Vol. XIX. No. 4

November, 1S62

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.

EDITORIALS*

THE MOTHER'S COMMENTARY

ON

THE DHAMMAPADA

IX

THE EVIL

All tremble at punishment: all are afraid of death. See others as yourself and do not strike or cause to strike.

All tremble at punishment: to all life is dear. See others as yourself and do not strike or cause to strike.

Creatures long for happiness. He who inflicts pain for his own happiness never gains happiness.

* Based on the Mother's Talks.

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Creatures long for happiness. He who does not inflict pain upon others for his own happiness gains happiness.

Never utter harsh words ; if you do, the same will be done to you in return. Words spoken in anger cause suffering, they strike back again.

If you fall silent even like a broken gong, then you have attained Nirvana. Violence no longer abides in you.

As the cowherd with his baton drives his herd out to the pasture, even so old age and death drive out the life of living creatures.

The fool knows not when he does an evil deed. One with a wrong mind is consumed by his own deeds as though by fire.

He who hurts one who does not hurt, he who blames one who does not blame enters forthwith into one of these ten domains:

He will undergo cruel pain, mutilation of the body, grave malady, mental breakdown;

Trouble from rulers, gross calumny, loss of relatives, loss of wealth ;

Fire burns his whole habitation, and when his body dissolves, he is reborn in hell.

Not nakedness nor matted hair nor dirt nor fasting nor sleeping on the bare ground nor smearing the body with ashes nor any ascetic posture can purify a mortal who has not freed himself from doubt.

Even though richly attired, one moves about calm and

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tranquil, controlled and restrained, chaste and pure, sparing all creatures any harm, he indeed is a Brahmin, he indeed a Sramana.

Is there in the world any man so irreproachable as not to deserve censure, even like a thoroughbred that needs no whip ?

As a thoroughbred, flecked with the whip, gets energetic and speeds fast, even so a man who is perfect in knowledge and conduct, who is self-conscious and alzvays remembering, through his faith and conduct and strength, concentration on and pursuit of truth, runs away from the Great Suffering.

Engineers canalise the water, makers of arms mould the arrow, carpenters fashion the wood, even so the sages direct themselves.

ONE has the impression that these things were written for rather primitive people. The series of calamities that will befall you if you do harm is quite amusing.

It would seem—provided of course it is an exact record of the words that Buddha had spoken—that he used to change the terms of his talks according to his audience and if he had to do with rustic people without education, he would speak a very material language with very practical and concrete comparisons so that they might understand him. There is a considerable difference in levels in these talks. Some have become very famous, as the last verse here, for example, where it is said that the artisan shapes his material to arrive at what he wants to do and this striking conclusion : the sage masters himself.

Truly one has the impression that human mentality has progressed since that age. Thought has become more complex, psychology more profound, so much so, that these arguments appear almost puerile. But if you mean to practise them, then you see that you have remained almost on the same level, and if hought has progressed, practice, far from being better, seems

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to have become worse. And there is here a childlike simplicity, somewhat sane, a want of perversion that unfortunately the human race does no longer possess.

There was a moral healthiness in those ages which has now completely disappeared. These arguments make you smile, but the practice of what is taught here is much more difficult now than it was at that time. A kind of hypocrisy, pretension, underhand duplicity seems to have carried away the human spirit, especially its way of being, and men have come to deceive themselves in a most pernicious way.

In those times, one could say, "do not do harm, you will be punished" ; the hearts were simple and the mind also and one said, "Yes, better not to do harm, because I will be punished". But now (with an ironical smile),

Mental capacity seems to have increased, mental power seems to have grown, men seem to be much more capable of playing with ideas, mentally rule over all principles, but at the same time men have lost the simple and sane candour of the people who lived closer to Nature and knew less to play with ideas. Thus entire humanity seems to have reached a very dangerous turning. They who try to find a solution of the general corruption preach a return to the simplicity of yore, but naturally that is an impossible thing : you cannot go backward.

You must go farther on, you must advance, climb greater heights transcending the greedy search of pleasure and personal welfare, not through fear of punishment, punishment after death, but through the development of a new sense of beauty, a thirst for truth and light, through understanding that it is only by widening yourself, illumining yourself, kindling yourself with the ardour for progress that you can find at once the integral truth and the enduring happiness.

One must rise up and widen—rise up...and widen.

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Old Age

Why this laughter ? Why this merriment ? When there is always this fire that consumes you are enveloped by darkness and you do not seek the light.

Look at this decorated image, the body full of sores, a heaped mass, diseased, full of vagaries with no stable status.

This form is decrepit, given to diseases, a mass of corruption, it breaks up—life ends in death.

What lure can there be at the sight of these bones white as dove feather, that are thrown away like gourds in autumn!

A fortress has been made of bones and it is plastered with flesh and blood. Age and Death, pride and deceit are installed there.

Even the gaudy regal chariots wear out. Age reaches tire body too. But Truth and Righteousness do not age ; they are passed on from sage to sage.

A man with little knowledge grows old like an ox. His flesh increases, his intelligence does not.

I have found Thee, O Maker of the house ! Thou wilt not build me a house again. All the beams are broken, the top-dome has toppled down. The mind is freed of all its obscure innate movements; desires have ended.

If you have not led a life of self-control, if you have not acquired wealth in your youth, you will perish like an old heron in a pond emptied of fish.

If you have not led a life of self-control, if you have not acquired wealth in your youth, you will lie like a worn-out bow lamenting over the past.

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There is one thing certain which is not clearly said here, but which is at least as important as all the rest : it is this that there is an old age much more dangerous and much more real than the amassing of years, it is the incapacity to grow and progress.

As soon as you stop advancing, as soon as you stop progressing, as soon as you cease to better yourself, cease to gain and grow, cease to transform yourself, you truly get old, that is to say, you go down towards disintegration.

There are young people who are old and there are old people who are young. If you carry in you this flame for progress and transformation, if you are ready to leave everything behind so that you may advance with an alert step, if you are always open to a new progress, a new improvement, a new transformation, then you are eternally young. But if you sit back satisfied with what has been accomplished, if you have the feeling that you have reached your goal and you have nothing else to do than to enjoy the fruit of your efforts, then you have already more than half of your body in the tomb, it is decrepitude and true death.

All that has been done is always nothing by the side of what remains to be done.

Do not look behind. Look ahead, always ahead and forward always.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

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LETTERS OF SRI AUROBINDO

(contd.)

IT is absurd to give the name of day dreams to things that some of the greatest minds and souls of the world have realised and given their whole lives to realise and to lead others to it.

24-6-1936

Pranam must cease to be either a routine or a pulling of vital force from the Mother. The sadhaks must learn to value it, to use it for its right purpose in the right attitude.

15-2-1937

The Arya is a work of spiritual philosophy founded on personal realisation; it is obvious ly not meant for minds that do not think out spiri tual things in all their aspects.

B's fineness is a matter of opinion; he went away because he thought he had a great mission to revolutionise India socially and otherwise and he was not allowed to do it from here. That was what he himself said and I don't see why I should not tell people so or why I should take any blame for his going. It is new doctrine that when the sadhak fails he must be held noble

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and blameless and the Guru be held responsible. Nobody blames Christ because Judas betrayed or Peter denied or Buddha because his...(disciples) quarrelled and created a schism.

It is an extreme ignorance to think that eyes and ears do not play false. Every psychologist knows that they do; it is a fact known to all that human evidence founded on eyes and ears is unreliable and human inferences founded on these data can lead to gross error. The same incident reported by ten different people gives ten different versions.

4-3-1937

Sadhana is the opening of the consciousness to the Divine, the change of the present consciousness to the psychic and spiritual consciousness. In this yoga it means also the offering of all the consciousness and its activities to the Divine for possession and use by the Divine and for transformation.

29-6-1937

SRI AUROBINDO

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SRI AUROBINDO AND THE NEW AGE

CHAPTER III

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

(II)

LEONARDO DA VINCI AS A SCIENTIST

"Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us".

— SIR THOMAS BROWNE

WE have seen that the seed of the Scientific Revolution lay in the outburst of new life known as the Renaissance. The severance of reason from faith and its gravitation towards physical Nature and material life inaugurated a new era of adventure and exploration, of insatiable curiosity and interminable discoveries. The spirit of man turned towards Matter, its neglected tabernacle. The arts and the sciences that enrich and embellish human life received an inspired incentive, and the cult of Humanism¹, the gospel of an all-round development of man, the mental being, came to be exalted to the status of a religion. But Humanism itself was a child of Naturalism, which was a passionate turning of the consciousness of man outwards, its externalization. It implied the turning of the mind and the senses to physical Nature, to a devoted observation of her ways and objects, and an enthusiastic and exploratory experimentation with them.

Of this full-blooded Naturalism Leonardo da Vinci was, if not the pioneer, the chief and outstanding exemplar. Embodying, as he did, the true spirit² of the Renaissance, he indicated

¹ Humanism meant at first an eager return to the ancient Classics, particularly to Plato. But the creative ethos of the Renaissance gave it a naturalistic and secular orientation.

² "If we had to choose one figure to stand for alt time as the incarnation of the true spirit of the Renaissance, we should point to the majestic form of Leonardo da Vinci."

