How to stop discussions in the mind?
The first condition is to talk as little as possible.
The second is to think just of what you are doing at the moment and not of what you have to do or of what you have done before.
Never regret what is past or imagine what will be.
Check pessimism in your thoughts as much as you can and become a voluntary optimist.
God works through the brain, but the brain is only one of His instruments.
-SRI AUROBINDO
August, 1967
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.
" Savitri "
(An Introduction)
SAVITRI, the poem, the word of Sri Aurobindo is the cosmic Answer to the cosmic Question. And Savitri, the person, the Godhead, the Divine Woman is the Divine's response to the human aspiration.
The world is a great question mark. It is a riddle, eternal and ever-recurring. Man has faced the riddle and sought to arrive at a solution since he has been given a mind to seek and interrogate.
What is this universe ? From where has it come ? Whither is it going ? What is the purpose of it all ? Why is man here ? What is the object of his existence ?
Such is the mode of human aspiration. And Ashwa pati in his quest begins to explore the world and see what it is, the way it is built up. He observes it rising tier upon tier, level upon level of consciousness. He mounts these stairs, takes cognisance of the modes and functions of each and passes on enriched by the experiences
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that each contributes to his developing consciousness. The ascent he finds is from ignorance to knowledge. The human being starts from the darkest bed of ignorance, the solid basis of rock as it were, the body, the material existence. Ignorance here is absolute inconscience. Out of the total absence of consciousness, the being begins to awake and rise to a gradually developing—widening, deepening and heightening—consciousness. That is how Ashwa-pati advances, ascends from a purely bodily life and consciousness, to the next rung of the ladder, the first appearance and expression of life-force, the vital consciousness—energies and forms of the small lower vital. He moves on, moves upward, there is a growing light in and mixed with the obscurity; ignorance begins to shed its hard and dark coating one by one and gives place to directed and motivated energies. He meets beings and creatures appropriate to those levels crawling and stirring and climbing, moved by the laws governing the respective regions. In this way Ashwapati passes on into the higher vital, into the border of the mental.
Ashwapati now observes with a clear vividness that all these worlds and the beings and forces that inhabit them are stricken as it were with a bar sinister branded upon their bodies. In spite of an inherent urge of ascension the way is not a straight road but devious and crooked breaking into by-lanes and blind alleys. There is a great corruption and perversion of natural movements towards Truth : falsehoods and pretensions, arrogance of blindness reign here in various degrees. Ashwapati sought to know the wherefore of it all. So he goes behind, dives down and comes into a region that seems to be the source and basis of all ignorance and obscurity and falsehood. He comes into the very heart of the Night, the abyss of consciousness. He meets there the Mother of Evil and the sons of darkness. He stands before
"...the gate of the false Infinite,
An eternity of disastrous absolutes."1
Here are the forces that pull down and lure away to perdition all
1 Book II : Canto 8 : p.250.
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that man's aspirations and the world's urge seek to express and build of Divine things. It is the world in which the forces of the original inconscience find their primitive play. They are dark and dangerous : they prey upon earth's creatures who are not content with being vassals of darkness but try to move to the Light. Dangerous is this passage for the celestial aspirant :
"Where the red Wolf waits by the fordless stream,
And Death's black eagles scream to the precipice..."1
He must be absolutely vigilant, absolutely on his guard, absolutely sincere.
"Here must the traveller of the upward way—
For daring Hell's kingdoms winds the heavenly route—
Pause or pass slowly through that perilous space,
A prayer upon his lips and the great Name."2
But there is no escape. The divine traveller has to pass through this region. For it lies athwart his path to the goal. Not only so, it is necessary to go through this Night. For Ashwapati
"Knew death for a cellar of the house of life,
In destruction felt creation's hasty pace,
Knew loss as the price of a celestial gain
And hell as a short cut to heaven's gates."3
Ashwapati now passes into the higher luminous regions. He enters regions of larger breath and wider movement—the higher vital and then into the yet more luminous region of the higher mind. He reaches the heavens where immortal sages and the divinities and the gods themselves dwell. Even these Ashwapati finds to be only partial truths, various aspects, true but limited, of the One Reality beyond. Thus he leaves all behind and reaches into the single
1 Bk. II : Canto 8 : p.26o.
2 Bk. II : Canto 7 : p. 238.
3 Bk. II : Canto 8 : p. 262.
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sole Reality, the transcendental Truth of things, the status vast and infinite and eternal, immutable existence and consciousness and bliss.
"A Vastness brooded free from sense of Space,
An Everlastingness cut off from Time...
A stillness absolute, incommunicable."1
Here seems to be the end of the quest, and one would fain stay there ever and ever in that status
"...occult, impenetrable,—
Infinite, eternal, unthinkable, alone."2
Ashwapati was perhaps about to be lured into that Bliss but suddenly a doubt enters into him—there is a hesitation, a questioning; he hears a voice :
"The ego is dead; we are free from being and care,
We have done with birth and death and work and fate.
O Soul, it is too early to rejoice !
Thou hast reached the boundless silence of the Self,
Thou hast leaped into a glad divine abyss;
But where hast thou thrown self's mission and self's power ?
On what dead bank on the Eternal's road ?"3
Ashwapati veers round. A new perception, a new consciousness begins to open within him. A new urge moves him. He has to start on a new journey, a new quest and achievement. The world exists neither as a Truth nor as an illusion in itself. It exists in and through the Mother of the worlds. There is a motive in its existence and it is her will that is being worked out in that existence. The world moves for the fulfilment of a purpose that is being evolved through earth-life and human life. The ignorant incomplete human life upon earth is not the be-all and end-all of the life here. That life has to
1 Bk. Ill : Cantos 1-2 : pp. 349; 351 .
2 Bk. Ill : Canto I : p. 350 .
3 Bk, III : Canto 2 : p. 351
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evolve into a life of light and love and joy perfect here below. Nature as it is now will be transmuted into a new pure and radiant substance. Ashwapati is filled with this new urge and inspired by this new vision. He sees and understands now the truth of his life, the goal that has to be achieved, the great dream that has to be realised here upon earth in and through matter. He sees how nature has been labouring ceaselessly and tirelessly through aeons through eternity onward. He is now almost impatient to see the consummation here and now. The divine Voice however shows him the wisdom of working patiently, hasten slowly. The Voice admonishes him :
"I ask thee not to merge thy heart of flame
In the Immobile's wide uncaring bliss...
Thy soul was born to share the laden Force...
Obey thy nature and fulfil thy fate :
Accept the difficulty and godlike toil,
For the slow-paced omniscient purpose live...
All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour."1
But the human flame once kindled is hard to put down. It seeks an immediate result. It does not understand the full ness of time. So Ashwapati cries out :
"Heavy and long are the years our labour counts
And still the seals are firm upon man's soul
And weary is the ancient Mother's heart...
Linger not long with thy transmuting hand.
Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time...
Let a great word be spoken from the heights
And one great act unlock the doors of Fate."2
This great cry of the human soul moved the Divine Mother and she granted at last its prayer. She answered bestowing of her motherly comfort to the yearning thirsty soul :
1 Bk. Ill : Canto 4 : pp. 380; 386.
2 Bk. Ill : Canto 4 : pp. 390-391.
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"O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.
One shall descend and break the iron Law...
A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will."1
And She herself came down upon earth as Ashwapati's own daughter to undertake the human labour and accomplish the Divine work.
II
The Divine Mother is upon earth as a human creature. She is to change the mortal earth into an immortal paradise. Earth at present is a bundle of material inconscience. The Supreme Consciousness has manifested itself as supreme unconsciousness. The Divine has lost itself in pulversing itself, scattering itself abroad. Immortality is thus entombed here below in death. The task of the incarnate Supreme Consciousness is to revive the death-bound divinity, to free the human consciousness in its earthly life from the obscurity of the material unconsciousness, re-instal it in its original radiant status of the Divine Consciousness.
Such is Savitri's mission. This mission has two sessions or periods. The first, that of preparation; the second, that of fulfilment. Savitri, the human embodiment was given only twelve months out of her earthly life and in that space of time she had to do all the preparation. She knew her work from her very birth, she was conscious of her nature and the mission she was entrusted with. Now she is facing the crisis. Death is there standing in front. What is to be done, how is she to proceed ? She was told she is to conquer Death, she is to establish immortal life upon mortal earth. The Divine Voice rings out :
"Arise, O soul, and vanquish Time and Death."2
1 Bk. Ill : Canto 4 : pp. 391-392.
2 Bk. VII : Canto 2 : p. 539.
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Yes, she is ready to do it, but not for herself, but for her Love, the being who was the life of her life. Savitri is the Divine Consciousness but here in the mortal body she is clothed in the human consciousness; it is the human consciousness that she is to lead upward and beyond and it is in and through the human consciousness that the Divine Realisation has to be expressed and established. The human Savitri declares : If Death is conquered, it is for the sake of Satyavan living eternally with her. She seems to say : What I wish to see is the living Satyavan and I united with him for ever. I do not need an earthly life without him; with him I prefer to be in another world if necessary away from the obscurity and turmoil of this earth here.
"My strength is taken from me and given to Death,
Why should I lift my hands to the shut heavens...
Why should I strive with earth's unyielding laws
Or stave off death's inevitable hour ?
This surely is best to practise with my fate
And follow close behind my lover's step
And pass through night from twilight to the sun..."1
But a thunderous voice descends from above shaking Savitri to the very basis of her existence.
"And what shall thy soul say when it wakes and knows
The work was left undone for which it came ?"2
Thus a crisis very similar to that which Ashwapati had to face now confronts Savitri also. Both of them were at the crossroads away from the earth in the pure delights of the heavens or in the world labouring on earth's soil. Savitri's soul was now revealed to her in its fullness. She viewed the mighty destiny for which she had come down and the great work she had to achieve here upon earth, not any personal or individual human satisfaction or achievement but
1 Bk. VII : Canto 2 : p. 539.
2 Bk. VII : Canto 2 : p. 540.
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a cosmic fulfilment, a global human realisation. The godhead in Savitri is now fully awake, established in its plenitude—the Divinity incarnate in the human frame. All the godheads, all the goddess-emanations now entered into her and moulded the totality of her mighty stature.
Here begins then the second stage of her mission,—her work and achievement, the conquest of Death. Only the Divine human being can conquer Death. Savitri follows Death step by step revealing gradually the mystery of Death, his personality and his true mission, although the dark God thinks that it is he who is taking away Satyavan and Savitri along with him, to his own home, his black annihilation. For Death is that in its first appearance, it is utter destruction, nothing-ness, non-existence. So the mighty Godhead declares in an imperious tone to the mortal woman Savitri :
"This is my silent dark immensity,
This is the home of everlasting Night,
This is the secrecy of Nothingness.
Entombing the vanity of life's desires...
Hopest thou still always to last and love ?"1
Indeed Death is not merely a destruction of the body, it is in reality nothingness, non-being. The moment being, existence, reality manifested itself, established itself as a material fact, simultaneously there came out and stood against it, its opposite non-being, non-existence, non-reality; against an everlasting 'yes' there was posited an everlasting 'no'. And in fact, this everlasting No proves to be a greater effective reality, it has wound itself around every constituent atom of the universe. That is what has expressed itself in the material domain as the irreversible degradation of energy and in the mortal world it is denial and doubt and falsehood—it is that which brings about failure in life, and frustration, misery and grief. But then Savitri's vision penetrated beyond and she saw, Death is a way of achieving the end more swiftly and more completely. The negation is an apparent obstacle in order to increase, to purify and intensify the speed of the
1 Bk. IX : Canto 2 : p. 661.
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process by which the world and humanity is being remodelled and re-created. This terrible Godhead pursues the human endeavour till the end; until he finds that nothing more is to be done; then his mission too is fulfilled.1 So a last cry, the cry of a desperate dying Death, pierces the universe and throws the final challenge to Savitri:
"O human claimant to immortality,
Reveal thy power, lay bare thy spirit's force,
Then will I give back to thee Satyavan.
Or if the Mighty Mother is with thee,
Show me her face that I may worship her;
Let deathless eyes look into the eyes of Death..."2
Death's desire, his prayer too is fulfilled. He faces Savitri but this is not the Savitri against whom he fought. Whose is this voice ?
"I hail thee almighty and victorious Death,
Thou grandiose Darkness of the Infinite...
I have given thee thy awful shape of dread
And thy sharp sword of terror and grief and pain
To force the soul of man to struggle for light.. ."3
What happens thereafter is something strange and tremendous and miraculous. Light flashed all around, a leaping tongue of fire spread out and the dark form of Death was burnt—not to ashes but to blazing sparks of light :
"His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured."4
1 We are reminded here of a parallelism in Goethe's conception of the role of Satan (the Negative Principle) in human affairs. Satan is not merely a destroying devil, he is a constructive angel. For it is he
Who must goad and tease
And toil to serve creation.
whenever
Man's efforts sink below his proper level.
2 Bk. X : Canto 4 : p. 745.
3 Bk. X : Canto 4 : p. 747.
4 Bk. X : Canto 4 : p. 749.
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Thus Death came to his death—not to death in reality but to a new incarnation. Death returned to his original divine Reality, an emanation of the Divine Mother.
"A secret splendour rose revealed to sight
Where once the vast embodied Void had stood
Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face."1
In that domain of pure transcendent light stood face to face the human Savitri and the transformed Satyavan.
III
Savitri has entered into the deathless luminous world where there is only faultless beauty, stainless delight and an unmeasured self-gathered strength. Savitri heard the melodious voice of the Divine :
You have now left earth's miseries and its impossible conditions, you have reached the domain of un-alloyed felicity and you need not go back to the old turbulent life : dwell here both of you and enjoy eternal bliss.
But Savitri answered firm and move less :
"I climb not to thy everlasting Day, Even as
I have shunned thy eternal Night...
Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls;
Earth is the heroic spirit's battlefield...
Thy servitudes on earth are greater, king,
Than all the glorious liberties of heaven."2
Once more Savitri, even like Ashwapati, has to make a choice between two destinies, two soul-movements—although the choice is already made even before it is offered to her. Ashwapati had to
1 Bk. XI: Canto I: p. 761.
2 Bk. XI : Canto 1 : p. 770.
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abandon, we know, the silent immutable transcendent status of pure light in order to bathe in this lower earthly light. Savitri too as the proto-type of human consciousness chose and turned to this light of the earth.
