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Post by Nitaidas on Sept 20, 2007 21:26:41 GMT -6
Here is the first article he wrote when Premananda arrived in the USA. This came out one month after his arrival in October of 1902. This is from the New York Herald, Nov. 23, 1902.
A ``holy man" from India has come to America to make converts to his faith, which is ``love for all men." Baba Bharati is his name. he is a typical high caste Hindoo---a Lama, who mastered English and became editor of a leading journal in Lahore. That was years ago, when Kipling, on a rival newspaper, was comming into notice with poems and short stories. This city of Lahore is where ``Kim" the hero of Kipling's greatest story, joined the Lama of Thibet [sic] and wandered over Hindostan in search of a certain holy river.
Kipling and Baba Bharati, the Hindoo editor, were newspaper acquaintences, and some say Baba is the original of Kipling's holy man in ``Kim" for this reason: Baba was a man of influence and a successful editor when he suddenly resigned his editorship and joined the ecstatic followers of Krishna, a Hindoo diety, became an ascetic and retired to the wilderness, where he remained in holy meditation and study for twelve years. He was then directed to do missionary work in the Western world, and he sailed for America.
As Baba speaks and writes English with skill and fluency, he has great advantages over many Hindoos visiting this country. His personality is pleasing, fascinating and picturesque. He is a handsome man, tall, statuesque, dignified, with dark, sparkling eyes. When they kindle the man seems on fire with holy enthusiasm. His religion, he says, is summed up in the word "love." He has anger for no man, no matter how great the provocation. Every act is preceded by asking a blessing. Every letter or manuscript begins with a little prayer written at the top of the page.
By special arrangement this extraordinary man writes the story of his life and faith for The Sunday News.
Written for {\it The News} by Baba Bharati.
From journalism to asceticism is almost an impossible leap. It is like jumping from pole to pole. Journalism means putting the whole world into your mind; asceticism means thrusting the whole world out of it. Journalism involves a minute study of men and manners; asceticism teaches how best to wipe out all their impressions. It is to dive beneath the surface of things to know their real causes and meanings and the only way to dive is to forget the surface.
But a Vaishnava ascetic need not blot the world from his mind and necessarily repair to the jungle to perform his devotions. He finds Krishna, his Diety, present everywhere and lives in the light of his love. To him, without Krishna, the most densely peopled city is a wilderness, and a bleak, wild stretch of waste a peopled New York.
How I became an ascetic from being a journalist may be worth telling. I was born in January 1858---the period when the ever memorable Indian mutiny was in its full, furious swing---of a ``Koolen" Brahmin family, that is, ``Brahmins of the first order."
The family was intellectual and wealthy and for many generations had produced some great men---men of conspicuous individuality, ministers and leaders of society in the past. My father's younger brother, the late Hon. Onoocool Chunder Mockerjee, was a brilliant judge of the Calcutta High Court, the highest civil appointment below the Viceroy.
Yet Mr. Kipling has done great work for India. What he has written no other European is able to present to the Western public with such clearness of expression and vividness of detail. Such wide mental grasp is only possible to a genius---which Kipling undoubtedly is. Both the West and the East ought to be grateful to him---the West especially, for no similar work has awakened such interest in men and things Hindoo in the Western mind as ``Kim."
That interest has produced a thirst for more knowledge of India, which, I hope, will sooner or later be satisfied. When that time comes the West will be perhaps rudely awakened from its pleasant dream that its civilization, born only yesterday, is all-powerful and is Westernizing the unprogressive Hindoo.
These European dreamers will awaken to find that all their so-called civilization of the Hindoo is but as a layer of moss upon rock. In the final test the moss will vanish, leaving the granite unchanged, eternal. The Hindoo and his spirituality are the same today as thousands of years ago. They have outlived Egyptians, Greeks and Romans---their systems, governments and religions. The Hindoos alone remain imperishable. The only hope for these so-called modern civilizations is in adopting the spirituality of the Hindoo. His vast, all-pervading spiritual power is realized by all---by English and American alike.
The magnitude of this intense belief and the vitalizing life of the Hindoo religion is a concrete reality, felt by every European when he first sets foot on Indian soil. The very atmosphere is impregenated with vitalizing currents of spirituality, for it is the only real lasting thing in the world. Your civilization, tall buildings, machinery and systems of government are but for a day---tommorrow they vanish! The spiritual remains forever. It is this unseen power that sways mankind and the universe.