—W. C. Dampier

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the decisive direction in which the mind of man was to travel for many a long century to come. He possessed the independence of spirit, typical of the Renaissance, which disdained to owe allegiance to any theological dogma and religious formalism, on the one hand, and, on the other, to the traditional authority even of the Classics, to which the Renaissance mind had turned with a fresh and ardent interest. He was no follower of Aristotle, nor even of Plato, though he had a close kinship with the Pythagorean views of the latter. For, Plato, in his Timaeus, displays a definite slant towards the Pythagorean conception of the universe and the central importance of numbers, i.e., geometrical units,¹ as the key to the understanding of it. Leonardo was, no doubt, indebted to Archimedes, Pythagoras and the Neo-Platonists, to a certain extent, but his philosophy was his own, a genuine product of the true Renaissance spirit. He was, indeed, too independent to attach himself to any school of thought. He trusted only to his intuition, with which he was richly dowered, and to the developed powers of his mind and senses, to unravel the mystery of life and Nature. The true scientific method of studying Nature was, according to him, unfettered observation and experiment, and not reliance on any authority. But observation was with him not a mere minute seeing and analysing of natural objects and processes, but rather a profound, intent, and wondering seeing into

¹ The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science by E. A. Bum

² The Age of Adventure—edited by Giorgio de Santillana

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which he read the harmonious working of the "the divine force". This divine force, according to him, is "a great incorporeal thing" which creates all forms of the universe—a typical conception of Indian philosophy. And this force springs out of the sun "from which all souls descend, because the heat that is in living animals comes from the soul, and there is no heat and light in the world except through the sun."

Experience was, then, the throbbing heart of Leonardo's Naturalism, and when he speaks of experiment, he means experience, a thrilled perception of the delight and beauty and harmony of the Divine in the glittering pageant of the universe. "Those sciences are vain and full of errors which are not born from experience, the mother of all certainty..." And he turned his mind and senses to Nature—this was his Naturalism—as the child turns to the gifts of its mother, with beaming rapture and jealous care. Here was God's largesse, flung out in alluring splendour, to observe, to handle, to study, and to derive joyous experience from their endless variety, their intricate patterns and marvellous mechanism. He threw himself into the sacrament of observation and experiment with the ardour of a neophyte whose devotion is founded on the rock of an unshakable faith, irradiated by an inner vision. But he did not lose himself in the Nature he studied, inasmuch as he lived securely in the Light of the Maker and Master of Nature. He loved mechanical science, not at all in the way the modern scientist dotes upon it—for that is the infatuation of a hypnotised slave—but because he perceived in the universe and in every object in it, beautiful or hideous,¹ a pervading and sustaining, though latent, harmony, and an impeccable working of the divine mechanism with mathematical exactitude. He set great store by mathematics—"no one should read me who is

¹ "His sensitivity opened up to him a thousand facets of reality unseen by the common eye...The innumerable forms that Leonardo drew sing the zest and marvel of life; but scattered among them are horrible grotesques and caricatures—deformed heads, leering imbeciles, bestial faces, crippled bodies, shrews contorted with fury, a Medusa with snakes for hair, men desiccated and corrugated with age, women in the last stages of decay; this was another side of reality, and Leonardo's impartial universal eye caught it, fixed it, nut it down resolutely on his sheets, as if to look ugly evil squarely in the face."

—Will Durant (Renaissance)

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not a mathematician"—as Pythagoras and Plato and Bruno had done before him, but here, again, his conception of mathematics was radically different from that of the later scientists. He did not mean by mathematics the abstract science of numerical computation, which ensures a machine-tooled precision and concordance, but the divine science which flawlessly regulates the pulsing rhythms of the force that creates, maintains and destroys all things in the universe, and determines the laws and lines of their development. "Instrumental or mechanical science is the noblest and above all others the most useful, seeing that by means of it all animated bodies which have movement perform all their actions; and the origin of these movements is at the centre of their gravity", which is, evidently, a mystic scientific strain, more Pythagorean than Archimedean. He sees the mechanics of the animated bodies as the coordinated functioning of a complex organism.

Man is for Leonardo a microcosm within the macrocosm of the universe, a single, individual unit among multitudinous units, and indissolubly united to the whole; and unless the whole is seen or seen into, there can be no sure knowledge of the parts. But of all units, man has the unique distinction of being "the transformer of Nature", of consciously willing and realising the boundless possibilities inherent in him. Leonardo was well convinced that the intellect of man cannot apprehend, or, as Whitehead would say, have any pretension of, the secret which Nature guards in her bosom, and that the "what ness of things", or, to put it in Kantian terms, "the things-in-themselves" it has no means of knowing. "You who speculate on the nature of things, do not be sure you know the things that nature in her order leads by herself to her own ends, but be glad if so be that you know the issue of such things as your mind designs." "Nature is full of infinite reasons which were never in experience." It is clear that Leonardo distrusted the intellect which is unleavened and unlit by intuition. The egoistic intellect drunk with self-importance, is the undoing of man, he held.

The cosmos, according to Leonardo, is a harmonious flow, a rhythmic motion, impelled by a "force divine or otherwise".

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And this force has the unceasing joy of its creative movement. In man the joy is most manifest in the artist. But in him there is, too, thanks to his highly developed faculty of feeling, the cognate feeling of pain and suffering.¹ The artist knows how to distil joy even out of his most poignant suffering.

Though Leonardo had the intuitive perception of the beauty and harmony immanent in the universe, he was not blind to the existence of evil and iniquity in men. And he was ruthless in denouncing it. One of his prophesies concerning man shows how clearly he foresaw the disastrous consequences of human frailty and depravity. "Creatures shall be seen upon the earth who will always be fighting one with another, with very great losses and frequent deaths on either side. These shall set no bounds to their malice; by their fierce limbs a great number of the trees in the immense forests of the world shall be laid level with the ground; and when they have crammed themselves with food it shall gratify their desire to deal out death, affliction, labours, terrors and banishment to every living thing..."

It was under such benign auspices and in such a brightening climate of thought that modern science was born, a child of mystical, intuitive Naturalism. Naturalism was a wondering, worshipful contemplation of Nature and the material life of the world as the radiant creation of the divine Artist. It was an ardent affirmation of earthly life as the field of God's self-revelation. It was a passionate denial, in the true Renaissance spirit, of the ascetic other- worldliness of the Middle Ages. But, it must be noted, this contemplation of Nature was not a distant, dreamy, enraptured act and attitude of the mind, such as we find in the poets and philosophers. It was the searching, curious contemplation of the scientist who observes and experiments, and who revels, not only in the beauty and harmony of the soul of Nature, but in her outer physical body, and in the laws and principles of its construction and action. "Leonardo perceived intuitively", says W. C. Dampier, "and used effectively the right experimental

¹ "Where is most power of feeling, there is the most suffering. Great Martyrdom."

—Leonardo

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method a century before Francis Bacon philosophised about it inadequately, and Galileo put it into practice." It was the living spirit of the universe whom Leonardo perceived everywhere, turned, as it were, in the soul of man to a devoted rehabilitation of its material tenement.

But Leonardo was much in advance of his time. He was a living link between the past and the future. He was a dreamer, a philosopher, an artist, and a scientist, endowed with a spiritual vision. But he left no systematic record either of his philosophy or science. His numerous notes or jottings are the only testimony to his versatile genius. "Had he published his work, science must at one step have advanced almost to the place it reached a century later," says W. C. Dampier. But that was not to be. The link had to be snapped, and science had inevitably to deviate from the path chalked out by Leonardo. It had to cut adrift from the secure moorings of his faith and intuition, and embark upon an exploration of the dark empire of Matter, where God's Light sleeps in utter self-oblivion.

Bereft of the intuitive vision of the divine immanence and the unity of the universe, which informed the Naturalism of Leonardo, human consciousness began to describe a downward curve. It created at first a division in the indivisible unity of existence, and, by rapid and precipitate steps, drifted towards a total rupture between Spirit and Matter, or, as the later philosophers phrase it, between Mind and Matter. Existence was carved in two, and though the metaphysical background prevailed for some time yet, and God was not altogether exiled from His creation, the spiritual and intuitive element vanished from the heart of science. A pallid faith, more religious and moral than spiritual, glimmered for over a century more, and even glowed up into incandescence in some exceptional scientific men in whom philosophy was telescoped into science, and then faded away. Science slipped and tumbled into atheism and materialism, led by the physical mind and reason of man. The light of intuition gone, and the fire of faith quenched, the mind of man hugged a shriveling globe of dust and slime, and employed its reasoning and inventive powers, in the frenzy of an insatiable material

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hunger, to exploit more and more the resources of physical Nature, in order to soothe and beguile with gadgets and gimcracks the wailing desolation of a gangrened life, sinking into the darkness of spiritual disintegration.

The next scientific pioneer we come to is Copernicus.¹

RlSHABHCHAND

(To be continued)

 

¹ For the scientific material incorporated m this article, I am indebted to Georgiou de Santillana and W. C. Dampier, but I do not hold them responsible for the conclusions I have drawn from it, and the perspective in which I have viewed and studied the birth and growth of modern science.

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READINGS IN THE BRIHADARNYAKA UPANISHAD

(IV)

CREATION

DIFFERENT Upanishads give different accounts of the Creation of the Universe. At times even in the same Upanishad there are more accounts than one. That is because of the different standpoints taken, the different Principles sought to be brought to the forefront and 'the various processes of Manifestation revealed to the spiritual experience of the Seers. Thus in an earlier section of this Upanishad, we were given an account of the Creation along the lines of certain fundamentals like Time, Sacrifice, Elements, vak etc. In the present section1 we begin in a different setting.

