With the Divine Love is the supreme power of Transformation.
THE MOTHER
God speaks to the heart when the brain cannot understand Him.
SRI AUROBINDO
August, 1962
The Divine gives itself to those who give themselves without reserve and in all their parts to the Divine. For them the calm, the light, the power, the bliss, the freedom, the wideness, the heights of knowledge, the seas of Ananda. .... Sri Aurobindo.
THE MOTHER'S COMMENTARY
ON
THE DHAMMAPADA
VIII
THOUSANDA
Better than a thousand phrases built with meaningless words is one single meaningful word which brings tranquillity to the hearer, (1)
Better than a thousand verses built with meaningless words is one single verse that brings tranquillity to the hearer. (2)
* Based on the Mother's Talks
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Better than a hundred verses built with meaningless words on the lips is one single word of the Law that tranquillises you when you hear it. (3)
One may conquer thousands and thousands of men in a battle, but he is the best among conquerors who has conquered himself. (4)
Better to have conquered one's own self than to have conquered all these peoples.
And if one has conquered the self and moves always self-controlled, neither gods nor angels nor Mara nor even Brahma can change that victory of his into defeat. (5-6)
If month after month one offers sacrifices by thousands for one hundred years and if one worships an accomplished soul even for a single moment, then this worship is greater than the other hundred-year sacrifice. (7)
If for hundred years one tended the fire in a forest, and if one worshipped an accomplished soul even for a single moment, then that worship is worth more than the sacrifice done through hundred years. (8)
Whatever sacrifice or offering is made in this world for a whole year, in expectation of merit, is not worth even a fourth part of that greater thing, the homage done to the Righteous. (9)
In him who is always full of respect for the aged, these four attributes increase: life, beauty, happiness and strength. (10)
Better than one who lives a hundred years in immorality - and dissipation is one who lives a single day in righteousness and contemplation. (11)
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Better than one who lives a hundred years in ignorance and dissipation is the one who lives one single day in wisdom and meditation. (12)
Better than one who lives a hundred years in indolence and inertia is the one who lives in strength and energy. (13)
Better than one who lives a hundred years seeing neither the beginning nor the end is the one who lives a single day seeing both the beginning and the end. (14)
Better than one who lives a hundred years and does not see the seat of immortality is one who lives a single day but sees the seat of immortality. (15)
Better than one who lives a hundred years not seeing the Supreme Law is the one who lives a single day but sees the Supreme Law. (16)
ALL kinds of things are gathered here under the same title. It is an association of words, more than an association of ideas. But the central trend is this that it is preferable to have one moment of sincerity rather than a long life of apparent devotion and that a psychological and spiritual victory over oneself is more important than all external victories.
There is also an interesting reflection, that a victory over oneself is the only victory which is truly safe from the intervention of any god or power of Nature and any instrument of Evil. If you have gained self-mastery on one point that goes beyond the reach of any intervention even from the very highest powers, whether they are gods of the Over mind or any anti-divine power in the world.
The opening text says that a single word that gives you peace is worth more than thousands of words that have no meaning —this everybody can understand—but it is also said that the word that gives you peace is worth more than thousands of words that can satisfy the mental activity, but have no psychological effect
on your being.
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In fine, when you have found something which has the power to help you in gaining a victory over your unconsciousness and inertia, you must till you obtain the final result, exhaust all the effects produced by the word or phrase before you look for others.
It is more important to continue to the end the practice of the effect produced by an idea that one has met somehow than to try to accumulate in the head a large number of ideas. The ideas may all be useful in their time, if they are let in at the required moment, particularly, if you carry to the extreme limit the result of one of those dynamic ideas that are capable of making you win an inner victory. That is to say, rather one should have for one's chief, if not the only aim the practice of what one knows than the accumulation in oneself a knowledge which remains purely theoretical.
So one may summaries : Put into practice integrally what you know, then only can you increase usefully your theoretical knowledge.
ON EVIL
Hasten towards the Good, turn the mind away from evil ; if you do good in sloth, the mind will indulge in evil. (1)
If a man does an evil thing, he must not repeat it, he must not indulge it. Painful is the accumulation of evil. (2)
If a man does a good thing, let him repeat it, let him indulge it. Happiness comes of the accumulation of the good. (3)
The evil-doer finds it all good, so long as the evil does not ripen. As soon as evil ripens then the evil-doer finds it all evil. (4)
The goodly man finds it all evil, so long as the good does not ripen. When the good ripens then the goodly man finds it all good. (5)
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Think not lightly of Evil, saying, "It will not come to me". Water drops falling constantly fill up the jar, even so the ignorant man gathers evil little by little and becomes full of it. (6)
Think not lightly of the good, saying "it will not come to me", Water drops falling constantly fill up the jar, even so the wise man gathers the good little by little and is full of it. (7)
A merchant who has few companions but a great treasure avoids dangerous roads, even so a man who loves his life should avoid evil. (8)
If a man offends a person who is harmless, pure and innocent, the evil falls back on him, like fine dust cast against the wind. (9)
Some come to birth again, the evil-doers go to hell, the righteous to heaven, the desireless to Nirvana. (10)
Neither in the sky, nor in the depths of the ocean, nor within the mountain cave is there a spot in the whole world where one can escape one's evil deeds. (11)
Neither in the sky, nor in the depths of the ocean, nor within the mountain cave is there a spot where Death cannot assail. (12)
People have the habit of dealing lightly with thoughts that come. And the atmosphere is full of thoughts of all kinds which do not in fact belong to anybody in particular, which move perpetually from one person to another, very freely, much too freely; because there are very few people who can act as policemen over their thoughts.
When you take up the Buddhist discipline, precisely to learn how to control your thoughts, you make very interesting discoveries. You try to observe your thoughts. Instead of
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letting them pass freely, sometimes even letting them enter into your head and establish themselves in a quite inopportune way, you look at them, observe them; you perceive then with stupefaction that in the space of a few seconds there passes in the head an absolutely unlikely series of thoughts that are altogether harmful.
You believe you are good, kind, well disposed and always full of good feelings. You do not wish harm to anybody, you wish only good for all, all that you tell yourself complacently. But if you look at yourself sincerely as you are thinking, you perceive that you have in your head a collection of thoughts sometimes frightful of which you were not at all aware.
For example, your reactions when something did not please you : how eager you are to send your friends, relatives, acquaintances, every one, to the devil ! How you wish them all kinds of unpleasant things, without being even aware of it ! And how you say, "Ah ! that will teach him for being like that !" And when you criticise, you say, "He must be made aware of his faults !" And when someone did not act according to your idea, you say, "He shall be punished !" and so on.
You do not know because you do not look at yourself as you are thinking. Sometimes you know it, then it becomes a little too strong. But when the thing simply passes by, you do not notice it—it comes, it enters, it goes out. Then you find out that if you truly want to be pure and wholly on the side of the Truth, then that requires a vigilance, sincerity, self-observation, self-control which are not common. You begin to perceive that it is difficult to be truly sincere.
You natter yourself that you have nothing but good disposition and good intention and that whatever you do you do for the good of someone—yes, so long as you are conscious and have control, but the moment you are not very attentive, all kinds of things happen within you of which you are not at all conscious and which are not very fine.
If you want to clean your house thoroughly, you must be vigilant for a long time, for a very long time and especially do not believe that you have reached the goal, like that, at one stroke
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because one day you happened to decide that you would be on the side of the good. It is of course a very essential and important point, but it must be followed by a good many other days when you would have to act as the strict policeman so that you do not deny your resolution.
NOLINI KANTA GUPTA
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(Contd.)
THIS is obviously a descent into the subconscient where is the seed or impression of all the instincts.
16-9-1935
*
* *
The peacock signifies victory in Yoga, the divine victory. The clear sky would indicate perhaps the mental part cleared of obscurities.
18-9-1935
*
* *
It is not that you have to do what you dislike, but that you have to cease to dislike. To do only what you like is to indulge the vital and maintain its domination over the nature—for that is the very principle of the untransformed nature, to be governed by its likes and dislikes. To be able to do anything with equanimity is the principle of Karma Yoga and to do with joy because it is done for the Mother is the true psychic and vital condition in this Yoga.
23-9-1935
*
* *
It is not possible for the Mother to promise to give help in worldly matters. She intervenes only in special cases. There
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are some of course, who by their openness and their faith get her help in any worldly difficulty or trouble but that is a different thing. They simply remember and call the Mother and in due time some result comes.
9-10-1935
I have not read fean Christophe, but Rolland is an idealist who takes interest in spiritual mysticism—not himself a man of spiritual experience. It is quite natural that such a man's writing should produce an effect on an intellectual man more easily than a religious or spiritual work." S was not rehgious-minded, so a religious work would not move him because it would be too far from his own way of thinking and turn of seeing. A spiritual book would not reach him, for he would not understand or feel the spiritual experience or knowledge contained in it, they being quite foreign to his then consciousness. On the other hand, a book by an intellectual idealist with an intellectual turn towards spirituality would suit his own temperament and could hook and draw his thoughts that way.
26-10-1935
Without the play of ego clashes would not come and if there were no tendency to drama in the vital there would be no dramatic happenings in life.
14-11-1935
The aspiration for the supramental would be premature. What you have to aspire for is the psychic change and the spiritual
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change of the whole being—which is the necessary condition before one can even think of the Supramental.
Every one can arrive at realisation, if he is sincere and faithful; none is sure of it now if he turns away from the Truth within him—although the final goal is same for all.
Each part of the being has its own nature or even different natures contained in the same part.
In these dreams the parents or relatives mean the ordinary forces of the physical consciousness (the old nature).
9-3-1936
SRI AUROBINDO
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CHAPTER III
THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
THE touch of Earth is always reinvigorating to the son of Earth, even when he seeks a supraphysical Knowledge. It may even be said that the supraphysical can only be really mastered in its full ness...when we keep our feet firmly on the physical. 'Earth is His footing0, says the Upanishad whenever it images the Self that manifests in the universe. And it is certainly the fact that the wider we extend and the surer we make our knowledge of the physical world, the wider and surer becomes our foundation for the higher knowledge, even for the highest, even for the Brahmavidya."—The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo, Ch. II.