With these explanations I will relate how I began my search for this religion of love and life everlasting.
I went from the {\it Tribune}, in Lahore, to edit the {\it Punjab Times}, and Mr. Kipling, I believe, left the {\it Lahore Gazette} for the {\it Pioneer}. Soon after I went down to Calcutta, having finished my practical training, and started my own paper, the {\it Gup and Gossip}, the first society paper in India.
I was now very happy with my material prospects and surroundings, and my paper having become popular among both Anglo-Indians and Indians, I had some fame and name for myself, too.
But just at this time my religious instinct began to assert itself, and very soon it overcame my passion for journalism. I was witnessing a performance of ``Chaitanya Lila" at the Star Theater. `Chaitanya' was an incarnation of Krishna, the form manifestation of the Hindoo's absolute deity.
He was born a little more than 400 years ago, in Bengal, at Nuddia on the Ganges, about 100 miles above Calcutta. He preached Krishna, the seed and the soul of the purest love, and of the universe. and while preaching he would burst forth into song in praise of Krishna, his Master, Friend, Father, and Lover.
Thus singing, he would be filled with ecstasy and in the fulness of joy within him perform the most graceful dance the world has ever seen, his arms and whole-body waving and quivering with the heaving billows, as it were, within his heart. He was like an ocean of divine love and streams of water from many fountains would flow from his eyes in the shape of tears. And in those tears, streaming straight from his eyes to the ground, all those who sang and danced around him in ecstatic motion would be liberally bathed.
This indescribable, wondrous scene made a profound impression on me. I had at last found my religion of love so hazily understood in boyhood, and I was resolved to give my life to it. With this awakening all attraction for things material left me, and in the depth of my heart flowed a stream of nectar which every moment thrilled through my being.
``Krishna, my beloved!" I exclaimed within myself. "I am thine forever. Thou art the mystery of love, the universe is its expression, and Chaitanya their most merciful explanation. Merciful, O, Lord, because thou art thy Chaitanya thyself, thou camest again as thy own devotee to teach us the way to thee."
It is impossible to describe the fretting and worry of my soul during the few years which I had to remain in the world before preparing myself for the new life. At last the promised day came and I renounced the world and its vanities at the age of 32.
I then went to my Gooroo, Srimad Brahmananda Bharati, and fell prostrate at his feet. he said: ``Rise, my child, and be happy for aye, for thou are liberated from all pain, and henceforth art wedded to eternal love. Thou art of Krishna, and Krishna is Love."
He took me to his Gooroo, the great Jogee of Baradi, the perfect jogee, whom I saw for the first time. He was about seven feet tall in height, of golden color, with long matted locks and the most handsome intellectual face. His two eyes shone with a piercing yet tranquil light, in which he read you like an open book. He told me my inmost thoughts and gave me his blessing. He was then 160 years of age. A few days after I left him he gave up his body, sitting on his haunches and telling people the exact hour he would go. He expired exactly at that time, without suffering from any disease or pain.
I then proceeded to the holy land of Brindaban, about a thousand miles from there, on foot. It took me about two months to reach my destination, but it did not matter, for I was blessed---blessed every step on the way. I saw Krishna in dreams, while awake and footing my way along, singing and dancing in his praise. He beckoned me, his most perfectly beautiful form dissolving, as it were, with his entrancing smile, his newest rain cloud complexion illuminating the blue sky of Hindoostan with the effulgence of his halo.
On the journey I had to pass through jungles, in which I met many saints, hermits and jogees of the highest order, who possessed miraculous powers, some of which I had the good fortune to witness.
Oh, the days and delights of that march to the Land of the Lord! What would I not give to enjoy them again! I was in ecstasy! ecstasy! I lay on bare, hard ground in those forests with my head pillowed upon the roots of trees, and slept as never Emperor or millionaire slept---slept like a baby, rising with the rosy morn, my spirit fresh and soaring as a lark, singing hymms to my Lord.
It is now twelve years since that day of Krishna and Chaitanya for ten years I was a thousand times happier than on the happiest days I ever knew while I was in the world with the world.
