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CASTE AND THE FOUR LIFE-STAGES our social, professional, and family interests; for religion claims the soul. But then religion is necessarily a community affair, and so itself is an instrument of bondage, tying us more subtly, by less gross and therewith more insinuative delusions. Anyone seeking to transcend the tight complacencies of his community must break away from the religious congregation. One of the classic ways of doing this is by becoming a monk-joining, that is to say, still another institution, this time dedicated to isolation from, and insurance against, the ordinary human bondages. Or people take the step into the forest, becoming hermit-solitaries-tied now to the gentle idyl of the hermitage and the innocent details of its primitive life-ritual. Where in all the world can one be totally free?
What is a man really, behind and beyond all the marks, costumes, implements, and activities that denote his civil and religious status? What being is it that underlies, supports, and animates all the states and changes of his life's shadowlike becoming? The anonymities of the forces of nature that operate within him; the curious persormances, successful or unsuccessful, upon which his social character depends; the landscape and life incidental to his time and place of birth; the materials that pass through and constitute for a time his body, charm his fancy, and animate his imagination: none of these can be said to be the Sell.
The craving for complete release froin limitations, which is identical with the craving for absolute anonymity, one may scek to fulfill by turning homeless beggar-mendicant, with no fixed place to lay one's head, no regular road, no goal, no belongings. But then-one is still carrying oneself around. All those stratifications of the body and psyche that correspond to the demands and offerings of the environment and link one to the world wherever one may be are present, active still. To reach the Absolute Man (puruşa) that is sought, one must somehow discard those garbs and obscuring sheaths. From the skin, down through the intellect and emotions, the memory of things past and the
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| SR No. | 007309 |
| Book Title | Philosophies of India |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell |
| Publisher | Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd |
| Publication Year | 1953 |
| Total Pages | 709 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 34 MB |