.........She is here
To heal the evils and mistakes of Space And change the tragedy of the ignorant World Into a Divine Comedy of joy.
SRI AUROBINDO
April 1969
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.
COSMONAUTICS
(1)
MODERN science, modern applied science, has brought about and is bringing about more and more "a big change in the earth atmosphere. It is not merely the dust and smoke, gases and fumes thrown out by the modern machineries from the earth into the sky that have been increasing ominously in volume, but the less patent vibrations that have been released by advanced scientific projects and experiments and that have been encircling the earth more and more in a tight embrace. A quiet and clean air was such a treasure for human beings; men have always longed for it as a necessity and also as a diversion, and it was so readily available. The saints and sages went up to mountain-tops and into deep forests and far away into open meadows for a full breath draught of that heavenly element.
But now physically, materially, we know that the radio-waves and innumerable other cosmic waves have been constantly, ceaselessly hammering, churning the earth-atmosphere all around us. Human
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bodies are immersed in a real turmoil. They are bathed in a whirlwind constantly. The nerves and tissues are being shaken from within to their very roots throughout one's life, day and night. There is no peace, no tranquillity upon earth; physical and material repose has altogether disappeared. The high hill-tops or mountain-sides do not help any more nor the ocean depths nor any African jungle nor even the Sahara desert.
The incidence of illness, of disequilibrium among human beings is a pronounced phenomenon in modern age. Stability, steadiness, measure, all the qualities that made for a balanced sober life in the past are on the decline, have almost disappeared. Ill-health, malaise, imbalance, physical and mental are reigning supreme. And the million doctors upon earth are finding it difficult to heal their patients or even themselves.
Is that the reason why man has now become so eager to quit earthly atmosphere and soar up into starry spaces? In any case, the human body is now, at least by way of experiment, being shifted to other atmospheres, other modes of living. The important, the most significant thing however is not so much the discovery of new regions of the universe but new dimensions of the human body itself. No doubt this is just the beginning, but there are indications, pointers towards unthinkable possibilities in the future. Men are now training themselves to be-inhabitants not of earth only but of distant places. It is a demonstration of developments on unusual lines for the body. At present to dwell or even to stay in unearthly regions, the earthly body has to be protected, buttressed, propped up, with much care and skill by a mechanical outfit—a crude scaffolding after all. In the future, other simpler and natural ways will surely be found.
As we know, Nature has pushed up its secret consciousness to the human level and is still pushing it up, upward to levels of the higher man, towards the Superman. She has moulded the body for the jelly-fish and moved up through all the intermediaries to the human body. Man's body like his consciousness has to be
remolded in such a way as to be able to enclose and express the superman-consciousness. The rigid natural laws that bind down the body—the so-called natural laws of temperature and pressure, of respiration and circulation, of assimilation and rejection—have to be turned,
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obviated, naturalised in order to be actually, physically a citizen of the world.
Now the discipline that the physical body is made to undergo at present in order to accustom itself to high flying may one day point to the way for a new adaptation and disposition for the body. As it is, the disruption that has been made in the earth atmosphere because of Science's new adventure is also a way to acclimatising the human body to new conditions. The new conditions are becoming even more and more new and the body is being forced to follow suit. At the beginning the result is a rupture but that is the way towards a new disposition, a new dispensation.
(2)
Showers, torrential streams of tiny infinitesimal particles—waves of indivisible light, charges of electricity, all kinds of ultimate units of matter, are pouring down upon earth shrouding it, overwhelming it, drowning it, stifling it as it were. It is not merely a discovery of what has already been there, a static reality since time immemorial, but that they have been coming, arriving, adding ceaselessly to the volume already there and continuing to do so more and more as time advances. For it is said that these particles—cosmic rays, radio-waves, have been on their journey for such a long time from the very beginning of time that they are arriving only now into the earth atmosphere. And always there are others that are arriving, are continuing to arrive at every instant from farther and farther distances. The density and volume and the force of impact of this additional quantity of matter are ever on the increase and one does not know when and what will be the end. Not only so, not only the old existing particles but new particles, none can gainsay the probability, are also being created continuously, in the process. And suppose even some are destroyed, the loss is more than compensated by the creation of new ones, may be, of a different variety, with prospects of a new and novel development.
Thus the burden upon earth has been increasing—and the nature also of the burden is changing. The change is not perhaps very obvious today but the body has already been feeling it and expressing
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its reactions in the instability of the balance so long enjoyed by man. That is to say, the modern man physically lives or soon will have to live under a new set of circumstances and his physical body has to undergo a change commensurate with its habitat or it will have to disappear.
The cosmonauts are teaching us at least the possibility of a new, almost a revolutionary acclimatisation of the body, the capability of the human organs to follow a different rhythm of life in place of the old normal way. We know from the past history of the evolutionary stages of life that the advent of a new species is signaled by a change in the conditions of living, and the change in the habitat involves a change in the form, the organs and functions of the body: that is what is meant by the appearance of a new type of creature adapted to the new conditions. Even so today cosmic travels are forcing the human body to adapt itself to new conditions and it is a very conscious discipline. The change in the body of living beings in the previous stages is due to an unconscious pressure brought to bear upon it by an unconscious Nature. But now the situation is different: man is attempting consciously to surpass himself, he has begun to do it in the physical field with remarkable results and a great promise. True, there is another factor, indeed the major factor behind, within the inner consciousness of man and within the inner regions of the world. As I have said, it is a revolutionary change there that is forcing itself upon the outside and the- surface of existence.
Thus there is a two-fold process for the new man to establish himself here. First, of course, there is the psychological or inner change and reorganisation: man's attempt to reach a new status of being and consciousness not in the category of the mere mental but a supra-mental status. Its nature and character and formation is being probed into by the new spiritual seekers and aspirants. That work is being done from within outward, and from above downward. This however is supplemented, supported, effectuated or materialised by the other attempt from below going upward and from outside going inward. That is the way of science, of the pragmatic man, the one we may say somewhat philosophically, is the Purusha, the conscious being corning down; the other, Prakriti, pushing up, Nature driving upward or inward.
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It is true the process of acclimatisation that Nature follows is a slow one and gradual though somewhat crude, in spite of scientific refinements and subtleties; yet it is a help and has an accumulated effect. We may just record the progress achieved in the mere outward mechanisation from Lindberg's transatlantic crossing to Borman-company's journey to the moon.
Just at present the appearances are slender but the cumulative effect of these slender forerunners in the long run, or, who knows, may be in the short run, is sure to be tremendously obvious. It is expected that the human body itself will acquire new dispositions forced by outer circumstances, the newly developing environment and impelled by the inner stress of the descending consciousness with its formative power. The power and action of the descending consciousness is outside our ken, it is easily overlooked—unknown and invisible to the normal mind. But in fact it is a great deal due to this element and thanks to it, that man's phenomenal discoveries of today and miraculous successes have been and are being achieved in the physical field in such a quick and revolutionary manner. The Mother has plainly declared that the new world is already there built and ready and is pressing down upon the material cover and sooner rather than later will force it open and manifest itself.
NOLINI KANTA GUPTA
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What are the signs and aspects of true love and bhakti ? How can one attain and increase them ?
Selflessness, self-giving, entire faith and confidence, absence of demand and desire, surrender to the Divine Will, love concentrated in the Divine, are some of the main signs.
What is emotional, rajasic or vital bhakti?
Vital bhakti is usually full of desire and demands,—it expects a return for what it gives; it loves the Divine more for its own sake than for the sake of the Divine. If it does not get what it wants, it is capable of revolting or turning elsewhere. It is often pursued by jealousy, misunderstanding, unfaithfulness, anger etc.,—the usual imperfections of human love, and can turn these against its object of bhakti. On the other hand, if there is vital bhakti governed by the psychic, those defects disappear and the vital gives an ardour and enthusiasm to the love and bhakti which gives it a greater push for effectuation in action and life. The vital should always be the instrument of the soul for self-expression in life and not act for its own account (ego, desire) or on its own separate impulse.
What is faith ? How can one attain, preserve and increase it ?
