Messenger, morning brought you, habited in gold.
After sunset, your song wore a tune of ascetic grey, and then came night.
Your message was written in bright letters across the black.
Why is such splendour about you, to lure the heart of one who is nothing?
This is the answer of the messenger:
Great is the festival hall where you are to be the only guest.
Therefore the letter to you is written from sky to sky, And I, the proud servant, bring the invitation with all ceremony.
And thus the poet knows that the silent rows of stars carry G.o.d"s own invitation to the individual soul.
The same poet sings:
What hast thou come to beg from the beggar, O King of Kings?
My Kingdom is poor for want of him, my dear one, and I wait for him in sorrow.
How long will you keep him waiting, O wretch, who has waited for you for ages in silence and stillness?
Open your gate, and make this very moment fit for the union.
It is the song of man"s pride in the value given to him by Supreme Love and realised by his own love.
The Vaishnava religion, which has become the popular religion of India, carries the same message: G.o.d"s love finding its finality in man"s love. According to it, the lover, man, is the complement of the Lover, G.o.d, in the internal love drama of existence; and G.o.d"s call is ever wafted in man"s heart in the world-music, drawing him towards the union. This idea has been expressed in rich elaboration of symbols verging upon realism. But for these Bauls this idea is direct and simple, full of the dignified beauty of truth, which shuns all tinsels of ornament.
The Baul poet, when asked why he had no sect mark on his forehead, answered in his song that the true colour decoration appears on the skin of the fruit when its inner core is filled with ripe, sweet juice; but by artificially smearing it with colour from outside you do not make it ripe. And he says of his Guru, his teacher, that he is puzzled to find in which direction he must make salutation. For his teacher is not one, but many, who, moving on, form a procession of wayfarers.
Bauls have no temple or image for their worship, and this utter simplicity is needful for men whose one subject is to realise the innermost nearness of G.o.d. The Baul poet expressly says that if we try to approach G.o.d through the senses we miss him:
Bring him not into your house as the guest of your eyes; but let him come at your heart"s invitation.
Opening your doors to that which is seen only, is to lose it.
Yet, being a poet, he also knows that the objects of sense can reveal their spiritual meaning only when they are not seen through mere physical eyes:
Eyes can see only dust and earth, But feel it with your heart, it is pure joy.
The flowers of delight blossom on all sides, in every form, but where is your heart"s thread to weave them in a garland?
These Bauls have a philosophy, which they call the philosophy of the body; but they keep its secret; it is only for the initiated.
Evidently the underlying idea is that the individual"s body is itself the temple, in whose inner mystic shrine the Divine appears before the soul, and the key to it has to be found from those who know. But as the key is not for us outsiders, I leave it with the observation that this mystic philosophy of the body is the outcome of the attempt to get rid of all the outward shelters which are too costly for people like themselves. But this human body of ours is made by G.o.d"s own hand, from his own love, and even if some men, in the pride of their superiority, may despise it, G.o.d finds his joy in dwelling in others of yet lower birth. It is a truth easier of discovery by these people of humble origin than by men of proud estate.
The pride of the Baul beggar is not in his worldly distinction, but in the distinction that G.o.d himself has given to him. He feels himself like a flute through which G.o.d"s own breath of love has been breathed:
My heart is like a flute he has played on.
If ever it fall into other hands,- let him fling it away.
My lover"s flute is dear to him.
Therefore, if to-day alien breath have entered it and sounded strange notes, Let him break it to pieces and strew the dust with them.
So we find that this man also has his disgust of defilement. While the ambitious world of wealth and power despises him, he in his turn thinks that the world"s touch desecrates him who has been made sacred by the touch of his Lover. He does not envy us our life of ambition and achievements, but he knows how precious his own life has been:
I am poured forth in living notes of joy and sorrow by your breath.
Morning and evening, in summer and in rains, I am fashioned to music.
Yet should I be wholly spent in some flight of song, I shall not grieve, the tune is so precious to me.
Our joys and sorrows are contradictory when self separates them in opposition. But for the heart in which self merges in G.o.d"s love, they lose their absoluteness. So the Baul"s prayer is to feel in all situations-in danger, or pain, or sorrow-that he is in G.o.d"s hands.
