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CHAPTER ONE
PERSPECTIVE
The bright pages in the story of man's progress and development are certainly those that tell of the mighty souls who come to the earth at critical times, manifesting a power of God or the Godhead himself in order to help the advancement of the race or liberate it from the darkness of a distress that overwhelms it. They are the bringers of new dawns by whose light and force the Ideal is seen again and a fresh endeavour made for its realisation.
When in his exclusive pursuit of the sordid aims of life, or in a long subjection of his soul to extraneous impacts, man forgets the real meaning of his existence, deviates from the path, feels lost in the abyss of lower forces, nothing but the force of God himself can rescue him. A heroic soul must then be born to lift him up; a finger of light must point him to the right path; an inspired voice must reaffirm the Ideal, utter the Word of liberation and lead the way to the goal. Because man has to march forward, whatever the impediments on the way. And these impediments man, as man, cannot overcome, unless aided by a Higher Force.
This is how evolutionary Nature helps forward man's growth towards his ultimate destiny. The pioneers of progress are her instruments who shine in history not so much for what they are as for what they do for the true advancement of man. The creature of an hour, man has to be remade into a child of infinity. That is the end towards which Nature tends and for which she is in constant travail.
It is not always that these divine leaders of the Way work uniformly on the surface life of man. Sometimes, and most often, the field of their activity lies deep below the outer world of man's consciousness which veils the very source of the crisis. Besides, this field is much vaster, unfathomably immense and infinitely more potential than the outer one which is but its reflex. Therefore have the foundations of the new order of life to be laid here and built up from its bottom if it is at all to be worthwhile and enduring.
Yet there are occasions when open activity even in the external field becomes necessary, for then the problem has to be attacked both ways, at its root and in its formulation. The great historic movements are, more or less, visible forms in which Nature breaks up the old and the effete and builds anew the collective life of man with its various aspects,—religious, social, political, cultural,—in order to fit him through more favourable conditions for a fresh striving and a further drive onward. Sometimes only one aspect is chosen, reconditioned or remoulded to answer to the need of the hour. The leaders of these movements are generally known as makers of history.
But history keeps no count of the silent work of the Mystics and Yogis who themselves rising to a higher consciousness bring down its light and power to earth and by their help illumine and exalt the inner world of man's consciousness, so that he may perceive the Ideal and find the path to its realisation free and easy. Besides, spiritual realisation, even when attained by an individual seeker with no concern for others, does not confine itself, says Sri Aurobindo, to its individual possessor alone but radiates its influence on others as well and makes for their uplift. An undeniable proof of the victory of Spirit over Matter.
When Sri Aurobindo says, ' My life has never been on the surface for man to see', he means that whether in the brief period of his political activity or in his long retirement from it, whatever he did had its meaning from the silent work done in the retreat of his soul. And of this none can form even an idea. Even his political work had a pretty long period of silent inner preparation beforehand. It was definitely more spiritual than political in its inspiration, incentive and effectivity. In fact, his spiritual work began with his work for India's freedom. If therefore his political work is to be properly appraised, it must be viewed as part, certainly, as the very basic part, of his work for the spiritual regeneration of India and the world.
Indeed the life of such leaders of humanity is one organic whole of which the different aspects are only the facets of the bright soul whose splendour shines in their lives and teachings, and whose light is needed by man at a crucial stage of his journey on earth. Human mind must rise above itself in order to appreciate the wide integrality of the life of God-men and God-inspired souls.
As charioteer of his beloved friend and disciple Sri Krishna revealed a supreme truth. A marvel of a statesman and diplomat with the invincible divine power and majesty of a Master-Yogi! While purely spiritual freedom was the core of the Buddha's teaching, he gave a most practical piece of advice to the Vajjians when he told them never to relinquish their republican ideal of political freedom. Joan of Arc heard heavenly voices speaking to her and by the force of that commandment fought for and won her country's freedom. All these actions of divine personalities, whether in the inner or the outer court of life, have been guided by the Will of God, and have helped forward the progress of the race.
