Vol. XXI. No. I 

February, 1964

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

DHAMMAPADA

XIX

OF THE JUST

One who comes hastily to a judgment, cannot be just. He indeed is wise who can distinguish between the just and the unjust, (1)

Who judges others in full knowledge, according to law and equity; the wise one who guards the Law is indeed called "the Just".(2)

* Based on the Mother's Talks.

Page-5

One does not become wise by talking much; one is called, wise if one is forbearing, without fear, or foe. (3)

It is not that the more you talk the more you become the upholder of the Law. Even if you hear a little of the Law, but observe it by your body, if you do not deviate from the Law, then you become the upholder of the Law. (4)

He is not an Elder whose head has turned grey; he has simply grown in years, he has become old in vain. (5)

He is called an Elder in whom dwell Truth and Law, amity and self-control and self-restraint, the wise one who is cleansed of all impurities. (6)

One cannot be saintlike by the finish of one's speechjyr by the polish of one's complexion if one is jealous and envious . and malicious. (7)

He indeed is said to be saintlike, he is wise in whom all these things have been eradicated, uprooted from the very bottom, who is cleansed of all impurities. (8)

One who does not follow the Path, who speaks untruth, who is full of desire and greed cannot be the saint-mendicant by merely shaving his head. (9)

He is the saint-mendicant who has eradicated all impurities, great or small, because of this eradication of impurities. (10)

One does not become a saint-mendicant simply by begging alms of others nor by observing all the cults. (11)

He indeed is called a saint-mendicant who transcends here below both sin and virtue remains wholly pure and leads a life of knowledge in the world. (12)

Page-6

One who is foolish und ignorant does not become a Hermit by merely keeping sitent. He is wise who holds the balance, as it were, (13)"

Keeping the good and rejecting the evil: he is a sage because of this, he has a right knowledge of both the worlds. (14)

He is not Noble who hurts living creatures ; one becomes Noble by not doing violence to anyone. (15)

It is not through moral precepts nor ritual observances nor through much learning nor through still meditation nor a lonely life nor by thinking, "I have attained the felicity, the Deliverance which men of the world never enjoy", that you can be a Disciple. Do not believe it, until you have achieved the total extinction of desire. (16)

LET us keep the last text. It is interesting. Certainly it is not easy to get rid of all desires, it needs a whole life at times. But to tell the truth, it seems to be a very negative way, although at some moment of self-development, it is a discipline which, is very useful, even indispensable to practise, if one does not want self-deception. Because you begin at first by getting rid of the big desires those that are quite obvious and trouble you so much that you cannot have any illusion with regard to them ; then come subtler desires that take the form of things that should be done, that are necessary, even at times as commands from within, and this needs time and much sincerity to discover and .overcome them ; in the end it looks as if you had finished with these accursed desires in the material world, in outward things, in the vital world, «i*the emotions and feelings, in the mental world in the matter of ideas, when all on a sudden you discover them again in the spiritual world and there they are more dangerous, more subtle, more sharp and much more invisible and covered by a saintly appearance which one does not dare call desires.

And when one has succeeded in overcoming all that, in discovering, ousting and getting rid of them, even then one has done only the negative side of the work.

Page-7

The Buddha says or is made to say tha| when one is free from desire 'one necessarily enters into infinite bliss. Perhaps it is a some what arid bliss, but anyhow it does not seem to me to be the quickest way.

On the other hand if one were to seize the problem bodily, jump into it with courage and determination and instead of undertaking a long, arduous, painful, illusory hunt after desires, one gave oneself up to the Supreme Reality, to the Supreme Will, to the supreme Being, relying entirely upon Him, with an urge .of the whole being, of all the elements of the being, without calculating,' that would-be the swiftest and the most radical way to getting rid of the ego. One may say that it is difficult to do the thing but at least it has a warmth, a fervour, an enthusiasm, a fight, a beauty, an ardent and creative life.

It is true that without desire there remains nothing much to sustain the ego and the impression is that the consciousness gets so hardened and that if the ego crumbles into dust, then something of one's very self also falls into dust and one is ready to enter into Nirvana which is annihilation pure and simple. 

But what we consider here as true Nirvana is the disappearance of the ego into the splendour of the Supreme. And this way, I call the positive way, the self-giving that is integral, total, perfect, without reserve, without bargaining.

There is such a profound delight that nothing can be compared to it, in the mere fact of not thinking of oneself, not existing for oneself, referring nothing to oneself, thinking only of what is supremely beautiful and luminous and delightful and powerful, compassionate and infinite.

This is the only thing that deserves, that is worth attempting. All the rest is only "marking time on the spot. 

The difference is between climbing a mountain by walking around it slowly, laboriously, step by step during centuries and opening the invisible wings and flying straight to the summit.

XX

Of all the Paths the pest is flu Eightfold one, of all the Truths the best is the Fourfold one, of all the Rules of life the

Page-8

best is detachment and of all men the best is one who has eyes. " (1)

This indeed is the Path, none other exists for the purification of vision. Take to this Path. This alone confounds Mara. (2)

Take to this Path and you shall end your suffering. I have known where the thorn hurts and I am explaining the . Path. (3)

You must yourself make the effort, the Master only explains. They who take to meditation and follow the Path are freed from the bondages of the Adversary. (4)

All becomings are transitory. When one sees by the right knowledge, sufferings vanish. Such is the Path of Purity. (5)

All becomings bring suffering ; when man sees by the right knowledge, his sufferings vanish. Such is the Path of Purity. (6)

All movements are without being ; when one sees by the right knowledge, sufferings vanish. Such is the Path of Purity. (7)

When it is time to be up, one keeps lying down, when young and strong one indulges in indolence, when the mind is full of vain notions, when one is so slothful, then one never finds the way to right knowledge. (8)

et&Keep guard on your speech, control your mind, 'let not the body act wrongly. Keep these three laws of action clean and follow the Path as directed by the sages. (9)

Concentration brings knowledge, lack of concentration 'brings lack of knowledge. Know this double Path one leading to progress, the other to the contrary; engage yourself so that your knowledge may increase. -(10)

Page-9

Cut down the forest of desire, not merely one tree. Danger lies in the forest. Cut down the 'for est and its bushes, be out of it and free. (11)

As long as a man has not rooted out the last of his desire for woman, his mind remains tied down even as a suckling child is to its mother. (12)

Pull out your self-attachment even as one does an autumn lotus out of the pond. Speak of that Path of Peace alone as is directed by the Buddha. (13)

" ™ Here shall I stay during the rains, and here during autumn and summer. A fool only contemplates in this way. He does not know, what may just stand in the way. (14)

Death seizes a man engrossed in his children and cattle- . heads and carries him away, even like a mighty flood overwhelming a sleeping village. (15)

Children or parents or friends are of no avail in serving you. When Death seizes you none of your family will be your saviour. (16)

A wise man shielded by correct conduct knows this perfectly and blazes his way to Nirvana. (17)

Here are some very useful recommendations : moderation in speech, control of the mind, abstention from wrong doings. This is very good.

This one goes to the very root, but it is very good also : "As long- as a man has not rooted out the last of his desire for woman,, his mind remains tied down even as a suckling child is to its mother".

And-finally : "Pull out your self-attachment even as one does an autumn lotus out of the pond". These are good subjects for meditation. 

These recommendations seem, to have been meant for people

Page-10

who are just at the beginning of the Path from the intellectual. point of view. One imagines easily a gathering of country people, people with a simple mind, to whom one has to say : "Just listen, it is no use making plans, for you do not know what will happen to you tomorrow. You are amassing wealth, you are strutting about in your family, you are making schemes for the morrow and the days following and you are not aware that death is on the watch and at any moment it can pounce upon you."

However the intellectual development has advanced a little more and these things need not be said—one must live them ! live in the consciousness that things are altogether' impermanent, never to be attached, if one is to be free to progress with the universe and grow according to the eternal rhythm. This one understands. But what is important is to practise. Here one has the impression that these things are told to people who have never thought (if them before and so they have the full power of an active force.

After all, in spite of all appearance humanity progresses; it has" progressed particularly in the mind. There are things that need saying no more...or otherwise one must go to countries that are in the primitive state and even so—for ideas have spread everywhere, the mental light has spread everywhere and in the most unexpected places one comes across receptive and understanding agents.

Really one has the impression that in the last century a light came and spread upon the earth with the result that certain ideas, idea-forces, new ideas with the power to stir up the consciousness in men have lost their actual validity, they are now old. Another hew light has been at work. In practice, the progress is not very great, even in some respects perhaps there has been a retrogression, but in the mind in the understanding, in the intellectual vision of things, there has been truly a great change.

It seems we are marching on the way at an accelerated pace and such things as were once of capital importance are becoming common-places beside new discoveries. life as it is is bad, disorder is everywhere, suffering is everywhere, confusion is everywhere,

Page-11

chaos is everywhere, ignorance is everywhere—we all know it, it is such a hackneyed thing.

But that one can come out of it through a total realisation, a total transformation, through a new light that will establish order and harmony in things, is a message of hope that has to be brought. It is that which is true, it is that which is dynamic. It is a new life that has to be built up.

Then all these difficulties that seemed so un surmountable— they fall down of themselves.

When you live in the light and the delight, can you cling to darkness and suffering ?

