
Bhawani Mandir, 1905
India's Rebirth
Source: The Varieties of Religious Experience
Bhawani Mandir, 1905
India's Rebirth
Quoted in Chicano Power: The Emergence of Mexican America by Tony Castro, ISBN 0841503214.
Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life http://www.spiritualbee.com/spiritual-book-by-tagore/ (1916)
Context: Though the West has accepted as its teacher him who boldly proclaimed his oneness with his Father, and who exhorted his followers to be perfect as God, it has never been reconciled to this idea of our unity with the infinite being. It condemns, as a piece of blasphemy, any implication of man's becoming God. This is certainly not the idea that Christ preached, nor perhaps the idea of the Christian mystics, but this seems to be the idea that has become popular in the Christian west.
But the highest wisdom in the East holds that it is not the function of our soul to gain God, to utilise him for any special material purpose. All that we can ever aspire to is to become more and more one with God. In the region of nature, which is the region of diversity, we grow by acquisition; in the spiritual world, which is the region of unity, we grow by losing ourselves, by uniting. Gaining a thing, as we have said, is by its nature partial, it is limited only to a particular want; but being is complete, it belongs to our wholeness, it springs not from any necessity but from our affinity with the infinite, which is the principle of perfection that we have in our soul.
“We should live two lives in order to understand the world: one as a man and the other as a woman.”
Bisognerebbe vivere due vite per capire il mondo: una come uomo e l’altra come donna.
Source: Towards Evening (1889), p. 93
Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (1955) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 349