Sri Aurobindo's work for the political liberation of India is one such aspect of his life whose full and sublime flowering will be a new and divinised humanity. The subject which Sri Aurobindo is had better be approached with reverence and contemplation. Else, not even an iota of its truth and meaning can be grasped. The springs of his life and activity are too deep for ordinary intelligence, too baffling for the analytical intellect. The reader has to apply his soul to the subject.
A distinguished publicist of India, while speaking on the importance of Sri Aurobindo's contribution to the Freedom Movement in India, uttered a great truth when he said that Sri Aurobindo the Master-Patriot who later became the Master-Yogi was a unique phenomenon in human history with a significance for the whole world.
An aspect of this contribution can be traced in what Sri Aurobindo often used to say in his writings and speeches during the Swadeshi days about the vital bearing of India's freedom on the progress of mankind. He reiterated time and again that India's struggle for liberation from foreign rule was a phase of the world-movement for the liberation of humanity.
What was then the precise nature of the task which called him away from active politics into his seclusion? It was to work a decisive change in the consciousness of man. Yet the fact was that he never completely gave up his political work. He carried it on silently, preparing by his spiritual force the conditions for the freedom of India to actualise, and this as the first step to the larger liberation he aimed at, which indeed was the supreme end of his spiritual endeavour. The Integral Yoga which he evolved and revealed to man does not exclude any aspect of life from the scope of its wholesale transformation.
It was therefore a moment of world significance when this mighty soul appeared on earth to do a mighty work of God.
The nineteenth century in the seventies of which Sri Aurobindo was born was remarkable for its gigantic political and cultural endeavours all over the world. But endeavours with no far-reaching aim, no unifying force, no sure power of execution. The need of the hour was a man of God.
Fundamentally, every problem is a problem of harmony, a spiritual problem. And never in history has the complexity of man's individual and collective life grown so formidable as in the present when his vast achievements in science have released forces which make at once for his well-being as well as for his undoing. He wanted freedom and its first outburst was the movement in the New World. The Revolution in France was a struggle for freedom but the freedom achieved was a freedom limited by the human mind. It resulted in rapid growths of national consciousness, of compact nation-units in Europe and other parts of the world. Then arose the problem: how to harmonise these new-born collectivities, each with its developed ego that threatened to break into conflict any moment and thereby negate all possibility of the needed harmony.
There was then an excess of material prosperity accruing from a mastery over the potencies of Nature; but not having a corresponding psychological development, man was driven to its sad misuse. Here again was the problem of harmonising man's inner and outer life. This could be done by finding and utilising the light of the Spirit enshrined in man's soul, which alone could solve all conflict into a harmonious order of happiness and peace.
The third problem, challenging but childish, was when Science declared itself to be ' the only means of certain knowledge, and that anything unknowable to science must remain unknowable for ever'. By this declaration the mind of man stood self-condemned, condemned to its own limitations, denying to itself the higher values of the infinite, which are open to man above the domain of his mind.
These are among the factors that have precipitated the crisis with which humanity is faced today. Nationalism, development of individuals and collectivities, expansion of scientific knowledge, increase of material comforts, all intended by Nature to quicken the evolution of the race, have now become disruptive forces. They have to be put in their right place and used as materials of nobler stuff to be built into a nobler pattern of life.
The nineteenth century also saw the birth of a high optimism, the turning of forward minds to the study of problems and the finding of their solutions. This gave rise to revolutionary ideas. Some of these ideas inflamed militant nationalisms which helped to free subject peoples and did away with the tyranny of absolute monarchies. Nature knew the turn things would take, imperfect being the instruments through which she was working. So she waited, making use in the meanwhile of whatever capacity the instruments possessed. With his mind already active, man attained a knowledge of the laws of the physical universe, and by that he made a realistic approach to his present and future.
The outcome of these efforts was the birth of new ideas first in France and Germany, then in other parts of Europe. It is well known how these ideas of the French thinkers inspired the Revolution, within a few years of which Condorcet declared that man is capable of ' infinite improvement' and that a time would come when the sun would shine upon free nations only. A few years before him Kant showed in his concept of ' Universal History ' how the freedom of the individual to develop to his highest possibilities could be reconciled with the developing society. Hegel's thesis in his ' Philosophy of History' was that man is a progressive and perfectible being.
