Vol. XXVI. No. 4. 

November 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.

EDITORIAL

THE MOUNTING FIRE

THE seat of human consciousness, in fact of all consciousness, is the brain—the grey substance filling up the cranium. The brain constitutes man in his essential and characteristic substance and functioning.

I am speaking specially of the physical and material basis of mind and consciousness, for unless this basis is changed there can be no change in the structure of the being, and in the movement of outward life; even the consciousness would not change radically or permanently: a stable transformation can come only when the material stuff has undergone a reversal.

The human brain consists, as physiologists tell us, of three parts: (1) the frontal lobe, (2) the hub behind and (3) further down, a hidden part—they are as we know, the cerebrum, the cerebellum and the Bridge and the Medulla. Such is man's head, the cranium, the lodgings where human mind dwells and from where it moves and controls all man's dynamic behaviour.

The frontal lobe is the seat of intellect and intelligence: the topmost portion, the crown of the head is usually associated with the

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still higher functions of mind, tending towards intuition, direct knowledge, luminous vision, etc. The front proper, the forehead that is to say, is the seat of intellect proper, the discursive deductive rational mind. The section of the brain in the hind portion of the cranium is usually associated not with reason or understanding but with vital urges, impulsions, sentiments, passions, desires, etc.: the nervous knots there are the controlling agent of these lower functions of the mind; that is the control room, as it were, for all dynamism, for man's character and nature. And the part hidden or embedded below houses the infra-impulses: the demands and needs that are inherent mostly in the bodily functions, all the movements that are called forth in the wake of physical existence.

The question, the problem now is, how to change, purify these ranges of the mind or brain: to suffuse the cranium with a new functioning and organisation replacing the old order of the ordinary, more or less animal man.

The usual course followed is to call in the higher reality: the light and its power of organisation, that lie above, above the brain outside the cranium. To invoke the light, the transcendent light and power to descend and penetrate the brain-consciousness and work out there a process of purification and new organisation. This has been done with considerable success. This is the Vedantic way.

But, there is a but, that is to say, a limitation in this line. The higher consciousness is brought down, it descends, but normally it does not penetrate far enough; it penetrates only very partially, slowly, intermittently and in a gradually diminishing strength. The top region receives the light comparatively easily; the middle receives or is touched and influenced with great difficulty and after long travail, but the bottom portion is rarely connected or contacted, only nominally perhaps. In other words, if the higher mind, the intellect and intelligence is somewhat illumined with a new light from above and even if the higher vital comes under its influence in a general way, the lower vital comes hardly in its grasp. And the lowest region, the region of physical or nervous movements for all practical purposes lies outside the influence of the Higher or Transcendent Consciousness; that remains almost undisturbed, unregenerated. To bring down the Higher Light there, behind and below the brain stuff is a task very

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few have done or even attempted to do.

The Tantriks devised a different way, an about-turn way. Instead of trying to bring down the superior or the supreme consciousness into these lower darknesses, they sought to attack these from below, set a blazing fire below that would shoot up its tongues into those nether regions of the brain or mind. Instead of a force of light from above coming down, a force of fire is rocketed upward and made to strike as it were at the back of the lower masses of the mind. Now where to find this fire, this mounting tongue of a living flame? That is what the Tantras have imaged in the concept of the Kundalini Shakti. There is a force, a mighty energy coiled and concentrated at the base of the spine holding it and supporting at its top, first, the subliminal region of the brain at the bottom, and over it the other two. There is a secret fire at the base of the human system. It is a fire as invoked by the Vedic Rishis: the tantriks view it as a coiled python—the universal nature-power, her massive ingathered creative energy. This energy is forceful and fierce because it is as much creative as it is destructive. That is the poison which the python carries, it is a poison in the ignorant state and unconsciousness, to the ignorant and the unconscious, but to the aspirant and the awakened and the luminous consciousness it begins to work as the immortalising drought-nectar. J

The energy at the root of the spine is, stored, as it is said, in the muladhara, the root, that is to say, in the root of the very material constitution of the human being. It is the concentrated energy in matter, indeed it is the energy of the mother earth. The Vedic Rishis speak of fire as being a deity of earth, as the Sun or the God of Light is the deity of the heaven. The earth-energy has to be awakened or kindled and it has to move upward and forward, piercing and burning and illumining all the inferior and denser regions of consciousness till it pierces through and enters into the head, and then goes beyond, into the supreme solar light. That is the image given in the Tantras calling it sat-cakrabheda.

The inferior parts of the brain are denser and darker than the superior. The lower it is, the denser and darker it becomes. I do not know if physically it is so, but the sensitivity, the vibrations there seem to point to such a direction. So it appears, it is not easy for the Light

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from above to penetrate, to penetrate to a great depth, to the bottom of the brain. It is not the Light from above but the fire from below, the flaming force of material consciousness that has to do the main or final work. For the light from above is mostly mental or mentalised, the very supreme Light does not descend easily, is not readily available: indeed it is ready and available only at the call of the fire below. Agni is therefore named 'hota', one who calls the Divine down here below.

It is the God here below that can call down the God above.

But how to awaken this God buried in matter, how is one to kindle this fire that apparently lies extinguished, the Vedic Rishis have a whole ritual of the process. They speak, first of all, of preparing the seat for Agni—barhi: it is the material casing of the body, and then one takes two pieces of the arani species of wood or fuel, and rubs them one against the other till the fire leaps out. It refers to an aspiration, a concrete and concentrated aspiration that is breathed into the living cells, this breathing, ādhmātam, is the concretising or .embodying of the aspiration: it is the invocation that calls forth the sleeping divinity.

The fire in fact is the aspiration in the body, the divine demand in the body and it kindles itself by its own self-pressure. The spreading of the barhi in the Vedic image means also the surrender and submission, the prostration" of the bodily being. By namas, by constant obeisance the fire is to be-tended; and a ceaseless refueling has to be done by a ceaseless self-offering, offering of all movements, especially all the automatic reactions of the physical that form the roots of the material existence.

The whole physical being if it is to embody a new life in a new organisation must concentrate at one point within itself and find or found there the Fire, the dynamic Divine Will in its most concrete reality—the body's self and soul: the yajamāna, the human figure of the Divine here invoking, calling forth the godhead who leads the sacrificial journey through all the worlds and domains to the Supreme Heights. .

We have said that fire is a denser and intenser force than light: while the light is likely to stop short or to dispense, the fire is apt to act fiercely and decisively with the denser or more refractory objects of

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existence, strands that are moved, as I have said, from the central control of the brain. Earth enshrines volcanoes; likewise the cells in the material body may be turned into little volcanoes if the Divine Flame is roused there in the intensive process of aspiration.

Earthly beings as we are, Agni, the earthly Godhead is the Deity we adore, he is the Lord of the Home, grhapati. He is the foremost of the gods and he goes in front of us (purohita), Agni's flame rises to wards Surya, the su preme Light, but fir st he must prepare the passage, burn down and clear the woodlands and marsh es that intervene-the growths and formations in the past of the very substance of the being.

Thus, the head, the brain, must be built wholly of fire particles. The cranium will hold, as it were, a golden ball, rounded and fully formed, the golden egg, hiranyagarbha, out of which the new physical creation will emerge-something in the manner of the legendary Greek goddess Minerva, whole and entire, complete in arms and panoply out of the head of Father Jupiter.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

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DEERGHATAMA'S HYMN TO THE SUN

(Rigveda: I. 164)

1. This is the delightful ancient One. He is the Summoner. Next to him is the second brother: he is the Devourer.

The third brother is the one with blazing front: here I saw the Lord of the Universe with his seven sons.

2. The Seven yoke the chariot that has one single wheel: the Horse with seven names draws it.

The Wheel has three naves. It is unaging and irresistible. All the worlds repose upon it.