"Science in its very nature is knowledge, is intellectuality and its whole work has been that of the Mind turning its gaze upon its vital and physical frame and environment to know and conquer and dominate Life and Matter. The scientist is Man the thinker mastering the forces of material Nature by knowing them. Life and Matter are after all our standing-ground, our lower basis and to know their processes and their own "proper possibilities and the opportunities they give to the human being is part of the knowledge necessary for transcending them. Life and the body have to be exceeded, but they have also to be utilised and perfected. Neither the laws nor the possibilities of physical Nature can be entirely known unless we know also the laws and possibilities of supraphysical Nature; therefore the development of new and the recovery of old mental and psychic sciences have to follow upon the perfection of our physical knowledge, and that new era is already beginning to open upon us. But the perfection of the physical sciences was a prior necessity and had to be the
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first field for the training of the mind of man in his new endeavour to know Nature and possess his world."—The Human Cycle by Sri Aurobindo, Chapter VIII.
The main characteristic of the modern age is its scientific temper. This does not mean that science is a new invention. What is meant is that no previous age in recorded history was so exclusively dominated by materialistic, experimental science as the present is. It has condemned theology as a crippling superstition, spurned metaphysics as a lazy idea-weaving and a tissue of unrealistic abstractions, and religious ethics as a crude system of moral indoctrination and an enforcement of primitive behaviour patterns. But while claiming to free man from the mediaeval obscurantism, it has plunged him in a worse obscurantism, the obscurantism of the cult of the brute fact.
Science existed even in very ancient times. In India, Egypt and Babylon, it contributed not a little to man's knowledge and mastery of Nature. Greece imbibed much of its scientific knowledge from these sources either directly or subsequently through the Arabs, and developed it to a fairly high state of speculative adventure and experimental discovery. The Greeks called it natural philosophy, and looked upon it as a branch of philosophy, which meant to them love of wisdom, and not an intellectual ratiocination and a logical analysis of ideas and concepts. A wide sweep of the reason of man viewed life and Nature in their organic unity, and tried to compass their basic principles and the rhythms of their functional laws. It had the perception of the harmony underlying all the movements of Nature, subjective and objective. The nature philosophers of Ionia discovered many truths of Nature, which have stood the test of centuries of experimentation. Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Leucippus, Democritus, Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, and Aristarchus are some of the honoured names we can mention in this connection. Though most of the Greek nature philosophers found reality in Matter, the Pythagorian school discovered it in form and number.
During the time of Socrates and Plato, natural philosophy was partly overshadowed by metaphysics, but in Aristotle it
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soon reconquered and fortified its position. Aristode may be said to be the pioneer Greek scientist to have set the pace of modern science and indicate the essential lines of its advance, though, it is true, in many respects, he remained loytal to the subjectivism of his master, Plato. The Greek natural philosophers knew that the earth spins in space; and the Pythagorians held the same view, only with this difference that, according to them, the earth moved round a central fire. Aristarchus thought that the fire must be the sun, and he tried to estimate the size of it. But Hipparchus reverted to the idea of the earth being the central planet round which the heavenly bodies wheeled in a complex system of cycles and epicycles. And it was this idea that was imparted to the Mediaeval Age by Ptolemy.1
But after the decline of Greek culture, the vitality of Greek science ebbed away under the stifling pressure of Christianity, under Church domination, which laid exclusive stress on the philosophical and theological aspects of knowledge, and frowned upon the pursuit of materialistic science. In the Dark Ages, Christian dogmas dominated the intellectual scene, and a strong and subtle rationalism, firmly entrenched in tradition, revelled in an intricate weaving of scholastic ideas and abstractions. Heaven was reduced to a cloudland of phantom figures, contemplated from a hazy distance with blind adoration, and Earth came to be looked down upon as the kingdom of the flesh. A hide-bound conservatism floated on the stagnant waters of an unprogressive culture. Whatever may have been the achievements of the Middle Ages, natural science, etiolated in form and depressed in spirit, always remained tied to the apron strings of philosophy and theology, and was never free to launch upon an exploration of physical Nature by the empirical means of unfettered observation and experimentation. The hoary deductive method, deriving unquestioned authority from sacrosanct dogmas of theology and philosophy, helped the extension of existing knowledge along accredited lines, and the enrichment and consolidation of time-worn postulates,
1 I am indebted to Dampier-Whet ham's "A History of Science" for some scientific information.
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but dared not venture out into untrodden fields of creation by an inspired, original impulse and a revolutionary initiative.
It was only when the Renaissance burst upon Europe with the quickening breath of the spring, that man felt the first thrill of freedom and an irresistible urge towards the adventure of life. Earth and her joy and beauty tempted his soul. Her secrets and wonders fired his curiosity. Lured by the physical Nature, dazzled by the prospect of her infinite riches, and avid of an unprecedented possession and mastery, the soul of man ran after her charms and seductions. Heaven receded from its view, and Earth hailed it with a bewitching smile. The Spirit was forgotten in the transports of Matter's embrace.
As we have already seen, the greatest gift of the Renaissance was Humanism. Humanism was an apotheosis of man as the architect of his own fortune. It was the emancipation of his mind and the unshackling of his initiative. It was a powerful call to a full and proper use of his senses, to a life of dreams and adventures, of explorations and discoveries, of risks and responsibilities. It was a passionate pursuit of beauty and pleasure, a throwing off of all religious and moral restraints, and a rather gusty assertion of the freedom of man, the individual.
But what was that man who thus blared his freedom ? Here we are up against a very crucial distinction. In very ancient times man regarded himself as the centre of the universe. It was for him, he felt, that the world existed. It was he who attributed beauty to the objects of Nature. Nature was made for his enjoyment. It was he who enjoyed the smile of the stars, the glory of the rising sun, the stately magnificence of the mountains, the ceaseless surge and roll of the seas, and the captivating patterns and perfumes of the flowers. But this man was not, evidently, the little, individual ego, asserting its separate freedom against the whole world. His belief was based upon the intuition, more or less living in him, that he is a soul, an immortal and infinite entity, in whom dwells the Supreme Being, the Author and Master of the universe. Living and concrete in some, dimmed in- many, dwindled to a faint faith in most, this intuition of his oneness and identity with the Divine and with all, was the secret
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spring from which he derived the perception that Nature as a manifold play of beauty and joy, of the organic harmony of forces and forms, was unfolding through a perpetual alternation of light and shade for his delight and enjoyment, or rather for the delight and enjoyment of the Divine in him. Even when he lost this faith, he end eavoured to recover it by self-discipline and spiritual contemplation. For, the recovery and possession of this mystic sense and intuitive faith was the primary aim and aspiration of his life. Though a mere speck of clay, crawling away his midget existence in one of the tiniest planets in the vast universe, man knew in his hidden depths that he was the potential master of Nature, and that it was for his delight and with his passive consent or under his active direction that she unrolls the never-ending pageant of Nantes and forms of an inexhaustible evolving significance. "The Soul and Nature! are only two aspects of the eternal Brahman, an apparent duality which founds the operations of his universal existence. The Soul is without origin and eternal, Nature too is without origin and eternal; but the modes of Nature and the lower forms she assumes to our conscious experience have an origin in the transactions of these two entities... Nature creates and acts, the Soul enjoys her creation and action; but in this inferior form of her action she turns this enjoyment into the obscure and petty figures of pain and pleasure... But this is only the outward experience of the soul mutable in conception by identification with mutable Nature. Seated in this body is her and our Divinity, the Supreme Self, Paramatman, the Supreme Soul, the mighty Lord of Nature, who watches her action, sanctions her operations, upholds all she does, commands her manifold creation, enjoys with his universal delight this play of her figures of his own being. That is the self-knowledge to which we have to accustom our mentality..."2 If and when man does that, he finds that he is the percipient, the appraiser, and the enjoyer of Nature, her lover and potential master. Without his appreciative and enjoying eye, the moon would be a mere
1 Nature is envisaged here in both her subjective and objective aspects.
2 Essays on the Gita, Chapter 13.
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gleaming disk, the sun a blazing ball, and the flowers a patterned flux of jazzing atoms. Man, the divine Soul, feeling his oneness with all beings and objects, was, therefore, fully entitled to regard himself as at the centre of the universe. In the Upanishad it is said : "From Him are the oceans and all these mountains and from Him flow rivers of all forms, and from Him are all plants, and sensible delight which makes the soul to abide with the material elements."1 Again it is said : "This sun is honey to all creatures and elements, and all creatures and elements are honey to the sun ...this moon is honey to all, and all are honey to the moon..."2 Which means that all beauty and delight we enjoy are the Beauty and Delight of the Eternal, and that all are attracted to all, because all are secretly akin and affiliated to that imperishable Fountain of Beauty and Delight.3 But the world that Copernicus and Galileo and Newton discovered was a drab world of swirling atoms and elements, motions of Matter is space and time, rigorous mathematical equations, inexorably deterministic interplay of masses and particles—a world of shifting configurations, structures and patterns, which had no beauty and joy to communicate, no warmth or thrill to impart. Soul and Nature stood apart, in sharp separation—conscious soul, and unconscious Nature of the Sankhyan formula. Their divorce was complete.
There is another point to note. That the earth was considered the centre of the material world was based on a truth which spiritual knowledge had discovered in olden times. It was a truth to which almost all philosophical schools of India subscribed. According to it, earth is the theatre of the cosmic drama of evolution, in which every living particle is instinct with an urge to self-transcendence. It is only on earth, it was believed, and nowhere else that the Divine can be integrally realised, lived in, and manifested. It is only here that even the gods have to be born, if they
1 Mundaka Upanishad
2 Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
3 "Seeing the beauty exquisitely mirrored forth in a human face, one turns to the Beauty of the Absolute. Perceiving the abundance of loveliness so grateful to the senses, and the marvellous orderliness of the spheres, and the glory of the stars, can one be so unmoved as not ~to recollect the Creator, and pause in reverent awe before this revelation of His greatness ?"—Plotinus.
