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<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN="center" STYLE="font-weight: 700;line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"> 
<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><img src="     " width="1" height="1" border="0"><img src="     " width="1" height="1" border="0"> 
  Principle 
  </font><FONT FACE="Times New Roman,sans-serif" size="4">and 
  Personality</FONT><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></P><BR>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">IT is asked of us why do we preach a man and not purely
and solely a principle. Our ideal being avowedly the establishment
and reign of a new principle of world-order and not gathering
recruits for the camp of a sectarian teacher, it seems all the more
inconsistent, if not thoroughly ruinous for our cause, that we should
lay stress upon a particular individual and incur the danger of
overshadowing the universal truths upon which we seek to build human
society. Now, it is not that we are unconscious or oblivious of the
many evils attendant upon the system of preaching a man – the
history of the rise and decay of many sects and societies is there to
give us sufficient warning; and yet if we cannot entirely give the
go-by to personalities and stick to mere and bare principles, it is
because we have clear reasons for it, because we are not unconscious
or oblivious either of the evils that beset the system of preaching
the principle alone.</font></span></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">Religious bodies that are formed through the </font></span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">bhakti
</font></span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">and </font></span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">puja </font></span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">for one man, social reconstructions forced by the
will and power of a single individual, have already in the inception
this grain of incapacity and disease and death that they are not an
integrally self-conscious creation, they are not, as a whole,
intelligent and wide awake and therefore constantly responsive to the
truths and ideals and realities for which they exist, for which at
least, their founder intended them to exist. The light at the apex is
the only light and the entire structure is but the shadow of that
light; the whole thing has the aspect of a dark mass galvanised into
red-hot activity by the passing touch of a dynamo. Immediately
however the solitary light fails and the dynamo stops, there is
nothing but the original darkness and inertia – toma </font></span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">asit tamasa
gudham agre.</font></span></I></P>
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<FONT face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page – 46</span></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">Ma</font></span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">n, however great and puissant he may be, is a
perishable thing. People who gather or are gathered round a man and
ding to him through the tie of a personal relation must fall off and
scatter when the man passes away and the personal tie loses its hold.
What remains is a memory, a gradually fading memory. But memory is
hardly a creative force, it is a dead, at best, a moribund thing; the
real creative power is Presence'. So when the great man's presence,
the power that crystallises is gone, the whole edifice crumbles and
vanishes into air or remains a mere name.</font></span></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">Love and admiration for a </font></span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">mahapurusha </font></span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">is not
enough, even faith in his gospel is of little avail, nor can actual
participation, consecrated work and labour in his cause save the
situation; it is only when the principles, the bare realities for
which the </font></span><I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;">mahapurusha </span></FONT></I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">stands
are in the open forum and men have the full and free opportunity of
testing and assimilating them, it is only when individuals thus
become living embodiments of those principles and realities that we
do create a thing universal and permanent, as universal and permanent
as earthly things may be. Principles only can embrace and unify the
whole of humanity; a particular personality shall always create
division and limitation. By placing the man in front, we erect a wall
between the Principle and men at large. It is the principles, on the
contrary, that should be given the place of honour: our attempt
should be to keep back personalities and make as little use of them
as possible. Let the principles work and create in their freedom and
power, untrammelled by the limitations of any mere human vessel. 
</font></span></P>
			<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">We are quite familiar with this cry so rampant in our
democratic age – principles and no personalities! And although
we admit the justice of it, yet we cannot ignore the trenchant onesidedness which it involves. It is perhaps only a reaction, a
swing to the opposite extreme of a mentality given too much to
personalities, as the case generally has been in the past. It may be
necessary, as a corrective, but it belongs only to a temporary stage.
Since, however, we are after a universal iqeal, we must also have an
integral method. We shall have to curb many of our susceptibilities,
diminish many of our apprehensions and soberly strike a balance
between opposite extremes.</font></span></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page – 47</span></FONT></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">We do not speak like politicians or </font></span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">banias; </font></span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">but
the very truth of the matter demands such a policy or line of action.
