[Sidenote:  The quest of the beatific vision still implies the dissociation of religion and active life.]

[Sidenote:  An unproductive religious ideal.]

What concerns us here is that in the conception of the beatific vision, we still find ourselves in a different religious world from ours—­religion exoteric for the vulgar, and religion esoteric for the enlightened; religion not for living by, but for a period of retirement; a religion of spiritual self-culture, not of active sonship and brotherhood.  Far be it from me to say that at this point the West may not learn as well as teach, for how much thought does the culture of the spirit receive among us?  How little!  However that may be, this conception of the religious life is deeply rooted in educated India.  The impersonal pantheistic conception of the Deity may be passing into the theistic, and even into Christian theism; the doctrine of transmigration may be little more than the current orthodox explanation of the coming of misfortune; the doctrine of Maya or the illusory character of the phenomena of our consciousness, it may be impossible to utter in this new practical age; and Jesus Christ may be the object of the highest reverence; but still the instinctive thought of the educated Hindu is that there is a period of life for the world’s work, and a later period for devotion to religion.  When dissatisfaction with himself or with the world does overtake 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.]