Faith in its essence is a light in the soul which turns towards the truth even when the mind doubts or the vital revolts or the physical consciousness denies it. When this extends itself to the instruments, it becomes a fixed belief in the mind, a sort of inner knowledge which resists all apparent denial by circumstances or appearances, a complete confidence, trust, adhesion in the vital and in the physical consciousness, an invariable clinging to the truth in which one has faith even
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when all is dark around and no cause of hope seems to be there.
What is sincerity ? What is needed to get it and practise it ?
Sincerity means to be turned wholly to the Divine and accept only the Divine impulses; it means also the true and constant call or effort to be like this.
What do 'inner' and 'outer' purity mean?
Purity in the consciousness and purity in the conduct is what is usually meant by these terms.
What is consciousness in general? What is the meaning of inner and outer consciousness, cosmic consciousness, widening of consciousness ?
Consciousness is inherent in Being, though it is here involved and concealed in things so that it has to emerge out of an apparent unconsciousness and organise itself in individual life. But this is only on the surface which is all of which we are aware because we live on the surface of ourselves. This surface (the ordinary waking mind of man) is what we think to be ourselves, the whole of us, because living awake on the surface we are conscious of that only. But within with a sort of wall of obscurity or oblivion between it and the outer being, there is an inner being, an inner mind, vital, physical and an inmost or psychic being of which we are not aware. We are only aware of what comes up from there to the surface and do not know its source or how it comes. By Yoga the wall is slowly broken down and we become aware of this inner and inmost being; by doing so we build up a new, a yogic consciousness which is able to communicate direct with the universal consciousness around and the higher spiritual above.
As the individual has a consciousness of his own, so too there is a universal consciousness, a cosmic Being, a universal Mind, a universal Life, a universal Physical Conscious Nature. We are unaware of it,
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because we are shut up in our outer physical selves. By the inner awakening and the opening above we become aware of this cosmic consciousness, cosmic Nature and cosmic Self, and its movements; our consciousness can widen and become one with it. The forces of universal Nature are always working on us without our knowing how they act or being able to get any general control over their action on us. By becoming conscious of the universal we are able to detect this working and control it.
What sort of things can come under the category of 'demand and desire' ? What is the exact form of 'demand and desire' ?
There are no special sort of things—demand and desire can cover all things whatsoever—they are subjective, not objective and have no special form. Demand is when you claim something to get or possess, desire is a general term. If one expects that the Mother shall smile at him at the pranam and feels wronged if one does not get it, that is a demand. If one wants it and grieves at not getting it, but without revolt or sense of an unjust deprivation that shows desire. If one feels joy at her smile, but remains calm in its absence knowing that all the Mother does is good, then there is no demand or desire.
What is 'to live within'?
There is an inner being in man of which he is not usually conscious; he lives in a superficial consciousness which he calls himself and which is normally concerned with outer things; one is aware of the inner being either not at all or only as something behind from which feelings, ideas, impulses, imperatives etc. come occasionally into the outer. When one ceases to be mainly concerned with outer and surface things one. can go more inside nearer to this inner being and become aware of things other than the ego and the outer nature. One can become aware of the inner being and live in it and get detached from the hold of other things, dealing with them from an inner consciousness (felt as
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separate from the outer consciousness) according to an inner truth of the soul and spirit and no longer according to the demands of the outer Nature.
Prayer to the Divine to remove worldly ills, to be free from diseases, to receive help in daily actions, to gain more wealth—what sort of prayers are these ? Has one a right to make such prayers ?
If one lives in the world one can offer such prayers; but one must not expect that the Divine shall fulfil all these prayers or that he is bound to do so. When one is a sadhak the prayer should be for the inner things belonging to the sadhana and for outer things only so far as they are necessary for that and for the Divine work.
What is citta ? Where is it located in the being ? What is its function ?
Usually the word is employed for the general surface consciousness in which thoughts, feelings, desires, emotions, sensations (these being called Chitta-Vritti) arise. There is therefore no special location. Its function is to receive the impacts of the world and give back reactions which take the form of thoughts, feelings etc.
What is manas and its function? In what respect and how citta, manas and buddhi are co-related?
Manas is the sense mind, that which perceives physical objects and happenings through the senses and forms mental precepts about them and mental reactions to them; it also observes the reactions of the Chitta, feelings, emotions, sensations etc. (which belong to what in the system of this yoga is called the vital). Buddhi is the thinking mind which stands above and behind all these things, reflects, judges, decides what is to be thought or done or not done; what is right or wrong, true or false etc. At least that is what it should do in all independence, but
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usually it is obscured by the vital movements, desires etc. and its ideas and judgments are not pure.
What is citta-vrtti nirodha? To what extent it is necessary and how can it be done?
Stopping the movements of the Chitta. In our yoga it is more necessary to transform these movements than to stop them altogether, but the power to stop them is necessary; it is usually done by the mind getting into silence and then imposing the same silence on the vital Nature.
You say, 'when one is a sadhak the prayer should be for the inner things belonging to the sadhana and for outer things only so far as they are necessary for that and for the Divine work'. This latter portion about prayer for outer things is not clear to me. Can you kindly explain ?
All depends on whether the outer things are sought for one's own convenience, pleasure, profit etc., or as part of the spiritual life, necessary for the success of the work, the development and fitness of the instruments etc. It is a question mainly of inner attitude. If for instance you pray for money for buying nice food to please the palate, that is not a proper thing for a sadhak; if you pray for money to give to the Mother and help her work, then it is legitimate.
I quote several types of prayers which I offer and shall be grateful to know which of them are outer or inner, right or wrong, helpful or hindrance, or what amendment to them can make them pure:—
1. In the night time when I sit to read and an untimely attack of sleep comes, I pray to the Mother to be freed from the attack.
If your reading is part of the sadhana, that is all right.
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2. When I go to sleep I pray to the Mother for her force to take over my sadhana during the sleep, to make my sleep conscious, luminous, to protect me during the sleep, to keep me conscious of the Mother.
3. When I wake up anytime in the sleep I pray to the Mother to be with me and protect me.
These two are part of the sadhana.
4. While going out for and during walk I pray to give me force to take more exercise and to gain more strength and health and thank the Mother for the help.
If strength and health are requested as being necessary for the sadhana and the development of the perfection of the instrument it is all right.
5. When I see any dog on the way while walking I at once pray to the Mother to protect from its attack and remove my fear.
A call for protection is always permissible. The removal of fear is part of the sadhana.
6. When I go for food I pray for the Mother's force to help me to offer every morsel to the Mother, to get everything easily digested, to make a growth of complete equality and detachment in my consciousness enabling me to take any food with equal rasa of universal ananda without any insistence or seeking or greed or desire.
This is again part of the sadhana.
7. When I go for work I pray for the Mother's force to take over my work, help me and make me do it well and carefully with love, devotion and pleasure, with the remembrance of the Mother and feeling of being
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supported and helped by her without ego or desire.
This also.
8. During the work also when there is a pause I pray for force, help and constant remembrance.
This also.
9. When any bad or impure thought, seeing and sensation come in me I pray for its removal and purity.
This also.
10. When I am reading I try to pray when possible to understand all quickly, to grasp and absorb completely.
If it is as sadhana or for the development of the instrument, it is all right.
11. When I commit any mistake in the work I pray to be more conscious, alert and unerring.
This also is part of the sadhana.
12. When I go to the post office to register a parcel of Prasad to my friend I pray to have the parcel accepted immediately and avoid any delay.
That can be done, if avoidance of waste of time is considered as part of the right regulation of the life of sadhana.
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13. When I sit down for meditation I pray for Mother's force to take over my meditation and make it deep, steady, concentrated and free from all attacks of troubling thoughts, vital restlessness, etc.
This is part of the sadhana.
14. In depression, difficulty, wrong suggestions, doubt, inertia, on any occasion or happening I pray to the Mother to hold courage, keep faith, face them and overcome them.
This also.
15. At all other times as far as I can pray to the Mother to fill me with her peace, power, light etc., or offer any other kind of required prayer, and thank her for supporting, strengthening and sustaining me.
This also.
What is the aspect of description of: psychic nature, spiritual nature, supramental nature and divine nature?
To answer these questions it would be necessary to write a volume. I have written some letters about the psychic being and the self; you can get hold of these and read them.