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aspire for spiritual liberation and divine union. This knowledge of the unique greatness of the Mother Earth, where all the forces of the universe, forces of light and forces of darkness, are concentrated to work out the glorious issue of the evolutionary travail, the long-dreamt-of Epiphany, was a common denominator in almost all ancient wisdom. Materially one of the smallest of planets, earth is spiritually superior to all others ; and it is this spiritual potential which invests earth and all earthly beings with a divinity unmatched elsewhere. But modern science, in its blind dogmatism, airily scouts and dismisses it as a primitive superstition. If this spiritual destiny of man and earth is ignored, Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest falls to the ground ; for, man, physically much less fit than most superior animals, would have ere long ceased to exist in his struggle for existence. If it is argued that his mind and its powers have contributed considerably to his fitness, the conclusion cannot then be escaped that the mind is a superior agency, a superior evolutes ; and that as there are various ranges of the mind itself representing the various stages of culture from the Hottentots upwards, so there may well be a whole range of higher intellectual and spiritual powers which can impart to the fully evolved man the power to become the master and enjoyer of all Nature, and to his domicile, the earth, the special prerogative of being the scene of the Divine Manifestation. When, therefore, it is said that man is at the centre of the universe or that the earth is the hub of the cosmic machine, it is the Divine in man and the earth who is meant, and not the mortal creature of Nature in human form, or the whirling lump of Matter he inhabits.
But because this knowledge was clouded and almost covered up in the Dark Ages—they should be called dark from this standpoint—the conservative and conventional clinging of man to a mere shadow or memory of it spelled stagnation in his life. The radiant core of the ancient knowledge became a dead shell, a delusion, and a prison. Hugging the delusion, man forgot and forfeited his creative powers, and looked up to a misty heaven to reward him for his sombre piety and routine righteousness. His vision grew dim and narrow, his heart and mind ceased to
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expand, and a progressive sterility marked his culture. It was high time the delusion was shattered, and the mind of man broke out of the capsule of cramping conventions. It was high time man asserted his liberty and dignity, his freedom of thought and expression, and his power to progress on the path of his own free choice.
The Renaissance gave him this liberty, and the Reformation, in some important respects, at least, enlarged and enriched it. Material life began to wear a brighter and a more buoyant look, and seem to glow with a dawning significance and purpose. A wave of electric inspiration ran through Western humanity, impelling it to use the reason and the senses for the rehabilitation and reconditioning of the material life by exploring the immense potentialities of Nature. Humanism fostered Naturalism,1 Naturalism created the scientific spirit and developed natural science, and natural science gravitated towards rank scepticism, hedonism, and materialism.
But Humanism, which had dispelled the delusion the mind of the Mediaeval Age had laboured under, itself fell a prey to a more dangerous delusion. In tearing himself away from his spiritual roots, man underwent the subjection of Nature. Humanism was arrogant and materialistic in grain. It was crudely anthropomorphic, a glorification of the fragile, mortal man, a helpless sport of Nature, to whose subtle spell he succumbed even in the midst of his victorious conquest of many of her physical secrets. His reason, which had served the high ends of fife, and ministered to the evolutionary growth and self-expression of his soul, now elected to pander to the obscure drives and appetites of his lower Nature. For, divorced from the soul, Nature is a blind mechanism; and, in hugging the chains of Nature, man began to approximate to her mechanism, and lose his spiritual freedom. Materialism thus led to the mechanisation of man. What man invented, he could not control and employ to his purpose. He let himself be controlled by it. Identified with
1 Historically, it would be more true to say that Naturalism, which had its birth towards the close of the Mediaeval Age, generated Humanism and was itself nourished by it.
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mechanical and technical science, he tended to become himself a machine.
But Science cannot be blamed for this tragic eventuality. "Science in its very nature is knowledge, is intellectuality", says Sri Aurobindo, and "the scientist is Man the thinker mastering the forces of material Nature by knowing them." Even Materialism, scepticism, and atheism, which science has nursed and developed, have done humanity a great service by sweeping away the shams and superstitions, the facile credulities and crudities of the conventional age out of which it sprang as the deliverer. It came to clear the passage for the advent of the age of an enlightened subjectivism. But because man had lost his hold upon the spiritual truth of his being, his greed and lust of power exploited science to their nefarious ends.
This prostitution and perversion of science by commercial cupidity1 and political power-lust has caused the degeneration of man, his mechanisation and dehumanisation. Cut off from his soul, he finds himself helplessly overborne by the dark waves of his low£r Nature ,He is no longer a conscious spiritual being, knowing and controlling Nature. He has become Nature— unseeing, brutal, mechanical. He is mastered by his inferior Nature to such an extent that he is driven to invent and perfect the very means of his own destruction.
Has he gained from science the knowledge he set out to acquire ? His mind has lost its higher powers of imagination, insight, comprehensive and synthetic perception, and th e apprehension of the subtle qualities and imponderables of human Nature. Even of the physical Nature, he knows, more or less,
1 Describing modern commercialism, Sri Aurobindo writes: "The accumulation of wealth and more wealth, the adding of possessions to possessions, opulence, show, pleasure, a cumbrous inartistic luxury, a plethora of conveniences, life devoid of beauty and nobility, religion vulgarised or coldly formalised, politics and government turned into a trade and profession, enjoyment itself made a business, this is commercialism .. .Therefore in a commercial age with its ideal, vulgar and barbarous,. . .the soul of man may linger a while for certain gains and experiences, but cannot permanently rest. If it persisted too long, Life would become clogged and perish of its own plethora, or burst in its straining to a gross expansion. Like the too massive Titan it will collapse by its own mass, mole met sua." The Hitlnan Cycle by Sri Aurobindo, Chapter VIII.
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the outer workings, the quantitative aspect. In studying Nature, piecemeal, analytically, by the exclusive method of specialisation, he has neglected her organic life. Ignorance of the organic whole, turns his knowledge of the parts into a confusing ignorance. His knowledge has been atomised. It is factual, not rational; informative, not illuminative. It is powerless to light his life's path, to lead him on it, to brace and sustain him in the face of its storms and thunders. In the very midst of his technical triumphs, he stands dwarfed, darkened, and dismayed, caught in the soulless mechanism of his own invention.
But this process of mechanisation, of dehumanisation was not completed in a day, nor, it must be noted, has it been an absolutely unmixed evil. Like all his previous falls, the present fall of man is a prelude and impulsion to another rise. Perhaps he will rise this time higher than ever before. Matter, which has absorbed and engulfed him, and submerged his spiritual powers and potentialities, will soon be constrained to release its hold upon him, acknowledge the sovereignty of his awakened soul, and consent to be a docile instrument of his spiritual self-expression. The glorification of man, the shuttlecock of his egoistic desires, the willing slave of Nature, which began in the Renaissance, will culminate in the glorification and apocalypse of the Divine in man. The curve of evolution will thus come full circle. The recent upward gradient of human quest through materialism, vitalism, psychology, and parapsychology, and the phenomenal progress of physics and biology, are a sure pointer to this consummation. Materialism, in spite of its perilous aberrations, has secured the physical field and condition for the ultimate fulfilment of the destiny of humanity on earth.
The Divine is not asleep, nor has He deserted man. With the infinite love and tenderness of the Universal Mother, He has been leading him through the soul-evoking experiences of darkness and evil, failure and frustration, pain and suffering, to the everlasting bliss of his spiritual existence. New that the reality of the material world has been vindicated, and its claim to be the vehicle of a higher life established ; now that the apex of the exclusive movement of the human mind has been reached, and the human
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reason has begun to realise how it has fallen from its high office and been duped into a sordid subservience to a crude physical life of animal cravings and passions, a ray of hope is stealing into the heart of man that his mind, forswearing its downward look, will direct its gaze inwards and upwards in an intrepid effort to transcend itself—for the principle of transcendence is the very motive power and meaning of evolution1—and that he may turn a new chapter of his existence with Matter as a stable and Uumined base for the remoulding of his whole life and nature in the image of the Divine. The inestimable gift of science,2 let me repeat, is the ringing affirmation of the reality and rich potentiality of material life. The New Age that is dawning will affirm the identity of Spirit and Matter, and found upon their union the creative harmony and happiness of the Life Divine.
I shall now try to trace very briefly the steps which have led mankind from Humanism to the present-day scientific technocracy.
RISHABHCHAND
1 "The animal is satisfied with a modicum of necessity; the gods are content with their splendours*. But man cannot rest permanently until he reaches some highest good. He is the greatest of living beings because he is the most discontented, because he feels most the pressure of limitations. He alone, perhaps, is capable of being seized by the divine frenzy for a remote ideal." The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo, Chapter VI.
2 There is another gift of science. Belonging, as it does, to no country, no race, no nation in particular, it is cosmopolitan, and its application and appeal are, therefore, universal. This universality of science has greatly widened the physical mind of modern man, but it has, at the same time, given a wider scope and spur to the greed and selfish desires of his life mind to which his reason is helplessly harnessed.
