บทที่ บทที่ 5 · REALISATION IN LOVE

. REALISATION IN LOVE

REALISATION IN LOVE

We come now to the eternal problem of co-existence of the

infinite and the finite, of the supreme being and our soul.

There is a sublime paradox that lies at the root of existence.

We never can go round it, because we never can stand outside the

problem and weigh it against any other possible alternative. But

the problem exists in logic only; in reality it does not offer us

any difficulty at all. Logically speaking, the distance between

two points, however near, may be said to be infinite because it

is infinitely divisible. But we _do_ cross the infinite at every

step, and meet the eternal in every second. Therefore some of our

philosophers say there is no such thing as finitude; it is but a

_māyā_, an illusion. The real is the infinite, and it is only

_māyā_, the unreality, which causes the appearance of the finite.

But the word _māyā_ is a mere name, it is no explanation. It is

merely saying that with truth there is this appearance which is

the opposite of truth; but how they come to exist at one and the

same time is incomprehensible.

We have what we call in Sanskrit _dvandva_, a series of opposites

in creation; such as, the positive pole and the negative, the

centripetal force and the centrifugal, attraction and repulsion.

These are also mere names, they are no explanations. They are

only different ways of asserting that the world in its essence is

a reconciliation of pairs of opposing forces. These forces, like

the left and the right hands of the creator, are acting in

absolute harmony, yet acting from opposite directions.

There is a bond of harmony between our two eyes, which makes them

act in unison. Likewise there is an unbreakable continuity of

relation in the physical world between heat and cold, light and

darkness, motion and rest, as between the bass and treble notes

of a piano. That is why these opposites do not bring confusion

in the universe, but harmony. If creation were but a chaos, we

should have to imagine the two opposing principles as trying to

get the better of each other. But the universe is not under

martial law, arbitrary and provisional. Here we find no force

which can run amok, or go on indefinitely in its wild road, like

an exiled outlaw, breaking all harmony with its surroundings;

each force, on the contrary, has to come back in a curved line to

its equilibrium. Waves rise, each to its individual height in a

seeming attitude of unrelenting competition, but only up to a

certain point; and thus we know of the great repose of the sea to

which they are all related, and to which they must all return in

a rhythm which is marvellously beautiful.

In fact, these undulations and vibrations, these risings and

fallings, are not due to the erratic contortions of disparate

bodies, they are a rhythmic dance. Rhythm never can be born of

the haphazard struggle of combat. Its underlying principle must

be unity, not opposition.

This principle of unity is the mystery of all mysteries. The

existence of a duality at once raises a question in our minds,

and we seek its solution in the One. When at last we find a

relation between these two, and thereby see them as one in

essence, we feel that we have come to the truth. And then we

give utterance to this most startling of all paradoxes, that the

One appears as many, that the appearance is the opposite of truth

and yet is inseparably related to it.

Curiously enough, there are men who lose that feeling of mystery,

which is at the root of all our delights, when they discover the

uniformity of law among the diversity of nature. As if

gravitation is not more of a mystery than the fall of an apple,

as if the evolution from one scale of being to the other is not

something which is even more shy of explanation than a succession

of creations. The trouble is that we very often stop at such a

law as if it were the final end of our search, and then we find

that it does not even begin to emancipate our spirit. It only

gives satisfaction to our intellect, and as it does not appeal to

our whole being it only deadens in us the sense of the infinite.

A great poem, when analysed, is a set of detached sounds. The

reader who finds out the meaning, which is the inner medium that

connects these outer sounds, discovers a perfect law all through,

which is never violated in the least; the law of the evolution of

ideas, the law of the music and the form.

But law in itself is a limit. It only shows that whatever is can

never be otherwise. When a man is exclusively occupied with the

search for the links of causality, his mind succumbs to the

tyranny of law in escaping from the tyranny of facts. In

learning a language, when from mere words we reach the laws of

words we have gained a great deal. But if we stop at that point,

and only concern ourselves with the marvels of the formation of a

language, seeking the hidden reason of all its apparent caprices,

we do not reach the end--for grammar is not literature, prosody

is not a poem.

When we come to literature we find that though it conforms to

rules of grammar it is yet a thing of joy, it is freedom itself.

