The Philosophy Of Swami Rama Tirtha

The lost being lost, I have had to base my study on whatever material is available, some of it being now out of print. The President and the Secretary of the Rama Tirtha Pratisthana, as well as Swami Hari Tirtha, the only surviving disciple of Swami Rama Tirtha have all corroborated that there is nothing from the pen of Swami Rama now left unpublished.

Sinha, the Secretary of the Pratisthana, for their cordial and unreserved permission to see and study the material available in their custody and to freely use their library. I am equally thankful to the Ramashram Library, Rishikesh, for extending to me the use of its books. My gratitude is to Dr.

Litt, under whose encouraging supervision I carried on this research study. But for his keen interest, sympathetic guidance and constructive suggestions my work could not have easily found its completion. I have my reverential gratitude in the remembrance of late Dr. Maitra, Head of the Department of Philosophy, Varanasi Hindu University, Varanasi, who had always shown to me an inspiring affection encouraging my philosophical studies. I express my respectful indebtedness to Dr. Head of the Department of Philosophy, Varanasi Hindu University, Varanasi, who was the first to enthuse me for my present undertaking and had been showing a helpful interest in all its progressive stages, giving me, most unreservedly, the advantage of his close study of Swami Rama.

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I am also deeply obliged to Dr. Murti, Formerly Head of the Department of Philosophy, Varanasi Hindu University, Varanasi, for some critical suggestions I received from him through his scholarly and sharp discussions on some vital issues. We only chanced to meet in a bus-travel and our casual introduction brought us closer for common moorings. It was out of his sheer love and good last to bring to light the wisdom of the saints that he showed his initiative to take up the present publication believing that it would reflect Swami Rama Tirtha.

The purpose of the present work would be served if it attracts its readers to a closer study of the philosophy of saints. From to he served as professor of philosophy and the Head of the Department in Various Degree Colleges in U. Weight of the Book: Subscribe for Newsletters and Discounts.

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By subscribing, you will receive our email newsletters and product updates, no more than twice a month. All emails will be sent by Exotic India using the email address info exoticindia. Share our website with your friends. The phenomena of birth and death of individuals involve all the complex processes and laws that govern cosmic life. The most impor- tant and unrejectable law that operates in the universe is the law of Causation which inevitably proves continuity of the individual life — a previous life and a future life — and hence transmigration.

This transmigration, says Swam! So there is a succession of bodies of man, they are born and they meet death; there is a transmigration of the individual and his life-after-life-journey is governed by the universal law of causation as well as freedom of action and desire. They have a meaning only G. We shall deal with it elsewhere.

The whole range of subject-objcct-duality, implied in our ordinary experi- ence, lies far below the self-luminous kingdom of the real self which transcends all empirical knowledge into a pure, witness consciousness, free from all duality and relations. It is a self-conscious spiritual entity which transcends all distinctions operat- ing in the empirical self. The limited ego, is what wrongly appears as the self, for, it is neither self-abiding nor a permanent existent. Its self-luminous consciousness lends awareness to the mind, just as the self-shining Sun imparts a glowful reflection to water.

The real self, thus, is held to be hidden behind and implied in all empiricality. In tune with the upaniiad Rama says: All sounds, colours, tastes acting through the senses find their centre in the one Atman or Self. The self is, therefore, the ultimate subject, beyond the reach of the intellect. The Self 65 as such, can never itself be an object of congnition.

Self-existence and self-awareness go together. The self-luminous all-witnessing self, from the very nature of the case, cannot be something temporary, for. Omniscience does not only mean knowing all things at one particular point of time but to know all at all time. It must, therefore, be an everlasting self.

The real self is ever indivisible and immutable. By breaking a looking glass, a child may only multiply his image a thousand times, but himself he remains the same one. The real self is an undeniable existent and a self-luminous subject. In so doing we have concentrated more upon what the self is not. He uses the Vedantic analysis of human aspiration to prove that man is essentially and inherently endowed with the Godhead. We always get curious to know the cause of an event or occasion that contradicts our kinship with divine 46 46 KR.

