Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/155

 The sensual activity will pass into the mind, the mind-activity into the breath of life, and that breath into the Five Elements. These elements, again, will be absorbed up to their seed in the highest self, and there the old birth ends. But then it is that the subtle body rises again, and emerging, reaches a ray of the sun, and takes the northern or southern course that leads him to the road of light—Archis. This light and its concomitant powers lead him forth on to the new plane, where he can create joy in all its forms, and give those forms material bodies, and put living souls in them; and he can move in these at will. At last, through this creative energy, he arrives at the higher knowledge, that of the higher self; and at the end of this second birth attains Brahma.

Rabindranath Tagore has shown us in a path, not for the Sanyasi and the ascetic, but one which every man may tread on his way to the first gate of mortality. Joy may attend his steps there, and love may be his guide; but there is more in the interlude than they at once can discover; and what that more is, and the mystery and the judgment that stands at the gateway like the angel with the sword, can be