Page:An Indian Study of Love and Death.pdf/26

22 Q. Lo, wherever I look, I behold two. To-day, life and laughter; to-morrow, death and tears. I behold joy. True, but pain is its shadow. And there, in the darkness, where I can see no further, how shall I know that my Beloved still persists?

A. Because all things bring forth their opposites. Because life is a rhythm, a rhythm of rhythms, and rhythm is but a continuous movement from one point to the reverse. Every experience within life is made up of such movement between two, and we cannot conceive that life itself should be different from all its elements. But if so, it must itself, in experience, be succeeded by death. Bodily consciousness must be succeeded by bodily unconsciousness. Manifestation by non-manifestation. This mode of acting and knowing, by not acting and not knowing in this mode.

Yet as I am myself a constant factor, in my own waking and sleeping, in health and in disease, so there must be a factor which remains constant, and undergoes this