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I had made a point from the beginning of making sure that my life as a Wanderer of the Waste 
should not cut me off from my family, the great men of the past. I got India-paper editions of 
Chaucer, Shakespeare and Browning; and, in default of India paper, the best editions of Atalanta in 
Calydon. Poems and Ballads (First Series), Shelley, Keats and The Kabbalah Unveiled. I caused all 
these to be bound in vellum, with ties. William Morris had re-introduced this type of binding in the 
hope of giving a mediaeval flavour to his publications. I adopted it as being the best protection for 
books against the elements. I carried these volumes everywhere, and even when mu alleged 
waterproof rucksack was soaked through, my masterpieces remained intact. 
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Let this explain why I should have been absorbed in Browning's Christmas Eve and Easter Day at 
Tuticorin. I was criticizing it in the light of my experience in Dhyana, and the result was to give me 
the idea of answering Browning's apology for Christianity by what was essentially a parody of his 
title and his style. My poem was to be called "Ascension Day and Pentecost". 
I wrote "Ascension Day" at Madura on November 16th and 'Pentecost" the day after; but my original 
idea gradually expanded. I elaborated the two poems from time to time, added "Berashith" --- of 
which more anon --- and finally "Science and Buddhism", an essay on these subjects inspired by a 
comparative study of what I had learnt from Allan Bennett and the writings of Thomas Henry 
Huxley. These four elements made up the volume finally published under the title The Sword of 
Song. 
One of the great sights of south India is the great temple of the Shivalingam. I spent a good deal of 
time in its courts meditating on the mystery of phallic worship. Apologists ordinarily base their 
defence on a denial that the lingam is worshipped as such. They claim correctly enough that it is 
merely the symbol of the supreme creative spiritual force of the Most High. It is perfectly true, 
none the less, that barren women circumambulate it in the hope of becoming fruitful. I accepted 
this sublimation gladly, because I had not yet been healed of the wound of Amfortas: I had not got 
rid of the shame of sex. My instinct told me that Blake was right in saying "The lust of the goat is 
the glory of god." But I lacked the courage to admit it. The result of my training had been to obsess 
me with the hideously foul idea that inflicts such misery on Western minds and curses life with civil 
war. Europeans cannot face the facts frankly; they cannot escape from their animal appetite, yet 
suffer the tortures of fear and shame even while gratifying it. As Freud has now shown, this 
devastating complex is not merely responsible for most of the social and domestic misery of Europe 
and America, but exposes the individual to neurosis. It is hardly too much to say that our lives are 
blasted by conscience. We resort to suppression and the germs created an abscess. 
The Hindu is of course a slave to his superstitions about sin even more than most nominal Christians, 
for the simple reason that he is absolutely serious about the welfare of his soul. I remember coming 
across a tribe which did not use tobacco. I offered them some and they refused. I supposed it was 
forbidden by their religion, but they told me no. It was, however, not commanded by their religion; 
they could therefore see no object in doing it. The Hindu attitude towards sin, absurd as it is, 
compares favourably with ours; because, though afraid of it, they have not reached our own state of 
panic which makes us the prey of the most fantastic superstitions and perversions of truth. I have 
found it practically impossible to convince middle-class 
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Anlgo-Saxons of facts which anyone would think were bound to be known. They take refuge in angry 
denial. It seems to them that if they once admit the most elementary and obvious propositions, they 
are bound to fall headlong into a bottomless pit of bestiality. Where, in fact, they always are. 
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