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THE mystery of the Divine Incarnation in her birth and work, Janma karma cha divyam, is an occult process of uniting the Upper and Lower hemispheres in the ladder of existence, so that the hitherto unmanifest Spiritual Powers pour into the triple world of Matter, Life and Mind and bring about not only an enrichment of earthly life but also a successive movement of new creations. All the worlds above and below are indeed organised in the vast bosom of the Infinite Consciousness, mayi
sarvam idam protam, but each world has a fixed norm and potentiality of movements which limit the possibilities of manifestation in that world. This world of ours is- an organisation on the foundation of Ignorance and it should have remained a field for working out the endless permutations and combinations of the energies of Avidya, circumscribed within the bounds of Nescience. But the Grace of the Divine descent and embodiment has added with every Advent a new dimension of the Higher Consciousness to the evolving humanity. The birth of Christ opened the path of Psychic Love for the Divine Love. The coming of the Buddha macadamised the road to Nirvana. The intervention of Lord Rama paved the way for perfection in Spiritualised Ethics. Sri Rama-krishna Paramahamsa canalised the Spiritualised Overhead Intuition for all. Sri Krishna made the ascent to the Over mental Knowledge and Love leading to the Supreme Ananda possible, while Chaitanya sought and achieved and transmitted the embodiment of Krishna's Love even in the vital and sometimes in the vital-physical consciousness. The work of Savitri, the Mother, is to add another, higher, all-comprehending zone of consciousness as a permanent part of the scheme of things here, so that the manifestation of the Divine Love and Ananda takes place even in this very material world, thereby fulfilling the cherished' dream of all mystical and spiritual aspiration for a divine life in a divine body. This ultimate aim of making the earth a Paradise for the Play of the Divine Anandamaya Purushottama in all His plenitude and perfection becomes possible only by the preliminary instrumentation
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of the Supramental Creative Consciousness whose Truth-Light and Truth-Force shape the mortal members and make them fit vessels for the Divine Shakti, so that mortality bears well the Eternal's touch and even welcomes the pure divine intolerance of that assault of ether and fire. "From the height of that summit which is identification with Thy divine, infinite love, Thou hast turned my look towards this complicated body which has to serve Thee as an instrument. And Thou hast said to me : 'It is myself; seest Thou not that my light shines in it ?' And in fact I saw Thy divine Love, clad in intelligence, and then in force, constitute this body in its smallest cells and radiate in it to such a point that it became nothing else than a mass of millions of radiant sparks, which all made it manifest that they were Thou.
"And now all darkness has disappeared, and Thou alone livest, in different worlds, under different forms, but with a life identical, immutable and eternal.
"We must make this divine world of Thy immutable domain of pure love and indivisible oneness commune mtimately with the divine world of all the other domains, up to the most material where Thou art the centre and the very constitution of each atom. To establish a bond of perfect consciousness between all these successive divine worlds is the sole means to live in Thee constantly and invariably, accomplishing integrally the mission Thou hast confided to the whole being in all its states of consciousness and all its modes of activity.
"O my sweet Master, Thou hast rent asunder a new veil of my ignorance, and, without leaving my happy place in Thy eternal heart, I am at the same time in the imperceptible but infinite heart of each of the atoms which constitute this body."
II
The inmost secret soul of Savitri is the Para Prakriti of the Upper Hemisphere of the world of Chit and Ananda, an immortal being of bliss and peace who can taste the Rasa of the essential Ananda manifesting itself in the Divine Lila in Time, Space
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and Circumstance. To the spiritual vision of the Divine Soul the sequence of actions in Time is a play, a Divine Comedy, a ball, a masquerade and a game. 'God is an eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.' Each set of events is a scene staged by the Eternal in His consciousness, motivated by the pure delight of self-existence, with actors who are all only different forms of His own Self. There is an endless succession of scenes in different space-time dimensions with an extraordinary wealth of characters, modes, moods and atmospheres. Nothing is permanent or fixed but each glides and flows imperceptibly into and leads naturally on to the next. The Divine dramatist does not seem to be in a hurry at all in accelerating the speed of the movement of scenes so that Time and the hours move so silently that the passage is not
flyby the spectators with a shock or violence. Each scene has to be a selection of particular characters and setting and mood but the principle of this selection is not explicable to the reasoning intelligence of man and so remains a mystery which can be unravelled only by a Supramental vision. The literary form of this drama is not adequately described by the usual categories of tragedy, comedy, melodrama or farce. These are the human, the all too human ways of response characterised by a terrible limitation of perception and comprehension. The human mind has only to declare its helplessness in defining what appears to it as a preposterous medley of all known forms of drama. For it is a Divine Comedy in which the Divine Love and Wisdom originate, direct, prepare and lead the events and figures to a divine consummation. The Divine Bliss is there behind every scene of apparent tears, laughter, sentimental sorrow or fantastic merriment. The human ego is a creature of Time and Circumstance with no vision of what is behind and beyond these and shaping these and that is the reason why it alternates between the limited and ignorant reactions of pleasure or merriment when events seem to satisfy its interest, and pain or exaggerated lamentation when they are adverse. But Time and Circumstance are only the framework for the Divine Artist to shape and change as .He pleases. The One and the Many who are the One in different guises have entered the field of manifestation only for a dance,
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a masqueraded ball of different steps and movements. Time and Circumstance ring changes according to the need of the participants in this ball. They keep time in tune with the rhythms of the Divine Dancer. The disguises of the Divine are very successful and none but He and his initiates know the real Person behind them all and even when knowing the Truth indwelling the ignorant forms He seems to revel in putting on these masks which hide His true nature so perfectly and completely. The essence of a
masquerade is this simultaneous perception of the appearance and the truth behind the appearance which is felt not indeed as an illusion but as a real mask worn with joy and for joy of oneself and all similar selves. And this masquerade or Lila in Ignorance and Time is only a prelude to the more
enervating masquerade or Lila in Knowledge and Eternity. Time is preparing itself for the direct, open play of the Timeless; the years point to immortality. Each Divine Soul, Jivatman, is God's delegate, a conscious representative of the Paramatman, the Spirit, and so can and does share the simultaneous awareness of the Individual, Universal and Transcendent Divine Consciousness. So the Jiva combines many apparently mutually exclusive qualities. She is a being standing above in her status of immortality and trifling with or hugging with a consciousness of condescending superiority all things subject to the mutations of time, a person living in the ambiance of the large and wide consciousness native to the upper ether where Peace and Happiness are in a state of fused and self-existent intensity and so proof against the invasion from without by pain or sorrow. So she can look on unperturbed at the cosmic game or masquerading drama of the Divine in the Universe. But she has also a hand in the selection of events and scenes of this drama. She participates in the divine play and presides over the evolution of the human individual acting as the delegate of the Divine here in this triple world and enjoys the divine Rasakrida with Him and with other Divine souls in the eternal Brindavan behind all the appearances to the contrary in the surface, outer world. The game of the Divine with the human is so absorbing in its interest that its endless variety and richness madden her into a state of passion which is visibly seen in the glow and luminosity of her eyes.
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"A joy in the world is her master movement here,
The passion of the game lighted her eyes :
A smile on her lips welcomed earth's bliss and grief,
A laugh was her return to pleasure and pain.
All things she saw as a masquerade of Truth
Disguised in the costumes of Ignorance,
Crossing the years to immortality."
The challenge of the dualities of the earth-scene is welcomed with a smile and the response to the opposites is accompanied by a masterful laughter exulting in the contact with the Divinity that shapes our ends. Her inward spiritual peace and tranquil happiness meet all the shocks of circumstance.
"All she could front with the strong spirit's peace."
III
All this participation in the Divine Lila of the world of Ignorance by the Jivatman is done from high above in a subtle plane of detached eminence and inwardness. But she is aware of the turmoil of the life in the surface of the mental, vital and physical parts of man's being. She knows that they do not share her alchemising consciousness and vision which go behind the opposites of pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance and concentrate on and taste the Divine Love and Ananda permeating them all with an equal extension and intensity, samatn
ānandam brahma. To their superficial outlook time is always and only time, and place is always and only place, and the life of alternation between the excitement of pleasure and the opposite excitement of pain with an intermediate swoon of indifference which must lead to either of these inevitably, is a vicious circle, a vain round of labour, a toil. The reaction of the Jivatman to this foiled circuitous wandering of the instruments is one of divine compassion of the mother for all her children. She is anxious not certainly with the fever and fret of the surface parts but in her own detached and certain poise that they too must share in the Divine Vision. Their education becomes her calm interest. She can indeed send from above,
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the spiritual calmness and bliss which would spiritualise them to a great deal but that would not change their essential stuff of nature and make them respond in the active dynamic life of ignorance to the challenges and terrible tailings of the Inconscient. Not content with mere reflections of her light, peace and bliss which are precarious and certainly inadequate to convert the contacts with Ignorance into the divine ecstasy,
"She puts forth a small portion of herself,
A being no bigger than the thumb of man
Into a hidden region of the heart
To face the pang and to forget the bliss,
To share the suffering and endure earth's wounds
And labour mid the labour of the stars."
This is the psychic essence, the spiritual spark in the members of the earth-consciousness, a unique quality of the earth not found in any other organisation of consciousness in the other worlds from the Over mental to the subtle physical. "It is a direct, special, transmuting infusion into the most inconscient and obscure Matter to awaken it once more step by step to the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Presence and finally the Divine Himself. It is a specialty of the earth. But only in the human being does the psychic become more conscious, more formed and also more independent; it is there individualised." At first it is a tiny being, a being no bigger than the thumb of man, Angushthamatra Purusha, deep inlaid in the cavernous depths of man's being, nihatah guhāyām, not in the front or responding or receiving the experiences of life directly but through a hard, confusing layer of ignorant mental, vital, and physical and even subconscient inchoate mass. In its state of initial weakness, the surface parts and ego might and do dominate and compel it to an identification with their life of agony and torture, exultation and ambition and subjection to the whippings of Fate.
"This in us laughs and weeps, suffers the stroke,
Exults in victory, struggles for the crown, .
Identified with the mind and body and life,
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It takes on itself their anguish and defeat,
Bleeds with Fate's whips and hangs upon the cross",
But the Jivatman is secretly supporting this human actor and slowly infusing more and more of her spiritual qualities into the psychic and through this into the other members.
"Yet is the unwounded and immortal self
Supporting the actor on the human scene.
Through this she sends us her glory and her powers,
Pushes to wisdom's heights, through misery's gulfs;"
Each human being carries within him a portion of the universal mental, vital, physical and subconscient consciousness of the Ignorance and the load he has to bear is terrible and impossible and man would have given up the game and lapsed into the original Inconscience individually . and collectively. Here where men sit and hear each other groan with the weary weight of all this unintelligible world, it is the strength, sympathy and brotherly love of the psychic being which have made man not only survive the onslaughts of Time and Fate but even confidently look up to the heights in a mounting aspiration of a divine perfection, profoundly dissatisfied with even the greatest achievements of the human ego or the mind. The divine discontent with the present organisation of things and an ardent longing for an integral transformation of all the members of man's personality are the products of a psychic influence and integration.