In the beginning was but the Self in the form of a Person. He looked around and found none else but himself. And he said, 'I AM'. That is why the Self came to be known as 'I' aham.

He was afraid. But then he asked himself: "Of what am I afraid ? There is none other than myself." And immediately he realised this truth, the fear was gone. For, what else was there for him to fear ? Fear can come only from another and there was no other.

When there is the other apart from oneself then there is room for fear from that other. Where there is no sense of other, the sense of separateness, but only a realisation of oneness, of the one T' throbbing everywhere, there is absolutely no fear, no grief. Says another ancient text: "How shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief who sees everywhere oneness ?"²

¹ I.4.

² "Being is one, Becomings are many : but this simply means that all Becomings are one Being who places himself variously in the phenomenal movement of His consciousness. We have to see the One Being...We have to see all becomings as developments of the move-

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But he had no delight (of manifestation) and therefore he desired a second. He grew and grew as big as a man and woman together. His own body he parted into two, the He and the She, who together make up the Whole. From their union issued forth Mankind.

Then followed the game of hide and seek between the creative Person as the He and the She—the Lila of the Divine hiding Himself for the joy of discovering Himself. She hid Herself becoming a Cow. He became the Bull and the bovine creation ensued. She concealed Herself as the Mare; He became the Stallion and the horse race came to be. Thus followed several orders of life creation down to the ant, each repeating the duality of Self-expression, the mithuna, on which all manifestation is founded.

Once the Creation thus came to be, He saw that He Himself was the Creation for indeed He had released it out of Himself. To realise is to become : He became the Creation. The Creation is He Himself. And he who realises this truth of creation being none other than God Himself, says the text, becomes himself a creator for he is identified with the Creative Person.

Next, the Creator proceeded to manifest Agni, the flaming Force that brings all into being, sustains them in existence and carries them forward on the strength of his impulsions. He is the God in charge of this creation based upon the Earth¹ peopled with its multitude of inhabitants, mobile and immobile. He was manifested and is ever manifest in the power of Speech issuing from the mouth and in the power of activity flowing from the hands. And it is because they are the sources of dynamic Agni,

ment in our true self and this self as one inhabiting all bodies and not our body only. We have to be consciously, in our relations with this world, what we really are,—this one self becoming everything that we observe. All the movement, all energies, all forms, all happenings we must see as those of our one and real self in many existences, as the play of the Will and Knowledge and Delight of the Lord in His world-existence. We shall then be delivered from egoism and desire and the sense of separate existence and therefore from all grief and delusion and shrinking; for all grief is born of the shrinking of the ego from the contacts of existence, its sense of fear, weakness, want, dislike, etc. : and this is born from the delusion of separate existence, the sense of being my separate ego exposed to all these contacts of so much that is not myself." (Sri Aurobindo : Isha Upanishad.) ¹

1.agnih prthivisthānah

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that both the hands and the mouth are free from the covering growth of the shoots of inertia and inconscience—the hair.

Like Agni, the other Gods that have come to be and govern the Creation, are all the manifestations of this Master Creator. Their very food of immortality, the Soma, is produced from the essence of His own Body. As Soma He forms the food; as Agni He eats the food. Both the eater and the eaten who constitute the universe are Himself. Though He has subjected Himself to the conditions of mortal existence in the course of His manifestation, He has yet emanated out of Himself the Gods who are above the state of mortality, immortal. Such is His great Creation.

Naturally, in the beginning all was an undifferentiated mass. Nothing was distinct; it was an indeterminate creation. It was only later in the course of the manifestation that there appeared Name and Form marking out and determining each from the other.

Nevertheless, in spite of its wondrous variety of Names and Forms the whole Creation is One. For its sustenance and support is One. It is the One Self that has entered into these bodies up to the very tips of the finger-nails, like a razor lying in its case, like Vayu in the body (or like fire which sustains the world lies hidden in its source). Dwelling within, It can be seen only in its functional forms each of which can only give a partial picture of It. When It courses as the vital energy, It is named Prana ; when It speaks, It is named the organ of speech ; when It sees, It is the eye; when It hears, It is the ear; and when It thinks It is called the mind. All these are merely names according to Its functions. Seen only in one aspect or function, the Self is revealed but partially and to concentrate upon any one or other of these and meditate upon it as the sole truth is to miss That of which all these are merely operations. What is to be meditated upon is the Self, the Self alone, ātmā iti eva upāsita ;

And dear is this Self to every one. For it is the innermost

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in each. Being the most intimate core of oneself, this Self is dearer than a son, dearer than wealth, dearer than everything else. Everything else is subject to mortality, to the rule of death. But not so the immortal Self. That is why, knowingly or unknowingly, one clings to it, directly or indirectly. Meditate upon this Self as the Dear. Approach It as the lover nears his beloved. To one in love with this Self there is no loss for he is given to what is Imperishable.

And this Self, Atman, is none other than the Supreme Reality that is Brahman. To realise this identity between the Atman and the Brahman that is All, is surely to gain oneness with All. This is the eternal secret of becoming one with the All, the Universe, whether for men or for gods or for seers like Vamadeva whose cry broke forth : "I was Manu, I was Sun".¹ Against such a one not even the gods can prevail for he is become their Self.

With this identity with the Self that is One in All, there is freedom, there is autonomy. But should one forget this truth and fall into a separative state, feel himself 'other' from another, then, verily, he becomes a creature.

The Upanishad then proceeds to give an account of the Creation from another angle, the fourfold order of manifestation of the Divine Creator in His puissance : the Divine as Knowledge, the Divine as Power, the Divine as Production and Interchange, the Divine as Work and Service. It is this quadruple order of self-manifestation that truly bases the fourfold division of humanity

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into the man of knowledge, the warrior, the producer and the serf : Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra.¹ Not only in the collectivity of men is this broad classification universal, but these four Powers of divine Self-expression are also to be seen in each individual. "In the soul-force in man this Godhead in Nature represents itself as a fourfold effective Power, caturvyūha, a Power for knowledge, a Power for strength, a Power for mutuality and active and productive relation and interchange, a Power for works and labour and service, ana its presence casts all human life into a nexus and inner and outer operation of these four things." "Our life is at once an enquiry after truth and knowledge, a struggle and battle of our will with ourselves and surrounding forces, a constant production, adaptation, application of skill to the material of life and a sacrifice and service." (SRI AUROBINDO) In the beginning was Brahman alone, the premier embodiment of all Knowledge. But being alone he did not flourish, the manifestation could not get into the stride. So he created the glorious form of the Kshatriya, and these are the Kshatriyas of his creation: Gods Indra, Varuna, Soma, Rudra, Parjanya, Yama, Mrityu and Ishana. These are the King-gods who rule supreme and in whose discharge of royal duties none can question. Of course the Kshatriya derives from the Brahmana (one who is the becoming of the Brahman) and he acknowledges it in his general demeanour.

In the beginning was Brahman alone, the premier embodiment of all Knowledge. But being alone he did not flourish, the manifestation could not get into the stride. So he created the glorious form of the Kshatriya, and these are the Kshatriyas of his creation : Gods Indra, Varuna, Soma, Rudra, Parjanya, Yama, Mrityu and Ishana. These are the King-gods who rule supreme and in whose discharge of royal duties none can question. Of course the Kshatriya derives from the Brahmana (one who is the becoming of the Brahman) and he acknowledges it in his general demean our.

The projection of the Kshatriya was not enough. Creation still did not flourish. So were created the Vaishya, those species of gods who are designated in groups : Vasus, Rudras, Adityas, Vishwedevas and the Maruts—the legions that work in association in furtherance of the object of Manifestation.

That too did not suffice and Brahman proceeded to create the Shudra : Pushan. Pushan in the Veda is the increaser, the

¹ There is a 'Wisdom in the supreme consciousness of the Divine that conceives the order and principles of things; there is the Power that sanctions and upholds it; then there is the Harmony that effects the proper arrangement of its parts and the Work that executes the direction given by the rest. These Cosmic Principles are in their origins, character and functionings Divine and are ever present in the very body of the creative Spirit. We can indeed view them as the Divine as knowledge, the Divine as power, the Divine as production, enjoyment and mutuality, the Divine as service, obedience and work.' (Sri Aurobindo)

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fosterer who 'advances our chariot by his energy'. And that Pushan is this Earth, for it nourishes all this that exists.

Even the creation of gods did not prove sufficient. Brahman projected that glorious form, Dharma, the Law that holds and sustains, the Law of Truth which governs all, governs the mighty Kshatriya, protects the weak from the strong and ensures the right ordering of creatures. Note the supremacy of the Truth and its Way of becoming, the Law of Truth, over the very gods that are the direct issues of Brahman.

Having created these archetypes of the fourfold order among the gods, Brahman went on creating in that mould the four classes among men : they are the Brahman, Kshatriya, Visha and Shudra. Agni among the gods, He became the Brahmana among men. As Brahmana he conducts the pilgrim-sacrifice among men and as Agni he reaches their offerings to the gods. Through the divine Kshatriya was manifest the human Kshatriya, through the divine Vaishya the human Vaishya and through the divine Shudra the human Shudra. What was worked out first in the higher world was projected in the human as the general mould for manifestation of the Divine Being.