The nineteenth century dawned with these broad ideas which continued to influence European mind and to some extent the mind of other countries. Human ills can be mitigated by progress, said Comte; by the spread of knowledge, said Buckle. Darwin's theory of evolution and those of others on the same subject, pointed, however vaguely, to the continuity of man's growth. Spencer identified progress with evolution. The Romantic poets saw visions of ' a new heaven ' and sang of its ' glory descending upon the earth '. In America the Transcend-entalists of Concord echoed the Vedantic idea that ' within man is the soul of the whole. . . . Man is a stream flowing into the ocean of the infinity'.
Progress was thus the central theme of almost all the thinkers and poets of the nineteenth century, progress towards a united, free and perfected world. While there were forces of Good preparing the field for a greater future for man, there were others that tried to oppose this progress. Reactionary politicians and selfish rulers of the period were such hostile forces. They usurped man's right to freedom and sought by. repression to keep him in perpetual subjection. But Nature used even their barbarous ways and acts to whip up human collectivities into a still more vigorous struggle to win their freedom. Thus did their national feeling deepen.
With the growth of this feeling grew their egos; conflicts of ideas and claims burst into clashes of arms. The faint call of the World Mother to her children—the call to union and harmony—was drowned. For that is the Ideal that Nature holds up before man and it must materialise sooner or later. Hence we find every conflict followed by a fresh effort to forge fresh bonds of unity. The system of international control of affairs or congressional government that after a series of revolutions and wars was tried in Europe during the greater part of the first half of the nineteenth century, was no doubt a measure initiated by the ruling powers. However inchoate, it was an indication of how things could shape towards the future unification of the race. The great international institutions of recent times, despite all their drawbacks, are notable advances on the road to unity.
Yet, things are not what they should be; unity is still a far-off ideal, so also is freedom. But these can never be attained by any amount of unaided human effort. They are essentially states of higher consciousness which man can attain by a sincere personal effort and with the aid of higher powers. As he is today, he is a slave to the forces of Evil, a victim of his blundering ego. Ignorance sits heavy on him. The need of the moment is liberation from all these dead-weights on his soul; then will come, as a natural sequence, unity, knowledge and freedom.
Who then is to bring about this liberation and crown it with unity and knowledge? Who but India, where from time immemorial, ' is preserved the Knowledge that preserves the world'.1 Hidden in her soul lies that vision of the Light which her ancient Seers had in the golden days of her past, and from which the mind of India derived its outstanding character, its spiritual tendency. That is why every upward movement in India has behind it a resurgence of her soul, the dynamism of a spiritual idea.
One such was the inspired movement of India's liberation which also began in the nineteenth century. Not an isolated event but as part of Nature's world-plan. It was a nation-wide effort to free India from the blight and degradation of foreign rule so that she might summon up once again the strength of her soul and discharge her mission in the world. The mission of bringing down from heaven a new Light by which to dispel for ever all darkness from the earth and usher in a new age of the Spirit.
The return of this ancient Vision to India was not a sudden phenomenon. It was preceded by a process of preparation through which India passed in the nineteenth century, creating conditions favourable to the rebirth of India's soul, the signs of which were visible in the closing years of the same century. A concrete sign of this rebirth was the awakening of forward-looking minds to their right to live as a free nation.
Plastic in her mind, open in her heart, intuitive in her soul, ' Bengal was chosen by the Shakti of India as her first workshop'2 where, also in the same century, she started her work by throwing up new forces and new personalities that became the makers of a new epoch, the bringers of a new dawn in every sphere of national life.
Bengal therefore soon grew into a centre of a wider awakening in the whole country. Her cult of Shakti which is the cult of her soul gave Bengal whatever force and light she needed for the purpose. It was therefore
1 Sri Aurobindo: Collected Poems and Plays, p. 139. 2 Sri Aurobindo: The Renaissance in India, p. 60. Page-8 a momentous hour when Sri Ramakrishna received the Light of Shakti from the Mother and infused it into Vivekananda through whom he wrought a wonder in the spiritual history of man. Then came the voice of Sri Aurobindo: 'Trust the Divine Power and she will free the godlike elements in you and shape all into an expression of Divine Nature.'3 ' She is the consciousness and Force of the Divine—which is the Mother of all things.'4 It is She who works out her Will in the nations through their soul which is her force, her light. A nation progresses in the measure it is conscious of its soul. The soul is the Shakti of the Divine Power. Thus did Bengal rediscover the ancient path, the path of the Spirit, by which India in her past achieved all her greatness and glory.
