Waking up at three in the night, I suddenly feel that the world in which I once lived has died, become a ghost, and now sits here occupying my bed, my room, all my belongings. I can well understand now why people are afraid even of the ghosts of those they once knew. When the familiar becomes unknown in a single moment, it is a terror. All the habits of life that once flowed in an easy stream—now, when I must guide them into a channel that has not yet been dug, a strange confusion arises; it becomes hard to preserve my own nature; looking at myself, I wonder if I too have become someone else.

For some days now, I have sensed that Sandip and his followers have begun to stir up trouble in our region. If I were still my usual self, I would have told Sandip firmly, “Leave this place.” But in this turmoil, I have become unnatural. My path is no longer straightforward. There is a certain shame in telling Sandip to go. Another thought intrudes alongside it; in my own eyes, I become diminished.

Marriage was something internal to me—it was not merely

My household life, or my journey through the world, is not merely a domestic institution. It is the unfolding of my life itself. That is why I could never exert the slightest force upon it from the outside—if I ever tried, it felt as though I were insulting my own deity. I will never be able to make anyone understand this. Perhaps I am strange. Perhaps that is why I have been defeated. But how can I save the outer world from being deceived, if in doing so I must deceive my own inner self?

I have taken initiation into that truth which, from within, creates the outer world. That is why today I have had to tear apart the web of the external so completely. My deity will grant me freedom from the slavery of the outside. I shall win that freedom at the cost of my heart’s own blood. But when I do win it, then the kingdom of the inner self will be mine.

Already I am tasting the flavor of that liberation. Again and again, from within the darkness, the dawn-bird of my soul bursts into song. Even if the Bimala fashioned by illusion, that dream, should fly away, it will not matter; my inner being, my true self, keeps reassuring me with this message.

From Mastermoshai I have heard that Sandip, joining with Harishkundu, is making grand preparations for the worship of Mahishamardini. The expenses for this festival are being extracted from Harishkundu and from the tenants. Our poet and the learned Vidyabagish Mosai have been set to composing a hymn...

...is being done, which has two meanings. Sandip even had a bit of an argument with Mastermoshai about this. Sandip says, “There is an evolution of the gods; if the grandsons do not remake the gods