|
CHAPTER TWO1
PROPHETIC DAWN
In studying the work of one whose whole life was a continuous fulfilment of the Will of God, our first concern should be to have in view the principal factors that formed the fabric of his being and of the country from whose soil he sprang. The meaning of his life may suggest itself through an attempt to discover what place it occupies in the historical development of India, and what significance it has for her future.
It seems he came just when his coming was most called for, we may add, when it was decreed by Providence. What he said and did was the culmination of the past endeavours of the race, of its high achievements, a restatement and reliving of which as an actual experience on his own part, was needed that India might regain her full stature as a nation conscious of its divine destiny.
A bare sketch of the main lines of her evolution through the ages leading to her present condition is given here in order to indicate how problems arose, how they were solved. Since the problem of India's freedom was part of the problem of peace and unity of the world, a broader approach has to be made to a subject whose immediate importance cannot be seen or understood unless viewed against the background of the past and future of the race.
India started on her historic adventure with the Vedic vision of the Light that was to descend into man
1 Unless otherwise acknowledged, quotations in this and subsequent chapters are from the book Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, containing Sri Aurobindo's own notes, reminiscences and letters, written to his disciples and to his biographers who submitted their manuscripts to him before publication.
and lift him above himself and newmake him into a divine perfection. It was this her early knowledge of the Reality with the infinite glories of its future manifestation that gave to the soul of India—born in that Light—its own character, its own strength and energy to which she owed her splendid achievements in every sphere of life. Indeed she created and created and created, and this not for centuries, not even for only a millennium or two, but for more than five thousand years. And there was no domain of spiritual or secular knowledge, no field of cultural or social activity, in which she did not make her immense original contribution.
' One of the oldest races and greatest civilisations on this earth, the most indomitable in vitality, the most fecund in greatness, the deepest in life, the most wonderful in potentiality,' 2 this is the India of the ages living on by the power of the Spirit which came to her at the very dawn of her history and which she developed through the ages, and won for herself the crown of immortality. The meaning of this immortality is the meaning of Sri Aurobindo's life and work.
India produced the greatest and oldest mystic poetry of the world; philosophies and cosmogonies and sciences; arts and poems and epics; cults and creeds and religions; laws and codes and social systems; logic and rhetoric and grammar; schools of thought, methods of self-discipline, lines of self-realisation. By the same amazing and inexhaustible vitality she built kingdoms, empires and republics; systems of polity and administration; crafts, trades and industries; guilds, societies and communities. Indeed, the list is endless and each item is a plethora of activity. India developed a language the most perfect in the world, a literature upon which time has not breathed, a culture which is the light of her soul, sustaining her as a race for a higher fulfilment. And the creations of her genius covering the
2 Sri Aurobindo: The Ideal of the Karmayogin, p. 1. country from end to end brimmed over to distant lands where under other skies her art and thought inspired newer expressions and made or enriched their histories.3
To what force was all this due? Certainly to that ancient vision realising itself through the lives and teachings of those incarnations of God, of God-men and God-lovers, of saints, sages and seers, of poets, artists and philosophers, who have hallowed this land from time immemorial to this day, giving away without stint their priceless treasures of heaven for the well-being of the human race on earth. Indeed it is they who have kept flowing the spiritual current of India's soul and have helped her historic evolution through the ages.
When however these millenniums of ceaseless activity were followed by a pretty long period of relaxation, the proverbial wealth of the land attracted to itself from across her borders greedy hordes of barbarians who burst upon the peaceful people and carried away their riches quite a number of times. Not that they met with no resistance. In fact, the resistance offered was, in some cases, heroic and memorable. But the weight of ruffian hordes, living by sheer brute force on loot and plunder, prevailed over that of civilized men living a higher life of Light and Truth, carefree, peaceful, militarily unorganised. And the consequence?—Plunder, hitherto sporadic, now became stabilised and systematic, organised on a wider scale, taking on the less disreputable name of exploitation, bringing in its train to buttress itself up, foreign rule and administration, and a gradual loss of the long-enjoyed freedom of the land.
Even then it was not too late for the people to wake up to the situation and mend it. But, then, the people, as a people, were not there. No integrated collective life. The country dotted with small political units which, self-blinded by too individualistic tendencies— fatally centrifugal—proved disastrous in effect.