No one welcomes death, nobody loves ignorance, nobody likes bondage or dependence, no one cherishes poverty and want and no man seeks suffering and misery. Further, no one in the world feels satisfied at the idea of his being impure, no one relishes an impeachment, no one chooses to suiter from insufficiency. The Self 67 virtues and set ourselves to an earliest removal of the same. What a grand fact l! The Self is always free, complete and absolute. It never wants anything. It is self- complete and ever- perfect. It is of the nature of bliss. All Knowledge, I am, OM!

It has a potent will which governs and accomplishes all activity. The self is, simultaneously, a supreme will which controls all phenomena. Among the ever so many divinities of the self is included the characteristic glory of its lordship, 'aisvarya,' Swam! The suns, the stars, the moons, the earths, the planets, the milky way, all these are yours.

The self is verily the Law- that governs all life. I am the Law inexorable. The Self 69 then on the celestial heights in which the real self shines supreme, it seems as if the two are utterly incompatible. The real self is transcendent and absolute ; it is beyond all time and space, beyond all relations, beyond all dualities or polarities of pleasure and pain, high and low, beyond all formational limits of the world, beyond all the variety of planes known as the physical, astral or mental, etc. Such a real self and such an empirical ego seem to present an antagonism. Swami Rama Tirtha explains it by reference to the mdyd-vada of the odvaitinx.

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He says, it is by wrongly identifying the self with the finite body, life or mind that we miss the liberating self-awareness. It is by putting predica- tions to the unpredicable that we mistake the not-self for the self. There is, however, another feature of Swam! Prophet and Poet in 2. Blind logician and Historian in — without materi- als for reasoning or a world for events but groping towards them.

It comprehends all the world within its compass. All the differentials of empirical self, life and energy, body and mind, knowledge and activity fall C. It is nearer than the nearest and farther than the farthest. The Self is, thus, a principle of unity embracing all diversity.

There is one single Self or Atman permeating the whole body of this universe. Matter and mind, sub- ject and object are only apparent differentiations of the same Indivi- sible reality. My respiration is life and death. The Self 71 The foregoing picture of the self has assumed all the colours which paint it into God. The nature of the self is the same as the nature of God.

This identity, however, is not only an identity in transcendence, but also in immanence, i. The majesty of the self is that it is centrally present in everything ; everything emerges from it. The self is the sole substratum of all things, it is postulated and implied in all beings, it is the axiomatic basis of all that exists. Such is the essential nature of the self and such again, are its intimations in the manifest world. The entire universe is a manifestation, an expression, a reflection of the self. Nature, its creation, its movement, its beauty and life, all owe their existence to the self.

All Cosmic immensities as also the smallest and the most insignificant of its details are grounded in the self. One in its essence inrunning all the formational many. The whole universe is intima- tely and essentially One Spiritual Self, as if in a dynamic dance of self-delight.

Ordinarily speaking, transcendentalism and immanent! Intimations of self-realization, however, being the primary import of his teachings, metaphysical inconsistency of traditional pattern between transcendence and immanence need better be resolved into a mystic synthesis, in which the two may meet as complcmentaries. Transcendence of the self need not necessarily exclude or oppose the empirical nature of the selT it may compre- hensively inform and explain it.

There is no good reason that the existential status of the self be regarded alone as true and functional power of the same Self be labelled as false. If function is not existence, equally, existence is not function ; if function is illusion from the existence point of view, existence may, as well, be illusion from function-point of view, both ways implying an arbitrary dualism between the two. A satisfactory monism is one which may be able to explain both mutually, and not demolish any for the sake of the other.

Conclusively, therefore, transcendence and immanence of the Self, do not seem to stand utterly irreconefled in the views of SwamI G. His views, however, are neither a matter of cold logic nor mere belief; they are practical inspirations for spiritual self-excellence and divinization of life. Naturally, therefore, the foregoing chapters on the metaphysi- cal nature of GOD, the World and the Self, howsoever they might satisfy our taste for classificational systematization, are a sort of chopping off his total philosophy into arbitrary segments to suit our adopted mode of analytical study.