The Rishi of the Upanishad declared : they who worship only Ignorance enter into darkness, but they who worship knowledge alone enter into a still darker darkness. This world of absolute light which Savitri names 'everlasting day' is what the Upanishadic Rishi sees and describes as the golden lid upon the face of the Sun. The Sun is the complete integral light of the Truth in its fullness. The golden covering has to be removed if one is to see the Sun itself—to live the integral life, one has to possess the integral truth.
So it is that Savitri comes down upon earth and standing upon its welcoming soil speaks to Satyavan as though consoling him for having abandoned their own abode in heaven to dwell among mortal men :
"Heaven's touch fulfils but cancels not our earth...
Still am I she who came to thee mid the murmur
Of sunlit leaves upon this forest verge...
All that I was before, I am to thee still..."1
Voicing Satyavan's thought and feeling, all humanity, the whole world in joy and gratefulness, utters this mantra of thanksgiving:
"If this is she of whom the world has heard,
Wonder no more at any happy change."2
NOLINI KANTA GUPTA
1 Bk, XII : p, 808.
2 Bk. XII : p, 812 .
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AN OLD LETTER OF SRI AUROBINDO
Pondicherry
30th August 1920
Dear Dr. Munje,
As I have already wired to you, I find myself unable to accept your offer of the Presidentship of the Nagpur Congress. There are reasons seen within the political field itself which in any case would have stood in my way. In the first place I have never signed and would never care to sign as a personal declaration of faith in the Congress creed, as my own is of a different character. In the next place since my retirement from British India I have developed an outlook and views which have diverged a great deal from those I held at the time and, as they are remote from present actualities and do not follow the present stream of political action, I should find myself very much embarrassed what to say to the Congress. I am entirely in sympathy with all that is being done so far as its object is to secure liberty for India, but I should be unable to identify myself with the programme of any of the parties. The President of the Congress is really a mouthpiece of the Congress and to make from the presidential chair a purely personal pronouncement miles away from what the Congress is thinking and doing would be grotesqualy out of place. Not only so, but nowadays the President has a responsibility in connection with the All India Congress Committee and the policy of the Congress during the year and other emergencies that may arise which, apart from my constitutional objection and, probably, incapacity to discharge official duties of any kind or to put on any kind of harness, I should be unable to fulfil, since it is impossible for me to throw over suddenly my fixed programme and settle at once in British India. These reasons would in any case have come in the way of my accepting your offer.
The central reason, however, is thus that I am no longer first and foremost a politician, but have definitely commenced another kind of work with a spiritual basis, a work of spiritual, social, cultural and economic reconstruction of an almost revolutionary
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kind, and am ever making or at least supervising a sort of practical or laboratory experiment in that sense which needs all the attention and energy that I can have to spare. It is impossible for me to combine political work of the current kind and this at the beginning. I should practically have to leave it aside, and this I cannot do, as I have taken it up as my mission for the rest of my life. This is the true reason of my inability to respond to your call.
I may say that in any case I think you would be making a wrong choice in asking me to take Tilak's place at your head. No one now alive in India, or at least no one yet known, is capable of taking that place, but myself least of all. I am an idealist to the marrow, and could only be useful when there is something drastic to be done, a radical or revolutionary turn to be taken, (I do not mean revolutionary by violence,) a movement with an ideal aim and direct method to be inspired and organized. Tilak's policy of "responsive cooperation," contained agitation and obstruction whenever needed— and that would be oftener than not in the present circumstances— is, no doubt, the only alternative to some form of non-co-operation of passive resistance. But it would need at its head a man of his combined suppleness, skill and determination to make it effective. I have not the suppleness and skill—at least of the kind needed—and could only bring the determination, supposing I accepted the policy, which I could not do practically, as, for reasons of my own, nothing could induce me to set my foot in the new Councils. On the other hand a gigantic movement of non-co-operation merely to get some Punjab officials punished or to set up again the Turkish Empire which is dead and gone, shocks my ideas both of proportion and of common sense. I could only understand it as a means of "embarrassing the Government" and seizing hold of immediate grievances in order to launch an acute struggle for autonomy after the manner of Egypt and Ireland, though no doubt without the element of violence. All the same, it could be only on a programme involving an entire change of the creed, function and organisation and policy of the Congress, making it a centre of national reconstruction and not merely of political agitation that I could—if I had not the other reason I have spoken of—enter the political field but unfortunately the political
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mind and habits created by the past methods of the Congress do not make practicable at the moment. I think you will see that, holding these ideas, it is not possible for me to intervene and least of all be in the chair of the President.
Might I suggest that the success of the Congress hardly depends on the presence of a single person and one who has long been in obscurity. The friends who call on me are surely wrong in thinking that the Nagpur Congress will be uninspiring without me. The national movement is surely strong enough now to be inspired with its own idea especially at a time of stress like the present. I am sorry to disappoint; but I have given the reasons that compel me and I cannot see how it is avoidable.
Yours Sincerely,
Aurobindo Ghose
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INDIAN NATIONALISM : (V) REPRESSIVE MEASURES
HOUSE SEARCHES
ONE wonders what would happen in any European country if the police as a recompense for their utter inefficiency and detective incapacity were armed with the power and allowed to use it freely for raiding the houses of respectful citizens, ransack the property of absent occupants and leaving it unsafe and unprotected, carrying off the business books of Presses, newspapers and other commercial concerns, the private letters of individuals, books publicly sold and procurable in every book shop, violating the sanctity of correspondence between wife and husband, searching the persons of ladies of the house even though it be by female hands and the trampling on the sanctity of the home, the dignity of the person and the self respect which every race worthy of existence holds to be dearer than life itself. And all this in spite of the fact exemplified hundred times over that these inquisitions are wholly in fructuous and can serve no purpose but harassment and exasperation. Usually the searches are undertaken, if we do not err, on the vague information of these disreputable hirelings used as spies and informers, the statements of lying approvers eager to save their skins by jeopardising innocent men and confessions to the police of arrested prisoners made either for the same purpose or dictated by a morbid vanity and light-headed braggadocio which invents facts and details in order to give dignity to petty crime and magnitude to small and foolish undertakings. The ludicrously irrelevant and useless nature of the articles which are the sole reward of this odious activity are, its sufficient condemnation. Even if the widespread conspiracy dreamed of by authorities were a fact is it conceivable that respectable men, knowing the police to be on the alert, would risk liberty and property by storing bombs, looted ornaments or treasonous correspondence in their houses ? We are aware that the right of house search is a necessary weapon in the hands of authority for the suppression of crime, but it was never meant that this should be misused as in order to supply the place of detective ability in the
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the Police. House searches are unwarrantable unless the information on which they proceed is precise, reliable and highly probable. Judging from results not one of these epithets can be applied to the numerous searches which are now becoming a standing feature of life in Bengal. And if the search of the persons of ladies is to become another common feature of these domiciliary visits, we fear that the patience of people jealously sensitive on these matters will not long endure the strain. Surely, the higher authorities ought to have sufficient good sense to draw inevitable conclusion from experience, perceive the limitations of this weapon and, if not for the possible evil consequence of creating still greater disaffection, yet for its barren inutility, renounce its excessive use.
POLICE UNREST IN THE PUNJAB
The action of some of the statesmen of this country seems to be guided by the principle that the best way to bring about a particular object is to try and promote its opposite. They certainly desire the political unrest to cease, but their action seems to be carefully calculated to prolong it. No more irritating action could have been taken in the present state of the public mind than the persistence in sedition-hunting which is being practised on a large scale in the Punjab. There is not the least sign of trouble or violence or even widespread agitation of any kind in that province. The causes which excited agitation and violence formerly were purely local and, with the removal of the cause, the effect, as it was bound to do, disappeared. Since then, the Punjab has been profoundly quiet, and the opposition to the Convention Congress and the convocation of the Hindu Sabha, presided over by so inoffensive a personage as Sri Pratul Chandra Chatterjee, were the only signs of life it gave. We wonder, is it the first-mentioned activity which has led to the raids, searches and arrests ? The almost universal opposition to a body which has faithfully excluded the Nationalists and enjoys the support and patronage of Mr. Gokhale, may seem to the authorities a certain sign .of widespread seditious feeling in the land. Is it by stirring up sedition with a police pole that the Punjab bureaucrats think they can get rid of unrest ?
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The Patiala case has developed its real objective, which is the destruction of the Arya Samaj, the men arrested being merely pawns in the game. The speech of the counsel for the prosecution, Mr. Grey, in no way sets out an ordinary case against individuals, nor is there any passage in it which gives any light as to particular evidence against the persons on their trial, but from beginning to end it is an arrangement of the Arya Samaj as a body whose whole object, semi-open rather than secret, is the subversion of British rule. Mr. Norton, taking advantage of the presence of Sj. Aurobindo Ghosh in the dock, attempted to build up in the Alipore case an elaborate indictment of the whole national movement as a gigantic conspiracy, but he did not neglect the individual cases and made some attempt to conceal the extra judicial object of his oratory by a continual reference to actual evidence, relevant or irrelevant, in the case. Mr. Grey has not given himself that trouble. The political character of his advocacy is open and avowed. But he follows his Calcutta precursor in the ludicrous jumps of his logic from trivial premises to gigantically incongruous conclusions, in his heroic attempt to make bricks out of straw. His chief arguments are that the Arya Samajists read the Amrita Bazar Patrika and the Pun-jubee,—to say nothing of the long defunct Bandentataram,—and that some of the prominent members of the Arya Samaj are politicians and yet remain members of the Arya Samaj. The perfectly general interpretations by Swamy Dayananda of the Vedic view of politics, are the basis of his attack, and even the vehement character of the great reformer's polemics against other religions, the orthodox Hindu included, are pressed into the service of this unique argument. And all this is used to prejudice men under trial on a serious charge. Mr. Norton trifled with the traditions of the British bar by his pressing of trivial and doubtful evidence against the accused in the Alipore case, but it seems to us that Mr. Grey has departed still further from those lofty traditions. And what if the Patiala court decides that the Arya Samaj is a seditious body, seditious in origin, seditious in intention, seditious in action ? Will the Government prescribe as an illegal association this wealthy, powerful
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and highly organised community containing more than half the brains and activity of the Punjab ? Already the charge has been made that by giving special, privileges to the Mahomedans the Government abandoned definitely the principle of religious neutrality on which their rule has hitherto been founded. The present Governor of the Punjab is possibly capable of such a step,—after the whitewashing of the police in the Gulab Bano case and his speech to the Loyalist deputation, we can believe him capable of any rash headstrong step. Fortunately, there is little likelihood that Mr. Grey's oratory will be any more effective than Mr. Norton's.
THE ARYA SAMAJ AND POLITICS
We have received a communication from a member of the Samaj in which he puts to us certain pointed questions relating to the aims, character and works of the Samaj and of its founder's teachings. We have not that direct and first-hand knowledge which would enable us to answer these questions with any authority. But on the general question our views are known. Aryaism is not an independent religion. It is avowedly an attempt to revive the Vedic religion in its pristine purity. The Vedic religion is a national religion, and it embraces in its scope all the various activities of the national life. Swami Dayananda as a restorer of Vedicism included the theory of politics in his scope and revealed the intensely national character of the Hindu religion and morality. His work was avowedly a work of national regeneration. In dealing with the theory of politics as based on the Vedic religion he had naturally to include the truth that independence is the true and normal condition of a nation and all lapse into subjection must be a sin and degeneration, temporary in its nature. No man can deny this great truth. Freedom is the goal of humanity and Aryanism was in its nature a gospel of freedom, individual freedom, social freedom, intellectual freedom, freedom in all things, and the accomplishment of such an all-pervading liberation cannot come about without bringing national freedom in its train. If to perceive
these truths of Vedism and of nature is to be political and seditious, then Swami Dayananda's teaching was political and seditious and the religion he preached maybe stigmatised as political and
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seditious. But if sedition be limited to its proper meaning, an attempt by illegal and violent means to bring about the fall of the established authority or prepare by word or action lawless opposition and revolution, then there is no sedition in the Swami's preaching or in the belief and actions of the Arya Samaj. They used the perfectly legitimate means of strengthening the national life at all points and their objective is national regeneration through an active and free religion, not political revolution. Individual members may be Loyalists, Moderates, Nationalists, even Terrorists, but a religious body is not responsible for the political opinions of its individual members. The religious teaching of Swami Dayananda was inspired by national motives, not political; and the aims of the Arya Samaj are national not political.
THE ARYA DISCLAIMER
The leaders of the Arya Samaj have issued a manifesto disclaiming the political motives attributed to them by the Counsel for the Prosecution in his extraordinary opening address at Patiala. But is there any use in these repeated disclaimers ? To a certain type of official mind, not in the minority in this country, every movement, body, organ of opinion or centre of activity that makes for national strength, efficiency or manhood is by that very fact suspect and indeed self-convicted as seditious and its very existence a crime to be punished by the law. The Governor of the Punjab is either himself an official of this class or swayed by advisers of that temper. Under such circumstances it is enough to issue once for all a strong and dignified repudiation of the charge and then proceed calmly with the great work the Samaj has undertaken, serenely strong and unperturbed in good fortune or evil fortune, good report or evil report, confident in God's grace and the spiritual force communicated by the founder. This is the only course worthy of a manly community professing a robust and virile religion. Anxious repetition of unheaded disclaimers seems to us undignified and futile.
Page-23
WHAT IS SEDITION?
