THE SECOND BIRTH By RABINDRANATH TAGORE

In the life of an animal on its negative side this element of separateness is still more pronounced, and on that account on its positive side its relationship with the world is still wider. Its food is more fully separated from it than that of the tree. It has to seek it and know it under the stimuli of pleasure and pain. Therefore it has a fuller relationship with its world of knowledge and feeling. The same is also true in its case with regard to the separation of sex. These separations, and the consequent efforts after unity, have the effect of heightening the consciousness of self in animals, making their personality richer by their contact with unforeseen obstacles and unexpected possibilities. In the trees the separation from their progeny ends in complete detachment, whereas in animals it leads to a further relationship. Thus the vital interest of animals is still more enlarged in its scope and intensity, and their consciousness is spread over a larger area. This wider kingdom of their individuality they have constantly to maintain through a complex relationship with their world. All obstacles to this are evils.

In man, this dualism of physical life is still more varied. His needs are not only greater in number and therefore requiring larger field for search, but also more complex, requiring deeper knowledge of things. This gives him a greater consciousness of himself. It is his mind which more fully takes the place of the automatic movements and instinctive activities of trees and animals. This mind also has its negative and positive aspects of separateness and unity. For, on the one hand, it separates the objects of knowledge from their knower, and then again unites them in a relationship of knowledge. To the vital relationship of this world of food and sex is added the secondary relation which is mental. Thus we make this world doubly our own by living in it and by knowing it.

This is the world of man's second birth, the extra-natural world, where the dualism of the animal life and the moral makes us conscious of our personality as man. Whatever hinders this life of man from establishing perfect relationship with its moral world is an evil. It is death,—a far greater death than the death of the natural life.

In the natural world, with the help of science, man is turning the forces of matter from tyranny into obedience.

But in his moral world he has a harder task to accomplish. He has to turn his own passions and desires from tyranny into obedience. And continual efforts have been directed towards this end in all times and climates. Nearly all our institutions are the outcome of these endeavours. They are giving directions to our will and dig- ging channels for it in order to allow its course to run easily without useless waste of power.

We have seen that the physical life had its gradual expansion into the mental. The mind of animals is fully engrossed in the search for and knowledge of the immediate necessaries of life. In man's case these objects were more varied and therefore a greater mind-power was requisite. Thus we became aware that our world of present needs is one with a world that infinitely transcends our present needs. We came to know that this world not only provides us with food, but with thoughts in a greater measure ; that there is a subtle relationship of all things with our mind.

The consciousness of relationship dawned in us with our physical existence, where there was separation and meeting between our individual life and the universal world of things ; it took a deeper hue in our mental life, where there was a separation and continual reunion between our individual mind and the universal world of reason ; it widened where there was a separation and combination between the individual will and the universal world of human personalities ; it came to its ultimate meaning where there was the separation and harmony between the individual One in us and the universal One in infinity. And at this point of the everlasting parting and meeting of the One with the One breaks out the wonderful song of man—

That is the Supreme Path of This,
That is the Supreme Treasure of This,
That is the Supreme World of This,
That is the Supreme Joy of This.

(Eshasya parama gatih,
Eshasya parama sampat,
Esho'sya paramo lokah,
Esho'sya parama anandah.)

Life is the relationship of the That and the This. In the world of things and men, this rhythm of That and This flows on in countless channels of metres; but the meaning of it is absent, till the realization is made perfect in the Supreme That and This.

Here comes the greatest suffering of the dualism in man, the dualism of the world of nature and the world of soul. The evil which hurts the natural man is pain, but that which hurts his soul has been given a special name, it is sin. For it may not be at all realized in pain, yet it is evil, just as blindness or lameness is of no consequence to the embryo, yet becomes a great evil if it continues after birth, for it hinders life's ultimate purpose. Crime is against man, sin is against the divine in us.

What is this divine ? It is that which has its right and true meaning in the infinite, which does not believe in the embryonic life of self as the ultimate truth. The travail of birth is upon all humanity—its history is the history of suffering such as no animal can ever realize. All its energies are urging it forward ; it has no rest. When it goes to sleep upon its prosperity, binds its life in codes of convention, begins to scoff 1 at its ideals, and wants to withdraw all its forces towards the augmentation of self, then it shows signs of death ; its very power becomes the power of destruction,—the power which makes huge preparations for death, not believing in the immortal life.

