ertake him, instinctively there occur to him thoughts of
retirement from the world and concentration of his mind, thereby to
reach God's presence. Very few spiritually minded Hindus past middle
life pass into the Christian Church, as some do at the earlier stages of
life. Under the sway of the Hindu idea of salvation, by knowledge or by
intense intuition, they withdraw from active life to meditate on God,
with less or more of the practice of religious exercises. Painful to
contemplate the spiritual loss to the community of a conception of
religion that diverts the spiritual energy away from the community, and
renders it practically unproductive, except as an example. Once more we
recall as typical the jogi, not going about doing good, anointed with
the Holy Ghost and with power, but fixed like a plant to its own spot,
and with inward-looking eyes. Time was that there were jogis and joginis
(female jogis) in Europe; but even of St. Theresa, at one period of her
life a typical jogini, we read that not long after her visions and
supernatural visitations, she became a most energetic reformer of the
convents.

[Sidenote: The jogi, not the brahman, is the living part of present-day
Hinduism.]

That quest for the beatific vision or for union with God, is the highest
and the most living part of present-day Hinduism, whether monotheistic
or pantheistic. Not the purohit brahman (the domestic celebrant), or the
guru brahman (the professional spiritual director), conventionally
spoken of as divine, but the jogi or religious seeker is the object of
universal reverence. And rightly so. The reality of this aspect of
Hinduism is manifest in the ease with which it overrides the idea of
caste. In theory brahmans are the twice-born caste, the nearest to the
Deity and to union with Him. A man of lower caste, in his upward
transmigrations towards union with God or absorption into Deity, should
pass through an existence as a brahman. In the chapter on Transmigration
we found that the upward steps of the ladder up to the brahman caste had
been clearly stated in an authoritative Hindu text-book. The word
_br[=a]hman_, the name of the highest caste, is itself in fact a synonym
for Deity. But as a matter of fact, men of any caste, moved by the
spirit, are found devoting themselves to the jogi life. "He who attains
to God is the true br[=a]hman," is the current maxim, attributed to the
great Buddha.

[Sidenote: Saving Faith, or Bhakti.]

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