When I read over the autobiography I have written of myself, I wonder, is this Sandip? Am I made of mere words? Am I a book bound in the flesh and blood of a living body? The world is not a dead thing like the moon; it breathes, Vapors rise from all its rivers and seas— It is wrapped in that vapor, dust swirls all around it, And it is shrouded in that veil of dust. The observer who looks at this world from outside Will see only the light reflected off that vapor and dust. Will he ever truly discern its lands and continents?

Just as the earth is alive, so too is a living man; From his innermost being, ideas rise like breath, And so he is obscured in vapor; Where his inner lands and waters lie, where he is most diverse, There he cannot be seen— He appears only as a sphere of light and shadow.

It seems to me that, like a living planet, I am only sketching the sphere of my ideas. But what I desire, what I think, what I resolve— From beginning to end, am I truly that?

That alone is not all—what I do not love, what I do not desire, yet I am that as well. Even before I was born, my being had already been shaped—I could not choose myself; I must make do with what I have received.

I know well that greatness is cruel. What is just for the common is unjust for the uncommon. The earth’s surface is level from end to end, but a volcanic mountain rises only when the fiery horn of flame pierces it with a terrible thrust. It does not judge all sides equally; its judgment is for itself alone. By the force of all its injustice and unfeigned cruelty, whether man or nation, it has risen to become a lord of millions, a master of the earth. Only by swallowing one with closed eyes can two become two—otherwise, the straight line of one would have continued unbroken.

That is why I preach the asceticism of injustice. I tell everyone that injustice is liberation, injustice is the flame of fire; whenever it fails to burn, it turns to ash. Whenever a nation or a man becomes incapable of injustice, at that very moment, his fate is to be cast into the world’s broken vessel.

Yet, even so, this is my idea, it is not wholly myself. However much I may boast of injustice, there are holes, there are gaps in the wooden hull of my idea; within it...

What emerges from within is raw, exceedingly tender. The reason is, most of what I am has already been shaped before me.

Sometimes, with my followers, I test the limits of cruelty. One day, we had gone to the garden for a picnic. A goat was grazing nearby. I asked everyone, “Who among you can cut off one of its hind legs with this knife?”