Bertrand Russell has spoken of our approach to philosophy as either intellectual or emotional or practical according to our different temperaments. History of Western Philosophy, p. The Goal of Life 75 light and truth, for moral excellence and spiritual realization, for religious faith and social ideals, for self-culture as well as for national reconstruction. With his characteristic conviction, SwamI Rama reads a spiritual significance in life and envisages a divine goal as the ideal of all human endeavour. As with metaphysical principles, so with the secret significance of life, we have to go deeper or transcend higher than what appears on the surface of life, and, thus, discover the ideal, as also perhaps the inevitable goal towards which it is moving.

There seems to be apparently no consoling explanation of, and no escape from anguish and distress in life. From our persistent frustrations life starts looking a horrible void exciting a tendency to run away from the mysterious, unaccountable, irrational and cruel existence. But SwamT Rama Tirtha speaks with his Vedantic confidence that life with all its details has a Divine Support and spiritual significance. You may recoil from that gaze ; but if you learn to encounter and return it whether in one or many life-times you will see that from it at length all secret terrors, shame, disfigurement, death itself vanish away, and you will not only not be alone in the world, but you will be a sovereign lord over the world.

This Law Divine, again, assures a promise of fulfilment of his aspirations from human misery to Divine Joy, from finitude to the Infinity, from limits to the Illimitable, from bondage to Liberation, from ignorance to Knowledge. They sort of temporarily gratify him but his final happiness recedes to further and further attainments and like the horizon of a traveller, the end never seems to come. Essentially man does not seek only the objects of his changing desires but a final and complete fulfilment of his whole being both through them and their transcendence.

Human suffering is constantly driving man towards God realiz- ation. To the ordinary material intellect which takes its present organisation of consciousness of the limit of its possibilities, the direct contradiction of the unrealised ideals with the realised fact is a final argument against their validity. His ideas are con- centrated more upon metaphysical or spiritual implications of the world rather than on its processive description.

His studies of scien- ce, however, seem to have almost convinced him that evolution is a fact of nature and the terms in which evolution has been generally described by the biologists do not seem to have presented any disag- reement with Vedantic spiritual significance which Swamljl reads in life. Of course, he believes that there are much deeper implications and much higher possibilities of evolution than mere biological.

The Laws and principles that govern life and its evolution are not only physico-chemical or chemico-biological but psycho-moral and religio- spiritual. Evolution, he accepts, is a long tale of passing through innumerable stages from matter to mind, but with a secret spiritual significance all along and with ultra-mental or spiritual future to follow,!

Everything tends to maintain its own identity in status and every creature tries to preserve itself and survive. At the same time everything under- goes constant change and mutation, every life undergoes transmuta- tion and successive transformations. There is both an inertia and a flux. The present, while conserving a continued status of and from the past, tends towards all the changes of future possibilities.

Human life, accordingly, contains all the imperfections and limitations of a past animality, but it also carries a promise of a future spiritual perfection. Life Divine American Edn. Rama believes, the individual moves on and on towards higher stages of his attainment until he inevitably realises his Godhead. Rama is inclined to think in agreement with the theosophical view that in such a progressive march of the individual, there is no returning back to the inferior stages of evolutionary process which one has already lived through and outgrown.

The notion that the individual soul may be retrograded from the human life to the ani- mal or still lower forms of life, as condemned for his misdeeds, does not find any support in either a scientific and rational approach to the problem of evolution or a spiritual interpretation and significance of cosmic processes. Light and knowledge and Realization of unity with all, the stage of Godhead, the superhuman divine stage. The Goal of Life 79 Evolutionary process remaining continuous, its laws and their operations may change from stage to stage. Struggle and strife, for example, might have been the characteristic features of the animal- stage of our past, but they do not constitute the final truth of evolu- tionary law.