Such is the Self that has projected Itself. Upon this Self and its Becoming one should meditate and know It. Should one depart from this world without this saving knowledge of the Self and its manifestation, he goes unprotected; all the acts of merit done during life-time cannot stand by him for long, for they too have an end. That is why it is imperative to meditate and know the Self and its manifestation. The fruit of this meditation knows no end; it is permanent. One gains an identity with the Self and because of it wields a power also to project what one wills. He shares in the natural power of the Self to create and to manifest.

Whatever the number of the orders constituting the universe, whatever the multitudes in each class of creation, there is underlying all a common oneness, not only a oneness of origin but also of life and sustenance, even as of Goal. Throughout there is a comprehensive bond of mutuality in creation. By his self-offerings and sacrifices man is in communion with the gods. By his absorption of the Knowledge of the' Veda and his chant of

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their Word, he draws upon the Rishis of yore. Offerings to the ancestors who have made his physical existence possible and desire to continue their line in his progeny relates him to the Manes. To men around he is ever a source of shelter and support. Not only to members of his own kind, but to other creatures of earth, water and air, he is a provider. All round there is a community of interests. And to him, says the Upanishad, who is conscious of this Oneness of creation and owns fealty to his fellow members, all—from the gods to the ants—wish well and do well.

This is the character of this multiple creation that has come to be from the One Self. The Self was verily Single, alone. It was moved to multiply itself by Desire, kāma, the sempiternal Desire to manifest what It held. in Itself. It moved in to the creative poise of He and She and cast Itself into an abundance of Name and Form-progeny and wealth-setting up the law of interchange, yajña, to promote the Creation. Thus was laid the foundation of Desire which actuates, in varying forms, all activity. Thus is all manifestation constituted of the originating Self, the creative executrix-the Wife, the Truth manifested-the progeny, the effort of exertion-karma, and plenteous sustenance to draw upon for the purpose-wealth. Anything short of these means an incompleteness. These are the five essential factors in creation. Even personally, each man has these five components constituting his individual manifestation: his mind that leads is the self; his speech that follows is the wife ; his life-force that multiplies is the progeny; his vision is hi s human wealth- and his audience the godly wealth"; his body embodies his effort as it is the body that makes all effort possible. And this quintuple Truth governs not only the yajña, Sacrifice, that underlies this Manifestation but bases also its orders of animals, of men, indeed of all that is.

M. P. PANDIT

¹ for by sight he comprehends and apprehends his share in whatever is. '

² for by his ear he receives the Word of Rhythms which ushers in the Plenty of the Gods.

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SAVITRI, THE MOTHER

THE secret design of the Divine Architect in the fashioning of life on earth is the building of a perfect Temple for the Supramental Ishwari Shakti. Even now indeed all life and matter hold within their depths the Divine Presence and especially on the human level this is crystallised and individualised and of a great intensity. So in a sense every body is a temple of the Divine, deho devālayah. But one has to go deep into the inmost part of this temple to discover the divinity an d almost always the outer and even the inner parts are undivine and sometimes even ant divine. The surface consciousness is made of the very stuff of Ignorance deriving all it s in separation from the Subconscient and the In conscient below. The su bliminal consciousness is comparatively les s subject to nescience and can even open to the subtle cosmic forces of the occult worlds of the Mind, Life and Matter. But this occultism has very little to do and often indeed very far from the spiritual nature of the Divine. So we have now only very imperfect temples for the Divine in the consciousness organised in this world. In fact this dichotomy and diametric opposition between the depths and the surface has driven many of even the greatest spiritual explorers to give up the surface as in corrigible or at any rate to be kept at a safe distance if one is to be unpolluted by darkness . An exclusive inward life in the depths of Spiritual Aware eness or the heights of Divine Consciousness with the irreducible minimum of outward externalizing movement is the safe formula recommended for the aspirant. The aim of Sadhana is to plunge into the depths and hold on to the very bottom of the ocean of consciousness in a Nirvikalpa Samadhi, the trance of unmodified consciousness. When one becomes an adept in this art, one can slowly acclimatize the surface consciousness even to this deep Awareness and so one can live in wakeful surface consciousness with this knowledge of the deep, a Sahajam Samadhi. The body of such a liberated soul,

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Jivanmukta, receives, retains and radiates the peace of the Brahman to all sensitive Sadhakas and the Darshan of such a Yogi can and does serve as the sacred initiation for entering into the depths of their own consciousness. This charging of a dynamic peace bringing about a tranquil restoration of the minds of all troubled souls and giving them a push inward lasts very often long after even the Prana has left when the Yogi passes away. The sacred place where the mortal remains of a Knower of Brahman are laid, a Mahasamadhi, is a House of the Divine and Spiritual Peace, a refuge and source of inspiration for all pilgrims of Eternity. This great -achievement of infusing matter with the Spiritual Peace is the reward of a Herculean Tapasya which often involves a stilling of the life-principle into a state of static immobility. Life has withdrawn from all its natural avenues of expression and has soaked itself so thoroughly in the Eternal Silence that it has almost forgotten its central purpose. This is a state in which all desire is dead and all aspiration is dissolved. Mind and Prana return to their Source and remain in involution, Laya. Life is not fulfilled but held back and withdrawn from all dynamic play. This is the highest achievement of the Spiritual Man of the past. To think of doing more is often declared to be an impossibility if not an enticement of the Force of Illusion, Maya. A great Temple of Divine Silence is built, but the perfect Temple of the Divine plenitude of Truth, Light Beauty, Power, Love and Ananda in the mental, vital and physical consciousness is not in sight. The moulding of such an integral, living and dynamic Divine Sanctuary is the work of the Gnostic Purusha of Savitri, the Mother.

"When we have discerned successively what is real from what is unreal in all the states of being and all the worlds of life, when we have arrived at the perfect and integral certitude of the sole Reality, we must turn our gaze from the heights of this supreme consciousness towards the individual aggregate which serves as the immediate instrument of Thy manifestation upon earth, and see in it nothing but Thee, our sole real existence. Thus each atom of this aggregate will be awakened to receive Thy sublime influence; the ignorance and the darkness will

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disappear not only from the central consciousness of the being but also from its most external mode of expression. It is only by the fulfilment, by the perfection of this labour of transfiguration that there can be manifested the plenitude of Thy Power, Thy Light and Thy Love.

"Lord, Thou makest me understand this truth ever more clearly ; lead me step by step on that path. My whole being down to its smallest atom aspires for the perfect knowledge of Thy Presence and a complete union with it. Let every obstacle disappear, let Thy divine knowledge replace in every part the darkness of the ignorance. Even as Thou hast illumined the central consciousness, the will in the being, enlighten too this outermost substance. And let the whole individuality, from its first origin and essence to its last projection and most material body, be unified in a perfect realisation of Thy sole Reality."

II

The guiding message of the Divine Guru for men on earth in the conduct of their life is to discover the Divine Presence within them by a knowledge based on union and identity with Him and then to manifest this realisation in the outer consciousness. "To know Thee, first and before everything else, yes ; but once the knowledge of Thee is acquired, there remains all the work of Thy manifestation; and then intervene the quality, force, complexity and perfection of that manifestation. Very often those who have known Thee, dazzled and transported with ecstasy by their knowledge, are content to see Thee for themselves and to express Thee as best or as worst they can in their outermost being. He who would be perfect in Thy manifestation cannot be satisfied with that: he must manifest Thee on all the planes, in all the states of the being and thus draw from the knowledge he has acquired the greatest possible profit for the whole world." "We must preach to all, first, union, then, work; but for those who have realised the union, each moment of their life must be an integral expression of Thy Will through the." "Do not revel in the ecstatic contemplation of this union, fulfil

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the mission I have confided to thee on earth." So the Sadhana is an alternation of ascent and descent, of inward concentration and assimilation. The scaling of the heights has to be done in a trance first, for the Psychic being is the readiest and the quickest and the first to respond to the Call of the Jagadguru and she is also the mediator between the Higher Divine Consciousness and the lower human consciousness. But this trance is far from the Samadhi of unconsciousness but a fully, inwardly conscious ascent retaining the link with the outer human consciousness which has fallen silent and is waiting in a quiet but intense aspiration for the priest of the sacrifice to come and share his gains in the higher Yagna. So Savitri comes . back to the normal human wakeful awareness after realising the Gnostic Purusha, her secret soul.

"Once more she was human upon earthly soil

In the muttering night amid the rain-swept woods

And the rude cottage where she sat in trance :"

The subtle world of the Superconscient is held by her in her luminous inner vision and she begins to take possession of her subliminal and surface consciousness. All the veils separating the different levels of consciousness between the subliminal and the surface, the Psychic and the subliminal, the Head and the Overhead are now broken and there is a free movement and flow from the one to the other. In the inmost Heart-Lotus reigns the Gnostic Purusha and She as the Inner Sovereign has now begun to rule her inner and outer instruments. So the lotus-bud of the Heart has fully blossomed and stands disclosed to the earthly ray. The rays of the earth receive the impact of the deathless Sun that the Gnostic Soul is. She now offers the whole of the Prakriti organised around her to the highest Paraprakriti :

"In its deep lotus home her being sat

As if on concentration's marble seat,

Calling the mighty Mother of the worlds

To make this earthly tenement her house.

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As in a flash from a supernal light,

A living image of the original Power,

A face, a form came down into her heart

And made of it its temple and pure abode."

