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A GNANI. 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI 
 
 TROW 
 
 ADA/ns Peak to Elephanta 
 
 BY 
 
 Edward Carpenter 
 
 Where I pass, all my children know me 
 
 AUTHORIZED 
 
 CHICAGO 
 ALICE B. STOCKHAM & CO. 
 
% 03 
 
 ftf T*aasf <sf 
 P.O. Dept. 
 
 
Post Office Dept., 
 
 NOV 9 1903 
 LIBRARY. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 EDWARD CARPENTER in " A Visit to a 
 Gnani, " has given in a few pages, a clear, 
 concise, and comprehensive view of Oriental 
 thought and teaching. One reads in this small 
 work, what many have searched for through 
 cumbrous volumes, and often failed to find. 
 It is coming more and more to be understood 
 that the East has valuable knowledge for those 
 earnest in the study of Life, and it may prove 
 that a coalition of Eastern and Western thought 
 will aid in a solution of difficult problems. 
 
 The East has been accused of negative 
 teachings, a giving up of desire, ambition, 
 and love even; of passivity and letting one's 
 external life be ruled by conditions. 
 3 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The West, more positive, demands a phi- 
 losophy that enables man to make conditions 
 serve him, that teaches an appropriation of 
 love, desire, passion, and all forces to his own 
 use. 
 
 Are we not learning that man can so under- 
 stand his faculties that he can control thought, 
 that he can cause for himself peace of mind, 
 health of body, as well as train his mental 
 powers to obey every behest, and put his 
 spiritual forces into full equipment for service? 
 Does he not do this by a realization of a supe- 
 rior or universal mind? a consciousness of the 
 pervading principle of all life and action ; and 
 by rising out of his subjection to the ordinary 
 confused products of intellect that go chasing 
 each other like insects around an evening 
 lamp. These thoughts, these insects, instead 
 of rushing on to destruction, are lead quietly 
 to glide out of the way, in order that the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 great light unobscured, may reveal the soul's 
 effulgence. 
 
 If this is so, the metaphysics of the West, 
 practical and effective in their application, 
 are not so widely different in philosophical 
 aspect from that taught by the Gnani. Man 
 loses his life to gain it ; he loses the sense of 
 bondage in the physical and mental, to gain 
 the greater power in the life of the spirit. 
 
 In a Visit to a Gnani, the author's nomen- 
 clature is very happy, giving an unmistakable 
 clearness and distinctness to his subject. Man 
 has an ordinary consciousness, and a Kosmic 
 consciousness, and this Kosmic consciousness 
 through definite training becomes a power of 
 such magnitude, that all experiences through 
 individual consciousness only pale into insignifi- 
 cance. Every individual possesses this con- 
 sciousness, and by its growth he gradually 
 learns to emancipate himself from the tradi- 
 tional belief in the inherent power of matter, 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and to understand that there is no life separate 
 and apart from the universal life. 
 
 To have this truth engraven upon one's 
 mind as a verity puts new meanings upon all 
 things, and enables one to evolve into effective- 
 ness, hitherto, unused faculties of the soul. 
 
 One needs no glossary to read this brochure, 
 
 but its perusal will quicken the perception, 
 
 elevate one's estimate of himself, and give him 
 
 a glimpse of the principle, pervading all life 
 
 that makes all souls akin. 
 
 Alice B. Stockham, M. D. 
 Chicago. 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 DURING my stay in Ceylon I was fortunate 
 enough to make the acquaintance of one 
 of the esoteric teachers of the ancient religious 
 mysteries. These Gurus or Adepts are to be 
 found scattered all over the mainland of India ; 
 but they lead a secluded existence, avoiding 
 the currents of Western civilization — which are 
 obnoxious to them — and rarely come into con- 
 tact with the English or appear on the surface 
 of ordinary life. They are divided into two 
 great schools, the Himalayan and the South 
 Indian — formed probably, even centuries back, 
 by the gradual retirement of the adepts into 
 the mountains and forests of their respective 
 districts before the spread of foreign races and 
 civilizations over the general continent. 
 
8 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 The Himalayan school has carried on the 
 more democratic and progressive Buddhistic 
 tradition, while the South Indian has kept more 
 to caste, and the ancient Brahmanical and later 
 Hindu lines. This separation has led to 
 divergencies in philosophy, and there are even 
 (so strong is sectional feelings in all ranges of 
 human activity) slight jealousies between the 
 adherents of the two schools; but the differ- 
 ences are probably after all very superficial; 
 in essence their teachings and their work may, 
 I think, be said to be the same. 
 
 The teacher to whom I allude belongs to the 
 South Indian school, and was only sojourning 
 for a time in Ceylon. When I first made his 
 acquaintance he was staying in the precincts 
 of a Hindu temple. Passing through the gar- 
 den and the arcade-like porch of the temple, 
 with its rude and grotesque frescoes of the 
 gods, — Siva astride the bull, Sakti, his consort, 
 seated behind him, etc., — we found ourselves 
 
NOV 9 ■* 
 
 A VISIT TO A fONTANI. 9 
 
 in a side chamber, where seated on a simple 
 couch, his bed and day-seat in one, was an 
 elderly man (some seventy years of age, though 
 he did not look nearly as much as that) dressed 
 only in a white muslin wrapper wound loosely 
 around his lithe and even active dark brown 
 form : his head and face shaven a day or two 
 past, very gentle and spiritual in expression, 
 like the best type of Roman Catholic priest — a 
 very beautiful and finely formed mouth, straight 
 nose and well-formed chin, dark eyes, undoubt- 
 edly the eyes of a seer, dark-rimmed eyelids, 
 and a powerful prophetic, and withal childlike, 
 manner. He soon lapsed into exposition which 
 he continued for an hour or two with but few 
 interjections from his auditors. 
 
 At a later time he moved into a little cottage 
 where for several weeks I saw him nearly 
 every day. Every day the same — generally 
 sitting on his couch, with bare arms and feet, 
 the latter often coiled under him — only requir- 
 
10 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 ing a question to launch off into a long dis- 
 course — fluent and even rapt, with ready and 
 vivid illustration and long digressions, but 
 always returning to the point. Though unfor- 
 tunately my knowledge of Tamil was so slight 
 that I could not follow his conversation and 
 had to take advantage of the services of a 
 friend as interpreter, still it was easy to see 
 what a remarkable vigor and command of 
 language the fellow had, what power of con- 
 centration on the subject in hand, and wealth 
 of reference — especially citation from ancient 
 authorities — wherewith to illustrate his dis- 
 course. 
 
 Everything in the East is different from the 
 West, and so are the methods of teaching. 
 Teaching in the East is entirely authoritative 
 and traditional. That is its strong point and 
 also its defect. The pupil is not expected to 
 ask questions of a skeptical nature or expres- 
 sive of doubt ; the teacher does not go about 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 11 
 
 to "prove" his thesis to the pupil, or support 
 it with arguments drawn from the plane of the 
 pupil's intelligence. He simply re-delivers to 
 the pupil, in a certain order and sequence, the 
 doctrines which were delivered to him in his 
 time, which have since been verified by his 
 own experience, and which he can illustrate by 
 phrases and metaphors and citations drawn 
 from the sacred books. He has of course his 
 own way of presenting the whole, but the body 
 of knowledge which he thus hands down is 
 purely traditional and may have come along 
 for thousands of years with little or no change. 
 Originality plays no part in the teachings of 
 the Indian sages. The knowledge which they 
 have to impart is of a kind in which invention 
 is not required. It purports to be a knowledge 
 of the original fact of the universe itself — 
 something behind which no man can go. The 
 West may originate, the West may present 
 new views of the prime fact — the East only 
 
12 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 seeks to give to a man that fact itself, the 
 supreme consciousness, undifferentiated, the 
 key to all that exists. 
 
 The Indian teachers therefore say there are 
 as a rule three conditions of the attainment of 
 Divine knowledge or gnanam: (i) The study 
 of the sacred books, (2) the help of a Guru, 
 and (3) the verification of the tradition by 
 one's own experience. Without this last the 
 others are of course of no use ; and the chief 
 aid of the Guru is directed to the instruction of 
 the pupil in the methods by which he may at- 
 tain to personal experience. The sacred 
 books give the philosophy and some of the ex- 
 periences of the gnani, or illuminated person, 
 but they do not, except in scattered hints, 
 give instruction as to how this illumination is 
 to be obtained. The truth is, it is a question 
 of evolution ; and it would neither be right that 
 such instruction should be given to everybody, 
 nor indeed, possible, since even in the case of 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 13 
 
 those prepared for it the methods must differ, 
 according to the idiosyncrasy and character of 
 the pupil. ^ 
 
 There are apparently isolated cases in which 
 individuals attain to Gnanam through their 
 own spontaneous development, and without in- 
 struction from a Guru, but these are rare. As a 
 rule, every man who is received into the body of 
 Adepts receives his initiation through another 
 Adept, who himself received it from a fore- 
 runner, and the whole constitutes a kind of 
 church or brotherhood with genealogical 
 branches so to speak — The line of adepts from 
 which a man descends being imparted to him 
 on his admission into the fraternity. I need 
 not say that this resembles the methods of the 
 ancient mysteries and initiations of classic 
 times, and, indeed, the Indian teachers claim 
 that the Greek and Egyptian and other Western 
 schools of arcane lore were merely branches, 
 more or less degenerate, of their own. 
 
14 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 The course of preparation for Gnanam is 
 called yogam, and the person who is going 
 through this stage is called a yogi — from the 
 root yog; to join — one who is seeking junction 
 with the universal spirit. Yogis are common 
 all over India, and exist among all classes and 
 in various forms. Some emaciate themselves 
 and torture their bodies, others seek only con- 
 trol over their minds, some retire into the 
 jungles and mountains, others frequent the 
 cities and exhibit themselves in the crowded 
 fairs, others again carry on the avocations of 
 daily life with but little change of outward 
 habit. Some are humbugs, led on by vanity 
 or greed of gain (for to give to a holy man is 
 highly meritorious) ; others are genuine stu- 
 dents or philosophers; some are profoundly 
 imbued with the religious sense, others by 
 mere distaste for the world. The majority 
 probably take to a wandering life of the body, 
 some become wandering in mind ; a great many 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 15 
 
 attain to phases of clairvoyance and abnormal 
 power of some kind or other, and a very few 
 become adepts of a high order. 
 
 Anyhow, the matter cannot be understood 
 unless it is realized that this sort of religious 
 retirement is thoroughly accepted and ac- 
 knowledged all over India, and excites no sur- 
 prise or special remark. Only some five or six 
 years ago a relative of the late Rajah of Tanjore 
 — a man of some forty or fifty years of age, and 
 of course one of the chief native personages in 
 that part of India — made up his mind to become 
 a devotee. He one day told his friends he was 
 going on a railway journey, sent off his serv- 
 ants and carriages from the palace to the sta- 
 tion, saying he would follow, gave them the 
 slip, and has never been heard of since ! His 
 friends went to the man who was known to have 
 been acting as his Guru, who simply told them, 
 "You will never find him." Supposing the 
 
16 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 G. O. M. or the Prince of Wales were to retire 
 
 like this — how odd it would seem ! 
 
 To illustrate this story I may tell the story 
 of Tilleinathan Swamy, who was the teacher 
 of the Guru whose acquaintance I am referring 
 to in this chapter. Tilleinathan was a wealthy 
 ship owner of high family. In 1850 he devoted 
 himself to religious exercises, till 1855, when he 
 became ' ' emancipated. ' ' After his attainment 
 he felt sick of the world, and so he wound up 
 his affairs, divided all his goods and money 
 among his relations and dependents, and went 
 off stark naked into the woods. His mother 
 and sisters were grieved and repeatedly pur- 
 sued him, offering to surrender all to him if he 
 would only return. At last he simply refused 
 to answer their importunities, and they 
 desisted. He appeared in Tanjore after that 
 in 1857, 1859, 1864 and 1872, but has not been 
 seen since. He is supposed to be living some- 
 where in the Western Ghauts. 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 17 
 
 In 1858 or 1859, at the close of the Indian 
 Mutiny, when search was being made for Nana 
 Sahib, it was reported that the Nana was hiding 
 himself under the garb (or no garb) of an 
 "Ascetic," and orders were issued to detain 
 and examine all such people. Tilleinathan was 
 taken and brought before the sub-magistrate at 
 Kumbakonam, who told him the Government 
 orders, and that he must dress himself prop- 
 erly. At the same time the sub-magistrate hav- 
 ing a friendly feeling for T., and guessing that 
 he would refuse obedience, had brought a 
 wealthy merchant with him, whom he had 
 persuaded to stand bail for Tilleinathan in such 
 emergency. When, however, the merchant 
 saw Tilleinathan he expressed his doubts about 
 standing bail for him — whereupon T. said, 
 "Quite right, it is no good your standing bail 
 for me; the English Government itself could 
 not stand bail for one who creates and destroys 
 
18 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 Governments. I will be bail for myself!" 
 The sub-magistrate then let him go. 
 
 But on the matter being reported at head- 
 quarters the sub. was reprimanded, and a force 
 consisting of an inspector and ten men (natives 
 of course), was sent to take Tilleinathan. He 
 at first refused and threatened them, but on the 
 inspector pleading that he would be dismissed 
 if he returned with empty hands, T. consented 
 to come "in order to save the inspector." 
 They came into full court — as it happened 
 before the collector (Morris), who immediately 
 reprimanded T. for his mad costume. "It is 
 you that are mad," said the latter, "not to 
 know that this is my right costume," — and he 
 proceeded to explain the four degrees of Hindu 
 probation and emancipation. (These are, of 
 course, the four stages of student, householder, 
 yogi and gnani. Every one who becomes a 
 gfiani must pass through the other three stages. 
 Each stage has its appropriate costume and 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 19 
 
 rules; the yogi wears a yellow garment; the 
 gfiani is emancipated from clothing, as well 
 as from all other troubles.) 
 