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

Page-12

SRI AUROBINDO AND THE NEW AGE

CHAPTER III

Chapter III THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

(VI)

The Age of Reason

Spinoza and Leibniz

Spinoza (1632-1677)

WITH the advent of Baruch Spinoza, a fresh wind blows in the " realms of modern thought. A rationalist, in the medieval sense of the word, he was, like Descartes, a staunch follower of the geometrical method and the canons of rigorous logic, but the fundamental substance of his philosophical thought was derived from the Jewish theology and bore unmistakable marks of the Schoolmen of the Middle Ages. Discarding the dualism of Descartes, which was but a thinly-veiled concession to the atomism of Natural Science and the empiricism of Hobbes and Locke, Spinoza reverts at once to the traditional pattern of pantheistic philosophy, and sets it forth with strict mathematical precision and unassailable logic, without appealing to authority or revelation of- any kind. Austerely scrupulous in thought, ascetic in temperament and habit, and uncompromising in his defiance of Jewish orthodoxy, he stood foursquare for the vindication of the sufficiency of reason to investigate and ascertain the truth of God, the truth of the world, and the truth of the soul and life of man. In him, for the first time in the Age of Reason, the ancient and the modern confront each other in a gesture of reconciliation—the ancient in the grain of its thought, and the modern in the method of its expression. Spinoza is one of

Page-13

the outstanding illustrations of our contention that the modern, in spite of its impatient revolt against the 'ancient, cannot exist and. grow as a rootless sapling. Its revolt is only a sharp reaction against the cramping codes and conventions of the past, a reaction, which is creative and constructive in its secret intention and working, however much it may appear to fritter itself away in a blind and destructive denial. The soul of the past lives on in the heart of the seething present, and imparts a constant inspiration to its evolutionary march. 

Spinoza holds with Descartes that philosophy is the generalisation of mathematics. He is also, like Descartes, deterministic in his philosophy. For, the laws of Nature are, according to him, inexorable and impeccable, and nothing can happen that had not to happen. The basic doctrine of his metaphysics is the concept of Substance. "By substance, I understand that which exists in itself, and is conceived by itself." This Substance is one and indivisible, though it appears to be divided in its universal material extension.. It is infinite and eternal, and there is nothing in the world that is not a modification of it. There is infinite diversity in its un abrogable unity, a proliferating mass of names and forms, energies and qualities, and their incalculable operations. But how does Spinoza account for this diversity ? He says that though Substance is one and unique, it has numberless attributes and their varying modes. "By attribute I understand that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of the substance." "By mode I understand the modifications of the substance, i.e., that which exists in and is conceived by something other than itself."

Substance is equated with Nature and God. God, Nature, and Substance mean one .and the same thing. And this Substance is self-conceived self-creating, and self-existent. It is the Cause itself, and the single cause of all that takes shape in the universe. Being infinite, it has infinite attributes, and the affections or modes of those attributes ate also necessarily—Spinoza will say, contingently, infinite. We can, with one important reservation, call it Sat in the Vedantic„ since. But Spinoza's Substance is immanent in and identical with Nature or the universe. It has no transcendent status. It can there fore, be called the Sat only in its immanently

Page-14

aspect. .Its infinity is only a temporal and spatial infinity, not the absolute infinity of the supracosmic Being. This circumscription of God within the bounds of the universe or Nature was, perhaps, a natural reaction in the mind of Spinoza against the all-too-common conception of the extra-cosmic Deity of the Jewish and Christian theologies. Unity being the master concept of modern scientific thought, Spinoza could not evidently bifurcate it by positing the extra-cosmic God over against the cosmic Nature as two polar truths of existence. He lacked the harmonising comprehensiveness of the Vedantic vision.

The Age of Reason conceived God only under two attributes, thought and extension. And this was the standpoint of Descartes, who was led by this prevailing distinction to postulate his trenchant dualism of 'Mind and Matter. But Spinoza was more true to the scientific spirit of his age in his rejection of this dualism, which he attributed to the partial view of the human mind. God or Substance is one, and Mind and Matter are only its attributes, not to be essentially differentiated from each other. It is the unity of the Substance or the wholeness of the universe that explains and makes us glimpse the truth of everything. To see parts only, and judge them by the limited intellect is to miss the fundamental, infinite truth of existence. To see the whole is to know the truth. It is a synthetic vision, acquired by love of God, self-discipline and ethical austerity that Spinoza advocated, and not the use of the alembic of the analytical reason which breaks up the unity, and atomises the whole.

There was a note of high moral elevation, and passionate, brooding religious ardour in the teaching of this Jew philosopher who, excommunicated and execrated by the Jewish Church for his challenging heresies, took to lens-grinding for keeping his body and soul together, and devoted the major portion of his time and his solitude to the. development and expression of his rationalistic, metaphysical ethics. Spurning the offers of honorable and lucrative posts, he contented himself with simple living and high thinking, and jealously' cherished his freedom of thought and expression to the last day of his lonely life.

Starting from the thought of Descartes, and reducing his method

Page-15

to a more logical and scientific pattern, Spinoza tackled the moot problems of ontology, epistemology and axiology, which shows his adherence to the age-old traditions of ancient philosophy. His metaphysics is generally misinterpreted or misunderstood because he has clothed certain key ideas of his in terms which have since undergone vital changes in their connotations. It is only by studying his metaphysics in the light of his key concepts, linked together in an organic unity, and taking his terminology in its distinctive sense, that we can appreciate its value and find its proper place and its definite contribution to modern thought. For instance, when Spinoza says that. God or Substance, though the sole Cause and substratum of the universe, has neither will nor intelligence, it startles us that a "philosopher of Spinoza's insight and stature should seriously advance such a proposition ! But what he really means by saying that "will and intellect do not appertain to the nature of God" is that our intellectual faculty bears no resemblance to the wisdom or intelligence of God, which is one with His Essence, and not a separate, limited faculty, and that His Will is as remote from our will as our will is from the instinctive drive of the animal nature. God's Will is a foresight working itself out in a spontaneous process, or an idea in its inherent dynamism, which either affirms or negates itself. God thinks without thought, and acts without the agency of a humanly conscious will. He is perpetual motion and change, and yet preserves in the very mutations and modes of its Substance a stir less immutability, without -which no motion or change could take place. The reason, which Spinoza so much glorifies and regards as the highest faculty in man and the solitary means of understanding the unitarian truth of existence, is, what we may call, in the language of the Vedanta, the pure reason, agrā buddhi, purified and freed of the mixture of the imagination, the emotions: and the passions, and enlightened and widened ,enough to take a synthetic view of the organic unity of the infinite angā eternal Substance or God. And the first postulate of reason is, necessity, which is-equated with the universal Law of Nature. Everything is determined by Necessity, which is the all-ordaining and alluring Law of Nature inexorable and ineluctable, flowing out from the absolute perfection of Gild. An understanding acceptance of this Necessity; and a glad l\l1d unreserved resignation to it sums up

Page-16

the ethical teaching of Spinoza. To those who ask : "Why did not y God create all men in such a manner that they might be governed by reason alone ?", Spinoza would reply : "...because material was not wanting to him for the creation of all things from the, highest grade to the lowest; or speaking more accurately, because the laws of his nature were so comprehensive as to suffice for the creation of everything that infinite intellect¹ can conceive..."

The philosopher, by accepting the determinism of Nature's laws, takes equal delight in all that is and all that shall be; for everything is but a mode of God's infinite Substance. He banishes all fear, desire and anxiety from himself, and contemplates on God with a love, an intellectual love² (amor in tellectuals Dei) which leads him towards greater and greater perfection, till the difference between God and his soul, between the infinite Substance and its individual mode, disappears in the ecstasy of union. The freedom and immortality of the soul are a natural consequence of this blissful identification, because, one with the Substance, the soul cannot but feel free and immune from death. The lover comes to partake of the nature of the Beloved, and transcends in his consciousness all subjection to death and suffering, which afflict mortal existence.

An exalted spiritual note quivers out of the philosophy of Spinoza for a brief moment, and finds a fading echo in the orchestral architectonic of Leibniz. Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza, and Leibniz, each, in his own way, celebrates the dignity and high epistemological potentiality of human thought and reason, and tries to keep alive a gleam of the ancient intuitive faith. But the main current of modern thought had already set in the direction of scientific materialism, and the chill blasts of growing scepticism and atheism threaten to snuff out the gleam, and leave man and his culture at the mercy of his doubting physical mind and its insatiable thirst for exploring the ,Jrf3den possibilities and conquering the powers and riches of the material existence.

RlSHABHCHAND

(To be continued)

¹ It is to be noted that Spinoza here speaks of the "infinite intellect" of God. - Here, too, "intellectual" means spiritual.

Page-17

READINGS IN THE BRIHADARANYAKA UPANISHAD

Prana in Embodiment¹ *

SO, then, it is not merely the Self, the Brahman, that is real. The worlds that emanate, vyuccaranti, from It, the individual formations therein and the Life-Force, Prana, that sustains them; are all equally real. Prana is nothing but the Self-energy put out for purposes of manifestation universally and individually. The Upanishad calls upon the seeker to perceive this real nature of Prana ' and meditate upon it as the most direct representation and immediate formulation of the Self in the individuation that is himself.

Lodged in the subtle body of man, this central Prana is like a child in embryo. Unlike his other parts like the eye, ear, nose, it does not dart towards objects outside; it has no direct contact with them. For this basic station, Prana breaks out fivefold for its varied operations in the gross body which is called, significantly, the pratyādhāna,² scene of manifestation. Though it radiates in a fivefold form, it functions in the body and keeps itself in action primarily" through the main breath, prii1,Ja, which is compared to the post which confines it to that particular place of lodge ment. And food, matter, is the factor that determines the range of the movement of Prana. The strength or weakness of Prana is largely dependent uopn the nourish ment received from matter, food.

Though active all over the body, the Prana has its directing station in the eye. There it is attended upon and adored and nourished by the gods imperishable : Rudra through his bright-red energisings in the red streaks of the eye; Parjanya (Deity presiding over Water) through his life-building currents in the watering of the eye; Aditya (Sun) through his rays of light enlivening the pupil of the eye;- Agni (Fire) through his consuming flames in the black

¹ 11.2 '

² āhitasya ādhāham pratyādhāham garbha āhito vatsah pasād bhūmāvādhiyate iti pratyādhāham, prasūtibhūtmh (Rangaramanuja)

Page-18

of the eye; Indra through his illuminations in the white of the eye; Earth below supporting in the nether lash of the eye; and Heaven above through the upper lash of the eye.

