'It is selfishness that we must seek to eliminate. I find that whenever I have made a
mistake in my life, it has always been because self entered into the calculation. Where
self has not been involved, my judgement has gone straight to the mark.'
'You are quite wrong,' he said again, 'when you think that fighting is the sign of
growth. It is not so at all. Absorption is the sign. Hinduism is the very genius of
absorption. We have never cared for fighting. Of course, we struck a blow now and
then in defence of our homes. That was right. But we never cared for fighting for its
own sake. Everyone had to learn that. So let these races of new-comers whirl on! They
all will be taken into Hinduism in the end.'
In another mood, the theme of his conversation would be Kali, and the worship of the
Terrible. Then he would say: 'I love terror for its own sake, despair for its own sake,
misery for its own sake. Fight always. Fight and fight on, though always in defeat.
That's the ideal! That's the ideal!' Again: 'Worship the Terrible! Worship Death! All
else is vain. All struggle is vain. This is the last lesson. Yet this is not the coward's love
of death, not the love of the weak or the suicide. It is the welcome of the strong man,
who has sounded everything to the depths and knows that there is no alternative.' And
who is Kali, whose will is irresistible? 'The totality of all souls, not the human alone, is
the Personal God. The will of the totality nothing can resist. It is what we know as
Law. And this is what we mean by Siva and Kali and so on.'
Concerning true greatness: 'As I grow older I find that I look more and more for
greatness in little things. I want to know what a great man eats and wears, and how he
speaks to his servants. I want to find a Sir Philip Sidney greatness. Few men would
remember to think of others in the moment of death.
'But anyone will be great in a great position! Even the coward will grow brave in the
glow of the footlights. The world looks on. Whose heart will not throb? Whose pulse
will not quicken, till he can do his best? More and more the true greatness seems to me
that of the worm, doing its duty silently, steadily, from moment to moment and hour to
hour.'
Regarding the points of difference between his own schemes for the regeneration of
India and those preached by others: 'I disagree with those who are for giving their
superstitions back to my people. Like the Egyptologist's interest in Egypt, it is easy to
feel an interest in India that is purely selfish. One may desire to see again the India of
one's books, one's studies, one's dreams. My hope is to see the strong points of that
India, reinforced by the strong points of this age, only in a natural way. The new state
of things must be a growth from within. So I preach only the Upanishads. If you look
you will find that I have never quoted anything but the Upanishads. And of the
Upanishads, it is only that one idea — strength. The quintessence of the Vedas and
Vedanta and all, lies in that one word. Buddha's teaching was of non-resistance or non-
injury. But I think ours is a better way of teaching the same thing. For behind that non-
injury lay a dreadful weakness — the weakness that conceives the idea of resistance.
But I do not think of punishing or escaping from a drop of sea-spray. It is nothing to
me. Yet to the mosquito it would be serious. Now, I will make all injury like that.