LETTERS FROM ABROAD
I remember, when I was young, how a blind old beggar used to come to our door every morning led by a boy. It was a tragic sight. The blindness of the old man robbed the boy of his freedom. The boy looked so wistful and eager for release. Our incapacity is a fetter with which we tie others to our limitations. Consciousness of this every day adds to my feeling of weariness. But this depression of spirit is likely to do me a service. It has led me to the brink of a discovery that a great measure of one’s impotence is maya.
Latterly I have constantly been giving myself a shaking, trying to rouse myself from this stupor of self-delusion. During the greater part of my life my mind has been made accustomed to travel ‘the inner path of dreams, till it has lost all confidence in its power to thread its way through the zigzags of the outer world. In fact, its attention has never been trained to accept the miscellaneous responsibilities of the clamorous surface life of society. Therefore the West is not my world.
And yet I have received the gift of love from the West, and my heart acknowledges its claims to my service and I must unreservedly offer myself to her before I die, I do not belong to the present age, the age of conflicting politics. Nevertheless I cannot repudiate the age which has given me birth. I suffer and struggle, I crave for freedom and yet am held back. I must share the life of the present day world, though I do not