The beauty of a poem is bound by strict laws, yet it transcends

them. The laws are its wings, they do not keep it weighed down,

they carry it to freedom. Its form is in law but its spirit is

in beauty. Law is the first step towards freedom, and beauty is

the complete liberation which stands on the pedestal of law.

Beauty harmonises in itself the limit and the beyond, the law and

the liberty.

In the world-poem, the discovery of the law of its rhythms, the

measurement of its expansion and contraction, movement and pause,

the pursuit of its evolution of forms and characters, are true

achievements of the mind; but we cannot stop there. It is like a

railway station; but the station platform is not our home. Only

he has attained the final truth who knows that the whole world is

a creation of joy.

This leads me to think how mysterious the relation of the human

heart with nature must be. In the outer world of activity nature

has one aspect, but in our hearts, in the inner world, it

presents an altogether different picture.

Take an instance--the flower of a plant. However fine and dainty

it may look, it is pressed to do a great service, and its colours

and forms are all suited to its work. It must bring forth the

fruit, or the continuity of plant life will be broken and the

earth will be turned into a desert ere long. The colour and the

smell of the flower are all for some purpose therefore; no sooner

is it fertilised by the bee, and the time of its fruition

arrives, than it sheds its exquisite petals and a cruel economy

compels it to give up its sweet perfume. It has no time to

flaunt its finery, for it is busy beyond measure. Viewed from

without, necessity seems to be the only factor in nature for

which everything works and moves. There the bud develops into

the flower, the flower into the fruit, the fruit into the seed,

the seed into a new plant again, and so forth, the chain of

activity running on unbroken. Should there crop up any

disturbance or impediment, no excuse would be accepted, and the

unfortunate thing thus choked in its movement would at once be

labelled as rejected, and be bound to die and disappear

post-haste. In the great office of nature there are innumerable

departments with endless work going on, and the fine flower that

you behold there, gaudily attired and scented like a dandy, is by

no means what it appears to be, but rather, is like a labourer

toiling in sun and shower, who has to submit a clear account of

his work and has no breathing space to enjoy himself in playful

frolic.

But when this same flower enters the heart of men its aspect of

busy practicality is gone, and it becomes the very emblem of

leisure and repose. The same object that is the embodiment of

endless activity without is the perfect expression of beauty and

peace within.

Science here warns us that we are mistaken, that the purpose of a

flower is nothing but what is outwardly manifested, and that the

relation of beauty and sweetness which we think it bears to us is

all our own making, gratuitous and imaginary.

But our heart replies that we are not in the least mistaken. In

the sphere of nature the flower carries with it a certificate

which recommends it as having immense capacity for doing useful

work, but it brings an altogether different letter of

introduction when it knocks at the door of our hearts. Beauty

becomes its only qualification. At one place it comes as a

slave, and at another as a free thing. How, then, should we give

credit to its first recommendation and disbelieve the second one?

That the flower has got its being in the unbroken chain of

causation is true beyond doubt; but that is an outer truth. The

inner truth is: _Verily from the everlasting joy do all objects

have their birth._ [Footnote: Ānandādhyēva khalvimāni bhūtāni

jāyantē.]

A flower, therefore, has not its only function in nature, but has

another great function to exercise in the mind of man. And what

is that function? In nature its work is that of a servant who

has to make his appearance at appointed times, but in the heart

of man it comes like a messenger from the King. In the

_Rāmāyana_, when _Sītā,_ forcibly separated from her husband, was

bewailing her evil fate in _Ravana's_ golden palace, she was met

by a messenger who brought with him a ring of her beloved

_Rāmachandra_ himself. The very sight of it convinced _Sītā_ of

the truth of tidings he bore. She was at once reassured that he

came indeed from her beloved one, who had not forgotten her and

was at hand to rescue her.

Such a messenger is a flower from our great lover. Surrounded

with the pomp and pageantry of worldliness, which may be linked

to Ravana's golden city, we still live in exile, while the

insolent spirit of worldly prosperity tempts us with allurements

and claims us as its bride. In the meantime the flower comes

across with a message from the other shore, and whispers in our

ears, "I am come. He has sent me. I am a messenger of the

beautiful, the one whose soul is the bliss of love. This island

of isolation has been bridged over by him, and he has not

forgotten thee, and will rescue thee even now. He will draw thee

unto him and make thee his own. This illusion will not hold thee

in thraldom for ever."

