The Sun and the Light may be a help, and will be if it is the true Light and the true Sun, but cannot take the place of the Mother's Force.
SRI AUROBINDO
April', 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.
THE MOTHER'S COMMENTARY
ON
DHAMMAPADA
XXI
MISCELLANY
If to give up a small pleasure is to find a vast pleasure, then it is wiser to give up the small in view of the vast. (1)
If one seeks one's pleasure by inflicting pain upon others, then one is entangled in the meshes of enmity and is not freed from it. (2)
* Based on the Mother's Talks
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To reject what should be done, to do what should not be done is just how the depraved and the deluded increase their sins. (3)
They who keep a perfect vigilance over their body, who do not indulge a thing that should not be done, ever doing faithfully what should be done, they are the good souls who have knowledge : sins disappear from them. (4)
He slays his father {egoism), he slays his mother (lust), he slays twin kings (wrong views), he slays the whole State with all its adherents (the senses) and still he remains the stainless, the Brahmin. (5)
He slays his father, he slays his mother, he slays the two warrior kings, he slays the fifth one, the tiger, and still he remains stainless, the Brahmin. (6)
They are truly awake in perfect wakefulness, who follow Gautama, who have their mind fixed upon the Buddha day and night. (7)
They are fully awake in perfect wakefulness who follow Gautama who have their mind fixed upon the Dharma day and night. (8)
They are fully awake in perfect wakefulness who follow Gautama, who have their mind fixed upon the Samgha. (9)
They are fully awake in perfect wakefulness who follow Gautama and have their mind vigilant about the body. (10)
They are fully awake in perfect wakefulness who follow Gautama and have their mind fixed upon compassion.(11)
They are fully awake in perfect wakefulness who follow Gautama and have their mind fixed upon meditation. (12)
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A home is a painful thing, difficult to abandon, difficult to enjoy, difficult to inhabit. It is painful to live with un equals, painful to wander in the cycles. Do not wander, do not stray into suffering. (13)
A man of faith and virtue, like a man of fame and wealth, receives worship wherever he happens to be. (14)
The wise one shines from afar even like the snowy Himalaya, the unwise one is invisible like an arrow shot in the night. (15)
One who sits alone, lies alone, walks alone untiringly, disciplining oneself all by oneself rejoices in his lonely forest. (16)
STILL you must not make a mistake. For I believe all these are rather images than material facts, because it is quite certain that eating alone, sleeping alone, living in the forest all alone does not suffice to give you the spirit's freedom.
It has been noticed that most of those who live alone in the forest become friends of all animals and plants that are around them ; but the fact of being all alone does not give you the power of going into an inner contemplation and living in communion with the supreme Truth. Perhaps it is easier, when by the force of circumstances you have nothing else to do, but I am not convinced of this. You can always invent occupations and it seems to me, as far as my life-experience goes, that if one succeeds in subduing one's nature in the midst of difficulties, if one endeavours to be an alone within oneself with the eternal Presence, keeping the surrounding which the Grace has given us, the realisation which one obtains then is more true, more profound, more durable.
To run away from difficulties in order to conquer them is not a solution. It is very attractive. There is something
in those who steak the spiritual life which says : "Oh ! to sit down under a
tree, quite alone, to remain in meditation, not to have the temptation to speak,
act, how fine it must be !" It is because there has been a very strong formation
in this direction, but it is very illusory.
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The best meditations are those that one has all on a. sudden, because they seize as an imperative necessity. You cannot do otherwise than to concentrate, meditate, look farther than the appearances. And that seizes you not necessarily in the solitude of the forest, it happens when something in you is ready, when the time is come, when the true need is there, when the Grace is with you.
To me it seems that humanity has made a progress and the true victory must be won in life itself.
You must be able to live alone with the Eternal and Infinite in the midst of all circumstances. You must know how to be free, with the Supreme your companion, in the midst of all occupations. That is indeed the true victory.
XXII
Of Hell
One who says of a thing that was not that it was goes to hell, also one who does a thing and yet says he has not dorte. Both of them on leaving the world will share the same fate , elsewhere, for they are men of vile action. (1)
Many with the yellow robe on do evil without restraint. They are evil men who, because of their evil doings, take birth in Hell. (2)
Better it were to swallow a flaming iron-ball than to eat of alms quested while leading a dissolute life. (3)
Four are the realms where the foolish who desire another man's wife are relegated : the realm of no merit, the realm of no sleep, the realm of censure and Hell itself. (4)
The only gain is demerit and sinful the end. Brief is the pleasure of a fearful man and a fearful woman, the punishment heavy that the Law inflicts. Therefore man must not go to- another's wife. (5)
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As a blade of grass wrongly held cuts the hand, even so ascetic discipline wrongly done drags one to hell. (6)
Whatever work is done with looseness, whatever rule is observed under compulsion, whatever discipline is felt as painful does not bring about a great result. (7)
A work that has to be done must be done with a firm zeal. .An ascetic that loosely wanders about raises dust upon dust. (8)
It is better not to do a wrong thing; a wrong thing done brings repentance. It is better to do the right thing; a right thing done brings no repentance. (9)
As a fortress-city is guarded from within and from without, even so guard yourself. Do not waste even a moment. A moment wasted, you are thrown into Hell and you have only to lament. (10)
One who is ashamed of a thing not to be ashamed of, one who not ashamed of a thing to be ashamed of, possesses a false vision and comes to an evil end. (11)
One who has fear for a thing not to be afraid of, one who has no fear for a thing to be afraid of possesses a false vision and comes to an evil end. (12)
One who thinks of abandoning a thing not to be abandoned, but finds in a thing to be abandoned a thing not to be abandoned possesses a false vision and comes to an evil end. (13)
He who knows what is to be rejected and rejects it, he who knows what is not to be rejected and does not reject it possesses the right vision and reaches the blissful end. (14)
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With regard to all these teachings there are several ways of under standing them. The external way is of course quite flat and commonplace. With regard to the moral principles, always the same thing is said.. This Niraya (Hell), for example, which some take as a kind of hell where one is punished for one's sins, has also another sense. The true sense of Niraya is that kind of particular atmosphere that one creates around oneself when one acts in contravention, not of external moral rules, or social laws, but in contravention of the inner law of one's nature, the particular truth of each one which must govern all the movements of our consciousness and all the acts of our body. The inner law, the truth of the being is the divine presence in every human being that which should be the master and guide of our life.
When you take the habit of listening to this inner law, when you obey it, follow it, try more and more to let it guide your life, you create around you an atmosphere of truth and peace and harmony which naturally reacts upon the circumstances and creates so to say the atmosphere in which you live. When you are a man of justice, truth, harmony, compassion, understanding, of perfect good will, this inner attitude, the more it is sincere and total, the more does it react upon the external circumstances, not that it diminishes necessarily the difficulties of life but it gives to these difficulties a new sense and that allows you to face them with a new strength and a new wisdom; whereas the man, the human being who follows his impulses, who obeys his desires, who is very little embarrassed by scruples, who comes to live in complete cynicism, not caring for the effect that his life may have upon others nor for the consequences more or less harmful of his acts, creates for himself an atmosphere of ugliness, selfishness, conflict and bad will which necessarily acts more and more upon his consciousness and gives a bitterness to his life that in the end becomes for him a perpetual torment.
It is well understood that this does not mean that such a man_ will not succeed in what he undertakes, that he will not be able to possess what he desires; these external advantages disappear only when there is within the inmost being a spark of sincerity which persists and makes him worthy of the misfortune.
If you see-a bad man become unlucky and miserable, you must
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immediately respect him. It means that the flame of inner sincerity is not altogether extinguished and something still reacts to his bad acts.
Lastly, that leads us to the further conclusion that you must never, never judge on appearances and that all judgments you come to from outward circumstances are always, necessarily false judgments.
To have a glimpse of the Truth, one must at least take one step backward in one's consciousness, enter a little more deep into one's being and try to perceive the play of forces behind the appearances and the divine Presence behind the play of forces.
NOLINI KANTA GUPTA
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THE end of a stage of evolution is usually marked by a powerful recrudescence of all that has to go out of the evolution. It is a principle of Nature that in order to get rid of any powerful tendency or deep-seated association in humanity, whether in the rings or in the individual, it has first to be exhausted by bhoga or enjoyment, afterwards - to be dominated and weakened by nigraha or control and, finally, when it is weak, to be got rid of by samyama, rejection or self-dissociation. The difference between nigraha and samyama is that in the first process there is a violent struggle to put down, coerce and, if possible, crush the tendency, the reality of which is not questioned, but in the second process it is envisaged as a dead or dying force, its occasional return marked with disgust, then with impatience, finally with indifference as a mere ghost, vestige or faint echo of that which was once real but is now void of significsece. Such a return is part of the process of Nature for getting rid of this undesirable and disappearing quantity.
Samyama is unseasonable and would be fruitless when a force, quality or tendency is in its infancy or vigour, before it has had the enjoyment and full activity which is its due. When once a thing is born it must have its youth, growth, enjoyment, life and final decay and death; when once an impetus has been given by Prakriti to her creation, she insists that the velocity shall spend itself by natural exhaustion before it shall cease. To arrest the growth or speed unseasonably by force is nigraha, which can be effective for a time but not in perpetuity. It is said in the Gita that all things are ruled by their nature, to their nature they return and nigraha or repression is fruitless. What happens then is that the thing untimely slain by violence ill not really dead, but withdraws for a time into the Prakriti which sent it forth, gathers an immense force and returns with extraordinary violence ravening for the rightful enjoyment which it was denied. We see this in the attempts we make to get rid of our evil samsharas or associations when we first tread the path of Yoga.
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If anger is a powerful element in our nature, we may put it down for a time by sheer force and call it self-control, but eventually un satisfied Nature will get the better of us and the passion returns upon -us with astonishing force at an unexpected moment. _ There are only two ways by which we can effectively get the better of the ' passion which seeks to enslave us. One is by substitution, replacing it whenever it rises by the opposite quality, anger by thoughts of forgiveness, love or forbearance, lust by meditation on purity, pride by thoughts of humility and our own defects or nothingness ; this is the method of Rajayoga, but it is a difficult, slow and uncertain method; for both the ancient traditions and the modern experience of Yoga show that men who had attained for long years the highest self-mastery have been suddenly surprised by a violent return of the things they thought dead or for ever subject. Still this substitution, slow though it be, is one of the commonest methods of Nature and it is largely by this means, often unconsciously or half consciously used, that the character of a man changes and develops from life to life or even in the bounds of a single lifetime. It does destroy things in their seed and the seed which is not reduced to ashes by Yoga is always capable of sprouting again and growing into the complete and mighty tree. The second method is to give bhoga or enjoyment to the passion so as to get rid of it quickly. When it is satiated and surfeited by excessive enjoyment, it becomes weak and spent and a reaction ensues which establishes for a time the opposite force, tendency or quality. If that moment is seized by the Yogin for nigraha, the nigraha so repeated at every suitable opportunity becomes so far effective as to reduce the strength and vitality of the or atti sufficiently for the application of the final samyama. Tais method of enjoyment and reaction is also a favourite and universal method of Nature, but it is never comp1ete in itself and, if applied to permanent forces or qualities, tends to establish a see-saw of opposite tendencies, extremely useful to the operations of Prakriti but from the point of view of self-mastery useless and inconcluve. It is only when this method is followed. up by the use of samyama that it becomes effective. The Yogin regards the rote merely as a play of Nature with which he is not concerned and of which he is merely the spectator; the anger, lust or pride is not his, it is the
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universal Mother's and she works it and stills it for her own purposes. When, however, the vrtti is strong, mastering and unspent this attitude cannot be maintained in sincerity and to try to hold it intellectually without sincerely feeling it is mithyācāra, false discipline or hypocrisy. It is only when it is somewhat exhausted by repeated enjoyment and coercion that Prakriti or Nature at the command of the soul or Purusha can really deal with her own creation. She deals with it first by vairāgya in its crudest form of disgust, but this is too violent a feeling to be permanent; yet it leaves its mark behind in a deep-seated wish to be rid of its cause, which survives the return and temporary reign of the passion. Afterwards its return' is viewed with impatience but without any acute feeling of intolerance. Finally supreme indifference or udāsinatā is gained and the final going out of the tendency by the ordinary process of Nature .is watched in the true spirit of the samyami who has the knowledge that he is the witnessing soul and has only to dissociate himself from a phenomenon for it to cease. The highest stage leads either to mukti in the form of laya or disappearance, the vrtti vanishing altogether and for good, or else in another kind of freedom when the Soul knows that it is God's līlā and leaves it to Him whether He shall throw out the tendency or use it for His own purposes. This is the attitude of the Karmayogin who puts himself , God's hands and does work for His sake only, knowing that it is God's force that works in him. The result of that attitude of self-surrender is that the Lord of all takes charge and according to the promise of the Gita delivers his servant and lover from all sin and evil, the vrttis working in the bodily machine without affecting the soul and working only when He raises them up for His purposes. This is nirliptatā, the state of absolute freedom within the līlā.
