Page:Shantiniketan; the Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.djvu/129

Rh We are all children crying in the dark for our eternal Mother, but we do not know that she is in the same bed with us all the time. We do not know this, and we think that we are separated. But when the lamp is lit we know that the Mother has been here all the while. Then we find that we are children of the same Mother, that amid differences of race, and climate, we are children of the same Mother, and the cry of India, “Lead us from the unreal to the real, from darkness to light, from death to immortality,” rises from our lips. When we listen to that prayer we know that these differences are the unreal, and that the Real is that we are one. Under these trees we have called Him in united voices our Father, and we have come to know that this is our true relationship; it can never be lost, but will continue deep in our souls.

Our personal relationship with this world was begun in love—Mother brought us into the world, Father’s love cherished and nourished us there. Gradually through the keynote of this love we could see that only this relationship was final. The objects of our passionate desires were either destructive or shadowy things. Life becomes unreal when filled up with them. But