Supramenal nature can only be understood if one understands what supermind is and that is not altogether possible for mind so long as it does not open to the higher planes. So far as a mental account can be given, I have done it in the Arya.
Divine Nature is the nature of the Divine Consciousness, Truth, Peace, Light, Purity, Knowledge, Power, Ananda, on whatever plane it manifests. Supermind is one plane of the Divine Nature. The Divine is Sachchidananda.
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What kind of difference is there between psychic power, spiritual power, supramental power, divine power?
The answer to that depends on the answer to the first question.
What is avyābhicārini bhakti?
I suppose it means complete and unswerving bhakti never wandering from its fidelity to its object.
Please explain what is the difference between these terms : mind, mental nature, mental consciousness, mental being, mental purusha, mental individuality.
Surely you know what Purusha and Prakriti are—if not, you should study the Arya. The mental being generally means the Purusha but it can be used in a wider sense to indicate the whole being of mind (the being of thought, intelligence, understanding, perception etc.) including the Purusha consciousness and the Prakriti action together. The mental individuality usually refers to the surface mental personality which is created by the action of prakriti for this life.
Are these terms the same ? True mental being and inner mental being. Larger mind, higher mind and inner mind. Larger vital, higher vital, inner vital.
No. Higher Mind is one of the planes of the spiritual mind, the first and lowest of them,—it is above the normal mental level; inner mind is that which lies behind the surface mind (our ordinary mentality) and can only be directly experienced (apart from its results in the surface mind such as philosophy, poetry, idealism etc.) by sadhana, by breaking down the habit of being on the surface and by going deeper within.
Larger mind is a general term to cover the realms of mind which
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appear whether by going within or widening into the cosmic consciousness.
The true mental being is not the same as the inner mental—true mental, true vital, true physical being means the Purusha of that level freed from the error
Higher vital usually refers to the vital mind and emotive being as opposed to the middle vital which has its seat in the navel and is dynamic, sensational and passionate and the lower which is made up of the smaller movements of human life-desire and life-sensations.
What is spiritualised mind and what planes other than the higher mind are there of the spiritual mind?
Mind that is aware of Self and whose activities are based on that consciousness and its thought and knowledge received from above.
There is no great utility in enquiring about these planes at this stage—one must get some experience of the Self and the liberated consciousness—then the knowledge becomes useful.
What planes other than the supermind are there of the Divine Nature ?
All the spiritual planes belong to the Divine Nature.
What is the meaning of spiritual liberation, perfection and fullness ?
Spiritual liberation means to be free from ego and from the imprisonment in the mind and vital and physical nature and to be conscious of the spiritual Self and live in that consciousness.
Spiritual perfection and fulfilment means that the nature should be spiritualised, new-formed in the consciousness of the free Self and the divine consciousness of infinity, purity, light, power, bliss and knowledge.
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Dwaita, Adwaita, Vishishtadwaita, Shuddhadwaita, Kewaladwaita —what do these mean or conceive?
These are questions of intellectual philosophy and can be read in books.
(From the note-books of
ISHWARBHAI PATEL)
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INDIAN NATIONALISM: THE FUTURE
(Continued)
UNITY OF INDIA
THERE is no subject more germane to our aims and purposes than the much mooted question of the unity of India. India is so disunited, say those who do not love her. And, India is one! answer her children and Bhaktas.
Let us, then, take the matter at its worst, and assume that the disunion and diversity of our Mother Land is a fact. What is the line of thought that we ought in such a case to pursue? It is to be supposed that we do not wish to intensify the problem, but rather to solve it, to treat in such a way that it may grow less instead of greater, day by day. In the first place, it is open to us, to dwell on the many elements of unity which India already possesses. Her own civilisation, apart from foreign influences, is remarkably harmonious, throughout the length and breadth of the country. There is not even such diversity of language as people suppose. The old Mother Land did not fail, amongst all the provisions that she made for her children, to evolve also for them a common tongue, more or less universal in the North, and well known as a language of culture in the South. If, again, we take up religion, it is difficult to see the acute diversity of which people talk. The whole theory of Hinduism is one of a vast accordance of faiths, and a scheme in which even Islam and Christianity, strongly individual as they are, may find places.
Let us, on the other hand, look at the problem with which other countries have to deal. Could Indian disunity be compared with that of America, or even England, who have to assimilate thousands of aliens every year ? Could her linguistic variety be compared to that of Switzerland, when we remember the relative sizes of the two populations? German, French and Italian divide that little land
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amongst themselves, and this vast India is practically covered by Hindi with its variations, and certain Dravidian tongues, all linked together, as these are, by a common classic, and common social characteristic and ideas.
Unity is a thing of which it may be said that, whether it apparently exists or not, it must first of all be conceived of in the mind. All the greatest realities of life are primarily, in this way, concepts in the mind. They must afterwards be externalised, it is true, but their birth is in the mind. There they must first be recognised and shaped. There they must be asserted. From this they become external. We all know how true this is of the relations of the family. Does the wife allow herself to argue the question of her husband's character and lovable ness? This would soon destroy the most perfect of relations. But she dwells only on the facts that support her own devotion. The rest she ignores, as so much waste material. It is of no consequence to her.
Similarly, there is a very actual sense in which only the positive is true. Only the positive really exists. Just as, to the eye of affection only the sweet and beautiful has any real objective existence, so in many other things also, a like truth holds good. Harmony, and harmony alone is, in this sense, real, while discord and its elements are unreal. The whole of human society is built up along such lines as these. The passionate love of mother for her children would soon be at an end, but for the great intensifying concepts of the child's need and dependence which is read into every act and word, and makes the relationship firm and growing. In a parallel way, then, it may be said that only unity is true: that the opposite of unity is negative and therefore has no existence. It matters not what the senses report. Reality is conferred by the mind. The great life-giving concepts arise within and become apparent afterwards. We see that India is one and she is one, and shall be one. This thought, is the note of joy and strength, is the duty of every nationalist to hold.
(Concluded)
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FROM THE KARMAYOGIN (1910)
MR. LALMOHAN GHOSH
THE death of Mr. Lalmohan Ghosh removes from the scene a distinguished figure commemorative of the past rather than representative of any living force in the present. His interventions in politics have for many years past been of great rarity and, since the Calcutta Congress, had entirely ceased. It cannot therefore be said that his demise leaves a gap in the ranks of our active workers. He was the survivor of a generation talented in politics rather than great, and, among them, he was one of the few who could lay claim to the possession of real genius. That genius was literary, oratorical and forensic rather than political but as these were the gifts which then commanded success in the political arena, he ought to have stood forward far ahead of the mass of his contemporaries. It was the lack of steadiness and persistence common enough in men of brilliant gifts, which kept him back in the race. His brother Mr. Manmohan Ghosh, a much less variously and richly gifted intellect but a stronger character, commanded by the possession of these very rare qualities a much weightier influence and a more highly and widely honoured name. In eloquence we doubt whether any orator of the past or the present generation has possessed the same felicity of style and charm of manner and elocution. Mr. Gokhale has something of the same debating gift, but it is marred by the dryness of his delivery and the
colorlessness of his manner. Mr. Lalmohan Ghosh possessed the requisite warmth, glow and agreeableness of speech and manner without those defects of excess and exaggeration which sometimes mar Bengali oratory. We hope that his literary remains will be published, especially the translation of the Meghnad
Budh, which from such capable hands, ought to introduce favourably a Bengali masterpiece to a wider than Indian audience.
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SOHAM GITA (SHYAMAKANTA BANERJI)
Every Bengalee is familiar with the name of Shyamakanta Banerji the famous athlete and tiger-tamer but it may not be known to all that after leaving the worldly life and turning to the life of the ascetic, this pioneer of the cult of physical strength and courage in Bengal has taken the name of Soham Swami and is dwelling in a hermitage in the Himalayas of Nainital. The Swami has now published a philosophical poem in his mother tongue called the Soham Gita. The deep truths of the Vedanta viewed from the standpoint of the Adwaitavadin and the spiritual experiences of the Jnani who has had realisation of dhyān and samādhi are here developed in simple verse and language. We shall deal with the work in a more detailed review in a later issue.
