radhakrishnan book from mk gandhi, Lecture notes of English Literature

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My Search for Truth * I. EARLY YEARS I was born on September 5, 1888, at a small place, Tirutani, forty miles to the north-west of Madras, in South India, the second child of Hindu parents, who were conventional in their religious outlook. T have not had any advantages of birth or of wealth. The early years of my life till twelve were spent in Tirutani and Tirupati, both famous as pilgrim centres. I cannot account for the fact that from the time I knew myself J have had firm faith in the reality of an unseen world behind the flux of phenomena, a world which we apprehend not with the senses but with the mind, and even when I was faced by grave difficulties, this faith has remained unshaken. A meditative frame of mind is perhaps responsible for my love of loneliness. Side by side with my outward activities, there is in me an inner life of increasing solitude in which I love to linger. Books, the vistas they unveil, and the dreams they awaken, have been from the beginning my constant and unfailing companions. | am not quite at home in the conventional social functions by which life’s troubles are tempered to most of us. When Lam in company, unless it be with one or two who know me well, it is with an effort that I get along. But I have an almost uncanny knack of putting myself en rapport with any individual, high or low, old or young, if the need arises. While | am essentially shy and lonely, I pass for a social and sociable man. My withdrawn nature and social timidity have given me a reputation that I am difficult to know. Again, I * From Vergilius Ferm, ed. Religion in Transition (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1937), pp. 11-59. 33