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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2024
Vedic tradition envisages the voyage of the individual after death as a passing on from one plane of being to another; and though there is the possibility of perpetuity on any given plane until the End of Time, when all Determinations are resolved, there is no conception of the possibility of a return to any past state. The later doctrine of reincarnation, in which the possibility of a return to a previous condition is conceived, seems to reflect an edifying tendency of the religious and psychological extensions, perhaps incorporating popular, non-Vedic elements.
The voyage has its end on the Farther Shore of the Sea of Life. When land is made there, the contingent Self knows itself as the Supreme Self, absolute space in the heart is known as the absolute space body of Being and Non-Being, and the Sea of Life is counter-seen by the Self as the multiplicity of its own identity. Voyaging, we are given intimations of that Paradise in Union consummating Thought, in Ecstasy consummating Will, and in the Consent of Art; knowledge, love, and work becoming Pure Act. There is in fact an ever present possibility of Immediate Enfranchisement by return to the Centre of our Being, to the Eternal Now, one and the same wherever and whenever we may be, in Heaven or on Earth. But as we are speaking in terms of Time, the possibility of severing in this way at one stroke all the knots of the heart remains only virtual. What we foresee is an Enfranchisement reached by a process of ripening and preparation; our ado is not with the Comprehensor, but the Wayfarer.
1 The John Company attitude to the East is past. The partitions are going, and Europe and Asia pour into one another. The new world-form is a matter for fear, and for hope. Two Internationals are engaged, Communism and the Catholic Church. The names suggest their difference.
Communism may extend, it cannot deepen human life. Modern science has diminished Space, it cannot break through the framework of time into eternity. Materialism unites by aggregation and repetition; monotony is the price of its unity.
Freshness is our closest sense of the eternal, and Catholicism unites by the intercourse of values. It can displace the fear of the simplification which is the goal of mechanical technique, superficially so complex, with the hope of a synthesis preserving and developing the variety it finds. It is not committed to the tight little Europe of the Middle Ages. In everything noble it can see the movement of grace; its missionary spirit is not sectarian; it does not recoil before the prospect of a World State, still less of Eurasia. Thc world-view and action of the present Pope make the old accusation of ‘Vaticanism’ singularly inapt.
‘Not that Asia can have importance for Europe as a model—in hybrid styles, authentic forms are merely caricatured, whereas a genuine assimilation of new cultural ideas should and can only result in a development formally altogether different from that of the original mode. What Asia signifies for Europe is means to the enlargement of experience, means to culture in the highest sense of the word, that is to an impartial knowledge of style; and this implies a better understanding of the nature of man, a prerequisite condition of co-operation.’ These are words from Mr. A. K. Coomaraswamy’s Introduction to the Art of Eastern Asia, which discovers an affinity between the Christian art of Europe and the art of Asia, and even considers the principles enunciated in the aesthetics of M. Jacques Maritain and Mr. Eric Gill as adequate introductions to its subject. The author prefers com!plements to alternatives.
May the following brief article be taken in this spirit. It offers a theological contact between the West and the East. It is easy to notice the difference of mode—the unacceptable proposition; but better to discern the correspondence.
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