Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/146

, which is the only thing we can call our own; and which, if lost, is a loss to the whole world." So he interprets the craving of the ego, assuming its very accent for the better enunciation of its personal pride. But the paradox of the ego is easily resolved. Its tireless self-consciousness is in effect, if it but knew, a result of the desire for fulfilment in the widest plane. It is the burning of a wick that is fed from the sources of the sun. When the sun rises, the flame bows and yields itself up to the greater illumination, and this is Nirvana, "the symbol of the extinction of the lamp." It does not mean night; it means that the day has come.

But we have to realise the truth which the doctrine of the two selves, lesser and greater, taught in the Upanishads, makes plain—that the gleam in the lamp is the same as the master-light. "Listen to me, ye sons of the immortal spirit, ye who live in the heavenly abode. I have known the Supreme Being whose light shines forth from beyond the darkness." To attain that light we have to render back the small fire lent to the lamp, since the soul's tenure of the body is finite. There begins the great mystery, the