The question, what is sedition, one of those Chinese puzzles which it seems impossible to solve, nevertheless, presses for solution. In Nagpur it has been established that to laugh at the holder of a Government title is sedition. In the Swaraj case Justice Chanda-varkar has declared it to be the law that to condemn terrorism in strong language and trace it to its source is sedition. At Patiala it is contended that to read the Amrita Bazar Patrika and the Punjabee is sedition. We are not quite sure that at Patiala the prosecuting counsel did not hint that to bring Christianity or Mahomedanism into contempt or hatred is sedition. And we have these remarkable cases in the Punjab, where to translate Seeley's Expansion of England or Mr. Bryan's opinion of British rule in Indian seems to have a fair chance of being established as sedition. Mr. Stead's Review of Review is now known to be a seditious publication. We are not sure, either, that the Indian Daily News is not even worse, for it is continually trying to bring the police, who are an indispensable part of the Government established by law, into contempt and hatred, and the incorrigible persistence of its efforts is sufficient proof of motive, if not of conspiracy. Now one of the charges against a Punjab accused is that he wrote impugning the character of the subordinate police service—just like the Indian Daily News of Sir Andrew Fraser. We would suggest that Sir Andrew Fraser should be arrested in England and brought here to answer to the outraged police for the remarks passed by the Police Commission. The reasoning is perfectly fair. Any strong criticism, especially if it is persistent, lowers the reputation of the Government and creates in people a tendency to belittle, that is to say, have a contempt for authority established by law. It is still worse if the Government is accused of injustice, say, in the matter of deportations or the Gulab Bano case; for that inevitably creates hatred. Therefore strong criticism of the Government is sedition. The Amrita Bazar Patrika and Punjabee strongly criticise the Government. Therefore they are seditious papers and their readers seditious conspirators. Every ^official is a member of the Government established by law; therefore to criticise strongly an official or a policeman, still more, officials or policemen as a class, is sedition. Christianity
Page-24
is the religion of the Government established by law; to criticise Christianity is to bring Christians into contempt; the Government are Christians; therefore to criticise Christianity is to bring the Government established by law into contempt. That is sedition. Therefore to criticise Christianity is sedition. To say that repression fosters Terrorism may be true, but it is seditious. To suggest a Press censorship, seriously or ironically, is to bring the administration of the law of sedition into contempt, that is, to bring the administrators into contempt; and the administrators are the Government established by law. Therefore Mr. Stead's Open Letter to Lord Morley is seditious. We are almost afraid to go on, lest, finally, we should end by proving that The Englishman itself is an intolerably seditious rag,—for does it not try to bring Sir Edward Baker and the Government generally into contempt by intimating genially that they are liars, idiots and good for nothing weaklings,—in connection with the Reforms and their unwillingness to put the whole population of India into prison ? Would it not save trouble to prohibit speech or writing in India altogether ?
LAJPATRAI'S LETTERS
The case of Parmanand, the Arya Samaj teacher, whom with a singular pusillanimity the D. A. V. College authorities have dismissed before anything was proved against him, has been of more than usual interest because of the parade with which Lajpatrai's letters to him were brought forward. The letters were innocent enough on the face of them, but prejudice and suspicion were deliberately manufactured out of the connection with Krishna Varma, the expression "revolutionary" the use of the word "boys," and an anticipation of the agrarian outbreak in connection with the Punjab Government's ill-advised land legislation. The bubble had been speedily pricked by the simple statement of facts in the Punjabee and by Lajpatrai's own evidence. That Lajpatrai was acquainted with Shyamji Krishna Varma when he was in England, was known already; so were many men who worked with him, Sir Henry Cotton among others, when he was only an enthusiastic Home Ruler and violently opposed to violence. The project of a Nationalist Servants of India Society well
equipped
Page-25
with a library and other appointments for political education was well advertised and known to the whole country previous to the first deportations. The anticipation of the agrarian outbreak in the letter expresses an apprehension, not a desire, and merely shows that Lajpatrai was uneasy at the rate at which the discontent was swelling and feared that it might lead to an outbreak prematurely forestalling the use of a peaceful pressure on the Government. It is remarkable how throughout his career the honesty and consistency of Lala Lajpatrai's adherence to a peaceful but strenuous Nationalism has been vindicated at every step, and this last revelation of his private and even secret letters is an ordeal of fire out of which he has triumphantly emerged with his consistency and his innocence wholly established.
A NERVOUS SAMAJ
It is with great regret that we find ourselves compelled to enlarge on the hint we gave in our last issue and comment adversely on the methods by which the Arya Samaj is attempting to save itself from the displeasure of the Government. It is well that it should have disclaimed sedition and repudiated the charge of being not a religious but a political body. But to run nervously to all and sundry for a testimonial of respectability, to sue for a certificate of loyalty to the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab and express gratitude for an ungracious, ambiguous and minatory letter of reply, to prejudge by dismissal a man whose guilt has yet to be proved, are actions which show that Swami Dayananda's religion may have emancipated the intellects of the leading Arya Samajists but has done little to elevate their character. We must also express our amazement at the action of the Samaj in accepting the resignation by Lala Lajpatrai of his offices on the various governing bodies of the Samaj. There are two men who are the glory of the Samaj and by whose adherence and prominence it commands the respect and admiration of all India, Lala Lajpatrai and Lala Munshiram. By its action with regard to the former, the Samaj will lose heavily, it has already lost heavily, in public estimation, In his generous anxiety for the body to which he has devoted the greater part of his life-work, Lala Lajpatrai offered to it the chance of freeing itself from the attacks its enemies
Page-26
founded upon his connection with it. It was an offer which he was bound to make, but the Samaj ought to have refused. Lajpatrai's only offence is that he has worked and suffered for his country. By its action the Samaj has announced to the whole world that no man must dare to feel and act, however blamelessly, for his country if he wishes to be recognised by the Samaj. If so, Aryaism will perish from the face of India and leave no trace behind. The world has no use any longer for religious bodies which exclude courage, manliness, generosity, justice and patriotism from their moral practice.
THE NEW POLICY
A policy of conciliation, a policy of trust in the people, a policy liberal, progressive, sure if slow,—that was the forecast made by the Moderate astrologers when the Reform comet sailed into our startled heavens. The prophets and augurs of the Anglo-Indian Press friendly to Moderate India—friendly on condition of our giving up all aspirations that go beyond the Reforms—prophesied high, loud and often to the same purpose, and if, like the Roman augurs, they winked and smiled mysteriously at each other when they met, the outside world was not supposed to know anything of their private opinions. Even the disillusionment caused by the publication of the Councils Rules has not prevented this party of wise and able politicians from supporting by participation the Reforms which they condemned, and
be lauding the intention of the Anglo-Indian reformers while swearing dismally and violently at their practice. Bad as it is, we must cooperate so as to make the best of the new measure. To make the best of a bad measure is to make it a success and so prevent or delay the coming of a better. This at least is our idea of the matter, but we belong to a party not of wise and able politicians to take the full profit of that which they condemn as disastrous and injurious, but of men who have the misfortune still to believe in logic, principle and experience. To be logical is to be a mere theorist, to cling to principle is to be a doctrinaire and to be guided by experience, the world's and our own, is to be unpractical. Only those whose theory is confused and practice self-contradictory and haphazard, can be wise politicians and capable of guiding the country aright. From this standpoint a proclamation
Page-27
of all India as seditious is, doubtless, the first step in the new policy, the policy of conciliation and liberalism. It is the sign-manual of the great reformer, Lord Morley, upon his work, the loud-tongued harbinger of the golden age.
No particular motive can be alleged for this sudden proclamation, .nor is any alleged. The people are left to speculate in the dark as to the mystic motives of Lords Minto and Morley in this remarkable step forward, or to get what light and comfort they can from the speculations of our Anglo-Indian friends and advisers, who seem to be as much in the dark as ourselves and can only profess their blind religious head in the necessity and beneficence of the measure and appeal to all patriotic Indians to cooperate in coercing the national movement into silence. If India had been full of meetings of a seditious and doubtful nature, the necessity of the measure could have been established. Even if the national life were pulsating swiftly though blamelessly, its "a etiology"—if we may use a word which may possibly be condemned by Mr. Petman or Mr. Grey as seditious,— could have been understood, though not its necessity. But at present, with the exception of an occasional scantily attended meeting in the Calcutta squares, the only political meetings held are those in which abhorence of Terrorism is expressed or Vigilance Committees of leading citizens organised to patrol the E. B. S. R. at night even in this chilly weather, and those in which the Deccan Sabha drinks deep of the political sermons and homilies of Lord Morley's personal friend, Mr. Gokhale. Was it to stop these that the proclamation of all India became necessary ?
It has been freely alleged that the prevalence of bombs and Terrorism in Bombay, Punjab and Bengal is the justification of the measure on the ground that open sedition leads to secret assassination, Nationalism to Terrorism. It is obvious that to attempt to meet secret conspiracy by prohibiting public agitation is a remedy open to the charge of absurdity. The secret conspirator rejoices in silence, the Terrorist find his opportunity in darkness. Is not the liberty of free speech and free writing denied to the Russian people by more rigorous penalities, a more effective espionage, a far more absolute police rule than any that can be attempted in India? Yet where do the bomb and the revolver, the Terrorist and the secret conspirator flourish more
Page-28
than in Russia ? The conspirator has his its own means of propaganda which the law finds it difficult to touch. The argument, however, is that it is only in an atmosphere of dissatisfaction, disaffection and sedition that the propaganda of the conspirator can be effective, and Nationalism creates that atmosphere. Criticism of the Government leads to dissatisfaction with the Government, dissatisfaction leads to the aspiration for a better form of Government, aspiration of this kind when baulked leads to disaffection, disaffection leads to secret conspiracy and assassination. Therefore stop all means of criticising the Government and the first cause being removed, the final effect will disappear. That this is the actual train of reasoning, conscious or unconscious, in the minds of those who advise, initiate or approve a policy of repression is beyond doubt. It is evident in all they say or write.
Unfortunately the statement of the premises in this chain is incomplete and the conclusion is therefore vitiated. The first premise may be granted at once. In a country well satisfied with its lot, a nation at ease and aware of prosperity and progress, the propaganda of the secret conspirator must necessarily fail. In India itself, if we are to believe the Times, secret societies have existed for upwards of forty or fifty years. How is that they had no success and no one was aware of their existence until the reaction after Lord Ripon's regime culminated in the viceroyalty of Lord Curzon ? Dissatisfaction is not created by public criticism, it is created by the adverse facts on which public criticism fastens, and it
crystallise either in public criticism or in secret discontent. The public criticism creates public agitation, the secret discontent creates secret conspiracy. Both are born of the same circumstances, but the lines of development are entirely different, nor is there much sympathy between them. The public agitator dreads the secret conspirator, the secret conspirator despises the public agitator, even when they are moving towards the same end. The man most detested and denounced by the Indian revolutionary organisations now active at Paris, Geneva and Berlin, is Sj. Bepin Chandra Pal, the prophet and first preacher of passive resistance. Yet the object of both is almost identical, the Nationalist agitator insisting on perfect autonomy, the revolutionist on separation, both being merely different forms of independence. The question for the authprities
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is whether they will try to ignore or silence the public criticism or remove the cause of dissatisfaction. If they ignore without silencing public criticism, the dissatisfaction grows in volume until it becomes the aspiration for a better form of Government. They must then either satisfy that aspiration or silence it, they can no longer ignore it. This game of ignoring the obvious is, like the first crude attempt of Nationalism in India to ignore the Government, foredoomed to failure; it only postpones and intensifies the problem, it does not get rid of it. Yet this was the policy long followed by the Indian Government towards the Congress movement. On the other hand, they may silence the public criticism or trample on it. If they trample on it, the aspiration becomes disaffection not necessarily to the sovereign, but to the form and system of Government then obtaining, with a cry for absolute transformation. This was what happened in India in 1905. Trampling on public opinion without silencing its expression is mere madness; it leads to genesis of great revolutionary movements, injures the Government, endangers public peace and order, and helps nobody. This method does not even postpone the necessity of a solution, it hastens it by intensifying the problem to breaking point. Yet this was the policy of Lord Curzon. He not only permitted the expression of public discontent, but he fostered it by arguing with and trying to persuade it; yet he invariably trampled on the thing he permitted. It is a statesmanship of this kind which ruins empires and destroys great nations. There is another kind of policy, and that is to play with the monster of discontent, to chide it, whip it and yet throw its sops when taking advantage of the monster's preoccupation with the sop to win the chain round its neck tighter and tighter. This is also bad policy. The whip enrages, the sop does not soothe but irritates, the tightening of the chain only shortens the distance between the tamer and the brute;—for the difficulty is that, the tamer has to hold the chain, he cannot tie it to something else and get out of springing distance.
Eventually, either discontent has to be satisfied or silenced. If it is satisfied, the whole difficulty disappears and perfectly amicable relations are restored,. That was the policy
perused by England with regard to its colonies after the severe lesson learned in America, with the result that the bond between the colonies and Great Britain still
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defies the efforts of Time and Circumstance to loosen or snap them. But if discontent is not to be satisfied, the question then for the ruler is whether he prefers it to crystallize in public agitation and peaceful but possibly effective resistance, or in secret conspiracy, terrorism and eventually armed insurrection. It must be one of the two, for to expect an immense impulse like the national impulse to sink to rest without being either crushed or satisfied, is to expect impossible miracles The Anglo-Indian appeal to the political leaders to be satisfied and cease from agitation is a singularly foolish and futile one. If the political leaders were to comply, even the most popular and trusted of them, they would cease to be leaders the next day. The dwindling numbers that attend the Convention sittings are a signal proof of this very obvious fact; that diminution has been effected, it must be remembered, without public agitation, without any organisation or activity of the Nationalist Party, by the mere operation of a law of Nature. The aspiration, however created, is there and it is a fire mounting out of the bowels of the earth, which no man's hand can extinguish. The political leaders know that they cannot quench it, if they would; the Government thinks it can. And the method it seems to favour, is the extension of the Seditious Meetings Act and the prosecutions of papers and publications or their leaders all over India....
If our view of the question is right, it is evident that to paralyse public
agitation is to foster Terrorism, and we can only suppose that Government think
Terrorism easier to deal with than public agitation. This seems to us a grievous
error. If experience shows anything, it is that Terrorism is never extinguished
except by the removal of its causes. The difference between Terrorism and open
rebellion is that open rebellion often effects its object, but can easily be
crushed, while Terrorism does not effect its object, but cannot be crushed. The
only thing that Terrorism can do is to compel Government to satisfy partially
the more moderate demands of peaceful agitation as the lesser of the two evils,
and this is a result which the Terrorist looks on with contempt. He is always
extreme and fanatical and will not be satisfied with anything less than,
immediate freedom gained by violence. He is confident of his result, he is
passionately and intolerably attached to his method. Irish Terrorism only
disappeared
Page-31
because of the expectation of Home Rule by the alliance with British Liberalism ; Russian Terrorism is still kept alive by the impotence of the Duma; Anarchism flourishes because the Governments of Europe have not found any way of circumventing it. Terrorism may perish of inanition; coercion is its food and its fuel.
The policy now being followed by the Lord Minto's Government has neither immediate justification nor ultimate wisdom. It is the old futile round which reluctant authority has always trod when unable to reconcile itself to inevitable concession. It is a wasteful, ruinous and futile process. For if the Government were to declare tomorrow that it would no longer tolerate public opposition and deport all the leaders of public and peaceful agitation in the country, it would only stimulate more formidable and unscrupulous forces and substitute a violent, dangerous and agonising process for one which, even if a little painful, is helpful, economical and constructive.