If we happen to be awake then, we question him: "How are we to

know that thou art come from him indeed?" The messenger says,

"Look! I have this ring from him. How lovely are its hues and

charms!"

Ah, doubtless it is his--indeed, it is our wedding ring. Now all

else passes into oblivion, only this sweet symbol of the touch of

the eternal love fills us with a deep longing. We realise that

the palace of gold where we are has nothing to do with us--our

deliverance is outside it--and there our love has its fruition

and our life its fulfilment.

What to the bee in nature is merely colour and scent, and the

marks or spots which show the right track to the honey, is to the

human heart beauty and joy untrammelled by necessity. They bring

a love letter to the heart written in many-coloured inks.

I was telling you, therefore, that however busy our active nature

outwardly may be, she has a secret chamber within the heart where

she comes and goes freely, without any design whatsoever. There

the fire of her workshop is transformed into lamps of a festival,

the noise of her factory is heard like music. The iron chain of

cause and effect sounds heavily outside in nature, but in the

human heart its unalloyed delight seems to sound, as it were,

like the golden strings of a harp.

It indeed seems to be wonderful that nature has these two aspects

at one and the same time, and so antithetical--one being of

thraldom and the other of freedom. In the same form, sound,

colour, and taste two contrary notes are heard, one of necessity

and the other of joy. Outwardly nature is busy and restless,

inwardly she is all silence and peace. She has toil on one side

and leisure on the other. You see her bondage only when you see

her from without, but within her heart is a limitless beauty.

Our seer says, "From joy are born all creatures, by joy they are

sustained, towards joy they progress, and into joy they enter."

Not that he ignores law, or that his contemplation of this

infinite joy is born of the intoxication produced by an

indulgence in abstract thought. He fully recognises the

inexorable laws of nature, and says, "Fire burns for fear of him

(i.e. by his law); the sun shines by fear of him; and for fear of

him the wind, the clouds, and death perform their offices." It

is a reign of iron rule, ready to punish the least transgression.

Yet the poet chants the glad song, "From joy are born all

creatures, by joy they are sustained, towards joy they progress,

and into joy they enter."

_The immortal being manifests himself in joy-form._ [Footnote:

Ānandarūpamamritam yad vibhāti.] His manifestation in creation

is out of his fullness of joy. It is the nature of this

abounding joy to realise itself in form which is law. The joy,

which is without form, must create, must translate itself into

forms. The joy of the singer is expressed in the form of a song,

that of the poet in the form of a poem. Man in his rôle of a

creator is ever creating forms, and they come out of his

abounding joy.

This joy, whose other name is love, must by its very nature have

duality for its realisation. When the singer has his inspiration

he makes himself into two; he has within him his other self as

the hearer, and the outside audience is merely an extension of

this other self of his. The lover seeks his own other self in

his beloved. It is the joy that creates this separation, in

order to realise through obstacles of union.

The _amritam_, the immortal bliss, has made himself into two.

Our soul is the loved one, it is his other self. We are

separate; but if this separation were absolute, then there would

have been absolute misery and unmitigated evil in this world.

Then from untruth we never could reach truth, and from sin we

never could hope to attain purity of heart; then all opposites

would ever remain opposites, and we could never find a medium

through which our differences could ever tend to meet. Then we

could have no language, no understanding, no blending of hearts,

no co-operation in life. But on the contrary, we find that the

separateness of objects is in a fluid state. Their

individualities are even changing, they are meeting and merging

into each other, till science itself is turning into metaphysics,

matter losing its boundaries, and the definition of life becoming

more and more indefinite.

Yes, our individual soul has been separated from the supreme

soul, but this has not been from alienation but from the fullness

of love. It is for that reason that untruths, sufferings, and

evils are not at a standstill; the human soul can defy them, can

overcome them, nay, can altogether transform them into new power

and beauty.

The singer is translating his song into singing, his joy into

forms, and the hearer has to translate back the singing into the

original joy; then the communion between the singer and the

hearer is complete. The infinite joy is manifesting itself in

manifold forms, taking upon itself the bondage of law, and we

fulfil our destiny when we go back from forms to joy, from law to

the love, when we untie the knot of the finite and hark back to

the infinite.