3 See Chapter One o£ the writer's book The Dawn Eternal.
It must however be said, in passing, that although these units cared each for its own freedom, to the exclusion of the larger interests of their common country, there was ample scope in Indian temperament for development of such regional patriotism to which is due much of ancient India's cultural progress. But, as a matter of fact, there existed along with it, the opposite centripetal tendency towards unity and integration, which from time to time asserted itself through the rise of empires and confederacies that had their days in history.
But the saving light amid the gloom of foreign rule was the Truth-based rock of India's culture. It was and has been too strong and solid a structure to be shaken, far less, broken or damaged by any extraneous shock or blast. It is true that her political life was at a low ebb, because the policy of the foreign rulers was not always dictated by justice, equity and goodwill; but the creative genius of India was not affected even under such untoward conditions. The ardour of patriotism and the sturdy manhood of the race continued to persist to the bitter end in the resistance that the Rajputs, the Marathas and the Sikhs offered to the Muslim aggression: and it was the medieval mystics and saints that kept alive the spirituality of the race. Nor did the springs of literature and art dry or choke up; works of beauty and excellence, produced even amid its decadent political life, could stand comparison with the best of their kind in the whole world.
The last days of the Muslim rule were marked by political and social evils of the worst type undermining the integrity and morale of the administration, laying the country open to any aggression from outside. As a matter of fact, the British found it easy, without having to strike a blow, to establish themselves in India by sheer underhand means. Whatever challenge they had to meet was not of India but of their rival within her borders, the French.
With the British came upon India the impact of a new force, the clash of another culture. But the power that had stood, absorbed and assimilated several such external shocks in her long career, and even in later times, made many Islamic ideas part of her being, now seemed to have withdrawn. Its place was taken by ignorance, inertia and tamas, a passive acquiescence, a vile imitation, a physical and moral decadence. As however it was certainly not the intention of Nature to allow such decline of a great country with a great destiny to speed on to its death, it gave a rude jerk in the form of an impact of a vitally powerful nation like England so that it might infuse into the old veins of India a new force and quicken her into a new life of progress.
Western civilisation, at least those aspects of it with which India first came in contact, destroyed much in her that had no longer the power to live. Many of her useful systems and institutions, sapped by doubt, disbelief or indifference, fell into disuse; an indiscriminate upsetting of values threatened racial degeneration. Bound by rigid rules and vitiated by corrupt practices, society was static and there was no question of its advancing with the march of time. Barring faint movements here and there, the free flow of cultural life, as in the great days of her past, through every vein of the body politic, was now but a memory. The ways of the Spirit were confined to the adherents of Vaishnavic, Tantric and Buddhist cults, not always of the highest order or in their best form. The common man, as during the long period of Muslim rule in the past, was indifferent to the change. Yet the influence of the change in some form or other could not but be felt by all. That it created a new condition, a new movement in the mind and heart of the people, was only too evident. The first reaction at the outset was a crude and confused attempt to imitate the forms and formalities of this foreign culture, a sedulous aping of the ways of life it introduced in the country.
A crucial moment indeed, an ordeal of perilous consequence, through which India passed at this time. Her past was an anathema to the sponsors of the movement of revolt. They derided the achievements of their country, broke its idols, called its age-old customs and usages ' superstitious nonsense'. It was a crusade, as it were, that ' Young Bengal', ' Young Bombay ' started with an enthusiasm, wild and overbearing, which created an uncontrollable commotion in the urban life of India. The orthodox sections, however, took up the challenge and stood by their cherished values of life. And while ' the new cultural sons of the West' sought to rebuild India on the Western pattern, leaders of thought came up to the front with a fresh approach to her ancient ideals, comparing them with those of other countries. Indeed, theirs was a sincere effort to get at the true truth of India's past and to appraise it in the light of reason which their Western contact had kindled in them. This is the first phase of the movement towards synthesis which later developed into a rebirth of the soul of India, a movement of an all-India scope and importance, whose culmination would be the last creative Word of Truth, Harmony and Perfection, to be spoken by her.
The spirit of Young India's revolt against what to them were positive evils in the country's social and religious life presently turned to the evils of their political subjection too. Western ideas of democracy, freedom, and nationalism opened to them fresh vistas of light through the gloom. And with the fading of the first flush of intoxication came quieter thoughts of sanity and clear-sightedness that possessed the minds of the leaders and turned their attention to the sad politico-economic conditions of their countrymen. The result was the awakening of a vigilant public life expressing itself in a number of leagues, associations and sabhas in important cities of the country—particularly in Calcutta and Bombay—which helped to foster the new-born political consciousness and give it some shape according to the need and temper of the time. The feeling began to deepen in the mind and heart of India that every son of hers had the right to live the life of a decent and honourable human being.
