February, 1965
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
THE BRAHMIN
O Brahmin ! Struggle hard, seal off the stream, drive away desires.
Knowing that all elements of existence have dissolved, you will know the Uncreated. (1)
When the Brahmin has gone beyond the dualities, then he attains knowledge and all his bondages disappear (2)
* Based on the Mother's Talks.
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Him I call a Brahmin for whom there is neither the shore nor the shore less, for whom both are non-existent, one who is free from fear, free from attachment. (3)
Him I call a Brahmin who is given to meditation and is free from impurities, who has settled down and done what is to be done, the sinless who has attained the supreme Good. (4)
The sun burns by the day, the moon shines by the night, the warrior gleams in his armour, the Brahmin is luminous in his meditation, the Buddha sheds his effulgence day and night. (5)
He has cast away his sins, therefore he is a Brahmin. He has led the life of discipline, therefore he is a monk. But a recluse is he who is cleansed of all impurities. (6)
One must not hurt a Brahmin, nor should a Brahmin, when hurt, hit back. It is a disgrace to him who hurts a Brahmin, but a greater disgrace it is to the Brahmin who hits back. (7)
There is no greater good for man than to withdraw the mind from its cherished objects. The more the wicked mind quietens, the more the suffering ceases. (8)
Him I call a Brahmin who does not do wrong, whether by the body or by speech or by mind, who is self-controlled in all the three domains. (9)
Bow to him with reverence, whoever has taught you the doctrine of the Enlightened, even as a Brahmin does to the sacrificial Fire. (10)
Not by matted locks nor by pedigree nor by birth does one become a Brahmin. He is a Brahmin in whom there is the Truth, the Right, me who is free. (11)
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O fool! What for your matted locks ? What for your robe of animal-skin ? Within, you are a dense jungle, Only in the outside you are trimmed. (12)
I name that living being a Brahmin who, even though clothed in dirty rags, the body reduced to mere veins, is solitary, in meditation, dwelling in the forests. (13)
I do not call him a Brahmin who is merely born in a Brahmin family, of a Brahmin mother and is rich and vain. One who possesses nothing, who is attached to nothing, him I call a Brahmin. (14)
I call him a Brahmin who has broken all bondages and has no fear, who has no attachment, who is free. (15)
I call him a Brahmin who has cut the thongs and straps and the chain with all its links, who has thrown off the yoke and is thus enlightened. (16)
I call him a Brahmin who bears without resentment blows and shackles, whose force is in forbearance and who possesses the strength of an army. (17)
I call him a Brahmin who is free from anger, who is true to his faith, true to his practice, faithful to the doctrine, who has self-control and, for the last time has taken a body. (18)
I call him a Brahmin who does not stick to a desire, even as water does not stick to a lotus-leaf or as a mustard-seed to the point of a needle. (19)
I call him a Brahmin who has in this life known the end of suffering, laid down his load and is free from bondages. (20)
I call him a Brahmin who is profound in knowledge, strong in intelligence, "who can discern which is the Path and which is not the Path, who has attained the supreme Goal. (21)
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I call him a Brahmin who does not keep company with householders nor with wandering monks, who has no home and very few needs. (22)
I call him a Brahmin who refrains from hurting creatures, timid or strong, who does not kill nor cause to kill. (23)
I call him a Brahmin who is friendly among the unfriendly, calm among the violent, disinterested among the interested. (24)
I call him a Brahmin from whom passion and hatred and pride and pretence have dropped away even like a mustard-seed from the point of a needle. (25)
I cell him a Brahmin who utters words that are smooth and instructive, offending none. (26)
I call him a Brahmin who does not, in this world, take anything long or short, small or big, good or bad, which has not been given to him. . (27)
I call him a Brahmin who has no desire in this world or in the other, who has no longing, who is free. (28)
I call him a Brahmin who has no yearning, who has attained the highest knowledge, who is free from doubts, who has reached the profoundest immortality. (29)
I call him a Brahmin who has cast away the twin bonds of sin and virtue, who is free from grief, and free from impurity, who is pure. (30)
I call him a Brahmin who is like the Moon, stainless, pure, clear, serene, whose worldly cravings have withered away. (31)
I call him a Brahmin who has gone beyond this path of mire, hard to traverse, this round of worldly life, the delusion,
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who has crossed over and reached the other shore, who is given to meditation, who is unmoved, free from doubt, free from needs, wholly withdrawn. (32)
I call him a Brahmin who has cast off all desires, has no home and wanders free, who has exhausted all hankering. (33)
I call him a Brahmin who has here below thrown out all thirst, who has no home and wanders free, who has exhausted all hankering. (34)
I call him a Brahmin who has abandoned ties human or heavenly, who is free from all ties. (35)
I call him a Brahmin who has rejected all attraction and repulsion, who has become indifferent, free from limitation who has conquered all the worlds, the hero. (36)
I call him a Brahmin who has the perfect knowledge of the birth and death of all beings, who has no attachment, who is the Blessed and the Enlightened. (37)
I call him a Brahmin whose destiny is known neither to the Gods nor to the demi-gods nor to men, whose bonds have dwindled away, the Worthy. (38)
I call him a Brahmin who has neither the past nor the future nor the present, who owns nothing, who receives nothing. (39)
I call him a Brahmin who is puissant, the very best, the hero, the supreme sage who has conquered all foes, the Impassible, the purified, the enlightened. (40)
I call him a Brahmin who knows his previous lives, who sees heaven and hell, and thus having come to the end of births and become d sage, attained perfect knowledge, attained all perfection,(41)
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SUCH is the conclusion of the Dhammapada and if we have practised—to take up their image—only a mustard grain of all that has been taught us, well, we have not lost our time.
There is one thing which is not spoken of here, in the Dhammapada : it is a supreme disinterestedness and a supreme liberation to follow the discipline of perfecting oneself, the march of progress, not with a precise end in view as described here, the liberation of Nirvana, but because this march of progress is the profound law and the purpose of earthly life, the truth of universal existence and because you put yourself in tune with that, spontaneously whatever be the result.
There is a deep trust in the divine Grace, a total surrender to the Divine Will, an integral adhesion to the Divine Plan which causes things to be done that should be done without caring for the result. That is the perfect liberation. That truly is the abolition of suffering. The consciousness is filled with an unchanging delight and each step that one takes reveals a marvel of splendour.
We are grateful to Buddha for what he has brought for human progress and as I told you at the beginning, we shall try to realise a little of all the beautiful things he has taught us, but we shall leave the goal and the result of our endeavour to the supreme Wisdom that surpasses all understanding.
September 5, 1958
NOLINI KANTA GUPTA
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I
CONSIDERABLE attention has been attracted and excitement created by the latest development of Mr. W. T. Stead's agency for communicant spirits which he calls Julia's Bureau. The Supposed Communications of Mr. Gladstone, Lord Beaconsfield and other distinguished politicians on the question of the Budget have awakened much curiosity, ridicule and even indignation. The ubiquitous eloquence of Lord Curzon has been set flowing by what he considers this unscrupulous method of pressing the august departed into the ranks of liberal electioneering agents, and he has penned an indignant letter to the papers in which there is much ornate Curzonian twaddle about sacred mysteries and the sanctities of the grave. If there is anything at all in the alleged communications from departed souls which have become of increasing interest to the European world, it ought to be fairly established that the grave is nothing but a hole in the earth containing a rotting piece of matter with which the spirit has no farther connection, and that the spirit is very much the same after death as before, takes much interest in small, trivial and mundane matters and is very far from regarding his new existence as a solemn sacred and mysterious affair. If so, we do not see why we either should approach the departed spirit with long and serious faces or with any more unusual feelings than curiosity, interest and eagerness to acquire knowledge of the other world and communication with those we knew and foved in this, in fact, the ordinary human and earthly feelings existing between souls sundered by time and space, but still capable of communication. But Lord Curozn still seems to be labouring under the crude Christian co nception of the blessed dead as angels harping in heaven whose spotless plumes ought not to be roughly disturbed by human breath and of spiritual communication as a sort of necromancy, the spirit of Mr. Gladstone being summoned from his earthly bed and getting into it again and tucking himself up comfortably in his coffin
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after Julia and Mr. Stead have done with him. We should have thought that in the bold and innovating mind of India's only Viceroy these coarse European superstitions ought to have been destroyed long ago.
It is not however, Lord Curzon but Mr. Stead and the spirits with whom we have to deal. We know Mr. Stead as a pushing and original journalist, not always over refined or delicate either in his actions or expressions, skilful in the advertisement of his views, excitable, earnest, declamatory, loud and even hysterical, if you will, in some of his methods, but certainly neither a liar nor a swindler. He does and says what he believes and nothing else. It is impossible to dismiss his Bureau as an imposture or mere journalistic reclame. It is impossible to dismiss the phenomena of spirit communications, even with all the imposture that unscrupulous moneymakers have imported into them, as unreal or a deception. All that can reasonably be said is that their true nature has not yet been established beyond dispute. There are two conceivable explanations, one that of actual spirit communication, the other that of vigorously dramatised imaginary conversations jointly composed with wonderful skill and consistency by the subconscious minds, whatever that may be, of the persons present, the medium being the chief dramaturge of this subconscious literary Committee. This theory is so wildly improbable and so obviously opposed to the nature of the phenomena themselves, that only an obstinate unwillingness to admit new facts and ideas can explain its survival, although it was natural and justifiable in the first stages of investigation. There remains the explanation of actual spirit communication. But even when we have decided on this hypothesis as the base of our investigation, we have to be on our guard against a multitude of errors; for the communications are vitiated first by the errors and self-deceptions of the medium and the sitters, then by the errors and self-deceptions of the communicant spirits, and, worst of all, by deliberate deceit, lies and jugglery on the part of the visitants from the other world. The element of deceit and jugglery on the part of the medium and his helpers is not always small, but can easily be got rid of. Cheap scepticism and cheaper ridicule in such matters is only useful for comforting small brains and weak imaginations with a sense of superiority to the larger minds
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who do not refuse to enquire into phenomena which are at least widespread and of a consistently regular character. The true attitude is to examine carefully the nature of the phenomena, the conditions that now detract from their value and the possibility of removing them and providing perfect experimental conditions which would enable us to arrive at a satisfactory scientific result. Until the value of the communications are scientifically established, any attempt to use them for utilitarian, theatrical or yet lighter purposes is to be deprecated as such misuse may end in shutting a wide door to potential knowledge upon humanity.
From this point of view Mr. Stead's bizarre experiments are to be deprecated. The one redeeming feature about them is that, as conducted, they seem to remove the first elementary difficulty in the way of investigation, the possibility of human deceit and imposture. We presume that he has got rid of professional mediums and allows only earnest-minded and
honorable investigators to be present. But the other elements of error and confusion are encouraged rather than obviated by the spirit and methods of Mr. Stead's Bureau. First, there is the error and self-deception of the sitters. The spirit does not express himself directly but has to give his thoughts at third hand; they come first to the intermediary spirit, Julia or another, by her they are conveyed to the human medium and through him conveyed by automatic or conscious speech or writing to the listeners. It is obvious how largely the mind of the medium and, to a smaller but still great extent, the thought-impressions of the other sitters must interfere, and this without the least intention on their part, rather in spite of a strong wish in the opposite direction. Few men really understand how the human mind works or fitted to watch the processes of their own conscious and half-conscious thought even when the mind is disinterested, still less when it is active and interested in the subject of communication. The sitters interfere, first, by putting in their own thoughts and expressions suggested by the beginnings of the communication, so that what began as a spirit conversation ends in a tangle of the medium's or sitter's ideas with the little of his own that the spirit can get in now and then. They interfere not only by suggesting what they themselves think or would, say on the subject, but by
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suggesting what they think the spirit ought dramatically to think or say, so that Mr. Gladstone is made to talk in interminable cloudy and circumambient periods which were certainly his oratorical style but can hardly have been the staple of his conversation, and Lord Beaconsfield is obliged to be cynical and immoral in the tone of his observations. They interfere again by eagerness, which sometimes produces replies according to the sitter's wishes and sometimes others which are unpleasant or alarming, but in neither case reliable. This is especially the case in answers about the future, which ought never to be asked. It is true that many astonishing predictions occur which are perfectly accurate, but these are far outweighed by the mass of false and random prediction. These difficulties can only be avoided by rigidly excluding every question accompanied by or likely'" to raise eagerness or expectation and by cultivating entire mental passivity. The last however is impossible to the medium unless he is a practised Yogin, or in a trance or a medium who has attained the habit of passivity by an unconscious development, due to long practice. In the sitters we do not see how it is to be induced. Still, without unemotional indifference to the nature of the answer and mental passivity the conditions for so difficult and delicate a process of communication cannot be perfect.