The law is the same for the mass as for individual. The process of human evolution has been seen by the eye of inspired observation to be that of working out the tiger and the ape. The forces of cruelty, lust, mischievous destruction, pain-giving, folly, brutality, ignorance were once rampant in humanity and they had full enjoyment; then by the growth of religion and philosophy they began in periods of satiety such as the beginning of the Christian era in Europe to be partly replaced, partly put under control. As
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the law of such things, they have always reverted again with greater or less virulence and sought with more or less success to reestablish themselves. Finally in the nineteenth century it seemed for a time as if some of these forces had, for a time at least exhausted themselves and the hour for samyama
and gradual dismissal from the evolution had really arrived. Such hopes always
recur and in the end they are likely to bring about their own fulfilment, but
before that happens . another recoil is inevitable. We see plenty of signs of it
in the reeling back into the beast which is in progress in Europe and America
behind die fair outside of Science, progress, civilisation and humanitarianism,
and we are likely to see more signs of it in the-era that is coming upon us. A
similar law holds in politics and society. The political evolution of the human
race follows certain lines of which the most recent formula has been given in
the watchwords of the French Revolution, freedom, equality and brotherhood. atu
the forces of the old world, the forces of despotism, the forces of traditional
privilege and selfish exploitation, the forces of un fraternal strife and
passionate self-regarding competition are always struggling to eat themselves on
the thrones of the earth. A determined movement of reaction is evident in many
parts of the world and now free perhaps more than in England which ,was once one
of the self-styled champions of progress and liberty. The attempt to go back to
the old spirit is one of those necessary returns without which it cannot be so
utterly exhausted as to be blotted out from the evolution. It rises only to be
defeated and crushed again. On the other hand, the force of the democratic
tendency is not a force which is spent but one which has not yet arrived, not a
force which has had the greater part of its enjoyment but one which is still
vigorous, unsatisfied and eager for fulfilment. Every attempt to coerce it in
the past reacted eventually on the coercing force and brought back the
democratic spirit fierce, hungry and unsatisfied, joining to its fair motto of
"Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" the terrible addition "or Death". It is not
likely that the immediate future of -the democratic tendency will satisfy the
utmost dreams of the lover of liberty who seeks an anarchist freedom, or of the
lover of equality who tries to establish a socialistic dead level or the-lover
of fraternity who dreams of a world-embracing communism. But some harmonisation
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of this great ideal is undoubtedly the immediate future of the human race. On the old forces of despotism, inequality and unbridled competition, after they have once more over-thrown, a process of gradual samyama
(Old Writing)
SRI AUROBINDO
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SRI AUROBINDO AND VEDIC INTERPRETATION :
A Rejoinder to Early Criticism1
Sri Aurobindo's first article on the Veda forming the first chapter of the series, "The Secret of the Veda", was published on the 15th August 1914, in the first issue of the monthly magazine, "Arya".
Perhaps the chapter was found to contain such revolutionary ideas that it was reviewed in the "Hindu" in its editorial by Prof. Sunderram Ayer, an orthodox Pandit. Sri Aurobindo's reply to it was immediate.
During the years that followed, Sri Aurobindo created a vast body of Vedic interpretation : the book "On the Veda" contains the "Secret of the Veda" "Hymns of the Atris", and "Selected lynns". These were written between 1914 and 1920. But his interest in the Veda continued throughout and the "Hymns to "the mystic Fire" was completed in 1946. The vast ground these books covered proved the applicability of his psychological and symbolic interpretation to the whole of the Rig Veda.
This work was followed up by some of his disciples : the late Kapali Shastri wrote the Siddhānjan Commentary in Sanskrit on the first Ashtaka of the Rig Veda. I compiled "Sri Aurobindo's Vedic Glossary based on the "Hymns to the Mystic Fire" and wrote the "Studies in Vedic interpretation" as an independent book applying his principles. M. P. Pandit has written many articles covering various topics of the Rig Veda. Nolini Kanto Gupta wrote on the Hymns of Madhuchhanda in Bengali.
Recently a small number of Vedic scholars in India have been raising their voice against the dry linguistic and historical approach to the interpretation of the Veda. It is a happy sign. It is heartening to find Sri Aurobindo's early labours
1 Quoted from The Hindu, Thursday, August 27, 1914.
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on the Veda beginning to bear fruit after half a century. We hope a time will come when the world of Vedic scholarship will accept his psychological and symbolic basis as the correct one for the interpretation of the Veda.—A. B. PURANI]
WHILE thanking you for the generous appreciation in your review of the "Arya" may I also crave the indulgence of your columns,—if indeed you can spare so much space at such a time when the whole world is absorbed in the gigantic homicidal conflict convulsing Europe,—for an answer to your criticisms on my "Secret of the Veda", or rather to an explanation of my standpoint which the deficiencies of my expression and the brief and summary character of my article in the "Arya" have led you, in some respects, to misconceive. Surely, I have nowhere said that "Knowledge of which no origin can be traced to previous sources must necessarily be disregarded and discarded" ! That would indeed be a monstrous proposition ! My point was that such knowledge, when it exposed a developed philosophy and psychology, stood in need of historical explanation—a very different matter. If we accept the European idea of an evolving knowledge in humanity,—and it-is on that basis that my argument proceeded—we must find the source of the Brahma-veda either in an extraneous origin such as a previous Dravidian culture—a theory which I can not admit, since I regard the so-called Aryan and Dravidians as one homogeneous race,—or in a previous development, of which the records have either been lost or are to be found in the Veda itself. I cannot see how this argument involves a regresses ad infinitum except in so far, as the whole .Idea of evolution and progressive causality lies open to that objection. As to the origins of the Vedic religion that is a question which cannot c be solved at present for lack of data. It does not follow that it had no origins or in other words that humanity was not prepared by 'it progressive spiritual experience for the Revelation.
Again, I certainly did not intend to express my own idea in the description of the Upanishads as a revolt of Philosophic minds against the ritualistic materialism of the Vedas. If I held that
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view I could not regard the earlier Sruti as an inspired scripture or Upanishads as Vedanta and I would not have troubled myself about the secret of Veda. It is a view held by European Scholars and .I" accepted it as the logical consequence, if the ordinary interpretations of the hymns, whether Indian or European are to be maintained. If the Vedic hymns are, as represented by Western scholarship, . . the ritualistic compositions of joyous and lusty barbarians the .Upanishads have then to be conceived as a revolt against the ritualistic Ilaterialism of the Vedas. From both premises and conclusion I have dissented and I have finally described not only the Upanishads but all later forms, as a development from the Vedic religion and not a revolt against its tenets. An Indian doctrine avoids the difficulty in another way, by interpreting the Veda as a book of ritual hymns and revering it as a book of Knowledge. It puts together two ancient truths without reconciling them effectively. In my view that reconciliation can only be effected by seeing even in the exterior aspect of the hymns not a ritualistic materialism, but a symbolic ritualism. No doubt the Karmakanda was regarded as a dispensable stepping-stone to the knowledge of the Atman. That was an article of religious faith, and as an article of faith I do not "dispute its soundness. But it becomes valid for the intellect -and in an irrtellecrual inquiry I must proceed by intellectual means,-only if the Karmakanda is so interpreted as to show how its performance assists, prepares or brings about the higher knowledge. Otherwise however much the Veda may be revered in theory, it will be treated in practice as neither indispensable nor "helpful and will come in the end to be practically set aside as has 'happened,
I am aware that some hymns of the Veda are interpreted in a sense other than the ritualistic; even the European Scholars admit , higher and religious ideas in the "later hymns" of the Vedas. I am aware also that separate texts are quoted in support of philosophical doctrines. My point was that such exceptional passages do not alter the general tone and purport given to the hymns in the actual interpretations we possess. With those interpretations, we cannot use the Rigveda as a whole, as the Upanishads can be used as a whole, as the basis of a high spiritual philosophy. Now it is" to the interpretation
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of the Veda as a whole and to its general character that I have addressed myself. I quite acknowledge that there has always been a side-stream of tendency, making for the Adhyatmic interpretation of the Veda even as a whole. It would be strange if in a nation so spiritually minded such attempts have been entirely lacking. But still they are side-currents and have not received general recognition. For the Indian intellect in general, there are only two interpretations, Sayana's and the European. Addressing myself to that general opinion, it is with these two that I am practically concerned.
I am still of the opinion that the method and results of the early Vedantins differed entirely from the method and results of Sayana for reasons I shall give in the second and third numbers of "Arya". Practically, not in theory, what is the result of Sayana's Commentary ? What is the general impression it leaves on the mind ? Is it the impression of "Veda" a great Revelation, a book of highest knowledge ? Is it not rather that which the European scholars received and from which their theories started, a picture of primitive worshippers praying to friendly Gods, friendly but of a doubtful Them-per, gods of fire, rain, wind, dawn, night, earth and sky, for wealth, food, oxen, horses, gold, the slaughter of their enemies, even of their critics, victory in battle, the plunder of the conquered ? And if so how can such hymns be an indispensable preparation for the Brahmavidya ? Unless indeed it is a preparation by contraries, by exhaustion or dedication of the most materialistic and egoistic tendencies somewhat as the green Old Hebrew Pentateuch may be described as a preparation for the mild evangel of Christ. My position is that they were indispensable not by a mechanical virtue in the Sacrifice but because the experiences to which they are the key and which were symbolised by the ritual are necessary to an integral knowledge and realisation of Brahman in the universe and prepare the knowledge and realisation of the transcendent Brahman. They are, to paraphrase Shankara's description, mines of all knowledge, knowledge on all the planes of consciousness, and do fix the conditions and relations of the divine, the human and the animal element in the being.
I do not claim that mine is the first attempt to give an Adhyatmic
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interpretation of the Veda. It is an attempt—the first or the hundredth matters little—to give the esoteric and psychological sense of the Veda based throughout on the most modern method ,of practical research. Its interpretation of the Vedic vocables is-based on a re-examination of a large part of the field of comparative Philosophy and a reconstruction on a new basis which I have some hope will bring us nearer to a true science of language. This I propose to develop in another work, the "Origins of Aryan speech". I hope also to lead up to a recovery of the sense of the ancient spiritual conceptions of which old symbol and myth give us the indications and which I believe to have been at one time, a common culture covering a great part of the globe with India, perhaps, as a centre. In its relation to this methodical attempt lies the only originality of the "Secret of the Veda".
SRI AUROBINDO
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READINGS IN THE BRIHADARANYAKA UPANISHAD
FORM AND THE FORMLESS
TWO are the deployments of the Eternal : The Eternal in Form, the Eternal as Formless. When It determines itself in form, there arises naturally the possibility of de-determination, of freeing Itself from the form, dissolution of the form i.e. Death. When it is formless there is naturally no dissolution, no death, it is immortal. Again, what is so determined, is fixed relatively to the space it occupies ; it is stationary even as what is not determined is not confined, is free in movement. Again, what is formed is concrete, palpable to the corresponding sense, it is identifiable as this; what is not so formed, the formless, is the beyond, beyond the range of actuality to the senses.
"These apparently opposite terms of One and Many, Form and Formless, Finite and Infinite, are not so much opposites as complements of each other; not alternating values of the Brahman which in its creation perpetually loses oneness to find itself in multiplicity, loses it again to recover oneness, but double and concurrent values which explain each other ; not hopelessly incompatible alternatives, but two faces of the one Reality which can lead us to it by our realisation of both together and not only by testing each separately." (Sri Aurobindo)
Thus is Brahman manifest on all the planes of Its Self-expression, cosmically as, well as individually. Speaking of the-cosmos, the Upanishad analyses the manifestation in both the aspects : the formed and the formless.
There are the five Elements which constitute this Universe Of these, the air and the ether are more sub de than others. What is constituted of the other three Elements viz. earth, fire, water is the formed and it partakes of the characteristics of Form i.e. death,
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fixation -and actuality. The essence, the core of this Formation of Brahman is the solar orb that emits heat. For the Sun is indeed the essence of the three constituent elements.
Turning to the Formless aspect of this cosmic manifestation of Brahman, the Upanishad posits it as the air and the ether. It partakes of all the characteristics of the Formless viz. it is immortal, it is moving, it is the beyond. The essence, the core of this manifestation of Brahman is the Person in the Sun, the Divine Purusha who ensouls the life-giving Orb in the skies.
As regards the individual aspect in creation, the Upanishad perceives the same truth—the formed and the formless.
All that is not the prāna
Consequently, the manifestation of Brahman as the formless in this scheme is the prāna,
This subtle Person is of variegated hue. As is the hue of the contacts, the impressions from outside that are impinged on the Person, so is the colour taken on by him. Now it is like a saffron coloured robe; now like white wool, now like the red beetle (Indragopa), now like a flame of fire, now like the white lotus, now like the flash of lightning.
'The Upanishad has spoken of the twedeployings of the Brahman—as the Formed and the Formless. Lest it should be assumed that these two categories cover the entire Brahman or exhaust it,. the Seer goes on to add that even this does not adequately describe the Brahman. Whatever may be posited, the Brahman is still beyond it. It is neither this nor that, neti, neti.2 It is more, If is other.
1 It is the eye that is first formed in the embryo, says the Satapatha Br. (iv.
2 "Brahman is the Alpha and the Omega. Brahman is the One besides whom there is nothing else existent. But this unity is in its nature indefinable. When we seek to envisage it by the mind
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It is Beyond all. And yet there is nothing which exists outside it. It is the Real of the real. All that lives is real, all the embodied beings are real; and of them the constituting Real is Brahman.