The human soul is on its journey from the law to love, from

discipline to liberation, from the moral plane to the spiritual.

Buddha preached the discipline of self-restraint and moral life;

it is a complete acceptance of law. But this bondage of law

cannot be an end by itself; by mastering it thoroughly we acquire

the means of getting beyond it. It is going back to Brahma, to

the infinite love, which is manifesting itself through the finite

forms of law. Buddha names it _Brahma-vihāra_, the joy of living

in Brahma. He who wants to reach this stage, according to Buddha,

"shall deceive none, entertain no hatred for anybody, and never

wish to injure through anger. He shall have measureless love for

all creatures, even as a mother has for her only child, whom she

protects with her own life. Up above, below, and all around him

he shall extend his love, which is without bounds and obstacles,

and which is free from all cruelty and antagonism. While

standing, sitting, walking, lying down, till he fall asleep, he

shall keep his mind active in this exercise of universal goodwill."

Want of love is a degree of callousness; for love is the

perfection of consciousness. We do not love because we do not

comprehend, or rather we do not comprehend because we do not

love. For love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us.

It is not a mere sentiment; it is truth; it is the joy that is at

the root of all creation. It is the white light of pure

consciousness that emanates from Brahma. So, to be one with this

_sarvānubhūh_, this all-feeling being who is in the external sky,

as well as in our inner soul, we must attain to that summit of

consciousness, which is love: _Who could have breathed or moved

if the sky were not filled with joy, with love?_ [Footnote: Ko

hyēvānyāt kah prānyāt yadēsha ākāça ānandō na syāt.] It is

through the heightening of our consciousness into love, and

extending it all over the world, that we can attain

_Brahma-vihāra,_ communion with this infinite joy.

Love spontaneously gives itself in endless gifts. But these

gifts lose their fullest significance if through them we do not

reach that love, which is the giver. To do that, we must have

love in our own heart. He who has no love in him values the

gifts of his lover only according to their usefulness. But

utility is temporary and partial. It can never occupy our whole

being; what is useful only touches us at the point where we have

some want. When the want is satisfied, utility becomes a burden

if it still persists. On the other hand, a mere token is of

permanent worth to us when we have love in our heart. For it is

not for any special use. It is an end in itself; it is for our

whole being and therefore can never tire us.

The question is, In what manner do we accept this world, which is

a perfect gift of joy? Have we been able to receive it in our

heart where we keep enshrined things that are of deathless value

to us? We are frantically busy making use of the forces of the

universe to gain more and more power; we feed and we clothe

ourselves from its stores, we scramble for its riches, and it

becomes for us a field of fierce competition. But were we born

for this, to extend our proprietary rights over this world and

make of it a marketable commodity? When our whole mind is bent

only upon making use of this world it loses for us its true

value. We make it cheap by our sordid desires; and thus to the

end of our days we only try to feed upon it and miss its truth,

just like the greedy child who tears leaves from a precious book

and tries to swallow them.

In the lands where cannibalism is prevalent man looks upon man as

his food. In such a country civilisation can never thrive, for

there man loses his higher value and is made common indeed. But

there are other kinds of cannibalism, perhaps not so gross, but

not less heinous, for which one need not travel far. In

countries higher in the scale of civilisation we find sometimes

man looked upon as a mere body, and he is bought and sold in the

market by the price of his flesh only. And sometimes he gets his

sole value from being useful; he is made into a machine, and is

traded upon by the man of money to acquire for him more money.

Thus our lust, our greed, our love of comfort result in

cheapening man to his lowest value. It is self deception on a

large scale. Our desires blind us to the _truth_ that there is

in man, and this is the greatest wrong done by ourselves to our

own soul. It deadens our consciousness, and is but a gradual

method of spiritual suicide. It produces ugly sores in the body

of civilisation, gives rise to its hovels and brothels, its

vindictive penal codes, its cruel prison systems, its organised

method of exploiting foreign races to the extent of permanently

injuring them by depriving them of the discipline of

self-government and means of self-defence.