EXIT BIBHISAN (GOPAL KRISHNA GOKHALE)
Mr. Gopal Krishna Gokhale has for long been the veiled prophet of Bombay. His course was so ambiguous, his sympathies so divided and self-contradictory that some have not hesitated to call him a masked extremist. He has played with Boycott, "that criminal agitation," has gone so far in passive resistance as to advocate refusal of the payment of taxes. Eloquent spokesman of the people in the Legislative Council, luminous and ineffective debater scattering his periods in vain in that august void, he has been at once the admired of the people and the spoilt darling of the Times of India,
the trusted counsellor of John Morley and a leader of the party of Colonial
self-government. For some time the victim of his own false step during the
troubles in Poona he was distrusted by the people, favoured by the authorities,
some of whom are said to have canvassed for him in the electoral fight between
him and Mr. Tilak. The charge of cowardice which he now hurls against his
opponents was fixed on his own forehead by popular resentment. So difficult was
his position that he refrained for some years from speech on the platform of the
Congress. But his star triumphed. His own opponents held out to him the hand of
amity and re-established him in the universal confidence of the people. Gifted,
though barred of creative originality, a shrewed critic, a splendid
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debator, a good economist and statistician, with the halo of self-sacrifice for the country over his forehead enringed with the more mundane halo of Legislative Councillorship, petted by the Government, loved by the people, he enjoyed a position almost unique in recent political life. He was not indeed a prophet honoured in his own country and black looks and black words were thrown at him by those who distrusted him, but throughout the rest of India his name stood high and defied assailants.
In his recent speech at Poona the veiled prophet has unveiled himself. The leader of the people in this strange and attractive double figure is under sentence of elimination and the budding Indian Finance Minister has spoken. The speech has caused confusion and searching's of the heart among the eager patriots of the Bengal Moderates school, rejoicing in the ranks of Anglo-India. The Bengalee
The most odious part of the Poona speech is that in which Mr. Gokhale justifies the Government repression and attempts to establish by argument what Mr. Norton failed to establish by evidence, the theory that Nationalism and Terrorism are essentially one and under the cloak of passive resistance, Nationalism is a conspiracy to wage war against the king. This proposition he seeks to establish by implication
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with that skill of the debater for which he is justly famous. By taking the London murders as the subject matter for the exordium of a speech directed against the forward party he introduces the element of prejudice from the very outset. After reviewing past political activities he takes up the clue he had thus skilfully thrown down and pursues it. In his view, the ideal of independence was the beginning of all evil. The ideal of independence is an insane ideal; the men who hold it even as an ultimate goal, Tilak, Chidambaram, Aswinikumar, Manoranjan, Bepinchandra, Aurobindo, are madmen outside the lunatic asylum. Not only is it an insane ideal, it is a criminal ideal. "It should be plain to the weakest understanding that towards the idea of independence the Government could adopt only one attitude, that of stern and relentless repression, for these ideas were bound to lead to violence and as a matter of fact they had, as they would all see, resulted in violence." Further, in order to leave no loophole of escape for his political opponents, he proceeds to assert that they were allaware of the truth and preached the gospel of independence knowing that it was a gospel of violence and "physical conflict with the Government". We again quote the words or the report of speech. "Some of their friends were in the habit of saying that their plan was to achieve independence by merely peaceful means, by a general resort to passive resistance. The speaker felt bound to say that such talk was ridiculous nonsense and was a mere cloak used by these men to save their own skins." In other words we are charged with having contemplated violence such as we all see, viz., the murders in London and the assassinations in Bengal, as inevitable effects of our propaganda, and physical conflict with the Government, in other words rebellion, as the only possible means of achieving independence. We are charged with preaching this gospel of violence and rebellion while publicly professing passive resistance, with the sole motive of cowardly anxiety for our personal safety. The accusation is emphatic, sweeping, and allows of no exception. All the men of the Nationalist party revered by the people are included in the anathema, branded as lunatics and cowards, and the country is called upon to denounce them as corruptors and perturbers of youth and enemies of progress and the best interests of the people.
Mr. Gokhale stopped short of finding faults with European countries
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for being free and clinging to their freedom. He is good enough not to uphold subjection as the best thing possible for a nation, and we must be grateful to him for stopping short of the gospel of the Englishman
whose abusive style he has borrowed. But man is progressive and it may be that
Mr. Gokhale before he finishes his prosperous career, will reach the Hare Street
beatitudes. At present he adopts the philosophy of hi s ally and teacher, Lord
Morley, and wraps himself in the Canadian fur coat. The love of independence may
be a virtue in Europe, it is crime and lunacy in India. Acquiescene in
subjection is weakness and unmanliness in non-Indians, in this favoured country
it is the only path to salvation. In the West the apostle of liberty have been
prophets when they succeeded, martyrs when they failed: in this country they are
corruptors and perturbers of youth, enemies of progress and their country.
Mendicancy, euphoniously named co-operation, can bring about colonial
self-government in India although there is no precedent in history, but passive
resistance, although when most imperfectly applied and hampered by terrorism
from above and below,it gave the seed of free institutions to Russia, cannot
bring about independence in India even if it it be applied thoroughly and
combined with self-help, because there is no precedent in history. As has often
been pointed by Nationalist writers, both mendicancy and self-help plus passive
resistance are now methods in history; both are therefore experiments but while
mendicancy is an isolated experiment which has been fully tried, failed
thoroughly and fallen into discredit, self help and passive resistance are
methods to which modern nations are more and more turning, but they have been as
yet tried only slightly and locally. It must be admitted that in India, so
tried, their only result so far ha s been the Morley reforms. But was it not Mr.
Gokhale who to defend mendicancy declared that the book of history was not
closed and why should not a new chapter be written? But the book is only open to
the sacred hands of the Bombay Moderate; to the Nationalist it seems to be
closed. But according to Mr. Gokhale we ought in any case to acquiesce because
England has not done so badly in India as she might have done. His argument is
kin to the AngloIndian logic which calls upon us to be contented and loyal
because England is not Russia and repression here is never so savage as
repression there, as if a serf were asked to 'be contented with serfdom because
his
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master is kind or else his whip does not lacerate so fiercely as the master's next door. Mr. Gokhale cannot be ignorant that our ideal of independence has nothing to do with the badness or goodness of the present Government in its own kind. We object to the present system because it is a bureaucracy, always the most narrow and unprogressive kind of Government, because it is composed of aliens, not Indians, and subject to alien control, and most essentially because it is based on a foreign will imposed from outside and not on the free choice and organic development of the nation.
We might go on to expose the other inconsistencies and sophistries of Mr. Gohkale's speech. We might
challenge the strangeness of sweeping and general charge of cowardice against the nation's leaders proceeding from the broken reed of Poona. But we are more concerned with the significance of the attitude than with the hollowness of his arguments. Lord Morley the other day quoted Nr. Gokhale's eulogium of the Asquith Government, saviours? of India from chaos, as a sufficient answer, to the critics of deportation. There was some indignation against Lord Morley for his disingenuousness in suppressing Mr. Ghokale's condemnation of the deportations; but it now appears that the British statesman did not make the mistake of quoting Mr. Gokhale without being sure of the thoroughness of the latter's support. As if in answer to the critics of Lord Morley Mr. Gokhale hastens to justify the deportations by his emphatic approval of stern and relentless repression as" the only possible attitude for the Government towards the ideal of independence even when its achievement is sought through peaceful means. Mr. Gokhale's phrase is bold and thorough; it includes every possible weapon of which the Government may avail itself in the future and every possible use of the weapons which it holds at present. On the strength of Mr. Gokhale's panegyric Lord Morley mocked at Mr. Mackarness and his supporters as more Indian than the Indians. We may well quote him again and apply the same ridicule, the ridicule of the autocrat, to Mr. Beech-croft, the Alipore judge, who acquitted an avowed apostle of the ideal of independence. Mr. Gokhale, at least, has become more English than the English. A British judge, certainly not in sympathy with Indian unrest, expressly admits the possibility of peaceful passive resistance and the blamelessness of the ideal of independence. A leader
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of Indian liberalism denounces that ideal as necessarily insane and criminal and the advocates of passive resistance as lunatics and hypocritical cowards, and calls for the denunciation of them as enemies of their country and their removal by stern and relentless repression. Such are the ironies of born cooperation. It is well that we should know who are our enemies even if they be of our own household. Till now many of us regarded Mr. Gokhale as a brother with whom we had our own private differences, but he has himself by calling for the official sword to exterminate us removed that error. He publishes himself now as righteousness Bibhisan who, with the Sugrives, Angads and Hanumans of Madras and Allahabad has gone to join the Avatar of Radical absolutism in the India Office, and ourselves as the Rakshasa to be destroyed by this new Holy Alliance. Even this formidable conjunction does not alarm us. At any rate Bibhisan has gone out of Lanka and Bibhisans are always more dangerous there than in the camp of the adversary.