It is very well to talk of principles and principles alone, but what
are principles unless they take life and form in a particular
individual? They are airy nothings, notions in the brain of logicians
and metaphysicians, fit subjects for discussion in the academy, but
they are devoid of that vital urge which makes them creative
agencies. We have long lines of philosophers, especially European,
who most scrupulously avoided all touch of personalities, whose
utmost care was to keep principles pure and unsullied; and the upshot
was that those principles remained principles only, barren and
infructuous, some thing like, in the strong and puissant phrase of
Baudelaire –</font></span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">La</font></span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman"> </font></span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">froide majeste de la femme sterile. </font></span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">And
on the contrary, we have had other. peoples, much addicted to
personalities – especially in Asia – who did not care so much for
abstract principles as for concrete embodiments; and what has been
the result here? None can say that they did not produce anything or
produced only still-born things. They produced living creatures
– ephemeral, some might say, but creatures that lived and moved and
had their days.</font></span></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">But, it may be asked, what is the necessity, what is the
purpose in making it all a one man show? Granting that principles
require personalities for their fructuation and vital functioning,
what remains to be envisaged is not one personality but a plural
personality, the people at large, as many individuals of the
human race as can be consciously imbued with those principles. When
principles are made part and parcel of, are concentrated in a single
solitary personality, they get &quot;cribbed and cabined,&quot; they
are vitiated by the idiosyncrasies of the man, they come to have a
narrower field of application; they are emptied of the general
verities they contain and finally cease to have any effect.</font></span></P>
			<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">The thing, however, is that what you call principles do
not drop from heaven in their virgin purity and all at once lay hold
of mankind </font></span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">en masse. </font></span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">It is always through a particular
individual that a great principle manifests itself. Principles do not
live in the general mind of man and even if they live, they live
secreted and unconscious; it is only a puissant personality, who has
lived the principle, that can bring it forward into life</font></span></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page – 48</span></FONT></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">and action, can awaken, like the Vedic Dawn, what was
dead in </font></span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">all – mritam kanchana bodhayanti. </font></span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">Men in general are
by themselves 'inert and indifferent; they have little leisure
or inclination to seek, from any inner urge of their own, for
principles and primal truths; they become conscious of these only
when expressed and embodied in some great and rare soul. An Avatar, a
Messiah or a Prophet is the centre, the focus through which a Truth
and Law first dawns and then radiates and spreads abroad. The little
lamps are all lighted by the sparks that the great torch scatters.</font></span></P>
			<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">And yet we yield to none in our demand for holding forth
the principles always and ever before the wide open gaze of all. The
principle is there to make people self-knowing and self-guiding; and
the man is also there to illustrate that principle, to serve as the
hope and prophecy of achievement. The living soul is there to touch
your soul, if you require the touch; and the principle is there by
which to test and testify. For, we do not ask anybody to be a mere
automaton, a blind devotee, a soul without individual choice and
initiative. On the contrary, we insist on each and every individual
to find his own soul and stand on his own Truth – this is the
fundamental principle we declare, the only creed – if creed it
be that we ask people to note and freely follow. We ask all people to
be fully self-dependent and self-illumined, for only thus can a real
and solid reconstruction of human nature and society be possible; we
do not wish that they should bow down ungrudgingly to anything, be it
a principle or a personality. In this respect we claim the very first
rank of iconoclasts and anarchists. And along with that, if we still
choose to remain an idol-lover and a hero-worshipper, it is because
we recognise that our mind, human as it is, being not a simple
equation but a complex paradox, the idol or the hero symbolises for
us and for those who so will, the very iconoclasm and anarchism-and
perhaps other more positive things as well – which we behold within
and seek to manifest.</font></span></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">The world is full of ikons and archons; we cannot escape
them, even if we try – the world itself being a great ikon and as
great an archon. Those who swear by principles, swear always by some
personality or other, if not by a living creature then by a lifeless
book, if not by Religion then by Science, if 
</font></span></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page – 49</span></FONT></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">not by the East then by the West, if not by Buddha or
Christ then by Bentham or Voltaire. Only they do it unwittingly –
they change one set of personalities for another and believe they
have rejected them all. The veils of Maya are a thousand-fold
tangle and you think you have entirely escaped her when you have only
run away from one fold to fall into another. The wise do not attempt
to reject and negate Maya, but consciously accept her-freedom lies in
a knowing affirmation. So we too have accepted and affirmed an icon,
but we have done it : consciously and knowingly; we are not bound by
our idol, we see the truth of it, and we serve and utilise it as best
as we may.
</font></span></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; font-weight: medium; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page – 50</span></FONT></P>
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