 Finally T. again told the collector that he 
 was a fool, and that he, T. , would punish him. 
 "What will you do?" said the collector. "If 
 you don't do justice I will burn you," was the 
 reply! At this the mass of people in court 
 trembled, believing, no doubt, implicitly in T. 's 
 power to fulfil his threat. The collector, how- 
 ever, told the inspector to read the Lunacy Act 
 to Tilleinathan, but the inspector's hand shook 
 so that he could hardly see the words — till T. 
 said, "Do not be afraid — I will explain it to 
 you." He then gave a somewhat detailed 
 account of the Act, pointed out to the collector 
 that it did not apply to his own case, and ended 
 by telling him once more than he was a fool. 
 The collector then let him go. 
 
 Afterwards, Morris — having been blamed for 
 letting the man go — and Beauchamp (judge), 
 
20 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 who had been rather impressed already by T. 's 
 personality, went together and with an escort 
 to the house of Tanjore, in which Tilleinathan 
 was then staying — with an undefined intention, 
 apparently, of arresting him. T. then asked 
 them if they thought he was under their gov- 
 ernment — to which the Englishmen replied 
 that they were not there to argue philosophy, 
 but to enforce the law. T. asked how they 
 would enforce it. "We have cannons and men 
 behind us," said Morris. "And I," said T., 
 "can also bring cannons and forces greater 
 than yours." They then left him again, and 
 he was no more troubled. 
 
 This story is a little disappointing in that no 
 miracles come off, but I tell it as it was told to 
 me by the Guru, and my friend A. having 
 heard it substantially the same from other and 
 independent witnesses at Tanjore, it may be 
 taken as giving a fairly correct idea of the kind 
 of thing that occasionally happens. No doubt 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 21 
 
 the collector would look upon Tilleinathan as 
 a "luny" — and from other stories I have heard 
 of him (his utter obliviousness of ordinary 
 conventionalities and proprieties, that he would 
 lie down to sleep in the middle of the street to 
 the great inconvenience of traffic, and that he 
 would sometimes keep on repeating a single 
 vacant phrase over and over again for half a 
 day, etc.) such an opinion might, I should say, 
 fairly be justified. Yet at the same time there 
 is no doubt he was a very remarkable man, and 
 the deep reverence with which our friend the 
 Guru spoke of him was obviously not accorded 
 merely to the abnormal powers which he seems 
 at times to have manifested, but to the pro- 
 fundity and breadth of his teaching and the 
 personal grandeur which prevailed through all 
 his eccentricities. 
 
 It was a common and apparently instinctive 
 practice with him to speak of the great oper- 
 ations of Nature, the thunder, the wind, the 
 
22 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 shining of the sun, etc., in the first person, "I" 
 — the identification with, or non-differentia- 
 tion from, the universe (which is the most 
 important of esoteric doctrines) being in his 
 case complete. So, also, the democratic char- 
 acter of his teachings surpassed even our 
 Western records. He would take a pariah dog 
 — the most scorned of creatures — and place it 
 round his neck (compare the pictures of Christ 
 with a lamb in the same attitude) or even let it 
 eat out of one plate with himself! One day, in 
 Kumbakonam, when importuned for instruction 
 by five or six disciples, he rose up and saying, 
 "Follow me," went through the streets to the 
 edge of a brook, which divided the pariah vil- 
 lage from the town — a line which no Hindu of 
 caste will ever cross — and stepping over the 
 brook bade them enter the defiled ground. 
 This ordeal, however, his followers could not 
 endure, and — except one — they all left him. 
 Tilleinathan's pupil, the teacher of whom I 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 23 
 
 am presently speaking, is married, and has a 
 wife and children. Most of these "ascetics" 
 think nothing of abandoning their families 
 when the call comes to them, and of going to 
 the woods, perhaps never to be seen again. He, 
 however, has not done this, but lives on 
 quietly at home at Tanjore. Thirty or forty 
 years ago he was a kind of confidential friend 
 and adviser to the then reigning prince of Tan- 
 jore, and was well up in traditional state-craft 
 and politics; and even only two or three years 
 ago took quite an active interest in the National 
 Indian Congress. His own name was Rama- 
 swamy, but he acquired the name of Eluk- 
 hanam, "the Grammarian," on account of his 
 proficiency in Tamil grammar and philosophy, 
 on which subject he was quite an authority, 
 even before his initiation. 
 
 Tamil is a very remarkable, and, indeed, 
 complex language — rivaling the Sanskrit in the 
 latter respect. It belongs to the Dravidian 
 
24 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 group, and has few Aryan roots in it except 
 what have been borrowed from Sanskrit. It 
 contains, however, an extraordinary number of 
 philosophical terms, of which some are San- 
 skrit in their origin, but many are entirely its 
 own; and, like the people, it forms a strange 
 blend of practical qualities with the most 
 inveterate occultism. "Tamil," says the 
 author of an article in the Theosophist for 
 November, 1890, "is one of the oldest languages 
 of India, if not of the world. Its birth and 
 infancy are developed in mythology. As in 
 the case of Sanskrit, we cannot say when 
 Tamil became a literary language. The oldest 
 Tamil works extant belong to a time, about 
 2,000 years ago, of high and cultured refinement 
 in Tamil poetic literature. All the religious 
 and philosophical poetry of Sanskrit has become 
 fused into Tamil, which language contains a 
 larger number of popular treatises in Occult- 
 ism, Alchemy, etc., than even Sanskrit; and 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 25 
 
 it is now the only spoken language of India 
 that abounds in occult treatises on various sub- 
 jects." 
 
 Going on to speak of the Tamil Adepts, 
 the author of this article says: " The 
 popular belief is that there were eighteen 
 brotherhoods of Adepts scattered here and 
 there, in the mountains and forests of the 
 Tamil country, and presided over by eighteen 
 Sadhoos; and that there was a grand secret 
 brotherhood composed of the eighteen Sadhoos, 
 holding its meetings in the hills of the Agasthya 
 Kutam in the Tinnevelly district. Since the 
 advent of the English and their mountaineer- 
 ing- and deforestation, these occultists have 
 retired far into the interior of the thick jungles 
 on the mountains ; and a large number have, it 
 is believed, altogether left these parts, for 
 more congenial places in the Himalyan ranges. 
 It is owing to their influence that the Tamil 
 language has been inundated, as it were, with 
 
26 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 a vast number of works on esoteric philosophy. 
 The works of Agasthya Muni alone (or those 
 ascribed to him) would fill a whole library. 
 The chief and only object of these brotherhoods 
 has been to popularize esoteric truths and 
 bring them home to the masses. So great and 
 so extensive is their influence that the Tamil 
 literature is permeated with esoteric truths in 
 all its ramifications." In fact, the object of 
 this article is to point out the vast number of 
 proverbs and popular songs, circulating among 
 the Tamils to-day, which conceal under frivo- 
 lous guise the most profound mystic truths. 
 The Grammar too — as I suppose is the case in 
 Sanskrit — is linked to the occult philosophy of 
 the people. 
 
 To return to the teacher, besides statecraft 
 and grammar he is well versed in matters of 
 law, and not unfrequently tackles a question 
 of this kind for the help of his friends ; and 
 has some practical knowledge of medicine, as 
 
A VISIT TO, A GNANI. 27 
 
 well as of cookery, which he considers impor- 
 tant in its relation to health (the divine health, 
 Sitkham). It will thus be seen that he is a 
 man of good practical ability and acquaintance 
 with the world, and not a mere dreamer, as is 
 too often assumed by Western critics to be the 
 case with all those who seek the hidden knowl- 
 edge of the East. In fact, it is one of the 
 remarkable points of the Hindu philosophy that 
 practical knowledge of life is expressly incul- 
 cated as a preliminary stage to initiation. A 
 man must be a householder before he becomes 
 a yogi ; and familiarity with sexual experience 
 instead of being reprobated is rather encour- 
 aged, in order that having experience one may 
 in time pass beyond it. Indeed it is not 
 unfrequently maintained that the early mar- 
 riage of the Hindus is advantageous in this 
 respect, since a couple married at the age of 
 fifteen or sixteen have by the time they are 
 forty a grown up family launched in life, and 
 
28 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 having circled worldly experience are then free 
 to dedicate themselves to the work of "eman- 
 cipation." 
 
 During this yoga period, which lasted about 
 three years, his wife was very good to him and 
 assisted him all she could. He was enjoined 
 by his own teacher to refrain from speech and 
 did so for about a year and a half, passing most 
 of his time in fixed attitudes of meditation, 
 and only clapping his hands when he wanted 
 food, etc. Hardly anything shows more 
 strongly the hold which these religious ideas 
 have upon the people than the common willing- 
 ness of the women to help their husbands in 
 works of this kind, which beside the sore 
 inconvenience of them, often deprive the fam- 
 ily of its very means of subsistence and leave 
 it dependent on the help of relations and others. 
 But so it is. It is difficult for a Westerner even 
 to begin to realize the conditions and inspira- 
 tions of life in the East. 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 29 
 
 Refraint from speech is not a necessary con- 
 dition of initiation, but it is enjoined in some 
 cases. (There might be a good many cases 
 among the Westerners where it would be very 
 desirable — with or without initiation !) ' ' Many 
 practicing," said the Guru one day, "not hav- 
 ing spoken for twelve years — so that when freed 
 they had lost the power of speech — babbled like 
 babies — and took some time to recover it. But 
 for two or three years you experience no dis- 
 ability." "During my initiation," he added, 
 1 ' I often wandered about the woods all night, 
 and many times saw wild beasts, but they never 
 harmed me — as indeed they cannot harm the 
 initiated. ' ' 
 
 At the present time he lives (when at home) 
 a secluded life, mostly absorbed in trance con- 
 ditions — his chief external interests, no doubt, 
 being the teaching of such people as are led to 
 him, or he is led to instruct. When, however, 
 he takes up any practical work he throws him- 
 
30 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 self into it with that power and concentration 
 which is peculiar toa u Master, ' ' and which is 
 the natural corollary of the power of abstrac- 
 tion when healthily used. 
 
 Among their own people these Gurus often 
 have small circles of disciples, who receive the 
 instruction of their master and in return are 
 ever ready to attend upon his wants. Some 
 times such little parties sit up all night alter- 
 nately reading the sacred books and absorbing 
 themselves in meditation. It appears that 
 Elukhanam's mother became his pupil and 
 practiced according to instructions, making 
 good progress. One day, however, she told 
 her son that she should die that night. 
 "What, are you ill?" he said. "No," she said, 
 "but I feel that I shall die." Then he asked 
 her what she desired to be done with her body. 
 "Oh, tie a rope to it and throw it out into the 
 street," was the reply — meaning that it did 
 not matter — a very strong expression, consid- 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 31 
 
 ering caste regulations on the subject. Noth- 
 ing more was said, but that night at 3 a. m., as 
 they and some friends were sitting up (cross 
 legged on the floor as usual), reading one of 
 the sacred books, one of these present said, 
 "But your mother does not move," — she was 
 dead. 
 
 When in Ceylon our friend was only staying 
 temporarily in a cottage, with a servant to 
 look after him, and though exceedingly ani- 
 mated and vigorous, as I have described, when 
 once embarked in exposition — capable of main- 
 taining his discourse for hours with unflagging 
 concentration — yet the moment such external 
 call upon his faculties was at an end, the inter- 
 est that it had excited seemed to be entirely 
 wiped from his mind ; and the latter returned 
 to that state of interior meditation and absorp- 
 tion in the contemplation of the world disclosed 
 to the inner sense, which had apparently 
 become his normal condition. 
 
32 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 I was in fact struck, and perhaps a little 
 shocked, by the want of interest in things and 
 persons around him displayed by the great 
 man — not that, as I have said, he was not very 
 helpful and considerate in special cases — but 
 evidently that part of his nature which held 
 him to the actual world was thinning out ; and 
 the personalities of attendants and of those he 
 might have casual dealings with, or even the 
 scenes and changes of external nature, excited 
 in him only the faintest response. 
 
 As I have said, he seemed to spend the 
 greater part of the twenty-four hours wrapt in 
 contemplation, and this not in the woods, but 
 in the interior of his own apartment. As a 
 rule he only took a brief half hour's walk morn- 
 ings and evenings, just along the road and 
 back again, and this was the only time he 
 passed out of doors. Certainly this utter inde- 
 pendence of external conditions — the very 
 small amount of food and exercise and even of 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 33 
 
 sleep that he took, combined with the great 
 vigor that he was capable of putting forth on 
 occasion both bodily and mentally, and the 
 perfect control he had over his faculties — all 
 seemed to suggest the idea of his having access 
 to some interior source of strength and nour- 
 ishment. And, indeed, the general doctrine 
 that the gnani can thus attain to independence 
 and maintain his body from interior sources 
 alone (eat of the "hidden manna") is one much 
 cherished by the Hindus, and which our friend 
 was never tired of insisting on. 
 
 Finally, his face, while showing the attri- 
 butes of the seer, the externally penetrating 
 quick eye, and the expression of illumination — 
 the deep mystic light within — showed also the 
 prevailing sentiment of happiness behind it. 
 Sandosliam, Sandosliam eppotham — "joy always 
 joy" — was his own expression, oft repeated. 
 