3. Seven are they who drive the chariot, seven are the horses that draw the chariot with seven wheels.

Seven are the sisters who together move there where the herds with seven names are pent in.

4. Who has been the First One taking birth: boneless himself he up bears that with bones.

Who was the Energy, the Blood, the Soul of this earth? And did any one ever approach the wise with the question?

5. I am young, therefore do I ask: with my mind I am unable to know of those secreted seats of the Gods.

Upon the moving seat the Seers spread out the seven threads as warp and woof.

6. I have not the consciousness, so do I ask here of the seers who have the consciousness: not having the knowledge I ask for the knowledge.

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Some one who is one and single has transfixed these six worlds as forms of the Unborn.

7. Here let him speak who knows of the secret step of this delightful one in his wide winging.

From his head the white herds draw sweet milk: they put on a covering and drink water by their feet.

8. In the Truth the Mother adores the Father: from the very beginning she has been united with him in consciousness and thought.

She quivered, her womb charged with streaming delight: they that carried their obeisance's approached and found the Word.

9. The Mother was united to the yoke by the right side: the embryo lay within all that was crooked.

The child lowed after its mother and saw her as the world-form in the three expanses. 

10. Three are the mothers, three the fathers, up borne by One standing above: they do not tire him down.

There, in that heaven, they utter the word which has the knowledge of the universe, which the universe cannot encompass.

11. The wheel of Truth with its twelve spokes rolls on round the heaven and decays not.

Oh Agni, here the sons stay in pairs, seven hundred and twenty in number.

12. The father who has five feet and twelve forms, they say, is on the higher hemisphere and he is delight itself.

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And there are those who say that one with clear vision is placed high above upon the seven wheels and six spokes.

13. All the worlds repose upon that wheel rolling on with its five spokes.

Its axle is never over-strained, in spite of the heavy load, it never wears out in the course of eternity, fixed on its nave.

14. The ringed wheel rolls on undecaying: the ten are yoked and they carry it upward.

Lo! there comes the sun's eye, encircled by the spaces. All the worlds are placed in there.

15. Sevenfold are they, born together: the seventh is born of the one, they say, and these six are seers and gods.

Their movements are fixed according to the status: they move out in varied forms for the sake of him who upholds them.

Notes

( I )

The three brothers:

i) Fire-earth-body or matter. Bhur.

ii) Air or wind-earth's atmosphere-life. Bhavah.

iii) Sun-sky or space-wind or consciousness. Swah.

Seven sons:

Sat-chit-ananda-Mahat-Manas-Prana-Anna.

Satyaloka-tapoloka-anandaloka-Maharloka-Manomayaloka

pranamayaloka-annamayaloka.

The worlds of the seven principles of existence:

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i) Being

ii) Consciousness-energy

iii) Delight

iv) Supermind (Turya)

v) Mind

vi) Life or vital

vii) Matter.

(2)

The three naves—the triple principle or states: in the higher sphere Sat-Chit-Ananda; in the lower hemisphere, mind, life and matter.

(3)

Cow=Light, ray of consciousness, luminosity.

(4)

Bones: Matter, material existence, solidity.

(5)

Child: the Divine born in man, the soul.

(6)

The One: the Supreme and Pure Existence; the rest of the principles are the Six, the Sestet.

(7)

The Consciousness, the Light and the Delight in the higher sphere from the head. The lower sphere covered or veiled by the ignorance means the flow or flood of ordinary life.

(8)

Father and Mother—the masculine and the feminine principles; Purusha and Prakriti—the Conscious Being and his Energy.

The Mother is giving birth to the Divine son, the divinity of the soul in man.

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(9)

Right hand side=movement of consciousness and Truth.

Yoke=the wheel of creation.

The three expanses: Mind, life and matter.

(10)

Three mothers and the three fathers: the dual principles of consciousness and Energy, Being and Power, in the three worlds or the three levels of consciousness.

(11)

Twelve spokes: the twelve signs or houses of the zodiac, the twelve means a complete and integral movement of the Sun or Truth-consciousness.

The number 720 = the number of days in the year doubled, because the integral movement means a double movement, upward and downward, the higher consciousness coming down and the lower consciousness going upward.

(12)

The five feet: compare the five kosas of the Upanishad. Twelve=the twelve signs of the zodiac referred to above.

(13) & (14)

Five and ten=Ten representing the double movement, up and down, of five, the five Upanishadic principles and worlds.

(15)

Seventh is the Supreme Pure Existence beyond creation; the other six levels contain the play of the dual principle.

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FROM THE KARMAYOGIN

NATIONALISM AND NATIONALISTS: B. C. PAL

WHAT is Nationalism? Who are Nationalists? So many things " good, bad, and indifferent, are being preached in the name of Nationalism; and so many people, holding so many views, have commenced to claim the name Nationalist, that a little calm and careful consideration of these questions may not be quite useless at this juncture. Both the idea and the words are somewhat new in current Indian literature. The concept has yet to be coined in institutions, crystallised in traditions and supported by sanctified authorities. It is still, so to say, in the melting-pot. Some confusion is inevitable in this transitional and formative stage. Yet it is just at these chaotic stages that great ideas have to be most carefully watched, and the mind of the people trained to differentiate the real from the formal elements in them.

What is Nationalism? The concept is new. Mazzini, I think, was the first prophet of this idea in modern Europe. It was he who first saw the limitations of that maddening gospel of individual freedom, which the French Revolution had preached. The French Revolution was, really, the last word of Christian Protestantism. Voltaire and Rousseau carried out the inexorable logic of the teachings of Erasmus and Luther, even as Erasmus' and Luther's were the last word, practically, of Christianity.

The human personality, as having an end unto itself, had but scant recognition in the social economy of the ancients,—outside India. In India alone, among the Hindus, the human individuality received the fullest recognition. In the Hindu economy alone was the right of the individual to be a law unto himself fully recognised. It was, however, the individual perfected through a long and laborious course of social discipline and thus trained to identify himself with the universal, who attained this right. Thus while in the first two orders of the student or Brahmacharin and the house-holder or Gri-hastha, subjection to authority was the rule, in the last two orders of the Vdnafrastha and the Sannyasin, when the individual at first partially

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and then completely gave himself up to the higher and the contemplative life, and was, therefore, freed from the conflicts of selfish passions and interests of the ordinary social duties and activities,—freedom was the law. In Sannyasa the individual was a law unto himself. And it was so because he was at least supposed in that stage to have really ceased to be an individual, that is an individual with private and personal ends and desires, but completely identified himself with the Universal. This identification with the Universal has always been the highest conception of freedom in India, among the Hindus. It was the peculiar fruit of the Hindu race-consciousness which has had from prehistoric times an overwhelming sense of the spiritual and the universal as an original and organic element of its intellectual and moral life.

Outside India, however, in all the ancient social economies, the individual as having an end unto himself received but scant recognition. The individual was a part, society was the whole: the individual was a link, society was the body: the individual was an organ, society was the organism. The whole must regulate its parts: the body must control the limbs, the organism must rule the organs to its own needs, —this was the old social philosophy. This was the old pagan view in Greece and Rome.

The first protest against this view was raised in the Western world of Christianity. But even Christianity failed to free the individual from the old social bondage altogether. All that it did was really to substitute a new social hold, more comprehensive and cosmopolitan than the old ones. The new Church was substituted for the old social authority, but the subjection of the individual practically continued. The Church was the whole, the members were the parts: the Church was the body, the members were the limbs. Thus the old subjection continued, only the authority that controlled the individual was transferred from pagan society to the Christian Church.

