SOLDIER-MYSTIC

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23945, 21 October 1939, Page 4

SOLDIER-MYSTIC

THE MIND AND THE SPIRIT The Sum of Things,” By Sir Francis Younghusband (Murray), lls 6d. “ Indian Philosophy and Modern Culture.” By Paul BrUnton (Rider). 5s 6d. Sir Francis Younghusband hasi long been an inspiration to many who feel within themselves the longing to find the right attitude to religion, and the religious attitude toward life, for he is that unusual combination, the sdldiermystic. No one can deny that he is fully a man, and with his example the most' virile of men can without false shame take an interest in a subject which not very long ago many people thought it bad form even to discuss. Readers of Sir,Francis’s earlier works will not find in this little volume anything startlingly new. The matter is not meant to be new. It is the attack which is new, for this is an attempt by a man nearing the end of earthly life to draw his experiences together and to give us the sum of his philosophy That philosophy is of the Unity of the universe, and the author, as one of the greatest moves in our day toward appreciation of the onepointedness of all religions, is going one step further in advocating realisation of a God both immanent and transcendent, as the pre-requisite of true happiness. He considers happiness as the goal of humanity, though it must be clearly grasped that he means by happiness something quite apart from sense-gratification. And having himself experienced the exquisite happiness of the mystical experience, he wishes those who have not done so to know that that is something before which all mere worldly gratifications pale like the candle before the sun. He cannot explain what he has known. The experience is rv yond the intellect and beyond words. He can only assure us that it is so, and express the hope that we will make an effort to realise it also. He says that this happiness is beyond love, but it must surely be in some sense one with love, for the “love of Christ which passeth all understanding” is the love of the enlightened for all things since all things are part of God. And since the happiness comes from a penetration of the nature of the absolute, that is, from a realisation of the unity, the Hindu “ Tat tvam asi,” the two emotions, the happiness and the love, seem to be in some sense inseparable. Only one looks inward to the sell, the other out to al l the world.

. Sir Francis has, of course, been greatly influenced by his researches into philosophies native to the East He is a Christian, but he has fortified and revivified his Christianity by draughts from Oriental cups. For those who wish to know something of Indian philosophy without making a complete study of the many branches of that very diversified subject, Mr Brunton in “Indian Philosophy and Modern Culture," has written a really excellent little monograph. He begins with a reminder that many of the most modern advances in Western thought in philosophy and psychology can be duplicated in the Sacred Books of India, though usually in a much cruder form He then proceeds to compare Indian and Western thought. This he is eminently qualified to do He divides his book into two parts, “ Indian Monism and Western Thought" and "Indian Idealist Metaphysics.” The value of the book is not only that it shows how very close a correlation actually exists and how comparatively little mental effort is needed to appreciate Indian philosophical thought, but also because_ he is very careful to clear the subiect from the many misconceptions that exist There is only one criticism that springs to the mind In speaking of Kant, the author says_ that he was at pains to show that owing to the limits imposed on us by our cognitive mechanism we cannot apprehend reality through the senses But it might be argued with more force that what Kant did was to show not that our cognitive mechanism hides reality, but merely that, it causes us to apprehend reality in a certain limited fashion Apprehension without sense organs is a priori, impossible, The organs condition the apprehension but, unless they are actually defective, they do not destroy* the reality of the things apprehended We may not see the whole reality, but for all that what we see is real In other words the bounds of the sense organs are the necessary conditions for our apprehending at all The mystic may develop more delicate and more perfect organs, but even he has no guarantee that what he perceives is in anv wav final PH W N The irlces marked against Docks reviewed In these columns are those at which they are retailed in New Zealand