Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/154

 layers of finite experience marked off by the colours of good and evil, the brightness of life and the darkness of death, to the realisation of the infinite, the author of has let the poet in him avert the rigour of the discipline assigned by the Brahminic doctrine. But do not think him, because of his interpretation of the twin functions, joy and love, and their effect in the approach to the of eternal bliss, a diverter of the moral law. The way is long and hard, and the divine joy can only be won by driving out the sensual and the alimental affections of our nature. "That in which the poet rejoiced—the breath of life, in its revealed forms—in that the gods themselves exist." But evil must be driven out by means of that spirit which is hidden in, the breath of life; only when it is driven out can the enlightened man go to the world where he becomes one with God.

The old Indian seers taught us that he who had grown wise by his meditation, and by his understanding therefrom of that life-breath, will have his reward in the end. At the time of death he will go free, although his mortal state may seem at first to be that of the rest of men.