But even this transference of authority, due to the personal election of the individual, was a distinct advance towards personal freedom. It conferred upon the individual the right of choosing, though perhaps not of actually making, the laws that shall govern him. Even this choice was a great thing. It was the first step towards personal freedom. In taking converts from pagan religions, Christianity, thus,

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started with a recognition of that right of private judgement, upon which the subsequent Lutheran protests were based. The right of private judgement was fully recognised in the acceptance of Christianity by every convert. The Lutheran protest, therefore, did not discover a new principle, but simply expanded somewhat the field of the application of an old principle. The authority of the individual was valid and absolute in his choosing Christianity against paganism. It was valid and absolute in his first act of choosing, but it ceased with that first act. That was Catholicism. Luther denied that this right ceased with the first act of choice. He claimed that as originally it was the reason and conscience of the individual which was vested with the right of deciding the truth of Christianity against other religions, so the same individual reason and conscience must have the right of deciding what is true and what is false in the traditional interpretations of the Christian Scriptures and the Christian dogma.

This is the necessary logic of all missionary religions. This is the essential implication of all credal systems, miscalled universal in contradistinction from national or ethnic systems. There is no need or room for the exercise of personal choice in ethnic religions. Every man belonging to an ethnic religion is born into it. But missionary religions are different. Not the accident of birth, but the acceptance of a creed, is the soul of missionary religions. Acceptance implies exercise of choice. All missionary religions appear before the bar of individual reason and conscience, pleading for acceptance. It is an appeal to individual reason and conscience. And the logic of this appeal is the recognition of the right of private judgement.

Christianity in the West and centuries before Christianity, Buddhism in the East—both credal and the missionary religions—, first raised the standard of personal freedom against social and sacerdotal authority, in the world that is known to us. But every new creed is essentially protestant. Buddhism was protestant Vedicism in India: Christianity was protestant paganism in Europe. And protests are mere antitheses. Protests are always half-truths. They cannot rest in themselves. They create new problems, requiring fresh solutions. They soon reveal new conflicts demanding a fresh reconciliation. The gospel of individual freedom proclaimed by both Buddhism and Christianity, had therefore, to be reconciled with authority, progress

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with order, intuitions with truth, the individual with the universal. In the sacred formula—

Dhammam Sharanam Gachchami:

Buddham Sharanam Gachchami:

Sangham Sharanam Gachchami:

I take refuge in Dharma or Law, I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Sangha or the Order or Church,—this higher synthesis and reconciliation was found by Buddhism. The individual, thus, subjected himself to Dharma which was above him, to Buddha who was above him and to the Sangha or Order, which was above him. The invisible Dharma and the bodily-absent Buddha were both visibly represented by the Sangha or the Church. In accepting the new creed, the individual, thus, became a part of Dharma, of Buddha, and of the Sangha or the Church. Through a new freedom he entered into a new subjection. And in proportion as he was able to completely identify himself with these larger entities, with Dharma, with Buddha, and with the Sangha,—this new subjection became, really, a larger freedom. He was not free as an individual, as standing apart from the universal as manifested about him, not as standing apart from the Law and Order to which he belonged, but only as part of these, consciously participating and actively co-operating with this larger life. The freedom of the individual in Buddhism was freedom not really in himself but in and through the Universal of which he was part. This was also Christian freedom in Catholicism. Substitute the Bible for Dharma, Christ for the Buddha and the Church for the Sangha, and you have the Catholic scheme of freedom and salvation. Both Buddhism and Christianity stood up with a denial of the old and established order about them. Both were at their start antithetical and protestant. Both required, therefore, a new synthesis and a new assertion. Both arrived at this new synthesis through the help of a new set of symbols of the Universal in place of the old ones.

But the Lutheran protest has so far failed, it seems to me, to work out a similar synthesis and reconciliation. Neither Buddhism nor Christianity repudiated the right of the whole to control the parts. They did not set up the individual as a law unto himself. They only

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freed the individual from the authority of that which had really ceased to be his larger and higher self, and set him in conscious relation with something which he was able to accept as his own larger and higher self. True it is that the Lutheran protest did not altogether deny all authority, but the denial of the authority of the Church was a practical repudiation of all objective authority. The Scriptures which Luther retained as authoritative, without the Pope, and with the right of the individual private judgement, ceased really to be an objective, and became essentially a mere subjective authority. The Lutheran protest was, thus, practically a transference of the regulative authority of individual reason and conscience from outside him to within himself. And with this transference really started the modern individualistic movement in Europe which reached its culmination in the French Revolution.

The new synthesis has come with the gospel of Nationalism and in Europe Mazzini was its first apostle and prophet.

The movement of individual freedom in modern Europe, originating with the Lutheran protest, found its culmination as I said last week in the French Revolution. Though the logic of Protestantism, with its right of private judgement, was really subjective individualism, yet in as much as it accepted the dogma of an objective and supernatural scripture, practically this freedom of the individual was circumscribed by the traditions of his rfeligion. Individual reason had to exercise its freedom of judgement within the limitations of the Scriptures. The conscience of the individual had to submit to the accepted moral code of the sacred Book. Protestant freedom worked within these limits. The French Revolution, however, threw these old brakes away, and proclaimed a new gospel of freedom in which the individual really became a law unto himself. Hindu thought had of old recognised the right of the individual to be a law unto himself, but only under certain conditions, when the individual had by long and laborious disciplines, cured himself of his conceit of individuality and had realised, thereby, his or her essential identity with the Universal. The gospel of individualism preached by the French Revolution was of a different kind. The freedom here proclaimed was an absolute right. It was an unconditional claim. The human unit was entitled to this freedom whatever might be the stage of

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intellectual or moral evolution in which it stood. Freedom such as this, reduces truth to mere opinion, destroys the validity of rational, as against irrational, judgement, both being ultimately a mere conjugation of the verb to think, and obliterates all distinction, on the ethical plane, between impulse and duty. The logic of this freedom, as I have often pointed out, is—"The Woman Who Did".

But still the debt of modern humanity to the French Revolution cannot be ignored. In spite of its excessive individualistic emphasis, the French Revolution ushered in a new era of human progress. It proclaimed the law of right against the old authority of status. It preached the freedom of the individual against the hide-bound regulations of Society. This was no mean work. It meant the resurrection of the dead peoples of Europe. It meant new thought, new ideals, new aspirations, a new outlook, and a new life for the modern world. It created a new philosophy of life and a new organ of culture for Western humanity. But for all that it was still an emphatically negative movement. It broke more than it was able to built.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—the war cry of the French Revolution, however inspiring it might have been to the down-trodden peoples of Europe among whom it was raised, was, especially as understood and interpreted by the eighteenth century, essentially a formula of revolt. It was not a principle of reconciliation. It was the assertion of an antithesis, not the discovery of a synthesis. It was, no doubt, a gospel of freedom, but freedom conceived more in its negative than in its positive aspects. Freedom was mainly apprehended as mere absence of restraint. And this negative idea of freedom has largely dominated European thought up to our own time. The oft-quoted dictum of Herbert Spencer,—"Every man is free to do as he pleases provided he infringes not the equal freedom of others,—" still represents the prevailing idea of freedom in Europe. And this is Europe's heritage in the French Revolution.

And as long as Europe has not been able to completely work out this excessive individualistic emphasis of the French Illumination, it will never fully understand the philosophy of true nationalism.

Nationalism is, indeed, a comparatively new idea in Europe. The concept is still more or less nebulous and vague. Neither the scientific basis nor the ethical and spiritual significance of it has yet

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been realised by the ordinary European mind. And this is because the European mind is still under the domination of the French Illumination. The necessary limitations of the eighteenth century individualism have, no doubt, commenced to be increasingly recognised, but the return movement has assumed the form of Socialism and not of Nationalism. This is due mainly to the predominantly economic character of the present phase of European evolution. Socialism represents the protest of European Democracy against the existing economic arrangements of European society. It is a demand for a more equitable distribution of economic privileges than what obtains at present. Competition is the basis of the existing economic structure in Europe: and individualism is the fundamental philosophy of this competitive economic arrangement. In this sense, and to this extent only, does Socialism represent a reaction against the excessively individualistic philosophy of the French Illumination. But though to a certain extent anti-individualistic, Socialism is in no sense a synonym for Nationalism. Socialism is a recognition of the limitations of individualism in one department of life only, namely, the economic: Nationalism recognises these limitations in every department of life. Socialism is a theory in economics, Nationalism is a fact in Sociology. It is a higher generalisation.