MR. GHOKHALE'S APOLOGIA
We do not think we need waste much space on the arguments of the recent speech in which Mr. Gokhale has attempted to reconcile the contradictory utterances in which his speeches have lately abounded.
Bibhisans utterances are' of little importance nowadays to anyone except the Government and Anglo-India, who are naturally disposed to make the most of his defection from the cause of the people. Justice
Chanda-varkar, who long ago gave up the cause of his country for a judgeship and whose present political opinions can be estimated from his remark in the Swaraj case, grandiloquently condemned the "vilification" to which Mr. Gokhale has been exposed, and declared that condemnation from such quarters was the greatest compliment a man like his
protégé could have. Of course, the worthy judge could not foresee that the Englishman
would hail the first Servant of India as a brand plucked from the burning and
compliment him on being the only righteous and right-thinking man among Indian
politicians,-which is, after all, a little hard on Sir Ferozeshah Mehta and Mr.
Harkishanlal. But in the same report that enshrines Mr. Chandravarkar's
semi-official rhetoric, we have it that the
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Commissioner of Police and his deputy were present to support the speaker with their moral influence and loudly applauded his sentiments. Surely this was a yet greater compliment to Mr. Gokhale,—the greatest he could receive. And if we suppose, with the Bombay judge, that the condemnation for his countrymen is an honour for which the erstwhile popular leader eagerly pants, surely the support and loud applause of the two highest police officials in the land, and one of them is old friend, Mr. Vincent, of whom he must have pleasant memories connected with his famous apology to the British army,—must have been yet dearer to the statesman's heart. Only three things are noteworthy in the speech itself. Mr. Gokhale fervently declares that it is not only the duty of every Indian to shun religiously all aspirations towards independence, but also to rush to the defence of the Government when it is attacked. This explains Mr. Gokhale's recent speeches. It is a pity that he awoke to the sense of his duty so late; otherwise, not being overburdened by a sense of consistency he might have rushed to the help of the Government against himself when he was loudly advocating political Boycott and even outdistancing the most extreme Nationalist by suggesting the refusal of payment of taxes. The second note is the remarkable statement that even if we try to use peaceful methods, the Government will not long allow them to retain their peaceful character. This can mean only that the Government will deliberately force the advocates of Indian freedom to use violent means by persecuting the use of peaceful and lawful methods. We had recently to dissent from a much more limited suggestion by Si. Bepin Pal, but an aspersion of this kind from Mr. Gokhale, not on officials but on the Government whom he is supporting so thoroughly in their policy, is amazing. Truly, Mr. Gokhale hardly seems to know what discretion means. In the same way he tried to teach the young men of India, among whom he admits that the gospel of independence has gained immense ground, that violence was the only road to the realisation of their cherished ideal. Finally, we find Mr. Gokhale appealing to the people of this country to give up their ideals from personal self-interest and the danger of harassment and martyrdom which attends the profession and pursuit of the new politics. Truly has a mighty teacher arisen in India! We could have passed by an argument based on the doubt whether our course was right and helpful to the country, but this
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sordid appeal to the lowest motives in humanity, selfishness and cowardice, makes one's gorge rise. And this is the man who claims, we hear, to have preceded the Nationalists as a prophet of self-sacrifice and the cult of the motherland. Well may we echo the cry of the Israelite malcontents, "These be thy gods, O Israel!"
SRI AUROBINDO
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(The original text of these two pieces is missing. The text is available only in its Tibetan translation, which was translated again into Bengali. The Bengali version is translated here in to English in its turn).
XXIV
THE moon rises, so shines the soul in its kingship:
The dark ignorance is dispelled by the Guru's words,
and all the senses dissolve in the Sky.
Heaven's seed goes back into the heavens
and sprouts, and
spreads its shadow over the three worlds.The Sun rising, the night ends and all the earth's delusion dissolves.
The Swan-King takes in only the pure water,
so here too is
taken in, Kanhu says, earth's pure rasa.XXV
How does the Great Law arise? How is it established?
The
Lightning-centre alone can tell.Five are the epochs of Time, the robe is woven into
its warp and
woof.I am the weaver, the threads are of me
yet I know
not the kind and quality.The carpet spread is three cubit and a half long:
it extends into the
three worlds:The whole sky is woven out into the robe.
NOTES :
The Lightning-centre: the Divine in the heart.
Five epochs: the five senses out of which is made the world of
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experiences that the soul puts on as its garb.
The weaver: the soul or self. It weaves the world upon its sense-experiences, it weaves out also the infinite space of Shunya or Nirvana.
The human body is the robe and it extends infinitely (that is to say, in its consciousness) and melts into the Void.
NOLINI KANTA GUPTA
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AUROBINDONIAN CONCEPTION OF THE GNOSTIC BEING
THE Supramental or Gnostic Existence, Sri Aurobindo says, eludes our grasp of mental perception and knowledge. It is verily a perfect integration and consummation of spiritual nature and experience. It contains in itself, by the very character of the Evolutionary Principle, a total spiritualisation of mundane Nature. It is, therefore, difficult, if not sheerly impossible, for mental thought to understand or describe or construct a picture of Supramental Nature. We can, however, make certain deductions from the very fact of the difference of nature which might be held valid at least for a general description and understanding of the passage from Overmind to Supermind or might vaguely construct for us a picture of the first status of the Evolutionary Supramental Existence. This passage is the stage at which the Supermind Gnosis can take over the lead of the evolution from the Overmind and build the first foundations of its own characteristic manifestation and unveiled activities. It is, therefore, marked by a decisive but long-prepared transition from an evolution in the Ignorance to an always progressive evolution in the Knowledge.
As there has been established on earth a mental Consciousness and Power which shapes a race of mental beings and takes up into itself all of terrestrial nature that is ready for the change, so now there will be founded on earth a Gnostic Consciousness and Power which will shape a race of Gnostic Spiritual Beings and take up into itself all of mundane nature that is ready for this new transformation. It will also receive into itself from above, progressively, from its own domain of perfect Light and Power and Beauty all that is ready to descend from that domain into terrestrial being.
Supermind has the power of withholding or keeping in reserve its force of knowledge as well as the power of bringing it into full or partial action. Besides all this, it harmonises, facilitates, tranquillises and to a great extent hedonises the difficult and afflicted process of the evolutionary emergence.
The descent of Supermind in the Gnostic Being, on the contrary,
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would not only found all his living on an intimate sense and effective realisation of harmonic unity in his own inner and outer life or group life, but would create a harmonic unity also with the still surviving mental world, even if that world remained altogether a world of Ignorance. In the emergence of the Gnostic Being would be the hope of a more harmonious evolutionary order in terrestrial nature.
A Supramental or Gnostic race of beings would not be a race made according to a single type, moulded in a single fixed pattern; for the law of the Supermind is unity fulfilled in diversity, and therefore there would be an infinite diversity in the manifestation of the Gnostic Consciousness although that Consciousness would still be one in its basis, in its constitution, in its all-revealing and all-uniting order.
FIRST MAJOR RESULTS OF THE SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION
IN THE GNOSTIC BEING.
1) The Gnostic Individual would be the consummation of the spiritual man; his whole way of being, thinking, living and acting would be governed by the power of a vast universal spirituality. He would feel the presence of the Divine in every centre of his consciousness, in every vibration of his life force, in every cell of his body. In this consciousness, he would live and act in are entirely transcendent freedom, a complete joy of spirit, an entire identity with the cosmic self and a spontaneous sympathy with all in the universe. The Gnostic Individual would be in the world, and of the world, but would also exceed it in his consciousness and live in his self of transcendence above it; he would be universal but free in the universe, individual but not limited by a separative individuality.