After preaching and singing the praises of Krishna and Chaitanya for ten years I retired to live for good in Radhakund in the forest of Brindaban in a cot with the meek hermits, on the edge of the Lake of Radha, the lake blessed by Radha with the virtue of imparting divine love to those bathing in it.
It would seem that in India, as elsewhere in the distant corners of the world, man is most powerfully swayed by the things unseen and unknown. Hence the vast following of Krishna and Buddha. It would also seem that in religion, as in music, once in centuries a master appears touching chords that sweep from the soul to Infinitude.
Holy men living in the Indian wilderness take no thought of the future. It is like going to the Adirondacks leaving all your baggage behind. The holy men have stations at various points and routes of travel by which they journey from jungle to jungle. As in ``Kim," the holy man has neither money nor arms---only his begging bowl and rosary; and his only food is that given him as alms. He joins other pilgrims and they pass their days and nights in huts or the open air.
On the slopes of the greater Himalayas, in caves and stone huts, are to be met saints and adepts of Hindoo mystic teachings---as also in Brindaban, a region about the area of the state of Maryland, which for centuaries has been the abode of holy men.
I spent my twelve years now in the wilderness of the Himalayas, now on the plains and again in the forest of Brindaban, in Muttra, near Agra, the city of Taj Mahal, and I was in the jungles off and on for seven years. In Bangal I saw a jogee sitting before a fire. I told him I was hungry and had no food. He shut his eyes for a moment and lo! an immense roast of root-fruits a foot long appeared. They were baked and the jogee told me to eat. The repast was delicious beyond expression, a kind of life-sustaining sweet potato and confectionery combined.
You should bear in mind that the holy men have no money, and they never worry over future possibilities. Their minds are lost in the deep rapture of spiritual things. Even in the wildest forest I had no fear.
But one day, to test my faith, I penetrated a thick jungle until far from any human abode, when I became faint with hunger and fell into a doze. I had not slept more than five minutes when a voice called me.
Opening my eyes I behold a man and his wife standing before me with a large brass dish heaped with food, cakes, brown sugar, vegetable currie and a pot of water.
As I was eating in thanksgiving to the Lord, the man said: ``Holy one, I saw you from a distance and was sure you were hungry. I went two miles to my house, and my wife prepared the meal, which we have brought, but I must ask pardon for the delay, as the distance is considerable and it took time to cook the food."
Again giving thanks, I resumed my journey, but had not gone far when the thought came to me like a thunderclap that human beings did not live in that jungle, and that the man and his wife must have been spirits from heaven. Besides, he spoke of going two miles to prepare the meal, and I knew that I had slept but five minutes.
In great agitation I retraced my steps to where I had eaten and could nowhere find man or woman. He said his house was in the neighbohood. I tranversed the jungle for miles in all directions and found no sign of habitation or even human footprints. Then I knew that the Lord had been with me and fed me. From that hour I was reassured that I would be provided for at all times.
When night came I slept under trees or in a hut, if I chanced to find one. Every hour filled my soul with the joy of spiritual thoughts. My Gooroo had given me mystic words and I repeated them continually. They opened my mind to the wonders of the spiritual world, and truth was revealed to me. In happy dreams I saw Krishna smiling and comforting me. Sometimes, while walking the jungle roads, I saw Krishna in mid-air, playing on his entrancing flute to cheer me on my way.
Up in the Himalayas among the highest mountains in the vastness of that awful solitude I saw holy men among the very clouds sitting in attitudes of devotion. They welcomed me and gave me food and shelter.
One day while walking alone I heard the roar of a tiger. Although I did not at that time care for my life, I soon grew afraid, for the tiger was almost within springing distance and coming toward me like a whirlwind. I ran, but soon stopped, realizing how ridiculous it was to fear even wild beasts when my Lord was with me.
The instant I stopped I saw a very holy man appear. He seemed to come out of the ground. He had long matted locks and wore a strip of cloth around his waist. He smiled and beckoned me toward him and said no beast would harm me in the sacred mountains---the land of the holy ones. Even tigers, he said, were subject to their rule and would harm no good man.