Error and self-deception from the other side of the veil cannot be obviated by any effort on this side, all that we can do is to recognise that the spirits are limited in knowledge and cabined by character, so that we have to allow for the mental and moral equation in the communicant when judging the truth and value of the communication. Absolute deception and falsehood can only be avoided by de
chining to communicate with spirits of a lower order and being on guard against their masquerading under familiar or distinguished names. How far Mr. Stead and his circle have guarded against these latter errors we cannot say, but the spirit in which the sittings are conducted, does not encourage us to suppose that scrupulous care is taken in these respects. It is quite possible that some playful spirit has been enacting Mr. Gladstone to the too
enthusiastic circle and has amused himself by elaborating those cloudy-luminous periods which he saw the sitters expected from the great deceased Opportunist. But we incline to the view that what we have got in
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this now famous spirit interview, is a small quantity of Gladstone, a great deal of Stead and a fair measure of the disembodied Julia and the assistant psychics.
II
The vexed question of spirit communication has been a subject of permanent public controversy in England. So much that is of the utmost importance to our views of the world, religion, science, life philosophy, is crucially interested in the decision of the question, that no fresh proof or disproof, establishment or refutation of this genuineness and significance of spirit communications can go disregarded. But no discussion of the question which proceeds merely on first principles can be of any value. It is a matter of evidence, of the value of the evidence and of the meaning of the evidence. If the ascertained facts are in favour of spiritualism, it is no argument against the facts that they contradict the received dogmas of science or excite the ridicule alike of the enlightened sceptic and of the matter-of-fact citizen. If they are against spiritualism, it does not help the latter that it supports religion or pleases the imagination and flatters the emotions of mankind. Facts are what we desire, not enthusiasm or ridicule; evidence is what we have to weigh, not unsupported arguments or questions of fitness or probability. The improbability may be true, the probable entirely false.
In judging the evidence, we must attach especial importance to the opinion of men who have dealt with the facts at first hand. Recently, two such men have put succinctly their arguments for and against the truth of spiritualism. Mr. W. T. Stead and the famous conjurer, Mr. Maskelyne. We will deal with Mr. Maskelyne first, who totally denies the value of facts on which spiritualism is based. Mr. Maskelyne puts forward two absolutely inconsistent theories, first, that spiritualism is all fraud and humbug, the second, that is all subconscious mentality. The first was the theory which has
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hitherto been held by the opponents of the new phenomena, the second the theory to which they are being driven by an accumulation of indisputable evidence. Mr. Maskalyne, himself a professed master of jugglery and illusion, is naturally disposed to put down all mediums as irregular competitors in his own art; but the fact that a conjurer can produce an illusory phenomenon, is no proof that all phenomena are conjuring. He further argues that no spiritualistic phenomena have been produced when he could persuade Mr. Stead to adopt conditions which precluded fraud. We must know Mr. Maskelyne's conditions and have Mr. Stead's corroboration of this statement before we can be sure of the value we must attach to this kind of refutation. In any case we have the indisputable fact that Mr. Stead himself has been the medium in some of the most important and best ascertained of the phenomena. Mr. Maskalyne knows that Mr. Stead is an honourable man incapable of a huge and impudent fabrication of this kind and he is therefore compelled to fall back on the wholly unproved theory of the subconscious
mired. His arguments do not strike us as very. convincing. Because we often write without noticing what we are writing, mechanically, therefore, says this profound thinker, automatic Writing must be the same kind of mental process. The one little objection to this sublimely felicitous argument is that automatic writing has no resemblance whatever to mechanical writing. When a man writes mechanically, he does not notice what he is writing; when he writes automatically, he notices it carefully and has his whole attention fixed on it. When he writes mechanically, his hand records something that it is in his mind to write; when he writes automatically, his hand transcribes something which it is not in his mind to write and which is often the reverse of what his mind would tell him to write. Mr. Maskelyne farther gives the instance of a lady writing a letter and unconsciously putting an old address which, when afterwards questioned she could not remember. This amounts to no more than a fit of absent-mindedness in which an old forgotten fact rose to the surface of the mind and by the revival of old habit was reproduced in the paper, but again sank out of immediate consciousness as soon as the mind returned to the present. This is
a' mental phenomenon essentially of the same class as our continuing unintentionally to write the date
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of the last year even in this year's letters. In one case it is the revival, in the other the persistence of an old habit. What has to do with the phenomena of automatic writing which are of an entirely different class and not attended by absent-mindedness at all ? Mr. Maskelyne makes no attempt to explain the writing of facts in their nature unknowable to the medium, or of repeated predictions of the future, which are common in automatic communications.
On the other side Mr. Stead's arguments are hardly more convincing. He bases his belief, first, on the nature of the communications from his son and others in which he could not be deceived by his own mind and, secondly, on the fact that not only statements of the past, but predictions of the future occur freely. The first argument is of no value unless we know the nature of the communication and the possibility or impossibility of the facts stated having been previously known to Mr. Stead. The second is also not con clusive in itself. There are some predictions which a keen mind can make by inference on guess, but, if we notice the hits and forget the misses, we shall believe them to be prophecies and not ordinary previsions. The real value of Mr. Stead's defence of the phenomena lies in the remarkable concrete instance he gives of a prediction from which this possibility is entirely excluded. The spirit of Julia, he states, predicted the death within the year of an acquaintance who, within the time stated, suffered from two illnesses, in one of which the doctors despaired of her recovery. On each occasion the predicting spirit was naturally asked whether the illness was not to end in the death predicted, and on each she gave an unexpected negative answer and finally predicted a death by other than natural means. As a matter of fact, the lady in question before the year was out, leaped out of a window and was killed. This remarkable prophecy was obviously neither a successful inference nor a fortunate guess, nor even a surprising coincidence. It is a convincing and undisputable prophecy. Its appearance in the automatic writing canenly be explained either by the assumption that Mr. Stead has a sub
hymnal self, calling itself Julia, gifted with an absolute and exact power of prophecy denied to the man as we know him,—a violent, bizarre and unproved assumption, or by the admission that there was a communicant with superior powers, to ordinary humanity
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using the hand of the writer. Who that was, Julia or another, ghost, spirit or other being, is a question that lies beyond This controversy, with the worthlessness of the arguments on either side and the supreme worth of the one concrete and precise fact given, is a signal proof of our contention that, in deciding this question, it is not a priori arguments, but facts used for their evidential value as an impartial lawyer would use them, that will eventually prevail.
(Karmayogin)
SRI AUROBINDO
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CHAPTER IV
PAINTING (Contd)
FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT
BAROQUE painting launched upon its sumptuous career in Bologna. It was gorgeous and imposing with its lavish decorations and a somewhat exaggerated incorporation of some of the characteristics of the Florentine, Mantuan, and Venetian styles. El Greco (1548-1615) the Spaniard, can be called a precursor of Baroque painting. He was a foreigner who had made Spain his home. His painting is distinguished by a deft delineation of feelings and emotions, and he did not scruple to sacrifice traditional technique in order to be able to give a swaying intensity to them in his pictures. His outlook on life had a strong strain of the tragic, and his artistic creations, which he undertook more to please himself than the world—though he was very popular in spite of his unconventional ways—vibrate with a depth of religious pathos. In him we find a blend of the old and the new. He was a follower of the old Byzantian and Venetian styles in painting, but a modernist in his unconventional, non-conformist manner, which made free with the accredited technique. He was a child of the past, having faith in the Catholic religion and a touch of mysticism, but his spirit rebelled against the technical extravagance of the Baroque tradition, and, breaking loose from it, forged new modes of self-expression. This born rebel in El Greco makes him one of the inaugurators of modernism.
Velasquez (1599-1660) presents a striking contrast to El Greco. He was little influenced by Italian painting, and had nothing of the religious or mystic vein of El Greco. He was a staunch realist, having his feet firmly planted on earth. His pictures have a perfection of line and colour, and reveal such a cold, matter-of-fact outlook on life
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that he may be called a modern of the moderns. He had no poetry in him and little imagination, and in this he represents a more decided step of seventeenth century painting towards the manner of the moderns than did El Greco, and a more vigorous and definite swing towards modern realism. He portrayed the social life of Spain, and his realistic, objective approach, made even his religious pictures glow with an arresting vividness. That his fame has been reinstated in the recent years bears witness to the strong elements of modernity his genius embodied.
There was a great flowering of the art of painting in the Netherlands. This painting, called genre,1 concerned itself not with the portrayal of the voluptuous luxury of the rich nobility and the higher strata of aristocratic society, but introduced a noteworthy tendency towards the life and manners of the middle-class men, men of trade and commerce, the manufacturers and the people of the towns. Though with a pronounced streak of sentimentality, genre painting was realistic, dealing with scenes of nature and appealing to the people through representations of the objects of every-day use.
Mention must here be made of the Haarlem school of painting which produced remarkable artists like Ruysdael and Frans Hals. Ruysdael was probably the greatest landscape painter of the Netherlands, next to Rembrandt. About his famous picture, "Mill near Duurstede", Henry S. Lucas says : "The placid stream, the sky mottled with patches of color, the town lying in deep shadow, and the tall mill near it lighted by straggling beams from the declining sun reveal the poetry of Dutch landscapes."2 Frans Hals had a fluent brush, and he excelled in portrait painting, in which he showed an unfailing eye for the essential and the vivid. His method was impressionistic, and the Impressionists of the latter part of the nineteenth century were influenced by it. Another painter of eminence to influence the Impressionists of the modern times was John Vermeer, who had also an eye for the essentials, and a purely realistic style. The name most honoured in Dutch painting is however, Rembrandt (1606-1669) whose mastery of technique and consummate handling
1 It was called "genre", because most of its motifs were realistic treatment of the scenes of everyday life.
2 A Short History of Civilisation by Henry Lucas.
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of light and shade geared to a thoughtful and poetic temperament made him one of the most universally admired painters in the West. He united in himself most of the qualities, psychological and aesthetic, which endow a painter with a harmonious greatness, and therein lies the secret of his influence on many of the modern painters. He painted portraits, landscapes and groups of people with such uniform excellence, such marvellous use of colour that, in his field of the realistic painting of the common scenes and objects of daily life, he stands unrivalled. But what he lacked was higher idealism, a flight of imagination, which invests some of the pictures of the Middle ages and the High Renaissance with an unearthly magnificence. His world was confined to the visible, the commonplace, and the homely. But he drew out of ordinary stuff such a meaning and significance, such an aesthetic appeal and charm, and achieved such a perfection of form by a harmonious blend of richness and restraint, simplicity and grandeur, vigour and delicacy, and the exceptional and the humdrum that his pictures have always met with universal appreciation. Not for him the radiant peaks and tapering spires of vision and experience, but the rolling plains of grey-green scenes, and the warmth and colour of common human life. His imagination, his psychological insight, and his idealism, in whatever measure he possessed it, are all harnessed to the service of the forms and interests of the phenomenal world of our daily experience. This is, indeed, the secret of his art, and it marks him as one of the most potent forces in the shaping and guiding of the modern creative mind in painting.