This is the glimmering of the dawn which was to break over the country with the beginning of the present century when the foreign domination, the one great cause of the appalling poverty and decadence of the people, eating into their vitals and corrupting the national soul, became in every sense intolerable. This is the motive-force behind India's struggle for freedom, the first great dynamic impulse of her soul to self-liberation.
Education, then in vogue, was too mean and meagre to be worth the name; it was a planned device of the alien rulers to produce ' coloured Englishmen' who could man the lower ranks of the administrative and mercantile services. The device worked well and long according to plan. But something of the incalculable, as often happens in human affairs, worked to the opposite end too. Some among the fruits of this exotic plant turned to be the leaders of progressive movements. Had this system been entirely English, it was held, it would have produced different results, better according to some, disastrous to the higher interests of India, according to others. But a particular instance, a singular one: at that, is Sri Aurobindo, whose training in England, almost from infancy seemed to have been a dispensation of the One who was shaping his destiny to an end none could foresee at the time. Indeed it is this end that gives meaning to his life, shaped and coloured every phase of it, every event and incident connected with it. For every such detail and their ensemble show how they fulfil in various ways and in their totality the purpose of God in the progress of India and the world.
The life of a great figure often makes the history of his country, and revolutionises the historical development of the human race. This is, as they say, ' the biographical force in history '. Rightly viewed, the life of Sri Aurobindo is a pilgrimage of India's awakening soul to that Temple of Light from whose pinnacle it would radiate its splendour over the whole world. The politico-economic freedom of fallen India is but the starting-point of her long, arduous, determined uphill climb to the yet unattained summit of her being from where alone she can share the celestial wealth of her pilgrimage with the world around. Through the long process of her history India has prepared herself a rock-bottom base for the evolution of her soul; there is provision too of a spring-board for an occasional leap upward, a saltus of her evolving soul. At the present age, Sri Aurobindo's life and work foreshadow that spring-board and the saltus.
The first period of India's evolution was luminous with the discovery of the Spirit developing her intuition; the second completed the discovery of the Dharma expanding her mind; the third was one of elaboration of the principles that governed the second. But none was exclusive, the three elements were always interactive. The third period is remarkable for its intellectual activity and achievement of immense importance in history. India rose to the peak of classical excellence in every branch of knowledge, through which her soul expressed its force and richness of life. Thus had she her round of experiences of the material basis of life and a completion of another stage of her evolution.4
The next grander preparation for the crowning stage was to be a new age of the Spirit which would spiritualise life and mind and then harmonise and orientate them to a larger vision and a freer play of the Light. This age was long in coming because the Seer and Leader had yet to appear. The interval was a prolonged lull of centuries. But the light of India's soul had not completely died out when the shock of the West impinged on her and threw up a new problem. Rather an old one in a new but insistent form: reconciling the forces of life, the gift of the West, with the forces of the Spirit, the contribution of India. The flickering
4 A fuller treatment of this line of India's evolution has been made in the first chapter of the writer's book The Vision of India. light flamed up in Sri Aurobindo whose pilgrim-soul visioned not only the oneness of all existence but of Matter and Life as forms and manifestations of the One Consciousness, One Spirit. It is this sense of One Divine Consciousness in multiform expressions that must for ever be established on earth that man may always live, move and have his being in that consciousness, and enjoy the peace and harmony that is his soul's to possess and enjoy. This was the vision of the Vedic and Vedantic Seers and Sri Aurobindo by affirming and realising it today disclosed not only his secret affinity with them, but seized her historic life-line that would ensure her existence from all catastrophe and promote her all-round development.
This explains why a firsthand and complete knowledge of the underlying principles of the various aspects and expressions of life must be had by one charged with the work of liberating man from the iron-grip of the thousand and one forces of division and discord into the free air of heaven on earth. It is significant that during his stay in England, Sri Aurobindo devoted his time and energy to the reading of the soul of Europe through her literature and history almost to the exclusion of her philosophy and sciences. Little did he know that the fresh blood he was drawing from the forces of Western life he would have one day to transfuse into the anaemic body and palsied mind of his own country induced by the twofold action of foreign exploitation and of the prevailing philosophy of Passivism that contradicted her true philosophy of life. A thorough knowledge of the progressive forces in the world gave him whatever intellectual equipment he needed for his appointed work in the future. His mastery in the ways of the Spirit came to him in India. And the notes from these two chords combined into the symphony of his soul out of which arose a new music of heaven, the new Song Celestial for the world to be.