But the gospel of the French Revolution was not merely individualistic, it was a gospel of universalism also. 'In fact it was this note of universalism which gave to the French Revolution its most fascinating feature. Its deeper idealism was really its intense humanitarianism. And in so far as it was humanitarian, the French Revolution was indeed, in a sense, anti-national. There were only two factors in the scheme of reform propounded by the French Revolution, namely, the individual human unit on the one side and universal humanity on the other. Liberty and equality for the individual, as members of a Universal Human Brotherhood,—this was the complete philosophy of the French Revolution. It was individualistic and cosmopolitan, and Nationalism as a philosophy of life had no place in its scheme. It recognised no middle term between the individual and the universal. Nationality in its view was the antithesis of Humanity. Nationalism was opposed to cosmopolitanism. It was conceived almost as a crime against universal Brotherhood.

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European culture in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, thus, really tried to stifle the spirit of nationality in the West. It is only the conflict of political and commercial interests between the European peoples that has preserved the national sentiment among them. Nationalism, consequently, is a more or less mean, selfish, and degrading sentiment there. It has no spiritual inspiration in it. It simply represents a scramble for power and pelf between rival communities.

But though Nationalism is a sentiment, Nationality is a fact. And the fact has always been present in Europe as much as in Asia, though it may not have been consciously realised, and, thus, formed the basis of a rational sentiment or a philosophic ideal everywhere. In fact, like every other thing, Nationality also comes within the range of consciousness only under certain conditions. And contact and conflict with other nationalities is the one universal condition of the growth of national consciousness. It is, indeed, the law of all consciousness. Human consciousness is always the result of the contact and conflict of the self with the not-self. The not-me is our physical surroundings, on the one side, and in our human associations, in other men and women, on the other—it is these which always awaken the self in us. Without this contact and conflict, no personal consciousness would have been possible. Similarly, it is contact, and, more than contact, keen and vital conflict, with other nations alone that can call forth the sentiment of Nationalism among any people. And the nature of this conflict always determines the character of the spirit of nationalism evoked by it. In Europe, international conflicts have almost always been political or politico economic. And nationalism, in Europe, therefore, is essentially a political sentiment. This also accounts for the unusual vigour of the political and the economic life among these peoples.

This partial and very incomplete idea of nationalism in Europe is largely due to the fact that from a long time past, there has ceased to exist any vital conflict of culture and civilisation among the different nations of the Western world. They are all more or less the inheritors of Greece and Rome. They are all mainly professors of one common religion. Their social life and ideals are practically the same. And there has been an almost constant flow of peoples of

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one nation into the territories of the other nations who have been rapidly absorbed into the nation of their adoption. And all these things have worked together to prevent the growth of any strong and fully determined national consciousness among the European peoples.

Mazzini was, I think, the only prophet of the complete national idea in Modern Europe. And the psychology of it is also hot very difficult to investigate. Rome had lost her empire, but not her traditions. Italy had lost her political freedom but not her pride of race. Austria, though their political master, was yet a mere barbarian in the eye of the Italian people. Her political domination represented only superior brute force, but not superior intellectual or moral force. It struck not merely against Italy's political freedom, but against the entire Italian culture. It wounded the keen pride of race of an ancient people. Italy's struggle for freedom was not merely a political struggle but a truly national struggle in the largest sense of the term. And it was the peculiar nature of this struggle which awoke in Mazzini a fuller sense of nationality and a deeper sentiment of nationalism than what is found ordinarily in Europe.

(To be continued)

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OLD BENGALI MYSTIC POEMS

XXVIII

Tier upon tier the hills arise,

there dwells the forest-girl;

She wears the peacock feather in her hair,

and round her neck the garland of gunja flowers.

 

The forest-man is mad, he is wild:

Oh, do not be troubled, I implore you:

Your own house-wife is there, her name, beauty pure and simple.

Varied trees are in flower, their branches reach out to the skies.

 

The lone forest-woman wanders in this woodland;

her ear-rings dangle, her arms carry the thunder-bolt:

The cot of triple substance is put in place

and the forest-man spreads his bed in great joy.

The forest-man, a hooded passion, the luminous Nought

a harlot and the Night love's arms.

 

He tasted, in his heart, of betel and camphor gleefully:

He put around his neck the lovely lady—the Void Selflessness

and passed the whole night in revel!

 

The Master's word is the bow,

hit the mark with the arrow of your mind:

Aim with the one single arrow—

and hit, oh hit, the supreme Void.

 

The forest-man is wild with passion;

The forest-man has entered into the cleft

on the top of the hill—how to find him out?

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XXIX

It does not become existence,

nor does it become non-existence.

Who would believe in such an experience ?

Lui says: my boy, true knowledge is hard to glimpse:

It flashes in the triple substance and one does not know it.

It is a thing with no colour or sign or feature that is known.

How can one explain it through scriptures and holy books?

To whom and in what way should I speak of the riddle?

It is like the moon in the water, neither true nor false!

Lui says, what am I to think of it?

The thing I live with has neither a purpose

nor a roadway.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

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SPEECH IN YOGA

IT was a long drawn out Telugu film, Sati Savitri, and it was screened at our playground in two parts on successive days. The picture had portrayed graphically the intense struggle undergone by Savitri of the Epic to reclaim Satyavan from the hands of the Lord of Death. The next day when there was a mention of the film before the Mother amongst a few of us, She remarked how fine it was at the end to see Savitri remain silent and answer with only a gesture the anxious enquiries of the royal search party as to why there was so much delay in their return. Savitri had indeed wrought a miracle but she did not feel it necessary to speak about it .

I was struck by this observation of the Mother. It was so characteristic of Her who always prefers not to speak but to do, an attitude which later found a mantric expression in a message given by Her for one of the New Year occasions: NO WORDS—ACTS. It is apposite that the recent publication brought out by the Sri Aurobindo Society containing excerpts from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on the power and control of speech should bear the same title, NO WORDS—ACTS.

Men rarely realise how much they talk and how little of it is really necessary for their day-to-day life. Stop for a moment and recall how much you have talked during the last one hour and ask yourself whether all of it was indispensable. You will see how wasteful you have been. Speech is a power given to man by Nature. Of all her creatures man alone has been gifted with this power because he is in a position, —he has attained that level of consciousness,—to use it fruitfully. If only he were to be as thoughtful in its use as with some of the other resources which he utilises with so much economy, he is bound to see his energies remarkably augmented. It has been noted in some of our ancient texts how the centre that governs speech is connected with the centre that controls the vital energy. In a subtle sense, to dissipate speech-energy in careless talk is as ruinous as throwing out of sex energy.

The practical advantages of sparse talk in the affairs of the world are obvious. To think before one talks and to talk with economy of

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words leads to a certain precision and effectivity. It saves one from a good deal of avoidable involvement and complications. However, we are not concerned at the moment with this aspect of the matter. What is its relevance in Yoga ? Does control of speech form part of the self-discipline of Yoga? If control of speech is recommended, then logically, the best counsel would be complete abstinence from speech, mounam, as practised in some of the older ascetic paths. These and allied questions are squarely answered by Sri Aurobindo in his letters.

Mouna, says Sri Aurobindo, is an extreme which is to be avoided for "it isolates too much", it makes one too subjective. "Absolute silence and looseness of talk are two extremes; neither is good. I have seen many people practising mouna vrata, but afterwards they are just as talkative as before. It is self-mastery you must get."