He who comes to know this nature of Prana, its locus and mode of operations, and merges himself in its truth automatically pens his natural foes, seven in number : he blocks the outward¹ pulling activities of his mind, intelligence and his five organs of senses. For they all derive their active existence from the breath of Prana and arc dependent upon it for their functioning. He who has gained conscious identity with this Prana becomes their master.

Prana is thus not only a premier Agent but, the text goes on, is the one Power of the Self that organises itself in and as so many senses which perform the life-operations. It recalls a significant verse from the Shruti which speaks of a Bowl with its mouth downwards and its base above.² In that Bowl is placed the yaśas, Glory full in form. On the rim of the Bowl sit seven seers, with-Vak, Speech, associated with the Word, as the eighth. The Bowl so described is both the Universe which has its foundation above (ūrdhvabudhna) in Brahman and the head of the individual whose opening is below in the form of the mouth and the base at the crown. The Glory of many forms is the Prana which throws itself in the form of so many senses (or prānas) and is the root cause of all the manifold knowledge obtained through their operations. The seven seers are these seven senses powered by Prana, with vāk, the tongue in the aspect of speech", as the eighth.

Each of these sense-organs is to be meditated upon as the Seer whose revealing name denotes the connection. The two ears are Gotama and Bharadvaja, one full of knowledge and the other who fills with plenty, bharat-vāja. The two . eyes are Vishvamitra and Jamadagni, one who befriends the whole world with his lustre and the -1Sther who eats what is born and defined. The two nostrils are Vasishtha and Kashyapa, one who is the best among those who dwell. and the other who drinks in the waters of existence. Yak is Atri,

¹ parāñci (Katha Up. II.

² Arvāgbilascamasa ūrdvabudhnah tasmin yaśo nihitam visvarupam Tasaydsata rfayafy sapta tire vāg atfami brahnanā samvidaneti. .

³ not as taste 

Page-19

one who eats. For by Vak it is that the Gods take in what is offered in the Sacrifice.

This is the meditation. One separates oneself from the activities of the senses; becomes conscious of the Prana that moves them; enters into it by steady meditation and gains identity with it which then reveals itself to be none other in truth than the Truth of the Self, served by seers who have attained to divinity and attended upon by the cosmic Gods in their appropriate manifestations in the individual scheme

M. P. PANDIT

Page-20

THE INTEGRAL WELTANSCHAUUNG

(continued from the last issue)

PROF. Whitehead, perhaps, is the most outstanding philosopher of-the present day in the West, more evolutionary in his outlook than even Bergson or Alexander. A comparison of Whitehead's philosophy with that of Sri Aurobindo reveals striking resemblances as well as fundamental differences. For both Sri Aurobindo and Whitehead evolution is not merely one principle among many others which explain the world as it is and as it will be in the future, but it is the one principle round which have clustered all the other principles and without which they cannot be understood. They are both equally opposed to all forms of dualism; they are not devotees exclusively either of Being or of Becoming and are forward-looking buoyant optimists. As for their fundamental differences, Whitehead's theory of evolution is naturalistic, whereas Sri Aurobindo's is spiritualistic. Whitehead's philosophy of organism is based upon a purely naturalistic principle, namely, what he calls pretension, a kind of feeling which is the inner spring or motive force of the entire world of process. It is the one great unifying factor which, starting from the lowest forms of it in electrons and molecules, reaches out to the highly developed aesthetic emotions and sentiments and moves on further to the uncharted immensities of the. future, spreading a network of events or actual entities so closely knit together so as to form one organic whole. It presents a magnificent scheme of,?-perfectly interrelated world of actual entities, but it cannot blind "us to the fact that it is reared upon a purely naturalistic principle. It is clearly a case of evolution from the standpoint of the beginning.-The higher processes are here all interpreted in terms of the lower, exactly as is done in the nineteenth-century evolutionistic theories of Darwin, Spencer and others. It is a purely naturalistic theory of evolution. In striking contrast to this is Sri Aurobindo's theory of evolution. Here the higher processes are the measuring rod for

Page-21

the lower ones, and not the lower for the higher. The principle of evolution itself is derived from the nature of the highest principle, the Ultimate Reality. The key to the understanding of the nature of evolution is not to be found in the processes of Nature but is to be sought in the Ultimate Reality. Evolution, therefore, is the ascent of physical nature, life, mind, etc., to the Ultimate Reality, made possible by the circumstance that these lower principles are themselves expressions in varying degrees of perfection, of the same ultimate Reality. As inadequate expressions of Ultimate. Reality, there is an urge in them to complete and perfect themselves. Sri Aurobindo, therefore, like Hegel, looks at evolution from the standpoint of the end. But the end, as conceived by Hegel, is a purely rational end, an end conceived by Thought. For Sri Aurobindo, Thought is not the Ultimate Reality, but there are various grades of reality above Thought which have to be climbed before the Ultimate Reality can be reached. No end, in fact, short of the Absolute, is competent to give an adequate account of the nature of evolution.

Whitehead identifies the principle of Creativity with novelty. This creativity or novelty is the inner spring of the process of -evolution, both at the lower and the higher stages. It is haunted by a dread, the vanishing of the past. Mere novelty, therefore, has only a negative and hardly any positive value. It is axiological of neutral quality. It cannot serve therefore as a directive principle of evolution : it cannot supply the missing element in Whitehead's -philosophy, namely, a goal of evolution. In Sri Aurobindo the dynamic element is not supplied by a mere urge for novelty but by the far .more effective teleological idea of a definite goal of the entire process of evolution, a goal which takes it far beyond the limits of the finite—the Infinite. .

"There comes no close to the finite's boundlessness,

There is no last certitude where thought can pause

And no terminus of the soul's experience."

This goal is, again, linked up by him with the question of the origin of the world. As the world has originated from Sachchidananda, so its goal is' to return to. Him,

Page-22

Thus we find that both Hegel and Whitehead are committed to the principle of continuity. A true theory of evolution" is an emergent one and treats matter, life and mind as successive. and distinct stages in the onward march of the world to its original spiritual Source. Sri Aurobindo's philosophy gives us an assurance that the future will not be a mere repetition of the past but that it will reveal undisclosed possibilities which we cannot dream of.

Evolution, however, is the soul of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy. His theory of evolution is the pivot round which his whole philosophy moves. Evolution is the movement which is the reverse of the movement of involution or creation. It is because of the descent of the Spirit into matter, life and mind that these can ascend to the higher regions of the Spirit. Because the Spirit in creation has involved itself in matter, life and mind, therefore, matter, life and mind feel an impulse to rise to their Source. Evolution, thus, 'is a sort of home-sickness of the Spirit'. The Spirit has descended into the lowest particle of matter ; therefore, .matter seeks to evolve into something higher than itself, namely, life. There is a descent of the Spirit into life and therefore, life seeks to rise to something higher than itself—mind. Similarly, there is a descent of the Spirit into mind, and consequently mind must ascend to something higher than itself, namely, Supermind. ¹ The highest principle so far evolved is mind. But evolution cannot stop with mind, for mind is not its last word. It must move further up and come to the next stage, namely, Supermind. But when it does so, there will be a radical change in the nature of the world, for with the emergence of the Supermind the process of evolution becomes a process through knowledge, the previous process being through ignorance. Such, in brief, is Sri Aurobindo's most optimistic scheme of evolution.

It is the weakness of modern European philosophy, not the., ancient, that it lives too much in the clouds and seeks after pure-metaphysical truth too exclusively for its own sake. It was Nietzsche who brought back something of the old dynamism and practical force into philosophy. Indian philosophy has always sought the truth not only as an intellectual pleasure but in order to know how man may live by the Truth or strive after it. The -Greek thinkers

Page-23

had also this practical aim and dynamic force, but it acted only on the cultured few. To both the Greek and European thinkers the problem of cosmic evolution has been a subject of immense interest. But it does not as much interest the Indian systems of philosophy, because they are mainly interested in the destiny of the individual. They do not show much concern for the fate of the universe. Also on account of the predominance of the cyclical view, Evolution becomes only a passing phase, since it is followed inevitably by Laya or Dissolution, and that again by another Evolution, and so on. "Cosmically, therefore", as Prof. Maitra remarks, "there is for Indian philosophy a May-pole dance of Evolution and Dissolution leading nowhere." Even the Sankhya which is supposed to lake evolution seriously, is not interested in it as a cosmic process but only so far as it relates to the interests of the purusas or individual souls. Sankara has shown how absolutely illogical is the claim of the Sankhya that an unconscious Prakriti evolves for the sake of the purposes of the conscious purusas. Sankhya has no right "to speak the purposes of the purusas, for it takes them to be absolutely nirguna and niskriya. Again so far as the purpose of salvation is concerned, it cannot be furthered by the evolution of Prakriti as Sankhya argues. Shankara's criticism is fatal to all systems of unconscious or mechanical evolution, to the Sankhya as much as to the modern Western representatives of it. Apart from this, the cyclical conception of the universe, which makes evolution and dissolution always follow each other, renders evolution absolutely meaningless. If evolution is to have any meaning, it must be conceived as a steady march to a higher goal. Moreover, it must have a cosmic character.

Sri Aurobindo's genius is at its best in the handling of the problem of evolution. He has accepted the cosmic view of evolution of the West but has rejected its mechanical character and are placed it by a spiritual evolution. Likewise he has rejected the cyclical view of the universe of Indian philosophy and the individualistic outlook of its theory of evolution, and substituted for the cosmic and over personal outlook of the West. The result is an altogether new theory of evolution. It bases itself upon the idea that the source of evolution being Sachchidananda himself, it cannot stop until the whole world is completely divinised. No limited

Page-24

objective, such as the naturalistic ideal of a perfect adjustment between the organism and the environment or the realisation of a kingdom of ends, which is Kant's social ideal, can be looked upon as the goal of evolution. What the thinkers in India ignored is the great truth that a divinised man can only emerge in a divinised ¹ world. The problem of salvation is intimately connected with that of evolution. In fact, evolution may be called a Cosmic Yoga.

Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, in its gigantic sweep and global vision, covering the whole range of mind, life, matter, and laying bare the hidden truths of the soul and the higher regions of the spirit which are at best but dimly felt by us, has perhaps no equal in breadth and comprehensiveness of outlook in the whole range of the history of philosophy. "He envisages a world in which Spirit and Matter, Life and Mind are all essential ingredients and work harmoniously together, and where truth is achieved not by a negation or annulment of any of these, but by a transformation and transmutation of them in the light of the Highest." Here Hegel perhaps comes nearer to him than any other philosopher either in the West -or in the East. For it was he who laid before us the secret of the onward march of the Absolute Idea through the realms of Nature and History, treating these not as negations to be annulled or oppositions to be conquered but as progressive stages into he evolution of the Absolute in Time. But even Hegel does not envisage the possibility of the Absolute shedding the full glory of its light upon these nether regions. For the Absolute only works, according to him, unconsciously in Nature and consciously, but not self consciously in History. Evolution must therefore go beyond Nature and History, before the Absolute can reach the final stage of its progression in time. There can thus be no possibility of man continuing his life in Nature and having his relations with his fellow men and yet receiving the supreme blessing from the Absolute Spirit which will convert him into a Divine man. In Sri Aurobindo's philosophy for the first time man and his terrestrial life have received their full recognition. It is not only possible, but it is certain that man in his terrestrial life will become, sooner or later, sooner rather than later, a Divine man. Between Sri Aurobindo's philosophy and the great Advaita philosophy of Sankara there is a wide

Page-25

divergence. For Sankara salvation would come only to the individual man ; there would be no transformation of the nature of man into, that of the Superman or the Divine Man, nor the uplift of the whole universe. But it is precisely this transformation of man into a Divine Man, the emergence of a race of Gnostic Beings, representing the culmination and fulfilment of human beings, which is the chief message of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy. And further, he asserts that this transformation of man, this emergence of a race of Supermen will take place in this world, in this terrestrial existence of ours. This terrestrial life will receive the benefit of the higher light that evolution will bring in its train ; there will be a general uplift of all the different spheres of existence, physical, vital and mental.

Such is Sri Aurobindo's philosophy of evolution envisaging and integrating within itself all that is best in the East and the West. His philosophy of evolution is the direct outcome of his integral world-view. In 'The Life Divine' he enunciates four main theories with their corresponding mental attitudes and ideals in accordance with four different conceptions of the truth of existence. These we may call the supracosmic, the cosmic and terrestrial, the supra-terrestrial or other-worldly, and the integral or synthetic or composite. In this last category would fall Sri Aurobindo's view of our existence here as a Becoming with the Divine Being for its origin and its object, a progressive manifestation, a spiritual evolution with the supra-cosmic for its source and support, the other-worldly for a condition and connecting link and the cosmic and terrestrial for its field, and with human mind and life for its nodes and turning-point of release towards a higher and a highest perfection. Our regard then must be on the first three to see where they depart from the in tegralising view of life and how far the truths they stand on fit into its structure.

In the supracosmic view of things the supreme Reality is alone -entirely real. A certain illusoriness, a sense of the variety of cosmic existence and individual being is a characteristic turn of this seeing of things, but it is not essential, not an indispensable adjunct to its main thought-principle. In the extreme forms of its world-vision human existence has no real moaning ; it is a mistake of the soul or a delirium of the will to live, an error or ignorance which somehow 

Page-26

overcasts the absolute Reality. But this idea of the total vanity of life is not altogether an inevitable consequence of the supra-cosmic theory of existence. In the Vedanta and the Upanishads, the Becoming of Brahman is accepted as a reality.

The cosmic-terrestrial view considers cosmic existence alone as real. Its view is confined, ordinarily, to life in the material universe. God, if God exists, is an eternal Becoming; or if God does not exist, then Nature is a perennial becoming. Earth is the field or it is one of the temporary fields, man is the highest possible form or only one of the temporary forms of the Becoming.

The Supra-terrestrial view admits the reality of the material cosmos and it accepts the temporary duration of earth and human life as the first fact we have to start from; but it adds to it a perception of other worlds or planes of existence which have an eternal or at least a more permanent duration; it perceives behind the mortality of the bodily life of man the immortality of the soul within him. There" arises from this view of things the idea that the true home of man is beyond and that the earthly life is in some way or other only an episode of his immortality or a deviation from a celestial and spiritual into a material existence.

But, finally, there must ''open in us, as our mental life deepens and subtler knowledge develops, the perception that the terrestrial and the supraterrestrial are not the only terms of being; there is , something which is supracosmic and the highest remote origin of our existence. In this integration the supracosmic Reality stands as the supreme Truth of being ; to realise it is the highest reach of our consciousness. But it is the highest Reality which is also the cosmic being, the cosmic consciousness, the cosmic will and life; it has put these things forth, not outside itself but in its own being, not as an opposite principle but as its own self-"unfolding and self-expression. A perfect self-expression of the spirit is the object of our terrestrial existence. The supra-terrestrial existence is also a truth of being; for the material is not the only .plane of our existence ; other planes of consciousness there are to which we can attain and which have already their hidden links with us. An integration of this kind would not be possible if a spiritual evolution were not the sense of our birth and terrestrial existence; the evolution of

Page-27

mind, life and spirit in Matter is the sign that this integration, this completed manifestation of a secret self-contained in it is its significance. A complete involution of all that the Spirit is and its evolutionary self-unfolding are the double-term of our material existence. "An involution of spirit in the Inconscience is the beginning ; an involution in the Ignorance with its play of the possibilities of a partial developing knowledge is the middle, and the cause of the anomalies of our present nature,—our imperfection is the sign of a transitional state, a growth not yet completed, an effort that is finding its way ; a consummation in a deployment of the spirit's self-knowledge and the self-power of its divine being and consciousness is the culmination : these are the three stages of this cycle of the spirit's progressive self-expression in life." It is a perfected and divinised life for which the earth-nature is seeking, and this seeking is a sign of the Divine Will in Nature. Other seekings also there are and these too find their means of self-fulfilment; a withdrawal into the supreme peace or ecstasy, a withdrawal into the bliss of the Divine Presence are open to the soul in earth-existence : for the infinite in its manifestation has many possibilities and is not confined by its formulations. But neither of these withdrawals can be the fundamental intention in the Becoming itself here; for then an evolutionary progression would not have been undertaken,—such a progression here can only have for its aim a self-fulfilment here : a progressive manifestation of this kind can only have for its soul of significance the revelation of Being in a perfect Becoming.

Such is Sri Aurobindo's supreme enunciation, such his integral Weltanschauung as put forth in his magnum opus, "The Life Divine" . In the memorable words of Professor S. K. Maitra, we may say that, " if the bridge of thoughts and sighs which spans the history" of Aryan culture, as it -has evolved so far, has its first arch in the Vedas, . it has its last in Sri Aurobindo's 'The Life Divine'"

V. Madhusudan Reddy

Page-28

Savitri, The Mother

THE cup has to be emptied again and again if it is to be filled with ever-new riches. The vessel of the human consciousness has to be kept free and ready for the advent of the felicities of the higher altitudes of being. For what prevents the inflow of the Higher Consciousness into the Lower is precisely the spirit of holding, grabbing and egoistic appropriation. Such a spirit not only insulates the gifts of Grace and therefore shuts the personality from the Source but goes on distorting and corrupting them and therefore degrading itself in the process. This may lead to the denial and betrayal of the Grace, which becomes the iron curtain separating the being from That. The solution recommended in all spiritual disciplines to avoid this perilous rejection of Grace, Brahma Nirakarana, is to offer the gifts of the Divine Mother to Herself for Her use and work. This keeps the being always in contact with the Divine, before, during and after the act of receiving. And the consciousness of the sadhaka begins to realize that the Divine is greater than all Her gifts and Her gifts are valuable because they embody Her Consciousness. So the true delight of the being is in communing with the Divine Consciousness in the gifts and not in the powers which accompany them. In fact, a gift from the Divine is a partial manifestation of the Divine Consciousness sent to the sadhaka to prepare him for receiving more and more complete manifestations till the whole and integral Divine Plenitude is established in him. This process is prevented or stopped only by the play of the separative individual consciousness with its ambitions in its ignorant and perverted state, and with its pride of 'Knowledge and self-righteousness in its comparatively enlightened . , but none-the-less unregenerate state. The true fulfilment for the individual is in being a focal centre, one of the multitudinous centres for the manifestation of the Divine Consciousness. It is to be at the centre of the Cross for the manifestation of the Higher Part of the Transcendent both sideways and downwards in "the universal consciousness around and below. This is possible only when the separate

Page-29

formation of the individual personality is dissolved -and the separate limited functioning of the instruments is made silent. The organs in man—his senses, vital being, heart, mind and the inner being are so many concentrations and therefore limitations of consciousness meant and developed to cognize, express and execute very finite movements of the finite and finitising lower consciousness. These concentrations have to be released and the consciousnesses pent up in them soaked in the Divine substratum and its infinity if they are to manifest the Eternal. This twofold preparation of the individuality and the instrumental personality is achieved by the great discipline and experience of Nirvana. For Nirvana ensures an eternal emptiness in the being and the becoming and therefore a permanent foundation for the manifestation of the Highest Super-conscient. The Divine Consciousness is a paradoxical blending of Mastery and Servitude, Transcendence and Immanence, Lordship and Humility, Fullness and Emptiness. The sadhana of Nirvana establishes in Savitri, the Mother, this divine emptiness, the prelude to the Supramental Manifestation.