THE VICEROY'S SPEECH
The speech of Lord Minto and the occasion of the first meeting of the Viceroy's Council under the new regime is a very important pronouncement; and the most momentous of the passages in the pronouncement are two, the one in which he disposes finally of any fingering hopes in the minds of the Moderates, the other in which he threatens to dispose finally of any lingering hopes in the minds of the Nationalists. It has been a Moderate legend which still labours to survive, that the intention of Lords Morley and Minto in the Reforms was to lay the foundations of representative self-government in India. This legend was perseveringly reiterated in direct contradiction of the Secretary of State's famous pronouncement that, so far as his vision could pierce into the future, the personal and absolute element in Indian administration must forever remain. Lord Minto has now stamped his foot on the Moderate legend and crushed it into atoms. We quote the important passages in which he accomplishes this ruthless destruction.
"We have distinctly maintained that representative Government
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ment in its Western sense is totally inapplicable to the Indian Empire and would be uncongenial to the traditions of Eastern populations—that Indian conditions do not admit of popular representation, that the safety and welfare of the country must depend on the supremacy of British aolministration—and that that supremacy can, in no circumstances, be delegated to any kind of representative assembly..........We have aimed at the reform and enlargement of our Council but not at the creation of Parliaments. I emphasise what I have just said in view of the opinions to which advanced Indian politicians appear not infrequently to commit themselves."
In the face of speech so plain and uncompromising it will be difficult indeed to keep up the fiction that that it is only the regulations which are unobjectionable and, if only the regulations are changed, we can with a clear conscience accept and participate in the Reforms. The Act and the Regulations are not different in aim or parentage; they have one origin, one object, one policy. Lord Minto has emphatically stated that the initiative in the Reforms was from beginning to end his own, and the facts bear out the truth of his statement. His inaugural speech has put a seal of finality on the death doom of Moderatism of which the publication of the Council's rules was the pronouncement. The objective of Moderatism is colonial self-government, the means, the grace and good will of the British rulers, and the two British rulers whom they have hailed as apostles and fathers of Reform have declared explicitly that in no future age, however distant, and in no circumstances, however changed, can the official supremacy be delegated to any kind of representative assembly however safely constituted. Not even, therefore a Russian Duma, that simulacrum of a Parliament, is to be granted to India even in remote and millennial futurity.
The other passage is the reference to the licence of a revolutionary Press as a
means of combating Terrorism. The revolutionary Press has long since disappeared
and, therefore, we can only suppose that Lord Minto means the Nationalist Press
and that this pronouncement heralds fresh coercive legislation. The platform has
been silenced, the Press must follow. Then Thought alone will remain free from
the prohibitions of the law and even that may be coerced by the deportation and
exile of any one whom the Police may suspect of entertaining
Page-33
liberal opinions. Just as the first quoted passage ensures the extinction of all Moderate activity, so this menace portends the extinction of all Nationalist activity. We do not know that we shall be altogether sorry. If The Englishman is tired of assassinations, we also are tired of the thankless and apparently unsuccessful task of regulating popular discontent and pointing out legitimate paths to the national aspiration on the one hand and attempting to save the officials from themselves on the other. We have only persevered in it on a strong sense of our duty to the country. But we are beginning to feel that Fate is more powerful than the strongest human effort. We feel the menace in the air from above and below and foresee the clash of iron and inexorable forces in whose collision all hope of a peaceful Nationalism will disappear, if not forever, yet for a long.. .
BUDDHA'S ASHES
Again the powers that behave committed a blunder. If any of the wise men who weave the tangled web of Anglo-Indian statesmanship at Simla, had a little common sense to 'salt their superior wisdom, they would never have allowed the strong feeling against the removal of Buddha's ashes to vent itself so long in public expression without an assurance at least of favorable consideration. We have waited long for that simple and natural act of statesmanship, but in vain. It is such a trivial matter in itself, concession would be so graceful, natural and easy; yet the harm done by perverseness and churlishness is so immense ! We wonder whether our official Governors ever think. It. is very easy. What would they feel if the bones of a great Englishman, say, the Duke of Wellington, were so treated ! But diseased attachment to prestige and the reputation of an assured wisdom and an inflexible power have sealed up the eyes of those in high places.
TO MY COUNTRYMEN
Two decisive incidents have happened which make it compulsory on the Nationalist party to abandon their attitude of reserve and expectancy and once more assume their legitimate place in the struggle
Page-34
for Indian liberties. The Reforms, so long trumpeted as the beginning of a new era of constitutional progress in India, have been thoroughly revealed to the public intelligence by the publication of the Council's Regulations and the results of the elections showing the inevitable nature and composition of the new Councils. The negotiations for the union of Moderates and Nationalists in an United Congress have failed owing to the insistence of the former on the Nationalists subscribing to a Moderate profession of faith.
The survival of Moderate politics in India depended on two factors, the genuineness and success of the promised Reforms and the use made by the Connectionists of the opportunity given then by the practical suppression of Nationalist public activity. The field was clear for them to establish the effectiveness of the Moderate policy and the living force of the Moderate party. Had the Reforms been a genuine initiation of constitutional progress, the Moderate tactics might have received some justification from events. Or had the Moderates given proof of the power of carrying on a robust and vigorous agitation for popular rights, their strength and vitality as a political force might have been established, even if their effectiveness had been disproved. The Reforms have shown that nothing can be expected from persistence in Moderate politics except retrogression, disappointment and humiliation. The experience of the last year has shown that, without the Nationalists at their back, the Moderates are impotent for opposition and robust agitation. The political life of India in their hands has languished and fallen silent.
By the incontrovertible logic of events it has appeared that the success and vigour of the great movement inaugurated in 1905 was due to the union of Moderate and Nationalist on the platform of self-help and passive resistance. It was in order to provide an opportunity for establishment of this union, broken at Surat, that the Nationalist gathered in force at Hughly in order to secure some basis and means of negotiation which might lead to united effort. The hand which we held out, has been rejected. The policy of Lord Morley has been to rally the Moderates and coerce the Nationalists; the policy of the Moderate party Jed by Mr. Gokhale and Sir
Faros Shah Mehta has been to play into the hands of that policy and give it free course and a chance of success. This
Page-35
alliance has failed of its object; the beggarly reward the Moderates have received, has been confined to the smallest and least popular elements in that party. But the rejection of the alliance with their own countrymen by the insistence on creed and constitution shows that the Moderates mean to persist in their course even when all motive and political justification for it have disappeared. Discomfited and humiliated by the Government, they can still find no way to retrieve their position nor any clear and rational course to suggest to the Indian people whom they misled into a misunderstanding of the very limited promises held out by Lord Morley.
Separated from the great volume of Nationalist feeling in the country, willfully shutting its doors to popularity and strength by the formation of electorates as close and limited as those of the Reformed Councils, self-doomed to persistence in a policy which has led to signal disaster, the Convention is destined to perish of inanition and popular indifference, dislike and opposition. If the Nationalists stand back any longer, either the National movement will disappear or the void created will be filled by a sinister and violent activity. Neither result can be tolerated by men desirous of their country's development and freedom.
The period of waiting is over. We have two things made clear to us, first, that the future of the nation is in our hands, and, secondly that from the Moderate party we can expect no cordial co-operation in building it. Whatever we do, we must do ourselves, in our own strength and courage. Let us then take up the work God has given us, like courageous, steadfast and patriotic men willing to sacrifice greatly and venture greatly because the mission also is great. If there are any unnerved by the fear of repression, let them stand aside. If there are any who think that by flattering Anglo-India or coquetting with English Liberalism they can dispense with the need of effort and the inevitability of peril, let them stand aside. If there are any who are ready to be satisfied with mean gains or unsubstantial concessions, let them stand aside. But all who deserve the name of Nationalists, must now come forward and take up their burden.
The fear of the law is for those who break the law. Our aims are great and honourable, free from stain or reproach, our methods
Page-36
are peaceful, though resolute and strenuous. We shall not break the law and, therefore, we need not fear the law. But if a corrupt police, unscrupulous officials or a partial judiciary make use of the honourable publicity of our political methods to harass the men who stand in front by illegal ukases, suborned and perjured evidence or unjust decisions, shall we shrink from the toll that we have to pay on our march to freedom ? Shall we cover behind a petty secrecy or a dishonorable inactivity ? We must have our associations, our organisations, our means of propaganda, and, if these are suppressed by arbitrary proclamations, we shall have done our duty by our motherland and not on us will rest any responsibility for the madness which crushes down open and lawful political activity in order to give a desperate and sullen nation into the hands of those fiercely enthusiastic and unscrupulous forces that have arisen among us inside and outside India. So long as any loophole is left for peaceful effort, we will not renounce this struggle. If the conditions are made difficult and almost impossible, can they be worse than those our countrymen have to contend against in the Transvaal ? Or shall we, the flower of Indian culture and education, show less capacity and self-devotion than the coolies and shopkeepers who are there rejoicing to suffer for the honour of their nation and the welfare of their community ?
What is it for which we strive ? The perfect self-fulfilment of India and the independence which is the condition of self-fulfilment are our ultimate goal. In the meanwhile such imperfect self-development and such incomplete self-government as are possible in less
favorable circumstances, must be attained as a preliminary to the more distant realisation. What we seek is to evolve self-government either through our own institutions or through those provided for us by the law of the land. No such evolution is possible by the latter means without some measure of administrative control. We demand, therefore, not the monstrous and misbegotten scheme which has just been brought into being, but a measure of reform based upon those democratic principles which are " ignored in Lord Morley's Reforms,—a literate electorate without distinction of creed, nationality or caste, freedom of election unhampered by exclusory clauses, an effective voice in legislation and finance and
Page-37
some check upon an arbitrary executive. We demand also the gradual evolution of executive government out of the hands of the bureaucracy into those of the people. Until these demands are granted, we shall use the pressure of that refusal of co-operation which is termed passive resistance. We shall exercise that pressure within the limits allowed us by the law, but apart from that limitation the extent to which we shall use it, depends on expediency and the amount of resistance we have to overcome.
On our own side we have great and pressing problems to solve. National education languishes for want of moral stimulus, financial support, and emancipated brains keen and bold enough to grapple with the difficulties that hamper its organisation and progress. The movement of arbitration-, successful in its inception, has been dropped as a result of repression. The Swadeshi Boycott movement still moves by its own impetus, but its forward march has no longer the rapidity and organised irresistibility of forceful purpose which once swept it forward. Social problems are facing upon us which we can no longer ignore. We must take up the organisation of knowledge in our country, neglected throughout the last century. We must free our social and economic development from the incubus of the litigious resort to the ruinously expensive British Courts. We must once more seek to push forward the movement toward economic self-sufficiency, industrial independence.
These are the objects for which we have to organise the national strength of India. On us falls the burden, in us alone there is the moral ardour, faith and readiness for sacrifice which can attempt and go far to accomplish the task. But the first requisite is the organisation of the Nationalist party. I invite that party in all the great centres of the country to take up the work and assist the leaders who will shortly meet to consider steps for the initiation of Nationalist activity. It is desirable to establish a Nationalist Council and hold a meeting of the body in March or April of the next year. It is necessary also to establish Nationalist Associations throughout the country when we have done this. We shall be able to formulate our programme and assume our proper place in the political life of India.
SRI AUROBINDO
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VII
Illusion and Delusion—the twin blocked the way;
This has confused the mind of Kanhu—
Where can he go and live ?
They who see with the mind stay away.
Three are there : although three, the three are one.
Kanhu says, the world is cut away from him—
Whoever that came has gone :
Because of this coming and going Kanhu is confused.
It is visible, the city of conquest is near to Kanhu.
Yet, Kanhu says, "it does not enter into my heart !"
NOTES
The goal is the city of God—the city of conquest for Kanhu. He must go there and live for ever. But with the active mind, with its illusions and delusions, none can enter. Illusion is to see a thing which is not there, delusion is to see one thing for another. They remain outside, Kanhu sees the world abolished for him, the three worlds of the mind, the life and the body which although three are really one— their truth is behind and beyond in the unity. That destination seems to be near and yet Kanhu has not completely entered into it.
VIII
The boat of Grace is filled with gold,
There is no reason for silver in it.
Kamali rows towards the heaven;
How is it then that the past life returns again" ?
Pull out the peg, spread out the rigging;
Row on, Kamali, and ask of the true Guru.
Sit in the rear and look around.
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The helm is not there ? How to ply and who can ply ?
Press evenly to the right and to the left as you go :
So do you find in the way the Great helpers.
NOTES
Through the supreme Grace your being carries only gold—pure consciousness. The impure, mixed worldly consciousness is the silverware—it must not be allowed to return. With this pure Consciousness firm in you, let yourself go ahead. Do not turn to the right, nor to the left—go forward keeping a watchful eye all around.
NOLINI KANTA GUPTA
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THE SPIRITUAL DESTINY OF THE WAKING STATE
(Contd.)
V. The Critique of the Samadhi- Solution
The Voice replied : "Is this enough, O spirit ?
And what shall thy soul say when it wakes and knows
The work was left undone for which it came ?
Or is this all for thy being born on earth
Charged with a mandate from eternity,
*
* *
To pass and leave unchanged the old dusty laws ?
Shall there be no new tables, no new Word,
No greater light come down upon the earth
Delivering her from her unconsciousness,
Man's spirit from unalterable fate ?
*
* *
Is this then the report that I must make,
My head bowed with shame before the Eternal's seat,—
His power he kindled in thy body has failed,
His labourer returns, her task undone ?"
(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Bk. VII, C. II, p. 540)
"I am concerned with the earth, not with worlds beyond for their own sake, it is a terrestrial realisation that I seek and not a flight to distant summits."
(Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 193)
TRANCE-experiences are undoubtedly of great value in the pursuit of the spiritual goal as ordinarily understood, and the Nirvikalpa Samadhi taken in the specific sense in which the term is used,
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no doubt represents a supreme height of realisation that a seeker may aspire after. Naturally enough, this most elevated trance-state proves to be adequate if the goal is to pass away into the Superconscient and not to bring down the Power and Glory of the Superconscient into our normal waking consciousness. But samadhi experiences cannot suffice in the least for the object of our Yoga of Transformation; for, our goal is no less than the dynamic divinisation of our total existence including the outermost parts of Prakriti. To be more specific, viewed from the perspective of our spiritual goal—the goal of embodying and manifesting the highest spiritual consciousness here upon earth itself—the trance-solution for the actual imperfections of our world-existence suffers, among others, from the following deficiencies:
(1) The supreme trance-state represents a state of consciousness or rather superconsciousness to which only a rare few can ordinarily attain. Thus, it has got no general validity so far as the goal of a wide-based terrestrial realisation is concerned.