M. P. PANDIT
we are compelled to proceed through an infinite series of conceptions and experiences. And yet in the end we are obliged to negate our largest conceptions, our most comprehensive experiences in order to affirm that the Reality exceeds all definitions. We arrive at the formula of the Indian sages, neti, neti, 'It is not this, It is not that', there is no experience which can limit It, there is no conception by which It can be defined." (Sri Aurobindo).
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CHAPTER III
THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
(VII)
The Age of Reason
LEIBNIZ (1646-1716)
UNLIKE Spinoza, who lived and died a martyr to the savage fanaticism of the Jewish Church, and in privation and forlorn solitude, Leibniz lived and died a happy and prosperous man, universally esteemed and honoured. He was an invincible optimist, who believed that everything was for the best in our material world, which is the best of all possible worlds, because God has created it in His unerring Wisdom. He was the most versatile genius of his age, and some of his scientific findings anticipated later discoveries of major importance. He "prepared schemes for the reunion of the Churches and for the European peace, foresaw and designed in outline a new science of statistics, contributed to the theory of probability, was a founder of symbolic logic, projected a universal language, studied optics, conceived the idea of calculating machines, speculated on human history, organised scientific research, and foresaw a new age of invention in mechanics. His thought and his vision of great academies of knowledge and enlighten-indent was the foundation of eighteenth-century rationalism."1'. Like Spinoza, he had an inextinguishable faith in reason.
Leibniz met Spinoza, but though they were on common ground in regard to the power and possibilities of human reason, their
1 The Age of Reason (The Mentor Philosophers) p. 144 of the 3rd edition.
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systems diverged widely. Leibniz opposed to the dualism of Descartes his theory of monads, and to the pantheism of Spinoza, his pluralistic theism. He contends, against Descartes, that extension is not the essence of Matter, but force of extension, which is active, and not, as Descartes holds, passive. He calls attention to the metaphysical or spiritual aspect of Matter, which is action, force, movement, and not inertia. He is, therefore, more in accord with the modern theory of Matter and the discoveries of advanced science than Descartes. To the unity and indivisibility of Spinoza's substance he opposes the infinite multiplicity of the monads, each' of which is- unique, independent and autonomous—"windowless", as he calls them.1 The world is composed of these monads or elementary units. The monads are the "real atoms of nature", but unlike physical points, they have no extension, and unlike metaphysical points, they are concrete realities. Each monad acts of itself, and is a self-contained, self-sufficient and self-developing entity, having no commerce or intercommunication 'with others. Since nothing can enter into it from outside, it develops only what is already within it. Its growth is a self-growth, directed by the law of its own being, and uninfluenced by any extraneous factor. The inner activity of each monad is called perception, and the principle of its activity is desire or apparition. The degree of its perception depends upon its inner development. Perception can be clear and distinct, or dim and hazy. The lowest monads, which form Matter, have little perception, that is to say, they are or appear to be unconscious. This apparent unconsciousness is not, in fact, a total absence of consciousness, but a shrouded and somnolent consciousness, passive and inert, which is what we know as Matter. From the lowest monads. to the highest, which is God, there is a regular hierarchy, "representing different grades of development. We have, then, a whole system from simple monads to minds and "souls, and reaching up to the highest, the central monad, God, who. is also the totality and harmony of the innumerable self-existent and self-active individual monads.
1 "The monads "have no windows by which anything could go out or come in".—Monado-logy by Leibniz. "
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The monads, though they are windowless and have no rapport with each other, are yet each a mirror of the universe. Each monad contains, as microcosm, all the essential principles of the universal composite, the macrocosm. Each is an epitome of the whole,-which is God. Each represents clearly or obscurely, according to its development, something of the Universal Spirit. The difference between one monad and another is not of content, but of representation, the mode of expression. And therein lies the individuality of each monad. The differences that mark off and distinguish one monad from another are only specifications and modifications of their cardinal principles and elemental contents. No two monads are alike, because no two are at one and the same stage of development at one and the same time ; and even if they were, their mode of representing the living universal Unity would be different. The differentiating quality is inherent in each monad.
But, it may well be asked, if each monad is unique and has no intercourse with the other monads, how does Leibniz explain the unity of the universe ? How can God be the indivisible substratum ana substance of the harmonious whole ? To this question Leibniz replies with his theory of the Pre-established harmony. Though each monad is different from the others, there is an analogy and a family resemblance or correspondence between them. "Those on the lower stages in the scale of things as well as the most perfect monads are forces, entelechies, and souls. Souls alone exist,1 and that which we call extension or body is nothing but a confused perception, a phenomenon, a sensible manifestation of effort, that is to say, of the immaterial."? Because each monad is a mirror of the universe, it contains the essential harmony of the universe. Its growth and development and its communication with other monads are all governed by this intrinsic harmony and are metaphysical rather than physical. For, Leibniz fully subscribes to the view that the world is fundamentally a world of metaphysical reality of consciousness
1 Italics are ours.
2 History of Philosophy by Alfred Weber. Leibniz says : "The name of entelechies might be given to all simple substances or created monads, for they have w/thin themselves a certain perfection ; they have a certain self-sufficiency which makes them the sources of their internal activities, and, so to say, incorporeal automata".
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and force, and only derivatively, a world of material actuality. It is essentially nominal, and only apparently phenomenal.
Leibniz's comprehensive philosophy attempts to unite the religious and scientific postulates about reality, or rather presents an embracing, harmonious form of theodicy in the garb of a close-knit scientific system. The mechanical and the teleological factors are skillfully blended together, and life is envisaged as a living, purposeful, creative force, working out its infinite potentialities in the best way possible, in spite of discords and aberrations that appear on the surface. These jarring and jostling elements are, in metaphysical fact, necessary conditions of its progressive advance. For, according to the law of continuity, enunciated by Leibniz, there is a continuous change or modification in every monad, a change governed by its own inner law and tending towards the realisation of the perfection which is already in itself.
Each monad enjoys a certain freedom of will, and is the architect of its own destiny, though its every act, every exercise of its free will is ultimately conditioned and guided by the incomprehensible will of God.1 It is actuated by two necessities, the metaphysical and logical necessity or the necessity of truth, and the hypothetical necessity or the necessity of fact. The former is a natural evolution from its own being, and the latter is only contingent, though all contingency is also ultimately derivable from the Will of God. Nothing happens in the world that has not had to happen.
Leibniz's philosophy is so broad-based and many-sided, and so subtly affiliated to the philosophies of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Nicolaus Cusanus, Bruno, Descartes, and Spinoza and the geometry of Euclid that it is practically impossible to disengage the different threads of its complex web, and resolve -the apparent paradoxes and contradictions which baffle its analytical students. The materialists have drawn out of it postulates and premises which reinforce their own convictions, and the philosophers, of the traditional schools have discovered in it nothing but a rational
1 "The final reason of things must be found in a necessary substance, in which the variety of particular changes exists only eminently, as in their source ; and that is what we call God". Leibniz's views about God as dwelling in each soul and at the same time containing and encompassing it, is a perfectly valid and spiritually verified Vedantic truth.
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justification for and a support of their cherished views. But#none of them, I am afraid, have regarded it in the right perspective, and done adequate justice to its vast and varied achievement. Let. us see whether a fair and correct appraisal can be made by approaching his manifold system through the universal truths of Indian philosophy.
I propose to take some of his main postulates and study them in the light of the Vedanta and the Samkhya. Leibniz propounds the
Sankhyan plurality of souls, but unlike Samkhya, he affirms the existence of God or the Central Monad as the absolute ground and substance of the whole universe. He is, therefore, at once theistic and pluralistic, or, if we carry his theistic conception to its logical conclusion, we perceive a faint outline of a sort of monism emerging from the pluralistic multitude. But his monism is left rather as a paradox than as a definite postulate. He is right in so far as he calls the monads self-contained and self-evolving, for, that is the Indian conception of the individual soul or the psychic being, but he has not taken into account the universality of the monads and their transcendence, without which their individuality would condemn them to a perpetual imprisonment within their own confines and a consequent forfeiture of universality and transcendence. His scientific preconcern with the mechanism of the universe, the mathematical laws of its movement, and the atomistic trend of the science of his time precluded the supreme reconciliation of the multiplicity of the monads with the unified wholeness of existence and the sole, indivisible, omnipresent reality of God. Unlike the Gita, he failed to harmonise the Vedantic and Samkhyan standpoints. His theory of the Pre-established Harmony, of which he was justly proud, can hold good only on the highest level of the
Unitarian Spirit. There, it true, everything is
provisioned and preordained, but our phenomenal world cannot be called the best of all possible worlds, because it is so visibly seamed and scarred, so obviously
afflicted .with distortions and discords. Leibniz's optimism was made .the' target of some of the most biting satire of Voltaire, but Voltaire's satire could tell only against a parody of the philosophy of Leibniz, not against his main predications. Kant was greatly influenced by Leibniz, whose wide philosophical sweep is, indeed, a remarkable achievement.
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Leibniz's theory of evolution, as we can glean it from his teleology, is an anticipation of much of the most advanced thought on evolution. His law of continuity is an accepted law in science, and is known as Continuum.1 His characterizations of Matter as immaterial force shows his scientific and metaphysical insight, and the investing of each monad with the attributes of the souls raises at once his metaphysics from the intellectual to the spiritual level.
Leibniz's identity of the part with the whole is a regular Vedantic viewpoint. His concept of the unity in plurality, though he has not worked out its spiritual and psychological implications" in-a satisfactory way, is a truth established by the ancient Vedanta, and fully endorsed by modern science. His theory of the monad being an epitome of the universe, a mirror and representation of the undivided totality or whole, and yet distinctly individual in its growth and self-expression, is a singular piece of spiritual perception, comparable only to the intuitive flashes of Plato and a very few other Western philosophers. I do not think Leibniz laid any claim to spiritual experience of any kind ; but the synthetic and harmonising capacity of his intellect, and the versatility of his genius built up a system which is almost unparalleled in the entire range of Western philosophy. He had, besides, a certain power of prescience or prevision, which bore fruit in the field of science no less remarkable than in the field of philosophy. The discoverer of the integral calculus was endowed with a special capacity for a more or less integral vision, and has given ample proofs of embodying in his thought something of the polychromatic future. He foreshadowed some of the vital elements of the syncretic philosophy of the most modern times, and also of the recent discoveries of modern psychology. The integral, synthetic philosophy of the future will confirm in the light of a more comprehensive and all-embracing spiritual experience some of the best elements of Leibniz's philosophy.
RISHABHCHAND
1 Cf. Prasritā Purānl—the eternal out-going divine dynamism—of the Hindu philosophy.
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(Contd. from last issue)
THE second chapter, Brahmanandavalli, describes the five sheaths of the spirit embodied in man. The chapter starts with a brief prayer for the benefit of the teacher and the disciple and for mutual trust and good-will, which is essential for all teaching, above all, spiritual teaching. Immediately begins the elucidation of the highest Truth :
OM, the knower of the Eternal, Brahman, attains the Highest; for this the verse that was declared of old, Brahman is Truth, Brahman is Knowledge, Brahman is Infinite, he finds Him hidden in the cavern heart of being, in the Highest Heaven of His creature, lo, he enjoys all desire and he abides with the Eternal, ever with that cognisant and understanding Spirit.8
On. this passage Sri Aurobindo says,9 "Whatever reality is in existence, by which all the rest subsists, that is Brahman. An Eternal behind all instabilities, a truth of things which is implied, if it is hidden in all appearances, there is such an unknown x...and that is the hidden head of the Infinite and the secret heart of the Eternal. It is the Highest and this Highest is the All; there is none beyond and there is none other than it. To know it is to know the Highest and by knowing the Highest to know all. For as it is the beginning and source of all things, so everything else is its consequence; as k is the support and constituent of all things, so the secret of everything else is explained by its secret; as it is "sum and end of all things, so everything else amounts to it and by throwing itself into it achieves the sense of its own existence.
The Eternal is knowable. He defines Himself so that we may seize Him, and man can become even while he exists in this body, a knower of Brahman. The knowledge of Brahman is a power and a divine compulsion to change and by knowledge he gains his highest being—it is a supreme accomplishment of all things that our present
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existence means and aims at, but in their highest sense and eternal values.
A greater knowledge opens the possibility of greater being, and that pieans greater power, consciousness, delight. The highest consciousness is integrally fulfilled in delight. The knower of Brahman has not only the joy of light but gains that which is highest, that which is supreme—the highest being, the highest consciousness, the highest delight, brahmavid āpnoti param.
The Highest is the Infinite; whoever attains the Highest consciousness becomes infinite in being and embraces the all. To make this clear, Brahman is defined as the Truth, Knowledge, Infinity, and the result of the knowledge of Him in the Secrecy, in the cave of being, in the supreme ether, is defined as the enjoyment of all his desires by the soul of the individual in the attainment of its highest self-existence. That is indeed a becoming one with Brahman in His eternity and infinity but is also an association with Him in delight of self-fulfilment, aśnute saha brahmanā. And that principle of the Eternal by which this association is possible, is the principle of His knowledge, His self-discernment and all-discernment, the wisdom by which He knows Himself perfectly in all the world and all beings, saha brahmanā vipaicitā. Delight of being is the continent of all the fulfilled values of existence which we now seek after in the forms of desire, to possess it purely and perfectly is the infinite privilege of the eternal wisdom."