Almost all the arrangements that his father made for Sri Aurobindo's upbringing in India and England seemed to show that he unknowingly acted as Providence moved him to, though his own intention in the scheme was different. Dr. K. D. Ghose,5 a man of great ability, strong personality and wide munificence, had been among the first to go to England for his education. He returned entirely anglicised in habits, ideas and ideals. Yet, as will be seen later, he was keenly alive to the injustices of British administration in India and felt strongly that it was the cause of all indignities and humiliations of his countrymen. He belonged to that type of honest and well-intentioned Indians of his generation who loved European ways for what they sincerely believed to be of superior worth. Dr. Ghose, however, did not cherish this bias for long. He showed interest in his country's literature, particularly in the writings of Bankimchandra. The well-being of his people "was nearest to his heart. The poor he served not only with free medical aid but with lavish charities, often forgetful of his personal and family needs, even of the needs of his children in England.
Not so much in the case of his other sons, as in that of Sri Aurobindo, Dr. Ghose took the greatest care that nothing Indian should touch this son of his, even when he was a child. Sri Aurobindo knew very little of his mother tongue till his return to India at the age of
5 Dr. Ghose belonged to the reputed Ghoses of Konnagar in the district of Hooghly, West Bengal. Leaving its mark on the old literature of Bengal, Konnagar maintained its importance even in the nineteenth century when it saw some of its illustrious sons taking leading positions in the life of Bengal. One of them was Sibchandra Dev, a prominent leader of Brahmo Samaj, widely known for his philanthropy which gave to Konnagar most of its public institutions. Dr. Ghose married Srimati Swarnalata, daughter of Rishi Rajnarayan Basu, ' the grandfather of Indian nationalism ', and had one daughter and four sons of whom Sri Aurobindo was the third. Sri Aurobindo, however, was bom in Calcutta on the 15th of August 1872. During the Swadeshi days, he visited Konnagar twice and addressed public meetings both the times. The youths unhorsed his carriage and drew it themselves. The spontaneous love and respect for their countryman expressed itself in several other ways. twenty-one. At home till his fifth year he spoke only English and Hindusthani. For two years after that, he had his education along with his two elder brothers, at the Loretto Convent School at Darjeeling. Sri Aurobindo was seven when his father took his three sons to England and placed them with an English family—the Drewetts who were his personal friends—' with strict instruction that they should not be allowed to make the acquaintance of any Indian or undergo any Indian influence. These instructions were carried out to the letter and Aurobindo grew up in an entire ignorance of India, her people, her religion, and her culture'.
For the first five years Sri Aurobindo was educated at home by Mr. Drewett. Impressed by little Aurobindo's proficiency in Latin, the Headmaster of St, Paul's school in London to which he was admitted, took him up himself to ground him in Greek and then pushed him rapidly in higher classes of the school. While at Manchester and at St. Paul's in London, Sri Aurobindo became familiar with English classics, ' but even at St; Paul's in the last three years he simply went through his school course spending most of his spare time in general reading,, especially English poetry, literature and fiction, French literature and the history of ancient, medieval and modern Europe. He spent some time also over learning Italian, some German and a little Spanish. He devoted much of his time to writing poetry. The school studies during this period engaged very little of his time; he was already at ease in them and did not think it necessary to labour over them any longer. AH the same he was able to win all the prizes in King's College in one year for Greek and Latin verse, etc.'