The One original Transcendent Mother-Force, Adya Shakti, sends a full-bodied integral Emanation of Herself into the receptive vehicle of the Sadhaka, a Puma Svabhava. She comes with all her powers of transformation and fulfilment of the aspirations of all the planes and parts of the personality of the devotee. And these powers are not only all-puissant but also all-benignant, protecting and redeeming at the same time, abhayakalyana-saktayah.

"An image sat of the original Power

Wearing the mighty Mother's form and face.

Armed, bearer of the weapon and the sign

Whose occult might no magic can imitate,

Manifold yet one she sat, a guardian force :

A Saviour gesture stretched her lifted arm,

And symbol of some native cosmic strength,

A sacred beast lay prone below her feet,

A silent flame-eyed mass of living force."

The descent of the Divine Shakti into the human heart brings about a radical reversal of consciousness from the spiritual to the supramental. All the divine powers involved in Ignorance begin to emerge and meet the descending Supermind when she touches the heart-lotus quivering with ardent longing, expectancy -and vibrating fervour at the Advent:

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"But when its feet had touched the quivering bloom,

A mighty movement rocked the inner space

As if a world were shaken and found its soul:

Out of the Inconscient soulless mindless Night"

 

"All underwent a high celestial change :

Breaking the black Inconscient blind mute wall,

Effacing the circles of the Ignorance,

Powers and divinities burst naming forth;"

"Magnetic is the touch of her hands and their occult and delicate influence refines mind and life and body and where she presses her feet course miraculous streams of an entrancing Ananda."

"Each part of the being trembling with delight

Lay overwhelmed with tides of happiness

And saw her hand in every circumstance

And felt her touch in every limb and cell :"

The human sheath is becoming the divine tenement, by the installation, Avahana, of the Mother.

III

'He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite.' All aspiration from below is the response to the descending Grace of the Divine Mother, and when the complete and integral Supramental Shakti descends, the aspiration also becomes complete and total and all the hitherto unconscious and potential energy in the mental, vital and physical levels becomes dynamic. The consciousness-force locked up in the physical body-consciousness, the serpent Kundalini which had been lying in a state of coiled sleep representing the normal human consciousness oblivious to all higher light, now wakes up, uncoils itself and rises more and more. It rises and passes through the centres one by one, becomes more and more awake, gathers new light and potency at each centre. "Finally, fully awakened, it rises to its full height,

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erect, straight like a rod, its tail-end at the bottom of the spine and its hood touching the crown of the man's head. The man is then the fully awakened, the perfectly self-conscious man. The movement does not stop there, however; for the serpent presses further on, it strikes with its hood the bottom of the crown and in the end breaks through and passes beyond like a flash of lightning. The serpent, now luminous,—pure and free energy—can enter the body again, this time with its head down and tail up. It enters blazing, illumining with its superconscient light the centres one by one, giving man richer and richer consciousness, energy and life, transforming the being more and more. The Light comes down easily enough to the heart region; then the difficulty begins, the regions below gradually become darker and denser and it is hard task for the Light to penetrate as it goes further down. If it succeeds in reaching the bottom of the spine, it has achieved something miraculous. But there is a further progress necessary, if man—and the world with him—is to realise a wholly transformed superconscient life. In other words, the Light must touch and enter not only the physical stratum of our being but the others too that lie below, the subconscient and inconscient."

"A flaming serpent rose released from sleep.

It rose billowing its coils and stood erect

And climbing mightily stormily on its way

It touched her centres with its flaming mouth :

As if a fiery kiss had broken their sleep,

They bloomed and laughed surcharged with light and bliss;

Then at the crown it joined the Eternal's space.

In the flower of the head, in the flower of Matter's base,

In each divine stronghold and Nature-knot

It held together the mystic stream which joins

The viewless summits with the unseen depths,

The string of forts that make the frail defence

Safeguarding us against the enormous world,

Our lines of self-expression in its Vast,"

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The erect awakened Serpent Power becomes a channel of communication between the Superconscient heights and the Inconscient depths; the fully awake human consciousness becomes a medium for the infusion of the Divine into the undivine. Every part and plane of the human tenement is connected with its Divine counterpart above. All the latent powers in the inner mental, vital and physical now manifest themselves fully and they receive from above new divine powers of the overhead planes for an endlessly rich fulfilment. The human consciousness is raised higher and higher towards the Supramental and every centre gets the descent. The thousand-petalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around, commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and over mind; the two-petalled white forehead centre between the eye-brows commanding thought, will and vision; the sixteen-petalled grey throat centre, commanding expression and all externalising of the mind movements and mental forces; the twelve-petalled golden pink heart-centre, commanding the higher emotional with the psychic deep behind it; the ten-petalled violet naval centre, commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; the six-petalled, deep purple red abdominal centre, commanding the small vital movements, the little greed's, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements and the four-petalled red Muladhara commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient—all are transformed into divinised movements :

"A glad uplift and a new working came.

The immortal's thoughts displaced our bounded view,

The immortal's thoughts earth's drab idea and sense;

All things now bore a deeper heavenlier sense.

A glad clear harmony marked their truth's outline,

Re-set the balance and measures of the world.

Each shape showed its occult design, unveiled

God's meaning in it for which it was made

And the vivid splendour of his artist thought.

A channel of the mighty Mother's choice,

The immortal's will took into its calm control

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Our blind or erring government of life;

A loose republic once of wants and needs,

Then bowed to the uncertain sovereign mind,

Life now obeyed to a diviner rule

And every act became an act of God."

'Love chanting its hymeneal hymn/ Made life and body mirrors of sacred joy And all the emotions gave themselves to God.' The 'proud ambitions and the master lusts were tamed into instruments of a great calm sway to do a work of God on earthly soil.' 'The childish game of daily dwarf desires was changed into a sweet and boisterous play, a romp of little gods with life in Time.' 'There came a grip on Mattel's giant powers for large utilities in life's little space.'

"A firm ground was made for Heaven's descending might."

"There was no longer the body, no longer any sensation; there was only a column of light rising from the place where is ordinarily the base of the body up to the place where is ordinarily the head, to form there a disk of light like that of the moon; then from there the column went on rising up to very far above the head to break into an immense sun, dazzling and multi-coloured, from which fell a rain of golden light covering the whole earth.

"Then slowly the column of light descended forming an oval of living light, awakening and setting in motion, each in a particular way, according to a special mode of vibration, the centres which were above the head, at the place of the head, the throat, the heart, in the middle of the belly, at the base of the spine and still lower. At the height of the knees, the ascending and the descending currents joined together and the circulation thus became in a way uninterrupted, enveloping the whole being with an immense oval of living light.

"Then slowly the consciousness descended again from stage to stage, halting at every world, till the consciousness of the body came back. The resumption of the consciousness of the body, was, if my memory is exact, the ninth stage. At this moment the body was still quite stiff and immobile." Prakriti has now yoked herself

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to Paraprakriti and the Purusha within completely illumined lives in the beatitude of consecration and surrender to the Divine Mother in all the parts and planes of her now harmonious and homogeneous personality. Aditi is established and firmly placed, samsthāpita,

IV

So life in the lower nature can find its fulfilment and need not for ever be condemned to remain in a state of Ignorance and exile from its origin. That would have been the inevitable destiny of life if the lower nature or Prakriti of the three Gunas and its faithful vassal and slave, the Ego, were all that man's consciousness har bours. But these are only the outer field, the Kshetra of a divine Guest who has allowed the play of the modes of Nature on the surface. He is the Knower of the Field, ksetrajña, not a passive witness of our ignorant life, a sāksi or anumantā but the secret master of all the movements, Prabhu and Vibhu. nces the wall separating the subliminal and the surface consciousness is brought down by inward aspiration and concentration or by the descent of the Divine Shakti from above, this inner sovereign becomes the Regal Lord of the lower Prakriti as well. Then he assumes the role of the Yaja ana of the great Yagna or Sacrifice of making plastic the in strumpets of the mind, life and body and turning them to the Higher Paraprakriti above. Agni, the fire of aspiration purifies them of all the ant divine elements and dissolves the undivine desire-forces and makes the total self giving and surrender to the Divine Powers possible. That breaks the veil separating the Overhead planes and the normal human consciousness so that the Higher Light, Power, Beauty, Love and Ananda pour into the mortal instruments and transform them integrally and so divinise them. 'Reason is transformed into ordered, revelatory intuition and light; effort or willing into an even and sovereign overflowing of the soul- strength, conscious force; enjoying into an even and objectless ecstasy, bliss; the divided individual into the world-personality; the animal into the Driver of" the herds, Krishna.' The dualities of sin and virtue , right and wrong, pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance leave

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the transformed human consciousness and take refuge in the universal lumber house of the Subconscient below.

Then lifts the mind a cry of victory :

"O soul, my soul, we have created Heaven,

Within we have found the kingdom here of God,

His fortress built in a loud ignorant world.

Our life is entrenched between two rivers of Light,

We have turned space into a gulf of peace

And made the body a capitol of bliss.

What more, what more, if more must still be done ?"