2) The three powers which present themselves to our life as the three keys to its mystery are the Individual, the Cosmic Entity and the Reality, present in both and beyond them. These three mysteries of existence would find in the life of the Supramental Being a united fulfilment of their harmony.
3) The existence of the Supramental Being would be the play of a manifold and multiply manifesting truth-power of one existence.
4) The Gnostic Being has the will of action but also the knowledge
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of what is to be willed and power to effectuate its knowledge; it would not be led by Ignorance to do what is not to be done.
5) The Gnostic Being would take up the world of life and matter, but he would turn and adapt it to his own truth and purpose of existence; he would mould life itself into his own spiritual image, and this he would be able to do because he has the secret of a spiritual creation and is in communion and oneness with the creator within him.
6) In the Self-Existence of which Supermind is the dynamic Truth-consciousness, there can be no aim of being except to be, no aim of consciousness except to be conscious of being, no aim of delight of being other than its delight. All is a self-existent and self-sufficient Eternity.
7) As in the Gītā the act of the taking of food is spoken of as a material sacrament, a sacrifice, an offering of Brahman to Brahman by Brahman, so also the Gnostic Consciousness and sense can view all the operations of Spirit with Matter.
8) Ananda or bliss would be inherent in the Gnostic Consciousness as a universal delight, and would grow with the evolution of the Gnostic Nature.
Granted that there is to be not only a perfection of the inner existence, of the consciousness, of an inner delight of existence, but a perfection of the life and action, two other questions present themselves from our mental viewpoint—(a) first, there is the place of personality in the Gnostic Being, (b) Secondly, the question of the place of the ethical element and its perfection and fulfilment in the Gnostic Nature.
(a) In the Supramental Consciousness, personality and impersonality are not two opposite principles; they are inseparable aspects of one and the same Realiy. This Reality is not the ego but the being who is impersonal and universal in his stuff of nature, but forms out of it an expressive personality which is his form of self in the changes of Nature.
(b) All the character of life and action of the Gnostic Being would arise self-determined out of this nature of his Gnostic Individuality. There could be in it no separate problem of an ethical or any similar content, any conflict of good and evil. There could, indeed, be no problem at all, for problems are the creations of mental
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ignorance seeking for knowledge and they cannot exist in a consciousness in which knowledge arises self-born and the act is self-born out of the knowledge, out of a pre-existent truth of being, conscious and self-aware. The Gnostic Evolution gives us the complete dynamism of that return to ourselves. Once that is done, the need of standards of virtue, dharmas, disappears: there is the law and selforder of the liberty of the spirit, there can be no imposed or constructed law of conduct, dharma. All becomes a self-flow of spiritual self nature, svadharma of svabhāva.
In the Supramental Gnostic Nature, there would be no need of the mental rigid way and hard style of order, a limiting standardisation, an imposition of a fixed set of principles. In the Gnostic Being, self-determining knowledge freely obedient to self-truth and the total truth of Being would be the very law of his existence. In him, there would be no possibility of conflict between self-affirmation of the ego and a control by super-ego; for in his action of life, the Gnostic Being would at once express himself, his truth of being, and work out the Divine Will. These two springs of his conduct would not only be simultaneous in a single action, but they would be one and the same motor-force. On this fact that the Divine Knowledge and Force, the supreme Super nature, would act through the Gnostic Being with his full participation, is founded the freedom of the Gnostic Being; it is this unity that gives him his liberty.
In the Gnostic Evolution, there would be a great diversity in the poise, status, harmonised operations of consciousness and force and delight of existence.
This would be the nature of the being, life and action of the Gnostic Individual, so far as we can follow the evolution with our mental conception up to that point where it will emerge out of Overmind and cross the border into Supramental Gnostis. This much is easily understandable, if we regard the Gnostic Beings as living their own life without any contact with a life of the Ignorance.
At the higher end of the evolution, the ascending ranges and summits of Supermind would begin to rise towards some supreme manifestation of the pure spiritual existence, consciousness and delight of being of Saccidānanda.
To the question of the cessation of the evolution of Gnostic
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Being, Sri Aurobindo answers that this depends on the farther question whether the movement between the Super conscience and the Incon-science as the two poles of existence is an abiding law of the material manifestation or only a provisional circumstance. The latter supposition is difficult to accept because of the tremendous force of pervasiveness and durability with which the inconscient foundation has been laid for the whole material universe. But for the Earth-nature, it would seem as if this necessity might be exhausted once the Supramental Gnosis had emerged from the Inconscience. A change would begin with its firm appearance; that change would be consummated when the Supramental Evolution became complete and rose into the greater fullness of a supreme manifestation of the Existence-Consciousness-Delight, Saccidānanda.
R. K. GARG
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THE SECRET OF YOGIC ACTION
IF the goal is one, the Divine, the means and methods by which one can realise it are many. In the integral yoga we combine most of the essential means and synthesis them, so that, piloted by our aspiration, they may carry all the parts and elements of our being towards the Divine. The difficulty of the endeavour arises from the tangled complexity of our being, the various divergent personalities that come into play under the pressure of the yoga. If our surrender to the Mother has developed in its sweep and sincerity, much of the initial difficulty can be obviated, for, then, the Mother's Light-Force works on all the multiple elements together. But still the difficulties will persist so long as the surrender has not been total and the ego dislodged from its central seat in the consciousness. What is most needed at this stage is a wide-eyed vigilance and an uncompromising attitude of self-offering and trust in the Mother's Grace.
The greatest difficulty comes in the field of action, where the final victory has to be won. It is the very field of discord and disharmony, of violent reactions and mechanical habits and tendencies. Our desires rush upon us and strive to deflect us from the true spirit of offering. A general attitude of surrender is not enough, the will to surrender has to be carried out in every action, even in every detail of action. Otherwise our desires will vitiate it.
"To choose without preference and execute without desire" is the Mother's formula—a formula simple enough in appearance, but how very difficult to put into practice! What are preferences ? They are the tentacles of our desire, and our whole nature is shot through with them. There is hardly any movement in our nature into which preferences and predilections do not enter. In the mind these preferences do not allow us to have a straight look at the truth or the Divine's Will which seeks to realise itself in our life. The gross desires can be detected and rejected, but the pervasive preferences often elude detection—they are so subtle and elusive. Whenever we choose an
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action, these preferences try to seize upon the choice and pervert it. A flaming aspiration to know the Divine's Will at every moment and carry it out in all sincerity is the only bulwark against the intrusion of the preferences. Our choice should be dictated by our perception of the thing that has to be done, kartavyam karma, which is not what is meant by the moral concept of duty, but the Truth or the Divine Will that is seeking an objective expression.
In the yogas which renounce all action or accept only those that conduce to the preliminary purification of the being, it is no part of their aim to transform the whole active nature of man and render it a flawless expression of the Divine Will. For them there is no Divine Will or purpose behind the working of Nature, and it is not expression of anything that they seek but the cessation of all expression, a return to the Inexpressible. But in the integral yoga a perfect expression or manifestation of the Divine in material life is the ultimate aim. The whole universe is, indeed, an expression, and if it is afflicted today with imperfection and discord, suffering and obscurity, it is all the more reason that it should be made harmonious and perfect and blissful.
Therefore, in action every choice must be decided by the vision or intuition of the Divine Will and not by our preferences. This cannot be done so long as there are in us desires and attachments, and personal inclinations for certain things, persons or circumstances. "A choice is a decision and 'an act," says the Mother, and no expectation of its results or care for its consequences should be allowed to tarnish its purity. We have to purify our nature of all the multiple forms of desire and all those innumerable movements that derive from or are related to them in one way or another. At every moment we must aspire to know the Truth and endeavour to translate it into action as best we can.