Paul Deussen proposes, says Hume in The thirteen Upanishads, to read ānanda, delight for ananta, infinite, in order to have the customary definition of Brahman, as Sachchidananda and to intro- duce the great culminating thought of the chapter. This shows that with their too human mind they are unable to conceive of infinity except as a sum Of finites. Anania, pure infinity, freedom from limits, is the condition precedent of delight. The vast, that is : felicity, bhumaiva sukham says Chhandogya; "absoluteness of conscious existence," says Sri Aurobindo, "is illimitable bliss of conscious existence; the two are only different phrases for the something. All illimitableness, all infinity, all absoluteness is pure delight."l0 (Life -Divine, Vol. I, chapter 12.)
Parame vyoman is a familiar Vedic expression for the highest
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ether. The cavern of the heart is well-known in the Vedanta. The Savitri (Book VII, canto 3) also has,
"Thou shalt see the fire burning on the bare stone
And the deep cavern of thy secret soul."
The section continues,
This is the Self, the Spirit, and from the Spirit ether was born ; and from the ether, air ; from the air, fire ; from the fire, waters ; and from the waters, the earth. And from the earth, herbs and plants ; and from herbs and plants food ; and from food man was born. Verily, man, this human being is made from the essential substance of food.
The Self is the origin of all, and the stages by which His conscious force took the form of matter are the bhūtas, the elemental states of substance. This is the process of creation, visualised by rational thinkers of ancient India, of creation "by successive expansions and "Contractions in the sea of force, originating longitudinal vibrations in its field," as described in The Life Divine, (Vol I, chapter 10) and poetically imaged in Savitri, (Book II, canto, 5).
Man also comes into being with the birth of the body, and everything here, sense, life, thought, all is founded on the formula of material substance. His body is formed of matter, and of this annamaya purusa, physical being, the Rishi points out the head, the sides, the self and the base of the human being, and quotes, in . the next section,-
Verily, all sorts and races of creatures that 'have their refuge : upon earth, are begotten from food ; thereafter they live also by food ' and it is to food again that they return at the end and last. For food is the eldest of created things and they therefore name it the Green stuff of the universe. Verily, they who worship the Eternal as food, is attain the mastery of food to the utmost Lo, it (food) is eaten and it eats ; yea, it devours all creatures that feed upon it, and therefore it is called food (annam) from the eating?11
Matter was the first to be organised in this world and in Savitri also it is
called "the first born of created things." Man is a spirit living as a mental
being in the living body; but hrs first pre-occupation is with matter and this
he takes as the only reality. The
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result of pursuing it as such gives power over the material world, as is amply illustrated by the success of modern science.
Here starts the exposition of the ascending forms of the human soul 'corresponding with the ascending series of worlds. In the Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo deals with the same subject from the comprehensive outlook of integral perfection. Some extracts, compiled as far as practicable in the Master's words, are set forth below for elucidation.
But, what are worlds ? By worlds or planes of consciousness, of existence, we mean a settled poise or world of relations between Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature. All is universal existence : the soul, individual in the individual and universal in the cosmos, is that existence in relations with or its experience of the becoming ; the principles or powers of the becoming are Prakriti, Nature. The nature of each world is determined by the principles, the way in which Prakriti is set to deal with being, conscious force and delight of being. The object everywhere is the development "of its terms of being, the power of being, the conscious delight of being.12
All is determined by the Spirit. Poised in the principle' of matter it becomes the physical self of a physical universe in the reign of physical nature. In the individual it becomes a materialised soul, annamaya purusa. He can concentrate on the Spirit, turn away from physical life and place his real existence beyond in other worlds. But the dynamic manifestation in him cannot rise entirely. above the limitations of the physical nature. The poise of the silent passive self is easier for him to attain.
But he has the power of self-transcendence. Poised in the'' principle of life, he becomes the vital self of the vital world, life-soul of life-energy in a consciously dynamic world, which is behind the physical world and of which the physical is only the outer crust. In the individual this Spirit becomes a vital soul, prānamaya purusa.
Man h as in himself behind the physical being, subliminal to it, t is vital
soul, this vital body and the whole vital plane connected with this life world
or desire world from which suggestions and influences pour down constantly on
his surface self. Man may awaken in hi s consciousness to the vital plane and
become the vital soul, living in the secret vital as well as the physical body.
13
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Says the Rishi,—
Now there is a second and inner self which is other than this' that is of the substance of food ; and it is made of the vital stuff called prāna. And the Self of prāna fills this self of food. Now the Self of .prāna is made in the image of a man ; according as is the human image of the other, so is it in the image of the man.
The main breath is the head of him : it effects all interchange . with the universal energy and makes for the duration of form of living matter; the breath pervasor, the nervous system, and the lower breath, expelling waste matter, are the sides ; ether, providing for equilibrium of the various life-forces, is his spirit which is the self of him, and earth is his lower member whereon he rests abidingly.
The next section, the third quotes,
The Gods live and breathe under the dominion of prāna and men and all beasts ; for prāna is the life of created things and therefore they name it the Life-Stuff of the All. Verily, they who worship the Eternal as prāna, reach (or, attain mastery of) Life to the uttermost.
And this Self of Prana is the soul in the body of the former one which was of food.
The Gods are divine powers working in the cosmos, leading its upward evolution ; in the individual they represent the psychological powers of perception, knowledge and action. And they all work with the help of vital energy. It is a cosmic principle, operating as if divided in individuals. To the life-soul, Life-energy appears to be the sole reality. "The result of this realisation is a richer flowering of the dynamic Infinite, a greater possibility of an active effectuation of the bliss and power of the Eternal." This plane is the preeminent source of occult powers.
Above matter and life stands the principle of Mind, nearer to the origin of things. The Spirit poised in mind becomes the mental soul of the mental world—the sattwic principle of pure and luminous mental nature. In the individual it becomes a mental soul, mono-maya purusa,
which rules and determines entirely the forms of its body and the powers of its
life and is independent of limitation or oppression by its vital or corporeal
instruments. Man too has in himself subliminal, concealed behind his waking
consciousness, this mental soul, and mental body, and mental plane. -It is
possible
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for him to awaken to this mental consciousness (including its higher ranges, right up to the over mind,) and to become the mental being, capable of a life at least half divine. He can also realise the Self or the Spirit in a much larger intensity, with a greater play of its active power and bliss.
The Upanishad also affirms that there is yet another inner Self, made of Mind, filling the Self of Prana, and made in the image of a man. The Vedas, the great Scriptures of self-perfection, naturally afford the image of its form. The head is Yajus, which lay down the process of inner and outer sacrifice, the surrender and offering of the entire being, the Vedic method of sadhana. The sides are Rik and Sama: the Riks give the principles of the upward journey of man, embodying in superb hymns the prayers for, and experiences of, establishing divine powers in the inner being; and the Samas set the same in music the notes of which lead the worshipper, with the spiral movement of its melody, to the presence of the godhead worshipped. The commandment, revealed code of conduct or observances and rites (not the Brahmanas only, as taken by commentators) or subtle audible orders coming to sadhaks, is the spirit and soul of him. Its base is Atharvan Angiras, for Atharva formed the path of sacrifice, says the Rigveda (1. 1.83.5) and Angirasas, "the flaming powers of Agni," broke open the subconscient caves to conquer back the herds of light captured by the powers of evil. It may also mean the Atharva veda, also called the Brahmavada, which embodies the hymns or prayers in connection with the events and actions of everyday life, outside the institutional sacrifices, and knowing the Eternal in the lotus of the heart.14
But the vast light and profound bliss of the Spirit is beyond the mind and for that the mental being has either to depart into, pure Spirit or develop further.13 As the scripture quoted here says, in the fourth section,
The delight of the Eternal from which words turn away without attaining and the mind also returns baffled, who knows the delight of the Eternal? He shall fear nought now or hereafter.
This is quoted once again later and is also found in other Upanishads. Above the mind is the supramental world of knowledge, maharloka.
If man rises into the Knowledge-Self and becomes
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the Knowledge-Soul, poised in gnosis, vijñānamaya purusa if he lives in the knowledge sheath, the causal body as well as in these subtle mental vital and physical sheaths then only can he draw down the full ness of the infinite spiritual consciousness. But this body's not yet developed in man. The supramental principle is however secretly lodged in all existences, and because of the unity of all existence, its perfect manifestation here in spite of every veil is a . certainty, for that is the law of the omnipotent Spirit. 13
Some systems take vijñāna as synonymous with buddhi, the discerning intellect, the logical intelligence. They have to pass at once from a plane of intellect to a plane of pure spirit, and the limited human means of knowledge being taken to be the highest dynatrons of consciousness, its original movement. Buddhi is merely a lower formation of gnosis. An opposite error identifies vrjiñāni with the consciousness of the Infinite, free from all ideation or else ideation packed into an essence of thought, chaitanyaghana, lost to other dynamic action in the idea of the one. This is only one aspect, for gnosis includes an infinite knowledge of the myriad play of the In finite. I 2 Vijnana is the knowledge of the One and the Many, by which the Many is seen in terms of the One in the unifying Truth, Right and Vast of the Divine conscious ness. 10
Supermind is the Truth-consciousness, its fundamental character is knowledge by identity. Mind is an instrument of ignorance trying to know; Supermind is the knower possessing knowledge, because one with it and the known, therefore seeing all things in the light of its own truth. It is dynamic, not only a static power, not only a knowledge but a will according to knowledge. It does not therefore transcend all manifestation.13
.This Self of knowledge, filling the Self of Mind, the soul in the body to the former one which was of Mind is" also imaged in the form of a man : Faith is the head of him, Law is his right side, Truth is his left side, yoga is his spirit and Mahas is his lower member whereon', fie rests abidingly.
Shraddha, or faith, the will to believe, to live" what one sees or thinks to be the truth of himself and the existence. 'Shraddha mayo-yam purusha' says the Gita (XVII.2)
and in that connection Sri Aurobindo says, "the soul is as it were made of
faith, a will to be, a
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belief in itself and existence, and whatever that will, faith or constituting belief in him, he is that and that is he." In the Supramental world, Knowledge and Will are one and every individual becomes that aspect of the Divine Truth which he has to express by that assured faith, Shraddha, that act of the conscious substance which is at once will and knowledge. The Rig Veda (X.151)
also speaks of the power of Shraddha. The sides are Ritam and Satyam, the truth
to be expressed and the process of the manifestation, which, says the Rig Veda
(X.I9I), came out of the flaming power of energised consciousness. These are
incorporated in the very body of the supramental being. Its soul is yoga, union
with the Divine and basis the 'Mahas', the vast consciousness. 'Mahas' may also
mean the Earth in which the principle is involved and taken in that sense, the
passage will be a significant suggestion of its manifestation here.
Then comes the quotation :—"Knowledge spreads the feast of sacrifice and knowledge spreads also the feast of works ; all the gods offer adoration to him as to Brahman and the Elder of the Universe. For if one worship Brahman as the Knowledge and if one swerve not from it neither falter, then he casts sin from him in this body and taties all desire.
Yes, knowledge spreads the feast of sacrifice, for "we can take up through the truth-mind all our mental vital and physical experiences and offer it up to the spiritual. - This was the secret mystic sense of the old Vedic sacrifice—to be converted into the terms of the infinite truth of Sachchidananda" ; and of works also—for "we can receive the powers and illuminations of the Infinite Existence in forms of a divine knowledge will and delight in our physical existence. "It is possible to find this Vijnanamaya Purusha in this body.14
At every step there is a reversal of consciousness "we are born into a soul status and put on a new nature." But the supramental transformation is the great and decisive transition, the shaking off the last hold on us of the cosmic ignorance, and our firm foundation in' the truth of things, in the infinite consciousness, inviolable by obscurity, falsehood, suffering, or error.
Further, Vijnana changes our wishes and desires into a various action of Truth-Will and also takes up our parts of affection and delight and changes them into the action of divine Ananda.
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This seems to be the very status and dynamis of perfection. But the Upanishad tells us that after the Knowledge- Self above the mental is possessed and the lower selves drawn into it, the last step, is to take up our gnostic existence into the Bliss self. In the gnosis the soul, aware of its infinity also lives in a working centre for' individual play of the Infinite. In its identity, it keeps a distinction without a difference for the joy of contact. In the Ananda there is no centre, but All is, all are one identical spirit. The joy of contact in diverse oneness becomes altogether the joy of absolute identity in innumerable oneness The soul fives : it is not abolished— the Ananda plane is in fact the true creative principle—Janaloka.15
This Self of Ananda, filling the Self of Knowledge, the soul in the body to the former one of Knowledge is also imaged in the form of a man : Love is the head of him ; Joy is his right side ; pleasure is his left side ; Bliss is his spirit which is the self of him ; the Eternal is his lower member wherein he rests abidingly.