Of course man is useful to man, because his body is a marvellous

machine and his mind an organ of wonderful efficiency. But he is

a spirit as well, and this spirit is truly known only by love.

When we define a man by the market value of the service we can

expect of him, we know him imperfectly. With this limited

knowledge of him it becomes easy for us to be unjust to him and

to entertain feelings of triumphant self-congratulation when, on

account of some cruel advantage on our side, we can get out of

him much more than we have paid for. But when we know him as a

spirit we know him as our own. We at once feel that cruelty to

him is cruelty to ourselves, to make him small is stealing from

our own humanity, and in seeking to make use of him solely for

personal profit we merely gain in money or comfort what we pay in

truth.

One day I was out in a boat on the Ganges. It was a beautiful

evening in autumn. The sun had just set; the silence of the sky

was full to the brim with ineffable peace and beauty. The vast

expanse of water was without a ripple, mirroring all the changing

shades of the sunset glow. Miles and miles of a desolate

sandbank lay like a huge amphibious reptile of some antediluvian

age, with its scales glistening in shining colours. As our boat

was silently gliding by the precipitous river-bank, riddled with

the nest-holes of a colony of birds, suddenly a big fish leapt up

to the surface of the water and then disappeared, displaying on

its vanishing figure all the colours of the evening sky. It drew

aside for a moment the many-coloured screen behind which there

was a silent world full of the joy of life. It came up from the

depths of its mysterious dwelling with a beautiful dancing motion

and added its own music to the silent symphony of the dying day.

I felt as if I had a friendly greeting from an alien world in its

own language, and it touched my heart with a flash of gladness.

Then suddenly the man at the helm exclaimed with a distinct note

of regret, "Ah, what a big fish!" It at once brought before his

vision the picture of the fish caught and made ready for his

supper. He could only look at the fish through his desire, and

thus missed the whole truth of its existence. But man is not

entirely an animal. He aspires to a spiritual vision, which is

the vision of the whole truth. This gives him the highest

delight, because it reveals to him the deepest harmony that

exists between him and his surroundings. It is our desires that

limit the scope of our self-realisation, hinder our extension of

consciousness, and give rise to sin, which is the innermost

barrier that keeps us apart from our God, setting up disunion and

the arrogance of exclusiveness. For sin is not one mere action,

but it is an attitude of life which takes for granted that our

goal is finite, that our self is the ultimate truth, and that we

are not all essentially one but exist each for his own separate

individual existence.

So I repeat we never can have a true view of man unless we have a

love for him. Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by the

amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved

and given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the love

of humanity. The first question and the last which it has to

answer is, Whether and how far it recognises man more as a spirit

than a machine? Whenever some ancient civilisation fell into

decay and died, it was owing to causes which produced callousness

of heart and led to the cheapening of man's worth; when either

the state or some powerful group of men began to look upon the

people as a mere instrument of their power; when, by compelling

weaker races to slavery and trying to keep them down by every

means, man struck at the foundation of his greatness, his own

love of freedom and fair-play. Civilisation can never sustain

itself upon cannibalism of any form. For that by which alone man

is true can only be nourished by love and justice.

As with man, so with this universe. When we look at the world

through the veil of our desires we make it small and narrow, and

fail to perceive its full truth. Of course it is obvious that

the world serves us and fulfils our needs, but our relation to it

does not end there. We are bound to it with a deeper and truer

bond than that of necessity. Our soul is drawn to it; our love

of life is really our wish to continue our relation with this

great world. This relation is one of love. We are glad that we

are in it; we are attached to it with numberless threads, which

extend from this earth to the stars. Man foolishly tries to

prove his superiority by imagining his radical separateness from

what he calls his physical world, which, in his blind fanaticism,

he sometimes goes to the extent of ignoring altogether, holding

it at his direst enemy. Yet the more his knowledge progresses,

the more it becomes difficult for man to establish this

separateness, and all the imaginary boundaries he had set up

around himself vanish one after another. Every time we lose some

of our badges of absolute distinction by which we conferred upon

our humanity the right to hold itself apart from its surroundings,

it gives us a shock of humiliation. But we have to submit to

this. If we set up our pride on the path of our self-realisation

to create divisions and disunion, then it must sooner or later

come under the wheels of truth and be ground to dust. No, we are

not burdened with some monstrous superiority, unmeaning in its

singular abruptness. It would be utterly degrading for us to

live in a world immeasurably less than ourselves in the quality of

soul, just as it would be repulsive and degrading to be surrounded

and served by a host of slaves, day and night, from birth to the

moment of death. On the contrary, this world is our compeer, nay,

we are one with it.