In the words of Sri Aurobindo in "The Secret of the Veda", "Then it is that the higher kingdom of the Immortality, Sachchidananda revealed, shines out perfectly in this world. The higher and lower are reconciled in the light of the supra-mental revelation. The Ignorance, the Night, is illumined upon both sides of our complete being, not only as in our present state upon one. This higher kingdom stands confessed in the principle of Beatitude which is for us the principle of Love and Light, represented by the god Mitra. The Lord of Truth, when he reveals himself in the full godhead, becomes the Lord of Bliss. The law of his being, the principle regulating his activities is seen to be Love; for in the right arrangement of knowledge and action everything here comes to be translated into terms of good, felicity, bliss." "And thou encompasses Night upon both sides, and thou becamest, O God, Mitra by the laws of thy action." The Supra-mental Light manifesting from above and the now evolved Supra-mental Light emerging from involution in the triple world protect life from the assaults of the universal forces of Sub conscience and Inconscience.

"In the slow process of the evolving spirit,

In the brief stade between a death and birth

A first perfection's stage is reached at last;

Out of the wood and stone of our nature's stuff

A temple is shaped where the high gods could five.

Even if the struggling world is left outside

One man's perfection still can save the world. *

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There is won a new proximity to the skies,

A first betrothal of the Earth to Heaven,

A deep concordat between Truth and Life :

A camp of God is pitched in human time."

V

The building of such a perfect temple of the Divine Consciousness is the consummation and fulfilment of all the different kinds of occult and spiritual disciplines of the past. Each kind of spiritual Sadhana has resulted consciously or unconsciously in fashioning the human consciousness to reflect or manifest the Divine in some form or other by some part or other of the being. Even the exclusive monistic ascetic path of liberation envelops the body with the Shanti of the Brahmic consciousness. The lower occultism of the inferior Tantras makes the outer consciousness receive from the subliminal physical, vital or mental and in rare cases from all these, the powers of the cosmic gods and goddesses of these planes. The higher spiritual occultism of the superior Tantras has insisted upon the awakening of the kundalini by a concentration of the pranic and mantric power, raising by an arduous Tapasya of this subtle force through all the Chakras resulting in a blossoming of all the latent powers and finally yoking it with the Brahmic consciousness in the plane of the spiritual mind, in the Sahasradala. In some other forms of Tantric Sadhana we have even a descent of the Kundalini from the Sahasrara with the gains of the experience in the spiritual mind to all the centres below and so enriching and liberating them from bondage to the earth-consciousness. The perfect Yogi is said to be the one who can ascend and descend at will between the Sahasradala and the Muladhara. In very secret the Tantra Marga, experiences from the planes higher than the spiritual mind are received into the still mind or the concentrated heart by a sort of filtration or reflection. While the Tantra has been stressing exclusively on working upon Prakriti, the paths based on Vedanta emphasise on becoming aware of the sub Uminal Purusha or the Jivatman above or, as in Vaishnava Bhakti Yoga, of the Psychic Being and its reflection of the Love for and of the Divine.

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But each line of approach by its very concentration and therefore exclusiveness misses the Siddhi of every other and none envisages 'the possibility of drawing the whole consciousness upward above the Brahmarandhra to ranges above belonging to the Higher Hemisphere of the Spiritual Consciousness proper and instead of merely receiving from there, to live in those very heights and from there change the lower consciousness altogether with the dynamism proper to the highest Spiritual Consciousness of the Supramental whose nature is Light, Power, Ananda, Peace, Knowledge and infinite Wideness.' Only in the earliest Vedantic Sadhana as outlined for example in the Taittiriya Upanishad we have 'some indications of these higher planes and their nature and the possibility of gathering up the whole consciousness and rising into them.' The secret of the Veda is precisely the exploration of the overhead planes leading to the Supramental Sun and opening the mental consciousness, Dhi, to this Vast Consciousness of the Truth, Ritam, Satyam, Brihat. The Sadhana of Savitri is a complete synthesis of the Siddhis of all these Yogas. Vedanta and Tantra are raised to the level of the Veda. And what is perhaps quite new is the method of achieving the goals of all these by the emphasis right from the outset on the Descent of the Higher Consciousness and the final Integral Transformation. Thus all that the Tantra accomplishes in the Kundalini Yoga and a great deal more are got not as the result of Tapasya or even a conscious working at its awakening but as the spontaneous response to the descending Spiritual Consciousness. The establishment of the Gnostic Purusha and the Surrender to the Highest Gnosis, of the Prakriti brings about the Gnostic Prakriti, the perfect Alaya, shrine of the Supreme.

References :

Sri Aurobindo—Savitri, Book VII Canto V.

Prayers and Meditations of the Mother.

On Yoga-Books One and Two.

M. V. SEETARAMAN

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THE TEACHINGS OF THE MOTHER

EDUCATION XV

PHYSICAL EDUCATION—II

WE have now to study the philosophical and spiritual aspects of physical education, for it is against the background of these aspects that we shall understand what, according to the Mother, is the proper function of the body in the economy of human nature, and how best it can play its part in the organised expression and fulfilment of our integrated personality. But before we take up these aspects, we had better dispose of a problem which seems to perplex and baffle the modern educationists— it is the problem of co-education in physical culture.

Opinion is sharply divided, not only on the question of coeducation in physical culture, but on the wider question of coeducation in general. Heaps of evidences are adduced to demonstrate the fatal error and evil of all forms of co-education. But I shall not embark here upon that larger question. I shall confine myself only to the Mother's strong advocacy of equal education as well as co-education for boys and girls in physical culture.

If we attack this problem on the mental level, and try to solve it on the basis of past experience, medical knowledge, and the supposed inviolability of the so-called laws of Nature, we shall be constrained to admit that if any physical exercises are to be prescribed for the girls at all, they must be quite distinct and different from those practised by young men. The female body is made for a special purpose and a specific utility. Even from the physiological and morphological points of view, it is apparent that it is constructed on another plan and other principles of growth. To train it on the lines of male development would be

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to pervert its natural growth, damage its anatomical pattern and physiological function, and disrupt the organised life of the society. It would be undermining the very base of human culture, upsetting the balance of Nature, and flying in the teeth of the Creator's design.

All this contention is, indeed, well-grounded and valid, only so long as we choose to live under the subjection of Nature. Traditionalism is satisfied subservience to Nature. Though modern science has almost exploded the myth of the inviolability of natural laws, the conservative mind still clings on to the belief that Nature does not change, and that no infringement of her laws can go with impunity. It has an instinctive horror and distrust of all novelty.¹

The Mother advocates the same physical education for women as for men, brushing .aside all objections to it on social, moral, medical or other grounds. "What we claim is this that given similar conditions, the same education and the same possibilities, there is no reason why a categorical, final and imperative distinction should be made between what one calls men and women. For us, human beings are the expression of a single soul. And if... Nature has made a difference in her expression in order to satisfy her needs and realise her motives, it does not follow that we must obey her blindly. If our needs and motives are of another kind and if we do not recognise that the physical purposes as they are conceived by Nature are the final and absolute ends, then we can try to develop consciousness on another fine."²

Visitors to the Ashram and to Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education often ask the Mother why she has the same programme of physical education for boys and girls. They are scandalized and shocked to see young girls and adult ladies in shorts, training and competing with young and adult men. "Why are the girls not treated in a special and different way from the boys as it is done everywhere

¹ "High instincts before which our mortal nature 

Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised." — Wordsworth 

² & ³ Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, August, 1962.

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To ask the Mother to toe the common line or tread the beaten track is like asking Time to move backwards. "When people throw this argument in my face," she says, "they can tell me nothing more profoundly stupid. That is done everywhere ! But that is exactly the reason why it should not be done; because if we do as the others do, it is not worth doing at all. We want precisely to bring into the world something which is not there. But if we keep all the habits of the world, all the preferences of the world, all the constructions of the world, I do not see how we can come out of the rut and do something new..." If modern science has greatly helped men to come out of the rut, cannot spiritual knowledge and power do infinitely more ? "We do not want to obey the orders of Nature, even if these orders have behind them habits of thousands an^L thousands of years...",

Thus the specious argument about the laws or ways of Nature is dismissed with a mere wave of the hand. The spirit of man is mightier than all the laws of physical Nature, and if we read history with un jaundiced eyes, we shall not fail to perceive, down the rolling panorama of ages of human culture, signal and significant triumphs of the Spirit over the inert obstruction of Matter. The static security and order in which the conservative mind would live for ever, if it could, are shattered by the creative challenge of the historical process, and the evolving soul of man progresses from perfection to perfection, from an easy and simple to a complex and multi-expressive integration and fulfilment through intersecting spirals of advance and retreat.

The Mother says : "The aim of physical education is to develop all the possibilities of a human body, possibilities of harmony, strength, plasticity, skill, ability, endurance, and to increase the control over the functioning of the limbs and the organs, and to make of the body a perfect instrument at the disposal of a conscious will. This programme is excellent for all human beings equally, and there is no point in wanting to adopt another for girls..."

The Mother was once asked as to what should be the ideal of a woman's physical beauty. She said : "A perfect harmony

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in the proportion, suppleness and strength, grace and force, plasticity and endurance and above all, excellent health, unvarying and unchanging, which is the result of a pure soul, a happy trust in life and an unshakable faith in the Divine Grace..."

The vision inspiring the philosophy of transcendence of the normalcy of life and the so-called laws of Nature is best expressed in the following words of the Mother :

"Even while recognising that in our body we still belong dreadfully to animality, we must not therefore conclude that this animal part, as it is the most concrete and the most real for us, is one to which we are obliged to be subjected and which we must allow to rule over us. Unfortunately this is what happens most often in life and men are certainly much more slaves than masters of their physical being. Yet it is the contrary that should be, for the truth of individual life is quite another thing.