"This is in us the godhead small and marred;
In this human portion of divinity
She seats the greatness of the Soul in Time
To uplift from light to light, from power to power,
Till on a heavenly peak it stands, a king.
In body weak, in its heart an invincible might,
It climbs stumbling, held up by an unseen hand,
A toiling spirit in a mortal shape."
The broad-based flame of Bhakti for the Divine in a total consecration extending to and igniting all the parts and planes of a man's
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being from the zenith at the head to the nadir at the feet and pouring towards the very heart of the Divine Sun in an undeviating straight and swift movement of exclusive concentration, the pyramidal Agni, is the result of the perfect working of the fully grown psychic being in man. Not to be satisfied with the lights on the way however great and dazzling, not to be deceived by the misleading will-o-the-wisps of the Intermediate zones, but to assimilate the pure spiritual influences in all the planes and proceed from peak to peak of the many-peaked hill of Spiritual Consciousness till one arrives at the highest peak of all, the Supra-mental Sachchidananda, the heavenly peak, strife singe, yajne yajne. It grows in stature progressively with every ascent towards and the descent from the Higher Conciousness till at last the tiny creature becomes a majestic king. For, from the very outset it holds within itself an unconquerable power, the power of the Divine Grace and Presence which manifests itself more and more in its upward ascent and out flowering.
IV
This psychic presence transplanted in the lower hemisphere for the redemption of the earth and humanity by the Divine Soul in the upper hemisphere, crosses the Intermediate zones with safety and finally meets the secret soul above in the Zone of Light.
Here in this chamber of flame and light they met;
They looked upon each other, knew themselves,
The secret deity and its human part,
The calm immortal and the struggling soul.
The Jivatman waits in the native home of Chit-Tapas for the psychic emanation sent into the triple world of Ignorance to ascend with a homogeneous, integrated, mental, vital and physical consciousness to its region of light, love and bliss. There is a mutual recognition of essential oneness and then there is the embrace of each other in a rapturous love,
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Then with a magic transformation's speed
They rushed into each other and grew one.
This identification of the Chaitya Purusha with the Jivatman is a mysterious union, for it is not a simple mergence or the passing away of the individual uniqueness of the psychic being or laya in the Beyond. Nor is it a lapse of the essential qualities of the Jivatman to acclimatize itself to the demands of the psychic. But it is a fusion of the peculiar qualities of both and the formation of a new Gnostic being, a transformed being who becomes the mediator between the Sachchidananda and the Jada, one who can call safely and bear the onrush of the Light, Power, Bliss and Love of the Supramental Ishwari Shakti, not only in herself and for her inner being but also and especially into the mortal members for their integral transformation. This profound alchemy is instantaneous and happens the moment the pyramidal psychic Agni touches the plane of Chit-Tapas, for this is the region of the all-effectuating power of transformation. "And when the day will come for the manifestation of the supreme Love, for the crystallised, concentrated descent of the supreme Love, that will indeed be the moment of Transformation. Because nothing will be able to resist That." By this finding of her soul and the rushing into each other of the secret deity and the struggling human soul in her, Savitri unites in her individual being to begin with, the Supreme Love, Chit-Tapas, of the Upper Hemisphere and the triple world of the lower hemisphere. The work that remains to be done is the work of individual transformation on this basis of all the mortal instruments and the further more difficult work of transmission of this experience to all aspiring centres on the earth-scene.
V
The life and work of the Avatar are at the same time a parable and a paradigm of the human evolution towards the Divine Consciousness. Always, with whatever stumblings or
tempos of movement and waiting in the inns of the wayside, man follows
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the path blazed by the Divine, mamavartmānuvartante manusyāh sarvasah. So we could envisage the future line of Sadhana of humanity to be a psychic orientation and integration and an ascent to the Supramental Love and a descent and consequent transformation and formation of the Gnostic Purusha. For the Avatar gives not a mere teaching or a blueprint of sadhana only but generates the Yoga Shakti for the new realisation and therefore a new creation. That is the reason why we find in Sri Aurobindo's epic, the sadhana of Savitri, especially the Finding of the Soul described not only with particular reference to the individual being in Savitri but in very general terms embracing and applicable to all humanity.
This in us laughs and weeps, suffers the stroke...
Yet is the unwounded and immortal self
Supporting the actor on the human scene.
Through this she sends us her glory and her powers,
Pushes to wisdom's heights, through misery's gulfs
This is in us the godhead small and marred ;
So the sadhana of Savitri is a type of all the sadhana of the evolving mortals aspiring for an integral transformation. She is the ladder of ascent for humanity and descent of the Divine Love.
The ascent of the inmost soul in man, the Hamsa or spiritual swan towards the Divine soul above, the Paramahamsa and their union or mergence have been revealed and practised in the greatest spiritual disciplines of the Eleusinian mysteries, the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus who spoke of the flight of the alone to the Alone as the very essence of mysticism, and of many forms of Oriental mysticism. Thus the great Hamsa Vidya aspires for communion with the Swan of all swans who should direct them all increasingly and permanently for their redemption and fulfilment : Hamsaharhsāya vidmahe ; Paramahamsāya dhīmahe ; tanno harhsah pracodayāt. But the formation of the Gnostic being in her and therefore opening up of the possibility in all are unique achievements of this Avatar.
But barring these rare spiritual disciplines which emphasise the out flowering and ascent of the soul in man towards the Divine soul
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above for the sake of liberation from the vain rounds of Karma, other lines of sadhana are satisfied with a reflection of the Peace and Bliss of the Parama Hamsa in the purified mind and sometimes in the chastened vital. Very often the emphasis is on leaping into the unmanifest Beyond free from all dynamism or the possibility of it, anyway the shuffling off of the mortal coil and instruments.
In very secret spiritual traditions which keep the overhead ascent as the goal, the evolution of the psychic being reaches a stage when a God of the plane of the Over mind extends and identifies himself with the psychic which has developed an affinity with him and so draws this psyche to his own world of felicity, or Heaven, the over mental world. This is the tradition of the ascent to Kailasa, Vaikunta, Goloka, Chintamanigriha and Kaumara loka of Eastern Spiritual Sadhana and the many mansions spoken of by Christ. In exceptionally fortunate periods in the terrestrial evolution one of these Over mental Gods comes down here attended by all the psyches in affinity with Him and clustered round Him in a constant' Mandala of love and harmony. This seems to be the case with Krishna and the Gopikas in this world, a temporary projection into this world of that great world of Harmony, sufficiently powerful to leave in the earth-memory a permanent impression and aspiration for the felicity of that heaven.
The crossing of the Over mental border and the entry into the Supramental and Chide ananda Loka not only individually but generating the Yoga shakti for that crossing by mortal man to produce not the mere Spiritual Man of the past but the new Gnostic Soul are the work of Savitri, the Mother.
M. V. SEETARAMAN
References :
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Savitri : Book Seven ; Canto Five. |
| Prayers and Meditations of the Mother. |
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READINGS IN THE BRIHADARANYAKA UPANISHAD
(3)
MEDITATION ON PRANA
THE, prāna, is the link between Spirit and Matter. It is the Life-Force that energies this manifestation and keeps it moving—-jagati. And this Life-Force is not insentient, a product of matter. It is conscient, it is purposive in its operations. And that is so because the Life-Force is really a derivation, a projection of the supreme Consciousness-Force, Chit-Shakti of the upper hemisphere, the parārdha, in the lower triple world of mind-life-matter. As a facet of the Divine Shakti, the Life-Force, Prana, has been lauded again and again in the Upanishads and meditation upon Prana as born of the Self, indeed as the very Self, is a recognised means of attainment to the Supreme. We have seen in the first section of this Upanishad the importance attached to the consecration of the Life-Force, the Vedic aśva, to the Divine. This section1 highlights the unique nature of this Force of Life and celebrates its glory by narrating a parable.
Of two kinds was the progeny of the Almighty Father : the shining ones, devas and the mighty ones, asuras. And what should be more natural than that the luminous children of light were outnumbered by the violent hordes 'of night ! Both vied with each other for supremacy in the domains of manifestation of their Father. The Gods looked for a way to surpass the titans and in their innate wisdom saw that they could do it by resort to the udgitha, the chant of ascension, the vocal expression of upward aspiration, in a Sacrifice to the Supreme. Now the chant is to be vocalised by Speech and so they approached Vāc, the organ of speech to give form to their common aspiration. Vac agreed
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and chanted. In so doing it provided the common enjoyment in the chant to the Gods but the rarer fruit of elegance it reserved for itself. The titans who were apprehensive of this move of the Gods, were on the wait for a loophole to strike and they got it in this egoistic self-reservation on the part of Speech and they smote it with Evil. This, says the text, is the evil that ever attaches to speech and becomes patent every time the improper is spoken.
Then the Gods approached the nose to chant. The nose chanted but it too appropriated the best for itself and gave room for the Enemy to strike ever tainting it with the evil of smelling the improper. Thus in turn the eye, the ear, the mind etc. were approached and each was found wanting and each was smitten with Evil by the Adversary. Artiest the Gods asked the Breath in the mouth, dsanya prdna or the Chief Breath, mukhya prdna of which all other prānas are functional operations,1 to help them in their predicament. And this Breath of Existence gave the full-throated chant. The enemies rushed upon him. But like a clod of earth hurling against a solid rock, they were dashed to pieces. Shattered in all directions, the powerful enemies perished and the Gods, rid of their constriction, recovered their innate and original nature.