(2) Even when attained, there is no return for the majority of seekers from this supreme height of spiritual consciousness. It is only the exceptionally gifted Isvarakotis or "divine souls" who succeed in coming back to the waking state. (Cf. Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol. VI, p. 499 :
"When once they (ordinary Sadhakas) somehow attain to the direct realisation of Brahman, they cannot again come back to the lower plane of material perception. They melt away in Brahman— ksire niravat—like water in milk.")
So the question of the^divinisation of the waking existence becomes otiose and irrelevant.
(3) Traditionally it is averred that even those rare few who happen to return from the supreme state can do so only through the intermediary of a trace of ego and desires. Hence a certain "lowering of the key" becomes unavoidable which places it at a remove from the perfect divine realisation we aspire after.
Cf. Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol. VII : "The conclusion of the Vedanta is that when there is absolute Samadhi and cessation of all modifications, there is no return from that state; as the Vedanta aphorism says : anavrtti Savdat... But the Avatars cherish a few desires for the good of the world. By
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taking hold of that thread they come down from the superconscious to the conscious state." (p. 140) [Italics ours]
Narrating his own personal experience the Swami says in the same context :
"I had just a trace of the feeling of Ego, so I could again return to the world of relativity from the Samadhi." (Ibid., p. 139, [Italics ours]
(4) In a more general way we may state that if the entry into the higher reaches of our being is effected only in the absorbed super-conscient state of trance, the experience cannot become real to the whole being, being valid only for a remote part of it. Thus it militates against our goal of the complete spiritualisation of the totality of our existence.
(5) The Yogic trance helps us to fix the spiritual experiences in our inner consciousness alone; it cannot automatically lead to the spiritualisation of the outer waking consciousness. So for us who aim at a total spiritual and supramental change, even and in particular of the outer parts of our Nature, samadhi as an instrumentation proves to be altogether inadequate and futile.
(6) Because of the aforesaid inability to exercise anything but a relative and moderate elevating influence on the outer consciousness, it so happens that when the samadhi ceases, the thread is broken and the soul returns once again to the "distractions and imperfections of the outward life."
As a matter of fact, since one cannot continually remain in the trance-state,1 while leading an embodied existence, vyutthdna or the "return" from the superconscious state becomes unavoidable, and with this vyutthdna "the lower consciousness from which the ascent took place falls back to what it was, with only the addition of an un-kept or a remembered but no longer dynamic experience."2
It is because of this persistence of the disabilities of the waking mentality even after attainment of samadhi that it is sometimes asserted that an absolute eradication of Ignorance or a complete ascension
1 Cf. "Yes, this Samadhi.. .is a state not at all easy to attain. When very rarely it appears in somebody, it doees not last for long."
(Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol. VII, p. 112) * Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 811,
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of consciousness from the "mortal mentality" become feasible only when the body and the bodily life cease to function at death. (Cf. Yoga-Shikhopanishad, I. 163: pindapātena ya murthi sā muktirna tu hanyate)
The foregoing discussion makes it clear that trance-experiences may be all right so far as the traditional Yogas are concerned; for, after all, according to them the true bondage is the very process of birth and the liability of the individual to rebirth in this "unhappy transient world" (anityamasukham lokam). Liberation achieved through the attainment of the knowledge of Reality should therefore have for its practical consequence the definitive stoppage of this cyclic process of birth-death-rebirth.
And if this is so, if the cessation from embodied existence is considered to be the summum bonum, one need concentrate only on an inner realisation of the inner Divine and not bother oneself with the possibility or otherwise of an integral terrestrial realisation. Also the body, although initially a necessary instrument for the realisation of our spiritual destiny (sariramādyam khalu dharmasādhanam), may be allowed to disintegrate once that goal is achieved ( Cf Sri Ramakrishna : "Take out the thorn with the help of a thorn" ; and Yoga-Vasishtha : "Renounce that with which you renounce" (yena tyajasi tarn tyaja)',
But this can by no means be our attitude to the body and bodily life. For the Integral Yoga has for its objective :
(i) to make spiritual experiences real to the whole consciousness including that of the outer being;
(ii) to establish the highest possible realisation in the waking state and make it endure there ;
(iii) not only to experience the truth subjectively and in one's inner consciousness alone, but to manifest it even in full activity ;
(iv) an integral possession of the integrality of the Divine in the life of this world and not only beyond it.
In short, in the words of Sri Aurobindo : "It is the object of my yoga to transform life by bringing down into it the Light, Power and Bliss of the Divine Truth and its dynamic certitudes. This Yoga is not a yoga of world-shunning
ascctism, but of divine life It aims at a change of life and existence, not as something
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subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object."1
Elsewhere Sri Aurobindo points out that "not only must the mind be able to rise in abnormal states out of itself into a higher consciousness, but its waking mentality also must be entirely spiritualised."'2' (Italics ours.)
This then is our goal, and hence trance-experiences alone cannot help us much in achieving our objective. Moreover the samadhi state as ordinarily realised suffers from another great disability which may not be considered as such when viewed from the standpoint of the goal of the traditional world-shunning Yogas but certainly so from our point of view. This is as regards the absence of any conscious memory of the trance-experience when one returns to the waking mentality again.
As a matter of fact the aim of the old Yoga is to pass away into the Superconscient and not to bring back its dynamic riches to the waking outer existence with a view to effectuate a spiritual transformation there. Hence, as soon as the Yogin goes above the level of the spiritual mind, he does not seek to retain any continuity of awareness there; instead, he passes into the "mystic sleep" of Samadhi, a state of superconsciousness in which the human mind in its actually evolved condition cannot remain awake even with what has been termed the "inner waking" and hence passes into "the blank incomprehension and non-reception of slumber."3 And as a result, because of the gulf of oblivion, the spiritual experiences, of the superconscient trance-state lose all their dynamic value for the waking consciousness.
But this disability has to be remedied. Since we seek to bring down the Superconscient into our normal waking consciousness, we must somehow bridge the gulf, heighten and intensify our spiritual awakening even in the normally superconscient reaches of being and train our consciousness to bring back in full the dynamic memory "from the inner to the outer waking."
In this connection we feel tempted to reproduce in extenso
1 Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, pp. 150,* 166.
2 The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 453.
3 Ibid., p. 599-
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what the Mother said in reply to the question "Is the state of trance or Samadhi a sign of progress ?"1
"To enter into Samadhi is to pass into a state of which no conscious memory remains on awakening.
"In ancient times this was considered as a very high condition. It was even thought that it was the sign of a great realisation. ...I have read in all kinds of so-called spiritual literature marvellous things about this state of trance or Samadhi; and it happened that I had never had it. I did not know if it was a sign of inferiority. And when I arrived here [at Pondicherry], one of my first questions to Sri Aurobindo was, 'What do you think of Samadhi, this state of trance which one does not remember ? One enters into a condition which seems to be bliss full but when one comes out of it one never knows what happened." He looked at me, he saw what I meant and told me, 'It is unconsciousness. ...Yes, one enters into what is called Samadhi, when one comes out of one's conscious being and enters into a part of one's being which is completely unconscious or rather into a domain where one has no corresponding consciousness—one goes beyond the field of one's consciousness and enters into a region where one has no more consciousness. One is in the impersonal state. That is to say, a state in which one is unconscious ; that is why naturally one remembers nothing, because one has not been conscious of anything'...
"So you have the reply. The sign of progress is when there is no more unconsciousness, when you can rise to the same regions without entering into a trance." (Italics ours)
At the time of the publication of this Talk, the Mother added the following remark :
"There are people who enter into domains where they have a consciousness, but between this conscious state and their normal wakeful consciousness there is a. gap : their individuality does not exist between the waking state and the deeper state; then in the passage they forget. They cannot carry the consciousness they had there into
1 Vide Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Vol. XIV, No 3, pp.43-45.
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the consciousness here because there is a gap between the two. There is even an occult discipline which consists in building the intermediary fields, so that one may be able to remember things."1 [Italics ours].
But even this does not suffice for our goal. For what we aim at is not the conscious bringing back of the impressions, the reporting back to the waking consciousness, in transcriptions more or less perfect, what one experiences in states at present superconscient to it: we want instead an integral supramental transformation of the waking existence itself. In the luminous words of Sri Aurobindo :
"If the control of [the] highest spiritual being is to be brought into our waking life, there must be a conscious heightening and widening into immense ranges of new being, new consciousness, new potentialities of action, a taking up—as integral as possible—of our present being, consciousness, activities and a transmutation of them into divine values which would effect a transfiguration of human existence. For wherever a radical transition has to be made, there is always this triple movement—ascent, widening of field and base, integration..."2 [Italics ours]
So we see that in order to have a divinely transformed waking existence, an ascension to the trance-state or even the building up of a conscious bridge between that and the waking state is not enough. Something much more revolutionary is needed : let us see what.
(To be continued)
JUGAL KlSHORE MUKHERJI
1 Ibid., p. 43-
2 The Life Divine, p. 657.
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V. INDIAN POLITICAL THOUGHT AND INSTITUTIONS:
ANCIENT INDIA
Functions of the State (I)
NOW that we have formed some idea of the limitations imposed by custom and public opinion on the powers of the state, we should examine in some detail the exact scope of the state's function in ancient India.
A slight confusion has been created in this matter by the attempt of modern scholars to read into some of the ancient texts and inscriptions certain ideas and institutions that savour of Western collectivism. Thus, it is generally held that Kautilya's Arthashastra advocates a thoroughgoing interference by the king and his officials in the day to day life of the people, and many look upon the so-called edicts of Asoka as an attempt on the part of a busybody to impose his arbitrary will on his subjects, in matters that had best be left alone. Asoka may be summarily dismissed as a freak. For all his zeal of anewly converted Buddhist, he managed in the end to lose his throne, apparently under public pressure, because he had been misusing state funds in making lavish donations to the Buddhist cause; this has been more than hinted at in the Buddhist tradition itself. And he left hardly an impress on later Indian history, whatever might have been his impact on the world-wide migration of Budhism. As Sri Aurobindo had occasion to note (The Ideal of Human Unity, Chapter 31,) "Asoka's edicts remain graven upon pillar and rock, but the development of Indian religion and culture took its own line in other and far more complex directions determined by the soul of a great people." Kautilya's Arthashastra is a different matter, and we shall have to consider its reputed "communistic" bias.
We have already indicated in the beginning that a characteristic feature of ancient Indian political thought was its emphasis on duties rather than rights. This comes out very clearly in its view of the state's
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functions. From the earliest times we find long enumerations of the king's duties, very little being said about his rights vis-d-vis his subjects, except the obvious injunction that he should be respected and obeyed provided he is worthy of the honour. The position assigned to the state is best brought out by the dictum often repeated in the texts, that the king is a servant of the people and the taxes that he can levy are as it were his wages, for services rendered. A variant is provided by saying that the foremost duty of the king is to keep his subjects happy and contented. Kalidas the representative poet of the classical age probably does violence to grammar but is certainly reflecting a common notion, when he derives the word rājan from a root meaning "to please", rāja prājā-rañjanāt.
If we are to borrow a term from modern parlance to describe the attitude of the ancient Indian state to its subjects, "paternalism" seems to fit the case best, provided we understand this term in its best and not the derogatory sense often attached to it. The Mahabha-rata, for example, describes the king as the 'father of the people, because he has compassion for them (Shanti, 139.105). In the Ramayana (II.2.49), the hero is said to have behaved like a father when he sympathised with the sorrows of his people and was highly pleased when they were happy and joined in festivities. Kautilya
(1.19) reflects the same sentiments when he says: "In the happiness
of the subjects lies the happiness of the king, in their welfare his welfare."
Yajnavalkya (1.334) exhorts the king to behave like a father towards his
subjects. Even Asoka, the heretic king, declares in his inscriptions : "all men
are my children".
Paternalism implied a number of things : protection from internal trouble and external danger, maintenance of law and order involving a regular and efficient system of police and justice, guardianship of the traditional Dharma and keeping the people on the path of virtue, help and support to the needy and infirm, prevention of economic exploitation and undue influence on the part of the men in positions of power, and a vigorous promotion of the general well-being of subjects. The aim in view was always to maintain the national culture at a high level and ensure the continued prosperity of the country, to the extent these could be secured" with the help of the state power, and without in the least degree impairing the initiative
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and efficiency of the individual and the diverse cultural, social, economic and religious groups of which he formed part.
The main lines of this endeavour were laid down at a fairly early date in the nation's history, in the period of the Upanishads to begin with, and in the Great Epics in full detail. A few quotations will illustrate the point. They are not meant to be exhaustive, but they may be taken as typical of the ancient Indian ideas on the functions of the state. In
Chhandogya Upanishad (V.115), King Aswapati the Kaikeya proudly declares : ''Within my realm, there is no thief, no miser, no drunkard, none who does not keep the sacrificial fire, none who defies the social law and acts according to his self-will, no woman who goes astray." In the Mahabharata (Adiparva, chapter 109), there is a description of Bhisma's kingdom which elaborates the theme in these words : "Here there were no thieves, there was none who was sinful; the people were devoted to virtuous acts, sacrifices and the vow of the truth. Bearing love and affection for one another, they grew in prosperity. None was there miserly, and there was no woman who was a widow. The wells were full of water, the groves abounded in trees, and the whole kingdom was full of prosperity." This is one of the earliest examples in history of a conscious and deliberate attempt to paint a Utopia which was to be the model of a successfully governed state. There is in the Mahabharata (Sabha, chapter 5) another well-known passage that will bear repetition; the passage is long but a few typical extracts will serve to bring out the spirit in which the state in ancient India was intended to be run. It is in the form of certain questions which the divine sage, Narada, puts to Yudhishthira the Pandava prince who has just been installed as king. Some of these questions, if answered in the affirmative and with tmthful ness by any of our contemporary Heads of states would do credit to their governments; presumably, the
Pandavas prince gave the correct answers but the answers have not been recorded. "Have your chief officers of states been really deserving the pay they receive", Narada asks. "And do they continue to be loyal to you ? You do not surely settle everything by yourself? And I trust the advice your ministers give does not leak out ? Do you get things done by officials who can be trusted to do their jobs well and who are incorruptible ? Your subjects are not surely oppressed by any severe measures taken
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by you? Do the people look upon you as an embodiment of impartiality, and can they come to you without fear as if you were their father and mother ? Are the peasants in your realm contented ? Are large tanks dug in your kingdom at -proper distances, so that the farmers do not have to depend solely on the vagaries of the weather ? Are they ever in need of food or of seeds, and do you give them loans on easy terms ? Do you give your soldiers their pay and rations regularly at the appointed times ? Do you support the wives and children of those who have given their lives for your sake and those who are now in distress because of their army service ? Surely you reward by bestowing wealth and honours on men of learning and humility and on those who are skilled in the different branches of knowledge ? You no doubt protect yourself from your public servants, and protect them from your relatives, and protect all of them from one another ?" This last injunction is a real gem which many modern governments would be the better for copying.