While the painters of the northern Netherlands were realistic in the secular sense, like Hals, Vermeer, and Rembrandt, those of the southern were realists with a pronounced strain of religiosity. The former were protestants with a rather dry, matter-of-fact sense of religious morality, but the latter were Catholics, not of the devout Mediaeval type, but those without any romance and higher idealism. Rubers (1577-1640) was a painter of outstanding merit. He was more secular, more of the earth earthy than Rembrandt. His religious pictures are at best only human figures drawn with a halo of myth and legend round them. He signalises another decisive step towards the secular, realistic, objective painting of the nineteenth century, which occupied itself exclusively with the outer appearance of
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things. Rubens was remarkably prolific in artistic creation, and his exuberance was matched only by his unwearied enthusiasm. Excitement, agitation, wildness of movement, which in lesser artists might have resulted in a welter and confusion, lent themselves gracefully to the general harmony of his conception and" scheme. He summed up in himself the main traditions of the Flemish painting, but he belonged to the future not only by his secular realism, but by his strong, active and pragmatic temperament, and his introduction of the commercial spirit into his art. He deserves the epithet of banal which Herbert Read bestows upon him; for, indeed, he took "the actual for the ideal," and thereby showed his basic affinity to the modern scientific spirit. He was a striking contrast to El Greco, and represents the modern tendency of revolt against the past, leading not to an unfettered scaling of the heights of idealistic vision of beauty and perfection, but to a masterful dealing with the visible factors of life in the interests of an art which has turned its back upon the spiritual and the intangible, and lavishes much of its devotion upon the concrete and the tangible.
RISHABHCHAND
(to be continued)
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READINGS IN THE BRIHADARANYAKA
UPANISHAD
DEATH
SO far regarding liberation from death. But what exactly is death ? " Is" it just a sudden happening, an event that comes to be at a particular moment and terminates the bodily existence ? No, says the Upanishad, death is not something that comes all of a sudden and ends everything. It is a continuous process of wearing down life and the body that houses it, and it is only the climax, the final precipitation into extinction of life that is known by the name. There is, in the life of man, a perpetual going forth and coming back- of his energies on the impulsion of desire; the senses, through their organs, leap forth at every object that comes by, seize it and occupy themselves with it. Another object sails into view and again the same process of seizure and appropriation. According as the object is one of like or dislike, there is augmentation or diminution of the nervous energy. Either way there is a spending, a constant outflow that depletes the life-energy and sets afoot a movement of steady disintegration. Death is slowly preparing itself. What are the doors of this outflow of life-force, the senses and their instruments, and what are the objects that overpower our senses this wise ? That is the question that is next asked of Yajnavalkya.1
Artabhaga, of the line of Jaratkaru, next, rises and asks :
Yajnavalkya, how many are the seizers and how many the over-seizers ? How many are the senses that seize the objects ? How many are the objects that overpower the senses and drag them to themselves ?
Yajnavalkya : Eight are the seizers and eight the over-seizers. Artabhaga : What then are the eight that seize and the eight that over-seize ?
Yajnavalkya : Prana, Breath,2 is the seizer; and fragrance that
1 111.2
2 standing for smell, organ of smell.
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is wafted on the breath that brings it1 is the over-seizer. It is the fragrance that attracts the sense of smell and impinges itself upon it through the incoming breath. This is the first.
Speech is the seizer; Name—and what is denoted by name—is the over-seizer. For by Speech, indeed, are the names i.e. words (and their meanings, artha) expressed. This is the second.
The tongue is the seizer; taste is the over-seizer. By the tongue, indeed, one knows the tastes. This is the third.
The eye is the seizer; form is the over-seizer. By the eye, indeed, one sees the forms. This is the fourth.
The ear is the seizer; sound is the over-seizer. By the ear, indeed, one hears the sounds. This is the fifth.
The mind is the seizer; desire is the over-seizer. By the mind, indeed, one cherishes the desires.
The hand is the seizer; action is the over seizer. By the hands, indeed, is action done. This is the seventh.
The skin is the seizer; touch is the over seizer. By the skin, indeed, one feels the touches. This is the eighth.
These are the eight that seize and these the eight that over-seize.
If such are the constituent agents of death,—and they are ubiquitous—, is Death the final truth ? Or is there anything that is greater, what can overpower and swallow Death itself ? Evidently there is Something. Otherwise life would not preponderate over death. That is the next question that Artabhaga addresses to Yajnavalkya.
Yajnavalkya, if all this is food for Death, what Deity is that to whom Death itself is the banquet ?
Yajnavalkya replies that Death which swallows all is indeed Agni that consumes all. And even as this Agni is swallowed up by waters, so too Death is contained by the Waters of Life, streams of the Consciousness-Energy in which all creation is afloat. And he who meditates upon this truth and realises that death is not the last but that beyond it is Immortality which is in the keeping of the pure Waters of the Divine Consciousness, conquers further death.
1 apāna, apānīyatvāl .
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What happens, in such a case of liberation, to the senses, to the personalities that are formed round them ? This is the next question of Artabhaga. Do they go forth with the person when he leaves ?
No, replies Yajnavalkya. They are all dissolved here itself in the embodiment. All the dead weight is left in the material body and only the liberated being, the soul goes to its destination, leaving solely his Glory behind.
But what of the ordinary man in ignorance ? Surely, all is not dissolved. There is something that persists and summons the soul back to mortal existence. Asks Artabhaga :
Yajnavalkya, when on his death, his speech attains to its universal Cause—the stuff from which it derives—Agni; when his prana attains to the wind; the eye to the sun; the mind to the moon; the ear to the quarters; the body to the earth; the ether in the heart to the skies; the hairs of the body to the annual herbs; the hairs of the head to the trees; blood and semen to the waters; where does the soul, the-purusha remain ?
Too profound a question to be discussed in the public,—so feels Yajnavalkya and takes Artabhaga by the hand elsewhere. And in secret they deliberate." We only know what they conclude upon : the soul rests on its karma, in the folds of the lasting, potent impressions gathered during its life-time. And according as this karma is good or evil, meritful or sinful, so will his next embodiment be, good or evil, meritful or sinful.
Artabhaga, of the line of Jaratkaru, had no more questions. He remained silent.
M. P. PANDIT
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Space and Time constitute the boundaries of our daily lives. They are the enclosures within whose confines our mental, vital, physical life can move and have its freedom, but not beyond. We are often inclined to trace the source of our unhappiness to this limitation which seems to baulk our efforts and stall our progress whether in the material or in the spiritual field. It is a far cry in Space between this world of Ignorance and the transcendent kingdom of Knowledge and Bliss; it is a far cry in Time between our aspiration for Knowledge and our realisation of it in life Have we not often felt how happier we would be if we could only be freed from our subjection to Space, Time and Causality? It is therefore not surprising that in our frustration we come to regard Space and Time, if not as instruments of torture, as elements which are inimical to our peace, progress and happiness !
But is this denunciation justified? Can we not, on the contrary, point our accusing finger at the limitation of our own perception, of the receptivity of our own senses? For example, our senses as constituted in us can see the world in a three-dimensional space only, but conceivably Space may have more dimensions than three, of which our senses due to some inherent limitation of their own are unaware. Let us take the case of a being in a single-dimensional world. To that being whose perception does not extend beyond sensations, the whole universe appears as the Line; going beyond the Line would seem to the being as if going into nothingness. It is only aware of a series of emerging points on the line; one point comes into view, disappears; another point then issues forth, disappears, so on. The points that disappear are described as the past and the points that are yet to emerge as the future. All the dimensions other than the Line appear to that being as a mysterious movement in the category of Time. If this being can rise to the domain of two-dimensional space, it will perceive that what appeared in the lower status as a movement into the past and movement from the future is now a higher dimension of Space. Its perception and movement are now bounded by the
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length and breadth of the plane, but the dimension of 'above and below' and 'the right and the left' is shrouded in mystery; so are the sections of the plane which appear to come from the future and disappear into the past. When this being of two-dimensional world rises beyond its plane it will see the object as we see it in our three-dimensional space. But are we certain that the view of the objects as perceived by our senses is the whole and real view and is not itself a sectional view of some other mysterious entity of which we are quite ignorant? In other words, is not our Time-perception an intimation of a yet higher dimension of Space of which we may become aware if we increase the receptivity of our senses? Time then may be regarded as invisible Space; when the visibility of Space increases, the sphere of Time becomes smaller and smaller.
Is Time then an illusion? Pragmatically at any rate it is real to us. The young tree in the backyard was a sapling about a year ago and in the fullness of Time will grow into a giant tree. Time's influence is very much in evidence. When we reflect how we have been adding years to our age, Time is poignantly real to us. It may be that what has passed away is here with us in a higher dimension of Space, but since we do not possess that higher dimensionality, Time is quite real, but its reality is derived from the limitation of Space-perception. Is Space then real ? Judged by its reference to Time it does appear to be intrinsically real. But we have seen that the dimensions of Space have no fixity as they depend upon the scale of observation which the observer brings to his act of perception. Theoretically we can go on increasing the dimensions of Space, with their corresponding Time-relation, to infinity, or we can equally postulate Space without dimensions. And what is Space without dimensions or Space with infinite dimensions? Have we arrived somewhere? Are we Knocking at the gates of Something, an Absolute, a Reality, which is spaceless and timeless or which is itself Space and Time?
When we attempt to reach the root of any aspect of the manifest world we are led to suppose that beyond its form, beyond its appearance, there must exist some sort of causal state, some undifferentiated continuum, of which that particularised form would be an apparent development. The first of the continua underlying all perceptible forms appears to be Space. The Indian philosophy defines Space as
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a limitless, undifferentiated indivisible continuum and relative space as imaginary divisions built in it. Similarly Time is called an 'indivisible rod' (akhanda-dandāyamāna) and is the second perceptible continuum. The absolute Time which is ever-present eternity seems inseparable from Space. Relative Time results from the apparent divisions of Space. The third continuum is Thought. The visible universe is looked upon as a form of Thought of its creator. Whenever we go to the root of anything we find behind substance a form, a concept whose nature is identified with that of Thought.
If we regard the cosmos as the manifestation of a conscious power then there must be a conscious substratum for each of the three perceptible continua of Space, Time and Thought. The substratum of Space is Existence (Sat), the substratum of Time is Experience or Enjoyment (Ananda) and the substratum of Thought is Consciousness (Cit). Before there can be location, place, dimension, there must be something to locate, some sort of existence. Hence Existence must pre-exist Space. The principle of perception pre-exists Time. The first principle of experience is said to correspond to pure, absolute Bliss the innermost nature of Existence. Says the Upanishad : "From Bliss alone are these creatures born and being born they live by Bliss and to Bliss they go hence and return." The substratum of Thought is Consciousness and implies someone conscious of the existence of Thought. Therefore Consciousness as the fundamental substratum of Thought is linked with the notion of individual existence, or self, or being. Behind the individual is yet a further substratum, a formless Immensity, which appears as the innermost nature of things and can be realised as the Self, Soul, Atman.
The soul is thus the unity that links up all individual beings. It is the indivisible Continuum in which beings appear as individual conscious units. Everything existing contains a part of the universal Soul, just as every form encloses a part of Space and every duration a part of Time. The individual soul is at no time really separated from the Atman. The three continua of Space-Time-Thought can be" considered to be different aspects of one further, still more subtle causal substratum. This is called the Absolute, Brahman. It is the ultimate state in which Existence, the source of spatial form, Consciousness of knowledge, the basis of thought; and eternity of duration, the basis
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of Experience or Enjoyment, are united. This ultimate principle is beyond reach of form, of thought and experience. It is beyond all categories of manifestation, beyond divisible time, beyond divisible space. "There sight attaineth not, nor speech attains, nor the mind. We know not, nor can we discern. How one should teach that ?"— says the Upanishad. This Immensity, this Unknown, this Absolute is the innermost nature of everything.