 Perhaps I have now said enough to show — 
 what of course was sufficiently evident to me — 
 
34 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 that, however it may be disguised under trivial 
 or even in some cases repellent coverings, 
 there is some reality beneath all of these — 
 some body of real experience, of no little value 
 and importance, which has been attained in 
 India by a portion at any rate of those who 
 have claimed it, and which has been handed 
 down now through a vast number of centuries 
 among the Hindu peoples as their most cher- 
 ished and precious possession. 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS WITHOUT THOUGHT. 
 
 The question is, What is this experience? or 
 rather — since an experience can really only be 
 known to the person who experiences it — we 
 may ask, "What is the nature of this experi- 
 ence?" And in trying to indicate an answer of 
 some kind to this question I feel considerable 
 diffidence, just for the very reason (for one) 
 already mentioned — namely, that it is so diffi- 
 cult or impossible for one person to give a true 
 account of an experience which has occurred 
 to another. If I could give the exact words of 
 the teacher, without any bias derived either 
 from myself or the interpreting friend, the case 
 might be different ; but that I cannot pretend 
 to do ; and if I could, the old-world scientific 
 forms in which his thoughts were cast would 
 35 
 
36 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 probably only prove a stumbling-block and a 
 source of confusion, instead of a help, to the 
 reader. Indeed, even in the case of the sacred 
 books, where we have a good deal of acces- 
 sible and authoritative information, Western 
 critics though for the most agreeing that there 
 is some real experience underlying, are sadly 
 at variance as to what that experience may be. 
 
 For these reasons I prefer not to attempt or 
 pretend to give the exact teaching, unbiassed, 
 of the Indian Gurus, or their experiences ; but 
 only to indicate as far as I can, in my own 
 words, and in modern thought-forms, what I 
 take to be the direction in which we must look 
 for this ancient and world-old knowledge which 
 had had so stupendous an influence in the East, 
 and which, indeed, is still the main mark of its 
 difference from the West. 
 
 And first let me guard against an error which 
 is likely to arise. It is very easy to assume, 
 and very frequently assumed, in any case 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 37 
 
 where a person is credited with the possession 
 of an unusual faculty, that such person is at 
 once lifted out of our sphere into a supernat- 
 ural region, and possesses every faculty of that 
 region. If, for instance, he or she is or is sup- 
 posed to be clairvoyant, it as assumed that 
 everything is, or ought to be, known to them ; 
 or if the person has shown what seems a mi- 
 raculous power at any time or in any case, it is 
 asked by way of discredit, why he or she did 
 not show a like power at other times or in 
 other cases. Against all such hasty general- 
 izations, it is necessary to guard ourselves. If 
 there is a higher form of consciousness attain- 
 able by man than that which he for the most 
 part can claim at present, it is probable, nay 
 certain, that it is evolving and will evolve but 
 slowly, and with many a slip and hesitant 
 pause by the way. In the far past of man and 
 the animals consciousness of sensation and 
 consciousness of self have been successively 
 
38 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 evolved — each of these mighty growths with 
 innumerable branches and branchlets continu- 
 ally spreading. At any point in this vast 
 experience, a new growth, a new form of con- 
 sciousness, might well have seemed miracu- 
 lous. What could be more marvelous than the 
 first revealment of the sense of sight, what 
 more inconceivable to those who had not 
 experienced it, and what more certain than 
 that the first use of this faculty must have been 
 fraught with delusion and error? Yet there 
 may be an inner vision which again transcends 
 sight, even as far as sight transcends touch. 
 It is more than probable that in the hidden 
 births of time there lurks a consciousness which 
 is not the consciousness of sensation and which 
 is not the consciousness of self — or which at least 
 includes or entirely surpasses these — a con- 
 sciousness in which the contrast between the 
 ego and the external world, and the distinction 
 between subject and object, fall away. The 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 39 
 
 part of the world into which such a conscious- 
 ness admits us (call it supramundane ', or what- 
 ever you will) is probably at least as vast and 
 complex as the part we know, and progress in 
 that region at least equally slow and tentative 
 and various, laborious, discontinuous and 
 uncertain. There is no sudden leap out of the 
 back parlor onto Olympus; and the routes, 
 when found from one to the other, are long 
 and bewildering in their variety. 
 
 And to those who do attain to some portion 
 of this region, we are not to suppose that they 
 are at once demi-gods, or infallible. In many 
 cases indeed the very novelty and strangeness 
 of the experiences give rise to phantasmal 
 trains of delusive speculation. Though we 
 should expect, and though it is no doubt true 
 on the whole, that what we should call the 
 higher types of existing humanity are those 
 most likely to come into possession of any 
 new faculties which may be flying about, yet 
 
40 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 it is not always so ; and there are cases, well 
 recognized, in which persons of decidedly 
 deficient or warped moral nature attain powers 
 which probably belong to a high grade of evo- 
 lution, and are correspondingly dangerous 
 thereby. 
 
 All this, or a great part of it, the Indian 
 teachers insist on. They say — and I think 
 this commends the reality of their experience — 
 that there is nothing abnormal or miraculous 
 about the matter ; that the faculties acquired 
 are on the whole the result of long evolution 
 and training, and that they have distinct laws 
 and an order of their own. They recognize 
 the existence of persons of demonic faculty, 
 who have acquired powers of a certain grade 
 without corresponding moral evolution; and 
 they admit the rarity of the highest phases of 
 consciousness and the fewness of those at pres- 
 ent fitted for its attainment. 
 
 With these little provisos then established I 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 41 
 
 think we may go on to say that what the 
 Gfiani seeks and obtains is a new order of con- 
 sciousness, to which for want of a better we 
 may give the name universal or cos?nic con- 
 sciousness, in contradistinction to the individ- 
 ual or special bodily consciousness with which 
 we are all familiar. I am not aware that the 
 exact equivalent of this expression "universal 
 consciousness" is used in the Hindu philos- 
 ophy ; but the Sat-chit-ana?ida Brahm, to which 
 every yogi aspires indicates the same idea; sat, 
 the reality, the all pervading ; chit, the know- 
 ing, perceiving ; a?ianda, the blissful — all these 
 united in one manifestation of Brahm. 
 
 The West seeks the individual consciousness 
 — the enriched mind, ready perceptions and 
 memories, individual hopes and fears, ambi- 
 tions, loves, conquests— the self, the local self, 
 in all its phases and forms — and sorely doubts 
 whether such a thing as an universal conscious- 
 ness exists. The East seeks the universal con- 
 
42 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 sciousness, and in those cases where its quest 
 succeeds individual self and life thin away to a 
 mere film, and are only the shadows cast by 
 the glory revealed beyond. 
 
 The individual consciousness takes the form 
 of Thought, which with its fluid and mobile like 
 quick-silver, perpetually in a state of change 
 and unrest, fraught with pain and effort ; the 
 other consciousness is not in the form of 
 Thought. It touches, sees, hears, and is those 
 things which it perceives — without motion, 
 without change, without effort, without distinc- 
 tion of subject and object, but with a vast and 
 incredible Joy. 
 
 The individual consciousness is specially 
 related to the body. The organs of the body 
 are in some degree its organs. But the whole 
 body is only as one organ of the cosmic con- 
 sciousness. To attain this latter one must 
 have the power of knowing one's self separate 
 from the body, of passing into a state of ecstacy 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 43 
 
 in fact. Without this the cosmic consciousness 
 cannot be experienced. 
 
 It is said: — "There are four main experi- 
 ences in initiation, (i) the meeting with a 
 Guru, (2) the consciousness of Grace, or Arul 
 (which may perhaps be interpreted as the con- 
 sciousness of a change — even of a physiological 
 change — working within one), (3) the vision of 
 Siva (God), with which the knowledge of one's 
 self as distinct from the body is closely con- 
 nected, (4) the finding of the universe within. " 
 "The wise," it is also said, "when their 
 thoughts cease to move perceive within them- 
 selves the Absolute consciousness, which is 
 Sarva sakshi, Witness of all things. ' ' 
 
 Great has been the disputes among the 
 learned as to the meaning of the word Nirwana — 
 whether it indicates a state of no-consciousness 
 or a state of vastly enhanced consciousness. 
 Probably both views have their justification : 
 the thing does not admit of definition in the 
 
44 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 terms of ordinary language. The important 
 thing to see and admit is that under cover of 
 this and other similar terms there does exist a 
 real and recognizable fact (that is a state of 
 consciousness in some sense), which has been 
 experienced over and over again, and which to 
 those who have experienced it in ever so slight 
 a degree has appeared worthy of life-long pur- 
 suit and devotion. It is easy, of course, to 
 represent the thing as a mere word, a theory, 
 a speculation of the dreamy Hindu ; but people 
 do not sacrifice their lives for empty words, nor 
 do mere philosophical abstractions rule the 
 destinies of continents. No, the word repre- 
 sents a reality, something very basic and 
 inevitable in human nature. The question 
 really is not to define the fact — for we cannot 
 do that — but to get at and experience it. 
 
 It is interesting at this juncture to find that 
 modern Western science, which has hitherto— 
 without much result — been occupying itself 
 
TAMIL LADY. 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. " 45 
 
 with mechanical theories of the universe, is 
 approaching from its side this idea of the 
 existence of another form of consciousness. 
 The extraordinary phenomena of hypnotism — 
 which no doubt are in some degree related to 
 the subject we are discussing, and which has 
 been recognized for ages in the East — are forc- 
 ing Western scientists to assume the existence 
 of the so-called secondary consciousness in the 
 body. The phenomena seem really inexpli- 
 cable without the assumption of a secondary 
 agency of some kind, and it every day becomes 
 increasingly difficult not to use the word con- 
 sciousness to describe it. 
 
 Let it be understood that I am not for a 
 moment assuming that this secondary con- 
 sciousness of the hypnotists is in all respects 
 identical with the Cosmic consciousness (or 
 whatever we may call it) of the Eastern occul- 
 tists. It may or may not be. The two kinds 
 of consciousness may cover the same ground, 
 
46 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 or they may only overlap to a small extent. 
 That is a question I do not propose to discuss. 
 The point to which I wish to draw attention is 
 that Western science is envisaging the possi- 
 bility of the existence in man of another con- 
 sciousness of some kind, beside that with whose 
 working we are familiar. It quotes (A. Moll) 
 the case of Barkworth who "can add up long 
 rows of figures while carrying on a lively dis- 
 cussion, without allowing his attention to be at 
 all diverted from the discussion;" and asks us 
 how Barkworth can do this unless he has a 
 secondary consciousness which occupies itself 
 with the figures while his primary conscious^ 
 ness is in the thick of argument. Here is a 
 lecturer (F. Myers) who for a whole minute 
 allows his mind to wander entirely away from 
 the subject in hand, and imagines himself to 
 be sitting beside a friend in the audience and 
 to be engaged in conversation with him, and 
 who wakes up to find himself still on the plat- 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 47 
 
 form lecturing away with perfect ease and co- 
 herency. What are we to say to such a case 
 as that? Here again is a pianist who recites a 
 piece of music by heart, and finds that his re- 
 cital is actually hindered by allowing his mind 
 (his primary consciousness) to dwell upon 
 what he is doing. It is sometimes suggested 
 that the very perfection of the musical perform- 
 ance shows that it is mechanical or uncon- 
 scious, but is this a fair inference? and would 
 it not seem to be a mere contradiction in terms 
 to speak of an unconscious lecturer, or an un- 
 conscious addition of a row of figures? 
 
 Many actions and processes of the body, e.g., 
 swallowing, are attended by distinct personal 
 consciousness ; many other actions and proces- 
 ses are quite unperceived by the same ; and it 
 might seem reasonable to suppose that these 
 latter at any rate were purely mechanical and 
 devoid of any mental substratum. But the lat- 
 ter developments of hypnotism in the West 
 
48 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 have shown — what is well known to the Indian 
 fakirs — that under certain conditions conscious- 
 ness of the internal actions and processes of 
 the body can be obtained ; and not only so, but 
 consciousness of events taking place at a dis- 
 tance from the body and without the ordinary 
 means of communication. 
 
 Thus the idea of another consciousness, in 
 some respects of wider range than the ordi- 
 nary one, and having methods of perception 
 of its own, has been gradually infiltrating itself 
 into Western minds. 
 
 There is another idea, which modern science 
 has been familiarizing us with, and which is 
 bringing us towards the same conception — that 
 namely of the fourth dimension. The suppo- 
 sition that the actual world has four space- 
 dimensions instead of three makes many things 
 conceivable which otherwise would be incred- 
 ible. It makes it conceivable that apparently 
 separate objects, e. g., distinct people, are 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 49 
 
 really physically united; that things appar- 
 ently sundered by enormous distances of space 
 are really quite close together; that a person 
 or object might pass in and out of a closed 
 room without disturbance of walls, doors, or 
 windows, etc. ; and if this fourth dimension 
 were to become a factor of our consciousness, 
 it is obvious that we should have means of 
 knowledge which to the ordinary sense would 
 appear simply miraculous. There is much ap- 
 parently to suggest that the consciousness 
 attained to by the Indian gnanis in their de- 
 gree, and by hypnotic subjects in theirs is of 
 this fourth-dimension at order. 
 
 As a solid is related to its own surfaces, so, 
 it would appear, is the cosmic consciousness re- 
 lated to the ordinary consciousness. The 
 phases of the personal consciousness are but 
 different faces of the other consciousness; and 
 experiences which seem remote from each 
 other in the individual are perhaps all equally 
 
50 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 near in the universal. Space itself, as we 
 know it, may be practically annihilated in the 
 consciousness of a larger space of which it is 
 but the superficies; and a person living in 
 London may not unlikely find that he has a 
 back door opening quite simply and uncere- 
 moniously out in Bombay. 
 