It may be argued that all this was very well in theory. But is there any evidence in history,—for according to the accepted notions the Upanishads and the Great Epics belong to pre-history,—is there any independent testimony to show that even a remote attempt was made in ancient India to approach anywhere near the ideal ? We shall here omit the descriptions, given in Kalidas and the later poets of the classical age, of conditions prevailing in their time, although it is obvious to even a casual student of our literature that most of the great poets had been in closest touch with kings and courts and the common man, and the pictures they paint, however tinged with poetry and idealism, do reflect the contemporary scene. We shall also omit for our purpose the grandiloquent claims made by Asoka in his well-known inscriptions about the state of the country under his beneficent rule; for it may be justly objected that this self-styled ' 'favourite of the gods'' (devdnathpriya) was too full of his own righteousness, like the Achemenid kings of-ancient Iran whom he seems to have taken as his models, to be telling the whole truth. But the honest and scholarly Buddhist monks who came to India all the way from China in search of the true knowledge cannot be accused of any bias in favour of the peoples whom they happened to have visited in the course of their travels through India. And the pictures they
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paint are singularly true to the ancient Indian ideal. Here is the impression that one gathers from
Fa Hine : he travelled through India around 400 A.D. The quotations are from the useful summary given in Smith's Early History of India. "The picture", avers Smith, "is a pleasing one on the whole, and proves that
Vikram Aditya (this was the honorific title adopted by Chandragupta II during whose reign the Chinese pilgrim happened to be in India) was capable of bestowing on his people the benefits of orderly government in sufficient measure to allow them to grow rich in peace and prosper abundantly." This is high praise, coming as it does from a hardened Anglo-India bureaucrat who has very few good things to say about the ancient Indian ways of government. According to Fa Hien, Smith continues, "the towns of Magadha were the largest in the Gan-getic plain. The people were rich and prosperous, and seemed to him to emulate each other in the practice of virtue. Charitable institutions were numerous; rest-houses for travellers were provided on the highways, and the capital (Pataliputra, modern Patna) possessed an excellent free hospital endowed by benevolent and educated citizens. Hither came, we are told, all poor or helpless patients suffering from all kinds of infirmities. They were well taken care of, and a doctor attended them, food and medicine being supplied according to their wants. Thus they were made quite comfortable, and when they were well, they might go away." This sounds very much like the modern welfare state which by many is considered to be an absolute novelty. "The region south of Mathura specially excited the admiration of the traveller. The large population lived happily under a sensible government which did not worry it overmuch. With a glance at Chinese institutions, Fa Hien congratulates the Indians that they had not to register their households, or attend to any magistrates and rules. They were not troubled with passport regulations, or, as the pilgrim bluntly puts it, 'those who want to go away, may go, those who want to stop may stop.' The administration of the criminal law seemed to him mild in comparison with the Chinese system. Most crimes were punished only by fines, varying in amount according to the gravity of the offence, and capital punishment would seem to have been unknown. Throughout the country, no one killed any living thing, or drank wine, ate onions or garlic; there were no butchers' shops or
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distilleries in the market-places." This last portion of the pilgrim's report needs to be taken with a certain amount of scepticism. For we know from the literary works and the Ajanta paintings as well as from the law books that men were not exactly tee-totallers in fifth century India, they were not all harmless vegetarians as a Buddhist might expect them to be, and punishments could be harsh in case of need. But the general picture presented here tallies well enough with that given by the native records.
Hiuen Tsang, the other well-known pilgrim from China who has left a record of his impressions, visited India early in the 7th century, during the reign of Harshavardhana in the north and Pula-keshin the great Chalukyan king in the Deccan. He too wrote from the Buddhist standpoint, but the general impression he carried away with him was quite in keeping with his reverence for the Sacred Land. "He was favourably impressed", says Vincent Smith, "by the character of the civil administration, which he considered to be founded on benign principles. The officials were remunerated by grants of land; compulsory labour upon public works was paid for; taxes were light; the personal services exacted from the subject were moderate in amount; and liberal provision was made for charity to various religious institutions. Violent crime was rare. Imprisonment was now the ordinary penalty. The other punishments were more sanguinary than in the Gupta period. Minor offenses were visited with fines." This, as pointed out above, does not indicate a degeneration in the public morals, as Smith suggests; it merely shows that Hiuen Tsang was more observant than his predecessor. "Education evidently was diffused widely, especially among the Brahmins and numerous Buddhist monks; and learning was honoured by the Government. King Harsha was not only a liberal patron of literary merit, but was himself an accomplished calligraphist and an author of reputation. Benevolent institutions on the Asokan model, for the benefit of travellers, the poor and sick, were established throughout the empire. The king also imitated his prototype in the foundation. of numerous religious establishments, devoted to the service of both the Hindu gods and the Buddhist ritual." It may be added in this connection that the glories of Nalanda University, which, like Oxford and Cambridge of a later date, had been founded as a centre of religious
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training, began about this time and continued under the patronage of Harsha's successors in this region, especially the Pala kings of Bengal. Incidentally, Hiuen Tsang has left some details of the royal munificence which throw a light on the way grants-in-aid, a potent instrument in the hands of the modern state, used to operate in those remote days. Hiuen Tsang is describing here the way largesse's were distributed by the king every five years at the confluence of the Ganges and the Jumna at Prayag. "By this time the accumulation of five years was exhausted. Except the horses, elephants and military accoutrements, which were necessary for maintaining order and protecting the royal estate, nothing remained. Besides these, the king freely gave away his gems and goods, his clothing and necklaces, earrings, bracelets, chaplets, neck-jewel and bright head-jewel; all these he freely gave without stint. All being given away, he begged from his sister an ordinary second-hand garment, and having put it on, he paid worship to the Budd has of the ten regions, and rejoiced that his treasure had been bestowed in the field of religious merit."
The ancient ideals of government outlasted the fall of Hindu empire in northern India. But the same ideals continued to govern kings in the south. The testimony of foreign travellers in the Vijayanagara kingdom during the days of its glory, in the sixteenth century, is illuminating. We shall choose a few typical quotations from Do-mingos Paes, a Portuguese visitor from Goa who has left a detailed record of what he saw. He is one among many others who were impressed by the wealth and organisation of the Vijayanagara kingdom before it fell, and may serve our purpose. "These dominions are very well cultivated and very fertile....The land has plenty of rice and Indian corn, grains, beans and other kinds of crops which are not sown in our parts; also an infinity of cotton....The whole country is thickly populated with cities and towns and villages; the king allows them to be surrounded only with earthen walls for fear of their becoming too strong....This country wants water because it is very great and has few streams; they make lakes in which water collects when it rains, and thereby they maintain themselves." Of the capital city of Vijayanagara, Paes says, "This is the best provided city in the world and is stocked with provisions such as rice, wheat, etc., and there is large store of these and very cheap. The streets and markets are full of
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laden oxen without count......Then the sheep they kill every day are
countless, for in every street there are men who will sell you mutton so clean....The state of this city is not like that of any other city, for in
this one everything abounds .........There live in this many honourable
merchants, and it is filled with a large population because the king induces many honourable merchants to go there from his cities and there is much water in it. The king made a tank there, and water comes to it from more than three leagues by pipes which run along the lower parts of the range of hills outside. This water is brought from a lake which itself overflows into a little river." All this sounds very modern indeed, and also the way the tank was built: "In order to make this tank the king broke down a hill which enclosed the ground now occupied by the tank. In the tank I saw so many people at work that there must have been fifteen or twenty thousand men. This tank the king portioned out amongst his captains (that is, officers), each of whom had the duty of seeing that the people placed under him did their work, and that the tank was finished and brought to completion." Ancient Indian states spent considerable amounts on maintaining a standing army, and Vijayanagara followed the old practice. As Paes observes, "this king has continually a million fighting troops, in which are included 33,000 cavalry in armour. All these are in his pay, and he has these troops always together and ready to be
dispatched to any
quarter whenever such may be necessary.......Should any one ask what
revenues this king possesses, and what his treasure is that enables him to pay so many troops, I answer thus : These captains whom he has over these troops of his are the nobles of his kingdom; they are lords, and they hold the city and the villages of the kingdom (as fiefs). There are captains amongst them who have a revenue of a million and a million and a half, and as each one has revenue so the king fixes for him the number of troops he must maintain, in foot, horse and
elephants ........Each of these captains labours to turn out the best troops
he can get, because he pays them their salaries....I did not see a man (among these troops) that would act the coward." This again was very much in the old Indian tradition; for we must not forget that India lost her battles against the foreigner not because the soldiers were cowards, but because their equipment had not kept march with the times, and also because in the crucial stages, they were invariably let
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down by their leaders and kings. These kings were in the habit of maintaining a full treasury which they kept on filling from generation to generation, thus incidentally providing an adequate incentive to hungry adventurers from abroad. So Paes goes on to add, "The previous kings of this place for many years past have held it a custom to maintain a treasury, which treasury, after the death of each, is kept locked and sealed in such a way that it cannot be seen by any one, nor opened. They are not opened except when the kings have great need, and thus the kingdom has great supplies to meet its needs........." We notice however a certain deterioration in the matter of giving punishments, although here too, precedents could be found in the code of Kautilya who wrote in the 4th century B.C. Another Portuguese traveller, Fernando Nuniz records : "The punishments that they inflict in this kingdom are these : for a thief, they cut off a foot and a hand ........Nobles who become traitors are sent to be impaled alive; and people of the lower orders, for whatever crime they commit, he forthwith commands to cut off their heads in the market-place." Brahmins no doubt were treated less harshly than the others, for as Nuniz says, "in this country they do not put Brahmins to death but only inflict some punishment so that they remain alive." Nevertheless, the state never hesitated to make its power felt, and we may accept the foreign Traveller's picturesque verdict : "The people are so subject to the king that if you told a man on the part of the king that he must stand still in a street holding a stone on his back all day till you released him, he would do it."
All this points to one conclusion, namely, that the state in ancient and medieval Hindu India was not a powerless entity. It was quite capable of giving protection to its subjects against misrule, and oppression by its own servants as well as by the anti-social elements among the general public. It was sufficiently strong, or at least took adequate precautions that foreign attacks would be met. Above all, it tried to ensure a decent standard of living for all its subjects by engaging in a number of welfare activities which many modern states even now hesitate to undertake under the pretext of laissez-faire. The doctrine
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of laissez-faire obtained in ancient India as well, but it was not misinterpreted and misused, except in one or two glaring instances, to keep the down-trodden under foot forever. Of all these points we shall take note in the sequel.
( To be continued)
SANAT K. BANERJI
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(BRIEF SUMMARY)
CHAPTER XXIV
MATTER
The quarrel begins with the struggle between Life and Matter with the apparent defeat of life in death as its constant circumstance; it continues with the struggle of Mind against the life and body and culminates with the struggle of the spirit against all its instruments; but the right end and solution of these discords is not an escape and a severance but the complete victory of the higher over the lower.
We have to examine the problem of the reality of Matter. Our present experience of Matter does not give us its truth; for Matter is only an appearance of the Reality, a form of its force-action presented to the principle of sense in the universal consciousness. As Mind is only a final dividing action of Supermind and Life of Conscious-Force working in the conditions of the Ignorance, so Matter as we know it is only the final form taken by conscious-being as the result of that same working. Mind precipitating itself into Life to create form gives to the universal principle of Being the appearance of material substance instead of pure substance, that is to say, of substance offering itself to the contact of mind as stable thing or object. This contact of mind with its object is Sense.
In the divine Mind there is a movement which presents to the divine Knower the forms of Himself as objects of His knowledge and this would create a division between the Knower and the object of
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knowledge if there were not at the same time, inevitable, another movement by which He feels the object as Himself. This movement, in the divided state of existence created by dividing Mind, is represented to us as the contact of sense which becomes a basis for contact through the thought-mind by which we return towards unity.
Since the action of Mind is to divide infinitely the one infinite existence, Matter, the result of that action, becomes in its apparent nature an infinite atomic division and atomic aggregation of infinite substance. But its reality is one and indivisible, even as in the reality of Life and of Mind, Matter is Sachchidananda represented to His own mental experience as a formal basis of objective knowledge, action and delight.
CHAP XXV
THE KNOT OF MATTER
Spirit and Matter are the two ends of a unity, Spirit the soul and reality of Matter, Matter the form and body of Spirit. There is an ascending series of substance and Spirit at the summit is itself pure substance of being. Brahman is the sole material as well as the sole cause of the universe and matter also is Brahman; it is like Life, Mind and Supermind, a mode of the eternal Sachchidananda.
Stoll, practically, Matter seems to be cut off from Spirit and even its opposite and the material existence incompatible therefore with the spiritual. Matter is the culmination of the principle of Ignorance in which Consciousness has lost and forgotten itself and the self-luminous Spirit is represented by a brute inconscient Force in whose mere action there appears to be no self-knowledge, mind or heart. In this huge no-mind Mind emerges and has to labour besieged and limited by the universal Ignorance and in this heartless Incon-science a heart has manifested which has to aspire opposed and corrupted by the brutality of material Force. This is the form-absorbed Consciousness returning progressively to itself, but obliged to work under the conditions of Matter, that is to say, always bound and limited in its results.
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For Matter is the opposite of the spirit's freedom and mastery, the culmination of bondage ; it is a huge force of movement, but of inertly driven movement subject to a law of which it has no conscience nor initiative but mechanically obeys. It opposes therefore to the attempt of Life to impose itself and freely utilise and the attempt of Mind to impose itself and know and freely guide and constant opposition of its inertia; it yields reluctantly to a certain extent, but brings always in the end a definite denial, limit and obstruction. For this reason knowledge, power, love, etc. are always pursued, accompanied and hedged in by their opposites.
For Matter is the culmination of the principle of division and struggle. It can only unify by an association which carries with it the possibility of dissociation and an assimilation which devours. Therefore Life and Mind in Matter working under this law of division and struggle, that is to say, of death, desire and limitation, aggregation and subsequent dissociation, labour without any finality or certainty of assured progress.