Space and Time lend themselves to divergent approaches and different view points. We can so visualise Space as to make Time appear either unreal or as only a dimension of Space. Or we can deal with Time exclusively assigning a secondary status to Space. Or we can conceiye of a many-sided relationship of Space and Time and derive widely differing interpretations of their nature and function. All this is possible or even inevitable because Space and Time are intimately related to Being and Consciousness. Now Being is one, Consciousness is one; in fact, at the summit both Being and Consciousness are inseparably one. In certain aspects Being is in the front, Consciousness behind; in some other aspects Consciousness takes the lead keeping Being in obscurity. Being and Consciousness are the fundamental aspects of the one omnipresent Reality. This Reality in its unmanifest state is the spaceless and timeless Absolute of which our mind can know nothing. It is indefinable and ineffable by our mental thought and mental language, and is only seizable in its fundamental aspects and manifested powers by a spiritual consciousness and a spiritual knowledge by identity.
The Absolute manifests itself in two terms, a Being and a Becoming. Being is the fundamental reality and Becoming the effectual reality. Being informs, inheres and constitutes Becoming and is always present in it. But such is the magic of the Infinite that Being and Becoming appear to our view as if they are two and separate. This distinction can be so striking that it is possible in one case to affirm the reality of Being, treating Becoming as an illusion or only phenomenally real, or, in the other case, to identify with Becoming exclusively by denying the reality of Being. The truth of Being and Becoming is that Being goes into hiding (or seeking) itself in Becoming in a descending order of involution and Becoming in turn seeks after Being in an ascending order of evolution. Becoming knows itself
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fully when it knows itself as Being. To realise Being in Becoming and at the same time possess Becoming in the plenary freedom of Being is the true self-knowledge, the true aim of our terrestrial life.
Where Being is, Consciousness is there too, for one is the expression of the other. And when Being starts wearing disguises and going places in Becoming (in the Eternal's game of hide and seek), Consciousness follows suit. The Superconscient descends into an involutionary self-forgetfulness at various levels of consciousness reaching an apparent negation of Itself in utter Inconscience, and the evolutionary return journey commencing from Inconscience courses progressively through the lower terms of Matter, Life and Mind and then through the higher term of Supermind to the summit of Superconscient Sachchidananda.
Space and Time can now be related to Being and Consciousness. There is the immobile status of an eternal Reality which is spaceless and timeless. In this status there is no time movement or time experience of a past, present and future. All is held unmanifested, in essence, in an eternal unity, in a supreme timeless Existence. It is the Spirit looking at itself, indrawn, self-absorbed in its essence and principle of being. In another poise of the same Reality, that which is unmanifested in the timeless status, that which is intended to be brought forth into manifestation, appears in Time in movement. It is now the Spirit looking at itself in the dynamism of its essence and principle. The Spaceless and Timeless and Space and Time are therefore one and the same Eternal in a two-fold aspect. The Un-manifest, the Absolute, the Spaceless and Timeless enters manifestation to discover Itself, so to say, in relativities and in Space and Time. Space and Time are the name we give for the self-extension of the one Spaceless and Timeless Reality. If we regard Space as a static extension in which things stand or move in a fixed order, and Time as a mobile extension, and relate both to the one Reality, then Space would be Brahman in self-extended status and Time would be Brahman in self-extended movement. Or if we regard Space not as something static but as something that is constantly moving, the constancy giving the impression of stability and mobility creating the sense of time-movement in a stable space, very much like a moving train appearing stationary to the traveller inside it engrossed in
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witnessing the rushing landscape, then in this view Space and Time would not be separate self-extensions but a dual aspect of one and the same self-extension of the cosmic Eternal.
In the dynamism of its movement the Spirit may take its poise in different gradations of consciousness with corresponding views of Space and Time appropriate to each gradation. Each status of consciousness has its own Space and Time and even within each status different Space and Time exist. A purely physical Space might be regarded" either as a self-extension of material Energy or its self-formed existence-field in which it formulates its action and creation. Time would be either itself a course of this movement or a division or continuum maintaining the continuity of the movement and at the same marking off its succession, as in the analogy of a running man in which each step that he takes is separate but there is something that takes the step and yet makes the movement continuous Or Time would be a dimension of Space necessary for the complete action of the Energy but not recognised by us as such because it is not perceived by our senses in the same way as the other dimensions of Space are perceived but is seen by our consciousness subjectively. As Matter has its field of Space, Mind too has its own. Mind Space, however, is subtler than the physical Space; it is not a material but a spiritual Space in which Mind lives and moves. Beyond Mind there is the pure spiritual Space into which all movement seems to disappear. These gradations are, however, not trenchantly separated or insulated one from the other. There is an interpenetration. Mind, for instance, while moving in its own subtler Space can effectuate a movement in the Space of Matter even at a distance.
As with Space, so with Time. Each state of consciousness has its own Time-relation. Physical consciousness has its own sense and measure of Time; Mind consciousness and Mind Space have their own. As being in one plane can act on the consciousness of other planes and vice versa, it is perfectly possible to have variable time-relations of different statuses and co-existence of different time-movements. In a dream, for example, Time appears to be stretched; events seem to occur in long sequences and yet the dream may have taken not more than a
few seconds of physical time. To sum up in the words of Sri "Aurobindo : "...a given Time or Space or any
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given Time-Space as a whole is a status of being in which there is a movement of the consciousness and force of the being, a movement that creates or manifests events and happenings; it is the relation of the consciousness that sees and the force that formulates the happenings, a relation inherent in the status, which determines the sense of Time and creates our awareness of Time-movement, Time-relation, Time-measure. In its fundamental truth the original status of Time behind all its variations is nothing else than the eternity of the Eternal, just as the fundamental truth of Space, the original sense of its reality, is the infinity of the Infinite."
Sri Aurobindo refers to the three different states of consciousness which the Being can have with regard to its own eternity. First, in the immobile status of its essential existence the Self is wholly turned upon itself; there is no development of consciousness in movement. This is the timeless Eternity. In the second state, the Being's whole-consciousness is turned towards a simultaneous view of what we call the past, present and future—a total vision of Time eternity without division or distinction; it is a vast spiritual bird's eye view, so to Speak, in which the three times coalesce into a single panorama. This is the stable Consciousness knowing itself in Time indivisibly and embracing all the mobile experience of the Time-self on the foundation of the immobile timeless Self. In Sri Aurobindo's terminology, this is the simultaneous integrality of Time.'1 In the third state, the Consciousness-Force works out in successive movements and relations, i.e. in Time-movement, all things seen by it in the static vision of the Eternal. Thus the Consciousness can observe the whole Time-movement itself uninvolved in it, or it can take a stable position within the movement and see the three times simultaneously in a fixed or destined succession, or it can move with Time-movement from moment to moment and see the events that have happened recede into the past and those yet to happen coming from the future, or it can concentrate on the moment itself and see nothing but what is in the present. This simultaneous vision or experience is -not only possible but perfectly normal and consistent to the. being of the
1 This triple knowledge of Time, trikāla drsti, is not the normal awareness of our ordinary consciousness although we can attain to that consciousness through appropriate yogic diciplines
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Infinite. To the finite consciousness, on the contrary, this simultaneity of vision far from being logical and consistent presents an unbridgeable opposition or a contradiction. But what appear as contraries to the finite reason are indeed complimentaries to the higher consciousness. It is because the normal function of the mind is to deal with finite things as finite, but when it comes to the question of spiritual experience which is itself the whole or contains the whole in itself the mind has a penchant to carry its segmenting reason there too and cuts a line of section between the Infinite and the finite. No wonder it runs into contradictions and irreconcilable oppositions. To understand the Infinite and the Eternal the consciousness must consent to pass beyond its finite reason to a larger reason, from a finite sense to a spiritual sense.
Again we do not possess this integral vision because we are limited in our consciousness and being. In our normal awareness we are neither the eternal Superconscient nor the utterly Inconscient, although both these extreme terms exercise a definitive influence on us. In the middle term of our separative existence, bounded by the limitations of Space and Time, we live a life of many-sided Ignorance mistaking our first view of things as the whole view, our surface living for the whole truth of our existence. We are absorbed in the present moment and capable of acting only in the present. The past has streamed away from us never to return or be re-lived except for a modicum of memory which does duty for us by recalling the past, not the whole past for that matter, but only a conceptual shadow of it. Of the future we know not all for it is not in the present and therefore for us not in existence. But to the true consciousness which is within us the past is very much in existence, it is as much active, living and productive as the present can be. The future too is an open book to it for somewhere in our inner being there is a field of cognition to which is open the knowledge of "perspective as well as a retrospective Time-sense, Time-vision, Time-perception," in which we can live indivisibly in the three times containing all their apparent division.
In Ignorance, we live in ego from moment to moment within the confines of our individual body, life and mind. To rise beyond Ignorance is to awaken to a concrete sense of our eternal self-existence
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beyond the mutations of physical births and deaths, beyond our transitory existences in this and other worlds. The realisation of Spirit's timeless existence is the true immortality. There is also a secondary term of this immortality which has its truth; it is the perpetual continuity of some intermediate term which exists from life to life, from world to world, which is not the timeless Eternal but which expresses itself in perpetuity in eternal Time. This intermediate term is what is called our true being, the true spiritual individual within us, which is distinct from our superficial ego with whom we are identified in our surface consciousness and movements. By the knowledge of self in Non-Birth and Non-Being we attain to the realisation of our timeless immortality. By the knowledge and birth and becoming we realise the time-immortality of our spiritual being through all changes of mind and life and body. It is 'Timelessness translated into Time manifestation.' The first realisation frees us from the bondage to births and deaths; the second realisation in conjunction with the first confers a free possession, with right knowledge, the experiences of the spirit in its successions of time-eternity. Then shall we exist consciously in eternity and not in the bondage of the hour and the succession of the moment, and, at the same time, shall possess and govern from that inner eternity of being the course and process of the becoming, a dynamic condition with a spiritual self-possession and self-mastery.
Man need not remain in the finite mind tied to a moment-to-moment vision; his life and movement need not be restricted to the confines of a narrow physical Space and Time-vision. He has at his disposal well-tried spiritual disciplines whose aids he can seek in transcending his present imperfect human consciousness and gaining the heights of spiritual consciousness. He possesses in himself the necessary equipment to cross the frontiers of Ignorance and enter the realms of plenary Knowledge.
The crux of the problem, therefore, is Ignorance in which man finds himself today. But Ignorance is only a stage in the human evolution, the soul's brief halting place in its long arduous journey from the depths of Inconscient from which it has risen to the heights of the Spirit, its original home. Man can ill afford to make what is only a stage as his terminus and remain 'an insect crawling among
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other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud' in the immensities of Space, and be carried helplessly, as it were, along the stream of Time more a slave than a master of his life or circumstance. He cannot rest content with an awareness of a modicum of his past, unable to look beyond his nose, let alone the distant future, and live in a few fleeting moments of the present. The evolutionary Force which has picked him from the mud and has carried him "on its crest so long will not allow him to rest by the wayside indefinitely, or permit him meandering in the bypaths of Ignorance looking for will-o'-the-wisp. It is sure to carry him on its journey into the main stream of a higher evolutionary endeavour but if the tempo is to be stepped up man must become a conscious participant in this high purpose. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have assured us that this higher evolutionary trend is in the direction of an ascent from Mind to Supermind followed by a descent of the Supramental Consciousness and Force into the being effectuating a radical transformation of Mind, Life and Matter. That is the ideal set before us. It is a supreme adventure to be undertaken, a supreme goal to be reached. For to reach, possess and be possessed by Supermind is to possess a dynamic Truth-perspective of the Man, the Universe and the Transcendent, a totality of an integral Vision in which the Spaceless and Space, the Timeless and Time are telescoped.