There is a clear indication in the writings of Swam! Rama Tlrtha that higher than the biological stage, human life has advanced to the mental stage in which it has progressively lost its physical and vital powers for his intellectual advancement to thrive upon, just as we lose the weaker unit for a stronger unit in a chess-game.

But that is not the last achievement. Essentially speaking, man as the aspirant and man as the potential God are both true in one without presenting any mutual opposition. The fundamental instinctive impulsions of man push him naturally and progressively into the direction of his spiritual ideals so that what he himself naturally desires is ultimately and essentially the same as may be ideally desired of him.

His instinctive aspiration is a sure promise of his divine future. Rama clearly maintains that even the evil-most propensity of man is grounded in his inherent love for Godhead and exhibits some grain of his perpetual quest for the Spiritual Glory. All the follies of the world, all the worldly wisdom of men in this world is tend- ing to push everyone on the right road to this Divinity, to realise his unity and oneness with God. All laws of nature are as it were the soldiers and Great Army of God that are pushing you on the onward march to self- realization.

You must come then, you cannot do otherwise. God the governing Law without, and Self the impelling force within, are the same. Godhead the goal lies within as much as we seek it with- out. The God of men and nature and nations is within you. Your God-head is not to be effected ; it is simply to be known and realised. And yet the changing world does show a regulated and well-designed plan and the Cosmic becoming is advancing towards the glory of its inherent Spiritual Being.

The highest aim we are destined to achieve lies latent within our own being. We cannot then bid pause at a given stage of her evolution, nor have we the right to condemn any intention she may evince or effort she may make to go beyond. It is according to Rama a Supreme State that transcends all dualities of the world and the limitations of the body, the senses, the life and the mind, the moral and social values of life, the psychological rela- tions and hopes and fears, thoughts and feelings. Could taint me ever, no kind of game.

Nothing but the flood of glory! Positively, he aspires for an existence, a knowledge and delight of the highest order and, negatively, he wants to be free from all his limitations — transience, ignorance, pain and suffering. Liberation from all bondage, freedom from all limitations, deliverance from all sorrow and anguish is one of the most funda- mental quests of man.

Emancipation, consequently, of the soul into C. An Outline of Theosophy, pp. The Life Divine American Edn. The Goal of Life 83 a transcendental state of existence where there is complete freedom from all circumstantial pain and pleasure, people, place and position, space and time limitations, all relational maladies, often seems to be the goal of our efforts. This transcendence, according to Swam! Rama, implies both a freedom from all that fails to sustain man as well as an attainment that fulfils him completely. The clouds pour their rains, the thunders roll and the lightenings flash, the fogs obscure and the hurricanes uproot and destroy, but they cannot reach him on the calm heights where he stands and where he dwells in continued sunshine and peace.

But it is because of the figurative expressions that such notions arise. Rama does not advocate an utter severance from the world but a heightening of the mind and its attitude, an enlargement of the soul to a divine self-expansion so as to encompass the whole existence within itself. It is not merely going asunder and cutting away from what seems to limit our existence, but discovering from within that Supreme Infinite which contains within its vasts all our limitations and loosens them into an infinite freedom and expansion.

All the yesterdays of such a person are the tide-washed and untrodden sands, no sin shall rise up against him to torment and accuse him and destroy his sacred peace. His tomorrows are as seeds which shall germinate, bursting into beauty and potency of life, no doubt shall shake his trust, no uncertainty rob him of repose.

The Present is his, only in the immortal Present does he live and it is as the eternal vault of blue above, which looks down silently and calmly yet radiant with purity and light. One whom the profit and loss, counsel of friends, gain and disadvantage, talk of pupils, crooked suggestions of adv- ersaries, unexpected news of any kind can influence and draw from him what?

