CHAPTER 1

1

Pure Joy

Pure joy is the children's joy. They have thepower of using any and every trivial thing tocreate their world of interest, and the ugliest dollmade beautiful with their imagination and lives withtheir life. He who can retain this faculty of enjoymentafter he has grown up, is indeed true Idealist.

Glimpse of Bengal

2

Wife and Husband

A wife knows her husband better than a husbandknows his wife, certain husbands have natures sorefined they are not entirely perceptible even undera wife's microscope.

The Lost Jewels

3

Death and Disease

Death does not hurt us; but disease does, becausedisease constantly reminds us of health and yetwithholds it from us.

The Religion of Man

4

White Sands and Black Soil

The sands of the desert may be very whiteand shiny, but I would much rather sow myseeds in black soil, where I can expect a return.

We crown thee king

5

The Greed of Man's heart

When a man, has greed in his heart, he is alwayson the verge of being beaten. The greed itselfsupplies his enemies with position.Our merciful God, beats us with His own hand, anddrives away all the poison. He who endures God'sbeating to the end is saved.

The Devotee

6

Mind and Material

When a material breaks it may be put togetheragain. But when the two human beings aredivided, after a long separation, they neverre-unite at the same place, and to the same time;for the mind are a living thing, and the moment bymoment it grows and changes.

The Elder Sister

7

Woman's Gaze on Timid Person

Never act shy in front of women. It increasestheir arrogance. Like a disease, women are alwayslooking for weakness in a man. Whenever they find aweakness, they strike and raise his temperature in a rush.

Laboratory

8

Manifestation of Infinite

Nothing can be manifest unless it has limits. The infinitehas to resort to limits-how else it can reveal itself? That whichcannot be revealed has not yet achieved completeness. Just asthought is borne by speech, so is the formless made completely byform.

Gora

9

A Prayer

Give us strength to love, to love fully,our life in its joys and sorrows, in its gainsand losses, in its rise and fall. Let us have strengthfully to see and to see and hear thy universe andto work with full vigor therein.

Sadhana

10

Aloofness

Not only in poetry, but in all art, the mindof the artist must attain a certain degree ofAloofness-the creator within man must beallowed the sole control.

My Reminiscences

11

Good and Bad Aspects of Science

Let us know that the Machine is good whenit helps but not so when it exploits life; thatScience is great when it destroys evil, but notwhen the two enter into unholy alliance.

The Religion of Man

12

The Lies of Women

Oh! What lies we women have to tell! Whenwe are mothers, we tell lies to pacify ourchildren; when we are wives, we tell lies topacify the fathers of our children, we are neverfree from this necessity.

Vision

13

Happiness

There are few kinds of happiness in the worldmore filling than the happiness of creatingsomething in which the mind is totally immersedin its surroundings.

Letter to Indira Devi Chaudhurani Tagore, Sept 5, 1894

14

Human Faces

Most faces do not give away much ofthe personality, but the transparent face-the face in a thousand-clearly reveals themystery behind it and immediately impressesitself on the mind.

The Conclusion

15

Big and Small Things of Life

When the big things of life raise their powerfulheads, the small things also are not deterred fromspreading their hungry little network of roots andputting forward their claims in the affairs of the world.

Cloud and Sun

16

Mental Training to Know the Truth

We are not trained to recognize the inevitableas natural, and so cannot give up gracefully thatwhich has to go, but needs must wait till it is snatchedfrom us. The truth comes as conqueror only becausewe have lost the art of receiving it as guest.

The Religion of Man

17

Conscious of the soul

Man's poverty is abysmal; his wants are endlesstill he becomes truly conscious of his soul. Tillthen, the world to him is in a state of continualflux-a phantasm that is and is not.

Sadhana

18

Conscious of soul

All our egoistic impulses, our selfish desires,obscure our true vision of the soul, for themonly indicate our own narrow self. When weare conscious of our soul, we perceive the innerbeing that transcends our ego and has its deeperaffinity with the All.

Sadhana

19

The World's test of Man

As the money-changer tests the ring of eachcoin, so does the world test each man by theresponse he gives to shocks of loss and pain, theresistance he offers to craze for cheap salvation. Thosewho fail to ring true is cast aside as worthless.

Broken Ties

20

Suffering and Humiliation

Only by suffering and sorrow shall you be freedfrom your crushing load. I do not know in whatform it will come to you, but it is the only way. Onlyby suffering and terrible humiliation shall you be made whole.

Modern Review 1917

21

Love

In love, loss and gain are harmonized. In its balancesheet, credit and debit accounts are in the samecolumn, and gifts are added to gains. Indeed, love whatbrings together and inseparably connects both the act ofabandoning and that of receiving.

Sadhana

22

Straight and simple life

Let your way of living be simple and straight,so that you feel no embarrassment to accept anyinvitation, whether from the rich in his palace orpoor man in his hut. Poor outside and rich within—thisis the ideal of India and you should strive to embrace it.

Letter to Rathindranath Tagore, May 17, 1903

23

Submission to Injustice

Because he who submits to injustice is alsoguilty-he causes wrong-doing to grow. You maynot understand but take it from me, being meek andtolerant is no dharma. It only encourages the wrong doer.

Gora

24

A Boy of Fourteen Years

In the world of human affairs there is no worsenuisance than a boy at the age of fourteen. Heis neither ornamental, nor useful. It is impossibleto shower affection as on a little boy; he is alwaysgetting in the way. If he talks with a childish lisp heis called a baby and if he answers in a grown-up way heis called impertinent. In fact any talk at all from him isresented.

The Home-Coming

25

Life, Death and Attachments

Death is the bearer of life, life flows forward in death'scurrent: once this idea is properly grasped, our mindbecomes free to see truth-within which there is no conflict.But as long as we persist in seeing life and death as fundamentallyopposed, we feel attachment to the world. And attachment bindsus, and makes us shed tears. All sins, fears and grief spring...