About this time the child went through two experiences that had prophetic bearings on his future life and work. ' At the age of eleven Aurobindo had already received strongly the impression that a period of general upheaval and revolutionary changes was coming in the world and that he himself was destined to play a part in it. His attention was now drawn to India and this feeling soon canalised into the idea of the liberation of his own country. But it took full shape only towards the end of another four years.' Concerning this, Sri Aurobindo wrote to his wife in 1905: 'Others know their country as a material thing, as fields, plains, forests, mountains, rivers; I know my country as Mother, I offer her my devotions, my worship. If a monster sits upon her breast and prepares to suck her blood, what does her child do? Does he quietly sit down to his meal . . . or rush to her rescue? I know I have in me the power to accomplish the deliverance of my fallen country. ... It is the power of knowledge, Brahmatej founded in Jnana. This feeling is not new to me, not of the present day; with this feeling I was born; it is in the marrow of my bones. God has sent me to earth to do this work, the seed of which first germinated when I was fourteen and it took deep root in me when I was eighteen.'6
It is clear from these his own words that Sri Aurobindo became conscious of his life's mission when he was only a child living in a foreign land. He also knew then that there was a work of God for him to do and that work was India's liberation. When God's bright heaven full of the vision of the future used often to burst on the consciousness of this young soul, he wondered why and how they were coming to him, and tried to trace them to the poetry of Shelley he was then reading. Years later he realised that they were prompted by a force other than human.
The next phase of his stay in England was what covered the period of his preparation for the Indian Civil Service Examination, of which his father was very particular. In a letter to a relative he wrote: ' Ara (Aurobindo) I hope will glorify his country by his brilliant administration.'7 In 1890 Sri Aurobindo passed with credit his final examination at St. Paul's securing a scholarship for further studies in the College. The
6 Sri Aurobinder Patra (in Bengali), pp. 8-9 7 The Orient, Calcutta, 27.2.49.
same year he appeared for the I.C.S. Examination which also he passed with credit, scoring record marks in the language-group, Greek and Latin. At the end of the period of probation, however, he avoided appearing for the departmental riding test. The fact is that he felt no call for the I.C.S. and wished to escape from that bondage. By certain manoeuvres he managed to get himself disqualified for riding without himself rejecting the service which he knew his family would not have allowed him to do. What actually happened is this that in the first test he fell down, and when called for the second chance on another day, he was walking about the streets of London and was therefore too late for the train that would take him to Woolwich where the test was to be held. There was an idea of trying for a third chance. But the India Office had already received reports of the revolutionary speeches delivered by Sri Aurobindo in Cambridge (Indian Majlis), advocating the cause of Indian independence. Sri Aurobindo learnt afterwards that these speeches had their part in determining the authorities to exclude him from the Indian Civil Service; the failure in the riding test was only an occasion, for in such cases an opportunity was given for remedying this defect in India itself. These incidents are, however, full of significance for the future of this young man who scorned the most-coveted of services that an Indian of his day might secure in his country. Indeed, the hand of Providence was here preparing him for his great work for India and the world.
Sri Aurobindo now came to Cambridge and took up Classical Tripos and passed high in the first part (first class) of the examination. This is what Oscar Browning, the famous don of Cambridge, told Sri Aurobindo who quoted his words in a letter to his father published in The Orient of 27.2.49: 'I suppose you have passed an extraordinarily high examination. I have examined papers at thirteen examinations and I have never during that time seen such excellent papers as yours.'
At Cambridge, Sri Aurobindo refreshed his know- ledge of the European languages with a view to reading the great literary works of these languages in the original. More important, however, was his preoccupation at Cambridge with political activities which in the main consisted in making fiery speeches pointing out the evils of British rule in India and the need for strong and revolutionary action to bring about the liberation of the country; and all this, it may seem strange, despite the care his father took to keep him away from anything Indian. These speeches were noted by India Office authorities and were one cause why they were so ready to get rid of him as a prospective member of the Indian Civil Service.
There had been already started at Cambridge the well-known association of Indian students, Indian Majlis. Sri Aurobindo was its secretary for sometime and used often to participate in its debates and address its members on the political condition of his country. Thus he did a great deal to rouse the Indian youths in England to a sense of their rights and responsibilities as Indians, to the sad plight of their motherland under an alien rule. And his speeches would invariably sparkle with revolutionary ideas and hints on the project of an actual revolution in India that was then forming in his mind.
As already said, his eleventh year 'impression' became more precise at fourteen when Sri Aurobindo for the first time became conscious of his work for the freedom of his country. In his eighteenth year, he took the decision to dedicate himself to the cause. No wonder therefore that he should have, by now, clear ideas and some plan of the work that he was meant to do for the liberation of his Motherland. He felt that the deadweight of subjection that was crushing out the vitality Of his country could be thrown off only by a revolution the plan of which then began to enter his thoughts and take form, as will be seen later.