II

The profound inner revolutions and heightening' of consciousness in the Yoga of Savitri when she began the search for the soul, entered into the inner countries, contacted the Triple Soul-Forces, found the Soul, entered into Nirvana and discovered the All-Negating Absolute, are essentially experiences within and they have not yet begun to change her corporeal substance enough to make all the human beings recognize the mighty transformation in her. They are 'accustomed only to read outward signs' and so 'none saw aught new in her, none divined her state'. They are engaged in their normal daily routine of sparing activities and plodding, small unchanging works in the atmosphere of the happy quiet of ascetic peace, and the characteristic smiling old beauty of the land space. Nature, the Ancient Mother, continued to be passionately attached to Savitri and responded in a thousand different ways revealing her possessive love and ignorance of the changes within or the possible and inevitable mutations without.

Page-30

".She too was her old gracious self to men....

To all she was the same perfect Savitri :

A greatness and a sweetness and a light

Poured out from her upon her little world.

Life showed to all the same familiar face,

Her acts followed the old unaltered round,

She spoke the words that she was wont to speak

And did the things she had always done."

The glow and warmth of her psychics personality manifesting the wideness of the higher consciousness have been the experience of all before and they feel the same even now. They are not aware of the inner transformation in her consciousness.

"They saw a person where was only God's vast, '

A still being or a mighty nothingness."

Savitri's experience of Nirvana 'does not lose hold of Existence and the universe. This Nirvana, this self-extinction, while it gives an absolute peace and freedom to the soul within, is yet consistent in practice with a desireless but effective action without.' She has realized 'the possibility of an entire motionless impersonality and void Calm within doing outwardly the works of the eternal verities, Love, Truth and Righteousness.' She is passing through the great experience of the Buddha, Sakyamuni, and the Seer of the Taittiriya Upanishad who spoke of the Asat, the Non-Existent, which 'alone was in the beginning and out of which the existent was born'. The mind, heart, will and the senses register no movement for there are no formations in them at ah\ And everything is done in and by the Void—all word, speech and act. Ah unknown, unfelt allergy kept the body in tact or it was impelled by the momentum gathered in the past, by Nature.

"Perhaps she bore made conscious in her breast

The miraculous Nihil, origin of our Souls
And source and sum of the vast world's events,
The womb and grave of thought, a cipher of God,

Page-31

A zero circle of being's totality.

It used her speech and acted in her acts,

It was beauty in her limbs, life in her breath; .

The original Mystery wore her human face."

The Absolute Non-Existence is 'an absolute eternally unrealised Potentiality, an enigmatic zero of the Infinite out of which relative potentialities may at any time emerge, but only some actually succeed in emerging into phenomenal appearance'. All the movements of the instrumental personality are now taking place without their instrumentation. This is an experience more profound than the one in which all the instruments make their movements because of the very presence and presiding influence, Sannidhimatra, of a deeper consciousness. The Nihil contains all and so it does all including walking, speaking, breathing, maintenance of the cell-shape and cell-harmony. Savitri is passing through the great experience of the Tao.

III

Steeped in the womb of Nirvana, Savitri could well see the other possibility taken advantage of by the souls with the push to Nirvana as their elected and chosen destiny. It is the absolute withdrawal of the consciousness from all manifestation and the possibility of it at all and dissolution or laya in the Asat. Now the mortal ego perishes " in God's night :

"Only a body was left, the ego's shell

Afloat mid drift and foam of the world-sea,

A sea of dream watched by a motionless sense

In a figure of unreal reality."

The progressive dissolution of the separative consciousness seen\s to lead inevitably by the very momentum gathered by the annihilating power of Nirvana to the absolving of all individuality as well. One could foresee in one's impersonal consciousness with its peculiar non-mental mode the threatening abrogation of all individuality and even cosmic consciousness.

Page-32

"The individual die, the cosmos pass;

These gone, the transcendental grew a myth,

The Holy Ghost without the Father and Son, 

Or, a substratum of what once had been,

Being that never willed to bear a world

Restored to its original loneliness,

Impassive, sole, silent, intangible."

This is a state beyond all gradations of consciousness where hierarchy has no meaning and all fixation of boundaries and planes of being has become fluid and non-existent. Thus the Transcendent Divine Father and the Individual Immanent Divine Son have merged in their basic substratum of the enveloping and brooding consciousness of all so called planes of being and becoming, the Holy Ghost. Each world is only a kind of concentration or crystallisation of the Original Consciousness delimiting itself and measuring itself in a "special way and keeping to the particular rhythm or Dharma which holds all things, beings, forces and personalities in that plane. This power of finitising the Infinite, the Great Maya, is passed by and penetrated and the basic Asat is experienced. Or rather, the sole Original loneliness has withdrawn the Maya into itself and so 'Infinity remains Itself without any other. A complete plunge into this Original Immense Nude Consciousness is well-nigh possible and it is certainly the most powerful way of exit from the cosmos, Moksha. And there are souls with the definite push to Moksha as the deepest aspiration of their being and the path of exclusive Nirvana is the one quite valid and proper to them. Nirvana for them is an end in itself. The supreme and sublime "Silence, Shanti, defying, denying, withdrawing and transcending all dynamism is all for them.

IV 

The Avyakta, Akshara or Shunya to which the experience of Nirvana leads is only an aspect of the Supreme Truth-Consciousness, which somehow includes it along with all helpable consciousness. The supreme Brahman, in the words of the ancient wisdom of

Page-33

the Upanishads, is at the same time the Quality-less and the All-Qualitied, Nirguno Gunee. The Great Purushottama, in the words of the Bhagavad Gita, transcends and includes the Immutable and the Mutable, Akshara and Kshara. The blending and integration of the two apparent opposites of Silence and Activity is made possible in the Infinite by a Higher effectuating Power, Para Prakriti, the Supramental Ishwari Shakti. And the road to the realisation of the Supra-mental is in and through the Silence. The poise in the Kshara and the lower Prakriti denies the static substratum and so becomes the field of contraries and dualities and therefore Ignorance—a Darkness. The stationing in the mere Akshara where Prakriti is held back denies all movement and so becomes the field of the One without any field. It is no doubt the realm of Knowledge of the One but this Knowledge, Vidya, excludes the Many and because of its apparent finality is, in the words of the Isha Upanishad, a greater Darkness —tato bhūya iva tamah. If the Silence of the Nirvana is sought neither for its own sake nor as an end in itself and if one's aspiration is not limited by it, Nirvana points beyond itself to a Higher Super conscious, the plane of Integral Knowledge-Vidyas ca avdyam ca ubhayam veda. This makes the working on Prakriti by the Para Prakriti directly and with all its native dynamism and power for transformation a certainty and even inevitability. For- this complex and complicated interconnectedness of the higher and the lower, the Divine and the Ant divine and Undivine, the Silence and the Activity, itself ensures and warrants the 'interplay of the Higher on the Lower and the consequent transformation when the highest is brought into touch with the lowest. The divine emptiness of the consciousness of Savitri has made the working of the Supramental on the lower triple world of Ignorance, where She has come, possible. So with Savitri, the Silence of the Nirvana becomes the . base, the necessary base, for the Transcendent Supermind to manifest '; a the world of Ignorance.

Yet all was not extinct in this deep loss ;

The being traveled not towards nothingness.

There was some high surpassing Secrecy,

In the hush of the profound and intimate night

Page-34

She turned to the face of a veiled voiceless Truth "

Hid in the dumb recesses of the heart

Or waiting beyond the last peak climbed by Thought,—

Unseen itself it sees the struggling world

And prompts our quest, but cares not to be found,—

Out of that distant Vast came a reply.

This Supermind is contacted in two ways: by the method of vertical ascent of consciousness crossing the Over mental Cosmic or global awareness—the last peak climbed by Thought—or by the lateral inward penetration of consciousness leading to the identification with the Divine behind the Psychic Being who lifts the blazing lamp of Supramental Knowledge from within to the completely consecrated devotee. Tesāmaham samuddhartā jñānadīpena bhāswatā. And this miracle happens in the depths and the .heights of the being far removed from the daylight wakeful awareness, in the night of the surface consciousness, yā nisā saruabhūtānām tasyām jāgarti samyami, The immobile silence of Nirvana in which all the instruments have been steeped has stopped their finitising, delimlring and even at their very best only translating power. Mind, ·heart and body have become ready to manifest the Transcendent directly.

"These thoughts were formed not in her listening brain,

Her vacant heart was like a string less harp;

Impassive the body claimed not its own voice,

But let the luminous greatness through it pass."

Her consciousness has become the playground of the Infinite with its White Lightning Light, the All-Puissant Agni, the Omniscient Vidya shakti. What the sages had realised-as far distant glimpses in a trance of the highest tapasya, she reveals naturally and spontaneously no their joy and surprise.

"Something unknown, un reached, inscrutable

Sent down the messages of its bodiless Light,

Cast lightning flashes of a thought not ours,

Crossing the immobile silence of her mind ":

In its might of irresponsible sovereignty

Page-35

It seized on speech to give those flamings shape,

Made beat the heart of wisdom in a word

And spoke immortal things through mortal lips. ,

Or, listening to the sages of the woods,

In question and in answer broke from her

High strange revealings impossible to men,

Something or someone secret and remote

Took hold of her body for his mystic use,

Her mouth was seized to channel ineffable truths,

Knowledge unthinkable found an utterance.

Astonished by a new enlightenment,

Invaded by a streak of the Absolute,

They marvelled at her, for she seemed to know

What they had only glimpsed at times afar.

V

The sadhana of Savitri differs basically from the sadhana of most Yogis and Tapaswins. They start by forming a strong individual personality, an enlightened Purusha in some level of their being Vital, Mental or Over mental or very rarely indeed Supramental. But the Purusha so formed however great and unique and full of Light and Plenitude of the Higher and sometimes even the Highest Truth-Consciousness remains an isolated miracle of creation, a Siddha or Perfect Man in a world of imperfect beings. For even the formation of one Gnostic Individual does not solve the problem of earth-consciousness. But Savitri has offered even this very Gnostic individuality of hers to the Supreme Lord by passing through the experience of Nirvana, the extinction of all separative in dividua lity and delimiting finitising movement of the instrumental members of the personality. She has 'annulled herself so that God might but;: So her divine emptiness has become now an instrument of the 'dual Power at being's occult poles'-The supreme Superconscient above
and the nethermost Inconscient below.