"The word for love, priyam means properly the delightfulness of the objects of the soul's inner pleasure and satisfaction. The vedicsiegers used the same psychology. They couple mayas, the principle of inner felicity independent of all objects, and preyas its out flowing as the delight and pleasure of the soul in objects and beings-the boon of pure possession and sinless pleasure in all things founded on the Truth and Right in the freedom of a large universality."16
Then comes in section six the quotation,
"One becomes as the unexacting, if he knows the Eternal as negation; but if one knows of the Eternal that He is, then men know him for the saint and the one reality. And this Self of Bliss is the soul in the body to the former one which was of Knowledge. And thereupon there arise these questions. "When one who has not the Knowledge, passes over to that other world, do any such travel farther ?' Or when one who knows, has passed over to the other world, does any such enjoy possession?"
Commentators interpret asat brahmeti veda as he who know striate God does not exist, an unbeliever. From the questions it appears that this misses the point. One realises the Divine as he worships Him. He who seeks to know Him as the non-existent, loses 'hi s individual self which is dissolved in the Infinite. But he who seeks Him in his becoming, in these five states of Consciousness becomes a centre
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of Divine manifestation to the extent of his realisation. And identification with the Bliss-Self taking up in it the experiences of all the other planes, is the height of realisation, and he who achieves it in the physical body possesses Him here, in his inner being. He is known as a saint and as the One, the embodied supreme.
Two questions have been raised. No reply is given here to the first question, but other Upanishads say clearly that the full perfection must be obtained here. Otherwise one has to come back again till it is achieved on all planes.
To the second the reply is—The Spirit desired of old " T would be manifold for the birth of peoples". Therefore He concentrated all Himself in thought, and by the force of His brooding He created all this universe, yea, all whatsoever exists. Now when He had brought it forth, He entered into that He had created, He entering in became the Is here and the May Be there; He became that which is defined and that which has no feature; He became this housed thing and that houseless; He became Knowledge and He became Ignorance; He became Truth and He became falsehood. Yea, He became all truth, even whatsoever 'here exists. Therefore they say of Him that He is Truth.
The object of creation is said to be desire. So does the Rigveda (X.129. 4.)The Spirit created all things and entered into every thing to enjoy the play of relations. And that delight is accessible on every plane-as stated later. The creation is said to be the re suit of Tapas.-c-as in R. V. 1,190.5. "Tapas means literally heat, aft rewards any kind of energism, askesis, austerity of conscious force acting on itself on its object",17
Then comes the quotation,
"In the beginning all this Universe was Non-Existent and Unmani fest, from which this manifest Existence was born. Itself created itself; none other created -it. Therefore they say of it the well and beautiful made".
All has come out of Asat. As Sri Aurobindo says, Non-being is-only a word. "We really mean by this Nothing Something beyorid the last term to which we can reduce our purest conception and our most abstract or subtle experience of actual being as we know or conceive it while, in this universe. This Nothing is merely a Something beyond positive conception".18 Chhandogya (VI.2.)
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the birth of being out of Non-being as an impossibility. So does Sankara. But the difficulty does not arise if Non-being is taken in this sense.
This Ananda is everywhere,—And here comes the glorious affirmation of the Rishi,—
Lo, this that is well and beautifully made, verily, it is no other than the delight behind existence. When he has got him this delight, then it is that this creation becomes a thing of bliss; for who could labour to draw in the breath or who could have strength to breathe it out, if there were not that Bliss in the heaven of his heart, the ether within his being ? It is He that is the fountain of bliss; for when the Spirit that is within us finds the Invisible Bodiless Un definable and Un housed Eternal his refuge and firm foundation, then he has passed beyond the reach of Fear. But when the Spirit that is within us makes for himself even a little difference in the Eternal, then he has fear, yea, the Eternal himself becomes a terror to such a knower who thinks not. Whereof this is the Scripture.
Through the fear of Him the Wind blows; through the fear of Him the Sun rises; through the fear of Him Indra and Agni and Death hasten in their courses.
Yes, He is the lord of the Universe and rules over the cosmic gods, his own emanations.
Now (in section eight) comes the exposition of bliss, in every plane, increasing hundredfold in every ascending plane. And the embodied sadhak, "Vedawise whose soul the blight of desire touches not" has access to the delight of every level according to the degree of his self-development. The consummation is the full delight of the Eternal.
Incidentally we get here a glimpse of stages between man and the the Eternal, and every stage manifests its" characteristic bliss. Gandharvas, Angels, have two levels, first, men who have become angels and then heavenly angels. Then come the fathers living for eves In their world. Then come gods, born in heaven, those who have earned godhead by their deeds, then the great gods (probably those who take active part in the cosmic evolution). They are followed by Indra, the king in heaven, Brihaspati, the preceptor, the master of word, the expressive soul-force. Then comes. Prajapati, the
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almighty father, finally the supreme bliss of the Eternal.
This is the mighty affirmation of the spiritual Oneness' of man and the self of supreme knowledge in Surya.
The Spirit who is here in a man and the Spirit who is there in the Sun, ii is one Spirit and there is no other. He who knows this, when he has gone away from this world, passes to this Self which is of food; he passes to this Self which is of Prana; he passes to this Self which is of Mind; he passes to this Self which is of Knowledge; he passes to this Self which is of Bliss.
He who has this knowledge can take up all soul-forms/ powers and joys of every plane successively, up to the supreme delight plane, after passing away from this body, for the soul still exists. But only after death, not in this physical life? The Upanishads says, asmat. lokāt pretya, and it is usually taken to mean after death; for it is thought that the " mental being exceeding his sphere does not return because by that transition he enters a high range of experience peculiar to the superior nature. But this limitation is true only so long as man remains closed within the boundaries of Maya. But if he rises into the Knowledge Self and becomes the Knowledge-Soul, Ivies in his causal body he will be able to draw down the fullness of the spiritual consciousness in his terrestrial being.......The passage beyond the border is the culmination of Yoga of self-perfection by Self Knowledge. The soul that aspires to perfection draws back and upward, says this Upanishad, from the physical into the vital, from the vital into the mental Purusha, from the mental into the knowledge soul and from knowledge- soul into the bliss-purusha, This self of bliss is the conscious foundation of perfect Sachchidananda and to pass into it completes the soul's ascension."19
The quotation of section four is repeated and it is stated. all moral doubts cease; for there individual will is one with the divine Will which is one with the divine Knowledge.
For he who knows the Eternal, knows these (moral doubts and sins) and delivers from them his spirit; yea, he knows both evil and good" for what they are and delivers his Spirit, who knows the Eternal. And this is Upanishad, the secret of the Veda.
The chapter ends with the initial prayer.
The third, chapter Bhriguvalli speaks of horizontal extension
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and the realisation of the cosmic principles, Matter, Life, Mind, Vijnana and Ananda, as manifestations of the Eternal. The previous chapter has given the inward or vertical ascension and realising the individual soul-formations corresponding to and capable of enjoying the experiences of each of these states of worlds. And since in ancient Indian tradition knowledge is not merely intellectual understanding of the truth, but realising it, knowledge is not complete unless the consciousness possesses it in self-expression—becomes the Truth. The truth is successively found by the seeker himself through concentration. And the chapter narrates how Bhrigu went to his father Varuna and asked for the Knowledge of Brahman and how he arrived at it.
Just as Agastya, is called the son of Mitra-Varuna in the Vedas and elsewhere, and Atharva, the son of Brahma in the Prashna Upanishad, Bhrigu is here called the son of Varuna. Sri Aurobindo says, (On the Veda) "Bhrigus share with the Angirasas the credit for bringing' down the fire, they found the flame secret in the growths of earthly existence and Angirasas kindled it in the altar If sac rifice. Very probably Angirasas are flame powers of Agni and the Bhrigus solar powers of Surya", of whom Varuna is the form of vas t purity. " T he Veda talks both of divine Rishis and human forefathers, pitaro manusyā rsyascā diuyāh, They may have been originally demigods who became humanised as fathers of the race and discoverers of Wisdom, or originally human sages deified by their descendants and in the process of apotheosis given a divine parentage , and a divine function." Further, the habit of symbolism of the Rishis tu rned even their own names into symbols.
After the same prayer as in the last chapter, it starts :
Bhrigu, Varuna's son, came unto his father Varuna and said "Lord, teach me the Eternal." And his father declared it unto him thus "Food and Prana and Eye and Ear and Mind—even there." Verily, he said unto him "Seek thou to know that from which these creatures are born, whereby being born they live and to which they go hence and enter again; for that is the Eternal."
Yes, matter, life, sense powers, mind are. all forms of, and approaches to, Brahman. The Kenopanishad also starts with the inquiry about the impeller of these and the power .behind them,
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Then comes the criterion which is taken in the Brahmasutras janmādi asya yatah the source sustenance and end of all.
As directed, Bhrigu concentrated himself in thought and by the askesis of his brooding "He knew food for the Eternal".
This is however the first view of man, the spirit as mental being in a living physical body. Rightly too, for it is a cosmic principle, and not only spirit but matter is also one and it satisfies the criterion, and all existences here are felt to be full of divine presence.
But soon the sense of inadequacy awakens; in even the universal soul, if limited by the material formula he could not be in entire possession of himself. He approaches his teacher again and gets the same advice—concentrate again. For the teacher adds "Tapas, askesis or concentration, in thought is the Eternal." "For conscious force of the Supreme is Tapas by which the self dwells gathered in itself, by which it manifests within itself, by which it maintains and possesses its manifestation, by which it draws back from all manifestation into its supreme oneness. Being dwelling in consciousness upon itself for bliss, this is the divine Tapas, and a Knowledge-Will dwelling in force of consciousness on itself and its manifestation is the essence of the divine concentration, the Yoga of the Lord of Yoga. Given the self-differentiation of the Divine in which we dwell, concentration is the means by which the individual soul identifies itself with and enters into any form or state (bhāva) of the Self."20
By concentration he knows then that Life is Brahman; for life force is the cosmic principle of energy, one like matter—it is the life force that is behind all formations of matter. Also it satisfies the criterion for all formation in the plane of Life and Matter. Again, doubt arrives and by the same process he comes to know of the principle of Mind above life and matter and nearer to the Supreme Cause. Then following the same path he arrives at the principle of Knowledge, supramental knowledge, the consciousness of the creator and the source of creation of the lower world. Finally :
He knew Bliss for the Eternal. For from Bliss alone, it appears', are these creatures born and being born they live by Bliss and to Bliss they go hence and return. This is the lore of Bhrigu, the lore of Varuna who has his firm base in the highest heaven. Who knows, gets his firm base, he becomes the master of food and its eater, great in progeny,
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great in cattle, great in the splendour of holiness, great in glory.
This is the highest principle, the very substance of the Divine inherent in his conscious existence. These are the chords of Being, the principles, the various worlds in the self-manifestation. of the Divine, the stages by which self-conscious blissful Spirit came down into the ignorance and by which from the darkness and inertia ignorant man may rise again to the supreme light and felicity. All these levels of the divine manifestation of the becoming of the Supreme Being Consciousness and Bliss,—'sarvamidam', of the Prasna. All this' Bhrigu knew in his inner being while still in his corporeal frame.. The result is the height of well-being, holiness and glory. Living a full life inwardly divine, outwardly expressing as much of it as the limitations of his mental-vital-physical frame (ādhāra) would allow. And, as the Kena says, becomes a live centre of Divine consciousness, attracting like a magnet those who are still engrossed in material life to higher truth and endeavour.
The Upanishad continues (section seven):
Thou shalt not blame food; for that is thy commandment unto labour. Verily, Prana also is food, and the body is the eater. The body is established upon Prana and Prana is established upon the body. Therefore food here is established upon food.
In the physical body, one result of contact with the Spirit is the ascetic tendency and the Rishi warns the disciple against relinquishing the material world and neglecting this body and life for they are interdependent. As in the Isha, the importance of embracing the becoming is emphasised. Similarly Waters, the streams of conscious energy, and the higher lights are interdependent, and the life-force that effectuates the conscious energy in the individual depends on-his body.
Thou shalt not reject food ; for that too is the vow of thy labour. Verily, the waters also are food, and the bright fire is the eater. ^Then emphasising the interrelationship still further it is said that on the Earth the Highest Ether is dependent.
Thou shalt increase and amass food...Thou shalt not. reject any man in thy habitation, for that too is thy commandment unto labour. Verily, earth also is food and ether is the eater.
So the injunction is: increase your wealth (annam bahukurvita).
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As is said in The Mother, money power is necessary for fuller and richer manifestation of the Divine here and should be wrested from the adverse forces in whose grip it now is.
Section ten says that the God-knower feels the Divine is in every activity and movement of animate and inanimate Nature, in his own body as well as in outside world, and as the All in ether. And every seeker realises Him, in the way of his seeking and gets the appropriate benefits.
Pursue thou Him as the firm foundation of things and thou shalt get thee firm foundation. Pursue Him as Mahas, thou shalt become Mighty ; pursue Him as Mind, thou shalt become full of mind ; pursue Him as adoration, thy desires shall bow down before thee ; pursue Him as the Eternal, thou shalt become full of the Spirit ; pursue Him as the destruction of the Eternal that ranges abroad, thou shalt get thy rivals and thy haters perish thick around thee and thy kin who loved thee not.
