“But of all renunciations, the most natural is that of the Bhakti-yogin. Here there is no violence, nothing to tear off, as it were, from ourselves, nothing from which we have to separate ourselves with violence. The bhakti’s renunciation is easy, smooth, flowing, and as natural as things around us. A man loves his own city, then he begins to love his country, and the intense love for his little city drops off, smoothly, naturally. Again, a man learns to love the whole world; his love for his country; his intense, fanatical patriotism drops off, without hurting him, without any manifestation of violence. Uncultured man loves the pleasures of the senses intensely; as he becomes cultured, he begins to love intellectual pleasures, and his sense enjoyments become less and less.
The renunciation necessary for the attainment of bhakti is not obtained by killing anything, but just comes as naturally as, in the presence of a stronger light, the less intense lights become dimmer and dimmer until they vanish completely. So this love of pleasures of the senses and of the intellect is all made dim, and thrown aside and cast into the shade by the love of God Himself. That love of God grows and assumes a form which is called Para-bhakti, or supreme devotion. Forms vanish, rituals fly away, books are superseded, images, temples, churches, religions and sects, countries and nationalities, all these little limitations and bondages fall off by their own nature from him who knows this love of God. Nothing remains to bind him or fetter his freedom. A ship, all of a sudden, comes near a magnetic rock and its iron bolts and bars are all attracted and drawn out, and the planks are loosened and float freely on the water. Divine grace thus loosens the binding bolts and bars of the soul, and it becomes free. So, in this renunciation auxiliary to devotion, there is no harshness, no struggle, no repression or suppression. The Bhakti has not to suppress any single one of his emotions; he only strives to intensify them and direct them to God.
“Set aside this apparent, illusive world, and by seeing God in everything one can find real happiness. Have what you will, but deify all. Possess nothing. Love God in all. Working thus you will find the way which corresponds to the Christian tenet: ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.’
“The Lord lives in the heart of every creature. He turns them round and round upon the wheel of his Maya. Take refuge utterly in Him. By His grace you will find supreme peace, and the state which is beyond all change.
“When at the end of a time-cycle, or Kalpa, the universe is dissolved, it passes into a phase of potentiality—a seed-state—and thus awaits its next creation. The phase of expression is called by Sri Krishna ‘the day of Brahma’ and the phase of potentiality ‘the night of Brahma.’ The creatures inhabiting the world, subject to these cycles, are perpetually being reborn and redissolved, with each succeeding cosmic day and night. This dissolution should not, however, be thought of as ‘going back to God.’ The creature merely returns to the power of Brahman which sent it forth, and remains there in an unmanifested state until the time comes for its re-manifestation.
“Hinduism accepts the belief in many divine incarnations, including Krishna, Buddha, and Jesus, and foresees that there will be many more.”
And then, one day, came the last words spoken to Berenice by the Guru. For, as he knew, her call had come, and she was about to leave him.
“Now I have taught you that wisdom which is the secret of secrets,” he said. “Ponder it carefully. Then act as you think best. For according to Brahman, he who is free from delusion, and knows me as the supreme Reality, knows all that can be known. Therefore he adores me with his whole heart.
“This is the most sacred of all the truths I have taught you. He who has realized it becomes truly wise. The purpose of his life is fulfilled.”
Chapter 79
The following year was spent by Berenice and her mother traveling over a good part of India, because they were anxious to see and know more of that fascinating country. Although she had devoted four years of her life to the serious study of Hindu philosophy, she had seen enough of the way in which the natives lived to realize that this was a deluded and neglected people, and she wanted to know everything she could learn about them before her return home.
And so, by degrees, they extended their travels to Jaipur, Cawnpore, Peshawar, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Amritsar, Nepal, New Delhi, Calcutta, Madras, as well as to the southern border of Tibet. And the farther they traveled, the more shocked was Berenice by the low mental and social status of the millions of inhabitants of this startling and perplexing land. She was puzzled as to how a country could have evolved such a noble and profoundly religious philosophy of life and yet, at the same time, have evoked and maintained such a low, cruel, and oppressive social system, whereby a few managed to live a princely existence while millions struggled for even less than bread. The stark disillusion of such a sharp contrast was too much for Berenice to comprehend.
For she saw streets and roads lined with dirty, ragged or naked and seemingly despairing beggars, some of them begging for alms for the migratory holy men of whom they were disciples. In some regions the types of mental and physical destitution were without parallel. In one village almost the entire population was stricken with a plague, yet, possessing no source of aid or relief, was allowed to die. Again, in many hamlets, it was common to find as many as thirty persons occupying one small room, the consequences being disease and famine. And yet when windows or openings of any kind were cut in their rooms, they sealed them up.
The worst of the social ills, to Berenice, was the shocking practice of the child-wife custom. In fact, the result of this custom had already reduced the majority of the child wives of India to a physical and mental state that could scarcely be compared to health or sanity, and their ensuing deaths were more of a blessing than an injury.
The deplorable problem of the untouchables caused Berenice to inquire as to the origin of this idea. She was told that when the light-skinned ancestors of the present Hindus first came to India, they found there a darker, thicker-featured native race, the Dravidians, builders of the great temples of the south. And the priests of the newcomers desired that the blood of their people be not mixed with the native stock but be kept of one strain. They therefore declared the Dravidians to be unclean, “untouchable.” So, in the beginning, race hatred was the origin of untouchability!
And yet, as Berenice was told, Gandhi had once said:
“Untouchability in India is on its way out, and in spite of all opposition, going fast. It has degraded Indian humanity. The ‘untouchables’ are treated as if less than beasts. Their very shadow defiles the name of God. I am as strong or stronger in denouncing untouchability as I am in denouncing British methods imposed on India. Untouchability, for me, is more insufferable than British rule. If Hinduism hugs untouchability, then Hinduism is dead and gone.”
But Berenice had seen several of the young untouchable mothers with their puny infants, always in the far distance, looking wistfully and sadly at her as she stood talking with a Hindu instructor. And she could not help but observe how sensitive of face and form some of them were. In fact, one or two of them looked to her about as any ordinary but attractive and intelligent American girl might look if she were exposed to the filth, neglect, and isolation of her Indian sister. And yet, as she had heard, there had been five million untouchables freed from the curse through becoming Christians.