separate consciousness, then this is not the sign of salvation, but of terrible extinction.… This Nirvana salvation of the Upanishads did not find a place in my heart.
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We must add a portrait from his own book to understand the human strain in the Maharshi's religion:
My grandmother was very fond of me. To me, also, she was all in all during the days of my childhood. My sleeping, sitting, and eating were all at her side. She was a deeply religious woman. Every day she used to bathe in the Ganges very early in the morning; and every day she used to weave garlands of flowers with her own hands for the family shrine.
And at her death the Ganges is still the background of the mournful last ceremony. The pious old woman was carried down as her death drew near, according to custom, but unwillingly and protestingly, to the shed by the Ganges. She lived three nights.
On the night before her death I was sitting on a coarse mat near the shed. It was the night of the full moon; the funeral pyre was near.
The sound of a chant came to him, and a sudden sense of the unreality of earthly things stole upon him. The thought of wealth and