"Inconscient Nature dealt with the world it had made, And made,

And -using still the body's instruments

Page-36

.Slipped through the conscious void she had become;

The superconscient Mystery through that Void

Missioned its word to touch the thoughts of men."

All the movements of this world with its Inconscient foundation are "accepted and have their impact, on her consciousness. But her consciousness on any level no longer gives the usual response of the finite members in ignorance. For there is now no witnessing mind in her, nor the hushed receiving heart, nor the individualised separate person reacting with whatever great or small poise of her being.

"A thought came through draped as an outer voice.

It called not for the witness of the mind,

It spoke not to the hushed receiving heart;

It came direct to the pure perception's seat,

An only centre now of consciousness,

If critter could be where all seemed only space;

No more shut in by body's walls and gates,

Her being a circle without circumference

Already now surpassed all cosmic bounds

And more and more spread into infinity."

This is the state of being the universalised individual, a conscious but not separative intermediary between the Inconscient and the Superconscient, the Lord and His universe.

"This being was its own unbounded world,

A world without form or feature or circumstance,

It had no ground, no wall, no roof of thought,

Yet saw itself and looked on all around

There was no person there, no centred mind, 

No seat of feeling on which beat events

Or objects wrought and shaped reactions's stress.".

Her identification with the Lord is so complete that she no longer reacts in any sense of the word. All outer and inner response born

Page-37

of a separate individual formation in personality or instrumentality has given place to an absolute stillness and immobility and therefore absolute readiness and passivity for the Supramental Shakti and the Divine's hour of manifestation. This integral readiness to embody and manifest is the whole and the only question now. And the readiness is all.

There was no motion in this inner world,

All was a still and even infinity.

In her the Unseen, the Unknown waited his hour.

Reference :

Savitri : Book Seven', Canto Seven.

M. V. Seetaraman

Page-38

THE TEACHINGS OF THE MOTHER

EDUCATION

XV

EDUCATION OF THE. VITAL (Contd.)

'HE development of the aesthetic sense, the love of beauty, in the child is of capital importance in the education that aims to be integral. Both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo set a great store by this development. To be a lover of beauty, a lover of art, is to bathe one's life and nature in the splendour of the sunlight and to raise them into the essential delight of the universal existence and the harmonious perfection of the Spirit. For, beauty is the radiant smile of the divine Delight. It is the reflection of the love and harmony which sustain and inspire the world in its upward striving.

It is commonly held that spiritual life is a life of bareness and voluntary privation. The cult of beauty, the love of art, can only be a hindrance to it, inasmuch as it entails a constant openness to the lure of the senses and the seductions of the insidious glamour of appearances. But that is a view derived from a superficial experience of the perversion of art or an abuse of the aesthetic sense. True art, according to the Mother, "must serve as the revealer and teacher" of the divine beauty in life. "In other words, the artist must be able to enter into communion with the Divine and receive the inspiration as to what should be the form or forms for the material realisation of  the divine beauty. "Infinite Delight, infinite Love and infinite Beauty are aspects of the same- Reality. As soon as one comes into contact with the Divine Reality, one perceives His Delight everywhere , His Love and Beauty thrilling and shining in everything. .I t is not that o, ne becomes will fully blind to the ugly. ness and deformity

¹ Sri Aurobindo and The Mother on Education 

Page-39

of the material world and the repulsive welter of animal passions, but behind all apparent ugliness of forms and chaos of discordant elements, one sees the glory of the eternal Beauty and its inalienable Delight as the sap and sustenance of the universal existence. Sri Aurobindo says that beauty is "the intense impression, the concentrated form of delight". It can be said to be the crystallisation of the? all-pervading delight of the Spirit, attracting all earthly beings to the Eternal and Infinite. It is the destiny of the physical form of man, according to the Mother, to embody and express this divine Beauty. What art incarnates in. moments of inspiration, man must express in his transformed body and in its own terms. Besides, "...in expressing true beauty in the physical, he also sets an example, becomes an instrument of education."¹ It is the purity, freedom, and harmonious perfection of the soul, or of the Divine in the soul, —and it is the same Divine everywhere—that must radiate through the physical form of man. This educative value of beauty has to be always kept in view, for beauty plays a great part in shaping human character into a poem of delight and loveliness by chiseling away its rough nesses and angularities. If human life in this industrial age has become crudely utilitarian and even vulgar, if modern culture has taken to the worship of the Mammon and the machine, it is because man has banished beauty from his life as a dreamer's luxury. And where beauty is absent, uncouth vulgarity and unblushing ugliness occupy its place and usurp human life, character and culture. Art is exploited for commercial purposes, and the artist, whose business is to "enter into communion with the Divine and receive the inspiration as to what should be the form or forms for the material realisation of the divine Beauty"² panders to the debased taste of the philistine rich and the vulgar public. "

The educative power of true art must be harnessed to the formation and transformation of the character of the child. What As

¹ The Mother in The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo -Part Seven-by Nolini Kania Gupta

² I bid,

Page-40

It is a typically puritanical conception of education which, thanks to the development of modern psychology and its growing application to education, is giving way to a more liberal and generous dealing with the vital. Cavalier repression, as modern psychology tells us, is a silly method, attended with explosive consequences. It coerces The vital and strangles its power and joy. What the Mother advocates is the radically effective method of seeking the consent and cooperation of the vital in its own transformation. This conscious help and collaboration of the vital in its own transformation makes for a sure and enduring result, "...this help is of the utmost importance if one wishes to have an all-round growth of the individual and his activity."¹ This idea of the conscious cooperation of the vital may sound fantastic to the average human mind, but it is none the less quite possible and practicable. Let alone he mind and the vital, even the body has its own consciousness, which can be developed, and disengaged from the normal tangle of human nature, and become 'autonomous to the extent of following its own intuitions in the work of self-perfection. The Indian conception of the Annamaya Purusha (the physical being), the Pranamaya Purusha (the vital being), the Manomaya Purusha (the mental being), etc. as integral but autonomous parts of the composite human being is based upon an incontrovertible truth of psychological experience. The harmony of the organic being can only be assured by a conscious mutual interaction of these autonomous correlates. To develop full consciousness in each of the parts of the being, even in the cells of the body, is what Nature is tending to through evolution.

The question which presents itself here is : How to set about the work of character-building in the child through the transformation of Ms vital ? "To become conscious of the many movements in oneself and take note of what one does and why one does it, is the , indispensable starting-point. The child must be taught to observe himself, to note his reactions and impulse and their causes, to be come a clear-sighted witness of his desires, his movements of violence and passion, his instincts of possession and appropriation and domination and the background of vanity against which they stand

¹ Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Education 

Page-41

with their counterparts of weakness, discouragement; depression and "despair."¹

This is a kind of psychological education which is imparted nowhere in the world to the child, so far as we are aware. Rather, it is regarded as something too subtle for the child. It is not even imparted to the youth. And yet it is the one indispensable part of any radical and integral education, an education which can transform the very stuff of the child's nature, character and conduct in a most detailed and systematic way. The secret of success in any education, any discipline, is that it must not be felt as an imposition from without. The child must be taught—and this is the best method of teaching—that he is teaching himself, acquiring more and more knowledge of what he is, what he should be, and how he can be what he has to be. Free in his initiative, unencumbered by traditions and conventions, and unimpeded by rules and restrictions he develops his personality with the spontaneity of a growing plant. What he needs, in the beginning of his education, is-the fostering love and care of the teacher who does in regard to him just what the good gardener does in regard to the plant. 

The work of evolution is going on even in the metal, the plant and the animal, but it is a veiled and indirect operation, subconscious and tardy, because Nature has not been able to enlist the conscious co-operation of these entities. She proceeds, as if she was blind and groping, in what appears to be her somnambulist Yoga.² But when Nature becomes conscious in conscious man, the work of evolution assumes a different aspect. It reveals its secret meaning, its purpose and its goal. Not all at once, but gradually in the wake of the" evolutionary enlightenment of consciousness. The mind of man begins now to observe itself, that is to say, a part of it stands aside and watches "what takes place in the other parts of the being. This detached part is the witness Purusha. It can, not only watch but assert its awakening will to approve or disapprove the actions ana reactions of .the nature. Its detached observation gives it a knowledge of how Nature works in the darkness or twilight of ignorance.

¹ Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Education

² The higher Nature, Para Prakriti, stands with her all-seeing and all-directing Intelligence behind the ignorant and fumbling working of the lower, executive Nature, Apara Prakriti.

Page-42

And knowledge being power, it comes to exercise its will to control, rectify and rearrange or remould whatever it finds erring or discordant in the Nature. Self-observation leads to a sustained and resolute exercise of the will, and a progressive control and mastery. "This will is to be instilled in the child as soon as he is capable of having one, that is to say, at a much younger age than is usually believed."¹ Mere self-observation without the effective power of the will to change one's nature and character is an idle pastime. It leads one nowhere. Knowledge gained by self-observation is not translated into the terms of power, because without practice and application, the knowledge itself remains imperfect and futile. It is only by application that knowledge widens and perfects itself, and acquires the power to win over and convert the rebellious parts of the nature and weld them all into a cooperative and composite harmony.

How to teach the child to exercise his will ? "There are different methods according to different cases for awakening this will to surmount and conquer: on certain individuals it is rational arguments that are effective, for others sentiment and goodwill are to be brought into pray, in others again it is the sense of dignity and self-respect; for all, however, it is the example shown constantly and sincerely that is the most powerful means."²

The teacher has to observe and see which of these different methods can be profitably applied to the case of a particular child. Those children in whom the intellect is more developed than the heart may take kindly to the first method, while those in whom the heart and the vital are more developed than the intellect are likely to respond spontaneously to the other methods. But the most important part of this teaching can be done by the personal example of the teacher himself. If the teacher has. himself achieved or is on the way to achieving mastery of his own vital, and its transformation by a constant and sincere exercise of his will, his example will have a very beneficial effect upon the child. His own character and way of life will be a potent, though silent, lesson of self-control to the child. It will be a beacon to him, stimulating the child's will and

¹ Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Education, Ibri4

Page-43

resolution, and encouraging him on the difficult path of self-conquest.