But especially the divisions of Matter bring in the law of pain. Ignorance and Inertia would not be necessarily a cause of pain if the Mind and Life were not aware of an infinite consciousness, Light and Power in which they live but are prevented from participating by the Ignorance and Inertia of Matter or were not stirred to possess this wideness partly or wholly. Man especially, because he is most self-conscious, develops this awareness to a high degree, nor can he be permanently satisfied with increase of power or knowledge within the limits of the material world, for that is also limited and inconclusive and, being aware of and impelled by the infinite, within and around him, he cannot escape the necessity of seeking to know and possess it. This progression of the conscious being out of the Inconscient to the infinite consciousness might be a happy out flowering but for the principle of rigid division and imprisonment of each divided being in his own ego which imposes the law of struggle, the dualities of attraction and repulsion, pleasure and pain, effort and failure, action and reaction, satisfaction and dissatisfaction. All this is the denial of Ananda and implies, if the negation be insuperable, the futility of existence; for in this existence the satisfaction sought by the Infinite in the finite cannot be found, then
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ultimately it must be abandoned as an error and failure.
This is the basis of the pessimist theory of material existence which supposes Matter to be the form and Mind the cause of the universe and both of these to be eternally subject to limitation and ignorance. But if on the contrary it is immortal and infinite Spirit which has veiled itself in Matter and is emerging, the development of a liberated supramental being which shall impose on Mind, Life and Matter a higher law than that of limitation and division, is the inevitable conclusion from the nature of cosmic existence. There is no reason why such a being should not liberate and make divine the physical existence as well as the mind and life, unless our present view of Matter represents the sole possible relation here between sense and its objects in which case, indeed, fulfilment must be sought only in worlds beyond. But there are other states even of Matter and ascending series of the gradations of substance, and their higher law is possible to the material being because it is there in it already latent and potential.
(To be continued)
SRI AUROBINDO
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THE SERVICE OF HUMANITY (contd.)
WE have seen that the service of humanity, in whatever form it is done, fails to contribute to the happiness either of the person who does it or of those for whom it is done. For real happiness, happiness which each one of us hankers after, cannot be brought about simply by material or mental means. It is certainly true that one has a birth-right to be happy, and that one's desire for happiness is quite a legitimate desire ; for utter happiness is the inevitable destiny of all. But we have to see what happiness one secretly longs for, what is its nature, and how it can be achieved. But before we take up that point, we have to answer a question we have already posed ourselves : Can service of humanity lead to the elimination of one's ego and its selfish motives ?
There is a lot of loose talk about one's being selfless in social, political or humanitarian work. We often hear of a social or humanitarian worker being universally eulogised as selfless. Well, if that were true, all these workers would be liberated souls. No spiritual discipline would then be needed for" liberation. But spiritual wisdom asserts that the little, petty self of man which feels itself separate from others is the cause of his ignorance and bondage. Liberation, according to it, is the expansion of one's consciousness into the infinite consciousness and the transfer of one's centre of gravity from the mortal lump of thinking clay one is at present to the eternal and immortal Being or Self-existence. That was the selflessness to which the Buddha and others attained by so much self-discipline and concentration. But service of humanity, if the truth has to be faced squarely, enhances rather than diminishes egoism and renders one's self more subtly, more pervasively, more complacently selfish.1 Of course, it is not the crude, narrow, repulsive selfishness of a man who makes no bones of inflicting privation or suffering on others in order to serve his own ends. It is the refined,
1 "Very usually, altruism is only the sublimest form of selfishness."—Sri Aurobindo
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sophisticated, wide-horizoned, ethics-coated selfishness of the idealist or the philanthropist who inflicts his own ideas and principles, his own views and plans and programmers upon others and insists on their adoption as the panacea for most ills of life. The infliction is done out of kindness and compassion, out of an earnest solicitude for the happiness and well-being of others, out of a deep sense of fellow-feeling. It is considered a laudable infliction to which humanity is expected to submit with a good grace. But the idealist or the philanthropist seems to be blissfully unaware of the fact that his mental views and moral principles are all ignorant and erring, deriving, as they do from his half-lit mind, and that to impose them on others whose line of evolution he cannot see, is to throw their nature out of gear and hinder rather than help their progress.1 This is nothing but ambition—that disguised ambition of the presumptuous human mind to lead the world by the nose to the Kingdom of Heaven or the Utopia of which it has itself no direct and definite knowledge. "How do you propose to help humanity ? You do not even know what it needs," asks the Mother. The humanist does not bother about the true need of humanity, and even if he did, he could not know it; for it takes the insight of a spiritual man to discover it. What he considers to be its need, must be its need. The humanist helps, because he must, because without it his own life will lose its savour. He imposes his will upon others, cripples their initiative, bends their spirit of independence to his dominating will and congratulates himself that it is not for himself but for others that he is sacrificing his time and energy and money. It is a glorious sacrifice, and he is secretly, often subconsciously, proud of it.
"How can you help another if you do not have a consciousness higher than his ?", asks the Mother again. But the consciousness of others is no concern of the philanthropist. It does not deter him or damp his ardour if he finds that the person he is going to help has a consciousness higher than his. Is it not his mission to help the lame dogs over the stile, irrespective of their consciousness ?
1 "Selfishness kills the soul; destroy it. But take care that your altruism does not kill the souls of others/'—Sri Aurobindo
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"It is only children who say, 'I am opening a dormitory, I am going to build a nursery, I will offer soup to the poor, preach knowledge, spread a religion etc It is only because you consider you
are better than others, that you know better than they what they should be or do..." The whole secret of this kind of humanitarian drive is the truth that "you consider you are better than others."
"I do not think that humanity has become happier or that there has been a great improvement." The humanist gets a satisfaction from the feeling that "he is something" and that he is doing something well worth doing.
The Mother tells us of a wit who once said, "...If mankind had no suffering, philanthropists would be left without occupation." One can, indeed, well imagine the fret and uneasiness of the philanthropist if he is told that he had better stop meddling with others' affairs and tinkering at social reforms. His ambition masquerades as altruism and philanthropy but he knows it not. "Altruism," says Sri Aurobindo, "does the works of compassion more often for its own sake than for the sake of the world it helps." "Altruism, philanthropy, the service of mankind are in themselves mental or moral ideals, not laws of the spiritual life," Sri Aurobindo says again. The humanist is shocked and alarmed to hear it.
It is clear then that service of humanity is not a royal road to selflessness or liberation from the ego. Rather the contrary. The ego in man battens on its self-righteous humanitarian activities which appear glorified in the eyes of the world. Human evolution has reached a stage where it has become necessary to draw a clear line between mental tentative and spiritual imperatives, between provisional palliatives and a radical therapy. Man must get beyond his ego and come in contact with the hidden springs of universal action, if he aspires to do real good to the world. Mental sympathy and fellow-feeling will not avail much. Knowledge alone with its inherent power can save the world. The One alone can save the Many.
(To be continued)
RlSHABHCHAND
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( continued )
WE must distinguish spirituality from morality and religion. Morality is an attempt to control, to guide and to direct our motives, seekings, impulses, desires, our life-force, by a mental standard of conduct. That it is a mental or a rational attempt is shown by the fact that the various standards of conduct are arrived at either by the calculations of consequences of action or by erecting a uniform law of some inner motive or intuition or conscience declared to be valid for all. The inadequacy of these moral standards has become too obvious in our day, and there seems to be hardly any way of formulating a stable moral theory. As in Thought, so in Morality there is a disequilibrium. If we examine the ethical situations, we find that they call for a unitary consciousness to deal with them ; and this unitary consciousness is precisely not obtained at the mental level. There is, we may affirm, above moral consciousness, a higher spiritual consciousness, intrinsically aware of the unity; it is this [automatic awareness of the unity that would resolve the moral state of disequilibrium. An action proceeding spontaneously and effectively from an intrinsic unity-consciousness, that is the hall-mark of spirituality. Moral education, that is, morals instilled by mental considerations, may be necessary so long as humanity has not felt the need to pass beyond the mental consciousness; one may justify the instilling of the guilt con-serousess among men by showing how successful it is in checking the ruthlessness and wildness of Man, but true spirituality shows that it is like administering sickness to man to check the outer signs of some other sickness. In an ideal system of spiritual education, the harmony of life would be induced, not by moral principles, but by a wise
channel sing of energy, and in fact, by an effective elimination of the moral problems altogether. Life can directly be guided by the Spirit; morality need not enter, even as an intermediate step.
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Similar remarks apply to religion as well. Religion is not spirituality. Religion is also a mental way of leading Man to some kind of relationship with the Spirit. The underlying assumption of Religion is that by certain specific acts, by certain rituals, ceremonies, certain confessions, certain prayers, a relationship can be established with what is believed to be the highest Being or Beings. True spirituality shows, on the contrary, a plastic path, an open way, recognising for each individual a unique path leading him to develop a growing and living relationship and identity with the supreme Reality. Spirituality is a matter of inner life, dependent upon no external binding of rituals or ceremonies; in the words of Sri Aurobindo : "spirituality is in essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul, which his other than our mind, life and body; an inner aspiration to know, feel, to be that, to enter into contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also our own being, to be in communion with It and union with It, and a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact, the union, a growth or waking into a new becoming or new being, a new self, a new nature." The path of Yoga is the path of the Yogi, the Rishi, the Sufi, the mystic. There are dogmatic religions which negate this path. To these dogmatic negations, our reply is that as they are by definition above argument, we shall leave them where they are, and let those who want them have them, but we shall refuse to ourselves the privilege of the dogmatic blindness. Our concern is with light and illumination, and if any given religion has within its heart this element of light, the truth of spiritual growth, we shall accept it, not in a religious spirit, but in the yogic spirit, the spirit of sincere seeking, and in the spirit of the widest seeking, the seeking of the Infinite.
Yoga or spirituality is very much associated with the idea of the renunciation of the world and dynamic action. This association is due to an extreme tendency of asceticism based upon a certain truth of the nature of the Spirit. The truth behind asceticism is that it demonstrates that the Spirit is prior to and above the movement. But this truth is evidently partial, for even though Spirit is above movement, the movement is not devoid of Spirit; indeed, both reason and spiritual experience affirm that all movement has its origin and
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source in the Spirit. In the original spiritual tradition of India, there was no opposition between the Spirit and the world; the Vedic and the Upanishadic Culture was not world-negating, and this culture, in fact, supplied the inspiration and basic bedrock for all the multifarious developments in the dynamic pursuits of the body, life and mind. It is wrong to suppose that the spirituality of India has been the cause of the poverty and misery of India; it was when spirituality became insufficiently spiritual, that is to say, partial in its movement and field of effort and achievement, that the seeds of its weaknesses were sown. This defective notion of spirituality has rightly been rejected by the spiritual pioneers of the modern Indian Renaissance. Dayananda stands out as a robust spiritual pioneer who boldly and confidently expounds dynamism as the truth of the Spirit and condemns with full force the theory and practice of world-negating Illusionism. In Sri Ramakrishna, we find a profound and wide and synthetic spiritual experience making way for the solid new foundation for the dynamic spiritual action. Vivekananda is for us the very embodiment of dynamism expressing the fire and passion of the Spirit; and all the truths and dynamic powers of the Spirit we find manifesting sovereignly and triumphantly in Sri Aurobindo. Spirituality finds its complete fulfilment in the sovereign embodiment in Matter and the most effective expression in Life. The divine life on earth, not an escape to an indifferent Nirvana or to a distant heaven of bliss, that is the great message of the Indian spirituality.
Life, it has been argued, is basically ignorant, and like a dog's tail, its curl towards corruption is irremediable. And yet, the defiant spirit of Man has throughout the centuries attempted to fathom, manipulate and change this very principle of existence. Religion, Morality, Culture, Polity, Economy, are so many ways by which attempts are made to churn the mysterious waters of Life so that it may deliver from its bosom something that is still so elusive and still promises to be perhaps the sweetest nectar. If these attempts have failed, the reason is that the secret of Life and Matter is not accessible to the Mind of which Religion, Morality, and Culture etc., are-so many dynamic expressions. Mind is incapable of penetrating into the heart of Life and the message of our new spirituality is that it is the Spirit and its Supreme Power which alone can achieve what seems to be an
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impossibility. There is, as we can discover through Yoga, behind our blind, impulsive, headstrong desire-soul, a true vital being, pure, calm, powerful and spontaneously turned to the inner and the higher Self, which we can bring forth and manifest in our surface activities the pure but powerful Hanuman. There is again, behind the true vital being, our true individual central being, pure and sweet and fragrant white flame, projecting into our outer being, and capable of suffusing all our life-activities with its nobility, sheer purity and devotion, and with the divine potency that can lead from the complicated cobwebs and snares of Ignorance into the highest sublimity, wideness and intensity of knowledge, action and delight. Not by fleeing from life, nor by accepting life as it is, but by a progressive discovery of the inner truth of life and its problems, and by an inner and delicate but effective change of the very vibrations of life-force that we can avoid the extremes of either killing and rejecting life or of drinking to death the sweet-bitter brew of life.
The West that is coming to us through Commerce, Politics, Culture or through Education, is full of a dynamism of Life; Life that is highly exploited, Life that is highly organised, Life that is highly and subtly mechanised. It is in a mad rush, and starting from the early Renaissance when it was liberated from the clutches of religion and religious morality, it has coursed through a finesse of equally liberated philosophy, literature and art, but has arrived now at a bottom point of a nude revelation of its unbridled phantasy and violence. It is as though by theblindbut sure eye that it invades India bandit could be the privilege of India to offer to it the real spiritual tranquilliser to liberate it from the pain that it carries within its bosom. It is in fact, a necessity on the part of India to discover the spiritual remedy that she inwardly has if she has to survive. For the only way in which India can receive the rush of life is by its majestic spiritual embrace; else, India will remain troubled and unequal to the task. India must be dynamic, but spiritually dynamic.
Spirituality and world-action are not incompatible with each other. On the contrary, since the Spirit is an all-embracing Reality and Power, the most effective world-action can proceed only on the spiritual basis. Caesar and Christ are not opposed to each other; only Christ has to apply himself to the works of Caesar. And we shall
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then see that Christ will out-Caesar Caesar.
A perception of world-unity and an automatic action contributing to the world-unity would be the natural outcome of spirituality applying itself to the works of Life-Force. Internationalism which is being imposed on the humanity through world-ideologies, commerce, communications and political drives, is in its truest reality an expression of the spiritual consciousness and therefore it is native to the spiritual man.