The original for 'the destruction of the Eternal that ranges abroad' is Brahmanah parimarah. Literally parimarah means round which all dies. This is given as in the Aitareya Brahman (VII.28) as a mantra for the self-defence of kings against their enemies in the same words as here, and air is said to be that round which die the five gods, lightning, rain, moon, sun and fire. The Kaushitaki Upanishad gives a philosophical explanation as the absorption or disappearance of all the gods or psychological powers in Brahman as Life. Shankara takes it as worshipping Brahman as Ether which is the soul of Air. Sri Aurobindo here seems to take it as the annihilation of entire manifestation into the silent Brahman.
Then comes the realisation of unity of the individual soul with the supreme Knowledge Soul in the Sun in this body and as a result of taking up all the inferior soul-formations into the highest. This realisation and this result have been mentioned in the previous chapter; for the ultimate goal in both the ways is the same. Here the state of ineffable delight is added.
Lo, he ranges about the worlds, he eats what he will, and takes what shape he will and ever he sings the mighty Sama. "Ho! ho! ho ! I am food ! I am food ! I am food ! I am the eater of food ! I am the eater ! I am the eater! I am he who makes ! I am the first born
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of the Law ; before the gods were, J am, yea, at the very heart of immortality.
Now that not merely the individual soul-form of delight but the cosmic principle of delight is possessed he ranges at will over the worlds, knowing both the joy and its object and himself, knows himself as a partner of the supreme dynamism of the Divine.
He who gives me, verily, he preserves me ; for I being food, eat him that eats. I have conquered the whole world and possessed it, my light is as the sun in its glory. Thus he sings, who has the knowledge. This, verily, is Upanishad, the secret of the Veda. He who makes the Scriptures, and the first born of the Laws-r-for he is unified with all knowledge and the source of revelation, "shastrayoni", of the Mahas and all his will and action come from the Divine Will one with the divine Knowledge.
"The eater eating is eaten" is a terrible and pregnant formula. "The whole process of the universe is in its very nature sacrifice (Compare Gita sahayajñāh pariāh) voluntary and involuntary: self-fulfilment by immolation to grow by giving is the universal law. That which refuses to give it self is still the food of the cosmic powers.":21
He conquers the entire universe in all its levels, attains Sāmrājya, the mastery over Prakriti, and shares the full light of the divine gnosis and delight.
The ancient dawns of human knowledge as Sri Aurobindo says, left their witness to the constant aspiration—to which the humanity is preparing to return today—for God, Light, Freedom, Immortality. Three and a half millenniums ago, our Rishis acquired these highest and deepest experiences in their organised entirety by -a revolutionary individual effort and have left for us a record of the broad lines of progress and their results. Now that the Supermind has been brought down into the terrestrial manifestation, this achievement is within easier reach of the aspirant and with our. self-giving and conscious cooperation the Mother is ushering in the new era of divine life on earth as the result of an evolutionary general progression.
NOLINI KANTA SEN
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9 Compiled from the article, 'The Knowledge of Brahman' in The Arya Vol. V, NO.4. Bengali version by the present author in 'Upanishad presage Sri Aurobindo.'
10 The Life Divine, Vol. I, Ch.
11 Anna comes from the root ad, to eat. Osadhi literally means that in which light and energy are collected, that which is the basis of growth, it is said to hold the honey of Soma, the divine delight. Saroausadham means the universal nourishing substance, translated here as the green stuff of the universe.
12 Compiled from On Yoga Vol I, Chapter XXII, 'Vijnana or Gnosis.'
13 On Yoga Vol. II. p.
14 On Yoga Vol I. Ch. XV, p.
15 Gnosis and Ananda, Ch. XXIV.
16 On the Veda, p.
17 The Life Divine, Vol. II, Ch. XII.
18 The Life Divine Vol. I, Ch. IV.
19 On Yoga I, p.
20 On Yoga, Vol. I, p.
21 On the Veda, p.
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EDUCATION
XV
MENTAL EDUCATION
WINDING up the main points of the education of the vital " or prana, the Mother speaks of the mastery and transformation of the vital movements and a radical change of character by a scrupulous and sustained observation of one's nature and a. steady exercise of one's will. But, the Mother hastens to add, all this effort and its- right application and result will depend upon the ideal one has resolved to achieve. "The value of the effort and its result ~ill depend upon the value of the ideal."1 The choice of the ideal is, therefore, of the utmost importance in education. The ideal is the mirror which reflects one's destiny. It is the seed of all future fulfilment. It is the focal point of all our aspirations, the pole star which attracts our steps, the bewitching melody of the flute of the Lord, the half-visible pilot at once galvanizing and guiding our life. A life without an ideal is like a ship without a destination— an aimless, senseless drift. The higher the ideal, the greater the possibility of achievement; for, self-transcendence is the secret purpose of life, and the soul of man has no end of power to realise what it seeks. The ideal draws us out of the petty circle of our selfish interests and sordid cares, and makes us unfurl our wings in the sapphire heavens of the infinite Spirit. And it is in the opening human mind that the ideal is first glimpsed.
What we know and pursue as education today is mostly confined to the mind. What we mean by education is only mental education. Moral and spiritual education is deliberately banned in
1 Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Education.
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the interest of what is glorified as secular education. To impart to the mind some splinters and snippets of knowledge, some useful scraps of information1 on various subjects, is all or almost all that modern bread-winning education is busy about, as if man was only the body and the mind, and the other parts of his organic nature needed no education or development. Some stress on physical education has come to be laid in recent years, but it hardly forms an integral part of the educational system, and is pursued as a separate discipline and exercise, unconnected with mental education. Besides, even in the mind-oriented education, there is no provision for the evolution of the different faculties of the mind and the calling forth of the creative powers dormant in them. The imagination, memory, reason, judgment, none of these faculties are given any systematic development, because the knowledge of human psychology, which went to the making of the ancient systems of education, is woefully deficient and inadequate in modern educators. Only the brain is packed with a medley of fragments, and in a good many cases, overloading impairs its health and suppleness, and prevents its full development. "Generally speaking, education is taken to
The Mother's scheme of education, which is meant to prepare the child for a higher life and a divine self-fulfilment, comprises five principal phases : The first is the power of concentration, the capacity for focussing one's attention on the subject on hand. The mind of the child remains usually dispersed, running about in many directions. It is dragged by his senses from object to object. Of course, it is true that this constant sulfating of the senses has the
1 "A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth." —Whitehead. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Education.
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salutary effect of awakening the mind of the child. But, in order to convert this awakening into a steady curiosity and train it to a searching observation, the child must be led by some of the means modem pedagogy has discovered, to collect his mind, gather up its wandering energies, and bring them to bear upon a particular subject or object which has to be attended to and studied. The truth, which Plato has insisted upon, and which cannot be too often emphasised, is that the child has the power of concentration in him, and that all knowledge lies latent within him. If the way to concentrate is shown, he can learn whatever he sets his heart on, whatever is considered 'conducive to his development and progress. As in most other things, so in this act of concentration, the teacher has not to inject and infuse anything into the child, but to evoke and foster what is already in him.
What is the secret of teaching the child how to concentrate ? The central secret, apart from the various methods discovered by modern education, is the art of stirring and engaging the interest of the child, "...when you succeed in making him interested, he is Tip able of a good amount of attention...the sovereign means is to rouse in the child interest in the thing that one wishes to teach, the Tate for work, the will to progress."1 The skill of the teacher lies primarily in his capacity for awakening and maintaining the interest of the child in whatever he happens to teach. Every subject can be made interesting, if he only knows how to make it. And the best and easiest way to do it is to take a genuine interest in it himself. I cannot make a subject interesting to the child, if I am not myself interested in it. Sincerity of purpose is here, as everywhere, the only precondition of successful teaching. If the teacher teaches, not. for any personal gain or gratification, but because he loves the subjects he teaches, he can never fail to arouse" the interest of the child and hold his attention. Teaching is the best way of learning. A sincere and insatiable thirst for learning in the teacher, and learning more and more, in order to progress in life, is the one thing with which the teacher will surely succeed in inspiring the child under his care. "The love to learn is the most precious gift that one can
1 Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Education,
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make to the child : to love to learn always and everywhere. Let all circumstances, all happenings in life be occasions, constantly renewed, for learning more and ever more."1
But concentration to be really effective, must be concentration on something. The child cannot concentrate on the void or on airy abstractions. That is why the Mother advises the cultivation of the power of observation, precision of recording, and faithfulness of memory. "The faculty of observation can be developed by various spontaneous exercises, making use of all opportunities that help to keep the child's thought wakeful, alert, quick."2 Modern schemes of education, in so far as they are loyal to the true spirit of science, advocate close and sustained observation. Sri Aurobindo says : "We do not observe sufficiently or with sufficient attention, and a sight, sound, smell, even touch or taste knocks in vain at the door for admission."3 He calls it "tamasic inertia of the receiving instruments." "The student ought to be accustomed to catch the sights, sounds etc., around him, distinguish them, mark their nature, properties and sources...."4 The child catches the sights, sounds etc. much more readily than grown-up students, but he has to be taught how to distinguish them and study their specific qualities, properties etc.
In India, owing to a long tradition of other-worldly orientation, a general tendency to dreamy, idealistic abstraction, and a consequent apathy to any lively interest in scientific and practical pursuits, the faculty of observation had not been given the encouragement it deserves. Rather, in education, a premium had been put on the old scholastic and theoretical type of learning, and on the outworn modes of the study of the humanities. The practical and objective, that is to say, the scientific side of education had been avoided. The ideal student had been a sort of a book-worm, 'dazed and darkened with excessive reading", as Emerson would say, and incapable of any original thought and imaginative creation. He had, besides, proved too unpractical, too languid and lackadaisical, too much given to abstract speculation or idea-spinning to be able to grapple with the forces of life. His ivory tower had become his
1 2 3 & 4, Sri "Aurobindo and the Mother on Education.
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prison. And society had put its stamp of approval upon him. It is only since the impact of Western culture that a new breeze has been blowing in the fields of education, and the concrete problems of life have been receiving an increasing attention and serious .study. The powers of observation, the spirit of scientific exploration, investigation, analysis and experiment, the empirical method of learning by trial and effort the secrets of Nature and the laws of life, are now being more and more encouraged and systematically cultivated. This scientific attitude and habit have led to a return of our consciousness to the neglected areas of our life and to the undeveloped potentialities of human nature. Life and its forces, Nature and her laws and her rhythms, have to be scientifically observed, scrutinised and studied, if victory and mastery, and not defeat and flight, be the ultimate goal of man on earth—victory in material life as well as victory in the realms of the Spirit. Ignorance-and incapacity cannot lead to victory. The child's education must, therefore, be polarized to -an existential victory, the triumph of the Spirit in material life, the evolutionary emergence of the Purusha as the lord and master of Nature. The Mother's system of education is geared to this integral ideal.
(to be continued)
RISHABHCHAND
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ALL spiritual sadhana or cultivation of inner life involves the cleansing, enlarging, deepening and heightening of the instruments of perception in man's personality. Every instrument —the senses, the vital, the mental or the subliminal—is just a finite concentration of consciousness in one plane of Being, and that is the reason why its vision of the world outside is so partial and limited. The most intensive and extensive cultivation of any one of these instruments could give the vision of the corresponding element in its field of functioning—the outer forms of things for the senses, the dynamic feelings motivating things for the vital, the Idea-Forces working behind for the mind and the occult Forces permeating these for the subliminal. But even the sadhana which does not neglect any one of these instruments but includes them all misses the basic substratum of the Spiritual Ether where all worlds have their being. Hence the need felt in the great spiritual adventure of negating all these in order to get at the Fundamental Spiritual Essence. The instrument which perceives this Essence is often the spiritualised mind which sees It as a Vast Impersonal Infinite Consciousness negating all worlds and when it is completely steeped in That sees only That and declares all worlds as non-existent and That as the sole Existent. The next step is to deny the Existence of the Existent and lose all consciousness or awareness in the All-negating Void, the Non-Being behind even the Being. Sometimes the Essence is approached through the spiritualised heart and its vision of That is of a Supreme Person to whom all must raise their being, leaving aside all the worlds. Anyway, the gulf between the Ultimate .-Reality and the Manifestation remains
unabridged and is pronounced unbridgeable. In fact, all such talk of bridging the gulf is looked upon as an indication of ignorant attachment to the Darkness and a lack of readiness for-the plunge into the Great Light of the Supreme. But the Yogic sadhana of Savitri, the Mother, shows a different road to the Essence- which sees no gulf, because there is no gulf, between
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the Ultimate and the Manifestation. The gulf is the creation of the spiritualised mind or the spiritualised heart because of their inability to hold together what appear to be sharp opposites. For, in the. language of the Isha Upanishad, "It is He that has gone abroad-— That which is bright, bodiless, without scar of imperfection, without sinews, pure, unpierced by evil. The Seer, the Thinker, the One who becomes everywhere, the Self-existent has ordered objects perfectly according to their nature from years sempiternal". The problem arises because the Reality and the Manifestation are seen not as the Reality sees but as the faculties or the instruments in man's personality, however spiritualised, perceive. One has to pass beyond the spiritualised consciousness to the Spirit and partake of Its' creative integral vision. The natural poise of the Supreme Spirit is the Supramental Truth-Consciousness, Rita Chit, where all contraries are reconciled and realised as complementariness so necessary for the fulfilment of the complex destinies of the many-sided manifestation. To raise oneself to the Supramental is to realise immediately that Its Consciousness is a complete fulfilment of all that the faculties or instruments of perception in man have been aspiring for. In fact, there is a Divine Sense, a Divine Vital, a Divine Mind and a Divine Subliminal in the Supramental whose distortions or imperfect manifestations are these so-called instruments of perception. It is possible by opening all the instruments to the corresponding divine counterparts in the Supramental to divinise and transform these, and every individual who does this in himself free from any egoistic motive becomes himself the bridge between Eternity and Time.
