Sadhana | Page 3

our destination; and as such it is part of our goal. It is already the beginning of
our attainment, and by journeying over it we can only gain that which in itself it offers to
us. This last point of view is that of India with regard to nature. For her, the great fact is
that we are in harmony with nature; that man can think because his thoughts are in
harmony with things; that he can use the forces of nature for his own purpose only
because his power is in harmony with the power which is universal, and that in the long
run his purpose never can knock against the purpose which works through nature.
In the west the prevalent feeling is that nature belongs exclusively to inanimate things
and to beasts, that there is a sudden unaccountable break where human-nature begins.
According to it, everything that is low in the scale of beings is merely nature, and
whatever has the stamp of perfection on it, intellectual or moral, is human-nature. It is
like dividing the bud and the blossom into two separate categories, and putting their grace
to the credit of two different and antithetical principles. But the Indian mind never has
any hesitation in acknowledging its kinship with nature, its unbroken relation with all.
The fundamental unity of creation was not simply a philosophical speculation for India; it
was her life-object to realise this great harmony in feeling and in action. With mediation
and service, with a regulation of life, she cultivated her consciousness in such a way that
everything had a spiritual meaning to her. The earth, water and light, fruits and flowers,
to her were not merely physical phenomena to be turned to use and then left aside. They
were necessary to her in the attainment of her ideal of perfection, as every note is
necessary to the completeness of the symphony. India intuitively felt that the essential
fact of this world has a vital meaning for us; we have to be fully alive to it and establish a
conscious relation with it, not merely impelled by scientific curiosity or greed of material
advantage, but realising it in the spirit of sympathy, with a large feeling of joy and peace.
The man of science knows, in one aspect, that the world is not merely what it appears to
be to our senses; he knows that earth and water are really the play of forces that manifest
themselves to us as earth and water--how, we can but partially apprehend. Likewise the

man who has his spiritual eyes open knows that the ultimate truth about earth and water
lies in our apprehension of the eternal will which works in time and takes shape in the
forces we realise under those aspects. This is not mere knowledge, as science is, but it is a
preception of the soul by the soul. This does not lead us to power, as knowledge does, but
it gives us joy, which is the product of the union of kindred things. The man whose
acquaintance with the world does not lead him deeper than science leads him, will never
understand what it is that the man with the spiritual vision finds in these natural
phenomena. The water does not merely cleanse his limbs, but it purifies his heart; for it
touches his soul. The earth does not merely hold his body, but it gladdens his mind; for
its contact is more than a physical contact--it is a living presence. When a man does not
realise his kinship with the world, he lives in a prison-house whose walls are alien to him.
When he meets the eternal spirit in all objects, then is he emancipated, for then he
discovers the fullest significance of the world into which he is born; then he finds himself
in perfect truth, and his harmony with the all is established. In India men are enjoined to
be fully awake to the fact that they are in the closest relation to things around them, body
and soul, and that they are to hail the morning sun, the flowing water, the fruitful earth, as
the manifestation of the same living truth which holds them in its embrace. Thus the text
of our everyday meditation is the _Gayathri_, a verse which is considered to be the
epitome of all the Vedas. By its help we try to realise the essential unity of the world with
the conscious soul of man; we learn to perceive the unity held together by the one Eternal
Spirit, whose power creates the earth, the sky, and the stars, and at the same time
irradiates our minds with the light of a consciousness that moves and exists in unbroken
continuity with the outer world.
It is not true