Bengal was the first in India to receive Western culture. In the beginning its reactions seemed to disrupt her own order of life and culture. But she did not take long to work these out and become herself again. What she achieved then is her splendid history of recent times. ' It is Bengal which first recovered its soul, respiritual-ised itself, forced the whole world to hear of its great spiritual personalities, gave it the first modern Indian poet and Indian scientist of world-wide fame and achievement, restored the moribund art of India to life and power, first made her count again in the culture of the world, first as a reward in the outer life, arrived at a vital political consciousness and a living political movement not imitative and derivative in its spirit and its central ideal.' 5
The Western impact created a new problem in India: harmonising the truth of life stressed by the West with the truth of the Spirit for which the East, particularly India, cares most. The attempt to solve this could be traced in every movement in India in modern times,
3 Sri Aurobindo: The Mother, p. 63. 4 Letters of Sri Aurobindo on the Mother, p. 15. 5 Sri Aurobindo: The Ideal of Human Unity, p. 260 (American Ed.). Page-9 whether social, cultural, religious or spiritual, each showing a marked tendency to synthesise ideas of various cultures and religions. Though not always purely Indian in their methods, they reflected the inherent spiritual bent of the Indian mind. But the soul of India spoke out when Sri Ramakrishna pointed to the essential oneness of all religions, when Sri Aurobindo affirmed the oneness of Life, Matter and Spirit, and declared that to the truth and light of this divine oneness and harmony humanity through all its phases and ordeals is being led by the supreme Shakti.
The political upheaval in India was in fact only one aspect of the vast resurgence of her awakened soul. From the very beginning her political as well as other endeavours were motived by a deeper aim, and sustained by a spiritual power that is characteristic of all movements in India. It may be noted that the very first attempt to liberate the country from alien domination was made in the eighteenth century by the Sannyasins of Bengal, a community of self-dedicated anchorites resolutely vowed to redeem their country by their life-blood. In his famous novel Anandamath which gave to India Vande Mataram—the mantra of dynamic nationalism—the mantra which envisages the Motherland as the eternal Mother-Aspect of the Divine—Bankimchandra gave a vivid and inspiring picture of this heroic national movement. The government records of the time bear a distorted version of the fact, dubbing it as ' a Sannyasi rebellion '. Till a fuller history of this is written, the saga, depicted by Bankimchandra, stands as a clear refutation of the records.
In the century that followed—again the nineteenth— Bengal saw her sky illumined from horizon to horizon by a galaxy of luminaries—about a hundred in number —men of outstanding genius in art and music, poetry and literature, religion and mysticism, science and philosophy, law and politics, who along with their compeers in other provinces enriched the world of culture in various ways and made wonderful contributions to the growth of the renaissance. It is however the spiritual leaders who were the harbingers of a brighter day in the life of the nation. Among them Sri Ramakrishna stands unique, whose vision of the Mother blazed forth through that heaven-born hierophant of God, the awakener of souls—Swami Vivekananda, who proclaimed to the world the inherent divinity of man; and to his countrymen the truth that every Indian from his very birth is dedicated to his motherland—the first word of Indian nationalism charged with the voice of a spiritual leader.
Yet the monster of materialism, already rampant in the West, threatened to engulf the rest of the world, rendering the problems of man more and more grave till they assumed the frightful proportions of a world-crisis. The only way out was again the same sure way of the Spirit. A seer had to come forth, embodying in himself the ancient truth, and stand ready to prepare man by his own spiritual force to receive the Light when it comes and thereby change into a higher nature. It is only this change that means a lasting solution.
A careful study of Sri Aurobindo's teachings will give glimpses of a new world of light of which man as a race had no idea before and whose revelation today is the sign that the hour of his redemption is at hand. The political liberation of India, though still incomplete, has been the spiritual solution of her gravest politico-economic problem—the first stroke of a yet mightier work the Light is doing behind the human gaze.