II
The Sadhana of Savitri hitherto has been precisely one of passing beyond all faculties or instruments of perception and her entry into Nirvana has served the purpose of liberating her simultaneously from the imprisonment in the separative ego or individuality and" the finite faculties. She now waits on the threshold of the Transcendent Supramental in an integral readiness to receive and transmit to the world around whatever That chooses to reveal or manifest. In this trance in waiting and luminous tranquillity. She hears the
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Word of the Silence, the supreme Anahata Nada. This trance is not indeed a hypnotic one of blissful non-awareness of the world around but one which combines with the complete wakeful awareness of the external world—with its sleeping Satyavan and the enormous Night—the awareness of all the ranges of consciousness between the surface and the superconscient, with the Unknowable Vast.
"A voice began to speak from her own heart
That was not hers, yet mastered thought and sense."
Now she listens to "a greater Word born from the mute unseen omniscient Ray. The Voice that only Silence' ear has heard leaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day." This voice is beyond all thought and feeling, the two major powers or instruments of man's personality—the reflecting, brooding or seeing part and the contacting, experiencing or emotive part. But the voice is the voice of the all-fulfilling Supramental and therefore it masters thought and sense. Human thought and human sense are now completely taker and transformed into the nature of Divine Thought and Divine Sense. The result is an instantaneous Tran valuation of all values in the light of the Supramental Truth-consciousness.
"As it spoke all changed within her and without;
All was, all lived; she felt all being one;"
It is the vision of the One omnipresent Reality affirming all, denying nothing, no, not even the nothing or non-being or the all-negating Absolute. All was.
But everything not only exists but has a movement characteristically its own, a
growth of consciousness according to its nature, Swabhava, and rhythm of
self-development, swadharma. .All lived. The Ultimate Reality is not only the
supporting consciousness of all but That is the moving dynamic consciousness of
all. But all the multitudinous organizations of consciousness are still the One
Supreme Being. She felt all being one. The vision of Oneness everywhere and
always in all planes of being and rhythms of movement is the key-note of the
music of the Supramental. The deluded
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impression of the unreality of the world which is the product of looking at things from the standpoint of the spiritualised mind is no longer there. There is now no need for erecting a mental model of an external universe which is only a structure in the mind and at best an indicative symbol or sign. For now the Spirit sees all with its own characteristic supramental mode of Truth-vision.
"A spirit, a being saw created things
And cast itself into unnumbered forms
And was what it saw and made; all now became
An evidence of one stupendous truth,
A Truth in which negation had no place,
A being and a living consciousness,
A stark and absolute Reality."
All are seen as the Brahman, sarvam khalwidam Brahma, Vāsudeavh sarvarh. The -Reality is not only all being but also all becoming. Purusa evedam sarvam.
"There the unreal could not find a place.
The sense of unreality was slain :
There all was conscious, made of the Infinite,
All had a substance of Eternity."
The Finite is not the opposite of the Infinite but one mode of being of the very Infinite. Time is not the opposite of Eternity but one organisation in the Eternal's bosom. Space and Time are only the frontal manifestations of the Infinite and the Eternal.
III
Reality is One whatever be the plane of manifestation and the same Sachchidananda is in the end as the Unmanifest Beyond. Even the Non-Being glimpsed and entered into in the experience of Nirvana is the same Reality :
"Yet this was the same Indecipherable;"
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In fact, there is even a resemblance between the experience of the universe in the state of Nirvana and the present experience of the World in the supramental vision—the perception of the universe as a "dream. Only, in Nirvana the dream is an unsubstantial pageant emerging from nowhere, existing in a void and dissolving into Nothing, leaving not a rack behind. The seer and the seen in Nirvana are negated and dissolved in an original void. But in the Supramental vision, the soul is recovered and made one with the world it sees in a tremendously real spiritual consciousness. The universe and the manifestation are the dynamic dreams of the Truth-consciousness with a reality as concrete and more concrete than the wakeful reality. The solidity and substance of the dream get their strength from embodying the being or consciousness of the Eternal. The clasp of the world by the soul is a living experience of ecstatic oneness.
"It was her self, it was the self of all,
It was the reality of existing things,
It was the consciousness of all that lived
And felt and saw; it was Timelessness and Time, -
It was the Bliss of formlessness and form.
It was all Love and the one Beloved's arms,
It was sight and thought in one all-seeing Mind,
It was joy of being on the peaks of God."
The Supreme Lord is Sat, eternal existence in all the levels of consciousness and
organizations of consciousness in each level, Chit, the consciousness which comprehends and feels in all, and the principle of Ananda which holds all together and in existence. Eternity and Time, Impersonality and Personality are one Divine Consciousness. The subject, the object and the contacting or enveloping or uniting medium of all experience of knowing and loving are the Lord's Being. The Supermind is the creator of all and organiser of all and once in tune with it one gets absolutely free from the cramping limitations of movement of the instruments of perception. One moves and ranges- freely in all the planes of consciousness in the manifest and the unmanifest levels. One explores the infinites of the Infinite in the superconscient above with as much freedom as
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one sounds the depths of the Inconscient below. Or one widens oneself to embrace the whole universe laterally or reduces one's consciousness to a point. All kinds of concentration of consciousness, inclusive, exclusive, transcendent, enveloping and encompassing are normal and natural and simultaneous to the supramental awareness.
"She was all vastness and one measureless point,
She was a height beyond heights, a depth beyond depths,
She lived in the everlasting and was all
That har bours death and bears the wheeling hours."
It is precisely because of the limitations of the powers of awareness of the instruments of perception that the contraries appeared as contraries. But in the supramental awareness
"All contraries were true in one huge spirit
Surpassing measure, change and circumstance."
Thus the three poises of the Individual, Universal and the Transcendent usually perceived by even the spiritualised mind or heart as exclusive of each other and therefore capable of being experienced only separately are perceived simultaneously.
"An individual, one with cosmic self
In the heart of the Transcendent miracle
And the secret of World-personality
Was the creator and the lord of all."
Mind, Life and Body are not opposites of the Spirit but fields for the manifestation of endless powers of the higher consciousness.
"Mind was a single innumerable look
Upon himself and all that he became,
Life was his drama and the Vast a stage',
The universe was his body, God its soul."
All phenomenon are the self-deploying of the one Neumann,
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"All was one single immense reality,
All its innumerable phenomenon."
IV
The supramental vision "not only recognizes eternal Spirit as the inhabitant of this bodily mansion, the wearer of this mutable robe, but accepts Matter of which it is made, as a fit and noble material out of which He weaves constantly His garbs, builds recurrently the unending series of His mansions. Perceiving behind their appearances the identity in essence of these two extreme terms of existence, it is able to say in the very language of the ancient Upanishads, 'Matter also is Brahman', and to give its full value to the vigorous figure by which the physical universe is described as the external body of the divine Being."
"Her spirit saw the world as living God;
It saw the One and knew that all was He."
The ground of all manifestation, the space where all the creation is laid and the movements happen is the Absolute Consciousness. Ignorance and Knowledge, Light and Darkness are organised in the same Sachchidananda. Even all the movements in time are only the movements of the Divine Consciousness. Nature and the Self, Prakriti and Purusha are no longer separate but the whole of Nature is felt in the self.
"All Nature's happenings were events in her,
The heart-beats of the cosmos were her own,
All beings thought and felt and moved in her;"
This identity with the universal consciousness and beings is not limited to the mental or the vital but extends and includes all tire physical. consciousness as well.
"Her mind became familiar with its mind,
Its body was her body's larger frame
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In which she lived and knew herself in it
One, multitudinous in its multitudes.
She was a single being, yet all things;"
"She is the world and of the world, but also exceeds it in her consciousness and lives in her self of transcendence above it; she is universal but free in the universe, individual but not limited by a .separative individuality. Her true Person is not an isolated entity, her individuality is universal; for she individualises the universe : it is at the same time divinely emergent in a spiritual air of transcendent infinity, like a cloud-surpassing summit; for she individualises the divine Transcendence. All beings are to her her own selves, all ways and powers of consciousness are felt as the ways and powers of her own universality."
"She was no more herself but all the world.
Out pf the infinitudes all came to her,
Into the infinitudes sentient she spread,
Infinity was her own natural home.
Nowhere she dwelt, her spirit was everywhere,
The distant constellations wheeled round her;
Earth saw her born, all worlds were her colonies,
The greater worlds of life and mind were hers;
All Nature reproduced her in its lines,
Its movements were large copies of her own.
She was the single self of all these selves,
She was in them and they were all in her."
V
The first experience of this complete identification with the cosmic consciousness is one of losing one's separate identity in the universal subconscient, material, vital, emotional and mental consciousness.
"What seemed herself was an image of the Whole.
She was the subconscient life of tree and flower,
The outbreak of the honed buds of spring;-
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She burned in the passion and splendour of the rose,
She was the red heart of the passion flower,
The dream-white of the lotus in its pool.
Out of subconscient life she climbed to mind,
She was thought and the passion of the world's heart,
She was the godhead hid in the heart of man,
She was the climbing of his soul to God.
The cosmos flowered in her, she was its bed.
She was Time and the dreams of God in Time;
She was Space and the wideness of his days."
"A deep concentration seized on me, and I perceived that I was identifying myself with a single cherry-blossom, then through it with all cherry-blossoms, and as I descended deeper in the consciousness, following a stream of bluish force, I became suddenly the cherry-tree itself, stretching towards the sky like so many arms its innumerable branches laden with their sacrifice of flowers. Then I heard distinctly this sentence :
'Thus hast Thou made thyself one with the soul of cherry trees and so Thou canst take note that it is the Divine who makes the offering of this flower-prayer to heaven.'
When I had written it, all was effaced; but now the blood of the cherry-tree flows in my veins and with it flows an incomparable peace and force. What difference is there between the human body and the body of a tree ? In truth, there is none, the consciousness, which animates them is identically the same.
Then the cherry-tree whispered in my ear :
'It is in the cherry-blossom that lies the remedy for the dis orders of the spring.' " Having thus the whole of the cosmos in her consciousness she rises into the Transcendental and so becomes the conscious bridge between the Eternal and the Temporal, the Infinite and the finite, the Superconscient and the Inconscient.
"From this she rose where Time and Space were not;
The superconscient was her native air,
Infinity -was her movement's natural space;
Eternity looked out from her on Time."
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"In a few days the new conquest was affirmed and made firm. And what Thou attends from the centre of consciousness which "my whole being represents at present upon the earth, clearly manifested before it : To be the Life in all material forms, the Thought organising and using this Life in all forms, the Love enlarging, enhghtening, intensifying, uniting all the diverse elements of this Thought, and thus by a total identification with the manifested .world, to be able to intervene with all power in its transformations.
On the other hand, by a perfect surrender to the Supreme Principle, to become conscious of the Truth and the eternal Will which manifests it. By this identification, becoming the faithful servant and sure intermediary of the divine Will, and uniting this conscious identification of the Principle with the conscious identification of the becoming, to mould and model consciously the love, mind and life of the becoming according to the Law of Truth of the Principle.
It is thus that the individual being can be the conscious intermediary between the absolute Truth and the manifested universe and intervene in the slow and uncertain advance of the Yoga of "Nature in order to give it the swift, intense and sure character of the divine Yoga.
It is thus that at certain periods, the whole terrestrial life seems to pass miraculously through stages which, at other times, it would take thousands of years to traverse.
At present, O Lord, the state of perfect and conscious surrender to Thy eternal will is, as far as I can know, constant and invariable, behind every act, every movement, mental, vital or material. This imperturbable calm, this deep, peaceful, unchanging bliss which do not leave me—are they not the proof of it ? The passive, that is to say, .the receptive identification with life, thought and love in all manifested forms is an accomplished fact which appears as the inevitable consequence of surrender to the pure Truth.
But the moments when the consciousness is effectively the Life animating and moulding all material forms, the Intelligence, in an active and fully conscious way, at once in the' mass and in the smallest detail, in a sense of infinite plenitude and precise powers, are yet intermittent, though becoming more and more frequent and abiding. It is in these moments that the two consciousnesses are
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simultaneous and melt into a single consciousness, indescribable and ineffable, in which are united Immutable Eternity and Eternal Movement. It is in these moments that the work of the present time begins to be accomplished."
REFERENCES :
Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book VII Canto 7.