Speech is of two kinds, what is necessary and what is wasteful. It is the latter kind that is harmful in sadhana. For "Talk of the usual kind does very easily disperse or bring down the inner condition because it usually comes out of the lower vital and the physical mind only and expresses that part of the consciousness—it has a tendency to externalise the being". Particularly if the talk relates to something of the past which is best left behind, it "brings back something of the past consciousness". Even in talk, "the mind should be free to shut off immediately as soon as the talk is done". In periods requiring greater concentration in sadhana, light talks or chats are specially harmful. "Chat of that kind has indeed a very tiring effect when one is at all in the stream of true experience, because it dissipates the energy uselessly and makes the mind movement a thing of valueless shreds and patches instead of gathered and poised in itself so as to receive."

The control has to be built up during the normal periods. Only then would it be spontaneously effective in times of special intensity. "Not to be under the control of the impulse of speech, to be able to do without it as a necessity and to speak only when one sees that it is right to do so and only what one sees to be right to say, is a very necessary part of the Yogic self-control. It is only by perseverance and vigilance and a strong resolution that this can be done, but if the resolution

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 is there it can be done in a short time by the aid of the Force behind."

Vigilance is recommended. "Especially speech is a thing which in most people is largely automatic and not under their control. It is the vigilance that establishes the control, so one must be on guard against the danger, the slackening of the vigilance. Only, the more it can be a quiet unmixed, not an anxious vigilance, the better."

The first sign that the talk has been detrimental to the inner health is a feeling of fatigue, dryness. Sri Aurobindo explains: "Talking of an unnecessary character tires the inner being because the talk comes from the outer nature while the inner has to supply the energy which it feels squandered away." "Fatigue is always a sign that the consciousness no longer wants the outward going thought and speech and is even physically strained by it."

How to bring about this control of speech ? Why is it so difficult? Sri Aurobindo answers: "It is difficult to bring the speech under control; for people are accustomed to speak what comes to them and not to supervise and control what they say. There is something mechanical about speech and to bring it to the level of the highest part of the consciousness is never easy. That is one reason why to be sparing in speech is helpful. It helps to a more deliberate control and prevents the tongue from running away with one and doing whatever it likes. ' »

"To stand back means to become a witness of one's own mind and speech, to see them as something separate from oneself and not identify oneself with them. Watching them as a witness, separate from them, one gets to know what they are, how they act and then put a control over them, reject what one does not approve and think and speak only what one feels to be true. This cannot, of course, be done all at once. It takes time to establish this attitude of separateness, still more time to establish the control. But it can be done by practice and persistence." And further: "It is really an inner silence that is needed—a something silent within that looks at outer talk and action but feels it as something superficial, not itself and is quite indifferent and untouched by it. It can bring forces to support speech and action or it can stop them by withdrawal or it can let them go on and observe without being involved or moved,"

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In Yoga it is not enough to be sparing in speech, one has also to be truthful in speech. "Complete truth of speech is very important for the sadhak and a great help for bringing Truth into the consciousness." Truth in speech is one of the rare ethical virtues that take on an added significance as one steps into spiritual life. What is truth the jester may ask. Philosophers may rush and argue that all truth is relative and what is truth today becomes a half-truth tomorrow. There is some point in all these positions. To the seeker, however, the experience is one of emerging truth displacing a receding ignorance. He conforms to truth as he sees it and experiences it at the highest attained level of his consciousness; but all the while he knows that the truth to which he subscribes corresponds to his present state of consciousness and he is prepared to pass to a higher truth that begins to operate when he reaches a correspondingly higher level of consciousness in his being. To speak and to act from the summit of his consciousness—that is the Mother's absolute rule for the sadhaka.

To be truthful does not mean to tell everything that one knows to everybody. Apparent truthfulness in speech but an intent to mislead does not fill the bill. A statement made under the honest belief that it is true, but which later proves to be untrue does not involve a spiritual lapse. Error is to be distinguished from falsehood. Throwing light on many of these subtle distinctions of practical import to the seeker, Sri Aurobindo writes: "If you want to be an instrument of the Truth, you must always speak the truth and not falsehood. But this does not mean that you must tell everything to everybody. To conceal the truth by silence or refusal to speak is permissible, because the truth may be misunderstood or misused by those who are not prepared for it or who are opposed to it. But to speak falsehood is another matter. Even in jest it should be avoided, because it tends to lower the consciousness.''

"One is not bound to tell everything to everybody—it might often do more harm than good. One has only to say what is necessary. Of course what is said must be true and not false and there must never be any intention to deceive."

"There is a great difference between uttering as truth what one believes or knows to be false and uttering as true what one conscientiously believes to be true, but is not in fact true. The first is obviously

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going against the spirit of truth, the second does homage to it. The first is deliberate falsehood, the second is only error at worst or ignorance.

"This is from a practical point of view of truth speaking. From the point of view of higher Truth, it must not be forgotten that each plane of consciousness has its own standard—what is truth to the mind may be only partial truth to a higher consciousness, but it is through the partial truth that the mind has to go in order to reach the wider, more perfect truth beyond. All that is necessary for it is to be open and plastic, to be ready to recognise the higher when it comes, not to cling to the lower because it is its own, not to all the desires and passions of the vital to blind it to the Light or to twist or pervert things When once the higher consciousness begins to act, the difficulty diminishes and there is a clear progress from truth to a greater truth."

Thus one has to be plastic to recognise and adjust oneself to greater and wider revelations of Truth as one ascends the hill of one's being. One has also to recognise and be charitable to concede the right of others to follow the truth or truths that command their adherence.

Finally, it should be remembered that the control over speech that the sadhaka is called upon to develop is not of a mental character guided by text book rules but a living psychic self-control which in everyday life

"(1) Not to allow the impulse of speech to assert itself too much or say anything without reflection, but to speak always with a conscious control and only what is necessary and helpful.

(2) To avoid all debate, dispute or too animated discussion and simply say what has to be said and leave it there. There should also be no insistence that you are right and the others wrong, but what is said should only be thrown in as a contribution to the consideration of the truth of the matter.

(3) To keep the tone of speech and the wording very quiet and calm and uninsistent.

(4) Not to mind at all if others are heated and dispute, but remain quiet and undisturbed and yourself speak only what can help things to be smooth again.

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(5) If there is gossip about others and harsh criticism,¹ not to join—for these things are helpful in no way and only lower the consciousness from its higher level.

(6) To avoid all that would hurt or wound others."

M . P. PANDIT

¹ "The habit of criticism—mostly ignorant criticism of others—mixed with all sorts of imaginations, inferences, exaggerations, false interpretations, even gross inventions is one of the universal illnesses. It is a disease of the vital aided by the physical mind which makes itself an instrument of the pleasure taken in this barren and harmful pursuit of the vital. Control of speech, refusal of this disease and the itch of the vital is very necessary, if inner experience has to have any true effect of transformation in the outer life." - —Sri Aurobindo

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TEACHINGS OF THE MOTHER

BOOKS-BATIERIES OF FORCES

WHAT is the proper way of fruitful reading ? The answer depends " upon one's object in reading. If it is merely to amuse oneself or pass one's time, the books read yield nothing more than a superficial and fleeting interest in terms of the mind, the emotions or the senses. If one is serious about learning something, scientific, philosophical or literary, from the books one reads, one is intellectually enlightened and benefited. It is seriousness and concentration that bring the enlightenment. But this kind of reading with a view to intellectual enlightenment is not the only way of reading. There is another, more perceptive and receptive, which puts us into contact with the personality of the authors.

Each book, the Mother says, is a battery of forces. It is not only the. knowledge of the writer, but his personality, his character, the very vibrations of his being are reflected and reproduced in his books, and we imbibe something of these without being aware of it.