Among his companions in Cambridge were K. G. Deshpande, Sir Harisingh Gaur and C. P. Beachcroft who as Sessions Judge tried Sri Aurobindo and others in the famous Alipore Case. He was however more intimate with Deshpande with whom, and later, with Chittaranjan Das in London, he used to have frequent discussions about his plan of revolutionary action in India. Both these friends continued their co-operation with Sri Aurobindo in his work in India.
It may be mentioned here that while in England, Sri Aurobindo was not unaware of the political conditions then prevailing in the country, about which he had known nothing before he began to read The Bengalee, a daily newspaper published from Calcutta, edited by Surendranath Banerji. Sri Aurobindo's father ' regularly sent him this paper with passages marked relating cases of maltreatment of Indians by Englishmen and in his letters to his son ' he would often denounce the British Government in India as a heartless Government '. This is positive proof of the patriotic feeling of his father whose love of European culture did not supplant his love for his motherland.
Sri Aurobindo's sojourn in England was not at all a plain sailing. The last three years were for him and his two elder brothers a very trying time. Their mother at home had been suffering from protracted mental disorder and the father would before everything else meet the ever-increasing calls on his purse not only from his poor patients but also from a large number of poor people and relatives. For these reasons his remittances to his sons in England grew irregular and inadequate. Sri Aurobindo experienced in a real measure ' hardships and even starvation'. But nothing could damp the ardour of his spirits.
' The Indian students in London once met to form a secret society called romantically " Lotus and Dagger " in which each member vowed to work for the liberation of India generally and to take some special work in furtherance of that end. Aurobindo became a member of it along with his brothers. But the society was stillborn. This happened immediately before his return to India and when he had finally left Cambridge. Indian politics at that time was timid and moderate and this was the first attempt of the kind by Indian students in England.' The activities of the moderate politicians of India came in for severe criticism and scathing exposure in a series of articles Sri Aurobindo wrote and published within six months of his return to India.
Sri Aurobindo's talent for poetry began to express itself when he was ten. About this time he knew Latin enough and a couple of years later his knowledge of Greek grew remarkably high. He was then rendering passages from Greek into English. Laurence Binyon was struck so much by one such translation that he encouraged Sri Aurobindo to cultivate his poetical gifts more earnestly. Some of the English poems that he wrote in England are published in his book Songs to Myrtilla. One of these was on the death of the well-known Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell whom he addressed as:
' O pale and guiding light, now star unspheared, Deliverer lately hailed,' . . .
Lines packed with history, rich in suggestion, aglow with worship. A reflection too of the fervour and trend of the young poet's mind and heart. A boy in his early teens, from a child cut off from his country, knowing nothing of it, nothing of its history, none of its languages, not even his mother tongue, engrossed in a wide range of studies. But his imagination aflame with thoughts of her liberation! Naturally enough, his homage to Parnell is the welling out of a kindred soul and so, so touching.
In Cambridge Sri Aurobindo made an attempt to learn Bengali and also Sanskrit. Nothing is known about his studies of ancient Indian literature except the fact that he read the volumes of The Sacred Books of the East series, edited by Max-Muller. In the translations of the Upanishadic series he came upon the idea of 'self'. This and other Vedantic teachings led him to believe that they were no ideas merely to be studied but truths to be lived. The mellow light of the Vedanta blessing the youth at the spring-time of life when Nature's gusts from various quarters sweep the mind and rock the being!
The time was now come for him to leave the country where he passed fourteen long years—most of his boyhood and some creative years of his early youth when he had nothing uppermost in his thoughts but poetry and liberation of his country.
It was about the end of 1892 when his brothers were wondering what career Sri Aurobindo should choose. Just about that time Sir Sayajirao Gaekwad, who was in England, wanted an I.C.S. man for the Baroda State. James Cotton, whom one of Sri Aurobindo's brothers knew, arranged for an interview after which the Gaekwad selected him on the spot. Thus came to Sri Aurobindo an opportunity to come back to India and serve his country.
In January 1893, he left England. With no pang of separation he left her shores. For no physico-vital attachment had ever a place in his nature. He did develop in him ' an attachment to English and European thought and literature, but not to England as a country; he had no ties there and did not make England his adopted country, as Monmohan, his elder brother, did for a time. If there was attachment to a European land as a second country, it was intellectually and emotionally to one not seen or lived in in his life, not England but France'. ' Few friendships were made in England and none very intimate; the mental atmosphere was not found congenial.'