1 "In the body of man there are said to be five workings of the life-force called the five Pranas. One specially termed prdna moves in the upper part of the body and is preeminently the breath of life, because it brings the universal Life-force into the physical system and gives it there to be distributed. A second in the lower part of the trunk, termed apāna, is the breath of death; for it gives away the vital force out of the body. A third, the samāna, regulates the interchange of thes two forces at their meeting-place, equalises them and is the most important agent in maintaining the equilibrium of the vital forces and their functions. A fourth, vyāna, pervasive, distributes the vital energies throughout the body. A fifth, udāna, moves upward from the body to the crown of the head and is a regular channel of communication between the physical life and the greater life of the spirit. None of these is the first or supreme Breath, although the prana most nearly represents it; the Breath to which so much importance is given in the Upanishads, is the pure life-force itself, first, because all the others are secondary to it, born from it and only exist as its special functions." (Sri Aurobindo : Kena Upanishad)
As the Prashna Upanishad puts it picturesquely : "As an emperor commands his officers and he says to one, 'govern for me these villages,' and to another, 'govern for me these others', so this Breath, the Life, appoints the other breaths each in his province." (III.4).
Vide also : "I (Prana) dividing myself into this fivefold support this hurp of God, I am its preserver." (Pr. Up. II.3).
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And the Gods naturally asked themselves, 'Where is he who has thus restored us to our Godhead ?' They saw him in the mouth, āsye antah, the Breath of the mouth, ayāsya, they perceive him to be the essence, the indispensable core of all the members of the body of manifestation—ahgānām rasah, āngirasa.
This Life-Force is celebrated as the Deity dur, for Death is far from it, dūram, and far from one who knows it thus. It is again the Life-Force that thrust the Evil, the very Death, far away from the Gods and cast it out into a region where none, neither Gods nor any other should venture lest one contact that Evil.
This Life-Energy, Prana Shakti, is the Dynamism that is capable of shooting across the belt of evil and death because it is in its very nature universal, infinite and by realising one's identity with it it is possible, through the inevitable shedding of the limitations of the individual ego-nature, to cross beyond death.
Once the Evil of death was banished, the Gods recovered their original nature. Speech became luminous1 Fire, Agni, for, Agni, forceful impulsion is what gives rise to the expressive Word, vac. So did the Gods presiding over the faculties of smell, sight, hearing, come into their own, their uninhabited states of Air, Light, Ether or Space. And the mind recovered its innate Delight of the Moon, soma.
Then, continues the parable, the Prana sought and secured food for himself; for all food taken in by the body is really consumed by the Life-energy and food is indispensable to support its embodiment in the material frame. The other Gods asked for their share of nourishment. 'Gather round me', said Prana and the Gods clustered around facing him. Hence the food eaten by Prana nourishes all the other Gods i.e., all the organs (over which the respective Gods preside). And that is so because it is on the strength of the Life-force that the life of the other organs depends.2 They flourish with the waxing of Prana, the Life-Force, they decay with the waning of the Prana.
1 luminous above the reach of death
2 Vide Prashna Up. II.4 : tasmin ittkrāmati athetare sarva eva ulkrāmanli, tasmin ca protifphatnāne sarva eva prātisfhanti.
prāpe sarvam pratisphitam. II.6.
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Not only is Prana the essence of all limbs, the feeder of all the Gods in the body, but he is also the Brihaspati. For Speech is the great Goddess, brihat, and Breath is the Lord, pati, of Speech. He is the Master of the potent Word that manifests all. He is also the Brahmanaspati, the conscious holder of the Creative word. And He is also the Saman, the Word of Harmonies. He is the one Life-Breath that extends equally in the tiny and the big, the white ant, and the elephant; it spreads over all the three worlds, over the whole universe. Indeed, he who realises this truth of the Supreme Breath attains union with it and extends himself wide with it.
This too is the Udgitha, the upward chant of aspiration. It is this Breath that holds all aloft and impels all effort upwards. It is this Breath in the mouth that gives a full-throated expression to the will for ascent to the Divine. Perforce the Sound needs to be in rhythm with the Idea. And the voice that chants is impelled and held in flow by the Breath governing.
This is the true form of the Force of Life, Prana, and as such it should be meditated upon. One who realises the truth acquires the competence to receive and repeat in Japa1 the Mantras to follow. This is the famous prayer embodying the ages-long aspiration of man to be delivered out of his petty life in Ignorance, out of its falsehood, darkness and death into the felicities of Truth, Light and Immortality :
From non-Being lead me to True Being, asato mā sad gamaya;
from darkness lead me to Light, tamaso mā jyotir gamaya;
from death lead me to Immortality, mrtyor mā amrtam gamaya.
The life that is the mortal's is riddled with falsehood and perversion, it is an existence contrary to the real Truth of Being, a life in non-Being. All right effort is a tapasya to move from these moorings in the unreal, the Falsehood, to the one Existence in Truth, the True Being, Sat.
It is again the darkness of Ignorance and its issues of limitation and error that obscure the true purpose and functioning of
1 termed abhyāroha because it makes one ascend towards the Divine, ābhimuhhyena arohati anena japakarmand evam vit deiabhāvam āltndnatn in abhyārohah (Shankara;. One attains by this to the stare of divinity, devabhāvam anena ārohdti (Anandagiri).
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life. All right effort is a tapasya to outgrow one's tutelage in Ignorance and emerge into the Light that leads and illumines.
Life is at every point denied by death which is the inevitable result of the falsehood and obscurity that clog its steps. All right effort is a tapasya to break through this thralldom to death and recover one's sovereignty in the deathless existence of the True Being, the Immortality of Sacciādnanda.
This, verily, is the Meditation that wins the World Above.
M. P. PANDIT
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EDUCATION
XV
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
". . a body must be developed with new powers, activities or degrees of a divine action expressive of a truth-conscious being and proper to a supramental consciousness and manifesting a conscious spirit..."1
"A transformation of the body must be the condition for a total transformation of the nature."2
"...the fact that it (the body) has developed a soul and is capable of serving it as a means may indicate that it is capable of further development and may become a shrine and expression of the spirit, reveal a secret spirituality of Matter, become entirely and not only half conscious, reach a certain oneness with the spirit."3
IT is significant that of the five principal aspects of education corresponding to the five principal activities of the human being—the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic, and the spiritual—the Mother takes up the physical first. There is a saying in Sanskrit : sariramaāyam khalu dharmasddhanām, which means that the body must be so trained at the very beginning of the religious or spiritual life that, instead of impeding the sadhaka's progress by its intrinsic inertia, weakness, easy liability to illness, and gross desires and impulses, it may help the concentration of his mind and supply a steady flow of energy to it for its inward
1 2 3 The Supramental Mamfeuatinn by Sri Aurobindo.
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or upward enterprise. This has been the traditional ideal in India. The body has to be tackled first. But once it has been quieted and fortified by Pranayama or other practices, once the consciousness of the sadhaka has developed the power to get beyond the body sense and enter into the depths, or scale the heights of his being, there is no further utility of the body except as a means of upholding the material life for the uninterrupted continuance of the spiritual culture of the sadhaka. A modicum of stillness, purity, freedom from disturbing and distracting movements, and a serene suppleness in its power of receptivity, endurance and stability, is all that is expected of the body. The ultimate object has been the surpassing of the body consciousness, and a final release and exit from the physical body into the Infinite and Eternal. A certain sense of contempt has almost always attached itself to the attitude of the sadhaka towards the physical frame and its fundamental working. Even those who have taken great pains to develop supernatural powers in the body and raise it to incredible degrees of efficiency and longevity, have never been able to shake off the persistent sense of this contempt and sufferance, and of the merely temporal and temporary nature of the body's utility.
But it was not so in the age of the Veda. The Vedic mystics knew the value and potentiality of the body, and had some conception of its spiritual utility. They prayed to the Divine for health, strength and long life. They felt no aversion to the body, which they considered an indispensable and integral part of a full spiritual life.
"May my limbs, speech, vitality, eyes, ears, strength and senses receive ample nourishment, and attain to their full development."1
"Possessed of strong and solid limbs, and chanting hymns to you (O gods), may we attain the full span of life ordained by the Divine."2
1 Sama Veda
2 Rig Veda
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A youthful, vigorous, full-blooded, dynamic spirituality knew and respected the claim of the body to be a means and expressive medium of spiritual progress and perfection.
It was only in the age of the Upanishads that we hear for the first time a faint, incipient note of physical renunciation, and, as a corollary to it, a certain cry of impatience with the obstructive grossness of the body. And with the progressive decline of spiritual culture in India, describing a downward curve of the evolutionary cycle, this intolerance grew both in extent and intensity. Losing hold on the unity of existence and the knowledge of the identity of Spirit and Matter, spiritual life gravitated steadily towards an increasing accentuation of the ascetic denial and an otherworldly preoccupation. This ascetic tendency reached its acme among the Jains, and later amdng the Illusionist Vedantins. Shankara voices it when he sings :
"Of what use is this wealth, what use these horses and elephants, what use a kingdom won, what use son and wife, friend and animals, what use the body and home ? Knowing them to be transient, you should fling them away, O Mind,..."1
"Giving up this illusory universe, enter, as soon as possible, into the status of the Brahman."
This attitude of repugnance to the body and the material life went on gaining strength and confirmation till the close of the nineteenth century, in spite of a few feeble attempts to restore the ancient balance and harmony. Even the various Tantric schools, which should have opposed it, were swept away by the swelling tide; and the later Vaishnavism, the religion of love, joy and beauty, strangely enough, turned ascetic under the strong pressure of religious and social tradition. It was reserved for the twentieth century to usher in a new age of life-affirmation in India, though it was in the Renaissance that the note of affirmation was sounded in Europe and humanity turned its attention to a
1 Sivāparadhakshmapana Stotra
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thorough overhauling of its earthly existence. Rammohan Roy and Rabindranath, it is true, had heralded the new turn of the national mind, but the influence of the former did not penetrate deep enough to effect the needed revolution in the collective consciousness, and that of the latter, though it considerably helped the formation of the affirmative thought and accentuated the new orientation, failed to break the spell of the hoary tradition, and left the vast body of the religious and social orthodoxy practically untouched. But the Time-Spirit has already passed its decree, and the hour of the anchorite has been tolled out for ever.