Similarly in images and photos there is a charge of forces, bright of obscure. In looking at an image or a photo we open ourselves to its vibrations. If it is the photo of a spiritual person, the aspiration with which we approach it receives a response from the person's force, its vibrations enter into us and we feel uplifted or purified. But if it is the photo of a man of low character, in looking at it intently we invariably run the risk of being infected by his vibrations and there is an immediate sinking or soiling of our consciousness. So long as our subconscient has not been purified or we have not acquired the power to repel the vibrations before they enter into us, we should take all care to avoid contact with such images or photos. This applies equally to the reading of all vulgar or obnoxious stuff.

The best way to approach books like the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's is to go deep into them, opening ourselves to the forces they emanate. In proportion to the depth of our concentration and the sincerity of our aspiration, we derive the light and force contained in them. "Sri Aurobindo represented a whole understanding, a whole knowledge and a whole power, and so every one of his books is at

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once a symbol and a representation. Each book of his contains symbolically, potentially what is there in him. Therefore if you concentrate on the book, you can through the book go back to the origin. And even going through the book, you may receive much more than what is merely in the book."

If we keep in mind this truth each time we read the Mother's or Sri Aurobindo's books, each reading can be not only a revelation to the mind but an opening up of the deeper layers of our consciousness and an out flowering of knowledge and power.

It is true that there are very few who have not felt exalted or illumined while reading the Mother's or Sri Aurobindo's books. But the approach of which the Mother speaks is the most abidingly effective. It gives us not only an inner joy or flashes of intuition, but a soul-touch, the very vibrations of their divine personalities. For, when they speak of Love, whether it is the Divine's Love or the psychic, the luminous vibrations of Love emanate through their words and can evoke corresponding vibrations in our being. When they speak of Power or Peace, we can have similar experiences in our depths. Take for instance, the Mother's Prayers and Meditations or Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. The language of these books is magnificent and marvellously poetic, but through the language open up vistas of spiritual experience and ranges of vision which transmit their light and power and beauty to us and, if we are concentrated and sensitive enough, something of the experience a d visions themselves.

Reading, if done in this way as taught by the Mother, becomes a sure means of spiritual progress and a widening and illumination of consciousness. Words then act as mantrams, dynamos of power and radiating centres of spiritual knowledge.

RISHABHCHAND

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THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FUTURE POETRY AND LETTERS OF SRI AUROBINDO (THIRD SERIES)

(Contd. from last issue)

THAT is why one would hardly feel like quarrelling with Sri Aurobindo when he says about the future of poetry: "The issues of recent activity are still doubtful and it would be rash to make any confident prediction; but there is one possibility which... is at least interesting and may be fruitful to search and consider. That possibility is the discovery of a closer approximation to what we might call the mantra in poetry. . . poetry in the past has done that in moments of supreme elevation; in the future there seems to be some chance of its making it a more conscious aim and steadfast endeavour."¹

On the face of it, it would seem as if Sri Aurobindo were merely relying upon the experience of the past for visioning the future. But as our familiarity with his poetics grows and we are able to see clearly what he actually feels and thinks and sees about poetry, we cannot fail to perceive that his aesthetic observations are almost prophetically original. Even the old truths about art and poetry are made new at his hands and we get almost a new theory of poetry; at any rate, it is very different from the ones we now hold. Or if the theory is not quite new, the manner of statement and application certainly is. What is this view of poetry like? The essence of poetry, its peculiar intensity, says Sri Aurobindo, "comes from the stress of soul-vision behind the word; it is the spiritual excitement of a rhythmic voyage of self-discovery among the magic islands of form and name in these inner and outer worlds."² Also, "poetry and art are born mediators between the immaterial and the concrete, the spirit and life. This mediation between the truth of the spirit and the truth of the life will be one of the chief functions of the poetry of the future."³ "Today", Sri Aurobindo continues to say, "mankind satiated with the levels

¹ The Future Poetry, p. II.

² Ibid., p. 22           ³ Ibid., p , 288.

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is turning its face once more towards the heights, and the poetic voices that will lead us thither with songs will be among the high seer voices."¹ If it is a fact—as Sri Aurobindo believes and says that it is—that behind the surface of the present crisis, the human intelligence "seems on the verge of an attempt to rise through the intellectual into an intuitive mentality"², then the aesthetic mind, "whether it takes form in the word of the poet or in the word of the illumined thinker, the prophet or the seer, can be one of the main gateways."³ And since what the age will aim at will be a "harmonious and luminous totality of man's being", therefore, "to this poetry the whole field of existence will be open for its subject, God and Nature and man and all the worlds, the field of the finite and the infinite. It is not a close, even a high close and ending in this or any field that the future offers to us, but a new and higher evolution, a second and greater birth of all man's powers and his being and action and creation."⁴ It is quite evident even from these brief statements how different, or at least, differently worded is this view of poetry from some of the contemporary Western theories of poetry⁵, and how robust and luminous is his faith in the future of poetry and man, despite the facts to the contrary. The basic difference lies in the very attitude to poetry which, for Sri Aurobindo, constitutes not only the fullest breath of life and one of the highest powers of truth, but one of the best levers of ascension and progress to "a new and higher

¹ Ibid., p. 285.

² Ibid., p. 275.

³ Ibid., p. 277.

⁴ Ibid., p. 278.

⁵ Quite a fair idea of such theories can be had from the following:

"I know that poetry is indispensable, but I do not know for what." — Jean Cocteau (The World of Poetry, compiled and edited by Clive Samson, Phoenix House, London, Reprinted 1961, p. I)

"Art is valuable not because it is educational... not because it is procreative... not because everyone enjoys it (for everyone does not), not even because it has to do with beauty. It is valuable because it has to do with order, and creates little worlds of its own, possessing internal harmony in the bosom of this disordered planet. It is needed at once and now..." —E. M. Forster: 'The Challenge of our Time, in Two Cheers for Democracy, 1946.

"Poetry matters little to the modern world. That is, very little of contemporary intelligence concerns itself with poetry." — F. R. Leavis: New Bearings in English Poetry, Chatto & Windups, London 1942 p. 5.

"The real difficulty is that as we no longer have the imagination to write poetry, we lack even the imagination to read it. The age of poetry is gone." — Prescott: The Poetic Mind.

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evolution, a second and greater birth of all man's power and his being and action and creation." He does not look upon poetry merely as a product of the surplus creative energy of man, howsoever sweet and beautiful and delightful, or some kind of an elevated superior pastime¹, and an exercise of the aesthetic and imaginative powers of man, howsoever rich and brilliant; but a direct and concentrated expression and communication of the Divine Truth and Beauty and Delight to the responsive human spirit. In this respect he is obviously more closely linked with some of the ancient Greek and Latin poets and critics as well as such Romantic English poets and critics as Blake and Shelley, for example, than the moderns and yet he goes some steps further than all of them. For, like the ancient Vedic and Upanishadic seers, he identifies the poetic activity of man with nothing less than his highest spiritual aspiration and consciousness, and seeks to embrace in poetry, like the integral Rishi of his futurist vision, all life and all being and all the action of the deeply as well as widely awakened modern spiritual man, thereby making it a living concrete symbol of his highest intuition or aspiration which, more than anything else, is to bring about a happy and subtle fusion of the truth and splendour of the Spirit with the truth and splendour of Matter in actual life, individual as well as collective.

A note of caution, however, needs to be given here, for when we think of poetry as an expression of the highest spiritual consciousness of man, it is necessary that we should have the right understanding of what is meant by spirituahty. At least, let us try to understand what Sri Aurobindo himself means by it on the basis of his own spiritual experience and realisation as well as his study of the scriptures of ancient India. "Spirituality", he says, "has meant hitherto a recognition of something greater than mind and life, the aspiration to a consciousness pure, great, divine, beyond our normal mental and vital nature, a surge and rising of the soul in man out of the littleness and bondage of our lower parts towards a greater thing secret within

¹ Vide, for example, T. S. Eliot's conception of poetry in the Preface to the 1928 Edition of The Sacred Wood:

"Poetry is a superior amusement: I do not mean an amusement for superior people. I call it an amusement un amusement pour distraireles honnstes gens, not because that it is a true definition, but because if you call it anything else you are likely to call it something still more false." (pp. viii-ix).