KESHAVAMURTI
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III
MATERIAL, ECONOMIC ORGANISATION AND ETHICS
IN THE COLLECTIVE LIFE
"What the modern spirit has sought for is the economic social ultimate,—an ideal material organisation of civilisasation and comfort, the use of reason and science and education for the generalisation of a utilitarian rationality which will make the individual a perfected social being in a perfected economic society."1
"At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny... "2
''REASON, science and education" are the means by which the modern spirit wants to create individual and collective perfection. What remains of the old spiritual values is "moralised humanitarianism" and "Social ethicism" : these are to replace the old religious spirit and spiritual idealism.
Granting that the economic stress has a legitimate place in any scheme of reconstruction of collective life, the need to consider the adequacy of the psychological means, which modern man proposes to employ, remains.
"Reason and Science" as psychological means can only help but are not Sufficient to solve the problems now facing humanity. This is, perhaps, being granted even by votaries of reason and Science now after the experience the world has had during the last forty years.
I want to deal particularly with the item, "Social ethicism" —in fact, with ethics as an effective means to solve human problems. It is very likely that the beginning of ethics was the sense of recoil
1 The Life Divine, p.932.
2 Ibid., p. 933.
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that even the primitive man felt from painful experiences of life. Then the growth of the sense of good and evil—particularly the sense of evil—was connected with the mind of desire; that is to say, good and evil had sensational value, what gave pleasure was good and what was painful was bad or evil.
Then the sense of good and evil advanced from the field of individual experience to society and acquired a utilitarian value; what was considered beneficial to Society was 'good' and its opposite was 'bad'.
Really speaking the sensational and utilitarian views of good and evil can hardly be called 'ethical'. When reason intervenes and tries to determine some principle or law of ethics, then the idealistic value of ethics comes into being. There is even a religious basis of ethics, declaring on the authority of religion what is good and what is bad. Conceptions of Truth and righteousness are determined by religion. For those that have a spiritual bent the Upanishad draws the distinction between 'Preyas', the pleasant, and 'Shreyas', 'what is conducive to welfare'. The rational approach gives only the relative value to ethics because mind can only be selective. What is 'good' for one mind is 'bad' for some other mind. Besides, the mind gives ethics a form in thought and in action of life which becomes more or less an artificial construction, not a spontaneous expression. Still, with all its limitations, ethics, the sense of moral values of good and evil, is an indispensable stage in evolution. It arises from the perception of possibility of a higher idealistic—intellectual—harmony instead of the prevalence of a lower movement in man's nature—the movement that he inherits from the animal and from the inconscience from which he has evolved. The aim of ethics is, really speaking, not to destroy the parts of nature that are wedded to the lower harmony, but to convert them—by first controlling them—"to lesson, to tame, purify and prepare to be fit instruments" for the higher harmony which the mind and heart of man perceive as necessary for perfection.
There is in fact a deeper basis of ethics, apart from the relative and selective basis of intellect, an inward sanction, and intuitive sense or a psychic tact which is traditionally known as 'Conscience'.
Morality has thus to do more with the will than with any other power of human psychology. But there are some thinkers who believe that morality gives knowledge. It is true in a certain sense,
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within certain limits : it gives one the knowledge of the world which is it conscient, it brings one in contact with the elemental powers of the subconscient and the lower vital nature. Secondly practice of ethics or morality tends to purify the ordinary nature and may serve as the beginning of dissolution of the ego which is a great obstacle in man's inner progress towards Truth. Ethics establishes active impersonal values in man's nature which require the subjugation of his ego. In the process of man's evolution out of Ignorance ethics is an indispensable stage.
At the basis of ethical endeavour there is "Will to attain perfection" in inner and outer life. Seeking for Truth, Good and Beauty is the sign that the will to perfection is awake. There are people who think that the duality that obtains in ethics—good and evil, truth' and falsehood, etc.—is eternal, that there are two eternally conflicting forces at the root of cosmic manifestation and man's progress lies in constantly choosing one against the other. But a little thinking will show that there is no reason to grant an eternal antinomy in the working of the cosmos. Duality, in fact, is only in the mind as a necessary mode for its action. But the opposites of Truth, Good and Beauty have no eternity about them. Of course, so long as one is in the mind, Good and Truth are also relative; but there is the absolute of Truth, the absolute of Good and of Beauty beyond Mind where there is no possibility of falsehood or evil. It is like darkness whose existence depends upon light but the contrary is not true.
Besides, though the first awakening to the sense of Truth, Good and Beauty generally comes to the mind, yet at its root it is much deeper. It is the soul of man that turns to these things because they are of its nature. In fact, awakening to ethical values—the attraction towards Truth, Good and Beauty, towards nobiliy, sacrifice and service, etc.—is the machinery provided by the Supreme Wisdom so that the all-pervading ignorance may slowly turn to the light of knowledge. Its ultimate aim is not merely to bring about a moral perfection but to lead the human being towards the Infinite. None of these great realities can be fully realised within the limits of mental consciousness. It is the curing of the split-existence that is the remedy.
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Sometimes an undue stress is given to external action in the practice of ethics. As a social and conventional rule there may not be much to say against it. But from the point of view of a deeper psychology one has to accept that action is not what it appears—it is the resultant of energy of being and there are many kinds of energies at work in producing a particular action. Action is the result of a very complex play of many forces. And we see that Nature admits strength, power, efficiency as elements in bringing about results in life. The value" of action depends upon its source in the being, for, externally the same action may be result of quite contrary forces.
Ethics accepts the position that life is a becoming and that there is a Truth -of becoming which man must realise. In that process of becoming through which the human soul evolves, the duality of good and evil, true and false, etc., belongs to the mind. The call- on the human soul is of the infinite, the human being has to rise to the cons-ciousness of Infinity. On that higher plane—the supermind-the soul rises above duality, because it goes beyond Mind and its ignorance. Ethics as the ultimate remedy is imperfect.
IV
It would be daring and even presumptuous to think that the problem of the origin of Ignorance would be finally and satisfactorily solved by exposition. I do not propose to make the attempt. Certain viewpoints may be suggested to help the seeker find the solution of the problem.
It must be emphasised at the beginning that Sri Aurobindo arrives at the solution of the problem on the basis of his spiritual experience. That is to say, it is not a metaphysical solution,—though it resorts to the method of metaphysics.
Attempts have been made to explain the origin of Ignorance on the basis of religious belief: accept a Satan, an Ahriman, or a Mara, as against God, Ahurmuzd, or Buddha, and you have an explanation of the origin of Ignorance, especially if you do not inquire as to who
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created Satan and his Compeers. Then, there is an eternal duality at the basis of creation, a power of good beneficent, all-knowing and a power of Evil, malevolent, obscuring.
It is also possible to explain Ignorance on the basis of monistic philosophy. According to it an Infinite Reality is the cause of the universe. Then the question how Ignorance could have originated from That remains to be answered. The general explanation is that Ignorance has no place in the Infinite Reality which is One. But then from where did Ignorance come ? Somehow or other, a principle opposed to the nature of the self-existent Reality, all-conscious and all-blissful, has succeeded in pervading the creation of that Reality : it is something "Anirvachaniya"—"indescribable". But the human being is bound to feel his Ignorance—it is an inescapable experience. Another important aspect of this experience is that man does not, and cannot, feel himself at home with Ignorance, it is not felt as native. There is a constitutional revolt against it from his nature and sometimes an active effort to eliminate it.
Monism posits an Absolute and Infinite as the only reality and it says that in it, this phenomenon of Ignorance has no place. It amounts to saying that the experience of ignorance is unreal.
But then the question remains : who experiences this Ignorance. Philosophical schools of so-called absolute monism assert that this unreal experience of ignorance is one due to the Mind, and Mind has no place in the Absolute, the ultimate Reality. Mind, according to them, is the creation of Maya, the power of Illusion, which imposes itself, somehow, on the Infinite. So, to get rid of Ignorance man must get rid of his mind. It is like proposing to a patient that he has to get rid of his limb by amputation in order to cure his malady. It may appear to be a short-cut but it is not easy, and its efficacy is not certain. One can always ask if that is the best method of cure.
Sri Aurobindo sees an Omnipresent Reality as the basis of this Universe. In terms of it he explains the phenomenon of Ignorance. At once the question arises : how can an all-wise, merciful, omnipresent, omniscient God inflict ignorance on his creation ? But Sri Aurobindo finds that this question is wrongly put, because the Reality being omnipresent does not inflict ignorance upon anybody else. Itself it assumes ignorance : God or the Omnipresent Reality
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has managed, on one status of Himself, to become ignorant. He has submitted Himself to a process which we feel as ignorance. This feeling of ignorance and of its infliction is the protest of the Divine in man.
So the question is : how has this self-division taken place in the One : how has the Divine become ignorant, subject to sorrow, suffering and pain and evil ?
We have to note that Consciousness is the fundamental fact of the cosmos. Consciousness is not simple, it is complex; it has a subconscient level which ends in the Inconscient, a waking outward-turned consciousness which is capable of partial knowledge and a superconscient level .which is the attainable potentiality. The infinite Brahman holds all of these in its integral being—it holds both Knowledge and Ignorance, Vidya and Avidya. At one pole of its being the Alone, the Timeless Self, the One immutable, is present with its dazzling Light. At the other pole is the broken light and mist, the mutable many, the One Self throwing itself in Mind and Life, in Time for. adventure. Thus we can say in the words of Sri Aurobindo : "Ignorance is the limited separative consciousness striving to become an integral consciousness."!
If the Omnipresent Reality is the basis then the phenomenon of ignorance cannot be something unknowable, or something that came about by an accident, or something which is non-existent. The dynamic character of Supreme is Omniscience, Omnipotence and Omnipresence. Ignorance, therefore, must be the result of the will of the Supreme. In fact, the Upanishad speaks of the Divine will as the creator of the world—and therefore of Ignorance. The character of this Ignorance in man is the separation of the knower from the object of knowledge—separation of the many from the One of whom they-are only variations based on fundamental unity. This division of the subjective consciousness has no place in Sachchidananda because nothing but the One exists in it, it is also not present in the Self because the Self is always identical with the One, the Infinite. The division of consciousness which is the root of human ignorance exists in Mind, it exists in Life and on the plane of the Body.
1 The Life Divine,
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Cosmic Ignorance is created by an act of concentration of the One in Prakriti : it has an essential concentration as Silence which becomes Inconscience in Nature; it has an integral concentration as Sachchidananda which becomes the Supermind creative of the cosmos; it has a multiple concentration which becomes the one over mind which gives rise to Mental, Vital and Physical worlds; it has a separative consciousness which becomes what we as individuals experience as Ignorance.
This Ignorance is due to exclusive concentration : that is, concentration which puts forward a part of self and holds back the rest of the self-knowledge behind. Thus a self-limitation takes place which gives rise to Ignorance, the true Being is not clouded but kept behind by the exclusive concentration. In fact, this exclusive concentration is purposeful and is within the exercise of freedom of the Self.
A similar phenomenon takes place—on a much smaller scale, of course, in the mental consciousness of the human being.
Generally the human being is exclusively concentrated in his outward personality and is oblivious of the Subliminal, the Sub-conscient and Superconscient and Psychic being. Even apart from these levels of consciousness, we find a temporary self oblivion, putting forward a personality and pushing behind the rest of the being, is often necessary to secure the highest effectivity of a particular aspect. For instance, a poet, an actor, or a soldier when concentrated on the task in hand becomes totally oblivious of his other parts and personalities : it is then that he gets his highest efficiency. Such an exclusive concentration, which is ignorance of the total self, is the condition for its highest effectivity as a personality. If the exclusive concentration and the resulting self-loss became permanent, that would give us some idea of the phenomenon of Ignorance in which the human being is the result of an exclusive concentration of the Infinite. The Infinite Brahman puts forward its power and knowledge only as a blade of grass and puts behind the rest of its infinity in order to manifest itself as a blade of grass.
