Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/137

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IX
SPIRITUAL COMMONWEALTH
113

thing doctrinal under the name. Even the eleven authentic Upanishads presented many contrary doctrines. They, like the Vedas, were given up.

These Upanishads could not meet all our needs, could not fill our hearts. Where was the foundation of Brahminism to be law? I came to see that the pure heart, filled with the light of intuitive knowledge, was the true basis. Brahma reigned in the pure heart alone.… We could accept those texts only of the Upanishads which accorded with the heart. Those sayings which disagreed with the heart we could not accept.

In one Upanishad we read:

God is revealed through worship to the heart illumined by an intellect free from all doubt.
To the soul of the righteous is revealed the wisdom of God.
These words accorded with the experience of my own heart, hence I accepted them.
In heaven there is no fear, thou art not there, O Death, neither is there old age. Free from both hunger and thirst, and beyond the reach of sorrow, all rejoice in the world of heaven.
He who sins here and repenteth not of his sinful deeds, and instead of desisting therefrom, falls into sin again and again, enters into doleful regions after death. Holiness leads unto holy regions and sin unto regions of sin.

He says elsewhere:

When I saw in the Upanishads that the worship of Brahma leads to Nirvana, my soul was dismayed. "All deeds together with the sentient soul, all become one in Brahma." If this means that the sentient soul loses its