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him"¹. Ordinarily we use this term rather vaguely and interpret it variously to include at times intellectual idealism, ethical effort, even social service. In the popular mind it is also taken to be that which is concerned with the world of vital spirits or the practice of occult mysterious rites to attain some special powers over nature and man, generally of a low vital kind. Sri Aurobindo, therefore, rightly warns us against such a superficial understanding of the subject and says:

"It must therefore be emphasised that spirituality is not a high intellectuality, not idealism, not an ethical turn of mind or moral purity and austerity, not religiosity or an ardent and exalted emotional fervour, not even a compound of all these excellent things; a mental belief, creed or faith, an emotional aspiration, a regulation of conduct according to a religious or ethical formula are not spiritual achievement and experience. These things are of considerable value to mind and life; they are of value to the spiritual evolution itself as preparatory movements disciplining, purifying or giving a suitable form to the nature; but they still belong to the mental evolution—the beginning of a spiritual realisation,—experience, change is not yet there. Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body. An inner aspiration to know, to feel to he that, to enter into contact with the greater Reality beyorid 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."²

Since poetry is essentially, though in varying forms and measures the result of something like "an awakening to the inner reality of our being," it has always in it the potentiality of true spirituality at its core. At times, particularly during the period of the Romantic movement in literary history, it also succeeds, again in varying forms and

¹ The Foundations of Indian Culture, American Edition, 1953, pp. 74-75.

² The Life Divine, American Edition, p. 765.

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degrees, in entering into something like a "contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe, which inhabits also our own being..." But it does not become poetry of true spiritual consciousness and experience until the poet concerned is awakened to the reality of a "spirit, self, soul, which is other than our mind, life and body," and, on the basis of this awakening, is able to enter into contact with the supreme Divine Reality beyond, which both inhabits our own being and pervades the universe. And increasingly and ultimately he is so much in "communion" and "union" with "It" that there takes place "a turning, a conversion, a transformation of (his) whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact, the union", till he not only awakens to but actually grows into "a new being, a new self, a new nature".

It is in this radical, integral sense of a wholesale spiritual awakening and transformation and growth that Sri Aurobindo thinks of the poetry of the future which awaits to be written by the poet-seer of the new age. It is only by such a wholesale revolutionary change in the poetic activity of man that he will be able to bring about the beautiful harmonious fusion of the truth and splendour of the Spirit with the truth and splendour of the Matter, of the human word with the Divine Word which is essential for the utterance of the mantra which, it seems, was the first high and sublime utterance of the poet and is going to be also his last highest speech.

Thus far the aesthetic and spiritual importance of The Future Poetry.

Let us now turn to Sri Aurobindo's letters on poetry and literature as they are to be chiefly found in the third series of the published volume.

This series of letters constitutes the replies which Sri Aurobindo gave to the questions put to him by some of his poet-disciples on poetry and literature. Naturally, the volume is not intended to give us "any systematic and exhaustive treatment of the subject", as The Future Poetry, to a very large extent, is. But the letters contain some of his illuminating views on the main issues relating to the creation and appreciation of poetry and literature and reveal Sri Aurobindo as "a literary critic of exceptionally fine discernment and unfailing

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judgment." (1) Though "a very large corpus of this writing relates to a critical examination and appraisement of particular lines or phrases of poems of his poet-disciples" (2), yet the compiler and editor of this volume has so arranged and grouped these letters under clear-cut headings and separate sections, after omitting all that is "particular" or purely personal and including only those portions of Sri Aurobindo's comments and explanatory remarks which "discuss poetry or literature in a general way" (3) that we get here "as complete a picture as possible of Sri Aurobindo's views on the main issues in the field of literary creation and appreciation". (4) Thus such general but vital questions as "the inspiration and vision, the form or technique or the style and substance of poetry" (5) are illuminatingly and variously examined and answered here. These letters, therefore, may be fittingly looked upon as a kind of supplement to what Sri Aurobindo had already said about these general questions in The Future Poetry several years before. The two books, taken together, however, amply enrich and reinforce Sri Aurobindo's poetics.

Another importance of these letters of literary criticism lies in the fact—indeed, it is implied in the very nature of the work undertaken by him here, i.e. the work of making comments or passing explanatory remarks on the poetical compositions submitted to himself for correction as well as on general" allied questions put to him for solution and enlightenment—that these are of immense practical value, in as much as "the illuminating advice which Sri Aurobindo gave to his few poet-disciples may also prove helpful to others who have a true impulse of literary creation and are in need of sure guidance to direct it on right lines."(6)

As the compiler and editor of the volume says, these letters "will prove of special help to those who are attempting to write spiritual and mystical poetry, for here Sri Aurobindo is not only a supreme Master himself but also a leader and guide to all who wish to explore the endless vistas of the Infinite Spiritual Muse."(7)

But above all, this volume of letters should occupy a specially important place in general literary criticism since here for the first

(¹) Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Third Series, Foreword, p. iii.

( ² ), (³), (⁴), (⁵) Ibid. , p . iv . (⁶) Ibid., pp. iv-v. (⁷)Idid., p. v,

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time Sri Aurobindo gives us an insight into the various sources of poetic inspiration and vision. Besides telling us something new and revealing about the subtle distinctions between poetry written from what he calls "poetic intelligence" and that from "Higher Mind" or between poetry of the "inner mind" and that of "dynamic vision" or between mystic and spiritual poetry or between poetry written from what he calls "the psychic inspiration" and that from "overhead inspiration", he gives us a fairly detailed account of what he has so felicitously and compendiously termed as "the Overmind aesthesis". This long letter on an entirely new subject also appears at the end of Letters on "Savitri", which was published two years later. It embodies a sound and sustained rationale of the Overmind inspiration or aesthesis which alone, according to him, can bring about the poetry of the mantric power and beauty or what he also call s "over mental" poetry, i.e., the kind of poetry which he has himself given on a sublimely sustained level and large scale in his epical work, Savitri. As the importance of the mantra has been deeply and fairly constantly emphasised in The Future Poetry particularly with reference to the poetry which is likely to be written in future, this section of Letters, 3rd Series enables us to supplement our knowledge of the subject we get in the former and to form a better, fuller and richer understanding of the inspirational sources and distinctive features of the mantric utterance in poetry'

Last but not the least' the section on the art of the translation of poetry and on Indo-English poetry as also on contemporary English poetry and surrealist poetry also bear the unmistakable stamp of Sri Aurobindo's subdue, luminous and original critical genius and our own critical awareness of these subjects gets unusually lifted and enriched. Then again the sharply penetrating insights into the essential genius of Wordsworth, Blake, Lawrence, Yeats, Baudelaire, Shaw and Russell in the closing section of the book are some of the shrewdest pieces of critical evaluation which only a critic of high intellectual caliber and fine intuitive discernment can give us with such masterly ease, beauty and power in a memorable minimum language.

SHREE KRISHNA PRASAD

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REVIEWS

A Sourcebook of Vaisnava Iconography by H. Daniel Smith. Pub. Pancaratra Parisodhana Parisad, 93, T. P. Koil Street, Triplicane, Madras 5. pp. 306. Price: Rs. 30{-

WHILE it is essentially true that Idols or Images are not significant by themselves but important for what they symbolise, yet the Form itself is not without a basis of its own. All Forms are expressions in shape and colour of their respective truths that seek to manifest. While the ensouling truth is of cardinal importance, the form in which it clothes itself serves its purpose only to the extent it answers in its composition to the quality and vibrations of that truth. If that were not so, any form would do for any truth for purposes of manifestation.