We speak today of the need of the unity of our country. But not knowing the fundamental truth of this unity, recommendations are made which are purely external and linguistic in their nature. The unity of India is spiritual, and once we recognise this truth, proclaim it, and act in the light of this inner unity, we can be sure we shall not have to go to external means to achieve the unity. It will simply be there.
Spiritual action is not a duty for duty's sake; spiritual action is not devoid of the mirth and joy and the shining laughter of the Life-Force. There is in the Life-Force a puissant will in the realisation of which is the ineffable joy and ecstasy. The idea of duty belongs to the moral plane, and duties often conflict with each other, and the justice sought after through the mental consciousness turns out to be a supreme injustice; and how often love abhors what duty demands ! This situation of conflict and disequilibrium does not belong to the spiritual consciousness. In Spirit there is inherent delight and in spiritual action there is a harmonious perception of unity which places each relation in its proper place and extracts from each shock of meeting the utmost Rasa, the sap of delight. Out of this delight or of the upward movement leading up to this delight can be born the highest forms of literature and art. The marvel of form is essentially the marvel of the presence of the Spirit. For this reason, then, the most marvellous forms of beauty can be the effortless and inevitable expressions of spiritual consciousness alone. An
unfailing rush of the waves of joy and love pour out of the bosom that has
opened its gates to the indwelling Spirit.
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Such a downpour of love, expressing itself in various relations, mutualities, formations, in the varied play of life, such a truth of dynamic spirituality basing itself on the eternal Repose of the Silence must form the very pulse of the new education. The Education Commission speaks of the close connection between life and education. And this is the right perception. There are sermons in stones, Nature itself is an open book widely spread before us, life itself is the great teacher of life. But we have seen that life as it is, has a drive, but it needs to be illumined; education is the process of releasing the light and the force of Light that are in the heart of Life, so that it becomes concentrated and richly and subtly organised; and life so organised will be an unfailing and sure guide of life; life" so organised quickens and sensitises our instruments to be in tune with the stone, insect, beast, man and woman, with the all-pervading Spirit itself.
Evidently, therefore, the method of spiritual education will have a foundation and spirit quite different from what is current in the ordinary systems of education. The pulsation that we seek in the educational process, the soul that we wish to implant in education, cannot be born of any external manipulation of organisation; the method of spiritual education is fundamentally that of constant fusion in the atmosphere of the spiritual experience, spiritual knowledge, spiritual force, the purifying force, the liberating and uplifting force. There must vibrate a constant idea of the Spirit, and there must be a constant meditation on the Spirit through each act; each activity of education must be directed to provide in it the presence and revelation of the dynamic Will of the Spirit. There must course through the whole educational process a wide understanding of the complex and varied ways through which the Spirit manifests itself in Nature and in Man; there must be correspondingly wise handling of the temperaments, possibilities and imperatives of the delicate natures that are entrusted to our care; there must be an insistence on the culture of the mind, emotions and the body, knowing full well that it is through the refinement, vigour, richness and perfection of these instruments that the Spirit can dynamically effectuate itself in the world; there must be an understanding of the various stages and principles of evolution of Nature and the understanding that each stage has its own norms and standards and that they have to
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be organised on a vast and complex scale of values, all leading in their large movements as well as in detail to the consummation and realisation of the highest values moved by an intrinsic consciousness of the unity and oneness; there must be wideness, charity, even indulgence, sympathy, affection, love in relationships; every field of knowledge and art should find its proper place, each one contributing to the harmony and essential oneness; reading, conversation, study, casual or organised, pertaining to spiritual matters will have their place; even instruction too will have its legitimate place; but more important will be the methods of example and influence. The method of spiritual education is the method of life itself; it is the active and mutual participation of teachers and students in their spiritual and integral development. This is the heart and soul and method of education.
But it may be objected that this goal of education, even if desirable, is extremely difficult to realise. But in reply, we have to insist on the necessity of its realisation. Science demands it, Life demands it, the Spirit of India itself demands it. Without it, we shall be swept off our feet. We shall, therefore, not desist from the utmost effort that is demanded of us. Indeed, it is the realisation of this ideal of education that will mean the revolution in education.
The logic of the new educational methodology itself will call for a spiritual orientation in education. The modern educationist is truly in search of the soul of the child. He has come to realise that the child is not a plastic material to be moulded and pressed into a shape desired and decided upon by the parents or the educators. A psychology of freedom in education has gained a great ground. The idea that the education is the education of the whole personality has begun to find its practical application in many advanced schools. The idea of psychological counselling has also gained ground; the Education Commission itself has recommended the appointment of
counselors in schools and colleges. The demand for work-experience in education has become insistent, and one of the chief recommendations of the Education Commission is to introduce work-experience as an integral part of education. All these ideas and recommendations and practices bear in themselves the seeds for a great psychological explosion. For the present psychological ideas are the first crude beginnings and very largely they are derived from Behaviourism
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or from the Analytic or Gestalt or Hormic Psychology. These schools themselves are in conflict with each other and create by this conflict a disequilibrium which must inevitably lead to its own correction. But if we inquire into the nature of this conflict, we shall find that it is rooted in the hiatus of experience, the incompleteness of data ; the present data that we have are capable of being interpreted in several alternative ways, and we are not in a possession of those crucial data which would settle this quarrel. This would mean an exploration of the as-yet unexplored or ill-explored regions of consciousness which, however, have been the central field of yogic psychology. We have or can have in the yogic psychology a complete science of personality which is the key-concept for education. Personality is sometimes identified with character, but very often a distinction is made between the two; according to this distinction, character means the fixed structure of certain recognisable qualities while personality means the flux of self-expressive or sensitive and responsive being. But when we examine the distinction between the fixed structure and the flux, we find that the fixity and the flux are only relative terms, and in the movement of Nature, nothing is fixed. Personality then is a plastic expression of certain forces of Nature combined for the time being. Yoga affirms that this combination of forces can be disturbed; it can be modified, it can be totally changed. Personalities can be multiplied within the same individual; the conflicting personalities in the individual can be harmonised; one can become capable of putting forth the needed personality according to the circumstances or the demand of the work or the situation, even while the other personalities would remain behind contributing to the efficacy of the personality put in the front. One can even go beyond all personality and know the real Person that assumes so many personalities, and even beyond this there are still many more discoveries that await us. All this the educational methodology will be obliged to admit in due course, and in fact, imminently if we truly understand how accelerated is the modern pace of progress.
But above all, it is the evolutionary force working in the world that seems to confirm our hope of a sooner change that must overcome mankind and turn it inwards towards the discovery of the inner realities. There are, we might say, three fundamental operative
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principles of evolution; first, a wide, subtle and complex organisation of the forms of the present term of evolution; next, an ascent of this into a higher term; and third, an assimilation of the lower by the higher. In the present complex and subtle organisation, we have the evidence of the imminent ascent of consciousness to what is above our present term of mentality. That which is above mentality should assume a most important subject of our inquiry both in the Universities and outside. For in this great movement of evolution, we are all equal partners; and the evolutionary force cannot be stayed by any dogma, doubt or obscurantism or denial. It is a cosmic necessity, and it is, therefore, wise to accept the meaning of this necessity, and prepare ourselves, to take the staff in our hands and to set out for the journey.
This evolutionary ideal can be a most satisfying goal that we can put forward before our youth. The realisation of this goal will demand from the youth a total consummation of his energy and the fire of his idealism. Not to be a mere citizen of the country or of the world, but to prepare a new world, to transcend the limitations of Man and to shape him into a new being, to evolve a new species,— let this be the project, the work-experience in our student's educational programme. This will prove indeed the project of their life itself.
The spiritual heritage of India is a most favorable circumstance for the project that we are presenting. The spiritual history of India reveals a logical development of the Spirit in the Intuitive Mind in the Upanishadic Age, of the Spirit in the Pure Mind in the Philosophic Age, of the Spirit in Life-Force in the age of the Purana, the Purana, Tantra, and the Bhakti and the later Bhakti Age. This movement would have found its completion in the development of the Spirit in Matter, but for the period of darkness and confusion that overcame India at a period of the exhaustion of the national life-force. But at the same time, when we are now renascent, we can continue from where we had left, and take the help of the fruits of the past spiritual labour and by a fresh effort, even if it be revolutionary, we can push forward, and fulfil the real role of India. The present national and international problems demand from us precisely that very thing which India as a spiritual laboratory has
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still left undone, namely, the reconciliation of Spirit with the material life. This is the challenge for India : in rejecting it is the ruin of the nation; in accepting and meeting it, we shall find ourselves and find our right place in the comity of nations.
It is fitting that at this historical juncture, Sri Aurobindo the foremost of the spiritual Teachers should have prepared and given unto this nation and to the world the most dynamic and the most spiritual goal, the manifestation of Spirit in Matter. In Sri Aurobindo then, as our spiritual Teacher, we should hope for the realisation of the regeneration of our nation and the birth and success of the new spiritual education. For spiritual education needs indeed the spiritual Teacher. And suffice it to say that Sri Aurobindo is present in our midst and my inner prayer is that He may invade us with all His glory and creative power and realise in us and through us all that we most ardently aspire for : Knowledge, Love, Power and Beauty.
Let me conclude by quoting here the Mother's message that She had given last year to the Education Commission :
"India has or rather had the knowledge of the Spirit, but she neglected Matter and suffered for it.
"The West has the knowledge of Matter but rejected the Spirit and suffers badly for it.
"An integral education which could, with some variations, be adapted to all the nations of the world must bring back the legitimate authority of the Spirit over a matter fully developed and utilised."
KIREET M. JOSHI
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The Science of Being and Art of Living By H. H. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Allied Publishers, Bombay I. pp.365, price Rs. 18.00
In this commendable attempt to relate the truths of Soul and Nature in a working synthesis for the modern man, the author rightly stresses on the prior, indispensable understanding of the Truth of one's own being before proceeding to the problem of right living. The first section is devoted to this exposition of the nature of the basic reality—individual and universal and also transcendent— and it is followed by a section on Life and its meaning. The third section discusses the ways in which the real Being can manifest itself in the diverse spheres of life.
The central theme of the exposition is the system of 'Deep Meditation' which Swamiji develops for the purpose of bridging the gulf between Spirit and Matter, Soul and Nature. As he is today, man is hardly aware of a hundredth part of his existence; his mind is extremely limited in its scope and power. If he is to govern his life in a better manner and lead it to some kind of perfection, he must learn to extend his area of consciousness. And the means therefore, as expounded by the author, is the technique of deep meditation. To start with a proper Thought of Sound or Form in its gross state, concentrate upon its less gross and then subtle and subtler states till one comes to the subtlest state and is landed at its source, the point of transcendence. Once this is done, the whole meaning of life undergoes a change. Even as things proceed, under the direction of a trained teacher, the mind and the life parts of the system being to partake of larger intensities of power, joy and knowledge ; they embrace life from a higher and deeper poise and fulfil themselves in its varied activities in a more effective manner, The consequences of such an inner change affect not only the individual life but equally the collectivity in which the person functions.
An interesting book in which the findings of modern science are sought to be integrated with the perceptions of the ancient Rishis of India.
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The Vedanta Sutras with the Sri Bhashya of Ramanujacharya. Translated into English by M. Rangacharya and M. B. Varadaraja Aiyangar. Vol. III P. 6II, Price Rs. 15.
This volume brings to a worthy close the great work of Prof. M. Rangacharya and his colleague in presenting a faithful English rendering of the Commentary of Acharya Ramanuja on the Brahmasutras of Badarayana. It covers the portions from Chapter II, Part II to the end of Chapter IV and discusses many important topics among which the major ones are : the views of the Sankhyas, Bauddhas, Jainas and Pashupatas on the cause of the world and their refutation by Ramanuja; the states of waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep of the self and the Brahman's freedom there from; important Vidyas like the Vaishvanara, Dahara, Prana and Sandilya; approved kartnas as subsidiary to the Vidyas; the manner in which the release of the soul is effected at the time of death and the precise status of the liberated soul after the body is shed.
The translation is accompanied by accurate notes, a glossarial index, index to the adhikaranas and a valuable Analytical Outline at the beginning of the volume. The work is a great contribution to Vishishtadvaita literature in English and will always remain a book for study and reference to scholars in the Vedanta Philosophy of Qualified Monism.
Sri Chaitanya's Teachings By Sri Siddhanta Saraswati Goswami Maharaj. Pub. Sree Gaudiya Math, Madras 14. Pp. 434, Price Rs. 12.00
This is a collection from the extensive writings of the author who founded the Gaudiya Math and its several branches for the propagation of the Message of Sri Chaitanya. The contents are varied, ranging from an Enquiry into the nature of the Absolute to interviews with western "journalists, but the one continuing note is that of the manifestation of the Divine as Love and the unfailing efficacy of the Divine Name as the means for atonement with the Divine. There is a good deal of dialectics in the section on Vedanta, plenty of philosophy
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in the discussion on the theistic solution of the cosmic problem, but the heart of the writer lies in bhakti and rati.
The chapter on Bhagavatam and Vaishnava Cult, mainly comprising of the discussion with Pandit Shyam Sunder Chakravarty (famous leader of the Independence movement), is particularly interesting.
Whether one is a philosopher or a devotee or a sadhaka, there is something for each one in these pages.
The Panchadasi Translated by Swami Swahananda. Pub. Sri Ramakrishna Muth, Madras 4. Pp. 618, Price Rs. 9.50.
The Pancadasi, work of fifteen chapters on the Advaita, by Sri Vidyaranya is a treatise of major importance for seekers of the advaitic persuasion. An English translation of the text has been long a desideratum and the recent publication in England of the late H. P. Sastri's rendering (with the text in roman characters) has not been of much service in India in view of its prohibitive cost. The present edition with the translation by Swami Swahananda, a conscientious scholar and senior monk of the Sri Ramakrishna Order, is a very welcome and reliable release.
The work itself is usually studied under three convenient groupings : the first five as dealing with the discrimination of the real from the non-real, viveka-pancaka, the next five describing the nature of the Self as pure consciousness, dipa-pancaka, and the last five discussing the Delight nature of Brahman, ananda-pancaka. The exposition covers a large field, quotes from Upanishads and allied texts, and emphasises the importance of practical discipline for the realisation of Brahman in preference to dry learning.
Dr. Mahadevan's Introduction provides a very helpful background to the work, explaining as it does some of the key terms in the Advaita System that are used freely in the text. The translation is free and yet faithful with the notes, index and glossary adding to the value of the book.
M. P. PANDIT
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