Continuing, he asked whither I was going. I told him. Then he said ``Turn back and proceed to the forest of Brindaban---that is your place. I returned as he directed, for it was Krishna who had come in the guise of a holy man.
In Radhakund, in the forest of Brindaban, I lived in a hut with many other hermits. They were the holiest men I have ever seen. They live a gentle, austere, simple life; rise at 4 o'clock in the morning and perform their ablutions in a sacred lake there, then they sit at their devotions, repeating mystic words, symbolical of the Lord's love; chanting sacred hymns and reading the Scriptures, followed by songs of joy and worship.
Then they dance.
In the ecstacy of their movements, so full of grace and beauty, they see visions of Krishna performing and reperforming his sacred acts of 5,000 years ago. Meanwhile the holy men keep on dancing and counting their beads. They fast by day. At night they go to the houses and camps of the neighborhood and beg a little bread, which, with water, is all the food they have during the twenty-four hours.
After eating a morsel of food they again sing and dance and listen to scriptural readings until 2 o'clock in the morning.
Then they sleep---but for only 2 hours. And this is all the sleep they get during an entire day and night, which, with the little bread and water, supports life, because the holy men are strengthened by spiritual thoughts.
They really perform much physical labor. The dancing alone would soon exhaust an ordinary man, despite his full meals and long hours of sleep. With holy men it is different. They feed on spiritual thoughts and are in such a state of pure happiness and exaltation that there is perfect digestion. Hence, the process of nutrition is carried on to perfection. There is no waste or shrinkage of tissue, as with men thinking of wealth and earthly possessions, feeding their stomachs with grass food followed by imperfect assimilation and torpidity of mind.
These hermits are the meekest people in the world. They are the real Christians of the type known in the days of the Savior. If you abuse or wound them, no matter how painfully, to the last they bless you, not in a spirit of religious fanaticism, but out of the depths of their hearts. And while you persecute them they pray God to put love into your heart. They have no property, except the scanty garments on their back, a drinking bowl which costs but a farthing and their rosary.
With these simple belongings they make vast journeys over India, winning the respect and love of all fair-minded men. It was with these holy ones that I spent my days in meditation and study of the spiritual life during twelve years of apprenticeship to a study of the faith. I am yet only one of their most unworthy servants.
If Christian bigotry or atheistic scepticism dare to call Krishna a myth, the Hindoo can answer by calling Christ a myth, too.
How can the data, he would naturally argue, of European history---or Hebrew, or Egyptian, or Roman, for that matter---be proved more reliable than those of the Hindoos, who for thousands of years kept their sacred scriptures and histories in perfect preservation all over the land?
This Krishna is the deity he worships every day before he begins any temporal duty or even breaks his fast. He offers every morning and evening fragrant flowers and the sacred leaves of the tulsi plant, smeared with sandalwood paste, to the ``lotus feet" of the image, accompanied by certain formulas of words and ceremonies, as injoined in his holy scriptures.
This form of worship of Sri Krishna is universally the same in Hindoo India---the image is symbolical and its worship is essentially mental, the outward forms being only adopted in order to impress the ignorant massess who cannot grasp the abstract idea of the supreme deity.
The Western mind ought to appreciate the necessity of such outward formulas and ceremonies. if not by looks at the forms and ceremonies of its own church in order to impress upon the average Christian mind the sacredness of functions inside the house of God. As to the objection to image worship, the Catholics have it, and it will not hold much water with Protestants either, so long as they raise statues of heroes and offer homage to them some way or other. That is image worship, whether you bare or nod your head to a statue or worship it with flowers.
Appreciation of worth is homage or worship in the least pronounced sense and you cannot prevent the growth of this virtue in a cultivated mind, Oriental or Occidental. The Krishna worshiping Hindoo does nothing but this---only his glowing imagination and keenly appreciative and grateful heart does it in a form which strikes as somewhat elaborate and unnecessary one whose cold imagination has no chance of improvement so long as it is fed by an education whose sheet anchor is sheer self-conceit.
By this worship he only appreciates the worth of Krishna, who was born in human form and flourished 5,000 years ago---Krishna, who from his birth to his ``ascension to heaven" was the ideal of ideal heroes of all mankind, was absolutely perfect in every virtue which he possessed or humanity can ever hope to possess.