We have in the upaniiads a variety of concepts, e. Constructive Survey of the Upanisadic Philosophy, pp. The Goal of Lift 85 cosmicisation of the God-realized. He is one with all the living and all the dead He realizes and feels that he is the true Divinity, the real Being, the true thing in itself, the Substance, the Unknowable God, He is All and thus being All he is in Heaven and in Heaven he meets everybody. It is not a self-extinction, but a self- enlargement, a self- fulfilment of the highest order that is achieved through Vedantic freedom.

It is to break all the limiting ties to the finitude of things of the world into the Illimitable Infinite Existence. Negation of the finite itself is the means and virtual characterisation of the Positive Ajffirmation of the Infinite. The free is self-attained and self-fulfilled. The Self-poised and Self-realized is at once the Self-sufficient and self-satisfied. The State of Self-realization through self-transcendence is the master-Key to all self-joy and the completest satisfaction of the highest aspirations. Writes SwSmt Rama, Compare: All that the world can offer to please man pales into insignificance in comparison to the spiiitual happiness of the realized free.

Nothing in all the trea- sures of the Kingdom, nothing in all the universe can draw his attention. Nothing in all charms and beauties in this world can draw his notice ; nothing in all the stores of knowledge can attract him. Oh, what happiness, what supreme joy, what perfect bliss! It transcends all language and surpasses all description. What has been conveyed through the expressions like self-attain- ment, self-realization, self-containedness, etc.

Nobody will ever deceive him. No pain or trouble will ever come to him. Rama Tirtha has fondly maintained that realization of Self-divinity brings sovereignty over nature and its powers. The realized is omnipotent in his identity with God. Truth and Unity with the All are the characteristics of the spiritual Awareness and Knowledge. Rama Tirtha refers to this self- uni versa! The whole universe is verily the body of the realized. On the subtle plane, again, the subtle body of the free superhuman finds a cosmic expansion and becomes one with the whole universe.

It is above the phenomenon of transmigration then, and effectively helps other individuals in moulding their moral life for regeneration and reform. Everybody partakes of him, carves his flesh and drinks his blood. His is a subtle body cut into pieces and eaten by the whole world. Here is egoism cast into winds. That man, whether he opens his lips or not, whether he be an author or not, whether he appears before the public or not wonderfully serves mankind. To the realised Godman life in the world and empirical exis- tence are all a matter of spiritual joy. The Goal of Life 89 Divine brings about a life divine, characterised by freedom, mastery, love, unity, joy and vigour.

It gives a new interpretation to life and its events and establishes a new order of values, a new aesthetics, a new art and a new science. Despite the seeming prickly thorns The flower of love free fragrance spreads. Perennial springs of bubbling joy With radiant sparkling splendour flow, Intoxicating melodies, On wings of heavenly zyphers blow. Yea, 1 Peace and bliss and harmony! A flood of rolling symphony Supreme is mine. In the western civilization philosophical investigation into the ultimates and religious quest for the Supreme, have generally been quite independent of each other, fn India, the head of reason and the heart of faith are so exceptionally joined in their pursuit for the Integral Goal, that it is impossible to have a religion without its philosophical background or a philosophical system devoid of its practical implications bearing on the religious life of its adherents.

To be more close to his spirit we better say, his philosophy and his religion are one. There is almost no room for an independent search and the non-believer is doomed to perish while the faithful adherent is promised all safety. At the face of it, religion looks like a bi-polar concern, having man as one pole and God as the other, man as the seeker and God as the Sought, and, as is usual in such a context, there are implica- tions of a God on the one hand, great enough to be prayed and worshipped, powerful enough to be obeyed and feared, benevolent and kind enough to be revered and loved, and a man on the other hand who plays the meek, obedient, needy, weak and incompetent, dependent and bound, so that God is a personal God and man a prayerful seeker in surrender.

But the views of Swami Rama Tlrtha about God, we already know, are mostly absolutistic. He docs not regard God to be a personal Being with favours or frowns, but as the Impersonal Absolute, the Transcendent Pure Being beyond all relations, and in its essential Self-Status unapproachable and unknow- able. Apparently such a nature of God and a concern for contact with Him seem to be mutually incompatible. God as the Transcendental Reality, however, is not held by Rama to be unknowable in the Kantian sense. It is realizable through knowledge by identity. To know' God is to know Him as identical with the Self.

