Prabuddha Bharata or Awakened India

In fact it is the attainment of spirtual freedom—the transcendence of the narrow and egoistic impulses of life and the ascent of the human soul to the vision of the Universal—which is fundamental to Hindu religio-philosphical thought ; whereas an inordinate emphasis on reason and the powers of the intellect are the characteristic marks of the Western attitude to life. [...] Had it been so the Vedas and the Upanishads and other sacred Books of the East and the West that record the varied grades of the spiritual experiences of the seers of old would have been no better than mere myths and figments of a heated imagintion yielding no truths whatsoever and the greatest saints and mystics from whose quivering lips ecstatic utterances have leaped up in moments of their [...] "Those who have known the Vital Force of the vital force "868 PRABUDDHA BHARATA August the Eye of the eye the Ear of the ear and the Mind of the mind have realised the ancient primordial Brahman (Brih. [...] In the case of the ropsnake illusion the rope is the essence because it is abiding and the snake an unavoidable appearance; and because"374 PRABUDDHA BHARATA August the rope is the essence of the situation it is called real. [...] The positivist will no doubt argue that in relation to the actual the ideal appears as abstract and that the abstract cannot be the essence of the concrete.