The annals of Krishna's life and exploits have been handed down through the corridors of time by the ancient sages, who saw him and his deeds with their own eyes, in hundreds of different books agreeing with one another in every essential detail of the ``Lila," manuscript copies of which will be found preserved in every Hindoo family throughout India.
What I think will strike the Western students of these scriptures of the Vaishnavas---as worshipers of Krishna are called---are the startling similarities of the ethical and moral teachings of both Krishna and Christ on main points.
My chief object in writing this article is to ask the educated men of this country to study these ``heathen" books, not only for their own benefit, but also for the benefit of the ignorant masses, from whose minds should be driven out once and for all the notion instilled therein by the bigoted Christian missionaries that the Hindoos are hopeless idolators, who revel in thick ignorance of matters spiritual.
They need also to be told that they should not judge a foreigner prejudicially becaue he belongs to a different form of religion than that prevalent in this country; that if it be that he who lives and acts like a Christian is a truer follower of Christ than one who only belongs to the Christian Church, but does not care to act up to Christian principles, the average Hindoo is more a Christian than a heathen; that, therefore, to send missionaries to India to spread the light of Christianity among the Hindoos is like carry coals to Newcastle; and, finally, that to baptize with Jordan water and kneel down and pray before a wooden cross is equivalent to worshiping the image of Krishna with incantations, flowers and Ganges water as the Vaishnava does every day.
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Post by madanmohandas on Sept 21, 2007 13:11:18 GMT -6
I think when they say things like that they are just setting the record straight. The audience for that article would no doubt have had misconstrued ideas concerning the religion of the Hindoo. People at that time would have probably thought that Hidoos were idolatrous heathens and worse.
I see Thakura Bhaktivinoda in a somewhat different light. He explicitly states the superior realisation of the Vedas above all other texts. If you want I can find plenty of quotes to that effect from his Tattva Viveka, Jaiva Dharma, Caitanya Siksamrta etc. Whatever he might have said in his Svalikhita Jivani', which was a private document, as you well know, cannot be taken as more than anecdotal.
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Post by subaldas on Sept 21, 2007 15:15:19 GMT -6
Bhaktivinode who lived at the same time, calculated the battle of Kurukshetra to be 1917 BCE and said, "The future swanlike scholars can determine the correct figures after further research." Sri Krishna-samhita (p 28), showing his openness to scholarly dating of such events.
“It is imperative that the people of a specific country give proper respect to their native saints, but no one, although they may hold a particular belief for their spiritual progress should go to other places and preach that what their teachers have taught is superior to all other teachings. This gives no benefit at all to the world…Each country has its particular religious rules concerning proper dress, food, purity and impurity…it is only natural that the various religions will appear quite different. However, it is improper and detrimental to argue over these differences…Pure love is the eternal function of the soul. Although the above mentioned five differences may exist amongst the many religions, the only real religion is pure love.” Sri Chaitanya-sikshamrita (pp 8-10)
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Post by kingcobra on Sept 21, 2007 15:27:08 GMT -6
He does take the reader on an interesting adventure through the jungles and mountain passes, but there are we to believe that his param guru actually lived to be 160? He may have been seven feet tall, but even that claim is probably hyperbole.
Bhaktivinode was extremely liberal and progressive, but not all CV adherents are necessarily that liberal and progressive, even today. Hopefully that is changing. The Westernization of Indian society is having an impact, which may not be entirely positive, but at least should give liberalization some impetus.
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Post by kingcobra on Sept 22, 2007 11:16:45 GMT -6
Yet, as Dawkins points out, American society today accords all sorts of respect to religion, even if there are obvious faults. Representatives of various religious faiths are always demanding concessions based on their constitutional right of religious freedom. The problem is not that they simply want to worship as they see fit without interference. It is that they demand things like having the ten commandments carved in stone in a courthouse. They demand prayer in public schools. They think that the fitness of a candidate for public office should be based on that candidate's piety (and they, of course, are going to be the arbiters of how someone measures up - i.e. belonging to the religious sect or sects that they see as valid). In short, they (at least the extremists among them) want to undermine the separation of church and state by having some sort of theocracy. They falsely believe that the founding fathers had something like that in mind when framing the US constitution. The fact is that those learned statesmen did not want a state church like the one that there was in England at the time.