 "The true quality of the soul," said the 
 Guru one day, "is that of space, by which it is 
 at rest, everywhere. But this space (Akasa) 
 within the soul is far above the ordinary 
 material space. The whole of the latter, in- 
 cluding all the suns and stars, appears to you 
 then as it were but an atom of the former" — 
 and here he held up his fingers as though crum- 
 bling a speck of dust between them. 
 
 "At rest everywhere," "Indifference," 
 "Equality." This was one of the most re- 
 markable parts of the Guru's teaching. 
 Though (for family reasons) maintaining many 
 of the observances of Caste himself, and 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 51 
 
 though holding and teaching that for the mass 
 of the people caste rules were quite necessary, 
 he never ceased to insist that when the time 
 came for a man (or woman) to be "emanci- 
 pated" all these rules must drop aside as of no 
 importance — all distinction of castes, classes, 
 all sense of superiority or self-goodness — of 
 right and wrong even — and the most absolute 
 sense of Equality must prevail towards every 
 one, and determination in this expression. 
 Certainly it was remarkable (though I knew 
 that the sacred books contained it) to find this 
 germinal principal of Western democracy so 
 vividly active and at work deep down beneath 
 the innumerable layers of Oriental social life 
 and custom. But so it is ; and nothing shows 
 better the relation between the West and the 
 East than this fact. 
 
 This sense of Equality, of Freedom from 
 regulations and confinements, of Inclusiveness 
 and of the Life that "rests everywhere," be- 
 
52 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 longs of course more to the cosmic or univer- 
 sal part of man than to the individual part. 
 To the latter it is always a stumbling-block 
 and an offence. It is easy to show that men are 
 not equal, that they cannot be free, and to 
 point the absurdity of a life that is indifferent 
 and at rest under all conditions. Nevertheless 
 to the larger consciousness these are basic 
 facts, which underlie the common life of 
 humanity, and feed the very individual that 
 denies them. 
 
 Thus repeating the proviso that in using 
 such terms as cosmic and universal conscious- 
 ness we do not commit ourselves to the theory 
 that the instant a man leaves the personal 
 part of him he enters into absolutely unlimited 
 and universal knowledge, but only into a 
 higher order of perception — and admitting the 
 intricacy and complexity of the region so rough- 
 ly denoted by these terms, and the microscopical 
 character of our knowledge about it — we may 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 53 
 
 say once more, also as a roughest generaliza- 
 tion, that the quest of the East has been this 
 universal consciousness, and that of the West 
 the personal or individual consciousness. As 
 is well known the East has its various sects and 
 schools of philosophy, with subtle discrimina- 
 tions of qualities, essences, god-heads, devil- 
 hoods, etc., into which I do not propose to go, 
 and which I should feel myself quite incom- 
 petent to deal with. Leaving all this aside, I 
 will keep simply to these two rough Western 
 terms, and try to consider further the question 
 of the methods by which the Eastern student 
 sets himself to obtain the cosmic state, or such 
 higher order of consciousness as he does encom- 
 pass. 
 
ft "— ° eft ' 
 
 IMC «* «** 
 
 METHODS OF ATTAINMENT. 
 
 The subject of the methods used by the 
 yogis for the attainment of another order of 
 consciousness has its physical, its mental, and 
 its moral sides — and doubtless other sides as 
 well. 
 
 Beginning with the physical side, it is prob- 
 able that the discounting or repression of the 
 physical brain — or of that part of it which is 
 the seat of the primary consciousness — is the 
 most important : on the theory that the repres- 
 sion of the primary consciousness opens the 
 way for the manifestation of any other con- 
 sciousness that may be present. Thus hypno- 
 tism lulls or fatigues the ordinary brain into a 
 complete torpor — so allowing the phenomena 
 connected with the secondary consciousness to 
 54 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 55 
 
 come out into a greater prominence. It need 
 not be supposed that hypnotism induces the 
 secondary consciousness, but only that it re- 
 moves that other consciousness which ordina- 
 rily conceals or hinders its expression. Some 
 of the methods adopted by the yogis are un- 
 doubtedly of this hypnotic character, such as 
 the sitting or standing for long periods abso- 
 lutely fixed in one position ; staring at the sun 
 or other object; repeating a word or phrase 
 over and over again for thousands of times, 
 etc., and the clairvoyant and other results pro- 
 duced seem in many respects very similar to 
 the results of Western hypnotism. The yogi, 
 however, by immense persistence in his prac- 
 tices, and by using his own will to effect the 
 change of consciousness, instead of surrender- 
 ing himself into the power of another person, 
 seems to be able to transfer his "V y or ego 
 into the new region, and to remember on his 
 return to ordinary consciousness what he has 
 
56 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 seen there; whereas the hypnotic subject 
 seems to be divided into a double ego, and as a 
 rule remembers nothing in the primary state 
 of what occurred to him in the secondary. 
 
 Others of the yogis adopt prolonged fasting, 
 abstinence from sleep, self-torture, and emacia- 
 tion, with the same object, namely, the reduc- 
 tion of the body, and apparently with some- 
 what similar results — though in these cases not 
 only insight is supposed to be gained, but 
 added powers over nature, arising from the 
 intense forces of control put forth and educed 
 by these exercises. The fact that the Siddhi, 
 or miraculous powers, can be gained in this way 
 is so universally accepted and taken for granted 
 in India that (even after making all allow- 
 ances) it is difficult not to be carried away on 
 the stream of belief. And, indeed, when one 
 considers the known powers of the will — culti- 
 vated as it is to but a feeble degree amongst 
 most of us — there seems to be an inherent prob- 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 57 
 
 ability in the case. The adepts, however, as a 
 rule, though entirely agreeing that the attain- 
 ment of the Siddhi powers is possible, strongly 
 condemn the quest of them by these methods 
 — saying with great justice that the mere fact 
 of a quest of this kind is a breach of the law 
 of Indifference and Trust, and that the quest 
 being instigated by some desire — ambition, 
 spiritual pride, love of gain, or what not — 
 necessarily ends either by stultifying itself, or 
 by feeding the desire, and if some powers are 
 gained, by the devotion of them to evil ends. 
 Thus the methods that are mainly physical 
 produce certain results — clairvoyances and 
 controls — which are largely physical in their 
 character, and are probably for the most part 
 more or less morbid and dangerous. They are, 
 however, very widely spread among the inferior 
 classes of yogis all over India, and the per- 
 formances which spring from them, by excit- 
 ing the fear and wonder of the populace, often 
 
58 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 become — as in the case of mesmeric perform- 
 ances in the West — a source of considerable gain 
 to the chief actor. 
 
 There remain two other classes of methods 
 — the mental and the moral. 
 
 Of the mental, no doubt the most important 
 is the Suppression of Thought — and it is not 
 unlikely that this may have, when once under- 
 stood, a far-reaching and important influence, 
 on our Western life — over-ridden and domi- 
 nated as it is by a fever of Thought which it 
 can by no means control. Nothing, indeed, 
 strikes one more as marking the immense con- 
 trast between the East and the West than, 
 after leaving Western lands where the ideal 
 of life is to have an almost insanely active 
 brain and to be perpetually on the war-path 
 with fearful and wonderful projects and plans 
 and purposes, to come to India and to find its 
 leading men — men of culture and learning 
 and accomplishment — deliberately passing be- 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 59 
 
 yond all of these and addressing themselves to 
 the task of effacing their own thoughts, effac- 
 ing all their own projects and purposes, in 
 order that the diviner consciousness may enter 
 in and occupy the room so prepared. 
 
 The effacement of projects and purposes — 
 which comes to much the same thing as the 
 control of desire — belongs more properly to 
 the moral side of the question, and may be con- 
 sidered later on. The subjection of Thought 
 — which obviously is very closely connected 
 with the subjection of Desire — may, however, 
 be considered here. 
 
 The Gnana-yogis (so called, to distinguish 
 them from the Karma-yogis who rely more 
 upon the external and physical methods) adopt 
 two practices, (i) that of intense concentration 
 of the thoughts on a fixed object, (2) that of 
 the effacement of thought altogether. 
 
 (1) The thoughts may be fixed on a definite 
 object, for instance, on one's own breathing — 
 
60 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 the inflow and outflow of the atmosphere 
 through the channels of the physical body. 
 The body must be kept perfectly still and 
 motionless for a long period — so that it may- 
 pass entirely out of consciousness — and the 
 thoughts fixed on the regulated calm tide of 
 respiration, to the complete exclusion of every 
 other subject. Or the name of an object — a 
 flower, for instance — may be repeated inces- 
 santly — the image of the object being called up 
 at the same time — till at last the name and the 
 image of the object blend and become indis- 
 tinguishable in the mind. 
 
 Such practices have their literal and their 
 spiritual sides. If carried out merely as form- 
 ulae, they evidently partake of a mesmeric 
 (self-mesmeric) character, and ultimately in- 
 duce mesmeric states of consciousness.* 
 
 *The Rev. H. Callaway, in a paper on "Divination 
 among the Natives of Natal" (Journal of the An- 
 thropological Institute, vol. I, p. 176), says that the 
 natives, "in order to become clairvoyants, attempt to 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 61 
 
 If carried out with a strong sense of their 
 inner meaning — the presence of the vast cos- 
 mic life in the breathing, the endeavor to rea- 
 lize Brahma himself in the flower or other ob- 
 ject contemplated — they naturally induce a 
 deeper sense of the universal life and con- 
 sciousness than that which belongs to the mes- 
 meric state. Anyhow they teach a certain 
 power and control over the thoughts ; and it 
 is a doctrine much insisted on by the Gurus, 
 that in life, generally, the habit of the undi- 
 vided concentration of the mind on that which 
 is doing is of the utmost importance. The 
 wandering of the mind, its division and dis- 
 traction, its openness to attack by brigand 
 cares and anxieties, its incapacity to heartily 
 enjoy itself in its work, not only lame and 
 cripple and torment it in every day, but are a 
 
 effect intense concentration and abstraction of the mind 
 — an abstraction even from their own thoughts." And 
 this is done by herdsmen and chiefs alike — though, of 
 course, with varying success. 
 
62 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 mark of the want of that faith which believes 
 in the Now as the divine moment, and takes 
 no thought for the Morrow. To concentrate 
 at all times wholly and unreservedly in what 
 you are doing at the moment is, they say, a 
 distinct step in Gfianam. 
 
 (2) The next step, the effacement of Thought, 
 is a much more difficult one. Only when the 
 power of concentration has been gained can 
 this be attempted with any prospect of success. 
 The body must be kept, as before, perfectly 
 motionless, and in a quiet place, free from dis- 
 turbance ; not in an attitude of ease or slum- 
 ber, but sitting or standing erect with muscles 
 tense. All will-power is required, and the 
 greatest vigilence. Every thought must be 
 destroyed on the instant of its appearance. 
 But the enemy is subtle, and failure — over a 
 long period — inevitable. Then when success 
 seems to be coming and Thought is dwindling, 
 Oblivion, the twin-foe, appears and must be 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 63 
 
 conquered. For if Thought merely gives place 
 to Sleep, what is there gained? After months, 
 but more probably years, of intermittent prac- 
 tice, the power of control grows ; curious but 
 distinct physiological changes take place ; one 
 day the student finds that Thought has gone ; 
 he stands for a moment in Oblivion ; then that 
 veil lifts, and there streams through his vision 
 a vast and illumined consciousness, glorious, 
 that fills and overflows him, "surrounding him 
 so that he is like a pot in water, which has the 
 liquid within it and without." In this con- 
 sciousness there is divine knowledge but no 
 thought. 
 
 It is Samadhi, the universal "I Am." 
 Whatever people may think of the reality of 
 this "Samadhi, of the genuineness or the uni- 
 versality of the consciousness obtained in it, 
 etc. (and these are questions which of course 
 require examination), it is incontestable that 
 for centuries and centuries it has been an 
 
64 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 object of the most strenuous endeavor to vast 
 numbers, even of the very acutest and most 
 capable intellects of India. Earthly joys paled 
 before this ecstasy ; the sacred literatures are 
 full of its praise. That there lurks here some 
 definite and important fact of experience is, I 
 think, obvious — though it is quite probable that 
 it is not yet really understood either by the 
 East that discovered it, or the West that has 
 criticized it. 
 
 Leaving, however, for the present the con- 
 sideration of this ultimate and transcendent 
 result of the effacement of Thought, and 
 freely admitting that the Eastern devotees 
 have in the ardor of their pursuit of it been 
 'often led into mere absurdities and excesses — 
 that they have in some cases practically muti- 
 lated their thinking powers — that they have 
 refrained from speech for such prolonged years, 
 that at last not only the tongue but the brain 
 itself refused to act — that they have in 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 65 
 
 instances reduced themselves to the condition 
 of idiots and babbling children, and rendered 
 themselves incapable of carrying on any kind 
 of work ordinarily called useful — admitting 
 all this, it still remains true, I think, that even 
 in its lower aspects this doctrine is of vast 
 import to-day in the West. 
 
 For we moderns, while we have dominated 
 Nature and external results in the most extra- 
 ordinary way through our mechanical and other 
 sciences, have just neglected this other field of 
 mastery over our own internal mechanism. 
 We pride ourselves on our athletic feats, but 
 some of the performances of the Indian fakirs 
 in the way of mastery over the i?iternal processes 
 of the body — processes which in ordinary cases 
 have long . ago lapsed into the region of the 
 involuntary and unconscious — such as holding 
 the breath over enormous periods, or reversing 
 the peristalic action of the alimentary canal 
 throughout its entire length — are so astonish- 
 
66 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 ing that for the most part the report of them 
 only excites incredulity among us, and we can 
 hardly believe — what I take it is a fact — that 
 these physiological powers have been practiced 
 till they are almost reduced to a science. 
 