Besides, the Supreme has not closed itself in the walls of Ignorance inescapably. He has kept and provided means of escape; only, the return to the Divine Self cannot be done without effort,
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without training.
Thus, Ignorance is not a blunder and a fall (as is ordinarily supposed), but a purposeful descent; "not a curse but a divine opportunity." (Ignorance pervades only Prakriti, it is not in the true self, it is not in the whole of oar being, it is active only in the Mind.)
A. B. PURANI
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EDUCATION
XV
MENTAL EDUCATION—IV
IN order to have a complete control of our action, we have to acquire a thorough control of our thoughts; and, as a means of perfecting and consolidating the control of thoughts, the Mother advocates the following :
"For that purpose it is good to set apart every day some time when one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put order into one's synthesis. Once the habit is acquired, you can maintain your control over thoughts even during work and action and you will be able not to let any come to the fore that is not useful to the thing undertaken..." 1 This method of going over one's thoughts and putting order into one's mental synthesis can be more easily done, if One has developed the power of concentration and sustained attention. The thoughts that are admitted or allowed in this state of concentration becomes all the more powerful and effective, for it is the desultory or discursive habit of the mind that impoverishes the power of thought.
When concentration deepens and becomes intense, it is found much easier than before to silence the mind altogether and open to the higher light of knowledge. Here, the Mother broaches a subject which has not been touched, or, if at all, only superficially touched by Western thought on education. Silence of the mind has been taken to belong to the exclusive province of contemplative or spiritual life. It has been thought that the springs of active life cannot be kept in gear if the mind remains silent or vacant. This wrong approach to education which has landed human culture and civilisation in the present sorry plight, stemmed, a few centuries ago, from the wrong idea that education was mere learning. In the beginning, learning
1 Sri Aurobindo and The Mother on Education,
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meant learning the classics and whatever else was included in the omnibus term 'humanities'. But later, it came to mean an elaborate drill in scraps of information. With the overriding domination of technology in the recent years, learning has meant the learning of the 'know-how' (not the 'know-why'), the learning of the knowledge of the parts and processes of the phenomenal Nature and the mechanism of material things. Matter and its constituents, life and the various play of its energies and the stages of its evolution as manifested in the vegetable kingdom and in animals and men, and the surface operations of the mind accessible to our perception in the long spectrum of animal and human psychology, have been considered the only field of learning. Ail this is, no doubt, to the good. Matter and life and mind have, indeed, to be known, and known fully and profoundly, if knowledge is held to be the goal of education. But the question, which is being insistently posed by the distracting confusion of ideologies and collapsing cultural values, is : What is knowledge ?
-Knowledge does not mean a mass of shallow conceptions, derived from observation and experiment. It does not mean a tissue of ideas and postulates based ultimately on sense-data and subject to frequent revision and rejection. It does not mean a swarm of blear-eyed hypotheses, milling round a single aspect of truth. Knowledge means a direct, immediate, revealing vision and perception of the Truth, the omnipresent Reality, which is indivisible even in its apparent parts and divisions, and organic and unified even in its infinitely multiplying diversities. The incorrigibly hypothetical nature of human knowledge has been causing a growing concern among the intellectual elite of today. They are waking more and more to the fragmentary, atomistic, derivative and uncertain character of the knowledge the diverse sciences and arts, in their increasing isolation, impart. The whole is not known, and therefore, nothing is known for certain. We see only its phases and aspects, but know not the total Reality.
All human knowledge is thus afflicted with imperfection and incompleteness. Why is it so? Why does not our education furnish us with the knowledge which is complete and abiding, and effective in restoring us to our own psychological health or wholeness ? It is because man's mind, being inveterately divisive and analytical, a breathless hunter of parts and parcels, is incapable of conceiving and
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receiving the whole, the undivided unity of existence. Its syntheses and aggregations are but a clumsy attempt to realise the infinite Reality in its own terms. What is needed is to release our consciousness1 into the Infinite, to silence the mind and pass out of it into the higher reaches and dimensions of Truth, or receive its influx into a hushed mind. Silence is the gate of exit and the portal of reception. The value of silence is, therefore, infinitely greater than that of the thinking, reasoning and concluding mind. The very object of education will be defeated, as it has been so long, if silence is not 'prescribed and practised both for the exploration of the higher domains of unifying knowledge and giving an assimilative and restorative relaxation to the active mind. An education that encourages constant mental activity only and does not teach the art of silencing or relaxing the mind produces but feeble brains and stunted and addled intellects.
It has been admitted by advanced scientists that there is a faculty in man which operates intermittently in poets and artists and scientists, and more steadily in mystics and prophets, and which is capable of revealing to us larger and surer truths than our mind, even in its highest flights, can ever apprehend. This faculty is called intuition, though the term is mostly used rather loosely and obscurely. It is also sometimes called inspiration. But, how do the poets, artists or prophets receive it ? We know from a large mass of authentic records that whenever, in intense moments of creative effort, their mental thought falls silent in an upward or inward tension of consciousness, there is an infiltration, an afflatus. Something from beyond the normal horizons of the mind comes with a flash of light or a thrilled accent of its own, a strain of unearthly melody or the blazing glory of a divine form. The vision or experience is undeniable and transporting. This creative faculty can be systematically cultivated by, among other means, a habit of silencing the external mind and diving into a state of an intent, aspiring, and receptive concentration. For, it is an age-old truth that concentration is the key to all knowledge. In education it should be an integral part of the method of teaching to inculcate the habit of silence. It is not that all thinking has to be stopped or
1 Consciousness and mind are not synonymous. Mind is only a limited and specialised field Of consciousness.
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discouraged, but the student must learn to acquire the power to suspend his mental thought from time to time, even as he acquires the power to control it, and glide into the depths of his consciousness. The result of this cultivation of silence will be a golden harvest of raptures and radiances of knowledge of which the human mind has no conception. Thought itself will then become luminous, spontaneous, and revealing—stamped with a suprarational authenticity of its own. It will not derive from a laborious process of reasoning, nor find itself clashing with other thoughts. Each thought will enter naturally and gracefully into the swelling harmony of a calm mind.
As I have said above, mental silence is a great restorative power, "...in most-people who have a somewhat developed and active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is put under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the. control of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in excessive and often incoherent activities. This creates a great tension ending in fatigue and diminution of mental faculties."1
The art of giving sufficient rest to the mind, as we give rest to the body, has to be taught to the student. Some rest can be given to the mind by changing the subject of thought, but it is only in silence that the mind can have full and health-giving repose.
To sum up, silence is indispensable for two reasons : for affording repose and relaxation, and through rest and relaxation, health and tone to the mind and its faculties, and for creating a congenial atmosphere for the infiltration of intuition and inspiration. The alarming increase in psycho-neurosis among intellectuals today, ending sometimes in partial or complete insanity, is the logical consequence of unrestrained mental activity. Books, periodicals, newspapers etc. are multiplying at such a staggering speed that there is no time for their readers to" devote to deep and sustained reflection. Superficiality, atrophy of the creative faculties like intuition and imagination, and the "diminution of mental faculties" of which the Mother speaks' are the doleful outcome. Great intellects can only be an exception in such a cramping age of mediocrities.
The Mother further says that if one knew how to remain in a
1 Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Education,
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receptive silence of the mind, all mental problems would be easily solved. Agitated or hurried thought is confused and impotent, and it is only in an intent calm that the light of higher knowledge can manifest and "open new horizons to man's capacity." Reason, fully developed, can be transcended in silence, and the doors of intuition opened.1
(To be continued)
RISHABHCHAND
1 "...It is the office of reason to distinguish and define. The infinite, therefore, cannot be ranked among its objects. You can only apprehend the infinite by a faculty superior to reason, by entering into a state in which you are your finite self no longer—in which the divine essence is communicated to you...It is the liberation of your mind from its finite consciousness."'-Plotinus
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NATIONALISM AND COSMOPOLITANISM IN
LITERATURE : INDIAN OUTLOOK*
INDIAN literature is one of the oldest in the history of the world, mirroring some of the wisest thoughts and grandest dreams of man. For instance, the Rigveda, which is the most ancient book, of. hymns, tells us that truth is one, though learned men may speak of it in varied manner (Ekam sat viprā bahudhā vadanti).
In Yajurveda, we read about the noblest dream of man 'in which the whole Universe becomes one nest' (Yatra viśvam bhavati ekanīdam).
The concepts of nationalism and cosmopolitanism as understood to-day were, however, unknown to ancient India and there are, therefore, no corresponding terms in ancient Indian literature. Of course, the word 'Rashtra' meaning a nation to-day does occur many times in Vedic literature, but it was then conceptually linked up with monarchy and it meant a kingdom rather than a nation, in the context of the social and political conditions of those times. Similarly, the term 'Vishwa' meaning the Universe is as ancient as 'Rashtra' but it has nothing to do with the concept of cosmopolitanism as such, although it hinted a more broadbased concept.
India is, as is well-known, a very vast country, described as a sub-continent, with wide variations in geography and with a baffling diversity of language, religion and culture. It was not an easy thing to build her into one national unit. The history of ancient and medieval India is by and large the history of small and big kingdoms competing with each other for power and pelf, though occasionally attempts were made to build up empires, holding sway over the whole or most parts of India. One such empire was built up by emperor Asoka, nearly 300 years before Christ. A philosopher king as he was, he not only ruled over vast territories, but also ruled the hearts of the. people by his deep interest in their well-being and by his policy of religious tolerance. The vision of nationalism and cosmopolitanism
* (Paper read at the IV Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association at Fribourg, Switzerland, on 2nd Sept. 1964)
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had come very near realisation in the India of his time. Generally speaking, however, it was regionalism and loyalism rather than nationalism which inspired and motivated the Indian people in the course of their long history. Politically India was not united as one nation, but culturally she strove to maintain a kind of unity, which was a source of strength to her and an admirable phase of Indian life and tradition. This cultural unity was visualised by the poets, saints and mystics of India right from the" Vedic times and was voiced forth in the literature of the different languages of India. There are at least three broad aspects of Indian literature of the past, which are common to the rich and varied literary heritage in the Indian languages and they are : (1) Inspiration from and indebtedness to Sanskrit language and literature for vocabulary and for themes, ideas and forms, chiefly to the great national epics viz. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata as well as to devotional and philosophic works like the Bhagavadgita and Bhagavata. (2) Religious and saintly utterances and songs, which transcend the barriers of caste and creed. (3) Folk-lore and folk-drama expressing in popular style the highest principles and ideals, embodied in Indian culture. Some of the languages of India are Aryan and derived from Sanskrit and some others are Dravidian, not derived from Sanskrit but nourished by it to a smaller or greater extent. And yet when one thinks of the similar urges and common factors in the different literatures of India, one is deeply moved by the alluring image of the same grand music played on different instruments in a rare sort of orchestra. On the whole, the ideal of unity in diversity, which is the underlying principle in the concomitance of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, did prevail in Indian life and literature in the ancient and historical times and in a sense, paved the way for the realisation of a new synthesis in the modern setting.