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This realization of God-Self-Identity is neither possible through scholastic theology nor through conceptual reason- ing but through a religious spirit, full of utter faith and love for God the All, not by a mere belief in a dogma about God, but by living the truth that is God. The final stage of God-realization or God-Self-Identity is generally preceded by feelingful religious intimations with the personal God, and the Vedmtic spiritual culture aiming at self- realization does not necessarily oppose a theistic worship in its various forms.

Religion 93 first aspect deals with the essential spirit and central principles of religion while the second and the third are concerned with its superfi- cial form and outer shell representing, respectively, the imagery-form and the performance-form. Spirit of Religion is the eternal quest of human soul for the Divine ; it is the constant, the most universal and the most important human aspiration.

Mythology and ritualism as the forms of religion have always been different and changing from place to place, age to age and temperament to temperament. But by and by its concretion thickens to cover its own inner significance and gets itself idolised supreme. But as the fate would have it, these were received at first with bitter opposition; then with over enthusiasm so much so that the mother Inde- pendent Thought and Meditation which gave birth to them was ignored and killed in handling the child.

The teachings were gradually taken on trust, a boy found himself a Christian, Mohammedan or Hindu before he was aware of being a man. The spirit was actually driven out to worship the dead carcass. Formal ceremonies and rituals bereft of spiritual principles are insigni- ficant and extravagant superfluities in religion just like the shape of the container from the point of view of the juice contained.

He has recognised the necessity of religious training, K. The Human Cycle American Edn. Religion 95 without which, he holds, we commit the sin of respecting the outer form and name of religion at the cost of its spirit.

The spirit or essence of religion concen- trates on God while the form of religion on the way of worship ; the former implies an implicit and unshakable faith of the heart while the latter clings to only some formula ; the former aims at a realiza- tion of Truth while the latter only preserves a creed ; the former is a spirited adventure into the Unknown while the latter is a timid sense of safety in the orthodox convention ; the former discovers a living truth while the latter fossilizes an old gospel ; the former enshrines the Beloved in the heart while the latter pedestals a stone in statue ; the former breathes vital a freshness of new experience while the latter suffers in suffocation under authority of stale order ; the former opens the heart to be filled by the melody of a celestial music while the latter drills up the tasteless grammatical notes of rituals.

Rama Tirtha has laid an exclusive importance on the spirit of religion which, he believes, is universally the same and which all the variety of religious forms are meant to serve. Religion in its essential spirit is the most fundamental and natural preoccupation of man because there is a community of nature between man and God.

Love for God is as natural for man as for the flame to rise upwards. I cannot miss Thee as I could never miss the sicy. Rama, is a question between man and his God and does not admit of any external or formal interference. The successful atheist knows not the process of his digestion, as it were. Quest for God is instinctively present in the very marrow of human being and his conscious urge for Him grows so spontaneously and simply. Consequently religion is a whole-life pre-occupation of man and not a mere pastime or custom or fear. Religion 97 From such a conception of religion it naturally follows that religious ideals of man are not what can be superficially adopted by him from somewhere or what can be elfectively imposed upon him from outside, but what he must intently discover from within him- self.

Formally speaking, religions have been quite as many and they have catered to the needs and suited the aptitudes of different people at different places in different ages. Yet the fundamental principles and basic truths they have embodied have almost been the same for the reason of human aspira- tions being essentially the same. The spirit of religion remains unantequated in spite of the forms of religion getting stale, since the essential search of human spirit is eternal. Such an eternal and universal religion is the religion of Truth Spiri- tual, universal and natural.

It is Truth, the end of knowledge. It is universal Truth and not a monopoly of a particular religion held by the Hindus alone, but a Truth that could be discovered by anyone anywhere. It is at once the science of self-discovery and the art of spiritual life. Vedanta religion is not merely a contention of the Vedic scriptures but a religion of the heart beating in its own awareness, and sustained by its own free conviction.