When Sri Aurobindo invoked the soul of India, he saw the Mother that India is. He worshipped her in the depths of his soul, and the Mother vouchsafed to her beloved son the vision of the Light she is. But the Light could not manifest in all its divine glory till she was freed from all subjection. That is why the liberation of his country became Sri Aurobindo's first work, his dominant passion. 'It has been the mantra of my life to aspire towards the freedom of my nation.'6 ' Nationalism is the dharma of the age, and God reveals himself to us in our common Mother.'7 ' The sun of India's destiny would rise and fill all India with its light and overflow India and overflow Asia and overflow the world.'8 Fervent expressions of a truth-conscious soul, suggesting much more than the words convey. It is all an indication that the Truth that India is found in Sri Aurobindo its chosen instrument and made him its mighty voice to assure to man his liberation into a new world of Truth and Light. India, as a people, at any rate, the elite of her sons, will realise this truth when they share in his truth-conscious soul. That is why Poet Rabindranath Tagore hailed him as ' the voice incarnate, free, of India's soul'.
Once awakened, the soul of India went on expanding in its scope and activity till its light brought about the freedom of the country and is now steadily growing into a world-wide aspiration of the human spirit to achieve its supreme destiny, of which this holy land would once again be the glorious centre.
Writing in the Arya 9 in 1918 on the sequences then appearing in the journal, Sri Aurobindo said: ' Spirit being the fundamental truth of existence, liije can be only its manifestation. . . . To grow into the fullness of the Divine is the true law of human life, and to shape his earthly existence into its image is the meaning of his evolution.' This is the theme of his magnum opus, The Life Divine. How to grow into this fullness is another theme elaborated in the Synthesis of Yoga which seeks ' to arrive at a synthetical view of the principles and methods of the various lines of spiritual self-discipline and the way in which they can lead to an integral divine life in the human existence. ... In the Psycho-
6 Sri Aurobindo: Speeches, p. 106. 7 ,, The Ideal of the Karmayogin, p. 56. 8 ,, Speeches, p. 89. 9 The Arya's Fourth Year, Arya, Vol. IV, p. 106. Page-12 logy of Social Development,10 we have indicated how these truths affect the evolution of human society. In The Ideal of Human Unity, we have taken the present trend of mankind towards a closer unification and tried to appreciate its tendencies and show what is wanting in them that real human unity may be achieved'. In the sequence The Secret of the Veda Sri Aurobindo discovers the inner meaning of the Vedic symbols and shows how in that meaning lies the truth of man's divine perfection. In this revelatory exposition of the Veda Sri Aurobindo points to the light of that Vast Truth the vision of which had come to the Vedic Seers millenniums ago. In this vision he saw the birth of India's soul, the perennial source of all her spiritual strength and vitality sustaining her historic evolution through the ages. By his discovering this truth of India's soul Sri Aurobindo became one with it, one with its light that is eternal. And this he did long before he actually read the Veda, as he himself said. His Essays on the Gita harmonises action with spiritual life by establishing a new synthesis of the three principal Yogic disciplines, the practice of which prepares man for his ' attainment of union with the divine Being, and oneness with the supreme divine nature'. The Future Poetry gives glimpses of Sri Aurobindo's soul envisaging the poet of the future as the seer whose poetry will be ' a voice of eternal things', ' a revelation of the infinite truth of existence and of the universal delight and beauty of a greater spiritualised vision and power of life'. This poetry will be resplendent with the golden glory of New Dawns; a perennial inspiration of ever-new unfoldings of the Infinite Truth; the soul-expression of the new world in the making. Sri Aurobindo's epic Savitri is a unique example of this future poetic creation. His exposition of India's culture, a pretty long sequence, establishes the spiritual character of her civilisation; he lays his finger on the hidden truth of a
10 A revised version has since been published under the title The Human Cycle.
larger resurgence of her/soul and shows how that will place her at the forefront of the world as its spiritual leader.
These revelations contain the Creative Word of India, the supreme Word that would liberate man and create a new world of freedom, unity and perfection. And it was this that he meant when Poet Rabindranath after his interview with Sri Aurobindo in 1928 said to him: ' You have the Word and we are waiting to accept it from you. India will speak through your voice, Hearken unto me.' |