Besides, there are any number of wise sayings and epigrams in the Indian epics, works of Indian polity and codes of conduct, which lay down what may be regarded as wise courses of action when there are divided loyalties or conflicts in respect of loyalty. In one of them it is said that one should sacrifice one's good for the good of the family, the good of the family for the good of the village, the good of the village for the good of the country but sacrifice the
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whole world for the good of his soul (ātmārthe prthivīm tyajet), This suggests that smaller loyalties must be sacrificed for the sake of larger loyalty and the largest loyalty should be to oneself i.e., to one's soul, to one's intellectual honesty and moral and spiritual integrity. It is clear from such utterances that the Indian people were taught, from time immemorial to love the family, the village, the nation and the universe, but to sacrifice smaller loyalty for the larger one in the event of a conflict. Love of one's nation and love of the world can go together and need not necessarily conflict with each other. But when love of one's nation is carried to an extreme and results in hatred of other nations, it has to be sacrificed for the sake of a larger loyalty —loyalty to the world at large. Of course, this does not mean that the legitimate interests of a nation should be ignored or sacrificed. But love of the world should help to curb the extreme forms of nationalism. It will thus be seen that Indian literature of the past has laid the foundations of a proper synthesis of nationalism and cosmopolitanism without actually using any of the terms, in their modern connotation.
Nationalism in its modern sense dawned in India with the impact of the western type of education, imparted in British regime in the 19th century. Educated Indians read more of the world's history and literature, had their horizons widened and derived inspiration from the nationalist movements in the rest of the world, based on the principles of freedom and democracy. The movement for the liberation of India from foreign domination under the leadership of great leaders like Tilak and Gandhi gave a strong impetus to Indian nationalism. At times it went to extremes under the intolerable conditions created by the foreign rule. But towering personalities, whose nationalism was unquestioned and whose culture was broadbased, tried to hold the balance between nationalism and cosmopolitanism in life and literature.
Among such personalities, the name of Sri Aurobindo stands out pre-eminently as that of one of the intellectual and spiritual giants and poet-seers of modern India. He took part in active politics for a brief period and went to Pondicherry for the realisation of his spiritual ideals In his voluminous writings which came from him like a torrent of heavenly Ganges, he put forth the highest ideal
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of spiritualising the whole of humanity. His nationalism was an essential and complementary aspect of his world vision. He believed that every nation had not only a culture of its own, but a soul of its own, which it must realise, so that it will make its distinct contribution to the spiritual progress and perfection of the entire world. He felt that 'Bande Mataram' (Salutations to the Mother) —the song which Bankim Chandra, the great Bengali novelist was inspired to write for his novel 'Anandamath' was not a mere song, it was 'the reviving mantra, which is creating a new India'. As a writer puts it, 'For him, India was no mere geographical entity, no mere physical and material land mass, no mere intellectual concept, but a Goddess incarnate, a mighty Mother, who for centuries had cradled and nourished her children, and who, at that time, was groaning under the yoke of the foreign oppressor—her pride shattered, her glory ground to the dust' (Karan Singh : Prophet of Indian Natiqnalism, p. 70). According to Sri Aurobindo, the nation is not a mere mass of land. He writes : "What is a nation ? What is our mother country ? It is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti (Power), composed of all the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up 'the nation'. He has waxed eloquent and risen to poetic heights while describing his patriotism in another context : "The feeling of almost physical delight in the touch of the mother-soil, of the winds that blow from Indian seas, of the rivers that stream from Indian hills, in the hearing of Indian speech, music, poetry, in the familiar sights, sounds, habits, dress, manners of our Indian life, this is the physical root of that love. The pride in our past, the pain of our present, the passion for the future are its trunk and branches. Self-sacrifice and self-forget-full ness, great service, high endurance for the country are its fruit. And the sap which keeps it alive is the realisation of the Motherhood of God in the country, the vision of the Mother,... the perpetual contemplation, adoration and service of the Mother" (Sri Aurobindo : The Doctrine of Passive Resistance, pp. 83-84).
Nationalism has a highly religious and spiritual basis according to Sri Aurobindo. He said : "Nationalism is not a mere political programme; Nationalism is a religion that has come from God; Nationalism is a creed which you shall have to five." (Sri Aurobindo :
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Speeches, p. 6). It is rightly called spiritual nationalism. In other words, it is a vital part of a comprehensive world-vision, in which divine life in its perfection is envisaged in minute detail. That is why 'he looked upon India's emancipation as only an essential vantage point from which she could fulfil her destiny as the spiritual guide of humanity at large. His nationalism thus develops logically into an internationalism that has as its goal the elevated ideal of human unity' (Karan Singh : Prophet of Indian Nationalism p. 76).
Rabindranath Tagore is another outstanding personality, who has left an indelible mark on the life and culture of India. He was a creative genius of a very high order. There was no branch of art or form of literature, which he touched and did not adorn by his creative richness and newness. He was both a dreamer and builder. In his great educational and cultural institution called Shantiniketan i.e. the abode of peace, he revived the old Ashram type of education and modernised it. He called it Vishwabharati, i.e. the culture of the, world as reflected in India. The name was coined by him to signify the fine balance which he had achieved in his personality between nationalism and internationalism. He wrote a number of songs and poems, which held up the ideal of Vishwabharati. In one of such songs, full of feeling and word-music, he addresses his heart to rise to welcome people of all races and countries, who are gathered on the soil of India. He says 'Oh my heart, rise slowly on the vast shore of the ocean of humanity that is India, the holy land. Here I stand with both hands stretched to bow to the god in man and sing his praise with great joy flowing in rich rhythm. Look at this sacred land, where the mountains are rapt in deep meditation and the plains are counting the beads in the rosary of rivers.'
In his boob on Nationalism, he has clearly stated: 'Neither the colour ess vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history'. (Rabindranath Tagore : Nationalism, p. 5). Every person has his roots somewhere in some part of the earth. He is born and brought up in certain milieu and he owes his first loyalty to the land of his birth and upbringing. If in the name of liberalism, he takes pride in being a cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world without having anything to do
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with his immediate surroundings, he will be living in an unreal world. That is 'the colour less vagueness of cosmopolitanism.' If on the other hand, he worships his nation and detests other nation, that will lead to 'the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship.' It must be remembered that Tagore expressed such views and tried to put them into practice, at a time when India was carrying on a desperate fight for freedom and nationalism was in the ascendant. Speaking of nationalism in India, Tagore stresses the need for a broad, humanistic approach to the problems facing India. According to him, 'India has never had a real sense of nationalism. It is my conviction that my countrymen will truly gain their India by fighting against the education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity' (Rabindranath Tagore: Nationalsim, p. 106). Comparing the Indian situation with the situation in Europe, he says : 'Her problem was the problem of world in miniature. India is too vast in its area and too diverse in its races. It is many countries packed in one geographical receptacle. It is just the opposite of what Europe truly is, viz. one country made into many. Thus Europe in its culture and growth has had the advantage of the strength of the many as well as the strength of the one. India, on the contrary, being naturally many, yet adventitiously one, has all along suffered from the looseness of its diversity and the feebleness of its unity. A true unity is like a round globe, it rolls on, carrying its burden easily, but diversity is a many-cornered thing which has to be dragged and pushed with force. (Ibid, p. 114).
India was extremely fortunate in securing the leadership of eminent persons in her struggle for freedom and in her efforts to build up the nation after the attainment of freedom. The names of Gandhi and Nehru stand out among those, who have guided India's destiny in recent history. Gandhi was a saint-politician and a very practical one at that. With his stress on the high principles of truth and non-violence, he led the freedom movement and taught the people to resist foreign domination but not to hate the foreigner. He loved India fervently and he loved other countries and other peoples with equal fervour. In his speeches and writings, he preached nationalism as well as universal brotherhood and practised what he preached.
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Following in the footsteps of Gandhi and yet keeping his own steps, Nehru occupied the centre of the stage in Indian politics as a great visionary and statesman. He not only worked and suffered in the cause of India's freedom and nation-building, but he also strove to lay down the principles of peaceful co-existence for all the nations of the world. He was a world-figure, a mighty force on the side of peace. In his writings, which reveal his extra-ordinary grasp of. world history and Indian heritage, he has proved himself to be" as much of an internationalist as a nationalist.
If we now turn to the modern literatures in the different languages of India, we shall be agreeably surprised to find some common urges and similar traits in all of them. They have all been influenced by Western literature and thought and they have sooner or. later adopted the modern forms of literature like the lyric, the short story, the novel and the essay. Modernist poetry also has had its strong influence on Indian poetry. Among the trends in Indian literature, we find a strong wave of patriotism which swept over the Indian mind and produced some of the best creative writing in almost all the major languages of India. In the context of the fight for freedom, some of the writers spat fire and were as it were swept off their feet. There are, however, poets and authors who possess the large vision of Sri Aurobindo and Tagore and have combined nationalism with cosmopolitanism and who are less known to the world because of the less known character of the language in which they wrote and are writing even now.
Bengal was the first province in India, which came under the influence of British thought and British way of life. Though some educated people went to the extreme of blind imitation and adoration of their masters, some others grew up to be admirers of Indian culture, ready to assimilate the best in Western culture. Raja Ram Mohan Roy was among the first stalwarts, who heralded the new era. Bankim Chandra came on the scene as a very staunch nationalist, preaching his creed through some of his novels. Reference has already been made to his song 'Bande Mataram', which has become one of the most stirring patriotic, songs of India. Besides Tagore, there were other nationalist poets like Nazrul Islam, who wrote patriotic poetry in their very blood as it were. Assam, which is nearer to Bengal,
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caught the spark early enough but did not blaze like fire as early as Bengal. The name of Phukan, a contemporary of Raja Ram Mohan Roy is mentioned as a pioneer in nationalist type of journalism. Some stirrings of the new consciousness were seen in the lyrics of Kamala-kanta Bhattacharya. It is said that his 'Chintanala' published in 1890, contains the outpourings of warm patriotic sentiments. Chandra Kumar Agarwalla, founder of a nationalist weekly, called 'Assamia', is remembered as a writer of delicate lyrics.
In Gujarati, Narmad was one of the early poets, who sang of the love of motherland. Nanalal, who is regarded as the greatest poet of the age, sang in tune with the time spirit. Gandhi in his inimitable prose spread his gospel of broad-based nationalism among Gujarati people. Munshi roused the feelings of patriotism by his historical novels and plays. There are some other eminent poets, who have written patriotic poetry. Coming to Hindi literature, we learn that Bharatendu Harishchandra, who lived in the last decade of the 19th century, is regarded as the father of modern prose and pioneer in patriotic writing. In his poems, essays and plays abounding in wit and humour and vigorous expression, he has revealed himself as a strong nationalist. In the later period, poets like Maithili Sharana Gupta, Nirala, Sumitranandan Pant have made a singular contribution to nationalist poetry. They roused the people from torpor and created a national consciousness. Particular mention must be made of the poem 'Bharat bharati' of Gupta, which is one of the best works in the line.
In Urdu, Iqbal, who is regarded as the greatest poet of the modern times, wrote poems and songs, which were intensely patriotic and thrilling. In Kashmiri, Mahjur is known for patriotic fervour in his writings.
In Marathi, the language of Tilak and Gokhale, some very powerful patriotic prose and poetry have come to be written. Among prose writers, S. M.
Para jape was an inspired patriot, who turned every-day journalism into spontaneous outburst of nationalist emotion. Among poets, Keshavsut and Kusumagraj have sung of the new spirit in India and the world. Savarkar, the most daring patriot of India, has written some of the most moving patriotic poetry while he was undergoing a life-sentence under unbearable conditions in a
far off island.
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In Oriya, Pandit Gopal Bandhu Das, a celebrated national leader of Orissa, wrote patriotic poetry in the form of a long poem called 'Bandir Atmakatha' (Confessions of a prisoner) and expressed his intense desire to sacrifice" his all at the altar of freedom. 'Aswana' a book of poems by a woman writer, Kuntala Kumari Devi by name, was proscribed for its fiery national utterances during the British regime.
Corning to the Dravidian family of languages, Tamil, which is the oldest in literary heritage, is proud of Subramanya Bharati, the great patriot-poet of India. He wrote 'Swadeshgeetam', some of which constitutes a high level of patriotic poetry. In Malayalam, Vallathol is claimed as a great national poet, who started writing poetry on the model of Tagore. K. M. Panikkar and Sankar Kurap are among other prominent poets in the language. In Telugu, Rayaprola Sub barao, a pioneer of lyrical poetry, was greatly influenced by Tagore's writings. He was followed by other poets who made lyrics popular and sang of nationalism.