 And if we are unwilling to believe in this 
 internal mastery over the body, we are perhaps 
 almost equally unaccustomed to the idea of 
 mastery over our own inner thoughts and feel- 
 ings. That a man should be a prey to any 
 thought that chances to take possession of his 
 mind, is commonly among us assumed as una- 
 voidable. It may be a matter of regret that he 
 should be kept awake all night from anxiety 
 as to the issue of a lawsuit on the morrow, 
 but that he should have the power of deter- 
 mining whether he be kept awake or not seems 
 an extravagant demand. The image of an 
 impending calamity is no doubt odious, but its 
 very odiousness (we say) makes it haunt the 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 67 
 
 mind all the more pertinaciously and it is use- 
 less to try to expel it. 
 
 Yet this is an absurd position — for man, the 
 heir of all the ages, to be in : hag-ridden by 
 the flimsy creatures of his own brain. If a 
 pebble in our boot torments us we expel it. 
 We take off the boot and shake it out. And 
 once the matter is fairly understood it is just 
 as easy to expel an intruding and obnoxious 
 thought from the mind. About this there 
 ought to be no mistake, no two opinions. The 
 thing is obvious, clear, and unmistakable. It 
 should be as easy to expel an obnoxious 
 thought from your mind as it is to shake a 
 stone out of your shoe ; and till a man can do 
 that, it is just nonsense to talk about his 
 ascendancy over Nature, and all the rest of it. 
 He is a mere slave, and a prey to the bat- 
 winged phantoms that flit through the corridors 
 of his own brain. 
 
 Yet the weary and care-worn faces that we 
 
68 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 meet by thousands, even among the affluent 
 classes of civilization, testify only too clearly 
 how seldom this mastery is obtained. How 
 rare indeed to meet a man! How common 
 rather to discover a creature hounded on by 
 tyrant thoughts (or cares or desires), cowering, 
 wincing under the lash — or perchance priding 
 himself to run merrily in obedience to a driver 
 that rattles the reigns and persuades him that 
 he is free — whom we cannot converse with in 
 careless tete-a-tete because that alien presence is 
 always there, on the watch. 
 
 It is one of the most prominent doctrines of 
 the Gnanas that the power of expelling 
 thoughts, or if need be, killing them dead on 
 the spot, must be attained. Naturally the art 
 requires practice, but like other arts, when once 
 acquired there is no mystery or difficulty about 
 it. And it is worth practice. It may indeed 
 fairly be said that life only begins when this 
 art has been acquired. For obviously when 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 69 
 
 instead of being ruled by individual thoughts, 
 the whole flock of them in their immense mul- 
 titude and variety and capacity is ours to 
 direct and dispatch and employ where we list 
 ("for He maketh the winds his messengers and 
 the flaming fire His minister"), life becomes a 
 thing so vast and grand compared with what 
 it was before, that its former condition may 
 well appear almost antenatal. 
 
 If you can kill a thought dead, for the time 
 being, you can do anything else with it that 
 you please. And therefore it is that this 
 power is so valuable. And it not only frees a 
 man from mental torment (which is nine-tenths 
 at least of the torment of life), but it gives 
 him a concentrated power of handling mental 
 work absolutely unknown to him before. The 
 two things are co-relative to each other. As 
 already said this is one of the principles of 
 Gnanam. 
 
 While at work your thought is to be abso- 
 
70 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 lutely concentrated in it, undistracted by any- 
 thing whatever irrelevant to the matter in 
 hand — pounding away like a great engine, 
 with giant power and perfect economy — no 
 wear and tear of friction, or dislocation of 
 parts owing to the working of different forces 
 at the same time. Then when the work is 
 finished, if there is no more occasion for the 
 use of the machine, it must stop equally, abso- 
 lutely — stop entirely — no worrying (as if a par- 
 cel of boys were allowed to play their devil- 
 ments with a locomotive as soon as it was in 
 the shed) — and the man must retire into that 
 region of his consciousness where his true self 
 dwells. 
 
 I say the power of the thought-machine itself 
 is enormously increased by this faculty of let- 
 ting it alone on the one hand, and of using it 
 singly and with concentration on the other. It 
 becomes a true tool, which a master- workman 
 lays down when done with, but which only a 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 71 
 
 bungler carries about with him all the time to 
 show that he is the possessor of it. 
 
 Then on and beyond the work turned out by 
 the tool itself is the knowledge that comes to 
 us apart from its use; when the noise of the 
 workshop is over, and mallet and plane laid 
 aside — 'the faint sounds coming through the 
 open window from the valley and the far sea- 
 shore; the dim fringe of diviner knowledge 
 which begins to grow, poor thing, as soon as 
 the eternal click- clack of thought is over — the 
 extraordinary intuitions, perceptions, which, 
 though partaking in some degree of the char- 
 acter of the thought, spring from entirely dif- 
 ferent conditions, and are the forerunners of 
 a changed consciousness. 
 
 At first they appear miraculous, but it is not 
 so. They are not miraculous, for they are 
 always there. (The stars are always there.) 
 It is we who are miraculous in our inattention 
 to them. In the systemic or secondary or 
 
72 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 cosmic consciousness of man (I dare say all 
 these ought to be distinguished, but I lump 
 them together for the present) lurk the most 
 minute and varied and far-reaching intuitions 
 and perceptions — some of them in their swift- 
 ness and subtlety outreaching even those of 
 the primary consciousness — but to them we do 
 not attend because Thought, like a pied piper, 
 is ever capering and fiddling in front of us. 
 And then Thought is gone, lo ! we are asleep. 
 To open your eyes in that region which is 
 neither night nor day is to behold strange and 
 wonderful things. 
 
 As already said the subjection of Thought is 
 closely related to the subjection of Desire and 
 has consequently its specially moral as well as 
 its specially intellectual relation to the ques- 
 tion in hand. Nine-tenths of the scattered or 
 sporadic thought with which the mind usually 
 occupies itself when not concentrated on any 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 73 
 
 definite work, is what may be called self-thought 
 —thought of a kind which dwells on and exag- 
 gerates the sense of self. This in hardly real- 
 ized in its full degree till the effort is made to 
 suppress it; and one of the most excellent 
 results of such an effort is that with the still- 
 ing of all the phantoms which hover round 
 the lower self, one's relations to others, to one's 
 friends, to the world as large, and one's per- 
 ception of all that is concerned in these rela- 
 tions come out into a purity and distinctness 
 unknown before. Obviously while the mind is 
 full of the little desires and fears which con- 
 cern the local self, and is clouded over by the 
 thought-images which such desires and fears 
 evoke, it is impossible that it should see and 
 understand the greater facts beyond and its 
 own relation to them. But with the subsiding 
 of the former, the great Vision begins to dawn ; 
 and a man never feels less alone than when he 
 has ceased to think whether he is alone or not. 
 
74 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 It is in this respect that the subjection of 
 desire is really important. There is no 
 necessity to suppose that desire, in itself, is an 
 evil ; indeed it is quite conceivable that it may 
 fall into place as a useful and important ele- 
 ment of human nature — though certainly one 
 whose importance will be found to dwindle and 
 gradually disappear as time goes on. The 
 trouble for us is, in our present state, that 
 desire is liable to grow to such dimensions as 
 to over-cloud the world for us, imprison, and 
 shut us out from inestimable Freedom beneath 
 its sway. Under such circumstances it evidently 
 is a nuisance and has to be dominated. No 
 doubt certain sections of the Indian and other 
 ascetic philosophers have taught the absolute 
 extinction of desire, but we may fairly regard 
 these as cases — so common in the history of all 
 traditional teaching — of undue prominence 
 given to a special detail, and of the exaltation 
 of the letter of the doctrine above the spirit. 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 75 
 
 The moral element (at which we have now 
 arrived) in the attainment of a higher order of 
 consciousness is of course recognized by all the 
 great Indian teachers as of the first importance. 
 The sacred books, the sermons of Buddha, the 
 discourses of the present day Gurus, all point 
 in the same direction. Gentleness, forbear- 
 ance towards all, abstention from giving pain, 
 especially to animals, the recognition of the 
 divine spirit in every creature down to the 
 lowest, the most absolute sense of equality and 
 the most absolute candor, an undisturbed serene 
 mind, free from anger, fear or any excessive 
 and tormenting desire — are all insisted on. 
 
 Thus, though physical and mental conditions 
 are held — and rightly — to be important, the 
 moral conditions are held, to be at least equally 
 important. Nevertheless, in order to guard 
 against misconception which in so complex a 
 subject may easily arise, it is necessary to state 
 here — what I have hinted before — that differ- 
 
76 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 ent sections and schools among- the devotees 
 place a very different respective value upon 
 the three sets of conditions — some making 
 more of the physical, others of the mental, and 
 others again of the moral — and that as may be 
 easily guessed, the results attained by the vari- 
 ous schools differ considerably in consequence. 
 The higher esoteric teachers naturally lay 
 the greatest stress on the moral, but any 
 account of their methods would be defective 
 which passed over or blinked the fact that they 
 go beyond the moral — because this fact is in 
 some sense of the essence of the Oriental inner 
 teaching. Morality, it is well understood, 
 involves the conception of one's self as distinct 
 from others, as distinct from the world, and 
 presupposes a certain antagonism between 
 one's own interests and those of one's fellows. 
 One "sacrifices" one's own interests to those 
 of another, or "goes out of one's way" to help 
 him. All such ideas must be entirely left 
 
Jnfe,^H 
 
 
 ?- A l 
 
 RL*, 
 
 :^»J % 
 
 
 Jf^ '■'"sa^iet — *HH 
 
 0j?T 
 
 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 77 
 
 behind, if one is to reach the central illumina- 
 tion. They spring from ignorance and are 
 the products of darkness. On no word did the 
 "Grammarian" insist more strongly than on 
 the word Non-differentiation. You are not 
 even to differentiate yourself in thought from 
 others ; you are not to begin to regard yourself 
 as separate from them. Even to talk about 
 helping others is a mistake ; it is vitiated by the 
 delusion that you and they are twain. So 
 closely does the subtle Hindu mind go to the 
 mark! What would our bald commercial 
 philanthropy, our sleek aesthetic altruism, our 
 scientific isophily, say to such teaching? All 
 the little self-satisfactions which arise from the 
 sense of duty performed, all the cheese-parings 
 of equity between oneself and others, all the 
 tiny wonderments whether you are better or 
 worse than your neighbor, have to be aban- 
 doned ; and you have to learn to live in a world 
 in which the chief fact is not that you are dis- 
 
78 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 tinct from others, but that you are a part of 
 and integral with them. This involves, indeed, 
 a return to the communal order of society ; and 
 difficult as this teaching is for us in this day to 
 realize, yet there is no doubt that it must lie 
 at the heart of the Democracy of the future, 
 as it has lain, germinal all these centuries in 
 the hidden womb of the East. 
 
 Nor from Nature. You are not to differen- 
 tiate yourself from Nature. We have seen 
 that the Guru Tilleinathan spoke of the opera- 
 tions of the external world as "I," having dis- 
 missed the sense of difference between himself 
 and them. It is only under these, and such 
 conditions as these, that the little mortal crea- 
 ture gradually becomes aware of what he is. 
 
 This non-differentiation is the final deliver- 
 ance. When it enters in the whole burden 
 of absurd cares, anxieties, duties, motives, 
 desires, fears, plans, purposes, preferences, 
 etc. , rolls off and lies like mere lumber on the 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 79 
 
 ground. The winged spirit is free, and takes 
 its flight. It passes through the veil of mor- 
 tality and leaves that behind. Though I say 
 this non-differentiation is the final deliverance 
 (from the bonds of illusion) I do not say it is 
 the final experience. Rather I should be 
 inclined to think it is only the beginning of 
 many experiences. As, in the history of man 
 and the higher animals, the consciousness of 
 self, the local self, has been the basis of an 
 enormous mass of perceptions, intuitions, joys 
 and sufferings, etc. , incalculable and indescrib- 
 able in multitudinousness and variety, so in 
 the history of man and the angels will the con- 
 sciousness of the cosmic and universal life — 
 the true self underlying — become the basis of 
 another and far vaster knowledge. 
 
 There is one respect in which the specially 
 Eastern teaching commonly appears to us 
 Westerners — and on the whole I am inclined 
 to think justly — defective ; and that is in its 
 
80 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 little insistence on the idea of Love. While, 
 as already said, a certain gentleness and for- 
 bearance and passive charity is a decided feat- 
 ure of Indian teaching and life, one cannot 
 help noting the absence — or less promi- 
 nence, at any rate — of that positive spirit of 
 love and human helpfulness, which in some 
 sections of Western society might almost be 
 called a devouring passion. Though with 
 plentiful exceptions, no doubt, yet there is a 
 certain quiescence and self-inclusion and 
 absorbedness in the Hindu ideal, which 
 amounts almost to coldness ; and this is the 
 more curious because Hindu society — till 
 within the last few years, at any rate — has 
 been based upon the most absolutely commu- 
 nal foundation. But perhaps this fact of the 
 communal structure of society in India is just 
 the reason why the social sentiment does not 
 seek impetuously for expression there ; while 
 in Europe, where existing institutions are a 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 81 
 
 perpetual denial of it, its expression becomes 
 all the more determined and necessary. How- 
 ever that may be, I think the fact may be ad- 
 mitted of a difference between the East and 
 the West in this respect. Of course I am not 
 speaking of those few who may attain to the 
 consciousness of non-differentiation — because 
 in their case the word love must necessarily 
 change its meaning, nor am I speaking of the 
 specially individual and sexual amatory love, 
 in which there is no reason to suppose the 
 Hindus deficient; but I am rather alluding to 
 the fact that in the West we are in the habit 
 of looking on devotion to other humans (widen- 
 ing out into the social passion) as the most 
 natural way of losing one's self-limitations and 
 passing into a larger sphere of life and con- 
 sciousness ; while in the East this method is 
 little thought of, or largely neglected, in favor 
 of the concentration of one's self in the 
 
82 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 divine, and mergence in the universal in that 
 way. 
 
 I think this contrast, taking it quite roughly, 
 may certainly be said to exist. The Indian 
 teachers, the sacred books, the existing 
 instruction, center consciously or uncon- 
 sciously round the development of Will-power. 
 By will to surrender the will ; by determina- 
 tion and concentration to press inward and up- 
 ward to that portion of one's being which be- 
 longs to the universal, to conquer the body, to 
 conquer the thoughts, to conquer the passions 
 and emotions; always will, and will-power. 
 And here again we have a paradox, because in 
 their quiescent, gentle, and rather passive ex- 
 ternal life, so different from the push and 
 dominating energy of the Western nations — 
 there is little to make one expect such force. 
 But while modern Europe and America has 
 spent its will in the mastery of the external 
 world, India has reserved hers for the conquest 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 83 
 
 of inner and spiritual kingdoms. In their hyp- 
 notic phenomena, too, the yogis exhibit the 
 force of will, and this differentiates their 
 hypnotism from that of the West, in which the 
 patient is operated upon by another person. 
 In the latter there is a danger of loss of will- 
 power, but in the former (auto-hypnotism) 
 will-power is no doubt gained, while at the 
 same time hypnotic states are induced. Sug- 
 gestion, which is such a powerful agent in hyp- 
 notism, acts here too, and helps to knit the body 
 together, pervading it with a healing influence, 
 and bringing the lower self under the direct 
 domination of the higher; in this respect 
 the Guru, to some extent, stands in the place 
 of the operator, while the yogi is his subject. 
 
 Thus in the East the Will constitutes the 
 great path ; but in the West the path has been 
 more especially through love — and probably 
 will be. The great teachers of the West — 
 
84 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 Plato, Jesus, Paul — have indicated this method 
 rather than that of the ascetic will ; though of 
 course there have not been wanting exponents 
 of both sides. The one method means the 
 gradual dwindling of the local and external 
 self through inner concentration and aspira- 
 tion; the other means the enlargement of the 
 said self through affectional growth and nour- 
 ishment, till at last it can contain itself no 
 longer. The bursting of the sac takes place ; 
 the life is poured out, and ceasing to be local 
 becomes universal. Of this method Whitman 
 forms a single instance. He is egotistic enough 
 in all conscience; yet at last through his im- 
 mense human sympathy, and through the very 
 enlargement of his ego thus taking place, the 
 barriers break down and pass out and away. 
 
 "O Christ ! This is mastering me ! 
 In at the conquered doors they crowd. I am possessed. 
 ******* 
 
 I embody all prescences outlawed or suffering ; 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 85 
 
 See myself in prison shaped like another man, 
 And feel the dull unintermitted pain. 
 
 5|C 7T JfC Tr If! J^C >[C 
 
 Enough! enough! enough! 
 
 Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back ! 
 
 Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head, slumbers, 
 
 dreams, gaping; 
 I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake. 
 That I could forget the mockers and insults ! 
 That I could forget the trickling tears, and the blows of 
 
 bludgeons and hammers ! 
 That I could look with a separate look on my own cruci- 
 
 fiction and bloody crowning." 
 
 But such expressions as these — in which the 
 passion of humanity wraps the speaker into an- 
 other sphere of existence — are not characteris- 
 tic of the East, and are not found in the Indian 
 Scriptures. When its time comes the West will 
 probably adopt this method of the liberation 
 of the human soul — through love — rather than 
 the specially Indian method — of the Will; 
 though doubtless both have to be, and will be 
 in the future, to a large extent concurrently 
 used. Different races and peoples incline 
 
86 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 according to their idiosyncrasies to different 
 ways ; each individual even — as is quite recog- 
 nized by the present day Gurus — has his 
 special line of approach to the supreme facts. 
 It is possible that when the Western races once 
 realize what lies beneath this great instinct of 
 humanity, which seems in some way to be 
 their special inspiration, they will outstrip 
 even the Hindus in their entrance to an occu- 
 pation of the new fields of consciousness. 
 
TRADITIONS OF THE ANCIENT 
 WISDOM-RELIGION. 
 
 I have dwelt so far on the nature of certain 
 experiences (which I have not however 
 attempted to describe) and on the method of 
 which, specially in India, they are sought to 
 be obtained ; and I have done so in general 
 terms, and with an endeavor to assimilate the 
 subject to Western ideas, and to bring it into 
 line with modern science and speculation. I 
 propose in this chapter to dwell more espe- 
 cially on the formal side of our friend's teach- 
 ing — which will bring out into relief the 
 special character of Eastern thought and its dif- 
 ferences from our present day modes of thought. 
 
 I must, however, again warn the reader 
 against accepting anything I say, except with 
 87 
 
88 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 the greatest reserve, and especially, not to 
 broaden out into sweeping generalities any- 
 detailed statement I may happen to make. 
 People often ask for some concise account of 
 Indian teaching and religion. Supposing some 
 one were to ask for a concise account of the 
 Christian teaching and religion — which of us, 
 with all our familiarity with the subject, could 
 give an account which the others would ac- 
 cept? From the question whether Jesus and 
 Paul were initiates in the Eastern mysteries 
 — as the modern Gurus claim that they were, 
 and as I think there can be no doubt that they 
 were, either by tradition or by spontaneous 
 evolution ; through the question of the simil- 
 iarity and differences of their teaching; the 
 various schools of early Christianity; the 
 Egyptian influences; the Gnostic sects and 
 philosophy ; the formation and history of the 
 church, its organizations, creeds and doctrines; 
 mediaeval Christianity and its relation to 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 89 
 
 Aristotle; the mystic teachers of the thir- 
 teenth and fourteenth centuries; the ascetic 
 and monastic movements; the belief in 
 alchemy and witchcraft ; the miracles of the 
 Saints; the Protestant movement and doc- 
 trines, etc. , etc. ; down to the innumerable 
 petty sects of to-day and all their conflicting 
 views of the atonement and the sacraments 
 and the inspiration of the Bible, and all the 
 rest of it — who would be so bold as to announce 
 the gist and resume of it all in a few brief sen- 
 tences? Yet the great Indian evolution of 
 religious thought — while historically more 
 ancient — is at least equally vast and complex 
 and bewildering in its innumerable ramifica- 
 tions. I should feel entirely incompetent to 
 deal with it as a whole — and here, at any rate, 
 am only touching upon the personality and 
 utterances of one teacher, belonging to a par- 
 ticular school, the South Indian. 
 
 This Guru was, as I have said, naturally one 
 
90 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 of those who insisted largely — though not by 
 any means exclusively — on the moral and 
 ultra-moral sides of the teaching; and from 
 this point of view his personality was particu- 
 larly remarkable. His gentleness and kindli- 
 ness, combined with evident power; and in- 
 flexibility and intensity underlying; his tense 
 eyes, as of the seer, and gracious lips and ex- 
 pression, and ease and dignity of figure ; his 
 entire serenity and calm — though with lots of 
 vigor when needed ; all these were impressive. 
 But perhaps I was most struck — as the culmi- 
 nation of character and manhood — by his per- 
 fect simplicity of manner. Nothing could be 
 more unembarrassed, unselfconscious, direct 
 to the point in hand, free from kinks of any 
 kind. Sometimes he would sit on his sofa 
 couch in the little cottage, not unfrequently, 
 as I have said, with bare feet gathered be- 
 neath him ; sometimes he would sit on a chair 
 at the table; sometimes in the animation of 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 91 
 
 discourse his muslin wrap would fall from his 
 shoulder, unnoticed, showing a still graceful 
 figure, thin, but by no means emaciated; 
 sometimes he would stand for a moment, a tall 
 and dignified form : yet always with the same 
 ease and grace and absence of selfconsciousness 
 that only the animals and few among human 
 beings show. It was this that made him seem 
 very near to one, as if the ordinary barriers 
 which divide people were done away with ; and 
 if this was non-differentiation working within, 
 its external effect was very admirable. 
 
 I dwell perhaps more on these points of 
 character, which made me feel an extraordi- 
 nary approchement and unspoken intimacy to this 
 man, because I almost immediately found on 
 acquaintance that on the plane of ordinary 
 thought and scientific belief we were ever so 
 far asunder, with only a small prospect, owing 
 to difficulties of language, etc., of ever coming 
 to an understanding. I found — though this, 
 
92 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 of course, gave a special interest to his con- 
 versation — that his views of astronomy, physi- 
 ology, chemistry, politics, and the rest, were 
 entirely unmodified by Western Thought and 
 science — and that they had come down through 
 a long line of oral tradition continually rein- 
 forced by references to the sacred books, from 
 a most remote antiquity. Here was a man who, 
 living in a native principality under an Indian 
 rajah and skilled in the learning of his own 
 country, had probably come across very few 
 English at all until he was of mature years, 
 had not learned the English language, and 
 had apparently troubled himself but little 
 about Western ideas of any kind. I am not a 
 stickler for modern science myself, and think 
 many of its conclusions very shaky ; but I con- 
 fess it gave me a queer feeling when I found a 
 man of so subtle intelligence and varied capac- 
 ity calmly asserting that the earth was the cen- 
 ter of the physical universe and that the sun 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 93 
 
 revolved about it! With all seriousness he 
 turned out the theory (which old Lactantius 
 Indicopleustes introduced from the East into 
 Europe about the third century A. D.) — 
 namely, that the earth is flat, with a great 
 hill, the celebrated Mount Meru, in the North, 
 behind which the sun and moon and other 
 heavenly bodies retire in their order to rest. 
 He explained that an eclipse of the moon 
 (then going on) was caused by one of the two 
 "dark planets," Raku or Ketu (which are 
 familiar to astrology), concealing it from view. 
 He said (and this is also an ancient doctrine) 
 that there were 1,008 solar or planetary sys- 
 tems similar to ours, some above the earth, 
 some below, and some on either hand. As to 
 the earth itself, it had been destroyed and 
 recreated many times in successive aeons, but 
 there had never been a time when the divine 
 knowledge had not existed on it. There had 
 always been an India gnana bhumi, or Widom- 
 
94 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 land, in contradistinction to the Western bhoga 
 bhutni, or land of pleasure, and always Vedas 
 or Upaninhads (or books corresponding) brought 
 by divine teachers. (About modern theories 
 of submerged continents and lower races in the 
 far past he did not appear to know anything or 
 to have troubled his head, nor did he put forth 
 any views on this subject of the kind men- 
 tioned by Sinnett in his Esoteric Buddhism. 
 Many of his views, however, were very similar 
 to those given in that book. ) 
 
 His general philosophy appeared to be that 
 of the Siddhantic system, into which I do not 
 propose to go in any detail — as it may be found 
 in the books ; and all such systems are hope- 
 lessly dull, and may be said to carry their own 
 death-warrants written on their faces. The 
 Indian systems of philosophy bear a strong 
 resemblance to the Gnostic systems of the 
 early Christian times — which latter were no 
 doubt derived from the East. They all de- 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 95 
 
 pend upon the idea of emanation — which is 
 undoubtedly an important idea, and corres- 
 ponds to some remarkable facts of conscious- 
 ness ; but the special forms in which the idea 
 is cast in the various systems are not very valu- 
 able. 
 
 The universe in the Siddhantic system is 
 composed of five elements: (i) ether, (2) air, 
 (3) fire, (4) water, (5) earth ; and to get over 
 the obvious difficulties which arise from such 
 a classification, it is explained that these are 
 not the gross ether, air, fire, water and earth 
 that we know, but subtle elements of the same 
 name — which are themselves perfectly pure, 
 but by their mixture produce the gross ele- 
 ments. Thus the air we know is not a true 
 element, but is formed by a mixture of the 
 subtle air with small portions of the subtle 
 ether, subtle fire, subtle water, and subtle 
 earth ; and so on. This explains how it is 
 there may be various kinds of air, of water, or 
 
96 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 of earth. When the five subtle elements give 
 rise to the five forms of sensation in the order 
 named: (i) Sound, (2) Touch, (3) Form, (4) 
 Taste, (5) Smell ; and to the five correspond- 
 ing organs of sense. Also there are five intel- 
 lectual faculties evolved by admixture from 
 the subtle elements, namely, (1) The inner 
 consciousness, which has the quality of ether 
 or space, (2) Thought {Manas), which has the 
 quality of aerial agitation and motion, (3) 
 Reason (buddhi), which has the quality of light 
 and fire, (4) Desire (chittam), which has the 
 emotional rushing character of water, (5) The 
 I making faculty (ahankard), which has the 
 hardness and resistance of the earth. Also the 
 five organs of action, the voice, the hands, the 
 feet, the anus, and the penus in the same 
 order; and the five vital airs which are sup* 
 posed to pervade the different parts of the body 
 and to impell their action. 
 
 This is all very neat and compact. Unfor- 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 97 
 
 tunately it shares the artificial character which 
 all systems of philosophy have, mak- 
 ing it quite impossible to accept any of 
 them. I think our friend quite recognized 
 this ; for more than once he said, and quoted 
 the sacred books to the same effect, that 
 1 ! Every thing which can be thought is untrue." 
 In this respect the Indian philosophy alto- 
 gether excels our Western systems (except the 
 most modern). It takes the bottom out of its 
 own little bucket in the most impartial way. 
 
 Nevertheless, whatever faults they may have, 
 and however easy it may be to attack their 
 thought-forms, the great Indian systems (and 
 those of the West the same) are no doubt based 
 upon deep lying facts of consciousness, which 
 it must be our business sometime to disen- 
 tangle. I believe there are facts of conscious- 
 ness underlying such unlikely things as the 
 evolution of the five subtle elements, even 
 though the form of the doctrine may be largely 
 
98 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 fantastic. The primal element, according to 
 this doctrine, is the ether or space (Akasa), the 
 two ideas of space and ether being curiously 
 identified, and the other elements, air, fire, 
 etc. , are evolved in succession from this one 
 by a process of thickening or condensation. 
 Now this consciousness of space — not the 
 material space, but the space within the soul 
 — is a form of the supreme consciousness in 
 man, the sat- chit- ananda Brahm — Freedom, 
 Equality, Extension, Omnipresence — and is 
 accompanied by a sense which has been often 
 described as a combination of all the senses, 
 sight, hearing, touch, etc., in one; so that they 
 do not even appear differentiated from each 
 other. In the course of the descent of the 
 consciousness from this plane to the plane of 
 ordinary life (which may be taken to corres- 
 pond to the creation of the actual world) the 
 transcendent space-consciousness goes through 
 a sort of obscuration or condensation, and the 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 99 
 
 senses become differentiated into separate and 
 distinct faculties. This — or something like it 
 — is a distinct experience. It may well be that 
 the formal doctrine about the five elements is 
 merely an attempt — necessarily very defective, 
 since these things cannot be adequately ex- 
 pressed in that way — to put the thing into a 
 form of thought. And so with other doctrines 
 — some may contain a real inhalt, others may 
 be merely ornamental thought-fringes, put on 
 for the sake of logical symmetry or what not. 
 In its external sense the doctrine of the evolu- 
 tion of the other elements successively by con- 
 densation from the ether is after all not so far 
 removed from our modern scientific ideas. 
 For the chief difference between the air, 
 and other such gases, and the ether is supposed 
 by us to be the closeness of the particles in the 
 former; then in the case of fire, the particles 
 come into violent contact, producing light and 
 heat ; in fluids their contact has become con- 
 
100 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 tinuous though mobile ; and in the earth and 
 other solids their contact is fixed. 
 
 However, whatever justification the formal 
 analysis of man and the external world into 
 their constituent parts may have to require the 
 ultimate object of the analysis in the Indian 
 philosophy is to convince the pupil that He is 
 a being apart from them all. "He whose 
 perception is obscured mistakes the twenty-six 
 tatwas (categories or 'thats') for himself, and 
 is under the illusions of 'I' and 'mine.' To 
 be liberated by the grace of a proper spiritual 
 teacher from the operation of this obscuring 
 power and to realize that these are not self, 
 constitute 'deliverance.' Here is the ultimate 
 fact of consciousness — which is the same, and 
 equally true, whatever the analysis of the 
 tatwas may be. 
 
 "The true quality of the Soul is that of 
 space, by which it is at rest, everywhere. 
 Then," continued the Guru, "comes the Air- 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 101 
 
 quality — by which it moves with speed from 
 place to place ; then the Fire-quality, by which 
 it discriminates; then the Water-quality, which 
 gives it emotional flow ; and then the Earth or 
 self- quality, rigid and unyielding. As these 
 things evolve out oj the soul, so they must involve 
 again, into it and into Brahm. * ' 
 
 To go with the five elements, etc. , the sys- 
 tem expounded by the Guru supposes five shells 
 enclosing the soul. These, with the soul it- 
 self, and the Brahm, the undifferentiated spirit 
 lying within the soul, form seven planes or 
 sections — as in the Esoteric Buddhism of Sin- 
 nett and the Theosophists. The divisions, 
 however, are not quite identical in the two 
 systems, which appear to be respectively North 
 Indian and South Indian. In the North 
 Indian we have (i) the material body, (2) the 
 vitality, (3) the astral form, (4) the animal 
 soul, (5) the human soul, (6) the soul proper, 
 and (7) the undifferentiated spirit; in the 
 
102 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 South Indian we have (i) the material shell, (2) 
 the shell of the vital airs, (3) the sensorial 
 shell, (4) the cognitional shell, (5) the shell of 
 oblivion and bliss in sleep, (6) the soul, and 
 (7) the undifferentiated spirit. The two ex- 
 tremes seem the same in the two systems, but 
 the intermediate layers differ. In some 
 respects the latter is the more effective ; it has 
 a stronger practical bearing than the other, 
 and appears to be specially designed as a 
 guide to action in the work of emancipation. 
 In some respects the other system has a wider 
 application. Neither, of course, have any 
 particular value except as convenient forms of 
 thought for their special purposes, and as very 
 roughly embodying in their different degrees 
 various experiences which the human con- 
 sciousness passes through in the course of its 
 evolution. "It is not till all the five shells 
 have been successively peeled off that con- 
 sciousness enters the soul and it sees itself and 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 103 
 
 the universal being as one. The first three 
 are peeled off at each bodily death of the man, 
 but they grow again out of what remains. 
 It is not enough to pass beyond these, but 
 beyond the other two also. Then when that is 
 done the student enters into the fullness of the 
 whole universe ; and with that joy no earthly 
 joy can for a moment be compared." 
 
 "Death," he" continued, "is usually great 
 agony, as if the life were being squeezed out 
 of every part — like the juice out of a sugar- 
 cane; only for those who have already separ- 
 ated their souls from their bodies is it not so. 
 For them it is merely a question of laying 
 down the body at will, when its karma is 
 worked out, or of retaining it, if need be, to 
 prolonged years." (It is commonly said that 
 Vasishta, who first gave the sacred knowledge 
 to mankind, is still living and providing for the 
 earth ; and Tilleinathan Swamy is said to have 
 seen Tiruvalluvar, the pariah priest who 
 
104 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 wrote the Kurral over 1,000 years ago.) "In 
 ordinary cases the last thoughts that cling to 
 the body ('ruling the passion strong in death') 
 becomes the seed of the next ensuing body. ' ' 
 
 In this system the outermost layer of that 
 portion of thehuman being which survives death 
 is the shell of thought (and desire). As the 
 body is modified in every day life by the action 
 of the thought-forms within and grows out of 
 them — so the new body at some period after 
 death grows out of the thought-forms that sur- 
 vive. "The body is built up by your thought 
 '—and not by your thought in this life only, 
 but by the thought of previous lives." 
 
 Of the difficult question about hereditary 
 likeness, suggesting that the body is also due 
 to the thought of the parents, he gave no very 
 detailed account, — only that the atomic soul is 
 carried at some period after death (by uni- 
 versal laws, or by its own affinities) into a 
 womb suitable for its next incarnation, where 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 105 
 
 finding kindred thought forms and elements it 
 assimilates and grows from them, with the 
 result of what is called family likeness. 
 
 Some of his expositions of Astrology were 
 very interesting to me — particularly to find this 
 world-old system, with all its queer formalities 
 and deep underlying general truths still pas- 
 sively (though I think not actively) accepted 
 and handed down by so able an exponent — but 
 I cannot record them at any length. The five 
 operations of the divine spirit, namely (i) 
 Grace, (2) Obscuration, (3) Destruction, (4) 
 Preservation, and (5) Creation, correspond to 
 the five elements, space, air, fire, water and 
 earth and are embodied in the nine planets, 
 thus: (1) Raku and Ketu, (2) Saturn, (3) the 
 Sun and Mars, (4) Venus, Mercury, and the 
 Moon, (5) Jupiter. It is thus that the birth of 
 a human being is influenced by the position of 
 the planets, i. e., the horoscope. The male 
 semen contains the five elements, and the com- 
 
106 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 position of it is determined by the attitude of 
 the nine planets in the sky ! There seems hereto 
 be a glimmering embodiment of the deep-lying 
 truth that the whole universe conspires in the 
 sexual act, and that the orgasm itself is a 
 flash of the universal consciousness; but the 
 thought-forms of astrology are as indigestible 
 to a mind trained in Western science, as I sup- 
 pose the thought-forms of the latter are to the 
 philosopher of the East. 
 
 When I expostulated with the Guru about 
 these, to us, crudities of Astrology, and about 
 such theories as that of the flat earth, the cause 
 of eclipses, etc., bringing the most obvious 
 arguments to attack his position — he did not 
 meet me with any arguments, being evidently 
 unaccustomed to deal with the matter on that 
 plane at all; but simply replied that these 
 things had been seen "in pure consciousness," 
 and that they were so. It appeared to me 
 pretty clear, however, that he was not speak- 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 107 
 
 ing authentically, as having seen them so him- 
 self, but simply recording again the tradition 
 delivered in its time to him. And here is a 
 great source of difficulty ; for the force of tra- 
 dition is so tremendous in these matters, and 
 blends so, through the intimate relation of 
 teacher and pupil, with the pupil's own expe- 
 rience, that I can imagine it difficult in some 
 cases for the pupil to disentangle what is 
 authentically his own vision from that which he 
 has merely heard. Besides — as may be easily 
 imagined — the whole system of teaching tends 
 to paralyze activity on the thought-plane to 
 such a degree that the spirit of healthy crit- 
 icism has been lost, and things are handed 
 down and accepted in an otiose way without 
 ever being really questioned or properly envis- 
 aged. And lastly, there is a cause which I 
 thing acts sometimes in the same direction, 
 namely that the yogi learns — either from habit 
 or from actual experience of a superior order 
 
108 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 of consciousness — so to despise matters belong- 
 ing to the thought-world, that he really does 
 not care whether a statement is true or false, 
 in the mundane sense — i. e., consistent or 
 inconsistent with other statements belonging to 
 the same plane. All these causes make it 
 extremely difficult to arrive at what we should 
 call truth as regards matters of fact — appear- 
 ances alleged to have been seen, feats per- 
 formed, or the occurrence of past events ; and 
 though there may be no prejudice against the 
 possibility of them, it is wise — in cases where 
 definite and unmistakable evidence is absent, 
 to withhold the judgment either way, for or 
 against their occurrence. 
 
 With regard to these primitive old doctrines 
 of Astronomy, Astrology, Philology, Physiol- 
 ogy, etc., handed down from far back times 
 and still embodies in the teachings of the 
 Gurus, though it is impossible to accept them 
 on the ordinary thought-plane, I think we may 
 
MONK WITH BEGGING BOWL. 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 109 
 
 yet fairly conclude that there is an element of 
 cosmic consciousness in them, or at any rate 
 in many of them, which has given them their 
 vitality and seal of authority so to speak. I 
 have already explained what I mean, in one or 
 two cases. Just as in the old myths and le- 
 gends (Andromeda, Cupid and Psyche, Cinder- 
 ella and a great many more) an effort was made 
 to embody indirectly, in ordinary thought- 
 forms, things seen with the inner eye and 
 which could not be expressed directly-— so was 
 the same process carried out in the old science. 
 Though partly occupied with things of the 
 Thought-plane, it was also partly occupied in 
 giving expression to things which lie behind 
 that plane — which we in our Western sciences 
 have neither discerned nor troubled ourselves 
 about. Hence, though confused and defective 
 and easily impugnable, it contains an element 
 which is yet of value. Take the theory of the 
 flat earth, for instance, already mentioned, 
 
110 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 with Mount Meru in the North, behind which 
 the sun and moon retire each day. At first it 
 seems almost incredible that a subtle brained, 
 shrewd people should have entertained so 
 crude a theory at all. But it soon appears that 
 while being a rude explanation of external 
 facts and one which might commend itself to a 
 superficial observer, it is also and in reality a 
 description of certain internal phenomena seen. 
 There are a sun and a moon within, and there 
 is a Mount Meru (so it is said) within, by which 
 they are obscured. The universe within the 
 soul and the universe without correspond and 
 are the similitudes of each other, and so (the- 
 oretically at any rate) the language which 
 describes one should describe the other. 
 
 It is well known that much of the mediaeval 
 alchemy had this double, signification — the 
 terms used indicated two classes of facts. 
 Sometimes the inner meaning preponderated, 
 sometimes the outer ; and it is not always easy 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. Ill 
 
 to tell in the writings of the Alchemists which 
 is specially intended. This alchemical teach- 
 ing came into Europe from the East — as we 
 know ; yet it was not without a feeling of sur- 
 prise that I heard the Guru one day expound- 
 ing as one of the ancient traditions of his own 
 country a doctrine that I seemed familiar with 
 as coming from Paracelsus, or some such 
 author — that of transmutation of copper into 
 gold by means of solidified mercury. There is 
 a method he explained, preserved in mystic 
 language in some of the ancient books, by 
 which mercury can be rendered solid. This 
 solid mercury has extraordinary properties : it 
 is proof against the action of fire ; if you hold 
 a small piece of it in your mouth, arrows and 
 bullets cannot harm you ; and the mere touch 
 of it will turn a lump of copper into gold. 
 
 Now this doctrine has been recognized by 
 students of the mediaeval alchemy to have an 
 esoteric meaning. Quicksilver or mercury — as 
 
112 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 I think I have already mentioned — is an image 
 or embodiment of Thought itself, the ever- 
 glancing, ever-shifting; to render quicksilver 
 solid is to fix thought, and so to enter into the 
 transcendent consciousness. He who does that 
 can be harmed neither by arrows nor by bul- 
 lets ; a touch of that diviner principle turns the 
 man whose nature is but base copper into pure 
 gold. The Guru, however, expounded this as 
 if in a purely literal and external sense; and 
 on my questioning him it became evident that 
 he believed in some at any rate of the alchem- 
 ical transmutations in this sense — though what 
 evidence he may have had for such belief did 
 not appear. 
 
 I remember very well the evening on which 
 this conversation took place. We were walk- 
 ing along an unfrequented bit of road, or by- 
 lane ; the sky was transparent with the colors 
 of sunset, the wooded hills a few miles off, 
 looked blue through the limpid air. He strode 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 113 
 
 along — a tall dark figure with coal-black eyes 
 — on raised wooden sandals or clogs — his white 
 wrapper closely encircling him — with so easy 
 and swift a motion that it was quite a consid- 
 eration to keep up with him — discoursing all 
 the while on the wonderful alchemical and 
 medical secrets preserved from ages back in 
 the slokas of the sacred books — how in order to 
 safe-guard this arcane knowledge, and to ren- 
 der it inaccessible to the vulgar, methods had 
 been adopted of the transposition of words, 
 letters, etc., which made the text mere gib- 
 berish except to those who had the key ; how 
 there still existed a great mass of such writ- 
 ings, inscribed on palm and other leaves, and 
 stored away in the temples and monasteries — 
 though much had been destroyed — and so forth ; 
 altogether a strange figure — something un- 
 canny and superhuman about it. I found it 
 difficult to believe that I was in the end of the 
 nineteenth century, and not three or four 
 
114 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 thousand years back among the sages of the 
 Vedic race ; and indeed the more I saw of this 
 Guru the more I felt persuaded (and still feel) 
 that in general appearance, dress, mental atti- 
 tude, and so forth, he probably resembled to 
 an extraordinary degree those ancient teachers 
 whose tradition is still handed down. The 
 more one sees of India the more one learns to 
 appreciate the enormous tenacity of custom 
 and tradition there, and that the best means to 
 realize its past may be to study its present life 
 in the proper quarters. 
 
 His criticisms of the English, of English 
 rule in India, and of social institutions gener- 
 ally, 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 VISIT TO A GNANI. 115 
 
 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 commer- 
 cial. The sole idea now, he said, is money. 
 Before 1857 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 pres- 
 ent day the rule was essentially feeble, with 
 no denned policy of any kind except that of 
 the money bag. The criticism impressed me 
 much, as corroborating from an entirely inde- 
 pendent source the growth of mere commer- 
 cialism in Britain during late years, and 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 char- 
 acter. "States," he said, "must be ruled by 
 
116 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 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 crim- 
 inal 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, t4 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 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 117 
 
 might almost have been claimed as a Socialist 
 — certainly was a Socialist in the heart of the 
 matter; and at any rate his 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 into 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, how- 
 ever, 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 
 
118 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 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 com- 
 plete 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 Ian- 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 119 
 
 gnages 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 Gfianis, 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 gnanam, but his 
 hearers had been the rude mass of the people 
 and his teachings 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 
 
120 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 two facts which appear to me practically cer- 
 tain: (i) 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 per- 
 haps that of emancipation from self through 
 repeated births is the most important ; so that 
 there has been a kind of tacit understanding 
 and free-masonry on this subject between the 
 great teachers throughout history, from the 
 Eastern sages, down through Pythagoras, 
 Plato, Paul, the Gnostic schools, the great 
 mediaeval Alchemists, the German mystics and 
 others to the great philosophers and poets of 
 our own time ; and that thousands of individ- 
 uals on reaching a certain stage of evolution 
 have corroborated and are constantly corrobo- 
 rating from their own experience the main 
 points of this doctrine ; and (2) that there must 
 
A VISIT TO A GNANI. 121 
 
 have existed in India, or in some neighbor- 
 ing region, from which India drew its tradi- 
 tion, 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 that 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 him- 
 
122 A VISIT TO A GNANI. 
 
 self 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 dis- 
 tinct from others shall entirely cease. 
 
HAVE FAITH. 
 
 [From "Towards Democracy," by Edward Carpenter.] 
 
 Do not hurry : have faith. 
 
 Remember that if you become famous you 
 can never share the lot of those who pass by 
 unnoticed from the cradle to the grave, nor 
 take part in the last heroism of their daily 
 life; 
 
 If you seek and encompass wealth and ease 
 the divine outlook of poverty cannot be yours 
 — nor shall you feel all your days the loving 
 and constraining touch of Nature and Neces- 
 sity; 
 
 If you are successful in all you do, you can- 
 not also battle magnificently against odds ; 
 
 If you have fortune and good health and a 
 loving wife and children, you cannot also be 
 123 
 
124 HAVE FAITH. 
 
 of those who are happy without these 
 things. 
 
 Covet not overmuch. Let the strong de- 
 sires come and go; refuse them not, disown 
 them not ; but think not that in them lurks 
 finally the thing you want. 
 
 Presently they will fade away and into the 
 intolerable light will dissolve like gossamers 
 before the sun. 
 
 2 
 
 Do not hurry : have faith. 
 
 The sportsman does not say, I will start a 
 hare at the corner of this field, or I will shoot a 
 turkey-buzzard at the foot of that tree ; 
 
 But he stands indifferent and waits on emer- 
 gency, and so makes himself master of it. 
 
 So do you stand indifferent, and by faith 
 make yourself master of your life. 
 
 For all things are possible, yet at any one 
 time and place only one thing is possible ; 
 
 And all things are good, yet at any one time 
 
HAVE FAITH. 125 
 
 and place can you extract the good only from 
 that which is before you. 
 
 Have faith. If that which rules the uni- 
 verse were alien to your soul, then nothing 
 could mend your state — there were nothing 
 left but to fold your hands and be damned 
 everlastingly. 
 
 But since it is not so — why what can you 
 wish for more? — all things are given into your 
 hands. 
 
 Do you pity a man who having a silver mine 
 on his estate loses a shilling in a crack in his 
 house floor? 
 
 And why should another pity you? 
 
 3 
 
 Do not hurry. 
 
 As at the first day the clouds suffused with 
 light creep over the edges of the hills, the 
 young poplar poises itself like an upward 
 arrow out of the ground, the birds warble with 
 upturned bills to the sun. 
 
126 HAVE FAITH. 
 
 The sun rises on hundreds of millions of 
 human beings ; the hemisphere of light follows 
 the hemisphere of darkness, and a great wave 
 of life rushes round the globe; 
 
 The little pigmies stand on end (like iron 
 filings under a magnet) and then they fall 
 prone again. And this has gone on for mil- 
 lions of years and will go on for millions more. 
 
 Absolve yourself to-day from the bonds of 
 action. 
 
 [Wait, wait ever for the coming of the Lord. 
 See that you are ready for his arrival. ] 
 
 Begin to-day to understand that which you 
 will not understand when you read these 
 words for the first time, nor perhaps when 
 you have read them for the hundredth time. 
 
 Begin to-day to understand why the animals 
 are not hurried, and do not concern them- 
 selves about affairs, nor the clouds nor the 
 trees nor the stars — but only man — and he but 
 for a few thousand years in history. 
 
HAVE FAITH. 127 
 
 [For it is one thing to do things, but an- 
 other to be concerned about the doing of 
 them.] 
 
 Behold the animals. There is not one but 
 the human soul lurks within it, fulfilling its 
 destiny as surely as within you. 
 
 The elephant, the gnat floating warily to- 
 wards its victim, the horse sleeping by stolen 
 snatches in the hot field at the plough, or com- 
 ing out of the stable of its own accord at the 
 sound of the alarm bell and placing itself in 
 the shafts of the fire-engine — sharing the ex- 
 citement of the men — the cats playing together 
 on the barn floor, thinking no society equal to 
 theirs, the ant bearing its burden through the 
 grass — 
 
 Do you think that these are nothing more 
 than what you see? Do you not know that 
 your mother and your sister and your brother 
 are among them? 
 
128 HAVE FAITH. 
 
 4 
 
 I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the 
 human soul look out upon me. 
 
 I saw where it was born deep down under 
 feathers and fur, or condemned for awhile to 
 roam four-footed among the brambles. I 
 caught the clinging mute glance of the pris- 
 oner, and swore that I would be faithful. 
 
 Thee my brother and sister I see and mis- 
 take not. Do not be afraid. Dwelling thus 
 and thus for awhile, fulfilling thy appointed 
 time — thou too shalt come to thyself at last. 
 
 Thy half-warm horns and long tongue lap- 
 ping round my wrist do not conceal thy 
 humanity any more than the learned talk of the 
 pedant conceals his — for all thou art dumb we 
 have words and plenty between us. 
 
 Come nigh little bird with your half-stretched 
 quivering wings— within you I behold choirs 
 of angels, and the Lord himself in vista. 
 
 Crooning and content the old hen sits — her 
 
HAVE FAITH. 129 
 
 thirteen chicks creep cheerily round her, or 
 nestle peeping out like little buds from under 
 her wings; 
 
 Keen and motherly is her eye, placid and 
 joyful her heart, as the sun shines warm upon 
 them. 
 
 5 
 
 Do not hurry : have faith. 
 
 [Whither indeed should we hurry? is it not 
 well here? 
 
 A little shelter from the storm, a stack of 
 fuel for winter use, a few handfuls of grain 
 and fruit — 
 
 And lo ! the glory of all the earth is ours. ] 
 
 The main thing is that the messenger is per- 
 haps even now at your door — and to see that 
 you are ready for his arrival : 
 
 A little child, a breath of air, an old man 
 hobbling on crutches, a bee lighting on the 
 page of your book — who knows whom He may 
 send? 
 
130 HAVE FAITH. 
 
 Some one diseased or dying, some friend- 
 less, outcast, criminal — 
 
 One whom it shall ruin your reputation to 
 be seen with — yet see that you are ready for 
 his arrival. 
 
 Likely whoever it is his coming will upset 
 all your carefully laid plans; 
 
 Your most benevolent designs will likely 
 have to be laid aside — and he will set you to 
 some quite commonplace business or perhaps 
 of dubious character — 
 
 Or send you a long and solitary journey — 
 perhaps he will bring you letters of trust to 
 deliver — perhaps the prince himself will ap- 
 pear — 
 
 Yet see that you are ready for his arrival. 
 
 Is your present experience hard to bear? 
 
 Yet remember that never again perhaps in 
 all your days will you have another chance of 
 the same. 
 
HAVE FAITH. 131 
 
 Do not fly the lesson, but have a care that 
 you master it while you have the opportunity. 
 
 6 
 
 These things I say not in order to excite 
 thought in you — rather to destroy it — 
 
 Or if to excite thought, then to excite that 
 which destroys itself ; 
 
 For what I say is not born of thought and 
 does not demand thought either for compre- 
 hension or proof ; 
 
 And whoever dwells among thoughts dwells 
 in the region of delusion and disease — and 
 though he may appear wise and learned yet 
 his wisdom and learning are as hollow as a 
 piece of timber eaten out by white ants. 
 
 Therefore though thought should gird you 
 about, remember and forget not to disendue 
 it, as a man takes off his coat when hot; and as 
 a skilful workman lays down his tool when 
 done with, so shall you use thought and lay it 
 
132 HAVE FAITH. 
 
 quietly aside again when it has served your 
 purpose. 
 
 7 
 
 A veil of illusion hangs following the lines 
 of all things, 
 
 Over the trees and running waters, and up 
 the sides of the mountains and over the sea 
 and the cities, and circling the birds in the air 
 as they fly — 
 
 So that these themselves you see not, only 
 the indications of them — and yourself you see 
 not, only the indication. 
 
 As long as through the eyes of desire, and 
 of this and that, you look — and of vanity — as 
 long as you hurry after results and are over- 
 whelmed with the importance of anything you 
 can do or leave undone — so long will the veil 
 lie close, do not be deceived. 
 
 On all sides God surrounds you, staring out 
 upon you from the mountains and from the 
 face of the rocks, and of men, and of animals. 
 
HAVE FAITH. 133 
 
 Will you rush past for ever insensate and 
 blindfold — hurrying breathless from one unfin- 
 ished task to another, and to catch your ever- 
 departing trains — as if you were a very Cain 
 flying from his face? 
 
 Resume the ancient dignity of your race, 
 lost, almost forgotten as it is. 
 
 What is it surely that you are fretting 
 about? Is it the fashions, or what men say 
 about you, or the means of livelihood, or is it 
 the sense of duty this way and that, or trivial 
 desires, that will not let you rest? 
 
 Are you so light, like a leaf, that such things 
 as these will move you — are you so weak that 
 one such slender chain will deprive you of in- 
 estimable Freedom? 
 
 And yet the lilies of the field and the beasts 
 that have no banks of deposit or securities are 
 not anxious : they have more dignity than you. 
 
 As long as you harbor motives so long are 
 you giving hostages to the enemy — while you 
 
134 HAVE FAITH. 
 
 are a slave (to this and that) you can only 
 obey. It is not You who are acting at all. 
 
 Brush it all aside. 
 
 Pass disembodied out of yourself. Leave 
 the husk, leave the long, long prepared and 
 perfected envelope. 
 
 Enter into the life which is eternal, pass 
 through the gate of indifference into the pal- 
 ace of mastery, through the door of love out 
 into the great open of deliverance ; 
 
 Give away all that you have, become poor 
 and without possessions — and behold! you 
 shall be lord and sovereign of all things 
 
Towards Democracy 
 
 By EDWARD CARPENTER 
 
 A masterpiece, the work of a seer. Gifted as poet and philoso- 
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 Over 367 pages, Levant cloth, prepaid, $2.25. 
 
 Loves Coming of Age 
 
 By EDWARD CARPENTER 
 
 A comprehensive and philosophical treatise on Sexual Science 
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 A Visit to a Gnani 
 
 By EDWARD CARPENTER 
 
 A vivid pen picture of oriental thoughts and teachings, contain- 
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 Illustrated. Bound in Vellum de Luxe, prepaid, $1.00. 
 
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