"We have in us an intelligent will more or less enlightened which is the first instrument of our psychic being. It is this intelligent will that we must use in order to learn to live not like an animal man, but as a human being, candidate for Divinity.

"And the first step towards this realisation is to become master of this body instead of remaining an impotent slave.

"One most effective help towards this goal is physical exercise."

The Mother's views are the expression of her vision of the future towards which humanity is advancing. If they are revolutionary, and appear to our rational, earth-bound mind to be impracticable, we have only to remember that the Pisgah glance of the prophets and pioneers sees truths and realities which are invisible to our mortal eyes. But it is these very truths and realities that will be the facts of tomorrow. To deny them or dismiss them as Utopian is to condemn our existence to stagnation and to be will fully blind to the message of history and the meaning of evolution. It is to refuse to advance, and rot in the old ruts. But even the Nature we swear by shall not be allowed to continue for ever in her customary jog-trot, her frequent flounders and lapses and detours. There is, encompassing her, a Super ture from which she is derived, the Infinite Shakti, who impels her

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sometimes to take sudden sprints and salts towards her evolutionary goal. It is the creative Will of the Super nature which the Mother voices when she bids us unfurl the wings of our soul and soar up to where there is neither the cramping hold of this blind Nature, nor the ceaseless buffet with the waves of mortality. There is our eternal Home, the blissful, reposeful lap of the Mother, the Super nature, Para Prakriti. And it is only by unveiling the Super nature here, in this battlefield of terrestrial life, that we can realise and fulfil our divine Manhood. To outgrow the society, the nation, the country, and the religion into which he is born, to transcend the laws of Nature to whose fostering sway he has to submit for his evolution so long as he is a spiritual nursling, is the destiny of man. And transcendence transfigures. It transfigures not only the soul, but, its creative Force directed downwards, the mind, life, and even the—body I¹

RlSHABHCHAND

. .It is not a crucified but a glorified body that will save the world."—The Mother.

New Year's Prayer for 1957

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A LETTER

IN simple words, in a plain manner you want to know the meaning of Yoga. You have asked me not to use highly philosophical terms, but just to make you understand the sole purport of Yoga in a few words. I shall try my best, but before that I would like to tell you something. Difficult matters cannot be explained as easily as easy ones. It is quite natural that a thing above the common cannot be brought down to the level of common understanding, nor is it advisable to do so. To do that is to help the common in their idleness. There is always some usefulness in acquiring a thing by the sweat of one's brow. One can derive much benefit from such labour. Instead of trying to bring down the uncommon to the level of the common, it would be better to try to mould the common after the uncommon, if needed, even at the cost of some effort. However, it must also be admitted that it is not always necessary to court useless toil on that account. Often we look at the uncommon in too excessive proportions, and make it almost inaccessible to our understanding. Specially about Yoga what you have said is quite true.

Generally we take Yoga for something quite mysterious. It is because we associate Yoga with many complex, un understandable rites and consider these as its main and inseparable parts. In fact, Yoga is a quite natural thing if we turn to it in the right manner. All ought to practise Yoga and all without exception can do that. Not only that, all are doing Yoga, if not consciously. Sadhana, spiritual practice, consists in bringing out the undercurrent flowing within oneself, in doing consciously what one's inner nature demands.

In short, Yoga is an attempt at discovering a new 'Law of Life', and after that discovery one has to mould and regulate one's life in accordance with it. This Law of Life is .nothing other than the Law of Divine Life. What does it mean ? It means that in a human being there are two planes, two kinds of nature

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and two laws of life—one belongs to the lower region, the other to the higher, one belongs to the terrestrial, the other to the supra-terrestrial. This earth of clay or the lower region possesses body, life and mind. Man moves about according to the laws and customs, bondages and limitations of body, life and mind. But there exists a world, a plane above these three ; and there the knowledge of man does not depend on gross physical sensations or on syllogistic reasonings. There the knowledge is self-revealing, un deformed and infallible. It is called Intuition, Revelation. There the restless wild urge of action or blind agitation of numberless sensations have turned into a calm spiritual power and an unalloyed delight. And that plane too has a body of its own. But it is absolutely free from disease, decay and death that we find in the physical being.' To leave aside the laws of body, life and mind and rise into the highest spiritual nature is called Yoga. But don't think, in doing Yoga you shall have to do away with this body, life and mind and keep aloof from the world and the earthly concerns. This theory is an absurdity on the face of it. The higher world can be contacted even while remaining in the body, life and mind, and it can also be infused into these three. The lower nature can be moulded by the infusion and the law of the higher. While residing in the world all earthly activities can be directed by the drive of that higher world.

It is a difficult task, but not impossible. In the least a good many years are not needed. It seems to be an impossibility or merely an ideal only, when I look upon myself alone, and think that I am a little, insignificant creature—how can I have the power to change the process of Nature that has been in vogue from time immemorial ? Will it be possible to do so even in hundreds of lives ? But is it not that a ray of hope peeps into me the moment I cast a glance at the universe without taking me into account ? We admit nowadays the law of evolution preached by the West. According to that law of evolution there existed Matter first in the creation, and then appeared the animal, finally the human. being. That is to say, the Western science has recognised in the first instance, evolution on lower planes of Nature. First body, then life and then mind. But nothing can be as

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absurd and illogical as to say that the evolution of Nature has stopped after reaching the mental level. Truly speaking, Yoga tells us that above the mental level there is a plane called Super-mind and above man there is Superman.

All Nature is anxious to give birth to the Supermind, and we too, all human beings have been making the same effort, although unconsciously. Behind your power and mine, behind your effort and mine there resides an enormous power of the whole universe, and that power is aspiring for the divine manifestation in humanity, for the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and the Divine Play of the Golden Age. When that universal Power reveals itself to our sight, and when we are able to recognise it and consciously collaborate with it, there can be nothing beyond our reach*.

 NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

(Translated from the original Bengali)

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REVIEW

Shvetashvatara Upanishad with translation and notes in Kannada By Swami Adidevananda. Pub. Sri Ramakrishna Ashram, Mysore. Re. 1.00 .

'THOUGH not included among the traditional ten great Upanishads, the Śvetāśvatara enjoys a unique position of its own. It is the one Upanishad outside the Ten that comes to be cited as Shruti in the Vedānta Sūtras of Badarayana (1.4.1 I ) and Acharya Shankara quotes from it again and again in the course of his commentary on the Sutras.! Belonging to the Krishna Yajurveda -being one of it s 32 Upanishads-this text contains 113 verses in all, divided into six chapters. Writing about the special features of this Upanishad," in hi s satisfying Introduction to this first edition in Kannada, Swami Adidevananda points out that t hi s is the first Upanishad in which the Supreme Divinity is called Hara (1.10), Rudra (IIl.2,4; IV. 12,21,22), Shiva (III II; IV.4). But on that account, he adds, it cannot be classed as a Shaivite text . For there are other appellations to follow: Bhagavan (III II), Agni, Adityas, Vayu etc. (IV. 2). Secondly there is an amp has is on Bhakti. The closing verse speaks of parā bhakti. So too the terms occur ring elsewhere in the text, śaranam, prapadye, underline the way of Devotion. Third, the Supreme is conceived and adored in Form : He is the Deva, Creator, Archie ct , the Lord and Overseer of all activity. Thousand-headed, thousand-eyed, thousand-footed is He the Purusha, shining as the Supreme Person

¹ References to this Upanishad are found in the Sribhdsya of Ramanuja as well. It i s drawn upon by the exponents of other systems of Vedanta also. Sri Aurobindo cites from this Upanishad a number of lines in his writings. A selection from his renderings is given at the end of this review-article for their sheer poetic beauty apart from their insight.

² It derives its title from the name of the sage Shvetashvatara who is recorded (VI.21) to have expounded it to an elect assembly of seekers. The name ivetd Sva may be explained as Svta-aiva, the white horse which signifies, in ancient thought, pure life-energy. He who has a superbly purified life-force is Shvetashvatara. Swami Adidevananda cites the parallel of Rishi Shyavasva in the Rig Veda.

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of sun-bright hue beyond the Darkness of Ignorance. This Upanishad contains references to system like Sankhya, Yoga, concepts like Prakriti which have come to play such an important part in the subsequent philosophical development of the Indian mind. Pervading the work is a broad spirit of synthesis taking up the essence of the various line of thought and practice, Jnana, Yoga, Bhakti etc. And finally, this Upanishad is remarkable as much for its profundity of content as for its beauty of expression, striking imagery and studied abandon of the tethers of mental reason. Some of the oft-quoted verses in the Upanishad literature are from the Svetdsvatara.

The Upanishad opens with the question of questions: Whence are we born ? By what do we live ? On what are we based ? What is the Cause ? Could it be Time or Nature or Law, or Chance or the Five elements ? No; for they all exist for the being, a living self. Neither is this being free. What then ?

The answer, says the Upanishad, has been discovered by the Rishis of old, not by reasoning, but by following the way of Meditative Yoga. Absorbed in this Yoga they perceived a Self-Power, the Shakti of the Lord, concealed by its own workings. It is He the one Lord with his innate Shakti that determines all this creation which is pictured as a Great Wheel or an ever flowing Stream of Waters. In this Wheel of Brahman is involved and revolves the Swan of the individual soul thinking itself to be different, and different the Lord who actuates it from above. When graced by the Lord it realises the truth and attains to immortality. And the Truth of Brahman is this that Brahman exceeds the universe of His making. Immutable, He contains in Himself all the three : the soul that is the enjoyer, the world that is the enjoyed and the Lord that is the actuator—all of which are really three poises of the One. Once the Jiva realises this truth it regains its original nature and becomes one with the Lord. And the means to realise this truth of oneself and the world, is to meditate upon the Brahman.