In Kannada, nationalist writing in prose and poetry got into stride in the twenties of the. present century. Some of the eminent poets like Bendre and Kuvempu rose to rare heights in patriotic self-expression. Bendre wrote his poem 'Thirty Crores and Three', depicting in a dramatic manner the tragedy of thirty-three crores of Indians, groaning under foreign subjection. His poem 'the bag of the belly' gives a glaring picture of the agony of India's poverty. His another poem 'The Bird is on its wing' works out the symbol of the bird as the time-spirit, with a profound insight into world situation. He is a great thinker-poet with a cosmic and synthetic vision and his profound lyrics belong to a category of their own. Lovers of poetry in the modern world will find it worth while to read his poetry and feel its magic even in English translation. Kuvempu is also a lyricist of high order, more attuned to nature poetry. In one of his poems, he proclaims" that Mother India is the only deity that one should worship with an intensity of passion.
We have so far tried to take a rapid survey of Indian literature, both old and modern, with a view to assessing its contribution to nationalism and" cosmopolitanism. It must have been clear from this
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survey that the Indian outlook is generally broad-based and synthetic, dreaming of the lofty ideal of unity in diversity not only for India but also for the entire world. It is profoundly spiritual and forward-looking. In Indian life and literature, nationalism and cosmopolitanism are taking deep roots and presenting a singularly Indian poise and balance, thanks to the great traditions of the past and the broad inspirations of the present age.
R. S. MUGALI
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Divine Dwellers in the Desert by Gurdial Mullik. Publishers : Gram Bhavan Prakashan, Patti Kalyana (Karnal). P. 113. Price Rs. 1.25
IT is said that when God created Man—a being unique in all
His creation—He summoned all the angels and archangels and required them to bow before the Man. But Satan refused and walked out of heaven, saying, "Sir, my love for you forbids this". He forsook the Paradise rather than compromise his Love. And that is why Shah Latif calls Satan 'the greatest lover of God'. Narrating this legend in his account of the Sufi saints of Sindh, Sri Gurdial —himself a kindred spirit—serves in these pages a delightful fare of history, myth, philosophy and mysticism.
Love, says the author, is the heart of Sufism and Love is not the exclusive contribution of any one religion or country. It is as old as Creation—if not older—and the specialty of Sufism is its emphasis on Love as the sole means to realise God. Sufism1 is "the love of wisdom and the wisdom of love" (Inayat Khan).
To the Sufi all life heaves on the bosom of one Love and therefore there is an underlying Unity of base. One begins to perceive this oneness of life as one awakens to Love, love for God and love for God in the fellow-creatures. Through Love the barriers of separativism crumble down: "The more a man loves, the deeper he penetrates the divine purposes. Love is the astrolabe of heavenly mysteries, the eye-salve which clears the spiritual eye and makes it clairvoyant." (Jalaluddin).
How to awaken this element of love ? By appeal to Beauty.
1 Speaking of the origin of the Sufi, Sri Gurdial is not inclined to accept its usual derivation from the persian sawwof or the Greek sophos meaning wise, or from soof (wool) referring to the woollen garment of we original Sufis. He recalls, instead, the legend "which says that the term is derived from suffa (sofa in English) which means 'bench', for so the story goes, the beggars who in the days of the Prophet sat on a bench, placed outside the mosque at Mecca, were called Sufs. For, may it not be that the people who sat on the bench outside the mosque sat there not with a view to asking for 'al moat the hands of the charitably inclined, but in silent protest against the sin of limiting the Limitless, God, within the four walls of a house of clay?" (P. 20)
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Beauty, the Mother has said, is the characteristic form for the manifestation of the Divine in the physical, the material world, and to look upon Beauty—and all that derives from or sustains upon it—as opposed to the Spirit of God, a temptation and a snare, is a perversity that plays into the hands of the Adversary. Says the author with an understandably hurt regret : "That is why to the true Sufi, the rags of pseudo-poverty are what a red rag is to the bull, the ochre-coloured robe is a mockery of beauty, and the unkempt appearance and the mien of mendicancy as if the besmearing of the Divine Face!"
And Beauty, Love, Unity are to be searched for not in the forests away from life, away from the variegated creation of God. The whole world, says the Sufi, pulsates with the breath of Love. It is not elsewhere in some beyond, but "here and now, in our human world and in the company of our family and friends", that the Love is to be realised. God the Beloved is to be greeted in this world which "is the pageant, panorama and playground of His Love."
Consequent to this Doctrine of Love the Creator, continues the writer, the Sufis believe in a wide diversity of approaches to God,1 and in the uniqueness of the individual, each with his own stress of nature in the manifestation of God. As put by a Sufi, "None can travel on another's ticket. Such is the journey of the seeker after Truth."
The Sufis on this path of Love-Illumination look upon Silence as the real Teacher. To them, "The Great Silence is not a vacuity; it is full of harmonies and hues, of visions and whispers; the sky is full of invitations issued by God; and these invitations are being wafted by the wind and when the individual receives his invitation, his soul is awakened from her sleep of self-sufficiency and she sets out on her journey to the home of the Beloved, whom she had forgotten while staying in the City of the senses."
1 The Sufis often quote the story of Moses to underline the truth of tolerance. it is said that one day Moses overheard a shepherd praying in this wise, 'O Lord, I will wash thy robes and comb thy hair', and he took him to task for making of God, so to say, such a personal affair. The shepherd was pained at this shock to his simplicity of faith in, and intimacy of affection for and association with, God to such an extent that thereafter he ceased to pray. Then Moses heard a voice from heaven telling him that he had done grievous wrong to God's; beloved shepherd, and added, 'Words are nothing to me. i regard the heart.' "
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There are three factors that lead to this Silence : solitude, pain —the pain of longing and insufficiency—and fellowship with all orders of life. To the votary of Divine Love the search is a natural Quest which grows on one; he has no fixed laws or rules to be followed. The ascetic Sufis, However, speak of the search as a Journey regulated by distinct stages : shariat, in which the seeker lives in the letter of the scripture; tarikhat, when he wakes up on the quickening of his intelligence through the effect of the sacred Word; marfat, when he is thrown into the pangs of doubt; hakikat, when the doubt has completed its task of bringing down the mental constructions and the Truth of oneness dawns upon him.1
These two are not the only kinds of Sufis, 'unitive' and 'ethical'. There is a third kind, which is a blend of both, and these have a discipline to thin and eventually dissolve the little self, the ego; it consists of an initial period of service to fellowmen, followed -by a retirement in oneself in order to find and serve God; and once the Truth of life is found and the rhythm of it discovered, the seeker is called upon to return to active life. A happier modification among these Sufis is of beneficent activity during the day and communion within on self during the night.
The author then draws further distinctions between the two types of Sufis whom he has called the 'Unitive' and the 'Ethical' :
"The unitive Sufi is one who lives in the world and yet is not of the world. To him silence and work are the obverse and reverse of self-same coin. The ethical Sufi, however, hovers between law the and love till he finds the fulfilment of all laws in the expansive affectionateness of his heart.
The unitive Sufi sets no store by ecstasy and miracles. It is the ethical Sufi who is impatient to attain to a state of ecstasy.
The unitive Sufi is often a poet, while the ascetic or ethically minded Sufi is a philosopher."2
Then follows a historical account of the arrival of the first Sufis
1 These Sufis, it may be noted, lay special stress on the purification of the self, "which consists of nafs (the separative soul ), ruh (the spirit), qalb (the heart) and aql (the Inteligence), for they say that unless this is done the little self will persist in accompanying the aspirant or the lover when he goes to the tryst" to meet the Beloved." (P. 30)
2 It is said once two great Sufis, Ibu Sina and Abu Said, met each, other and were engaged in a long conversation. After they had parted they were asked by their respective disciples to
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in Sindh from Baghdad in the 14th century A.D. and the impact of their unorthodox ways for the fulfilment of the Quest of man which is nothing less than the effacement of the ego and a total abandonment of the soul in the arms of God, the Beloved All.
According to the teaching of these Sufis of Sindh, the first necessity is to have a Murshid, Teacher. Man passes through three stages of development : the first stage in which he identifies himself with everything—I am. It is the stage of kasrat (variety) when the indidual is lost in the Many (tilsam).
The second stage is when man awakens to the fact that he is really not what he seems to be; he realises that he is not his body, mind etc.—I am not. This awakening comes as a result of meditation on the Great Word, ism-e-azim, communicated by the Teacher.
The third stage comes when he suddenly strikes into identity with the All—I am All. "The seeker when he is under the sway of his self says, 'God is nowhere', but when he has become one with the' Truth, he says, 'God is now here'. The phenomenal world remains as before, it is the eye which has been 'winged' with the vision of the One." (P. 49)1
We then read in this book, accounts of Shah Latif, the greatest mystic-poet of Sindh,2 who sang of human love as a stepping-stone to the Divine Love,3 of the Tavern-Keeper 'who gives the cup only when one's head is offered as a price'. We read of Sachal who was seized by the Reality in its manifestation of Beauty and Love and spoke of his illumination in the memorable phrase :
give their estimates of each other. Said Ibu Sina, "What I know, he sees," and Abu Said observed, "What I see, he knows". (P. 23)
1 I burn with Love.
The Centre is within me, and its wonder
Lies as a circle' everywhere about me. (Attar).
2 Shah was a lover of the Beautiful; yet in conformity with the obtaining practices, he used to tell the beads of the rosary. "He continued these practices for some years when one day he was shaken out of the slough of conformity by the conversation between two milk-maids, which he overheard. One milkmaid said to the other, 'I have met my lover so many time; how many times have you ?' The other answered, 'Sister, why keep an account of one's meeting with one's lover ?' Thereupon Shah threw away his rosary, saying : 'Indeed, why keep an account with our lover ?' " (P. 56)
3 Vide also :
A lover may hanker after this love or that love,
But at the last he is drawn to the King of Love. (Rumi)
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It was like the coming of the sea into the pitcher.
Sachal it was who when asked when he was born, replied, "I do not know when I was first born. I feel I have always been living." The author's summing up of the message of this mystic-poet is gripping : "Sachal has served the cup of love divine to not a few who dwell in the desert and outside. And those who have drunk deep of it have felt in some mysterious manner that they have themselves been transformed into so many cups, from out of each of which one day the Eternal Thirsty Traveller, when He passes by their houses on the road, might just take a sip and slake His thirst. All of us have to become cups—be it even broken cups—for to drink out of such cups has been the undying longing of our Divine Fellow-Traveller ever since we shook off our feet the fragrant dust of Paradise. Let us, then, keep our cups ready, for who knows when He might knock at our doors and say, 'Give me a drink'. And woe to us if on the day on which He comes we turn Him away because we have no cups in the house."
Indeed, "unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the moment; for them is irreparable loss or great destruction." (Sri Aurobindo)
A book with vision, feeling and purpose.
M. P. PANDIT
A Plea for Creative Rethinking in Indian Philosophy By Dr. K. C. Varadachari.
In this his presidential address to the Religion and Philosophy Section at the All India Oriental Conference 1965, Dr. Varadachariar expresses his gratification at the work that is being promoted in this field, especially in bringing to light old manuscripts and in the
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publication of critical editions of the Darsana texts. He sounds a needed note of caution against overdoing the 'historical' presentation in ancient Indian Philosophy and rightly pleads for an organic view in these studies so as to give due importance to the experience and the mystical tradition that has imparted a special flavour to the genuinely Indian contribution to the subject. He refers to attempts at fresh interpretations of the Brahma Sutras and the Upanishads in the light of this tradition and records Sri Aurobindo's work-in the exposition of the Vedic hymns.
M. P. PANDIT
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