As such, it is one with the essence of every other reli- gion. It aims at a discovery of the innermost secrets of life and existence, an understanding that comprehends all the immensities of the universe, an insight that penetrates all depths of reality ; it seeks w G. Religion 99 the vision of the highest beauty, the zenith of the highest perfection, the joy of the highest bliss ; its realization vitalizes all life, animates all activity and intimates all relations.

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It brings an integral fulfil- ment of man in his ever-true identity with God, and therefore, with the whole existence, a realization of the truth of his self-divinity — higher than the highest knowledge, happier than the happiest enjoy- ment and better than the best virtue. He implies a spiritual self-seeking behind the apparent self-con- cealing phenomena into a divine vision of its own God-head essenti- ally and categorically perfect and blissful, and holding the entire existence in its non-dual God-identical, all-uniting Truth of being.

This suggests a field connoted better by the term mysticism than religion. In the context of the Vedanta, however we have not much to differentiate, Veddntic realization, to review, means God-realiza- tion, Veddntic life and religion mean God-religion. The difference does not only rest on the metaphysi- cal planes, it equally stands on the religious and the moral values of life.

The spiritual realization of God-self-identity, consistently, means a transcendence of our ordinary experience it means a knowledge that transcends subject-object-duality, a joy that trans- K. It is a state that surpasses all materia- lity and wofidliness into a sublime freedom of the spirit. The God- man is a man of realization beyond all relativity, all pairs of opposites, complete and perfect in his own Self the same to everyone everywhere, one with the whole existence— all himself. RSma observes that other religions help the removal of extrinsic illusion by holding everything as creation of the same God, whereas Veddota removes the intrinsic illusion responsible for the appearance of all duality.

Transcendentalism of his religion, at the face of it, looks very cold and barren. Does it not encourage an utter indifference towards life and its affairs? Is not a transcendental religion of the Veddntic type devoid of all that is good and happy in life? Swami Rama holds that transcendence of all that is relative, either in terms of ontological existence or of moral virtues, instead of being an ontolo- gical nihil or moral indifference takes to pure existence and all good.

He is at heart one with the Christian, the Musatman, the Bauddha and all, and his God-feeling flows equally pure in the temple, the mosque or the church. Rama expresses the Veddntic religion in a single commandment: Religion not be mistaken for a stoic contentment born of indifference to pain and pleasure and reliance on some wise God, but a positive joy born of transcendental realization of our identity with the All.

Peace comes by transcending all the differences, the cause of all disturbances and worry.

The Philosophy of Swami Rama Tirtha

Freedom is born of our identity with the all-governing Law, the Absolute. Thus Vedantic transcendence of all that is relative, partial, limited, worldly or other-worldly, is transcendence into all that is Perfect and Good and Happy and not merely a self-annihilation into a void. Rama Tirtha do not easily encourage such an interpretation. All religious views of life are an thropocentric. Divinity as the aim of religious aspiration is not some extra-imposed or other-worldly aim of man, but a self-impelled seeking of his very being.

His attitude is more reconciliatory than revo- lutionary. His approach does not encourage an absolute division between the human and the Divine or the worldly and the other- worldly and, as such, his religion unites God with man as much as man with God. What he calls the Vedantic religion, therefore, olfers harmonious unity of all religions by affirming their common essentials. In so doing he is full of confidence that essentially there is no difference between one religion and another except in words and figures of imagination.

Religion take a few examples, and the idea of 'atma -self-help or self- confidence or self-salvation are not mutually opposed in that, both- ways, it is our faith that saves, and from the Saviour without to the Saviour within there is just a little change of centre of faith without any variation in faith itself. Amen being uttered at the end of all prayer, the language of the heart, and Om represent- ing the end, the final stage and comprehension of all knowledge. Rama Tirtha, have the Vedantic truth of the divine nature of the self.