But once the choice is made, we must be on our guard to repel all incursions of desire in the execution of it. The right choice does not by itself ensure clean execution. There is always the possibility of desires creeping in in the execution, just as there is always the possibility of preferences swarming in to pervert the choice—desires to excel in the work, to show one's capacity, to make one's mark or attract others' attention and admiration. If these are detected and
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rejected, there may still lurk in some unsuspected nook or corner a sense of self-gratification or self-glorification in the doing of one's work in the right spirit and way. All these are subtle forms of desire which feed the ego. After the choice is made, the initial impulse to execution, the "inner elan", as the Mother calls it, has, therefore, a crucial importance in the yogic work and has to be held under the lens of the purest intelligence we can command or the deepest feeling of surrender in the heart. This impulsion which is an automatic push is an index to the spirit in which we are going to do the work. It will determine our progress or retrogression in the yoga. A yogic action defeats its own purpose if the ego thrives by it.
Perfection in work is the aim, but perfection that comes from the Mother's Power and Grace, and not from what the ego thinks is its own power and skill. Perfection in the purity of self-offering precedes and makes for perfection in yogic work. If the ego is suffered to attribute the perfection to its own capacity, a fresh link is forged in the chain of bondage, and the blind, bounded ego goes spinning in its separative sense of vainglory. The release of the soul, the realisation of the Divine, the discovery and fulfilment of the Truth and its victory in our life, which alone can conquer ignorance and suffering—all that for which the yoga is practised, all the sublime dreams of the Divine Life with which the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have inspired us, recede into the background if the ego is" left the liberty of choice and execution. Ego's "small successes are" failures of the soul".
The yoga of works is the most difficult to practise precisely because the hardest knots of the ego are in the vital-physical which is its proper field. But if the psychic attitude of surrender and offering is adhered to, it is the most effective for liberation and transformation.
RISHABHCHAND
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Faith, Knowledge and Art of the Ancient Hmdus1 By Niklas Muller, Mainz, 1822. (facsimile reprint 1968, Leipzig)
HOW was it possible that this marvellous book, full of noble feeling and deep intuited imagination, had been completely forgotten soon after its appearance? Maybe because not only the ideals of the French Revolution of which our author was a protagonist in Germany were overcome by the conservative powers in his country, but also the idealistic and high-winged minds were replaced by more scholarly and dry ones.
The fact that this book is reprinted now might be an indication that Indology can and should at last add something of Niklas Muller's spirit to its methods. Niklas Miiller plus Max Muller! What this author writes-in a creative style-about the symbolism of the ancient religions, their scriptures and languages, makes fascinating reading. Beautiful are his answers to the graecophile misunderstandings of the Olympians: Goethe, Wieland and Voss.
The limitations of even this sublime idealism can be seen by comparing it to Sri Aurobindo's books on the Ancients. But this comparison, rather than diminishing it, would point to all that is great and true in this book, which had appeared in Germany at a time when it was extremely difficult to get to any sources!
We have had several times the pleasure to review books about India which Heinz Kucharski has edited. We are looking forward to new surprises from this original scout..
PETER STEIGER
1 Glauben, wissen und kunst der alten hindus
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THE ADVENT
Vol. I. No. 2
April 1944
MATER DOLOROSA
SUFFERING, Distress and Death today hold the earth in thrall.
And yet can there be any other issue in temporal life? That seems to be the ineluctable fate for mankind. Ages ago it was declared, the wages of sin is death.
Doubters ask, however, if sinners alone suffered, one would not perhaps mind; but along with sinners why should innocents, nay even the virtuous, pass under the axe? What sins indeed babes commit? Are the sins of the fathers truly visited upon coming generations? A queer arrangement, to say the least, if there is a wise and just and benevolent God! Yes, how many honest people, people who strive to live piously, honestly and honorably, according to the law of righteousness, fail to escape! All equally undergo the same heavy punishment. Is it not then nearer the truth to say that a most mechanical Nature, a mere gamble of chance—a statistical equation, as mathematicians say, moves the destiny of creatures and things in the universe, that there is nowhere a heart of consciousness in the whole business?
Some believers in God or in the Spirit admit that it is so. The world is the creation of another being, a not-God, a not-Spirit— whether Maya or Arhiman or the Great Evil. One has simply to forget the world, abandon earthly existence altogether as a nightmare. Peace, felicity one can possess and enjoy—but not here in this vale of tears, anityam asukham lokam imām, but elsewhere beyond.
Is that the whole truth? We, for ourselves, do not subscribe to this view. Truth is a very complex entity, the universe a mingled strain. It is not a matter of merely sinners and innocents that we have to deal with. The problem is deeper and more fundamental. The whole question is—where, in which world, on which level of consciousness do we stand, and, what is more crucial, how much of that
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consciousness is dynamic and effective in normal life. If we are in the ordinary consciousness and live wholly with that consciousness, it is inevitable that, being in the midst of Nature's current, we should be buffeted along, the good and the evil, as we conceive them to be, befalling us indiscriminately. Or, again, if we happen to live in part or even mainly in an inner or higher consciousness, more or less in a mood of withdrawal from the current of life, allowing the life movements to happen as they list, then too we remain, in fact, creatures and playthings of Nature and we must not wonder if, externally, suffering becomes the badge of our tribe.
And yet the solution need not be a total rejection and transcendence of Nature. For what is ignored in this view is Nature's dual reality. In one form, the inferior (aparā) Nature means the Law of Ignorance of pain and misery and death; but in another form, the superior (parā) Nature's is the Law of Knowledge, that is to say, of happiness, immunity and immortality, not elsewhere in another world and in a transcendent consciousness, but here below on the physical earth in a physical body.
The whole question then is this—how far has this Higher Nature been a reality with us, to what extent do we live and move and have our being in it. It is when the normal life, our body, our life and our mentality have all adopted and absorbed the substance of the Higher Prakriti arid become it, when all the modes of Inferior Prakriti have been discarded and annihilated, or rather, have been purified and made to grow into the modes of the Higher Prakriti, that our terrestrial life can become a thing of absolute beauty and perfect perfection.
If, on the contrary, any part of us belongs to the Inferior Nature, even if the larger part dwells in some higher status of Nature, even then we are not immune to the attacks that come from the Inferior Nature. Those whom we usually call pious or virtuous or honest have still a good part of them imbedded in the Lower Nature, in various degrees, they are yet her vassals; they owe allegiance to the three gunas, be it even to sattwa—sattwa is also a movement in Inferior Nature; they are not above, they are not free. Has not Sri Krishna said:
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Traigunyavisaya Veda
nistraigunyo bhavārjuna ?
The only thing we must remember is that freedom from the gunas does not necessarily mean an absolute cessation of the play of Prakriti. Being in the gunas we must know how to purify and change them, transmute them into their higher and divine potentials.
This is a counsel of perfection, one would say. But there is no other way out. If humanity is to be saved, if it is at all to progress, it can be only in this direction. Buddha's was no less a counsel of perfection. He saw the misery of man, the three great maladies inherent in life and his supreme compassion led him to the discovery of a remedy, a radical remedy,—indeed it could remove the malady altogether, for it removed the patient also. What we propose is, in this sense, something less drastic. Ours is not a path of escape, although that too needs heroism, but of battle and conquest and lordship.
It is not to say that other remedies—less radical but more normal to human nature—cannot be undertaken in the meanwhile. The higher truths do not rule out the lower. These too have their place and utility in Nature's integral economy. An organisation based on science and ethicism can be of relief; it may be even immediately necessary under the circumstances, but however imperative at the moment it does not go to the root of the "matter.
FEDERATED HUMANITY
The last Great War, out of its bloody welter, threw up a mantra for the human
consciousness to contemplate and seize and realise: it was self-determination.
The present World War has likewise cast up a mantra that is complementary. The
problem of the unification of the whole human race has engaged the attention of
seers and sages, idealists and men of action, since time immemorial; but only
recently its demand has become categorically imperative for a solution in the
field of practical politics. Viewed from another angle, one can say that it is
also a problem, Nature has set before herself, has been dealing with through the
ages, elaborating and leading to a final issue.
