INTRODUCTION
I
To certain types of mind the spiritual adventures of man will seem always the most absorbing of all studies ; the most real amongst the confusing facts of life. These will, when they are offered the history of a personality, ignore much that the practical man might consider essential ; that they may seek at once for those secret guiding lines, the laws of that interior growth, which condition the relation of the self to the world of eternal things.
In the life of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore such readers will find a new document of absorbing interest : one more amongst the small number of authentic histories of the soul. This book must rank with the few classic autobiographies bequeathed to us by certain of the mystics and saints : Suso, Madame Guyon ; even the great St. Teresa herself. It is essentially of the same class as the Testament of Ignatius Loyola, the Journal of George Fox. The whole life of the intricately-blended human creature