For all other creatures nature is final. To live, to propagate their race and to die is their end. And they are content. They never cry for salvation, for emancipation from the limits of life ; they never feel stifled for breath and knock with all their forces against the boundary walls of their world ; they never know what it is to renounce their life of plenty and through privations to seek entrance into the realm of blessedness. They are not ashamed of their desires, they are pure in their appetites; for these belong to their complete life. They are not cruel in their cruelties, not greedy in their greeds ; for these end in their objects, which are final in themselves. But man has a further life, and therefore those passions are despised by him which do not acknowledge his infinity.

Even in his savage days he would change things by magical powers. He dreamed, as no animal ever does, of Aladdin's lamp and of the obedient forces of genii to turn the world upside down as it suited him, because his free spirit, in its movements, stumbled against things arranged without consideration for him. He was obliged to behave as if he must follow the arrangement of nature, which had not his consent, or die. But this, in spite of hard facts against him, he never could believe in his heart of hearts. Therefore he dreamed of the paradise where he could be free, of the fairy land, of the epic age when man had constant cooperation with gods, of the philosopher's stone, of the elixir of life. Though he saw no gate opening out anywhere, he groped for it, he fretted, he desired and prayed with all his might for an entrance to freedom. For instinctively he felt that this world was not his final world, and unless he had another world his soul was to him a meaningless torment.

Science guides man's rebellion of freedom against Nature's rule. She is working to give into man's hand Nature's magic wand of power ; she is to free our spirit from the slavery of things. Science has a materialistic appearance, because she is engaged in breaking the prison of matter and working in the rubbish heap of the ruins. At the invasion of a new country plunder becomes the rule of the day. But when that country is conquered, things become different, and those who robbed act as policemen to restore peace and security. Science is at the beginning of the invasion of the material world and there goes on a furious scramble for plunder. Often things look hideously materialistic, and shamelessly belie man's own nature. But the day will come when some of the great powers of nature will be at the beck and call of every individual, and at least the prime necessaries of life will be supplied to all with very little care and cost. To live will be as easy to man as to breathe, and his spirit will be free to create his own world.

In the same manner also man, in his instinct, is almost blindly sure that, however dense be his envelopment, he is to be born from Nature's womb to the world of spirit,—the world where he has his freedom of creation ; where he is in cooperation with the infinite, where his creation and God's creation are to become one in harmony.

In almost all religious systems there is a large area of pessimism, where life has been held to be an evil, and the world a snare and a delusion ; where man has felt himself to be furiously at war with his natural surroundings. He has felt the oppression of all things so intensely that it has seemed to him there was an evil personality in the world, which tempted him, and with all its cunning wiles waylaid him into destruction. In his desperation man has thought that he would shut up all possible communication with nature and utterly prove that he was sufficient in himself.

But this is the intensely painful antagonism of the child-life with the mother's life at the time of birth. It is cruel and destructive ; it looks at the moment like ingratitude. And all religious pessimism is an ingratitude of deepest dye. It is a violent incitement to strike at that which has so long borne us and fed us with its own life.

In nature we are blind and lame like a child before its birth. But in the spiritual life we are born in freedom. And then because we are freed from the blind bondage of nature she is illuminated to us, and where we saw before mere envelopment we now see the mother.

But what is the ultimate end of the freedom which has come into man's life ? It must have its meaning in something beyond which the question need go no farther. The answer is the same that we receive from the life of the animal if we ask what is its final meaning. The animals, by feeding and gratifying their desires, realize their own selves. And that is the ultimate end, to know that I am. The animal knows it, but its knowledge is like the smoke, not like the fire—it comes with a blind feeling but no illumination, and though it arouses the truth it darkens it. It is the consciousness passing from the undistinguished non-self to the distinct self. It has just enough circumference to feel itself as the centre.

The ultimate end of freedom is also to know that ‘I am.’But it is the aberration of man's consciousness from the separateness of the self into its unity with all. This freedom is not perfect in its mere extension, but its true perfection is in its intensity, which is love. The freedom of the child's birth from its mother's womb is not fulfilled in its fuller consciousness of its mother, but in its intense consciousness of its mother in love. In the womb it was fed and was warm, but it was narrowly self-contained in its loneliness. After its birth, through the medium of its freedom, the inter-communication of the love of the mother and the child brings to the child the joy of the fullest consciousness of its personality. This mother's love gives to it the meaning of all its world. If the child were merely a feeding organism, then by fixing its roots into its world it could thrive. But the child is a person, and its personality needs its full realization, which can never be in the bondage of the womb. It has to be free, and the freedom of personality has its fulfilment, not in itself, but in other personality, and this is love.