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The original unit of the human aggregate is the family; it is like the original cell which lies at the back of the entire system that is called the human body or, for that matter, any organic body. A living and stable nucleus is needed around which a crystallisation and growth can occur. The family furnished such a nucleus in the early epochs of humanity. But with the growth of human life there came a time when, for a better and more efficient organization in collective life, larger units were needed. The original unit had to be enlarged in order to meet the demands of a wider and more complex growth. Also it is to be noted that the living body is not merely a conglomeration of cells, all more or less equal and autonomous—something like a democratic or an anarchic organisation; but it consists of a grouping of such cells in spheres or regions or systems according to differing functions. And as we rise in the scale of evolution the grouping becomes more and more complex, well-defined and hierarchical. Human collectivity also shows a similar development in organization. The original, the primitive unit—the family—was first taken up into a larger unit, the clan; the clan, in its turn, gave place to the tribe and finally the tribe merged into the nation. A similar widening of the unit can also be noticed in man's habitat, in his geographical environment. The primitive man was confined to the village; the village gradually grew into the township and the city state. Then came the regional unit and last' of all we arrived at the country.
Until the last Great War it seemed that the nation (and country) was the largest living unit that human collectivity could admit without the risk of a break-up. Now it was at this momentous epoch that the first concept or shape of a larger federation—typified in the League of Nations—stirred into life and began to demand its lebensraum.
The present war puts the problem in the most acute way. Shall it be still a
nation or shall it be a "commonwealth" that must henceforth be the dynamic unit?
Today it is evident, it is a fact established by the sheer force of
circumstances that isolated, self-sufficient nations are a thing of the past,
even like the tribes of the Hebrews or the clans of the Hittites. A
super-nation, that is to say, a commonwealth
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of nations is the larger unit that Nature is in travail to bring forth and establish. That is the inner meaning of the mighty convulsions shaking and tearing humanity today. The empire of the past— an empire of the Roman type and pattern—was indeed in its own way an attempt in the direction of a closely unified larger humanity; but it was a crude and abortive attempt, as Nature's first attempts mostly are. For the term that was omitted in that greater synthesis was self-determination. Centralisation is certainly the secret of a large organic unity, but not over-centralisation; for this means the submission and sacrifice of all other parts of an organism to the undue demands and interests of only one organ which is considered as the centre, the metropolis.
The autocratic empire is dead and gone: we need not fear its shadow or ghostly regeneration. But the ideal which inspired it in secret and justified its advent and reign is a truth that has still its day. The drive of Nature, of the inner consciousness of humanity was always to find a greater and larger unit for the collective life of mankind. That unity today has to be a federation of free peoples and nations. In the place of nations, several such commonwealths must now form the broad systems of the body politic of human collectivity. That must give the pattern of its texture, the outline of its configuration—the shape of things to come. Such a unit is no longer a hypothetical proposition, a nebula, a matter of dream and imagination. It has become a practical necessity; first of all, because of the virtual impossibility of any single nation, big or small, standing all by itself alone —military and political and economic exigencies demand inescapable collaboration with others, and secondly, because of the still stricter geographical compulsion—the speed and ease of communication has made the globe so small and all its parts so interdependent that none can possibly afford to be exclusive and self-centred.
The organisation of this greater and larger unit is the order of the day. It does not seem possible at this stage to go straight to the whole of humanity at large and make of it one single indivisible entity, obliterating all barriers of race and nation. An intermediate step is
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still necessary even if that remains the final end. Nationhood has been a helper in that direction; it is now a bar. And yet an indiscriminative internationalism cannot meet the situation today, it overshoots the mark. The march of events and circumstances prescribe that nations should combine to form groups or, as they say in French, societies of nations. The combination, however, must be freely determined, as voluntary partnership in a common labour and organisation for common profit and achievement. This problem has to be solved first, then only can the question of nationalism or other allied knots be unravelled. Nature the Sphinx has set the problem before us and we have to answer it here and now, if humanity is to be saved and welded together into a harmonious whole for a divine purpose.
VANSITTARTISM
Germany is considered now, and naturally with great reason, as the arch criminal among nations. Such megalomania, such lust for wanton cruelty, such wild sadism, such abnormal velleities no people, it is said, have ever evinced anywhere on the face of the earth: the manner and the extent of it all are appalling. Hitler is not the malady; removal of the Fuehrer will not cure Germany. The man is only a sign and a symbol. The whole nation is corrupt to the core: it has been inoculated with a virus that cannot be eradicated. The peculiar German character that confronts and bewilders us now, is not a thing of today or even of yesterday; it has been there since Tacitus remarked it. Even Germans themselves know it very well; the best among them have always repudiated their mother country. Certainly there were peoples and nations that acted at times most barbarously and inhumanly. The classical example of the Spanish Terror in America is there. But all pales into insignificance when compared to the German achievement and ideal in this respect. For here is a people violent and cruel, not simply because it is their character to be so and they delight in being so, but because it forms the bedrock of their philosophy of life, their weltanschauung.
This is the very core of the matter. Germany stands for a philosophy of life, for a definite mode of human values. That philosophy was slowly developed, elaborated by the German mind, in various
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degrees and in various thinkers and theorists and moralists and statesmen, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. The conception of the State as propounded even by her great philosophers as something self-existent, sacrosanct and almost divine—august and grim, one has to add—is profoundly significant of the type of the sub-conscient dynamic in the nation: it strangely reminds one of the state organised by the bee, the ant or the termite. Hitler has only precipitated the idea, given it a concrete, physical and dynamic form. That philosophy in its outlook has been culturally anti-Latin, religiously anti-Christian. Germany cherishes always in her heart the memory of the day when her hero Arminius routed the Roman legions of Varus. Germany stands for a mode of human consciousness that is not in line with the major current of its evolutionary growth: she harks back to something primeval, infra-rational, infra-human.
Such is the position taken up by Sir Vansittart who has given his name to the ideology of anti-Germanism. Vansittartism (at least in its extreme variety) has very little hope for the mending of Germany, it practically asks for its ending.
A son of the soil, an eminent erstwhile collaborator of Hitler, who has paid for his apostasy, offered a compromise solution. He says, Germany, as a matter of fact, is not one but two: there is the Eastern Germany (the Northern and the Eastern portion) and there is the Western Germany (the South and the West) and the two are distinct and different—even antagonistic—in temperament and character and outlook. The Western Germany is the true Germany, the Germany of light and culture, the Germany that produced the great musicians, poets and idealists, Goethe and Heine and Wagner and Beethoven. The other Germany represents the dark shadow. It is Prussia and Prussianised Germany. This Germany originally belonged to the bleak wild savage barbarous East Europe and was never thoroughly reclaimed and its union with the Western half was more political than psychological. So this ex-lieutenant of Hitler proposed to divide and separate the two altogether and form two countries or nations and thus eliminate the evil influence of Prussianism and Junkerism.
The more democratic and liberal elements among the allies do not also consider that Germany as a whole is smitten with an original sin and is beyond redemption. They say Germany too has men and
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groups of men who are totally against Hitler and Hitlerism: they may have fallen on evil days, but yet they can be made the nucleus of a new and regenerated Germany. Furthermore they say if Germany has come to be what she is, considerable portion of the responsibility must be shared by the unprogressive and old-world elements among the Allies themselves who helped or pitied or feared the dark Germany.
Hence it is suggested that for the post-war reconstruction of Germany what is required is the re-education of its people. For, only a psychological change can bring about a durable and radical change. But certain proposals towards this end raise considerable misgivings, since they mean iron regimentation under foreign control. Even if such a thing were possible and feasible, it is doubtful if the purpose could be best served in this way. Measures have to be taken, no doubt, to uproot Prussianism and Junkerism and prevent their revival, no false mercy or sympathy should be extended to the enemies of God and man. But this is only a negative step, and cannot be sufficient by itself. A more positive and more important work lies ahead. The re-education of Germany must come from within, if it is to be permanent and effective. What others can do is to help her in this new orientation. As we have said there are the progressive elements in Germany too, although submerged for the moment. The task of reconstruction will precisely consist in calling up and organising and marshalling these forces that are for the Light. The Allied organisation, it may be noted, itself has grown up in this way. When one remembers how Britain stood alone at one time against the all-sweeping victorious march of the Titan, how slowly and gradually America was persuaded to join hands, at first in a lukewarm way, finally with all its heart and soul and might and mane, how a new France is being built up out of the mass of ruins, we can hope that the same process will be adopted in the work that lies ahead even after victory, with regard to Italy and with regard to Germany. In the second case the task is difficult but it has got to be done.
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