"Once the resolution is firmly established, there is nothing more to do than to proceed with strictness and persistence, never to accept, defeat as final. If you are to avoid all weakening and withdrawing, there is one important point you must know and never forget: the will can be cultivated and developed even like the muscles by methodical and progressive exercises. You must not shrink from demanding of your will the maximum effort even for a thing that appears to be of no importance ; for it is by effort that, capacity grows, acquiring little by little the power to apply itself even to the most difficult things. What you have decided to do, you must do, come what may, even if you have to begin your attempt over and over again any number of times. Your will will be strengthened by the effort, and in the end you will have nothing more to do than to choose with a clear vision the goal to which you will apply it,"¹

Therefore, so far as the transformation of character by self-conquest goes, self-observation is the first step, and self-control by a steady exercise of the will the next. This dual method will achieve a total purification and discipline of all the elements and energies of the child's being, till a higher power intervenes to quicken and consummate the work of transformation.

(To be continued)

RlSHABHCHAND

¹ Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Education

Page-44

THE TAITTIRIYA UPANISHAD

(AN EXPOSITION IN THE LIGHT OF SRI AUROBINDO'S TEACHING)

THE Taittiriya claims our special attention as it gives us a glimpse of the method of self-development laid down by our most ancient sages including those of the Rigveda. It declares that "man may evolve from plane to plane of his being and embrace on each successively his oneness with the world and with Sachchidananda realised as the Purusha and Prakriti; conscious soul and nature soul of that plane, taking into himself the action of the lower grades of being as he ascends. He may, that is to say, work out by an inclusive process of self-enlargement and transformation the evolution of material into the divine or spiritual man."¹

This is one of the most ancient Upanishads, placed immediately after «he Brihadaranyaka and the Chhandogya. It keeps close to the Vedic root, reflects the old psychological system of the Vedic seers and preserves what may be called its spiritual pragmatism— the divine perfectibility of human nature. There is no trace here of later ascetic and ant pragmatism Vedanta.

It forms the three penultimate chapters of the Taittiriya Brahmana, laying down successively, the early preparation, the realisation of the individual soul and the Eternal in the Cosmos. The last chapter of the Brahmana forms the Maha Narayana Upanishad.

By the way, the name Taittiriya, (derived from titter, a partridge) is peculiar and in support of it, the Vishnu Purana (111.5) narrates a story which will bear repetition. Yajnavalkya teach r, annoyed , with his spirit of independence and self-importance, ordered him to give back all the learning he had imparted and Yajnavalkya dis :' gorged all he had received from the teacher, including the Yajur Vida, as if it was something concrete. His co-disciples assumed the form of partridges and picked it all up-and that is how the name 'Taittiriya' comes into being. By his concentrated effort however, Yajnavalkya earned the grace of the Sun god-the image of divine

Page-45

Knowledge, and produced a new Samhita of the Yajurveda, called the 'Shukla', white or luminous (the other Samhita—the Taittiriya being called Krishna or black for distinction). The story probably conveys the tradition that Yajnavalkya dissented from the inherited System—which had to be learnt up bit by bit, in the manner of all mental knowledge and received the luminous new system by inspiration from the source of all knowledge.

The first chapter of the Upanishad Sikshavalli, the chapter of preliminary education, indicates how young students were prepared for higher life. It starts with a prayer :

"Be peace to us Mitra. Be peace to us Varuna. Be peace to us Aryaman. Be peace to us Indra and Brihaspati. May far-striding Vishnu be peace to us."²

The invocation, taken from Rig veda 1.90.9, calls for peace, protection and aid from well-known gods. As Sri Aurobindo says,³ gods are cosmic powers of the Divine whose mission is to lead man in his upward march to his destiny and to help him in the struggle against the forces of darkness, division and ignorance. The Sun, Surya Savitri, is the master of supreme truth,—truth of being, of knowledge, of process and act and movement and functioning. The four powers of Surya, indispensable previous conditions for establishing the truth in human nature, are "a vast purity and clear wideness destructive of all sin and crooked falsehood—this is Varuna ; a luminous power of love and compassion leading and forming into harmony all our thoughts, acts and impulses—this is Mitra; an immortal puissance of clear discerning aspiration, and endeavour, —this is Aryaman; a happy spontaneity of the right enjoyment of all things dispelling the evil dream of sin and error and suffering —this is Bhaga" who is invoked in the fourth section. "The Heaven is our father and Earth our mother; Vayu, the master of Life links them together by the mid air, the region of vital force."

"Indra is the puissant, the power of pure existence self-manifested in mind" and Agni is "the seven-tongued power of Will, a force of God instinct with knowledge." "Brihaspati is the master of the inspired word the power of the soul" and "Vishnu, of the vast pervading motion, (urukrama) upholds all the worlds".

The first lesson (section 2) is the correct chanting of the Vedas.

Page-46

This was held to be of great importance, the effect of a mantra depending on sound vibration. Next comes the five great Samhita, or groups of five—concerning the worlds, the shining fires, the knowledge, progeny and the self. This is training the mind to see things analytically in a new light of interrelationship.

The fourth section contains a prayer to Indra for endowing the intelligence with the power to receive and hold the higher truths :-

"He who is the Bull of the Vedas of universal form, he who was born in the sacred hymns of the immortals—May Indra satisfy me through the intelligence. O God, May I become a vessel of the Immortal. May my body be full of vision and my tongue of sweetness, may I hear much and Vast with my ears. For thou art the sheath of Brahman covered over and hidden by the intelligence.''⁴

Here Indra "plainly appears as the power and godhead of the Divine mind", says Sri Aurobindo, and he cites the passage, as an example of the development of Vedic idea and image in the Upanishads, bringing out the spiritual significance and the psychological functions of the Vedic gods more openly than in the cryptic verses of the. Veda.

The Rishi further prays that disciples may come to him in large numbers and bring him material prosperity and fame as a teacher of the sacred lore. He does not believe in asceticism but in right enjoyment, which dispels the evil dream of sin and error. So he prays to Bhaga to enter into him and wash him clean like a river of hundred streams. The god is a neighbour, the Rishi feels, but further progress in identification depends on the god's grace.

The fifth section gives the Vyahritis—the seed words, the " rhythm of self-manifestation of the Supreme in the various worlds. In the Upanishad and Puranic tradition, there are seven of them, three lower, Bhur, Bhuvar, Svar of matter, life and mind, the ripple worlds of ignorance with which alone we are familiar; three higher worlds of divine knowledge jana, Tapas, Satyam,-of delight, conscious force and existence; and the link world, Mahas, of Vijnana, Supermind-hymned in the Vedas as the Truth, the Right and the Vast-"satyam, rtam, brhat" the primary origin and source of all creation in the lower worlds, also called the great path, mahaspatha. 5 of return to the Supreme. "These. four together

Page-47

make the fourfold fourth world. Sometimes this upper world seems to be divided into two, Svar, the base, Mayas, or divine ·beatitude of the Summit, giving five worlds or births of the ascending soul." "In the Upanishads and Puranas there is no distinction between Swar and Dyaus ; and therefore a fourth name had to be found for the world of Truth and this is the Mahar discovered according te the Taittiriya Upanishad by the Rishi Mahachamasya as the fourth Vyahriti.?" "That is the Brahman, that is the Self" declares the. Rishi, "the other gods are its members". Indeed the Supermind is the consciousness of the Lord of Creation and the origin of. all things, the source of all light and power, in the lower world. Further, the same rhythms of self-expression of the Divine obtain in all the various fields of our experience. First, of the worlds, "the earth is Būur, the sky is Bhuvar and the other world is Soar, .Mahas is the sun ; by the sun all these worlds increase and prosper."

Further, the same rhythms of self-expression of the Divine obtain in all the various fields of our experience. First, of the worlds, "the earth is Būur, the sky is Bhuvar and the other world is Svar, .Mahas is the sun; by the sun all these worlds increase and prosper."

Then of "the shining fires or the lights of heaven", or the cosmic powers that lead us upward, Fire, Air and Sun are the first three, while the source, Mahas, is the Moon, the symbol of spirituality and of Divine delight. Of the revelations, Rik, Sam and Yaju, the fourth, the basis, is the Eternal. Of the individual being, the three breaths or functions of the life force have their basis, Mahas, in food.

"These are four words of his naming and each is four again. He who knows these, knows the Eternal and to him all the gods carry the offering." For, the perception of oneness underlying the Universe —the realisation that everywhere all things and functions are expressions of the various rhythms of the Divine idea is the first step towards intellectual approach to the Divine.

The next, the sixth, section gives the place of the representative of the Self in mental man—the centres for concentration on the syllable, OM, given in Section 8.

"This heaven of ether is in the heart within, there dwells the Being who is all mind, the radiant and golden immortal. Between the two palates, this that hangs down like the breast of a woman, is the womb of Indra; yea where, the hair at its end whirls round like an eddy, there it divides the skull and pushes, through it,"—that is from the throat opening out to higher ranges at the crown of the head.

Page-48

He is established as Bhur in Agni, as Bhuvar in Vayu, as Svar in the Sun, as Mahas in the Eternal. He attains to the kingdom of Himself; He attains to the Lord of Mind; He becomes the Lord of Speech, Lord of Sight, Lord of Hearing, Lord of Knowledge. Thereafter this too He becomes,—the Eternal whose body is all ethereal space, those Soul is Truth, whose bliss is in Mind, who takes his ease in Prana, the Rich in Peace, the Immortal. As such, O Son of the Ancient Yoga, do thou adore Him."