Case in point: Polygamous Mormon fundamentalist sects are allowed to exist, even though polygamy is not legal in any of the 50 states. There is an unspoken hands off policy, as long as those sects are not breaking laws regarding transporting underage girls across state lines, and as long as multiple wives are not acquired by marrying them legally (a distinction in name only, since the practice of cohabiting and having children by multiple wives, and even marrying step daughters, is common in such communities). An obvious fault is that girls are typically pulled out of school as early as the 7th grade and coerced into marrying much older men. That fault is apparently largely overlooked by US authorities.
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Post by Nitaidas on Sept 22, 2007 14:28:04 GMT -6
Yes, Premananda took a very militant stance when he was here. He really didn't like Christian missionaries going to India. Hindus still don't like it. His militancy was in part a response to that and to the kind of reception he must have received from the Americans and British he came into contact with. I think he allowed himself to be defined by his opponents which is too bad. His opponents, it must be said, were shaken up by him, however. In response to him and some of the other Hindus who came to the USA during this period, a movement was started among Christian fanatics to close the borders to such people. And the sad thing is, the borders (that is immigration from non-Western countries) were closed from about 1915 (I think) to 1965. I don't know how Mahanamabrata managed to make it in 1933. He must have slipped under the radar somehow.
It is kind of sad, though. Everyone has to think they are the best or theirs is the best. No one is humble. Being humble is regarded as weakness. So we go about thumping our chests. Best evidence ever of primate heritage.
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Post by kingcobra on Sept 23, 2007 7:40:22 GMT -6
In addition to those points, I would like to point out that Premananda's background was that of (after retiring from his career as a journalist) a yogi who was also a Boishnab. Bharati is not a CV title.
It is not just CV adherents represented in the community in Braj. There are a number of yogis there as well. They may not be wearing tilak or Tulasi malas around their necks, but they are generally intimately familiar with CV theology. The bhakti movement was a pan-Indian movement, not just a Bengali one. Krsnadas Kaviraj wrote in Bengali, but Sanatana, Rupa and Jiva wrote in Sanskrit. Granted that was the language of medieval scholars, it also served the purpose of making their writings accessible to all learned Indians of their time.
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Post by Nitaidas on Oct 17, 2007 7:31:47 GMT -6
Here is another article of Premananda Bharati. This came out five years after the first one. It is actually an interview given on the eve of his departure for India. He didn't think he was coming back, but he did in 1910. That stay only lasted about a year. He had plans for an extended lecture tour around the country which seems to have been canceled, perhaps because of ill health. He returned to India in 1911 and passed away in 1914. Sorry for the mark up in the text. This article and the former one are going into the new edition of Sree Krishna: the Lord of Love.
\subsection{The White Peril: {\it New York Herald}, November 19, 1907}
\begin{verse}
Far east is east and west is west,\\ And never the twain shall meet.
\end{verse}
It is not improbable that Rudyard Kipling saw the gulf dividing the two civilizations in his early acquaintanceship with Baba Bharati when both were journalists in India. It is certain that Bharati saw it, for he came to the Occident avowedly to study the possibilities of bridging it. Now, after five years among us he has gone back to his own people, never, he says, to return. And with his perspective of time, old ideals of civilization and disinterestedness Baba Bharati, ``citizen of the universe," ascetic, philosopher and apostle of the purely spiritual life, sees war impending between east and west, a war, not of the west against the ``yellow peril," but of the east against what he calls the ``white peril" of aggressiveness and materialism.
``The Orient will rise and drive the white man forth. This will happen in a very few years. By 1915, I believe, this conflict will be well under way. This is my own prophecy, but I find that Lafcadio Hearn made virtually the same forecast some years ago. It is the `White Peril' from which we suffer in the Orient---Caucasian aggressiveness and soul killing civilization."
Such was Bharati's parting message to the western world.
Baba (Father) Bharati is not to be confounded with the type of picturesque Hindu charlatans who, with appropriate scenery and costumes, have come to America from time to time to wheedle dollars from silly women and men who wear thumb rings. His sponsors were men of like standing with Rev. Dr. R. Heber Newton, Prof. Charles R. Lanman, of Harvard, and Dr. Felix Adler, of the Ethical Culture society. He is a Brahmin of the first order. His father was a magistrate and his uncle a judge of the high court of Calcutta. Twenty years ago he was editor of the Lahore Tribune when Kipling was a newspaper writer there. Later he became the editor and proprietor of a society paper in Calcutta. Then his religious instincts asserted themselves, and for 12 years he became an ascetic, a hermit, living a life of austere simplicity in Brindaban, most holy of India's holy lands. While here he met the great Jogee of Barada, a giant in stature, and believed to be the most spiritual man in India. Under his teachings Baba Bharati came to believe that he had a message to carry to the Caucasian world. He did not wish to go, and for a time he struggled against what he deemed a command from on high. Then he went forth, and now he regards his work as well done. He is happy in the thought of return, yet has learned to love the American people and feels pangs of regret at leaving them forever.
\subsubsection{The Orient for Orientals}
Large of frame, with the prayer cloth of his ``Krishna," yellow and inscribed with wondrous words to the Hindu faith, wound around his turban, long raven black curls dropping down about his shoulders, with an eye as clear as Rhenish wine and a face of peculiarly benign mien, yet strongly chiseled, combining as it does a certain acquired western vigor with the placidity and calmness of the Orient---Baba Bharati is a striking figure. He has studied the Occident and its ways and declares that the aggression, the tremendous conceit and the blindness of the white race are going to bring about the uprising of all Asia---that Asia will be free at last from domination and oppression by foreign hands and that a new Monroe doctrine will be called into being and the Orient will be for the Orientals alone.
The western coast just now is aroused over the ``Hindu Peril," as it is called. Hundreds, even thousands, of Hindus are coming across the Pacific, and the western states and western Canada fear a very deluge. So great has been the feeling in some places that the white laborers have driven the dusky invaders out, as the Chinese were sent forth from certain western cities in early days. But Baba Bharati declares there is no such thing as the ``Hindu Peril." It is rather the ``Japanese Peril" on this side of the Pacific, or the ``White Peril" on the other side of the ocean.
``The Hindus that come to the American shore are really not Hindus in the common acceptance of the term; rather they are half Hindus, sikhs from upper India, with a different religion and different ideas," said Baba Bharati in an interview I had with him at the Hotel Stander just before the Minnesota sailed. He continued: ``There is no cause to fear an invasion, for only a few of the sikhs will come. And they are not an aggressive people. If they find they are not wanted they will not cross the Pacific. There is no cause for fear."
The Hindu philosopher and sage talked for an hour or more on this western world we know, his eastern world, religion, literature, modern conditions, his own life and experiences, his hopes, ambitions, and made predictions of such amazing nature regarding the future readjustment of relations across the Pacific as to startle any person who thinks on the shadows that portend coming events. In this interview he summed up a message he wished to convey in farewell to the America he is leaving.
\subsubsection{Spirituality Not For Sale}
``The New York Herald gave me and my mission most helpful publicity, and then followed my first success since leaving my own shores. I was to lecture. Thirty persons came to hear me, and when I had finished speaking they placed upon the table \$30 in money. I almost wept. Then I explained that a Hindu cannot take coin for sustenance he gives either to the body or the soul. One can travel all through my country without being able to buy cooked food and spirituality is not for barter and sale, either.
``This was merely the mistake of commercialized America. These New Yorkers thought, in their simple way, that money could pay for anything. Yet I found them warm hearted and altogether lovable, just as all other Americans are. When they can be halted for a few moments in their mad pursuit of gold they have admirable natures, I find.
``The trouble with America is that it is building on a material plane. It is making tremendous progress in all things material, but we of the Orient understand the spiritual. We live not for today, but for all time, and when you forget the soul, as you do, you are making a sad mistake. Your modern `Churchianity' is spoiling your Christianity. Your ministers of the gospel want more spirituality. They do not elevate themselves above the level of the visible, material world. Your much vaunted progress counts for naught.
``You look at life on the surface, we of the Orient look at it in its depth in the cool and quiet places, where there is no tubulence and no mad scramble. America is afflicted with national nervousness, as I call it. In certain directions you call it frenzied finance. I see it in every phase of life. I observe it where you do not suppose it exists.
``In India religion is the chief business of life. All else is subordinate. It is the true anchor of the Hindu. In the moring he arises, and after his bath he gives up two hours to spiritual thought and contemplation---at least two hours. The he looks after the needs of his body. All else is subordinate to this reverence for the Creator and those things which typify and represent Him.
\subsubsection{Christianity Sublime}
``Christianity, in its teachings, is sublime. I preach Christ as much as I do my Krishna, who represents to me the great incarnation of God. God is love, as Christ says, and that is all there is to any religion. The Bible, which I respect and love, is merely a page from the Vedas of India. They contain all its truths and more.
``But you can see only your own religion. I can see the good of all. When I became an ascetic in India I lost my nationality and became a citizen of the Universe. I love all people. When I was in London, even, I felt a deep heart interest in the Briton, even though he is oppressing my people.
``I did not come to America to thrust my religion upon you. I came to advance spirituality in whatever form I find it. Yet you send your missionaries to `covert' us. We cannot help but smile, when we are the very incarnation of religion ourselves. With your religion, which is constantly changing, altering with the currents of new thought, you seek to rejuvenate us, who are fastened inseparably to the great, deep truths of the universe, truths which know no mutation.
``We wonder how we ever got along without the helping hand of the New World missionaries.
``But the truth did come out not long ago, and now we know why your missionaries do come to visit us. Some one close to your richest declared that missionaries are the best trade getters. There again is your commercialism.
``The wine maker calls out: `I have the best wines!' The soap maker calls out: `My soap is the best!' The minister: `There is no religion like unto mine.' It is pitiful Christianity is reduced to commerciality."
\subsubsection{Concerning Mr. Rockefeller}
Curious to know what Baba Bharati would say of the richest man in America, I asked him for his opinion of the president of the Standard Oil company.
``It is envy more than anything else that makes the average American condemn Rockefeller." he answered. ``He thinks that Rockefeller has some of the millions that he should have."
``Please do not think that I am severe with Americans. I do not mean to be, but I cannot help observing how they contrast with us of the far east. The Americans will lead all the white race in spirituality in the time to come. I went to England and found the English too self-satisfied and smugly contented with themselves to receive my message.
But Americans yet are children from the spiritual viewpoint. Your minister who taught only spirituality would be boycotted.
``I know your literature and I love it. What is there finer in language than Irving? Mark Twain is the greatest living writter in the world. His `Following the Equator' is a wonderful book. Through his works, in his humor, there runs that thread of the spiritual that places him high among the great men of letters.
But to turn to another phase of modern conditions. You in your materialistic progress have given the Orient implements of destruction, while through all the ages we gave you naught but peace. These weapons of warfare the Oriental, impersonated by the Japanese, turned upon the Russian and the result was a war the like of which is unknown in history---not a single reverse for the men of Nippon. Those same Japanese, with reawakened China even greater than Japan and India at the back of both, are going to show the world a conflict that will make all others pale in comparison.
``America wants to exploit the whole world, but would shut out foreigners from her shores. Is it not likely that foreign nations will retaliate? And then what answer can America make?
``The Mikado is one of the greatest rulers any nation has produced in modern times. When, ten years before the war with Russia, Japan was deprived of the fruits of her victory over China by the European powers, the Mikado said nothing, but complied with apparently good grace. The he quietly prepared to punish Russia as the most hated of those powers.
``Future events will come about in this way. President Roosevelt will suggest to Japan that an exclusion treaty be signed preventing Japanese of the lower classes from entering America. This will not meet with favor on the other side of the Pacific, but a storm will arise here which will force through congress some sort of an exclusion measure.
``The Mikado will still hold his peace, but soon after he will frame a message to be sent to Washington, reading something like this:
```You have found it necessary for the protection of your working classes to exclude Japanese from your borders. After careful consideration we find that our country will be benefited by prohibiting the entry of American trade, and a decree is hereby promulgated.'
``What could America do but accede, at least for the time? Yet how could such a condition continue? The great conflict is coming, and while I hate to think of it, while I regret that peace cannot always prevail, still, the people of many countries will be benefited and those of my own India will be free.
``This seems a harsh prophecy to make upon leaving America for all time, but it is something neither you nor I can control. It is the inevitable" ---New York Herald.
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