He solves the problem of emanc.i.p.ation from sufferings by accepting and setting them in a higher context:
I am the boat, you are the sea, and also the boatman.
Though you never make the sh.o.r.e, though you let me sink, why should I be foolish and afraid?
Is the reaching the sh.o.r.e a greater prize than losing myself with you?
If you are only the haven, as they say, then what is the sea?
Let it surge and toss me on its waves, I shall be content.
I live in you, whatever and however you appear.
Save me or kill me as you wish, only never leave me in others" hands.
III
It is needless to say, before I conclude, that I had neither the training nor the opportunity to study this mendicant religious sect in Bengal from an ethnological standpoint. I was attracted to find out how the living currents of religious movements work in the heart of the people, saving them from degradation imposed by the society of the learned, of the rich, or of the high-born; how the spirit of man, by making use even of its obstacles, reaches fulfilment, led thither, not by the learned authorities in the scriptures, or by the mechanical impulse of the dogma-driven crowd, but by the unsophisticated aspiration of the loving soul. On the inaccessible mountain peaks of theology the snows of creed remain eternally rigid, cold, and pure.
But G.o.d"s manifest shower falls direct on the plain of humble hearts, flowing there in various channels, even getting mixed with some mud in its course, as it is soaked into the underground currents, invisible, but ever-moving.
I can think of nothing better than to conclude my paper with a poem of Jnandas, in which the aspiration of all simple spirits has found a devout expression:
I had travelled all day and was tired; then I bowed my head towards thy kingly court still far away.
The night deepened, a longing burned in my heart.
Whatever the words I sang, pain cried through them-for even my songs thirsted- O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
When time seemed lost in darkness, thy hand dropped its sceptre to take up the lute and strike the uttermost chords; And my heart sang out, O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
Ah, who is this whose arms enfold me?
Whatever I have to leave, let me leave; and whatever I have to bear, let me bear.
Only let me walk with thee, O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
Descend at whiles from thy high audience hall, come down amid joys and sorrows.
Hide in all forms and delights, in love, And in my heart sing thy songs,- O my Lover, my Beloved, my Best in all the world.
EAST AND WEST
I
It is not always a profound interest in man that carries travellers nowadays to distant lands. More often it is the facility for rapid movement. For lack of time and for the sake of convenience we generalise and crush our human facts into the packages within the steel trunks that hold our travellers" reports.
Our knowledge of our own countrymen and our feelings about them have slowly and unconsciously grown out of innumerable facts which are full of contradictions and subject to incessant change. They have the elusive mystery and fluidity of life. We cannot define to ourselves what we are as a whole, because we know too much; because our knowledge is more than knowledge. It is an immediate consciousness of personality, any evaluation of which carries some emotion, joy or sorrow, shame or exaltation. But in a foreign land we try to find our compensation for the meagreness of our data by the compactness of the generalisation which our imperfect sympathy itself helps us to form.
When a stranger from the West travels in the Eastern world he takes the facts that displease him and readily makes use of them for his rigid conclusions, fixed upon the unchallengeable authority of his personal experience. It is like a man who has his own boat for crossing his village stream, but, on being compelled to wade across some strange watercourse, draws angry comparisons as he goes from every patch of mud and every pebble which his feet encounter.
Our mind has faculties which are universal, but its habits are insular. There are men who become impatient and angry at the least discomfort when their habits are incommoded. In their idea of the next world they probably conjure up the ghosts of their slippers and dressing-gowns, and expect the latchkey that opens their lodging-house door on earth to fit their front door in the other world. As travellers they are a failure; for they have grown too accustomed to their mental easy-chairs, and in their intellectual nature love home comforts, which are of local make, more than the realities of life, which, like earth itself, are full of ups and downs, yet are one in their rounded completeness.
The modern age has brought the geography of the earth near to us, but made it difficult for us to come into touch with man. We go to strange lands and observe; we do not live there. We hardly meet men: but only specimens of knowledge. We are in haste to seek for general types and overlook individuals.