This self of the Mind is known as the Lord of all individual and Cosmic functions and becomings.

The next section, the seventh, is a lesson in classification, seeing all in various groups of five—three groups of the material world one of the embodied human being and one of the elements of his body.

The eighth section declares that the syllable "Om is the Eternal, OM is all this universe". And the sound is widely used in sacrifice and is the means of attaining the Eternal. The importance of the sacred syllable is emphasised in all scriptures. Sri Aurobindo says in the Savitri (Book III, Canto 2).

"The voice that chants to the creator Fire

The symboled OM, the great assenting word."

The ninth section lays down the duties of the householder. The primary emphasis is on reciting and teaching the Veda. The other duties specified are righteousness, truth, concentration or askesis, self-mastery and attending to the household fires and the ordinary family responsibilities.

"The tenth, which is extremely interesting,. gives a hymn of self-knowledge as Rishi Trishanku's voicing of the Vedas—the core 'of Vedic teaching. It is not found in the present compilation of the Rigveda. Shvetashvatara also quotes quite a few more lost gems of the vocal Aryan past.

"I am He that moves the Tree of the universe and my glory is like the shoulders of a high mountain. I am lofty and pure like sweet nectar in the strong, I am the shining riches of the world. I am the

Page-49

deep thinker, the deathless one who decays not from the beginning''

The integral teaching of the Upanishads embraces both static and the dynamic aspects of the Divine. The Vedas lay emphasis on' the identification with the dynamic aspect, giving birth to the Vicvadevas—all the cosmic forces of light—imaging them in the individual and attaining to divine perfection, culminating in identification with the Lord of the universe. The Eternal in the universe is imaged as a tree also in other hymns of the Rig Veda,⁷ and in the Upanishads, and the Gita⁸.

In connection with this last, Sri Aurobindo says, "this tree, of cosmic existence is eternal and imperishable, is an infinite movement and its foundation is above in the Supreme of the Infinite. Its principle is the ancient sempiternal urge to action, pravrtti

The last section sets forth the exhortation to the students returning home after completing their education, laying down the high moral ideal of the householder:

Speak truth, walk in the way of thy duty, neglect not the study of Veda... Thou shalt not be negligent of thy duty, thou shalt not be negligent of thy welfare ; thou shalt not be negligent towards thy increase and thy thriving. Thou shalt not be negligent of thy works unto the Gods or thy works unto thy fathers. Let thy father be unto thee as thy God and thy mother as thy Goddess whom thou adorest. Serve the-Master as a God and as a God the stranger in thy dwelling. The works that are without blame before the people, thou shalt do these with, diligence and no others... Whosoever are better and nobler than we among the brahmins, thou shalt refresh with a seat of honour them. Thou^ shalt give with faith and reverence and with fellow-feeling. If thou doubt of thy course or of thy action, then to whatsoever Brahmins Be there who are careful thinkers devout, not moved by others, lovers of virtue, not cruel or .severe, even as they do in that thing, so do thou. As to men accused and arraigned by their fellows, whatsoever Brahmins be there, who- are careful thinkers, devout not severe or cruel, even as

Page-50

they are towards these, so be thou. This is the law and the teaching: This is the Commandment
The chapter closes with the same prayer with which it opens:

NOLINI KANTA SEN

1 Sri Aurobindo, On Yoga I p. 457.

2 The translations are, except when otherwise indicated, all taken from Sri Aurobindo's The Eight Upanishads, on which the exposition is based.

3 On the Veda, p. 203·

4 The Foundations of Indian Culture, p. 311.

5 Rigveda 11.42.7.

6 On The Veda, p. 203.

7 For example in Rigveda x.31.7; x.127.4.

8 Katha Upanishad, 2.3.2; Gita, 15.1.

Page-51

REVIEW

Resurgent India. Sisirkumar Mitra. Allied Publishers Private Limited. Bombay, 1963 pp. 432. Rs. 26.00.

WE have forgotten how to feel and remember. How else explain our neglect and total misunderstanding of the Indian Renaissance ? Or why, after a brilliant start, did it seem to waver and wane, it not lose its track ? The reasons for this deviation are too many and complex. But to a deeper view the deviation apart, the Fire still burns and it will lead us to victory, a victory very different from what we now know or think of,-a new age and a new race. Such, to the discerning few, is the rationale of Resurgent India, history as apocalypse.

Sri Mitra's remarkably well produced book is a sustained and uncompromising analysis of the inner values, the mystic motivations of the Indian Awakening and going back to earlier days, returning to the roots, an affirmation of India's eternal svadharma. It needed both courage and insight to do so. Most histories of modern India have been such drab and docile echoes of "western standards of historiography" that it is almost a shock-the shock of recognition ' -to come upon this re-discovery of the reality of the Vedic vision of the destiny of man. But once that vision is admitted, its ' renewal in any modern personalities and movements-in art, litera-ture, science, religion, philosophy, politics and education-leading, . by degrees, to its climax and fulfilment in the life and works of Sri Aurobindo, "the last the Rishis", becomes but a logical finale. And that is what our author, in effect, says.

He describes his effort, modestly, as "a book on modern Indian renaissance through a biographical approach". Indeed, it is much more than that. Nineteenth-century world-history for its backdrop, and the recovery of^the ancient past as the opening scene of a swiftly moving drama—such is the unfinished saga of Modern or Mother India. Like subject, like author. Sri Mitra has an easy and enviable

Page-52

flair for the sublime and his gallery of portraits—Ram Mohan, Devendranath, Rajnarayan, Keshubchandra, Ranade, Tilak, Daya-nanda, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Rabindranath, Jagadishchandra; Abanindranath and others—is as fair as it is imposing, a wonderful story wonderfully told. The present generation has moved so far away from these men and motives that this orientation of interest and call to verities might come as a surprise to many. Openly and .by implication, the book is a work of revaluation, I had almost said revelation.. It is sure to flutter the dovecotes.

Simply put, on the positive side, the characteristics of the Indian Renaissance as Sri Mitra sees these things (helped in this as in other matters by his Master's vision), are mainly three : a spiritual motive ; the acceptance of the whole of life instead of the time-worn illusionism or ascetic withdrawal; and, finally, universalism. Also this time it will be part of the 'progressive, mind' of humanity and avoid the earlier compromise between society and spirituality. In the words' of Sri Aurobindo : "The utility of the compromise in the then actual state of the world cannot be doubted. It secured in India a society which lent itself to the preservation and the worship of spirituality, a country apart in which as in a fortress the highest spiritual ideal could maintain itself in its most absolute purity un overpowered-by the siege of the forces around it. But it was a compromise, not an absolute victory. The material life lost the divine impulse to growth, the spiritual preserved by isolation its height and purity, but sacrificed its full power and serviceableness to the world. Therefore, in the divine Providence the country of ."the Yogins and the Sannyasins has been forced into a strict and 'imperative contact with the very element it had rejected, the element of the progressive Mind, so that it might recover what was now wanting in it." (The Synthesis of Yoga, 30) 'As our author repeatedly -points out, this has been the direction and the driving force of New India. And this is what the great ones, each in his own -, way, have done. Especially in the vision and labour pf Sri Aurobindo (and the Mother) are prefigured the clearest indication of' .a nobler future not only for India but for the human race faced with a crisis of choice and transition, "the final dream", as Sri Aurobindo called it in his message of August 15, 1947. Later, speaking of the same

Page-53

possibility, he wrote : "This possibility, if fulfilled, would mean that the human dream of perfection, perfection of itself, of its purified and enlightened nature, of all its ways of action and living, would be no longer a dream but a truth that could be made real and humanity lifted out of the hold on it of inconscience and ignorance." (The Supramental Manifestation) Such is the content he put into India's date of liberation, a date with destiny. Will New India be worthy of that dream? Here patriotism is not enough and, appearances notwithstanding, the leaders. of the Indian Renaissance did not make that mistake.

Sri Mitra deserves credit for staging his heroic thesis without fear or favour. For sure many, probably more than will openly admit the fact, will be grateful to him for setting the balance and providing us with life-values that we had all but lost. The very recognition of such an aim would be a liberation of the will and intellect, the lifting of an incubus.

In the last section, 'The Hour Has Come', he has drawn attention to the many traditions, occult and religious, that refer to the coming Age of Truth. To this there is a striking parallel in the recent scientific thought of Julian Huxley, Alexis Carrel, de Chardin and others. Perhaps this is more than a coincidence, this growing sense of "unrealised possibilities" (Huxley) and of' "a higher order" (de Chardin). For those who have followed our author so far, this is the heart of the matter, the rationale of the Renaissance, the Vedic vision. And the hour is or could be now, what Sri Aurobindo has called the Hour of God. We are faced with a "choice of being".

The choice is always ours. Then let me choose

The longest art, the hard Promethean way

Cherishingly to tend and feed and fan

That inward fire, whose small precarious flame, —

Kindled or quenched, creates

The noble or ignoble men we are .

The world we live in and the very fates,

Our bright or muddy star.

In this overall, inside history of the Indian Renaissance which sums

Page-54

up all his earlier works, Sri Mitra has proved, not for the first time, that Indians can not only make but also write history—the only' kind of history that matters, the history of human becoming, "the birth of a divine race. Here is history with a difference—history whose language is the Sun, a Hymn to the Alystic Fire in which (our author along with) the pioneers of a new India—and a new world —stand like hierophants singing of the Dawn Eternal.

This humble, honest, inspiring re-statement of the deeper rhythms of Indian life and mind, and, above all, its account of Sri Aurobindo's work and vision, political and yogic, will send many readers to the Master's own immortal writings. That will be one of its many services. For as our author has shown, what few will deny, nor deny for long, Sri Aurobindo is the soul of India- And the world to be . '' I declare to the these that Heavenly Flame, For I know

S. K. GHOSE

Page-55

New Horizon Sugar Mills ( Pvt.) Ltd.

PONDICHERRY