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By constant meditation upon Him, by union with Him, by identity with Him, there is finally a cessation from all illusion. When the Lord is known all fetters fall off; with the ebbing of miseries, cease birth and death. By meditation on Him, one arrives, at the death of the body, to the third stage—universal lordship; being absolute, his desire is satisfied. And this Brahman, the eternal that abides in one's self is what is truly to be known— known by askesis, by the strenuous churning of meditation, dhyānanirmathana-abhyāsāt.

But before launching upon the course of Meditative Yoga, the seeker is enjoined to invoke the grace and help of Savitrā-prasavena juseta brahma, with the benediction of Savitri the impeller wait upon Brahman.¹

With meticulous eye for detail, the Upanishad then describes the where and the how of the Yoga.

In a place that is level, pure, free from pebbles, fire and gravel, undisturbed by the noise of water and other propinquities pleasant to the mind, not offensive to the eye, in a hidden retreat protected from high wind, practise Yoga.

Holding the body steady, with the head, chest and neck erect, turn the senses by the mind into t he heart; control the prānas and when they are quieted, well-regulated in movements, breathe out slowly through the nostrils; restrain, undistracted, the mind like a chariot yoked to vicious horses.

Then will slowly begin to appear the first milestones on the journey leading to Brahman : snow-flakes, smoke, sun, wind, fire, fire-flies, lightning, crystal, moon—these will be seen again and again. Not merely visions, but also there follow concrete results in the body. Lightness, healthiness, steadiness (or absence of desire), clearness of complexion and pleasantness of voice, sweet odd our and scanty excretion ; these are the first precursors of the perfection in Yoga. For perfection of body is a definitive result of Yoga rightly pursued. When the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and ether manifest in their characteristic power,

¹ The Upanishad quotes five mantras for the purpose from the Taittiriya Samhita, (IV. I. I. I-5)

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then is the body forged in the Fire of Yoga ;^l to such a one there is neither disease, nor aging nor death.

He is pure. He beholds Him by knowing Whom one is freed from all fetters.

The Brahman is indeed One but He has many statuses, many poises of stativity and movement, many periods, Kala, of manifestation and withdrawal from manifestation. As the ruler, protector and destroyer He is lauded as Rudra. He is not only the creator but also the Cosmic Person who has spread himself in the big and small, high and low, in ways appropriate to each, yathā nikāyam. Not only spread around, he stations himself as the inner self, of the measure of a thumb, angusthamdtra, in the nine-gated city that is the body of man. Immanent in all H e yet transcends the All.

The Upanishad devotes some of its most beautiful passages for the celebration of the Glory of this Lord of all, whose Shakti, Consciousness-Force, emanates this variegated creation, fashions the myriad Many out of the Immutable One. Know this power of Maya to be His very Nature and Him the Lord to be the Master of Maya. This exalted Power of His is known to be various and innate, active in Knowledge and Strength. He is there extended not only in the whole width and length of the universe but also seated in the cavern of heart, sadā jandnām hrdaye sannivistāh.

¹ In an important note Swamiji explains : The mind (chitta) that is impure and full of envy etc., cannot concentrate. To enable it to do so the Yoga-shastra lays down 6 means; known as parikarma. The first is citta-prasddana : friendliness to the happy, compassion for the distressed, delight in the fortunate etc. When the mind dwells on any high purpose there ensues a happy calm, Uayavati vd pravrttik utpannd manasah stithinibandhini (Y. Sutra I.35). This is the second parikarma. Example : if one concentrates on the tip of the nose or tip of the tongue, one will experience an unearthly fragrance or unearthly taste. By a mental activity that is free from sorrow and luminous, the mind is at peace, viiokd vd jyotismall (1.36). This is the third parikarma which is of two kinds: 1) by meditating on the lotus in the heart the sattvic-dominated buddhi is obtained. By this grace of meditation the consciousness gets illumined in the manner of the sun, moon, planet and jewel. 2) As the chitta founds itself in the samitt (I am) it shapes into the form of asmita that is Peace and infinity. The chitta of the Great thus becoming the object of meditation is the fourth parikarma. The chitta of the yogins supporting itself on dream-knowledge and sleep-knowledge, assuming their form and attaining their status is the fifth parikarma. To^meditate on the Deity of one's choice and obtain thereby a definite status is the sixth parikarma. Till we get the supernormal experience ourselves, the teachings of the Masters of science

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Him proceed to realise. More minute than the minute, vaster than the vast, is the Self set in the heart of creatures. By the Grace of the Creator does one behold Him, without Desire, the Lord majestic and becomes freed of grief.

Commenting on the word kapila in V.21 Swami Adidevananda points out that many have taken this passage to refer to Kapila the traditional founder of the Sankhya system. But, he writes, it is not so. "It has been stated in IlI4 that Rudra the all-knower gave birth to Hiranyagarbha. In IV.12 it is men tioned that Rudra saw the birth of Hiranyagarbha. Further in VI.18 it is stated that the Parameshwara created Brahma. And here in V. 2 it is declared that H e saw the seer Kapila at birth. Kapila is really the one of tawny hue, gold-like, the Hiranya Garbha. Kapilam kanaka-kapilauarnam hiranyagarbham. And who possibly could be this all-knowing Kapila ? He it is who has been called in the Vedas, the Upanishads, the svayambhu, jāpati, brahmā, the hiranyagarbha." It is clear that this Upanishad is not specially related to the Sankhya. It may refer to it as it mentions other systems like Yoga and Ved anta. Its oneness of souls in the Brahman is opposed to the Sankyhan plurality of souls. So too the Sankhya looks upon Prakriti as independent of Purusha whereas in this Upanishad Prakriti or Shakti is a power of the Lord who rules over it.

SELECTIONS FROM THE SHVETASHVATAR

(from Sri Aurobindo's renderings)

They beheld the self-force of the Divine Being deep hidden by its own conscious modes of working. (1.3)

The Master of Maya creates this world by his Maya and within it is confined another; one should know his Maya as Nature and the Master of Maya as the great Lord of all. (IV.9,10)

It is the might of the Godhead in the world that turns the wheel of Brahman. Him one must know, the supreme Lord of

will always remain indirect. And the realisation of supernormal things creates faith (in the seeker) in what is subtle.

¹ Rsim prasūtam kapilam yastamagre jñānairbibharti jdyamānam ca paśyet.

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all lords, the supreme Godhead above all godheads... Supreme too is his Shakti and manifold the natural working of her knowledge and her force. One Godhead, occult in all beings, the inner Self of all beings, the all-pervading, absolute without qualities, the overseer of all actions, the witness, conscious knower and absolute...the One in control over the many who are passive to Nature, fashions one seed in many ways. (VI. 1,758 )

The Godhead moves in this Field modifying each web of things separately in many ways...One, he presides over all wombs and natures ; himself the womb of all, he is that which brings to ripeness the nature of the being and he gives to all who have to be matured their result of development and appoints all qualities to their workings. (V.3-5)

This whole world is filled with beings who are His members. (IV. 10)

Two are there, hidden in the secrecy of the Infinite, the Knowledge and the Ignorance; but perishable is the Ignorance, immortal is the Knowledge; another than they is He who rules over both the Knowledge and the Ignorance. (V. I)

The Soul of man, a traveler, wanders in this cycle of Brahman, huge, a totality of lives, a totality of states, thinking itself different from the Impeller of the journey. Accepted by Him, it attains its goal of Immortality. (1.6)

The soul seated on the same tree of Nature is absorbed and deluded and has sorrow because it is not the Lord, but when it sees and is in union with that other self and greatness of it which is the Lord, then sorrow passes away from it. (IV.7)

The Purusha is all this that is, what has been and what is yet to be; He is the master of Immortality and He is whatever grows by food. (III. 15)

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Two unborn, the Knower and one who knows not, the Lord and one who has not mastery : one Unborn and in her are the object of enjoyment and the enjoyer. (I.9)

There is a birth and growth of the self. According to his actions the embodied being assumes forms successively in many places; many forms gross and subtle he assumes by force of his own qualities of nature. (V.11.12)

Equipped with qualities, a doer of works and creator of their consequences, he reaps the result of his actions; he is the ruler of the life and he moves in his journey according to his own acts; he has idea and ego and is to be known by the qualities of his intelligence and his quality of self." Smaller than the hundredth part of the tip of a hair, the soul of the living being is capable of infinity. Male is he not nor female nor neuter, but is joined to whatever body he takes as his own. (V.7)

Thou art man and woman, boy and girl; old and worn thou walkest bent over a staff; thou art the blue bird and the green and the scarlet-eyed... (IV.3,4)

M. P. PANDIT

We are informed by the publishers of Vācaspatyam, reviewed in these p ages, (1962, August) that the pre-publication offer of the complete set for Rs. 230 (inclusive of Rs. 10.00 for transport) is kept open till the end of December 1962.

________________________

Published by P. Counnouma

Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry-2

To be had of:

SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM, PONDICHERRY-2