The day being a religious holiday—a festival of Shiva, destroyer and healer—he was spending the quiet hours in meditating upon God, and reading a large volume of Professor William James’s “Principles of Psychology.” In religion he was inclined to the Monist view that the spirit of man is identical in essence with the spirit of God, but admitted that he felt no violent enmity towards the Dualists, who maintain a difference in essence. He wore on his forehead the three strong lines of white and vermillion, which represent the footprint of Vishnu, the maintainer of existence, and pronounce the wearer to be a reverential servant to the god’s commands. But, here again, he felt no enmity towards the worshippers of Shiva, who draw three parallel lines in grey or yellow earth across their brows. His true interest lay in the region of philosophy, and as a Monist his conception of the universe hardly differed from Spinozism, unless it be said that he went beyond Spinoza in his belief in a universal Consciousness, the subtle waves of which he could himself universally perceive if only his mind were not too gross an instrument of perception. All through his life he had striven to purify and etherialize that instrument by clean feeding and the practice of concentration. He had never touched flesh or strong drink or tobacco. By practising for an increasing time every day, he had been able to fix his mind on eternal truths with such absorption that the transitory things no longer disturbed his meditation, and he had acquired new and subtle powers, enabling him dimly to perceive a consciousness in the air and so-called inanimate objects. He could sometimes even feel the impalpable workings of Karma—the influence of man’s reputed good or evil deeds working upon his own destiny, and affecting even the infinitesimal atoms of the universe.
A Servant of Vishnu.
[Face p. 106.
He now longed to retire from the world, to lay aside his sacred thread—the triple thread of Brahmans—and devote to contemplation the few years left. But the size of his patriarchal household, and the necessity of making that 16s. 8d. a week restrained him, and, of course, his motives were laudable. Nevertheless, as usually happens, it would have been better for himself and his family if he had flung away his obvious duties and followed the call of his higher thoughts alone. For as I came away after receiving sour milk, and the usual pan leaf enclosing a bit of spice and beetel-nut to chew, one of his sons—an inferior telegraph clerk—stole after me to ask my advice about £2, which he had forwarded to a swindling Trust Company that plays the confidence trick with Congo Bonds and other ludicrous impostures. It was pitiful to think that the £2, now probably greasing the dirty works of Belgian brothels and gambling-hells, might have secured the philosopher nearly three weeks’ leisure from his school-teaching for the contemplation of the Monistic Essence, and but for his sense of family duty his son could not have squandered it.
The End of Man.
Offerings to the Dead.
[Face p. 108.