We have seen that consciousness of personality begins with the feeling of the separateness from all and has its culmination in the feeling of the unity with all. It is needless to say that with the consciousness of separation there must be consciousness of unity, for it cannot exist solely by itself. But the life in which the consciousness of separation takes the first place and of unity the second place, and therefore where the personality is narrow and dim in the light of truth,—this is the life of self. But the life in which the consciousness of unity is the primary and separateness the secondary factor, and therefore the personality is large and bright in truth,—this is the life of soul. The whole object of man is to free his personality of self into the personality of soul, to turn his inward forces into the forward movement towards the infinite, from the contraction of self in desire into the expansion of soul in love.

This personality, which is the conscious principle of oneness, the centre of relationships, is the reality,—therefore the ultimate object of attainment. I must emphasize this fact, that this world is a real world only in its relation to a central personality. When that centre is taken away, then it falls to pieces, becomes a heap of abstractions, matter and force, logical symbols, and even those,—the thinnest semblances of reality,—would vanish into absolute nothingness, if the logical person in the centre, to whom they are related in some harmony of reason, were nowhere.

Will has its supreme response, not in the world of law, but in the world of freedom, not in the world of nature, but in the spiritual world.

This we know in ourselves. Our slaves do our bidding, furnish us with our necessaries, but in them our relation is not perfect. We have our own freedom of will which can only find its true harmony in the freedom of other wills. Where we are slaves ourselves, in our selfish desires, we feel satisfaction in slaves. For slaves reflect our own slavery, which comes back to us, making us dependent. Therefore when America freed her slaves she truly freed herself, not only from the spiritual, but also from the material slavery. Our highest joy is in love. For there we realize the freedom of will in others. In friends, the will meets our will in fulness of freedom, not in coercion of want or fear ; therefore, in this love, our personality finds its highest realization.

In our country the Vaishnavas have realized this truth and boldly asserted it by saying that God has to rely on human souls for the fulfilment of his love. In love there must be freedom, therefore God has not only to wait till our souls, out of their own will, bring themselves into harmony with his own, but also to suffer when there are obstacles and rebellions.

Therefore in the creation of the spiritual world, in which man has to work in union with God, there have been sufferings of which animals can have no idea. In the tuning of the instruments discords have shrieked loud, and strings have often snapped. When seen from this aspect, such work of collaboration between man and God has seemed as though meaninglessly malevolent. Because of the ideal that there is in the heart of this creation, every mistake and misfit has come as a stab and the world of soul has bled and groaned. Freedom has often taken the negative course to prove that it is freedom,—and man has suffered and God with him, so that this world of spirit might come out of its bath of fire, naked and pure, radiating light in all its limbs like a divine child. There have been hypocrisies and lies, cruel arrogance angered at the wounds it inflicts, spiritual pride that uses God's name to insult man, and pride of power that insults God by calling him its ally ; there has been the smothered cry of centuries in pain robbed of its voice, and children of men mutilated of their right arms of strength to keep them helpless for all time; luxuries have been cultivated upon fields manured by the bloody sweat of slavery, and wealth built upon the foundations of penury and famine. But, I ask, has this giant spirit of negation won ? Has it not its greatest defeat in the suffering it has caused in the heart of the infinite ? and is not its callous pride shamed by the very grass of the wayside and flowers of the field every moment of its bloated existence ? Does not the crime against man and v God carry its own punishment upon its head in its crown of hideousness ? Yes, the divine in man is not afraid of success, or of organization ; it does not believe in the precautions of prudence and dimensions of power. Its strength is not in the muscle or the machine, neither in cleverness of policy nor in callousness of conscience ; it is in its spirit of perfection. The to-day scoffs at it, but it has the eternity of to-morrow on its side. In appearance it is helpless like a babe, but its tears of suffering in the night set in motion all the unseen powers of heaven, the Mother in all creation is awakened. Prison walls break down, piles of wealth come tumbling to the dust under the weight of its huge disproportion. The history of the earth is the history of earthquakes and floods and volcanic fires, and yet, through it all, it is the history of the green fields and bubbling streams, of beauty and of prolific life. The spiritual world, which is being built of man's life and that of God, will pass its infancy of helpless falls and bruises, and one day will stand firm in its vigour of youth, glad in its own beauty and freedom of movement.