If we cast a glance at the Western world, we shall find that, there too, the body and the material life received no better treatment till the Renaissance. Plato, who was one of the pioneer champions of physical culture," and a staunch advocate of it in education—physical culture and music formed the staple of his scheme of education—betrays his real attitude towards the body when he says that it is "the source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of food; and is liable also to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search after true being; it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes away from us all power of thinking at all...It has been proved to us by experience that if we would have true knowledge of anything, we must be quit of the body." The Stoics, the Neo-Pythagorians, and the Neo-Platonists made no secret of their contempt of the body, and Christianity went a step, further in denouncing the flesh in uncompromising terms, and branding it as an inveterate enemy of the Spirit. Some of the Christian religious and mystics have left records of their torture of the body which, in its fanatic excess, beats hollow even the mortifications practised by Indian ascetics.
Thanks to modern science and the dominant influence of Materialism, the ascetic aversion to the body has become a thing of the past. But the pendulum of human interest has swung to the other extreme, and aversion has been replaced by indulgence with a vengeance. And no wonder. For, asceticism and indulgence are but the obverse and reverse of the same tendency, and a periodical swaying of the human mind from one to the other is a usual
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historical phenomenon. A preoccupation with the body and its needs, an eager pursuit of its comforts and pleasures, and even an unbridled gratification of its animal lusts and passions, are the outstanding features of modern civilised society. Self-discipline, self-restraint, self-mastery, and an aesthetic sense of harmonious living through self-culture, have all been cast to the winds. The beast in man has got upon a high horse and is galloping over the poor devil of moral conscience with the haughty defiance of unchallenged authority. Modern humanity is being led by the Frankenstein monster from peril to peril, and distress to distress, blindfold and battered.
All this proves our incapacity to deal properly with the forces of material life. And like all other incapacities, it implies a lack of knowledge of the nature' of the forces we have to deal with. Lack of knowledge is lack of power, which has made our subjection to Nature so tragically inevitable.
But, whatever that may be, science has demonstrably succeeded in establishing the claim of material life to as much progress and perfection as our mind and soul desire and achieve. And under its diffusing influence, the latest trends in religious and spiritual life emphasise the cultivation of a more sane and seeing attitude towards the physical body.
One can, therefore, reasonably hope for a fuller knowledge and a more free and masterful dealing with the forces of material life in the near future. This knowledge will be the perfect knowledge of the essential nature of the material substance and of the energies of life. Even in the Vedic age, it must be admitted, this perfect knowledge was wanting, for the simple reason that the time was not ripe enough for humanity to discover and realise it. Human evolution has to pass through various stages of progress and retrogression—it does not proceed in a straight line. Whatever greatness was attained by the Vedic seers in the domain of the Spirit was an individual achievement, and the collective advance which was also made to a certain extent was only in the domains of mind and soul. But the spiritual conquest and conversion of the gross material substance of which the body is made, and its generalisation in society was not the object of their quest, though, perhaps,
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something of its secret was not altogether unknown to some of them. No Columbus had yet been born to discover the uncharted possibilities of the world of Matter and the material life for the manifestation of the Spirit.
Having taken stock of the historical background of physical culture, we shall now try to understand the philosophy of it, as enunciated by the Mother, and then proceed to a detailed study of the physical education she has propounded for the rising generation of mankind.
That the Mother takes up physical education as the first plank of her system of integral education indicates the great importance she attaches to it. But her views on it are so revolutionary, and so radically different even from those of the most idealistic of educationists, ancient and modern, that unless we apply ourselves very closely to a devoted, scrupulous and intensive study of them, we shall fail to catch their undertones and overtones, their subtle suggestions and profound, pregnant implications, and, in consequence, miss the very core and kernel of them. Nothing is more fatal to the future of the race than our habitual stumbling into the error of reading our cherished notions and theories into the seminal ideas of the minds most richly endowed with prophetic vision and creative power. Is this not the classical way of perverting and sterilising the emergent forces of regeneration ?
RISHABHCHAND
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(A Letter)
YOU want to do something. It seems it has become impossible for you to remain quiet. But you cannot make up your mind as to what you should do. You seem to think that whatever work you do would be commonplace and trivial and would have no inner support. You find no work after your heart. But I am afraid you have started from a wrong idea. Bear in mind that the most essential thing in one's life is 'to be' and not to 'do'. First, be something, then action will come of itself. Action is the expression of becoming or the natural effect of the fullness of your becoming. What you will do and how far you will go depends solely on what you have become and how far you have grown. To become is to build yourself up within. It is a common but big mistake of the world to judge a man by his action, as if the measure of manhood lay in what one has done. No doubt, the world has no other standard of judgment, for it can see only the appearance. It has neither the capacity nor the time to look within. But, mind you, you are a sadhak. You cannot acquit yourself that way. It matters little' whether outwardly you remain idle or do something or even something utterly useless. Never try to judge yourself nor your progress, your capacity or even the greatness of your work. For these things are very subtle. They remain in seed-form in your own heart. Gradually they grow unobserved by others, even by yourself.
You may raise here an objection and say that it is from us that you have learnt about Karmayoga—man shapes himself through work. The more one uses one's energy, the more it increases. In action alone one can become what one truly is. Quite true. But I have never asked you to refrain from action. You breathe in and breathe out, you eat, you study, you play, you mix with people. You work for your family—what else are these
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if not work ? You will say that all this is no work at all. Everybody does all this. What is the difference then between an ordinary man and a great personage ? But remember Karmayoga does not mean that you must do something quite astonishing, wonderful and unique. It is not that you will not do Karmayoga if you do not fight like Arjuna on the battlefield. Even if you do what others do, your own Karmayoga will not suffer in the least. Everything depends on your attitude, how you look upon the world, with what kind of urge you are getting on with your life. True Karmayoga demands that you should remain in your present circumstances, within all your surroundings, that you should remain witling your present conditions and should perform the chain of works that surrounds your present life, and through all these activities you have to recognise your own being, your own dharma, draw out of it and develop your own field of action. To do all this you need not leave the house, you need not move about looking for some work after your heart. It will not be possible for you to find the work of your choice until your inner attitude changes. I don't mean that you must for good remain tied to the same physical activities as at present. What I mean is that to change work, to change the surroundings is not the one thing needful. Of course, these tailings may serve some purpose and may be useful to some extent, but so long as you do not find anything solid within yourself, and make it part of your inner Self, this kind of eagerness to launch upon ever-new activities is merely a sign of restlessness and impatience, and these are nothing else than smoke and foam.
Simply to work at random does not mean Karmayoga. In our spiritual discipline Karmayoga is the field of manifestation. By means of Jnana yoga you will build there the edifice of your higher life. The aim of sadhana is to establish the divine qualities within oneself and transform oneself. And for that one has first to change one's thought, mind and feeling. And thought is changed mainly by thought, by meditation, by will and Tapasya. The impact of active life may be of help in changing thought and feeling, but that would be only a help. Try to turn your eyes on your own life and activities. View the outside world with your inner thought and feeling. Try to observe what thought and
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feeling, what inner plane gives rise to your work and governs your life. Is your work to be the effect of only your desires, your emotions and of your nervous excitements ? If not, then see from your inner poise and feel from behind everybody and everything what divine urge, what inner divine impulse is trying to emerge. Get to know and nurse it into being. Remove all waste matter from all sides and be guided by the full ness of its light and force. To be at work, whatever its nature, and to remain self-poised in the light and force of knowledge—this is true Karma-yoga. When you acquire this, at least a bit of it, then only there will come to light in the proper way what God wants to create with your collaboration.
NOLINI KANTA GUPTA
(Translated from Bengali)
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REVIEWS
I
Rauravagama Vol. I Ed. N. R. Bhatt. Pub. Institut Francais D'Indologie, Pondicherry. P. 233.
THOUGH it is known that there is a large number of Shaiva-gama manuals, the texts published so far are very few. They are mostly in old-type manuscript form in private hands, written in granthi, tamil or (some) in nāgari characters. As Dr. Jean Filliozat points out in the course of his Introduction to this volume, they have been largely drawn upon by scholars in Archeology and Iconography who have relied upon these texts for data regarding the foundation and construction of temples and the specifications of Idols and Images in them. It is a matter of gratification that the Institut Français propose to bring out a series of these Agamas and if the standard of the present critical edition of the Rauravagama I (the first to be so published) is kept up in the releases to come, the Institute will have done a notable service in the cause of the renaissant religion and culture of India.
Rauravagama is a Shaiva Agama mainly dealing with the rites and rituals in Shiva temples. It was revealed to the world by sage Ruru who in turn received it from Parashurama.1
Among the number of rites described in the work, mention may be made of the bhasma-sndna, Ash-bath (P. 35), the nityotsava-vidht2, the grand festival in the temples, mahotsava of five kinds,
1 Narrating the mode of the transmission of this Agama, the text says : The Cause of the world that emerged out of the Shiva Fire, possessing a form of smokeless effulgence, the Infinite Lord, is the Supreme Master. He imparted to the great lord Srikantha who conveyed it to the Devi. The Devi told to Nandisha and Skanda. From Nandisha, Brahma and Indra; then TJrva, from Urva to Richika and from him Rama (Bhargava) and from him Ruru. (Patala III)
2 Offering in the form of a linga made up of flowers, in the forenoon; cooked food at noon; and parched rice in the evening.
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each with different results1. There are elaborate descriptions of the ritual of snāpana (bathing the deity with sanctified water) illustrated with diagrams detailing the positions of the various kalaias, jars etc.
It is interesting to note that as a measure to counteract threatened apamrtyu, untimely death, the agama prescribes dance and music in pure unalloyed form in the Shiva temple. (XIX.8)
The Editor discusses the place of saura ritual, sun-worship in the Ritual and points out that while some texts give it an integral place in the daily ritual of Shiva worship, there are others in which there is no mention at all of Surya worship. Even in the present work the topic does not figure in the text proper and what is found in the Mss. seems to be a later addition. It is appended to the text. The Editor draws attention on every page to the variations in corresponding injunctions in the other agamic texts. His tabulation of these studies is a most valuable feature of this work and does credit to his painstaking, accurate scholarship.