Through our progress in science the wholeness of the world and

our oneness with it is becoming clearer to our mind. When this

perception of the perfection of unity is not merely intellectual,

when it opens out our whole being into a luminous consciousness

of the all, then it becomes a radiant joy, an overspreading love.

Our spirit finds its larger self in the whole world, and is

filled with an absolute certainty that it is immortal. It dies a

hundred times in its enclosures of self; for separateness is

doomed to die, it cannot be made eternal. But it never can die

where it is one with the all, for there is its truth, its joy.

When a man feels the rhythmic throb of the soul-life of the whole

world in his own soul, then is he free. Then he enters into the

secret courting that goes on between this beautiful world-bride,

veiled with the veil of the many-coloured finiteness, and the

_paramatmam_, the bridegroom, in his spotless white. Then he

knows that he is the partaker of this gorgeous love festival, and

he is the honoured guest at the feast of immortality. Then he

understands the meaning of the seer-poet who sings, "From love the

world is born, by love it is sustained, towards love it moves, and

into love it enters."

In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and

are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance.

Love must be one and two at the same time.

Only love is motion and rest in one. Our heart ever changes its

place till it finds love, and then it has its rest. But this

rest itself is an intense form of activity where utter quiescence

and unceasing energy meet at the same point in love.

In love, loss and gain are harmonised. In its balance-sheet,

credit and debit accounts are in the same column, and gifts are

added to gains. In this wonderful festival of creation, this

great ceremony of self-sacrifice of God, the lover constantly

gives himself up to gain himself in love. Indeed, love is what

brings together and inseparably connects both the act of

abandoning and that of receiving.

In love, at one of its poles you find the personal, and at the

other the impersonal. At one you have the positive assertion--Here

I am; at the other the equally strong denial--I am not.

Without this ego what is love? And again, with only this ego how

can love be possible?

Bondage and liberation are not antagonistic in love. For love is

most free and at the same time most bound. If God were

absolutely free there would be no creation. The infinite being

has assumed unto himself the mystery of finitude. And in him who

is love the finite and the infinite are made one.

Similarly, when we talk about the relative values of freedom and

non-freedom, it becomes a mere play of words. It is not that we

desire freedom alone, we want thraldom as well. It is the high

function of love to welcome all limitations and to transcend

them. For nothing is more independent than love, and where else,

again, shall we find so much of dependence? In love, thraldom is

as glorious as freedom.

The _Vaishnava_ religion has boldly declared that God has bound

himself to man, and in that consists the greatest glory of human

existence. In the spell of the wonderful rhythm of the finite he

fetters himself at every step, and thus gives his love out in

music in his most perfect lyrics of beauty. Beauty is his wooing

of our heart; it can have no other purpose. It tells us

everywhere that the display of power is not the ultimate meaning

of creation; wherever there is a bit of colour, a note of song, a

grace of form, there comes the call for our love. Hunger compels

us to obey its behests, but hunger is not the last word for a man.

There have been men who have deliberately defied its commands to

show that the human soul is not to be led by the pressure of wants

and threat of pain. In fact, to live the life of man we have to

resist its demands every day, the least of us as well as the

greatest. But, on the other hand, there is a beauty in the world

which never insults our freedom, never raises even its little

finger to make us acknowledge its sovereignty. We can absolutely

ignore it and suffer no penalty in consequence. It is a call to

us, but not a command. It seeks for love in us, and love can

never be had by compulsion. Compulsion is not indeed the final

appeal to man, but joy is. Any joy is everywhere; it is in the

earth's green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky;

in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence of

grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame;

in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in

living; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of

knowledge; in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never can

share. Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, unnecessary;

nay, it very often contradicts the most peremptory behests of

necessity. It exists to show that the bonds of law can only be

explained by love; they are like body and soul. Joy is the

realisation of the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul with

the world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover.