-02_The Advent Part 1

THERE are some wise recommendations here, for example, not to be busy with what others do nor with the mistakes they make, but to occupy oneself with one's own faults and negligence's and mend them. Another wise counsel is never to utter too many eloquent words which are not effectuated in action —speak little, act well. Beautiful words, they say, that are mere words are like flowers without fragrance.

And finally, lest you get discouraged by your own faults, Dhammapada gives you this solacing image : the purest lotus can spring out of a heap of rubbish on the roadside. That is to say, there is nothing so rotten as not be able to give birth to the purest realisation.

Whatever may be the past, whatever may be the faults committed, whatever the ignorance in which one might have lived, one carries deep within oneself the supreme purity which can translate itself into a wonderful realisation.

The whole point is to think of that, to concentrate on that and not to be busy with all one's difficulties and obstacles and hindrances.

Concentrate exclusively on what you want to be, forget as entirely as possible what you do not want to be.

This seems to point directly to hypocrites who take up the external forms and appearances of wisdom but in their heart keep all the desires, ambitions, the need of show and live to satisfy this ambition and these desires instead of living for the only thing that is worth living for; attainment of the true consciousness, integral self-giving to the Divine, the peace, the light and the delight that come from the true knowledge and self-forgetfulness.

One could easily replace in the whole text here the word senseless by the word ego. One who lives in his ego, for his ego, in the hope of satisfying his ego is the senseless person. Unless

you transcend ego, unless you reach a state of consciousness in which ego has no reason for existing, you cannot hope to attain the goal.

The ego seems to have been indispensable at one time for the formation of the individual consciousness, but with the ego are born all the obstacles, sufferings, difficulties, all that appears now to us as adverse and anti-divine forces. But these forces themselves were a necessity for attaining an inner purification and the liberation from ego. The ego is at once the result of their action and the cause of their prolongation. When the ego will disappear, the adverse forces will also disappear, having no longer any reason for their existence in the world.

With the inner liberation, with a total sincerity and perfect purity, all suffering will disappear, because it will no more be necessary for the progress of the consciousness towards its final goal.

Wisdom then consists in working with energy at the inner transformation so that you may come out victoriously from a struggle which will have borne its fruits but will have no longer any reason to exist.

THE sex pull is that of a general force which uses the individual for its purpose and it takes advantage of any proximity of the other one....The security lies in oneself, in immediate detachment (standing apart, not accepting as one's own) and rejecting it.

If his faith depends on the perfection of the sadhaks, obviously, it must be a rather shaky thing ! Sadhaks and sadhakas are not supposed to be perfect. It is only siddhas for whom one can claim perfection and even then not according to mental standards. ...His faith seems to be more mental than otherwise, and mental faith can easily go.

To be by oneself very much needs a certain force of inner life. It may be better to vary solitude with some kind of its opposite. But each has its advantages and disadvantages and it is only by being vigilant and keeping an inner poise that one can avoid the latter.

To find all that (joy, peace, sufficiency in oneself) in oneself is only possible to a few who have a powerful mental life and great strength of character. Others find these things in the Divine or else they find substitutes for them in the society of others. To find them in the Divine one must have an inner soul-life which is so strong and full that it is sufficient to itself. You have not reached on that stage is evident from your not being able to live two days alone. Apart from that, to be absolutely secluded

and alone is not always a good thing. To be able to be alone or to move with others and keep the same consciousness is the ideal.

We have had sufferings and struggles to which yours is mere child's play. I have not made our cases equal to yours. I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open a way for humans too to a higher consciousness. If nobody can follow the Way, then either the conception of the thing which is that of Christ and Krishna and Buddha also is all wrong or the whole life and action of the Avatar is futile. N seems to say that there is no way and no utility...of following, but the struggles and sufferings of the Avatar are unreal and all humbug; there is no virtue...in struggle for one who represents the Divine. Such an idea makes nonsense of the whole idea of Avatar hood. There is no reason in it, no necessity for it, no meaning in it. The Divine being all powerful can lift people up without bothering to come down on earth. It is only if it is part of the world arrangement that he should take upon himself the burden of humanity and open the Way that Avatar hood has any meaning.

It is no use entertaining these feelings. One has to see what the world is without becoming bitter; for the bitterness comes from one's own ego and its disappointed expectations. If one wants the victory of the Divine, one must achieve it in oneself first.

Whatever you do for E., it is better not to give it the appearance of teaching or let it be spoken of as such. It should be merely as if you were amusing her.

These are E., imaginations and as children do she constructs a real world out of them by attaching them to the real world and presenting to herself and others that she actually spoke and heard these things from the Mother. If she were older she would feel as if these things were illuminations from some real self within and not need to put them in the mouth of the Mother. But she is too young for that. Still it is not mere lying—it is an attempt to support the reality these things have for her.

This is a well-known psychology of children. It is a pity that 99.9 percent of parents should be absolutely ignorant about it. It is no use being severe with children.

E. lives normally in a world of imagination of her own, like many children, and to her these things seem real, more real perhaps than outer things. Human parents are stupid and matter of fact, take all that as mere lies and the child grows up either her imaginations suppressed or unbalanced and neurotic.

These delicate imaginations and inspirations of children which they tell usually only to people in whom they feel sympathy ought not to be subjected to the rough-handling of people who do not understand.

"My father and mother do not really love me. It is not for myself they love me, but for their own sake." The character of ordinary human love cannot be better discriminated, but few can see it. And yet she is only a child of nine.

THIS human world of ours is an emergence out of the Inconscient, a gurgitation from the cavernous depths of the womb of the black dragon-base of all existence. So the mortal mind, life and body are sicklied all over with the pale cast of Ignorance, the slime and mucus of inertia and nescience. All the movements of thought, feeling and instinctive response have amidst their orgiastic revelries and mad gambols this marvellous and alarming consistency of fidelity to the parental source. A downward gravitation to the nether origin enveloping and embracing all its children, unites all the otherwise divergent faculties in man even in their greatest flights and most sublime ascents. In fact, this original Force of division and separation of the units of consciousness leading to their death-in-life existence and finally terminating in the total oblivion of all consciousness which is death, has evolved the faithful delegate of the human Ego as 'the lynch pin in the wheel of delusion', the hub of all its operations upon mind, life and body and the obsessively haunting shadow falling on and vitiating all manifestations of this world. A creature of the universal lower nature, the ego assumes the three postures of Tamas or weak and slavish but growling acceptance of the human predicament, Rajas or self-asserting, possessive aggrandise ment and proud domination, and Sattwa or self-righteous, sense-bound ratiocination of limited superficial knowledge and balance. Each mode has its leading instrument or faculty which serves as the lever of operation on the other members in the human tenement. The Sattwic Ego is concentrated in the reasoning mind; the ever-hungry, all-devouring lower vital, mahasano, mahapapma, becomes the vehicle of the Rajasic Ego; the Tamasic Ego chooses the undeveloped higher vital, the petty heart with its limited power of expansion of consciousness as its seat. These are the three dialects in the kingdom of the ego :—a moaning, wrathful,

anguished speech, a supremely self-confident, arrogant, thundering oration and a sober language of self-awareness of one's strength and weakness and therefore a curious amalgam of the grandiose accent and cosmic pathos.

The tamasic ego is exclusively preoccupied with misery, and the world for it is only a theatre of sorrows inflicted by the ruthless hand of a malicious President of the immortals whose sole pleasure is in the chastisement of this single individual, with other individuals and fate as His faithful attendants and accomplices. The very fire of aspiration planted in its heart becomes the instrument of torture because of its utter impossibility of fulfilment; the dreams of the splendours of heaven only serve to emphasise the agony of life in the actual world of unrealised ideals and frustrated ambitions. Heaven and hell, however contrary in their conditions of life point to one end which is suffering, always. Each attempt to throw off the yoke or tyranny of circumstance only gives place to a new subjection, and life therefore is a perpetual slavery and drudgery without love or reward. Not only God but the whole human kind is aligned against one man whose essential nature is so absolutely self-centred and whose heart is so petty that all goodness, kindness and altruism are only subtle masks of selfishness. It would be quite worthwhile and desirable to get strength in order that one might dominate all and so torture all and enjoy the pain of all and even their short-lived pleasure which serves only as a background to reinforce and intensify the very pain, the groundswell of all life. But since that cannot be, the only alternative left is to cherish one's suffering and go on increasing it in quantity and quality and therefore excel all others. It is impossible to take delight in the riches and happiness of others which excite only envy and hatred. This is evil indeed, but evil is the very nature of this being and what Nature made one, one can only remain. A fierce satisfaction with one's special pangs, a perverse delight in suffering is the only refuge for this man of sorrows. 'To suffer and toil and weep; to moan and hate.'

Not this state of being invaded by self-pity, vishada, kripayavistam, is the characteristic of the Rajasic Ego, but a naked, amoral worship of power, and pleasure in its exercise. Its aim is

the complete possession and mastery of the world which is only an arena for the manifestation of its power. In fact everything has been created only for its enjoyment and aggrandise ment, the elements and all the resources of this vast universe. The last born of the creator, it stands first, and is the destined leader and master of all, who does not believe in respecting the laws of Nature and the miserable condition of the established world, but would break it to pieces and remould it to its heart's conception, for it is greater than Nature, wiser than God. What God imperfect left, it will complete and eliminate the sin and error in His creation. It will become the new creator of a new world where the secret atomic energy will serve its needs of destruction of the enemy and whole nations and of construction in expanding its wealth and comforts. Space and Time have been mastered, beast and reptile subjugated and trained to be willing vassals. Very soon the technological mastery of Nature will reach its completion and the science of occultism now in its infancy will be perfected when a look or thought will be enough to slay one's enemies whose hidden thoughts and feelings can be sensed with ease. Complete sovereignty over the earth once established, its empire could be expanded even into the realm of the gods who will become its aids or menial folk. This pursuit of power will culminate in the achievement of omnipotence and omniscience !

Not this restless, feverish clamouring for power and overmastering desire for doing and practical achievement, but the ardent quest for knowledge and understanding with the sense-shackled intellect, of Nature, Man and the Beyond if it exists, is the hall mark of the Sattwic Ego. It is proud indeed of its glorious achievements in unravelling the secrets of the world by the pursuit of scientific enquiry. The rapid strides in Astronomy, Geology, Archeology, Natural Sciences, Physiology, Chemistry and Physics have given it a knowledge of the processes of external forms of Nature on earth, sky and air. But truth of process is not truth of essence and by the very nature of the instruments used in scientific analysis—observation by sense-experience, naked or enlarged, and intellectual purification, classification and speculation or inference, constructing tentative hypotheses on the

basis of the data supplied by the senses—the fundamental why or the cause of things must escape its scrutiny. The spirit escapes or dies beneath his knife. It can foresee the acts of Matter's force but the destiny of man or the nature of life remains a mystery. In these realms, the great intellectual philosophies of the speculative mind and imagination are only a reasoned guess. 'A certain kind of agnosticism is the final truth of all intellectual knowledge.' When all has been explained, nothing is known. Perhaps we are only such stuff as dreams are made of and our little life is rounded with a sleep and the universe a trick of the senses or a dance of Maya and even if an Ultimate Reality or a Vast Consciousness exists it is better if it is not approached but kept at a respectable distance because it might well nigh swallow and obliterate the individual uniqueness. Again this might mean the over spacing of the beloved pastures of the sense-mind and the attractions of the finite. Our smallness saves us from the Infinite. Extinction of the Ego is not life but the great eternal Death. Being human, one should prefer to be human and enter into the original inconscient in natural death. The immanence of the Transcendent is a chimera. Time and Timelessness are mutually irreconcilable contraries which can never coexist. The divine and the human are polar opposites and no thinking man will entertain the hope of getting his finite members transformed into the infinite !

These are the three cosmic Nature-forces of Egoism with their characteristic entrenchment in themselves whether feeling, willing or knowing. All individual human beings are more or less open to these with varying intensity or concentration and even alternately they receive and embody the growling wrathful cry of self-pity of the brute Titan with his love of sorrow or the triumphant tone of self-assertion of the dwarf-Titan with his gospel of power, or the agnostic whisper of the mind of superficial knowledge with its commitment to the externalizing reason. So men imagine and live under a black sun or sometimes attempt at smiting at the sun with their shadowy nature or again analyse it and reduce it to its component elements and miss its truth for 'ever. And so life in the lower Prakriti of Ignorance seems to be under the curse of the doom of Death.

But all these ugly noises and terrible discordant notes are only perverted echoes and warped cries and distortions of other, more subtle and harmonious tunes audible to the subliminal ear of the seeker of Truth. For behind Prakriti is Pardprakriti, behind Nature-force, Soul-Force. The dark infinite of the Inconscient is answered by the luminous Infinity of the Superconscient. In fact, the very evolution of mind, life and body out of the cosmic drowse of Inconscience is by the compulsion and pressure of the* Superconscient from above. The One original Transcendent Shakti has sent forth emanations from her being to preside over the evolution, support it from behind and prepare the conditions for a progressively higher ascent of life and descent of the now unmanifest supernal verities. These delegates from the Transcendent kindle and maintain and intensify the aspiration in man for communion with and manifestation of the forces and powers of the Higher Vast Consciousness, Bhuma. These are the three Mothers of the universe—Madonna of suffering, Mother of grief divine; Madonna of might, Mother of works and force; Madonna of light, Mother of joy and peace. The divine pity is echoed by self-pity, divine selfless power by human self-assertion and divine light by the flickering light of human reason.

Suffering is rooted in and is the product of Ignorance and since the latter is sevenfold we have the seven sorrows and every act based upon one of these kinds of ignorance delivers a stab into the world-mother's heart. The constitutional ignorance which arises because of the material base and orientation of human life, inflicts pain on all life and mind, things not so tangible or valuable as matter. The Psychological ignorance which consists in completely limiting oneself to the surface mind, life and body wounds the deeper parts and planes of being because of insensitivity to these. Exclusive preoccupation with one's egoistic life results in the ignorance of the timeless, the superconscient, the subliminal, the subconscient and universal selves and so we commit offence, apavada, and cause misery on all these levels. The Mother of divine pity draws all these offences into her heart and dissolves

them in her universal compassion. But for her Grace, the world would be a scene of interminable torture, for every movement of ignorance not only acts upon others and produces pain but rebounds and comes back sooner or later to the person generating it and there need be no end to this Karmic chain and entanglement. This compassion of hers is spontaneous and goes out wherever there is suffering irrespective of the character of the person or his attitude or response, 'tending the hands that gave her cruel blows' and 'serving the hearts that spurned her love and zeal', avyaja karunā. Nor is it working, as a detached, non-participating and uninvolved agency. She is the soul of all who wail and she becomes by identity even the forms and personalities afflicted. So she is woman, nurse, slave and beaten beast. Her identification with suffering creatures is so complete that the helpless prayer in despair of response is felt as hers. Not only the occasions and areas of extraordinary suffering like the scream of tortured flesh, the cry of ravished woman or slashed child but the customary sorrows of daily life like the toil of the yoked animal drudge, the unwanted tedious labour without joy and the fear-filled life of bird and beast are shared by her wide heart. To bear with an untiring patience all this terrible load of suffering including the cruelty of Nature and the ruthless indifference of the gods, without complaining against the creator, is her accepted lot. Because of her presence, men do not yield to their doom but hope for happiness and strive with fate. Her aspiration and prayer are for the suffering humanity 'only to change this great hard world of pain'. She waits with faith, hope and certitude for the hour of God.

The Mother of Might is the guardian of the worlds of felicity and truth-consciousness, from the invasion of the powers of Death and Night. She is the divine warrior with the divine puissance smiting the Titan who bestrides the world and helping the unfortunate and saving the doomed. Always in the thick of the battle of the bright and sombre powers, her voice of sovereign command assuring victory is a charm restoring hope in failing hearts. She is the dispenser of the reward and the applause for the strong and the wise and when their day is done, their trampler

with the armed heel of Fate, always true to her spiritual supra-ethical vision and will. The gods and the goblins must obey her imperious touch or court disaster. She is especially the guide of man to the path of the Divine guarding him from the dangerous Asuric vital force of the red Wolf and the cunning, crawling subconscient power of the Snake. Breaking all his narrowness and pride she invests his aspiration with a wideness and mounting intensity and takes him through the shortest, secret and occult route to his spiritual goal. She does not hesitate to rob him of his worldly success if by that alone she could set him in the higher path of spiritual sadhana. Because of her presence, man hopes and dares and his soul can climb the heavens and walk like Gods in the presence of the Supreme. The great obstinate world resists her word, but she has hardened her heart and does her work, helping the few towards the heights and waiting with confidence for the hour when she shall "hear the silver swing of heaven's gates, when God comes out to meet the soul of the world."

The Mother of Light has come down to the wounded desolate earth to heal her pangs by establishing a solid block of peace and therefore preparing the human consciousness to harbour Heaven's messengers and powers of light. All experience including even sin and error, in her guidance becomes a long march towards Light. She leads man through death to reach immortal life, Asato satgamana. She brings to the receptive vehicle all the values of the Paraprakriti, the spiritual Good, Right, Freedom, Valour, Wisdom, Beauty and Truth. Her ultimate aim is to make Love tread unwounded earth's soil, man's mind admit the sovereignty of Truth and his body bear the immense descent of God. She brings meanwhile the gods into the human consciousness and because of her presence, the soul draws near to God, love grows in spite of hate and knowledge walks un slain in the pit of Night. But human mind clings to ignorance and so she waits for the hour when Eternity takes Time by the hand, and infinity weds the finite's thought.

These are the triple cosmic soul-forces, aspects of the World-Mother, Over mental Goddesses and faithful instruments of the

Superconscient, Supramental Ishwari Shakti. "It is the function of the over mind to give to every possibility its full potential, its own separate kingdom, to separate the main powers of consciousness and give to each its full separate development and satisfaction, its own soul and significant body and take it on its own way as far as it can go." So these are triple and not triune; each lacks the power of the others, the being of pity and love wanting power and wisdom; the being of power not endowed with wisdom and compassion and the being of light devoid of that puissance and that sympathy. All admit the recalcitrance of the threatening Inconscience which requires for its victorious handling not only a blending of all these powers but a new Power, the very power of the Supermind. So the World-Mother in her three Forms together with Aswapati, the lord of earthly life yearning for the life divine waits with an ardent aspiration and prayer, but with a calm certitude of fulfilment, for the Avatar of the Supermind.

The prayer is answered and Savitri, the Divine Mother comes to bring down the Supramental. She is the living power of the incarnate Word, the force by which the Lord made the worlds, His vision, will and voice descending here with the impetuous drive of a heart of flame and a passion to deliver man and earth. This mighty sadhana of hewing the ways of immortality for man, involves the blending of the three levels of consciousness of the totality of the earth, of the world-Mother and of the Transcendent Lord. "To be the Life in all material forms, the Thought organising and using this fife in all forms, the Love enlarging, enlightening, intensifying, uniting all the diverse elements of this Thought, and thus by a total identification with the manifested world, to be able to intervene with all power in its transformations.

"On the other hand, by a perfect surrender to the Supreme Principle, to become conscious of the Truth and the eternal Will which manifests it. By this identification, becoming the faithful servant and sure intermediary of the divine Will, and uniting this conscious identification of the Principle with the

conscious identification of the becoming, to mould and model consciously the love, mind and life of the becoming according to the Law of Truth of the Principle.

"It is thus that the individual being can be the conscious intermediary between the absolute Truth and the manifested universe and intervene in the slow and uncertain advance of the Yoga of Nature in order to give it the swift, intense and sure character of the divine Yoga." "With fervour I salute Thee, O divine Mother, and with deep feeling I identify myself with Thee. United with our divine Mother, I turn towards Thee, O Lord, and I salute Thee in a mute adoration; in an ardent aspiration I identify myself with Thee."

"Mother Divine, thou art with us; every day thou givest me the assurance and, closely united in an identity that grows more and more total, more and more constant, "we" turn to the Lord of the universe and to That which is beyond in a great aspiration towards the new Light. All the earth is in our arms like a sick child which must be cured and for which one has a special affection because of its very weakness. Cradled on the immensity of the eternal becomings, ourselves those becomings, we contemplate, hushed and glad, the eternity of the immobile Silence where all is realised in the perfect Consciousness and immutable Existence, miraculous gate of all the unknown that is beyond.

Then is the veil torn, the inexpressible Glory uncovered and, suffused with the ineffable Splendour, we turn back towards the world to bring it the glad tidings." "Yet Thou gavest me hours of unforgettable illumination, hours when the union between the most divine Consciousness and the most material had become perfect, hours when the identification of the individual being with the universal Mother and of the universal Mother with Thee was so complete that the individual consciousness perceived simultaneously its own existence, the life of the whole universe and Thy eternity beyond all change." So Savitri commences as the ordinary mortal woman whose husband is fated to die and undergoes all the pangs felt by such a lady and then enters into her subliminal with the aspiration of the collective human consciousness and then begins her upward ascent into the overhead

planes. She has come to that part of the great winding road to the source of the universe, where it dwindled into a narrow path trod only by rare wounded pilgrim-feet. This is the region of the Over mind where the World-Mother is. She sees the Madonna of suffering, a woman sitting in a pale lustrous robe, a moon-bright face in a sombre cloud of hair, listens to the anguished music of her rapt voice and the warped tamasic echo and finally realises her as a portion of her soul and promises to bring the strength and wisdom of the Transcendent Lord. Ascending higher, she sees the Mother of Might, a woman "in gold and purple sheen, Armed with the trident and the thunderbolt,/ Her feet upon a couchant lion's back./ A formidable smile curved round her hips, Heaven-fire laughed in the corners of her eyes;/ Her body a mass of courage and heavenly strength,/ She menaced the triumph of the nether gods./ A halo of lightnings flamed around her head." She hears her puissant voice and the perverted echo of the Rajasic Ego and realises her as a portion of her soul and promises to bring the light and wisdom of the Supermind. Ascending still her upward route she meets the Mother of Light, "A woman in clear and crystal light :/ Heaven had unveiled its lustre in her eyes,/ Her feet were moonbeams, her face was a bright sun,/ Her smile could persuade a dead lacerated heart/ To live again and feel the hands of Calm." She listens to the low music of her floating voice and the answering echo of the Sattwic ego, realises her as a portion of her soul and promises to bring God down into man's body and life. Here is the complete identification with the World-Mother and her aspiration for the Transcendent. Once the ascent to the Supermind is made and the consequent conscious descent into the world-consciousness, Savitri becomes the bridge between That which eternally is, but is not manifested and that which is manifested; between all the transcendences, all the splendours of the divine life, and all the obscure and sorrowful ignorance of the material world.' The woman yearningly supplicates Her Lord :

"All that thou hast, shall be for others' bliss,

All that thou art, shall to my hands belong.

I will pour delight from thee as from a jar,

I will whirl thee as my chariot through the ways,

I will use thee as my sword and as my lyre,

I will play on thee my minstrelsies of thought,

And when thou art vibrant with all ecstasy,

And when thou livst one spirit with all things,

Then will I spare thee not my living fires,

But make thee a channel for my timeless force.

My hidden presence led thee unknowing on

From thy beginning in earth's voiceless bosom

Through life and pain and time and will and death,

Through outer shocks and inner silences

Along the mystic roads of Space and Time

To the experience which all Nature hides.

Who hunts and seizes me, my captive grows :

This shalt thou henceforth learn from thy heart-beats.

For ever love, O beautiful slave of God !

O lasso of my rapture's widening noose,

Become my cord of universal love.

The spirit ensnared by thee force to delight

Of creation's oneness sweet and fathomless,

Compelled to embrace my myriad unities

And all my endless forms and divine souls.

O Mind, grow full of the eternal peace;

O Word, cry out the immortal litany :

Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born."

So 'the world shall be freed from the anger of the beast', and 'from the cruelty of the Titan and his pain'. 'The cry of the ego shall be hushed within' and 'its lion roar that claims the world

as food'. The spiritual and sattwic ego of the partially enlightened mind will die. "The three Gunas become purified and refined and changed into their divine equivalents : sattva becomes jyoti the authentic spiritual light; rajas becomes tapas, the tranquilly intense divine force; tamas becomes śama, the divine quiet, rest, peace." 'The holy marriage is achieved' and 'the divine family is born' because, 'Her arms outstretched in a gesture of ecstasy, the Eternal Mother pours upon the world the unceasing dew of Her purest love."

ULRICH Zwingli of Switzerland imbibed Lutheran ideas and became a powerful preacher of Protestantism. A Humanist in his youth, he too, like Luther, passed through an inner struggle during a severe illness, which changed his outlook and the whole tenor of his life. He exercised a great influence in his country, and championed a more orthodox and puritanical kind of Protestantism than the Lutheran. It was characterised by an antipathy to all kinds of art, and an arid attitude in religion, devoid of any emotional leaven or mystical glow. What stands out in in his life as a pointer to the new trend in religion, springing out of the extravagant hedonism of the Renaissance, was the inner struggle, precipitating his conversion and the increasing severity of the puritanical attitude.

This rigour and austerity of attitude was further accentuated in the life and teaching of Calvin. Next to Luther, Calvin was the most important apostle of Protestantism. But, unlike Luther, he was extremely stern and ruthless in his advocacy of a Spartan discipline and stoic morality. He was influenced by Erasmus and Luther, and, renouncing Catholicism, began to preach Protestantism. He subscribed to the basic Lutheran tenets of justification by faith alone, predestination, and the original depravity of man, but was more radical and intolerant, more grim and severe in his attitude towards religious life. He was positively hostile to all forms of art, and detested singing, dancing, games, theatres, festivals, and all those forms of religious practice in which popular emotions have a free play. He established a clerical supervision of

the conduct of the people—a sort of clerical spying and policing— and was relentless in punishing even the slightest delinquency. The champion of freedom of the conscience of the individual was forced by the inexorable logic of the historical process to impose an inquisition upon human conscience and effect a strict regimentation of faith and religious life. The God he installed at the centre of his theology was the God of the Old Testament, the implacable, grim-eyed God of relentless law and justice, and not of love and grace. And yet, paradoxically, he invoked the grace of this imperial Olympian, and professed to depend upon it alone for salvation. The decoction that he held up to the thirsting his of his followers was a queer mixture of modern rationalism and mediaeval obscurantism, democratic individualism and theocratic dictatorship, religious liberty and political subjection, inflexible ethics and economic licence.

Calvin inherited the legal acumen, mental lucidity and precision, and organising ability of his father, who secured for him,— while he was only twelve !—an appointment as chaplain in the Cathedral of Noyon. He was then sent to the University of Paris where he lived under conditions of extreme hardship, physical weakness, and suffering, and graduated in theology. For his exceptional knowledge of Latin even at a very young age, and his supercilious criticism of those who knew less than he, he was dubbed "the accusative case". A young man of frail health but an iron will, he learned in the school of hardship the lessons which stood him in good stead when he was called to the leadership of a great revolution.

When Calvin was at the Paris University, Francis I, the King of France, was captured by his enemy, Emperor Charles V. of Spain. Overwhelmed by the news of their king's defeat, the people of France attributed their calamity to the impious revolt of the heretical Protestants, and initiated a vindictive campaign of persecution against them. Calvin felt indignant at this brutish display of blind religious intolerance. It turned him into an embittered rebel. It roused his religious conscience. It set fire to his moral susceptibilities. He transferred his attentions from theology to law, and obtained a Doctorate in the latter. But he

had in the meantime imbibed so much of the Protestant heresy that he resolved to cast in his lot with the enemies of the Roman Church and espouse the cause of the persecuted. Luther's creed of the justification by faith appealed to him, and he seemed to find in it a way out of his inner torment. Thus resolved and spurred, he wrote to his father : "The die is cast. I have thrown in my lot with the Protestants of the kingdom." Luther's successor, more formidable in his strength of will and mental equipment than Luther, and more uncompromising in his insistence on a Spartan discipline, Calvin rose as the leader of the Protestant movement, and gave it such a direction that the contours of the modern age, dimly visible in the preceding upheaval, which was dashed with many incongruous blotches, began to wear the definiteness of a historical fact.

A lecture, written by Calvin for the rector of the Sorbonne University, who was a friend of his, contained such shocking heresy that, in the general rage, provoked by it among the Catholics, he had to fly to Noyon, and then to Angulated for the safety of his life. For some time, though hunted from place to place, and inflamed and braced, rather than dispirited and cowed, by the dangers dogging his steps, Calvin acquired more and more theological and philosophical knowledge to equip himself for the projected crusade against the autocracy of the Roman Church. He went to Switzerland and settled at Geneva, where he gathered under his banner a considerable number of ardent Protestants, and organised a well-knit, disciplined band of devoted workers for what he considered to be his God-given mission in life. But the citizens of Geneva began to chafe against his dictatorial ways and stringent measures, and forced him to leave the city. He then traveled to Germany. But here too he was considered a bully and a pest. He married a widow and thought of settling down into family life. But an unexpected call from Geneva made him again migrate there. He lived in Geneva for the rest of his life, and ruled the city with an iron rod. Law, discipline, rigorous moral austerity, pitiless purge of the delinquents, and an unfaltering will to keep life clean, by strenuous and unremitting effort, for meriting the grace of God—these were the hard lessons Calvinism

taught the Protestants wherever it found a congenial soil to grow on and flourish.

Calvin lacked Luther's intuitive feeling and impulse, for there was no strain of mysticism in his make-up, but he possessed, what Luther had not, a clear, disciplined mind, endowed with an impressive power and precision; a scholarship, at once deep and varied, and reduced to a lucid compactness, which he could use with a shattering effect against his opponents; and a clear, cogent, sinewy mode of expression. Indeed, he wielded a wonderful prose style, which proved an invaluable asset in his religious campaign. In 1536 he published his Institutes of Christian Religion, which, undergoing several revisions, finally appeared in 1539. It was not only his own masterpiece, but a veritable masterpiece of Protestant theology. It was at once welcomed as the most systematic and exhaustive vindication of the religious revolt he represented.

Calvinism spread to many parts of Europe—France, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Germany, Poland, and Hungary. Wherever it went, it fortified the moral fibre of the people and set their secular spirit free. Luther had made the Church virtually subordinate to the State, but Calvin preached that the State and the Church were two separate institutions, representing two different aspects of life, and that, so far as religious life was concerned, the State must bend before the Church, for obedience to God came before man's allegiance to the State.¹ This was adding a fresh accent to the note of individualism sounded by Protestantism. From the sphere of religious morality, Calvin's influence penetrated into the legal and political fields of European life, and brought about perceptible changes in it. Calvin made it a rule that candidates for the ministry must be approved by the City council. They were also called upon to preach to the people, and their appointment could be confirmed only after they had satisfied the people. This was a distinct improvement on the democratic contribution of Luther. Calvin was more influenced

by the Humanists than Luther, and had, consequently, imbibed more of their rationalism and individualism, which found an expression in the impetus he gave to the political and economic changes of the time; but in religious matters, he was more mediaeval and dogmatic than Luther, and used his authority with a staggering, brutish ferocity. The persecution and burning at the stake of Servitors, a distinguished scientist, for his attack on the doctrine of the Trinity, was the greatest blot on Calvin's character. His regime is, indeed, disfigured by a series of persecutions and punishments of such revolting savagery that he came to be nicknamed "Cain". It was his "Christianity of the sword", remarks Fried ell, which was "the origin of French world-policy, Dutch expansion, and English sea-power." The disgraceful Thirty Years' War, which plunged a great part of Europe in an orgy of torture and massacre, can also be traced to Calvin's blood-thirsty fanaticism.

As we have already seen, both the Arts and Sciences suffered more at the hands of Calvin than they had at Luther's. But education throve and became democratic and liberal. It did away with all distinctions of high and low, and incorporated some of the salient elements of the Renaissance Humanism.

"Calvin's Protestantism was closely associated with the ideals of the new Capitalism. He sanctified the ventures of the trader and the money-lender, and gave an exalted place in its ethical system to the business virtues of thrift and diligence."¹

To sum up the results of the Protestant revolt : Reason, liberated by the Renaissance from its bondage to the conventional and superstitious faith of the Middle Ages, and imbued with the individualistic spirit of Humanism, reverted, by a nostalgic impulse, to the original faith of the early Fathers and recovered a slender, pulsing beam of pure light which, though obscured by its later deviations and increasing preoccupation with material things and interests, has yet continued, down the centuries, to lead

man's pilgrimage to his divine destiny. The main contribution of Protestantism lay in the stimulus it gave to the awakening spirit of Individualism, Nationalism, Democracy, Secularism, and Capitalism and, above all, in the freedom it won for man to pursue the moral and spiritual elevation of his personality, unhampered by the restrictions and taboos of the Church and the traditional tendency to ascetic otherworldliness. And these are the essential ingredients of the modern age. Its religious individualism was a potent call to human nature to explore its subjective dimensions. Protestantism " opened the way to a vision of God", says the Encyclopedia of Religions and Ethics, "and the vision of God is the inspiration of men."

BRIHADARANYAKA, the Great Aranyaka, belongs to the Shatapatha Brahmana of the Shukla Yajurveda. The concluding portion of this Aranyaka, covering six chapters,¹ is the famous Brihadaranyaka Upanishad which is considered to be one of the oldest of the Upanishads. The Brihadaranyaka is so called because it is great in its size, brhatvāt, and also great in its profundity. Brahman is the subject-matter and the Upanishad is remarkable for the varied approaches it makes to the subject and the diverse methods it chooses to expound to the human intelligence the absolute and infinite nature of Brahman. The language it speaks is old, figurative and symbolic, reminiscent of the speech of the ancient Veda. The technique it adopts links the esoteric lore of the mystics of the Vedic age—with its outer frame of ritual—to the formulations of the Mind of a later era.

The Upanishad is divided into three Books, Kandas: Madhu-kanda, Yajnavalkya or Muni Kanda and Khila Kanda. Of these the first, Madhu kanda, covering the first two chapters, enunciates the Doctrine of Brahman who is the One Sole Reality with which the Self, Atman, is identical and of whom All this is a manifestation. It posits the Teaching, upadeśa. The Second Kanda comprising the 3rd and 4th chapters) establishes the teaching by Reasoning, upapatti: negatively repudiating alternate positions and positively arguing, in terms of the intellect, to carry home the Message. The last Khila (supplementary) Kanda (the 5th and 6th chapters)

gives the Practice, upāsana, to realise in oneself the Truth of the Doctrine propounded.

The Upanishad opens with a striking imagery recalling —or more correctly, continuing—the language of the earlier Rishis of the Veda who used the most external physical objects as symbols of the deeper truths operating in the cosmos. The figure here chosen is the Horse, the Horse of the Ashwamedha, the preeminent Sacrifice of that age. The Ashwamedha commemorates, to the mystics of the Vedic tradition, a landmark in the inner evolution of man : it signifies his transcending the bounds of the ordinary material life in Ignorance and passing into the wider altitudes of the reign of the Spirit. The Life-Force, the dominating Power in the being of man, aswa, is consecrated and delivered into the charge of the Gods who preside over the destinies of men and the worlds. The imagery is cast on a cosmic scale. The [Horse, aswa, signifying strength, force and speed in the symbology of these mystics, is the Universal Force of Manifestation at work in Creation.

Of this Horse, says the text, Dawn is the head. The Dawn i.e. the beginnings of life-motion, the impulse towards manifestation, is the leading part, the front that first shows over our world. The sun is the eye with which he looks at creation and sustains it with his truth-light. The wind is the life-breath which he breathes into the world. And fire, the universal energy, is the open mouth through which he swallows and consumes the enjoyments of the worlds of his making.

The Horse is not a figure of this gross material universe alone. For Time is his body, his substance : the very texture of his being is made of Time which is non-material, though it manifests in physical Space as it does in the other extensions of Space. Earth is his footing. The material extension of Earth is the feet, the foundation created by the Power in manifestation. The Mid-region, antariksa, is his belly wherein all is seized and consumed. Heaven, the freer spaces of ether, the domain of purer Mind, is his back, the part on which this manifest creation rests. The four Quarters are the flanks and the intermediate regions the ribs ; the stars, the stellar systems constitute

the hard bones and the sky is the very flesh of his body. Periods of Time, the Seasons governed by the movements of the sun and stars are his members ; months and fortnights set by the moon are that on which he stands. Thus does the manifesting Power cover in its self-extension all the three worlds of our creation in the dimension of Time moving hi Space.

Further, the loose strands of the rivers are the undigested food in his stomach, the flowing rivers which carry the essential waters to the ends of the earth are his veins ; the mountains with their invigorating air and the streams that spring of them, are his liver and lungs ; the growths of earth, the herbs and the plants are the growths, the hair, on his body. The rising of the sun, the awakening of life into the move of ascension is his front and the sun-set which lulls all into rest is the hind, the disappearing portion of his Body.

When he extends and spreads himself there is the outbreak of light, the lightning in the skies : there manifests the light of Knowledge. When he shakes himself out of rest and readies for action, there is the reverberation of sound, the thunder in the clouds : the manifestation of Power. And when he rejects the waste-matter from his body there ensues the downpour of life-giving waters in the world.

His is the Voice that finds expression in the vāk, the Word that is loaded with thought-content and creative urge.

Great as he is, his appearance is heralded by a greatness, mammā, in his front even as his passing is trailed by a greatness behind. Day is the grandeur that appears with his advent, Night the grandeur that follows his leaving—Day and Night being a constant figure in this Thought, for the manifestation and withdrawal into non-manifestation of the Eternal. The grandeur that is the Day is born in the Eastern Waters of the Infinite and the grandeur that is the Night in the Western Waters. The Cosmic Horse stands in between linking both, the Manifest and the Unmanifest, the Being and the Non-being.

Again, it is this Horse, this Universal Power that carries on his back the several orders of creation (represented by their typical beings) that are released into manifestation, varying

his strength, force and speed to suit their different formulations of consciousness-force. He bears the Gods—fulfilled in their plenitude—as the haya, one of delightful, abandoned and swift movement; as vājin, the horse of plentiful strength and force, he carries the Gandharvas, beings of joy, beauty and ease; as arvan, the fighter-force, he bears the Titans in their endless struggle for supremacy ; and as aśva, consuming Force of strength, he adapts himself to man, the creature who dies as he eats.

Finally, says the seer with great significance, of this Horse the Sea is the brother and Sea is the place of birth.¹ The Sea is the sindhu of the Veda, the Upper Ocean, the parārdha from which derives this lower ocean of ours, the aparārdha—figured here in the image of the Horse of the Worlds—and whose Nature is the same as the essential nature of his lower projection of itself, brother to it. And in this oneness of Being and unity in Becoming lies the means of deliverance for the Horse of this Creation from subjection to the Hunger that is Death, aśanāya mrtyu, which is the subject-matter of the next Brahmana.

To recapitulate this magnificent meditation as rendered by Sri Aurobindo from the terse original in Sanskrit :

"Dawn is the head of the horse sacrificial. The sun is his eye, his breath is the wind, his wide open mouth is Fire, the universal energy, Time is the self of the horse sacrificial. Heaven is his back and the mid-region is his belly, Earth is his footing, the quarters are his flanks and these intermediate regions are his ribs ; the seasons are his members, the months and the half-months are that on which he stands, the stars are his bones and the sky is the flesh of his body. The strands are the food in his belly, the rivers are his veins, the mountains are his liver and lungs, herbs and plants are the hairs of his body ; the rising day is his front portion and the setting day is his hinder portion. When he stretches himself, then it lightens; when he shakes himself, then it thunders ; when he urines, then it rains. Speech verily

is the voice of him. Day was the grandeur that was born before the horse as he galloped, the Eastern Ocean gave it birth. Night was the grandeur that was born in his rear and its birth was in the Western waters. These were the grandeurs that arose into being on either side of the horse. He became Haya and carried the gods,—Vajin and bore the Gandaharvas,—Arvan and bore the Titans,—Ashva and carried mankind. The sea was his brother and the sea his birthplace."

"EDUCATION to be complete must have five principal aspects relating to the five principal activities of the human being: the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic, and the spiritual. Usually these phases of education succeed each other in a chronological order following the growth of the individual. This, however, does not mean that one should replace another but that all must continue, completing each other, till the end of life."!

But before enlarging upon and explaining these five aspects of education, the Mother sounds an opportune note of warning to the parents. It is only when the admonition is deeply pondered, taken to heart, and sincerely acted upon, that the first foundations of the Mother's system of education can be properly laid, and not before. Modern man, a thrall of social crazes and group conditioning, has hardly any individuality left in him. He follows the mercurial fashions and fancies of the society.² He goes drifting in the flux and reflux of the habits and tendencies imposed upon him by his environment from almost his very birth. He is fitted into one of the current, conventional patterns of the community to which he belongs. He may, therefore, naturally find it extremely difficult to cry a halt to his drifting, and set about a thorough overhauling of his whole life. But a radical malaise requires a radical treatment, it does not respond to a tinkering palliative. If mankind has to be saved from the present predicament, some of its elite at least must bestir themselves to turn

over a new leaf, accept the new ideal, the radical remedy, and strive to realise it in their life. They will be the pioneers, the standard-bearers of the New Age. Grim determination, dogged perseverance, and an unflagging will to unstinted sacrifice for the service of God and the welfare of humanity will conquer the obstacles, and lay the foundation of the new education which the Mother propounds for the creation of a new race of men and and a new culture and civilisation.

"The majority of them (the parents), for various reasons, take very little thought of a true education to be given to children. When they have brought a child into the world, and when they have given him food and satisfied his various material wants by looking more or less carefully to the maintenance of his health, they think they have fully discharged their duty. Later on, they would put him to school and hand over to the teacher the care of his mental education.

"There are other parents who know that their children should receive education and try to give it. But very few among them, even among those who are most serious and sincere, know that the first thing to do, in order to be able to educate the child, is to educate oneself, to become conscious and master of oneself so that one does not set a bad example to one's child. For it is through example that education becomes effective. To say good words, give wise advice to a child has very little effect, if one does not show by one's living example the truth of what one teaches."¹

Example is, indeed, the best and most effective means of education. The example of the Buddha, the Christ, St. Paul and St. Francis, of Laotze and Sri Ramakrishna has never failed to change the ordinary clay of human nature into shining gold within the orbit of their living influence. It has inspired countless men and women of all ages and climes to rise to the height of their stature and reveal something of the Divinity dwelling in them.

Teaching or preaching, without the setting of a personal example of what one utters, is worse than futile. For, children are subtly sensitive; they have an instinctive perception, a sort of immediate feeling which scarcely fails to spot a lie, or see through the mask of hypocrisy. And they automatically imbibe what they detect and discover in their parents and teachers. What actually happens, psychologically, is that their instinctive perception stamps itself upon their immature and impressionable outer nature and leads to the formation of habits which gradually harden into second nature. It is clear, then, that it is the parents and teachers¹ who must hold themselves responsible for most of the delinquencies and perversions of the children they have under their care. It is sheer folly to scold or chastise the children for what they have themselves infected them with without, it may be, even their being aware of it. They must have the honesty to be what they would like their children to become. They must embody the ideal which they desire their children to grow into and realise.

It can, therefore, be said that the primary and momentous problem in modern education is the re-education of the educators, even as it is always a good gardener who is indispensable before a garden is laid out. This problem has begun to engage the active interest of the Western educators, as I have already said before, particularly of those who are idealistic in their outlook and influenced by modern psychological developments. The question we have to clear up in this connection is : what does this reeducation mean ? Various educationists have advanced various views. Let us glance at or recollect some of them here.

"No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nurture and education," says Plato. Rousseau is of the same opinion.² Montessori expresses herself on this point in the following words: "An ordinary teacher cannot be transformed into a Montessori teacher, but must be created anew, having rid herself of pedagogical prejudices.

The first step is self-preparation of the imagination, for the Montessori teacher has to visualise a child who is not yet there, materially speaking; she must have faith in the child who will reveal himself through work The teacher who presents herself to the children should remember that they are great people to whom she owes understanding and respect....We must help the child to act for himself, will for himself, think for himself; this is the art of those who aspire to serve the spirit. It is the teacher's joy to welcome the manifestations of the spirit, answering her faith Our teachers thus penetrate the secret of childhood. Knowing the child's secret, she has a deep love for him, perhaps for the first time understanding what love really is." "In learning, the child follows inner laws of mental formation. There is a direct interchange between the child and his environment, while the teacher with his offerings of motives of interest and his initiations constitutes primarily a link, a trait d'union between them." "Nature, wise Nature, must be the basis on which a supra-Nature, still more perfect, can be constructed. It is certain that progress must surpass nature and adopt different forms—it may not, however, proceed by trampling upon nature."¹

According to Froebal, "All the child is ever to be and to become lies, however slightly indicated, in the child, and can be attained only through development from within outwards." The educator's part must be nothing but "a passive following—only guarding and protecting—not prescriptive, categorical, interfering."

The faith upon which Kees Boeck founded his principles of education was that in every child there is a spirit or self which must be allowed to blossom in perfect freedom. Education, he says, must begin with the educator, who must have an inner spiritual life of his own, constantly nourished by quiet contemplation.

These words of some of the illustrious educationists of Europe are like stray, prophetic beams shot into the chaos and gloom of modern pedagogy. If we take particular note of them, it is because they seem to render it somewhat easier for us to follow the Mother's

educational system, which, though it springs from a much higher plane of consciousness and an integral vision of human life and its meaning, has yet in it some elements likely to be lighted up by these stray beams, which represent the dreams and divinations of the most profound thinkers of all ages. Their persistence in the teeth of denial and opposition is the proof that they hold in them a grain of truth which nature will not allow to perish, but continue to nourish and develop till it attains to its full growth and breaks into flower and fruit. But we must be always on our guard against attaching ourselves to any or all of them, or mingling them with the Mother's ideal, which is of a different order altogether. Superficial resemblances often lead us unawares into a confounding of values. The Mother's scheme of education is, as I have already said, psycho-centric, and it is hitched to the supramental Sun, if I can so put it. It embodies a creative Truth and a self-accomplishing Force, which we should never understand if we failed to shake ourselves out of the facile doubts and dogmatisms of our mental ignorance, or of the cramping hold of our pseudo-progressive intellect, which paddles in the shallows of thought and floats about with the cargo of sense-impressions and superficial notions.

In a message to the teachers of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, the Mother said :

"Never forget that to be a good teacher one has to abolish in oneself all egoism."

In another message : "To be worthy of teaching according to the supramental truth given us by Sri Aurobindo, there should be no longer any ego."

In answer to a teacher's query, the Mother once expressed herself as follows : "Most teachers try to have good pupils, pupils who are studious, attentive, who understand and know many things, who can answer well. This spoils everything. The students go to consult books, to study and to learn. They have confidence in books only, in what others say or write, and lose contact with the superconscient part of themselves which receives knowledge by intuition. This contact often exists in the child, but in the course of its education, it loses it—Evidently,

to make students progress in the right direction, the teachers should understand this and change their old way of looking at things and of teaching."

All this is, obviously, going far beyond the views of even the most gifted educationists of the West. It is going even beyond the sublime ideal of education in ancient India. It is not enough, according to the Mother, to see the self or spirit in the budding child. One must have realised the same self or spirit in oneself by a total elimination of the ego and all traces of egoism. One must have learnt to live in the universal consciousness, united with all in an indissoluble bond of spiritual oneness, and become a transparent vehicle of the Spirit's intuitive knowledge.

But it must be noted here at once that this release from the ego, and union and communion with the universal existence must not be turned into a door of escape from the baffling riddle of the material world. The lingering spell of the past tradition must be shaken off. The liberation from the ego has to be used as an avenue of access to the Supermind for the transmission of the supramental Consciousness into the earthly existence. The teacher, who is aspiring to be in contact with the Supermind, will foster, as far as he can, the development of the children under his charge into supramental beings. It is these children, the children of the future^ as the Mother loves to call them, who will transform the very substance, texture and dimensions of earthly life, and propagate the New Age of human culture of which God will be the manifest centre, and God's Will the sole motive-force of all human activities. What science and technology are doing for the body and the sense-mind of man, the Supermind will do for the whole man, transfigured and integrated by it.

This high objective can be realised if the parents and teachers cease to encourage the students' excessive browsing on the pale and stale trickles of the human mind, as they do now all the world over, but inspire them with the aspiration and will to open, silently and intently, to the higher spiritual planes of consciousness and draw upon their infinite wisdom. They must be shown by example

and a steady inner influence how to rise, step by step, through the higher degrees and dimensions of consciousness, into the illimitable glories of the Supermind. The dim twilight of the mind has to be transcended. Man must deliver himself for ever from the storms of his life's hungers and passions. He must become master of himself and master of the world he lives in.

In the Mother's scheme of education the soul of the child is the student, and the Supramental fulfilment of the whole man and of the human race in knowledge and power and peace and love and harmony, the ultimate goal. The parents and teachers, who feel the urgent need of a reorientation and renewal of human life and culture for a happy and harmonious way of creative living, have to prepare themselves on the lines indicated by the Mother, and address themselves to the lofty task of leading the new generation of children to the splendours of the Supramental Age. This is what the Mother means by the re-education or self-preparation of the parents and teachers.*

1. As contrasted with the logic of the human mind we have to see that the supramental in one sense deals with Reality as a whole and deals with every particular as belonging if not as a whole to the whole.

2. The whole which the Supermind apprehends is not what the intellect or the finite mind arrives at as the ground of the particulars and which is above all indeterminate in so far as that mind is concerned.

3. It is not the system constructed by the finite mind, even when it is seen that the finite mind is a unified mind because it seeks to integrate or unify the psychological modes of being such as cognition, conation and affection or emotion and feeling. No amount of unification of these makes for the integral oneness of the Supermind which does not depend on the particulars for its knowledge nor catch up their surface character however subjectively unified in oneself.

4. The Supermind accepts the reality of every level of experience, from the lowest inconscient (matter), the subliminal, subconscious, affective sensory, cognitive sensory, perceptual, inferential, and the reality of the generalisations based on such experiences also. Their unification into a system or order is an ideal which also is accepted and the hierarchical arrangement according to values or axiology is also accepted. This only reveals that the Highest Consciousness which is defined or expressed Sac-cid-ananda supports all the others and can only be fully articulated or manifested in their true nature through that Highest or the ultimate. This is expressed in a wonderful phrase by the Upanishad : yāihātathyato arthān vyadadhāt sāsvatibhyah samā-bhyah : all things or relations, particular or collective or universal, are known as in eternal nature as they are in themselves which is what they are in and for the Ultimate. The concept of annihilation

or absorption or loss or negation (bādhita) does not enter into their reality, but only refers to their separative knowledge which is misleading. It is this prapañcikarana if this means divisive knowing, that is overcome or abolished. This is possible only to the Super mental or the Ultimate Consciousness-Existence-Bliss.

5. The Super mental is indeed a power, not a derealizing „ power. It is true that all power is a self-Umitation for expression. It is at once a power that limits and a limit that reveals power. It is this mystery of creative dynamism that reveals itself in all the planes of the descent and shows also the means by which the limits can be overcome and the truth of each be assimilated and embraced by the 'comprehending power' of the supermind.

6. If the logic of the finite mind laboriously assumes that the entire process of reality is a process of deduction or descent from the universal to the particular, and in a sense a kind of understanding that seeks the axioms of universality or system, which it can only assume and never reconstruct, the logic of the Infinite seeks or rather unveils the Universal in a direct intuition and also reveals how it is exemplified in the particular.

7. The dialectical method which the intellect has discovered owes its inspiration to the intuitional or Infinite for it finds that one truth involves its 'overcoming' its opposite, also a truth, what is available and pressing on it so as to overcome it. This tension of opposites, whether it is expounded in terms of concepts by Idealism or in terms of 'forces' in terms of life, gives only a half truth. The law of contradiction requires to be reformulated. It is not true to say that it is sole law of system, for the law will undergo modification as it applies to organic systems or unorganized bodies or wholes or psychical systems or the Spiritual Universe. It is seen that opposites co-operate in bringing about processes the most diverse and operate in all fields of Reality.

8. It is possible to hold that the Dialectic of Distinct as formulated, also an intellectual logical discovery, by Croce, is capable of being incorporated into the logic of the Infinite. But the sub sumptive formula of the same does not fully reveal the real" evolution of the integrative operation of the opposites as well as the distinct even in the conception of History. It is yet

an image of eternity rather than the eternity that is presented in its fully articulated diversity of laws and existences.'

9. Any logic must aim at the complete explanation of the lower processes, their wherefore so to speak. The Logic of the Infinite must explain how the finite emerges and how again the finite seeks to attain the Infinite. The terms and forms of the seeking of the Infinite indeed impel our seeking to know and arrive at the Infinite; finite mind-logic seeks to frame the Infinite in two ways : (i) either as the negation of all that the finite is known to be or as the negation of the finite itself, or (ii) as the sum of all the finites, indefinitely continued or imagined. The former is a qualitative notion of the Infinite whereas the latter is the quantitative notion of the Infinite. Mathematical Infinity is just an in definite which may reveal newer and newer formulas or qualities so to speak but can never make us derive the notion of the finite itself because it cannot put into the Infinite more than what is in the finite and it can take out only that which it has put into it. The so-called mathematics of the Infinite is an' unthinkable solution of the true logic of the Infinite. Representation ally our finite mind hopes to profit by the theory of numbers or even geometry of the finite mind. But the Reality is a dynamic process which brings out of itself both the extensive Infinity of ākāśa and the duration or time and also the intensive process of formulation of planes of being or concentration and diversification of the multiplicity inherent in its Power whilst not making them lose the unity which is the stem of the multiplicity. It is a unity that pervades all phases of the multiplicity both in its collective as well as individual formation. Thus when one confronts the Reality one perceives it to be a Solid as it were in which every part reveals the whole and all and every whole reveals every part and all. The Infinite indeed seems to pass beyond the concept of whole and part itself whilst supporting all.

10. The Logic of the Infinite provides for transcendence as the urge or élan or impetus or aspiration of the finites, at every level. A knowledge that leaves out this growth-principle or urge or aspiration of the part for the whole, which is expressed in its physical as well as psychical being, is not a true transcript of its nature.

The practical is a form of the theoretical, even as the theoretical is the substance of the practical. All thus have to be explained together. Intellectual divisiveness that exaggerates the practical at the expense of the theoretical today is but the counteraction or reaction of what was held previously to be right. Neither of them has real superiority over the other because they are integral to one another. However we have to see that the word 'practical' means to most that which is applicable to the everyday life, in so far as it increases the comforts of life as it is aspired after. Science is being yoked to human wants and comforts. Theoretical science may be an ideal even as theoretical philosophy may be. Even philosophy must be practically-minded to give solace to human hearts, to inspire human beings to good social conduct. But Reality is up to a point really serviceable, but its own urge to pull men even out of their complacency and comforts by urging them to great endeavours to transcend themselves should not be lost sight of. The problems of life and death are a grim reminder that our securities of comfort and service or state are shortlived and one has to be vigilant about maintaining them. But here is the rub. One does not live eternally, much as we may hope for the day when death will be a thing of the past. There is also another factor; it is seen that every movement, intellectual or instinctive or revelation too, as it goes on, curves on itself though it thinks it is going on forward. This cyclical turn not seen by the followers themselves, and possibly interpreted as a forward movement becomes a retrograde movement. Life itself becomes a picture of death, and death itself then looks as if it is life. This logic of movement is capable of being explained only by the Logic of transcendence or the Infinite, not merely of life, or the organic. The practical and theoretical aspects of Reality are inseparable except by the lower intellectual mind that seeks goods of wealth and comforts of desire. Therefore true practicality lies not in interpreting the higher in terms of the lower but reversely.

10. It is one of the most important parts of the Logic of the Infinite that it should explain this process of evolution and also show how this transcendence takes place. The evolution from a

lower to a higher level of Being, entails as we have shown that the higher alone can explain the lower rather than the lower explain the higher. The logic of the finite mind or intellect proceeds to understand the higher in terms of what it knows, from its fragmentary knowledge, as a composite of them. In a sense we find that we conceive of the real existence of the Reality as the Highest as in a way descending to manifest and explain how the lower and the lowest function in terms of the Highest. Thus a descent of the Infinite into the finite multiplicity or even the unorganized inconscient or matter is a presupposition of the ascent now underway. (Has it always been underway ?)

Secondly, the transformation of the higher into the lower and the reverse evolutionary transformation of the lower into the Higher and so on has to be explained by means of certain well-known principles of 'natural' transformations due to the introduction of new factors already implicit in the Ultimate or in the lower.

The observation of the physical processes of change from one state to another will show that 'heat' has to be introduced or removed. There is in the psychic field the introduction of a force or a higher force which acts like a shock, so to speak, which helps the conversion of the lower type of mind to the higher mind from which it has descended in a sense. This is a return to the higher and real state. This 'shock' is to be either received or given by one who belongs to the Highest Reality or has reached the Highest Reality. When given by those who have just gone above it helps very little, in ascent. The need for the Highest Power to help this ascent comes from a deep recognition of the ineffectiveness of the laws and powers of the lower mind to urge itself to a transcendence. An internal impetus from within or below however strong can hardly have the power to effect a transformation, though it is a need. Thus the logic of the Infinite involves the acceptance of a twofold process, an urge from within, strong and integral, an aspiration to transcend the limits of the finite mind, ignorance and limitation, to solve the problems of life that seems to be limited in its operations, and a descending power, strong and integral, superconscient, a grace that uplifts by a series of 'shocks' that lift the individual from his cyclical progression

that brings him back to his starting point again and again, to a higher level or even the highest level of integral Infinite Nature. This is the principle of 'liberation' or creative liberation or creative altruism, through grace, shocks, Guru and Mother. There are several such points in divine evolution that have to be administered by the Highest Reality Sachchidananda so as to enable the fulfilment of Its own Being in each and in all.

The process of degradation or fall which we witness in Reality is equally to be explained as the process of entropy but it is never complete in a universe nor is it permitted to reach its maximum in Divine Evolution. Sri Aurobindo has in his comprehensive work The Life Divine at several places clearly laid down the subtle processes that intersect in the general progress of the Descent as well as the Ascent. The twofold processes of materialisation or transformation into matter and spiritualisation of matter and ignorance into the Sachchidananda seem so to be integrated also and mutually supporting each other so as to make for an organic whole that is infinitely growing. It is the psychic change that makes for the perception of the complementary nature as well as synthetic unity of all processes and wholes in the Reality.

There have been thinkers who had envisaged the process of organic wholes and who had showed that Psychic interpretation of Reality as Duration or Consciousness would be fruitful. They have also revealed that Evolution has to be seen as a process not of going away from Reality but as a process of conscious integration that goes beyond man and his intellect. To Sri Aurobindo however goes the credit of not merely suggesting their synthesis but to have proceeded to lay down the essential principles of the logic of the Infinite and the Integral in his works and shown how rich the result for our Evolution can be.

The Later Poems of Tagore by Dr. Sisir Kumar Ghosh; Publishers: Asia Publishing House, Bombay. Price Rs. 12.50. Pages 304.

'THE publishers deserve to be thanked for bringing out this critical volume on Tagore in the Tagore centenary year. It is for his early poetry mostly that he has been appreciated, admired and idolised throughout the world. It was, as we all know, Gitanjali—an early work—which won for him the Nobel prize and subsequently international name and fame. Naturally the universal popularity of Tagore seems to be chiefly based upon the poems of his early phase, and this circumstance has tended to obscure the value of his later poems which being different in sub-tance and form from his previous works came to be even regarded as the least Tagorean in nature and merit by most Tagore fans. It is most fitting, therefore, that a serious attempt should have been now made to look at this modernist and so-called un-Tagorean poetry of Tagore in a spirit of true criticism and, thereby, put the conventional and popular portrait of the great poet in a more correct and balanced perspective. Of course, as Dr. Ghosh rightly suggests, "perhaps more than one examination will be needed before the conventional image gives place to a truer picture and we can hope to win our Tagore entire." His attempt in this volume is, therefore, "to see Tagore anew in the light of his later works" and one believes, more attempts of this kind will follow in future.

A critical evaluation, such as the one we have here, does not necessarily mean an attempt to dethrone the idol. On the contrary, it may lead to a still deeper admiration and popularity being based on a more developed taste and discrimination. In any case, Dr. Ghosh has eminently succeeded in giving us such an evaluation of Tagore in this volume. He does not hesitate to "criticise" the poet, and frankly points out in the very beginning that in the poetry of this period "there is much that is weak, expository

and experimental"; there are pieces where Tagore seems to be "obviously tired and the effort of sustained creation seems too much for him." Yet no true critic can fail to see at the same time that "the peaks too are there, pinnacles of promise and achievement." And it is "on bended knees", in a spirit of true reverence that Dr. Ghosh makes an attempt in this book to make a detached but certainly not disenchanted "survey of the foothills, the slopes and the summit" of Tagore's later poetry.

But even in this limited area of Tagore's poetry Dr. Ghosh does not claim to give a detailed and comprehensive criticism of the poems. His intention is modest enough : "If this essay helps in any way to increase our awareness of the poet's work, specially of the period under review, its struggles and seekings, heights and abysses, its occasional tiredness and its sudden thrills, if it leads us honestly to face difficulties, if it can at all suggest that there is more in his poetry than is dreamt of by both eulogist and disparager, the labour that has gone to its making will not have been in vain". Not only does Dr. Ghosh succeed in deepening our interest in Tagore but he also presents him in a light which is usually not to be found in most of the studies available so far on the poet. And one feels like fully endorsing the opinion of Prof. Somnath Maitra of Presidency College, Calcutta that in recent years there has hardly come to us any criticism of Tagore's poetry in English or Bengali which equals Dr. Ghosh's book "in depth of understanding or power of interpretation." Both the author and the publishers deserve to be congratulated for giving us in the Tagore centenary year a book on Tagore's poetic genius which is "a model of balanced and sensitive criticism."

Within the well-defined limits set down by the author, the volume examines in some details Tagore's Prose Poems, Prantik, Senjuti-Akashpradip, Nabajatak-Sanai and Last Quartet. The English translation of most of these poems, made by the author himself, is excellent, and very valuable to the non-Bengali readers, keeping in view, of course, the difficulties of such a translation.

The "Notes" provided at the end of the book are so exhaustive that they almost threaten to compete in length and size with the main work itself. However, as they are all put at the end, they

do not stand in the way of the reader of the main book. Also, they provide in themselves a very fruitful reading and reveal the wide range of the author's study as well as the acuteness of his critical mind.

There is one remarkable observation which Dr. Ghosh makes about Tagore in this book. The popular notion of Tagore, at least in our country, is that he was not merely a poet par excellence but also a Rishi. For Dr. Ghosh, on the contrary, "the truth seems to be that Tagore is a link between us and the Rishi". But this, instead of being any disparagement of Tagore's genius, is "in some ways a grater distinction".

Vedanta Sutras with the Sri Bhashya of Ramanujacharya translated into English by M. Rangacharya, M.A., M. B., Varadaraja Aiyengar B.A. B. L., Price Rs. 15.00 n P. Educational Publishing Co., Madras 6.

The Vedanta is the living philosophy of India to-day and its popularity is due to its being a world-view and a way of life at the same time. It is a rational inquiry into the nature of Brahman as the Ultimate Reality as well as the way of spiritual realization of Brahman as the supreme goal of life. Of the most important schools of Vedanta, Advaita, Dvaita and Visistadvaita, the Advaita is so well-known and so powerful that the Vedanta is sometimes identified with it; and the Dvaita is regarded as the best philosophic account of theism. The Visistadvaita of Ramanuja tries to cut a via media between the two extremes and seems to reconcile the opposite standpoints of Advaita and Dvaita.

The Visistadvaita is essentially a philosophy of religion and in its religious aspect it is called Sri-Vaishnavism. The history of the Visistadvaita like that of the other schools of the Vedanta claims the authority of immemorial tradition. It is based on the triple authority,—'The Prasthanatraya'—the Upanishads, the Vedanta Sutra of Badarayana and the Gita. Ramanuja, the first historic

exponent of the Visistadvaita, says in his Vedartha Samgraha and Sribhasya,—the commentary on the Vedanta-Sutra, that his system is founded on a work of an ancient teacher, called Bhodha-yana Vritti and the prior teachings of Dramida, Tanka, and Guha-dev; it is also traceable to the Nammalvar, the super mystic of Sri Vaishnavism. It was Nathmuni born in 824 A.D. who belonged to the Bhagavat tradition from the North that elevated the Alvar's divine songs in Tamil to the level of Vedanta in the scheme of Ubhaya-Vedanta which insists on the language of the heart as the true spiritual language and not merely the spoken word. The next important teacher of Visistadvaita was Alavandar, the grandson of Nathmuni, who established the Vedantic value of Panchatantra. Then came Ramanuja (born in 1017 A.D.) the greatest exponent of Visistadvaita philosophy which put up a challenge to the Advaita interpretation of the Vedanta by raising a few unanswerable objections against the doctrine of Maya.

The book under review is an English translation of a portion of Sriāhasya, the well-known commentary on the Vedanta sutras of Badarayana. The translators have planned to bring out the English translation of the entire Sribhasya in three volumes of which this is the first volume. The attempt in this direction has been exemplary and very laudable. In this book, the thirty-two aphorisms, contained in the 1st part of the 1st Chapter of the Vedanta-Sutra are taken up for translation along with its elaborate commentary. The English rendering of the original sutras and the commentaries on them have been very admirable and we thank the scholars for the great pains they have taken in achieving this. Those who are anxious to know about the philosophy of Ramanujacharya, especially students of Indian Philosophy and Religion, will find this work very useful and instructive. Besides, it will go very far in removing a long-felt need,-the rendering of Sribhasya into into English-and thereby making it available to a wider public. We hope to see the publication of the other two volumes of the same work very soon. We warmly recommend the book to all lovers of Philosophy and trust the work will earn for the eminent scholars the reputation they richly deserve.