His criticisms of the English, of English rule in India, and of social institutions generally, were very interesting—to me at any rate—as coming from a man so perfectly free from Western “taint” and modern modes of thought, and who yet had had considerable experience of state policy and administration in his time, and who generally had circled a considerable experience of life. He said—what was quite a new idea to me, but in the most emphatic way—that the rule of the English in the time of the East India Company had been much better than it had become since under the Crown. Curiously enough his charge was that “the Queen” had made it so entirely commercial. The sole idea now, he said, is money. Before ’57 there had been some kind of State policy, some idea of a large and generous rule, and of the good of the people, but in the present day the rule was essentially feeble, with no defined policy of any kind except that of the money bag. This criticism impressed me much, as corroborating from an entirely independent source the growth of mere commercialism in Britain during late years, and of the nation-of-shopkeepers theory of government.
Going on to speak of government generally, his views would I fear hardly be accepted by the schools—they were more Carlylean in character. “States,” he said, “must be ruled by Justice, and then they will succeed.” (An ancient doctrine, this, but curiously neglected all down history.) “A king should stand and did stand in old times as the representative of Siva (God). He is nothing in himself—no more than the people—his revenue is derived from them—he is elected by them—and he is in trust to administer justice—especially criminal justice. In the courtyard of the palace at Tanjore there hung at one time a bell which the rajah placed there in order that any one feeling himself aggrieved might come and ring it, and so claim redress or judgment. Justice or Equality,” he continued, “is the special attribute of God; and he who represents God, i.e. the king, must consider this before all things. The same with rich people—they are bound to serve and work for the poor from whom their riches come.”
This last sentence he repeated so often, at different times and in different forms, that he might almost have been claimed as a Socialist—certainly was a Socialist in the heart of the matter; and at any rate this teaching shows how near the most ancient traditions come to the newest doctrines in these respects, and how far the unclean commercialism out of which we are just passing stands from either.
As to the English people he seemed to think them hopelessly plunged in materialism, but said that if they did turn to “sensible pursuits” (i.e. of divine knowledge) their perseverance and natural sense of justice and truth would, he thought, stand them in good stead. The difficulties of the gnosis in England were however very great; “those who do attain some degree of emancipation there do not know that they have attained; though having experience they lack knowledge.” “You in the West,” he continued, “say O God, O God! but you have no definite knowledge or methods by which you can attain to see God. It is like a man who knows there is ghee (butter) to be got out of a cow (pasu, metaph. for soul). He walks round and round the cow and cries, O Ghee, O Ghee! Milk pervades the cow, but he cannot find it. Then when he has learned to handle the teat, and has obtained the milk, he still cannot find the ghee. It pervades the milk and has also to be got by a definite method. So there is a definite method by which the divine consciousness can be educed from the soul, but it is only in India that complete instruction exists on this point—by which a man who is ‘ripe’ may systematically and without fail attain the object of his search, and by which the mass of the people may ascend as by a ladder from the very lowest stages to such ‘ripeness.’”
India, he said, was the divine land, and the source from which the divine knowledge had always radiated over the earth. Sanskrit and Tamil were divine languages—all other languages being of lower caste and origin. In India the conditions were in every way favorable to attainment, but in other lands not so. Some Mahomedans had at different times adopted the Indian teaching and become Gñánis, but it had always been in India, and not in their own countries that they had done so. Indeed the Mahomedan religion, though so different from the Hindu, had come from India, and was due to a great Rishi who had quarrelled with the Brahmans and had established forms and beliefs in a spirit of opposition to them. When I asked him what he thought of Christ, he said he was probably an adept in gñánam, but his hearers had been the rude mass of the people and his teaching had been suited to their wants.
Though these views of his on the influence of India and its wisdom-religion on the world may appear, and probably are in their way, exaggerated; yet they are partly justified by two facts which appear to me practically certain: (1) that in every age of the world and in almost every country there has been a body of doctrine handed down, which, with whatever variations and obscurations, has clustered round two or three central ideas, of which perhaps that of emancipation from self through repeated births is the most important; so that there has been a kind of tacit understanding and freemasonry on this subject between the great teachers throughout history—from the Eastern sages, down through Pythagoras, Plato, Paul, the Gnostic schools, the great mediæval Alchemists, the German mystics and others, to the great philosophers and poets of our own time; and that thousands of individuals on reaching a certain stage of evolution have corroborated and are constantly corroborating from their own experience the main points of this doctrine; and (2) that there must have existed in India, or in some neighboring region from which India drew its tradition, before all history, teachers who saw these occult facts and understood them probably better than the teachers of historical times, and who had themselves reached a stage of evolution at least equal to any that has been attained since.
If this is so then there is reason to believe that there is a distinct body of experience and knowledge into which the whole human race is destined to rise, and which there is every reason to believe will bring wonderful and added faculties with it. From whatever mere formalities or husks of tradition or abnormal growths have gathered round it in India, this has to be disentangled; but it is not now any more to be the heritage of India alone, but for the whole world. If however any one should seek it for the advantage or glory to himself of added powers and faculties, his quest will be in vain, for it is an absolute condition of attainment that all action for self as distinct from others shall entirely cease.
INDIA
GREAT PAGODA IN TEMPLE AT TANJORE.