M. V. Seetaraman Prayers and Meditations.
M. V. SEETARAMAN
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ON ART AND BEAUTY : THE LADDER
OF AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE
DIFFERENT LEVELS OF PERCEPTION OF BEAUTY
EVEN though beauty is everywhere there is room for a hierarchy in it. Sri Aurobindo says : "All is from one point of view beautiful; but all ft not reduced to a single level. All things can be seen as having divine beauty but some things have more divine beauty than others."
And this scale of beauty does not hold good only for one who appreciates beauty but it applies to the artist as well; "In the Artist's vision too there can be gradations, a hierarchy of values— Appelle's grapes deceived the birds that came to peck at them but there was more aesthetic content in Zeus of Phidias, a greater content of consciousness and therefore Ananda to express and fill in the essential principle of beauty, even though the essence of beauty may be realised perhaps with equal aesthetic perfection by either artist in either theme."
The creations of art do not all proceed from one plane of consciousness ; different artists create from different levels,—from the physical and vital attraction, to pure devotion or aesthetic perception, from reaction to shocks of life, attachment to an ideal, play of creative imagination. This ladder of creative impulse might give us different levels of the experience of beauty.
,We will take a few examples at random. Byron writes : "Who can view the ripened rose nor seek to wear if?" In this line we find the irresistible attraction which beauty exerts on the human heart. But it also expresses the most common reaction of the. desire-soul, the Kāmanāmaya Purusha, to the experience of beauty. Byron here represents the ardent cry of the vital being in man for the possession of beauty. Coupled with the experience of beauty is the tragic vein of disappointment and a justification of the possessive impulse.
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In Shelley's experience of beauty there is an ethereal and mystic strain. Shelley and Keats are like caged birds trying to escape from the imprisonment of human limitations beating ineffectively their wings against the bars. But their perception has great truth and power ; they stress the need for reaching out to the transcendent beauty. Shelley writes :—
I can give not what men call love ;
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above,
And the Heavens reject not;
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow ?
Shelley's experience differs from that of Byron; it is more subtle, more delicate, suffused with elements of psychic beauty. It moves on a different plane. The poet admits that he cannot give to his beloved "what men call love",—there is an implied contempt for that love ! but he offers instead a far greater thing, the worship which the human heart offers to the Divine and which the Supreme does not reject. There is a thirst in the human heart for perfection unattained. Not only is it present in the human heart but even in the insignificant moth there is an attraction for the light of the stars and even the dark night holds in her heart the immortal -hope for the Dawn ; from the world of sorrows the human being feels devotion for the Divine.
Here there is no distracted cry of the human vital being to possess beauty. There is instead an ardent aspiration to offer his devotion to the object of love which the poet feels akin to the Divine.
Keats wrote those immortal lines :—
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know."
Beauty is one with the Reality. But Keats found the world far
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from being beautiful. So, he burst forth into a magnificent and fiery aspiration :—
But cannot I create ?
Cannot I form ? Cannot I fashion forth
Another world, another universe
To overbear and crumble this to naught ?
Where is another chaos ? Where ? (Hyperion)
In the white heat of his intense impulse the poet did not, perhaps} realise that one chaos was quite enough; and if any scheme of perfection is to be realised it is by a transformation of this world, by man's ascent to the attainment of Beauty which is Truth and by a descent of the Truth which would bring beauty into Life.
There is here the intense expression of human need for perfection, for beauty : the creative impulse in the poet sees the possibility of perfection in life on earth.
Wordsworth perceived the presence of a spirit behind the forms of Nature, he received intimations from the world of immortality. His experience of beauty is largely in the field of Nature; to him Nature is living; outside Nature—particularly in human life—he was very much disappointed. He did not feel beauty in life, in action or character as he felt in Nature. He wished man to identify himself with the presence that pervades Nature. He describes his experience in one poem thus —
"These beauteous forms
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye ;
But oft in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet
Felt along the blood, felt along the heart"
The experience of beauty of Nature could influence not only his inner being but almost his nervous system and the. body.
At the same time, it seemed to open the third eye of knowledge in his consciousness and illumine the world with
its light and transform it. He says
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"while with an eye made quiet by the power of
harmony and the, deep power of joy
we see into the life of things" (Tintern Abbey)
This vision of "the life of things" endows the forms with universal beauty.
Tulsidas, the great Hindi poet, describes the love at first sight between Rama and Sita thus :
"Lochan maga Ramahi ura ani
Dine palaka kapata sayani
"Bringing Rama to her heart along the path of the sight, Sita closed the doors with her winking".
The aspect of beauty expressed here differs so much from the charm of mere external form. The poet does not describe here the beauty of either Rama or Sita, or the attraction they felt. The love that Sita felt for Rama seems so spontaneous, so much like recognition of the souls for each other. It seems as if Sita took Rama to her heart through the path of her sight and then closed, not merely her eyes but, the doors of her heart, so that there was no chance for anyone else to enter there. And the suggestion—the Dhwani—indicates that Rama could not go out of her heart even if he wanted to. There is no question of why there was love. The experience of beauty carries everything before it; there is no logical cause, no explanation. Beauty is beyond the net of logic and explanation. Here there is no question, as there is in case of Shelley, about the acceptance of the pure offering of love. Here is the self-poised serene joy of attainment, a feeling of fulfilment of the experience of beauty.
Beauty acts spontaneously and without any self-regarding motive. Bhavabhnti describes it in one of his dramas :
"Vikasati hi patangasyodaye pundarīkam"
"The Lotus blooms, at sunrise," why? Because there is between them "āntarah kopi hetu"
"some inner, mysterious affinity." The attraction of the bee for the flower
is natural in a certain sense.
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But the sunlight works on the flower on almost a different plane, their relation is on a higher plane and nearer the true expression of beauty. From that absolute love for the Divine as the Beautiful came the attitude of unconditional self-surrender known as Madhur-Bhava.
Tagore's sense of beauty is keen, colour full, universal and mystic. Beauty to him is unseizable,—though eternally alluring, beauty is the messenger from the unknown,—at times, from the Beloved. But beauty is unknowable and unattainable in life here. He calls her "Bideshini"—"a foreign lady" whom yet the heart knows— "ami chini"—"I know."
In "his poem on 'Spring' he asks :—"By what path did you make your way to the earth, O traveller !" "Tumi kon pathe je yele"— "I did not see your coming—ami dekhi nai tomare" "You came upon my vision suddenly like a dream at the edge of the forest" "Ha that swapan samo dekha dile, boneri kinare".
Tagore's Urvashi, an ode to the spirit of Beauty, is one of the finest poems in literature. Says he, "you are not a mother, nor a daughter, nor a housewife, O Urvashi, Inhabitant of heaven" !- Beauty has no duty, need not fulfil any social function, she comes into being full-blown, she has eternal youth! (Naho mātā; naho kawyā, naho vadhu, he nandana oāsini, Urvasi.")
When she dances her ecstatic dance in the assembly of the Gods, the waves of the oceans keep harmony with her steps, and and green sari of the earth moves into rhythmic waves of ecstasy, the stars fallen from her necklace deviate from their orbits in the sky and suddenly the human heart beats in unison with her steps, and man forgets himself. Thus the dance of Beauty pervades every thing in the universe—heaven, ocean, earth, man, all is in rhythm wish her dance.
In the last two stanzas the poet puts the question : "Will the ancient day when Urvashi walked on earth, ever return ? The heart of the whole earth is pining for her, crying for her." ;
"No !" replies the poet, "Urvashi will never return". The poet calls her nisthurā,
badhira-deaf-for she does not respond to the call of the earth. In the last
stanza he says : "The moon of glory, Urvashi, has set and she is now a dweller
on the mountain where the sun sets, "asta gechhe she gaurava sail, astā
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calvasinī, Urvafī".
In some of his other poems like Balākā while trying to visualise the goal of the journey of humanity the poet concludes with a note of agnpsticism. "Whither ?" is the question and the answer is "not here, not here, somewhere else, at some other place". The beautiful vision of the poem emphasises the act of flight,
The overtones of Tagore's poems are even more important than his expression. He is able to see the vision of the Universal in the particular, of the subtle in the superficial, of the profound in the simple.
In Sanskrit literature a distinction is made between creations of the Laukika mind and those of the Seer, i.e. Arsha. In Bha-vabhuti's Uttararāma Charita we find :—
Laukikānām tu sādhūnām
Artham vāk anuvartate
rsinām punarādyānām
Vācant arthomudhāvati.
"In the case of ordinary writers the speech follows the intent, the meaning, while in that of the ancient seers, the Rishis, the meaning runs after their speech".
This is an admission of overhead inspiration as a superior power of creation than ordinary mind. It also means that the creator is not a mere thinker but a 'Seer' or 'hearer' of the truth.
Rules of ordinary criticism in Sanskrit do not apply to these 'Arsha'—overhead-creations. In Greek literature also a divine afflatus is held responsible for great creation. Even today, after so much work by new psychology, the critics admit that the roots of creative power of the artist are mysterious. C. Day Lewis in his book The Poetic Image
"It is a veiled vision, a partial intuition communicated to him from the depth of
human heart. If he needs mystery, the last mystery is there, and of all that proceeds from man's heart, nothing is more mysterious than virtue, the disinterested movements of moral fervour and intellectual curiosity, the spontaneous springs of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love,"
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Experience of Rasa gives delight and so, very often Rasa and delight—Ananda—are regarded as equivalent. But there is a subtle difference. For the experience of Rasa,— aesthetic enjoyment, a subject, an I , is necessary. In the experience of delight the subject, the I, may be completely dissolved—or disappear. Delight can be self-existent,—without any outer support. Whereas for Rasa some outer support is needed. Even in the subjective aesthetic enjoyment there is needed a double action in consciousness, on one side a detachment from the experience and on the other an identification with it—which is the result of unity with the cosmic spirit. One identifies himself with the spirit of the poem, with a character in a drama or story, and at the same time a detachment keeps all personal elements aside. The individual outgrows the limits of his ego, enlarges his being, and has the joy of the universal consciousness. That is why Vishwanath the Sanskrit critic speaks of the delight or Rasa—as "Brahmānanda sahodara" "Of the same nature as the spiritual delight of the Brahma".
The meaning of the word "Rasa" can be easily grasped if we compare it with the liquid flow that keeps the tree alive. That sap is the "Rasa" of the tree's life. The life of the tree depends upon it" It is the same sap that transforms itself into flower and ripens into fruit. We get the taste, the Rasa, through the fruit. The Rasa of literature, poetry, music is similar to the sap that flows in trees, it is the stream of universal delight that flows through everything. That is why the Upanishad says : "who would breathe, who would continue to live, if this universal delight was not there." It is this delight which finds expression in works of art and the creator enjoys the delight while creating and imparts the same to others.
The capacity of aesthetic enjoyment is limited at present by man's nature, i.e. by his mental, emotional, vita and physical being. Man has been using the material of his experience from these fields for aesthetic enjoyment. Now and then, some sparks from some, unknown higher regions have illumined his experience with a light that can be called divine. The acceptance of the phenomenon of inspiration, intuition etc as exceptional, points to the mystic origin of such light.
But if man is a growing and evolving being and if ascent to
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higher plane than mind is the goal of his evolution, then his aesthetic instrumentation, his creative power, and the field of his aesthetic enjoyment of experience should not only expand horizontally but ascend vertically. That will liberate man from the limits of his ego and widen him to universality. Such an ascent is possible now by a conscious effort-though the aspiration is present in man from the beginning of history. The demand on the human spirit today is that he should make the effort now and be faithful to his inmost urge.
Such an ascent of consciousness, it is often feared, would mean renunciation of, or at least indifference to, life. That such an ascent to a higher plane must mean a negative condition is a current but mistaken idea. On the contrary, such a rise brings out an intensification of the powers of nature. So, the power of aesthetic enjoyment also increases in intensity, extension and subtlety. A rise in consciousness brings about a state of ease and serenity- it is based on a universal calmness and ease.
To Sri Aurobindo beauty is the highest aspect of the Divine, and his faith is that divine beauty not only can but shall walk or-earth ; "Beauty shall walk celestial on earth" (Savitri). Three of his long poems "Love and Death", "Urvasie" and Savitri deal with 'the subject of love and therefore are concerned with beauty. The whole outlook breathes the spirit of one who not only knows true beauty but lives in secure intimacy with it. To him has come the vision of the universe, harmonious and beautiful. The beauty that one finds . in his works is universal, its expression is impersonal and yet it is- the most intense. Beauty, in his view, is not only of the intellectual plane, nor merely of the life-plane,-though he is familiar with the .. beauty of those planes-but it also belongs to the overhead. But because it is of the overhead origin it is not abstract, and airy nothing, it is on the contrary much more concrete. This can be . very easily seen in hi s epic Savitri, where on four different occasions Savitri, the press, is described : these descriptions are surcharged with overhead beauty and yet all of them are convincingly concrete and intense, full of the colour of' Life,
Sri Aurobindo does not get, as do some other great creators of beauty, intermittent glimpses of this supreme beauty; he seems to
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have his permanent station on those heights. And he sees and utters from those heights, the heights of intuitive vision, of inspiration, and over mind influx. All is securely possessed, truly felt and effectively expressed—expression that is, in his own word, "inevitable".
A. B. PURANI
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