Though these pages are full of rites and rituals there are, here and there, a few points of spiritual import. For instance speaking of the Mantra, the loaded Word, the agama warns those who lack the requisite competence against sitting in judge ment on a Mantra. All the gods, says the text, are mantrdtmaka (mantra-souled) and the Soul of all Mantras is Shiva Himself (III.27-28). Again, for a Mantra to be effective, it should be properly communicated. Only then can its repetition lead one to gain identity with the life of the Mantra and even merge in it like water in water, like milk in milk. (P. 184).
There is a whole chapter devoted to the exposition of the meaning of Siva Mālā Mantra of 368 letters.
In a brief section on dhāranā-vidhi (mode of concentration) the text says :
The Godhead (Shiva) is sakala (with parts) and niskala (without parts). The Parts are Sadyojata, Vamadeva, Aghora,
1 depending upon the duration of their performance:
ekāham sāntikam proktam tryaham ca paustikath matam,
pañcāham jayadam proktam saptāham dhanadam smrtam
sarvakamikamityuktam navāhotsavakarh param. (Patala xviii)
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Tatpurusha and Ishana. These are the kalās—Five Manifestations, the Five Faces of Shiva.
Shiva without parts is the all-pervasive, the supreme beyond the Beyond, residing in the supreme Ether.
The One to be constantly meditated upon is Shiva the Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, multifaceted, the Soul of all Becoming.
Six-limbed is the Yoga consisting of Pratyahara, Dhyana, Pranayama, Dharana, Tarka (Deliberation) and Samadhi.
Of Dharana there are four kinds : Dharana in the navel is āgneyī; in the heart, saumyā; in the head, aiśanī; all over the body, amrta.
M. P. PANDIT
II
Science and Cosmic Meaning (Studies in the Metaphysics of Depth Psychology). By George Yeisley Rusk, Ph.D. Chetana, Bombay. Pp. xxxii + 185, Price $ 4.50, 21s. Indian edition. Rs. 12.50.
Ours is an age of doubts and denials, of anguish and bewilderment and like 'gnats above a stagnant pool in a summer evening, man dances up and down without the faintest notion why'. And because of the lack of an integrating total vision in the midst of over-specialization so prevalent in our days, the contemporary man, through his failure to grasp the weary weight of this incomprehensible world in which he is left to wander, is seized with a fear of being in a universe without any significant meaning.
But, as the author of the volume under notice points out : "This is an age of an ultimate and cosmic tumult of cultures : materialistic, pantheistic, historical—interpreted in a multitude of contending ways. Hence as men now look about them, they can find no assured foundations and adequate guidance for their personal lives nor for the national conduct of affairs, but only what
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is at least partially false and hence contentions, hence without basic spiritual discipline or assurance." (p. viii).
And yet, as never before, in our present age we must boldly face the fundamental questions of existence without any inhibition, any let or hindrance and seize the real and secret meaning of the cosmos and in particular that of human existence. The Deus absconded has to be sought after and discovered, if we are to adequately meet the intensified needs of our age.
Indeed, there are some problems of basic import, some dark mysteries so to say, which have stimulated men's minds in all climes and in all ages, and that still remain wrapped in seemingly impenetrable darkness :
What is Life ? Whence is man and what is his end ? And what is Death ? O mysteries tremendous ! Is death merely the absence of life or an entrance gate to life immortal ? What is the solemn mystery of the sequel to death ? Is there any postcarnate existence for man ? Where are the mighty hosts of the Dead ? Do they touch our spirits ? Is there any probability of communion between the incarnate and discarnate souls ? Then, again, is there any such thing as Deity ? If so, is it allowable to personify it as God ? And should we accept that God is a Providence, actively at work in the world around us, and in ourselves ? Finally, does their exist any direct communion between God and mankind ?
In the volume under review, Mr. G. Y. Rusk faces these perennial questions and
many more allied ones which man has asked and variously answered during all the
millennia of his earthly existence. The seven papers that make up the present
work, although written independently of each other, bear upon a common theme :
the contribution which science including philosophy and theology can make to
man's knowledge of the real meaning of the cosmos in which he finds himself. The
author cites some two hundred and sixty findings from some sixteen fields of
human knowledge like physics, mathematics, biology, psychology, psychiatry,
psychic research, etc. to support his argument that there exists a postcarnate life for man and a "psychic universe" whose nature is "rational, moral, social and redemptive" and that this psychic
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universe is possessed of a "divine personality who is the effective standard and inspiration of human conduct but who is not responsible for the evil and sin in human experience."
In order to arrive at his far-reaching conclusions, Mr. Rusk employs in his book what he calls the method of structured gestalt. His arguments are largely composed of fusions of abstractions from diverse fields of human knowledge. Indeed, he employs liberally the discoveries and methods of contemporary science and has abstracted from all the work of science its essential methodology and has found that that method is exactly competent to span the distance between our present carnate life, the precarnate and post carnate." (p. viii)
But after going through the pages of this very interesting book, we feel inclined to comment that the method of research as adopted and advocated by Mr. G. Y. Rusk, although he himself regards it as "basic, comprehensive and sound", is not perhaps adequate to the principal task he has set before himself: to establish the existence of a psychic universe along with a post-carnate life for man and to explore the spiritual character of this universe and the consequences it entails. For we cannot but remark that, however extended their search and subtle their grasp may be, the means of knowledge developed by the seeker will never reveal the truths of the spiritual domains so long as he remains wedded to his present status of externalised mental consciousness, imprisoned in the mind's 'candle-lit darkness' and wandering without any final issue amidst its "shimmering mists and fogs".
For our means and ways of knowledge must necessarily be conditioned by the nature of our consciousness—secundum modum intelligentsias—and it is the consciousness that must radically change if we are to command the higher powers of knowledge. And since "the reasoning intellect bases itself on man's normal experience and on the workings of a surface external perception and conception of things which is at its ease only when working on a mental basis formed by terrestrial experience and its accumulated data",1 the comprehension realised by it whether through
1 Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Series IV, p. 99.
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the methods of science or through those of philosophy will always remain pale, partial and fragmentary and although it may be true that "veil after veil will lift" still "there must be veil after veil behind."1
Thus it is that our utmost and widest mental knowledge cannot give us any sure hold on spiritual truths, but that is no cause of despair. For we must remember that consciousness is not altogether and invariably synonymous with mentality but indicates 'a self-aware poise of existence of which mentality is but a middle term'. We must discard the false notion that all valid knowledge must be equated to mental knowledge and capable of being grasped in the cadre of mind.
As a matter of fact, there are many other lights, other levels of knowledge higher than the human mind and if, instead of reflecting albeit luminously great constructions of Truth, we would move in the domain where Truth is authentic, direct, sovereign and native, we should be ready to leave far behind the divisive methods devised by mind-awareness and enter into the field of spiritual pratyaksa boāh, direct perception. To know Self and Reality and the spiritual truths of the universe, mind "has to be silent and reflect some light of these things or undergo self-exceeding and transformation, and this is only possible either by a higher Light descending into it or by its ascent, the taking up immergence of it into a higher Light of existence."2
And for that the seeker after knowledge has to pass beyond the domains of scientific and rational enquiry and carry his spiritual search into regions where this separative mental basis falls away.
. And so far as the knowledge of the post-carnate existence is concerned, very little genuine knowledge can be gathered from mediumistic seances and other types of so-called psychic research upon which Mr. Rusk tends to heavily lean. For spiritualism glorified under the name of psychic science offers us only "a mass of obscure and ambiguous documents from which you can draw
1 Edwin Arnold : The Light of Asia.
2 Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Series I, p. 108.
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only a few meagre and doubtful generalisation. Moreover, so far as it belongs to the occult, it touches only the inferior regions of the occult—what we would call the lowest vital worlds —where there is as much falsehood and fake and confused error as upon the earth and even more."1
On the whole the title under review makes very interesting reading for all the wealth of materials gathered herein and although the reviewer does not see eye to eye with many of the views propounded by Mr. Rusk-and some of the points are open to serious objection-he has not hesitation in stating that Science and Cosmic Meaning would repay perusal not so much for the reason that the reader may possibly feel inclined to agree with all the conclusions . arrived at by Mr. G. Y. Rusk but because the book cannot fail to supply the necessary stimulant; to the serious reader to explore for himself the perennial problems of life existence and organise the solutions as and when he finds them.
JUGAL KlSHORE MUKHERJI
III
Vachaspatyam Vol. I. By Tarkavachaspati Sri Taranath Bhattacharya. P. 826. Price Rs. 75.00 Pūb. Chowkamba Sanskrit Series, P. B. 8, Banaras.
We have great pleasure in welcoming this new edition of the famous Sanskrit lexicon compiled by Pandit Taranath Tarkavachaspati, for long out of print. Published as it was in the seventies of the last century, this work contains all the words found in the Sanskrit Dictionary of Wilson, the Shabdakalpadruma of Raja Radhakant, the Bohtlingk Sanskrit-German Dictionary, and many more words not found in any of them. The author has taken pains to include all technical terms used in the different Sciences and Systems of Philosophy with every available derivation and explanation (in Sanskrit).
1 Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Scries IV, p. 67.
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The entry of Agni, for instance, covers over ten columns. Dwelling on the derivation of the word, the learned lexicographer cites from etymologists like Yaska, Shakapuni, Brahmanas— Taittiriyas and the Vajasaneyins—, commentators like Maddhwa-charya, Sayana etc. and gives quite a plethora of meanings with illustrations .from the Sruti.
Altogether a work of solid scholarship, a book of reference rather than a mere dictionary. We understand the subsequent (5) volumes are under print and will be soon made available. The entire set is offered at a special prepublication price of Rs. 220.
The publishers are to be heartily congratulated on their laudable attempt to preserve Sanskrit learning and tradition in the way they have been doing.
M. P. PANDIT
Published by P. Counouma
Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry 2
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