The chief controversy between Nikhil and myself arises
from this: that though I say “know thyself”,
and Nikhil also says “know thyself”, his
interpretation makes this “knowing” tantamount
to “not knowing”.
“Winning your kind of success,” Nikhil
once objected, “is success gained at the cost
of the soul: but the soul is greater than success.”
I simply said in answer: “Your words are
too vague.”
“That I cannot help,” Nikhil replied.
“A machine is distinct enough, but not so life.
If to gain distinctness you try to know life as a
machine, then such mere distinctness cannot stand for
truth. The soul is not as distinct as success,
and so you only lose your soul if you seek it in your
success.”
“Where, then, is this wonderful soul?”
“Where it knows itself in the infinite and transcends
its success.”
“But how does all this apply to our work for
the country?”
“It is the same thing. Where our country
makes itself the final object, it gains success at
the cost of the soul. Where it recognizes the
Greatest as greater than all, there it may miss success,
but gains its soul.”
“Is there any example of this in history?”
“Man is so great that he can despise not only
the success, but also the example. Possibly
example is lacking, just as there is no example of
the flower in the seed. But there is the urgence
of the flower in the seed all the same.”
It is not that I do not at all understand Nikhil’s
point of view; that is rather where my danger lies.
I was born in India and the poison of its spirituality
runs in my blood. However loudly I may proclaim
the madness of walking in the path of self-abnegation,
I cannot avoid it altogether.
This is exactly how such curious anomalies happen
nowadays in our country. We must have our religion
and also our nationalism; our __Bhagavadgita__ and
also our __Bande Mataram__. The result is that
both of them suffer. It is like performing with
an English military band, side by side with our Indian
festive pipes. I must make it the purpose of
my life to put an end to this hideous confusion.
I want the western military style to prevail, not
the Indian. We shall then not be ashamed of the
flag of our passion, which mother Nature has sent
with us as our standard into the battlefield of life.
Passion is beautiful and pure—pure as the
lily that comes out of the slimy soil. It rises
superior to its defilement and needs no Pears’
soap to wash it clean.
A question has been worrying me the last few days.
Why am I allowing my life to become entangled with
Bimala’s? Am I a drifting log to be caught
up at any and every obstacle?
Not that I have any false shame at Bimala becoming
an object of my desire. It is only too clear
how she wants me, and so I look on her as quite legitimately
mine. The fruit hangs on the branch by the stem,
but that is no reason why the claim of the stem should
be eternal. Ripe fruit cannot for ever swear
by its slackening stem-hold. All its sweetness
has been accumulated for me; to surrender itself to
my hand is the reason of its existence, its very nature,
its true morality. So I must pluck it, for it
becomes me not to make it futile.