The eternal years of God are hers. In spite of such an emphasis on the spirit of VedSntic religion. Rama never despises any of the various religious practices. He emphasises his Vedantic principles of self-God identity, ego-transcendence, virtue of renunciation, etc. Religion oneness of the self with God. Religion, thus understood as a spiritual self-seeking, holds SwamI Rama Tirtha, is never opposed to either philosophy or science. Rama Tirtha has made a very valuable contribution to the recent efforts of thinkers to bring about a reconciliation between them.

But for the most part, its treatments have been superficial and dogmatic, in some cases even pretentious. Referring to one of them, which looks upon religion as a mania, curable by medicine SwamI Rama writes: Would that prove that scientific acumen G. Just as no medicines can make ns scientists, so no chemical can give us the religious sense. Veddntic religion, conclusively, is a free and scientific experimental spirituality which goes so well not only with, but to the advantage of both philosophy and science. There being a progressive religious enlightenment, he holds, religious experiences are not false simply because they vary: Search for enlightening Wisdom and celestial Bliss might seem to be an independent private enterprise of an individual and the problems of common life might seem to have concentrated on such ideals of social character as may help in the attainment of common Good.

Truly speaking, the problem of prac- tical values of life cannot, except most arbitrarily, be cut off from the problem of ultimate and final values of life as a whole ; it seems rather extremely uncritical and superstitious to split up human life into practical and otherwise. Accordingly, values, immediate as well as remote, social as well as extra-social, mundane and supra- mundane, have to be studied and evolved out comprehensively.

Superficially speaking, SwamT R3ma Tlrtha seems to have little or no regard for the common moral conventions while advoca- ting a transcendentalism of religious perfection. Spirit or God to him is the only worthwhile Value in life and all that is mundane is discarded to be worthless, contemptible and foolish. It is true that out of an advaitic enthusiasm he has regarded the world as illusory and hence all worldly concerns to be valueless, but it is equally true that his advaitism suffers from no privations and hence his constructive approach to the problems of life.

Struggle and strife in the world, disharmony and discord of our relations, sufferings and miseries of our existence, fear and frustrations, sin and evil, and all that is so ugly and unpleasant in life cannot be annihil- ated by merely shutting our eyes towards them. Even social and scriptural authority is recognised only by an implied choice of oar own acceptance thereof and hence proves our freedom firom and superiority to them. It is between conformity to the small and seeming and conformity to the Universal and Real. He who sacrifices the former at the altar of the latter wins.

The former is the fruit- ful source of sins. The latter is Virtue and it should be observed so long as the Universal and the Real has not become one with our being — a part and parcel of our life. Then and not until then there is no conformity. Codes and conventions are only the formals of morality of which purity of the heart and character are the essentials.

The former undergo change and alterations with age and place and cir- cumstance and serve as means for the latter, A vigorous and vital ethics, therefore, must be adaptive enough to liberalise its forms to suit the changing conditions of society and time. Swami Rama Tirtha is one of the greatest saint-philosopher, India has produced. We are proud of him. We should cherish his memory and try to live his Vedanta A God-intoxicated soul, Swami Rama Tirtha realized the presence of God every where and in all mankind He moved with God and lived with God Another personality, in many ways far more attractive than that of Swami Vivekanand, carried the same movement of new Vedanta Those who came in his contact in this short duration cherished his memory for a long time.

In the audience were also Buddhists and Theosophists from Australia who listened to him with rapt attention and with him on the same platform spoke Mr. Kanzo Uchimura, the Carlyle of Japan Its wonderful flow attracted a great attention of the people The Russian Ambassador in Japan, having seen the reports of his lecture in the papers, was attracted towards Swami Rama Tirtha with whom he wanted an interview, but by that time Swami Rama had left for U. Professor Takakutsu of the Tokyo Imperial University says: In him Vedanta and Buddhism meet. He is true religion. He is a true poet and philosopher.

Attracted by the glow of Rama, an American gentleman approached him as to know about his destination and his belongings etc. Hillar became an ardent admirer of Rama.