Thus ended the days in England of a soul who was to do mighty things for the future of his country and the world. This period served to impress him with the indispensability of material contribution to the divine work of liberation that was awaiting him in India— the political liberation as the first essential step to her own and the world's spiritual liberation.
Averse to using European methods in India's politics, Sri Aurobindo had to use them in the exigencies of the situation in the country as he found them. And on this task he always brought to bear his practical mind, his first-hand knowledge and intimate understanding of European history and of the English people, their bent of mind and nature.
There is a yet deeper implication of his training in England. The future will be a spiritual civilisation. It will integrate the best in the existing cultures of the East and the West, yet exceeding them into a new creation under the sovereign sway of the Spirit. Such an eventuality will be possible when the present life and mind of man, liberated from their numerous slaveries, lend themselves to the divine action of the Spirit. The East—India in particular—tried this and made much headway towards the goal but could not follow it up for various untoward conditions, one of which being the repeated impacts of foreign rule and foreign cultures. Nevertheless, India retained in her soul the light of the Spirit her ancients saw. It is this light that will give the next great drive towards the coming remaking of man. The West took the path of Life and her victories in that direction are the marvels of the modern world. But these victories have brought upon her incalculable miseries in their train. The deliverance of man lies, therefore, in a harmony between these two apparently opposite but really complementary poles of existence.
It was thus ordained that one who would reveal to man the truth of this harmony should himself know the essential meaning of these two poles. The early part of his tapasya in England unlocked to Sri Aurobindo the meaning of the West; the later part, in India, a more arduous tapasya, gave him that of the East. The entirely foreign education, the foreign surroundings in which he lived there, the academic brilliances and accomplishments he gained were enough to have denationalised an ordinary soul. But Sri Aurobindo came out of it all, untouched, intact, true to his own self, in every way a truer Indian than one could wish for.
In fact, his days in England were the first steps of the pilgrimage of his soul to that Temple of Light it was decreed to reach. This pilgrimage was for his soul to gather in strength and experience for its mighty work in the future, the work of preparing the consciousness of man for the new age of the Spirit that would dawn as a completing phenomenon in the cycle of India's evolution.
Centuries ago India was almost ready for this spiritual resurgence but the seer was not there, neither the vision. The time was now ripe for this vision to be seen and revealed. Hence the advent of the Master-Seer in an age of the highest development of the human mind which by its own power is unable to extricate itself from its own complexities. It was therefore a divine dispensation that Sri Aurobindo should have passed his early life in the very heart of this new development, in order to be able, all the more easily and with direct knowledge, to probe its whole content and draw from it whatever knowledge he would need to make good the defects of h is country where his soul would have scope to open into the boundless realms of the Light and conquer their infinite riches with which to build a golden bridge between East and West, heaven and earth. The Light is enshrined in his country' s soul with which, as if by a magnetic attraction, he realised the oneness of his own soul. The rediscovery of this Light by Sri Aurobindo, which was first seen by the Vedic Seers and which has ever been behind India's historic evolution, suggests a secret link between him and this evolution, between India he represents and the world he would work for.
The child of the Mother is on his way back to her bosom. What was he doing on board the ship that was carrying this lone, quiet, pensive young man musing on the future he was to face? He did nothing but read books on Yoga, books he could secure in England just on the eve of his departure. 1893 is a landmark in the long history of India's spiritual life. For the first time in the present age, it marks the coincidence of two remarkable phenomena: Swami Vivekananda goes out to the West; Sri Aurobindo comes home to the East. The one to illumine the West with the light of the East as the preparation for the greater light to follow. The other to liberate the Mother and then, through her, to liberate the world.
Another fact of note. As Sri Aurobindo set foot on the soil of India at Apollo Bunder in Bombay he felt a deep calm and silence within him and without, pervading and enveloping his whole being. As a flash it came, but came to stay for two or three days and then slowly passed. Years later he recognised and realised it as Brahmic Calm! Does it not mean that while receiving him back into her bosom, the Mother initiated him then and there into the mystery of her soul and charged him with the work that was his to do?
We may read in it the Will of God that India should rise and be free and have her rightful place in the forefront of nations, because only a liberated India could by her supreme 'Creative Word' bring about the vaster liberation of the world. It was therefore that Sri Aurobindo declared complete independence to be the goal of India and gave to the country a dynamic lead to that end. |