Page:The Autobiography of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore.djvu/18

x INTRODUCTION living "eternal life in the midst of time"—not the mere factual happenings, not alone the intuitions, the meditations and the dreams, but the whole rich complex of elements both finite and infinite, the growth and change, the slow becoming of the soul—this it is which such books, when written with simplicity of purpose and read with attention and humility, bring home to the reader s mind.

Those familiar with the history of the Christian mystics will find again, in the self-revelations of this modern saint of the East, many of those characteristic experiences and doctrines which are the special joy and beauty of our own traditjon of the spiritual life. Students who have approached the subject from the psychological rather than the philosophical side are accustomed to think of this life less as a status than as a growth; a development, a becoming, which passes through certain well-marked stages on its way to the attainment of that complete maturity, that entire and impassioned identification with eternal interests which mystical writers call "union with God." They have learned too, of recent years, that psychology can offer us some explanation of these normally occurring states, of the alternating periods of joyous illumination and mental distress, the successive experiences, conflicts, and adjustments, undergone by the growing soul. Now here we may see the record of a life— lived within our time, yet totally uninfluenced by the mystical psychology of Europe—which exhibits close