The Form also has an importance of its own. Particularly in the case of images, icons etc. their function is not merely to serve as a symbol drawing the attention of the mind to the thing symbolised. It acts as a body, as a physical nodes for the human consciousness at the one end and the Divine at the other to meet. The form is a transcription in physical substance of the self-figuration of the Divine in the course of its manifestation; that configuration is perceived by the adepts in their subtle vision and transmitted in terms that are appropriate to the human understanding. Each limb of the Image expresses an inner truth and the proportions in the general figure correspond to certain realisations on the subtler planes. It is when all these requirements are fulfilled that the infusion of Consciousness in the Figure, prānapratisthā, is done with success.

Vaisnava Iconography is a splendid treatise on the subject with special reference to the Idols and Icons used in the Pancaratra Religion. The author, who has already written widely on some of the practical features of this system, has examined a large number of texts, selected and edited appropriate excerpts from them—not only those in Nagari, but also in Telugu and Grantha script—and arranged them attractively under suitable headings prefaced with symbolic surveys. Dr. Narasimachary mentions in his learned introduction: "The first four chapters meet the first requirements in iconography

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—of material, manner and measurement—whereas the remaining four follow the order supported by the Pancaratra texts—starting with iconographical descriptions of the Lord, the Pivotal Principle lodged in the temple, and then proceeding outwards to cover other deities, chief and secondary, in 'ever-expanding circles', to use the phrase of the Editors. The opening chapter justifies the importance and usage of images from the theological and speculative points of view. The second chapter deals with the materials that can be used for different types of icons. This is followed by chapters on econometric and pedestals that support the icons. This leads to an elaborate fifth chapter dealing with iconographic details of the several types of manifestations of the Lord such as Vyuha and Avatara, and the Female Deities. This is followed by another chapter on some subsidiary and rare forms of the Lord and His direct attendants like Ananta and Garuda. The seventh chapter provides an insight into the inner divinities; iconographical representations of abstract principles like Dharma and Adharma also find a place in this chapter. In the final chapter passages bearing upon the decorations, weapons, articles of worship, etc. are presented."

In an interesting note on the temple, Dr. Smith writes:

"The temple residence—its various structural parts and its precincts are analogies to His Being in its visible, subtle and transcendent modes—a veritable symbol of God's Presence in the world. Even the names of the various elements in the structural buildings are called by names that signify His bodily parts. If this is so—if the temple is the Body of the Lord—then no temple is 'alive' without the vital Presence of the Divine Spirit in its innermost recesses, namely the Lord in His iconic form, the image of the God in the sanctum sanctorum. As Vasishtha Samhita puts it: " F or all temples, the pratimā-image is the animating jiva-spirit. Therefore by all means a wise man should prepare a pratima-image (of the Lord.)

The pages dealing in Yyuya, the modes of manifestation of the Supreme Lord, the auatdra, the special Forms of incarnation in the universe are worth special study.

Art plates and the Bibliography of texts consulted add to the value of this excellent production.

M . P. PANDIT

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The Gitabhashya of Ramanuja By M. R. Sampatkumaran. Pub. Rangacharya Memorial Trust, Madras 5. pp. 585. Price Rs. 15/-

To the Advaitin, karma and bhakti, works and devotion, are subsidiary to jñāna, knowledge; they are preparatory stages preparing the seeker for en try into the high path of Knowledge that alone liberates. To the Vishishtadvaita, follower of Ramanuja, however, bhakti is the sole means for attainment to God, karma and jñāna are steps of the discipline that prepares the being by way of purification and enlightenment. Liberation, mukti, into the likeness of the Lord can come only by surrender, prapatti, which is the high water mark of bhakti, devotion. It is in this spirit of the great truth of Love for the Divine that the Gita has been approached and interpreted by Ramanuja. This teaching was part of a long tradition to which he was heir, a tradition that dates back in its origins to the hymns of the Rig Veda. The Gitabhashya of Ramanuja by Sri Sampatkumaran is a faithful rendering of the original in Sanskrit, along with helpful notes (950 of them) based upon the Gloss, tātparyacandrikā, of Sri Vedanta Desika. Each verse is followed by a free rendering in English, translation of the commentary and notes.

In an exhaustive Introduction, the translator sums up the teaching of the Gita under five heads, arthapañcaka: the nature of God, the nature of the individual soul, the stat .. of final emancipation, the obstacles in the way and the means of attainment. In an interesting observation, he points out that Brahman, the Absolute, has been referred to as One with auspicious attributes. 'God is spoken of in the Gita in all the seven or eight cases known to Sanskrit grammar. The Lord, dwelling in the heart, causes each being, mounted on the machine of the body, to move through the workings of the gunas of the Prakriti ( r8.6 r) . To cross beyond the maya, one has to seek Him as refuge (7. r4). When liberated from the bonds of karma, one attains Him (9.28). By Him the world is pervaded (9.4). Because Arjuna is dear to Krishna, the latter speaks for his good (18.65). There is none higher than Him (7.7). Many births of His have passed away, all of which He knows (4.5). One will live in Him alone, if one's attention is fixed on Him and one's will directed to Him (12.8)."

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The central teaching of the Gita, according to Sri Ramanuja, is that God is the Soul of the universe: I am the Self seated in the heart of all creatures (10.20). "Earlier (7.7) He has declared that the whole universe is strung on Him like gems in a necklace... He has two prakritis, a higher and a lower. The latter consists of the material universe, while the souls which sustain the material universe, constitute the higher prakriti of the Lord (7-4-5)" (P xiv).

There is then a discussion on the difference between kaivalya ¹ of the Vishishtadvaita and their moksa. "In the case of moksa the primary experience is about God who has the soul for his attribute: in the case of kaivalya, the experience is about the individual soul, though God comes into the picture secondarily as the soul of the soul. There is difference of opinion between the two sects into which the followers of Sri Rainanuja are divided, about whether or not the state of kaivalya is final, though both agree that it is inferior to the full experience of God in the freedom of moksa. Those who follow the lead of Sri Loka charya take the view that kaivalya cannot lead to anything else. Sri Vedanta Desika, on the other hand, argues that kaivalya is a halfway house to salvation, whence progress to the highest moksa is possible and indeed inevitable."

The three stages of Bhakti (parā-bhakti, intense devotion, parājñāna, direct knowledge, paramd-bhakti, supreme devotion), the doctrine of surrender, prapatti, and its origins in the Upanishads, the indispensable intervention of Grace, the testimony of the Alvars to the preaching on self-surrender in the Gita are some of the other points underlined by Sri Sampatkumaran in his writing introducing this work.

A reliable treatise on the Vishishtadvaita approach to the Gita.

M. P. PANDIT

Evolution of India—Its Meaning by Sisirkumar Mitra. Published by Jaico Publishing House, 125 Mahatma Gandhi Road, Bombay 1.

¹ "A state of the soul in which it is freed of all association with prakriti and revels in its innate knowledge and bliss. This kaivalya, 'aloneness' is to be distinguished from the kaivalya which is the final state of release of the Sankhyas and that which constitutes the moksa of the Advaitins." (P. xx)

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Pages 125. Price Rs. 4/- Also available at The Publication Department, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry 2.

To quote from two places in the book, Sri Aurobindo regards the spiritual history of mankind and especially of India as a constant development of a divine purpose... the recent spiritual history of India is a very important stage.. . and never in history has there been a greater age than now.

These readings by the Master of the spiritual evolution of the world and of India could be given in such a forthright way only by the one whose life-long devotion to the cause of reshaping humanity has succeeded in calling down a supreme divine Force to operate on earth for the purpose.

Yet the questioning mind might ask: What is the divine purpose?

The answers are clearly given in the book, true to history, true to facts, true to open minds and awakened souls. The readers will find most interesting and richly educative stuff in the first two chapters: 'The Spiritual Mother of Mankind' and 'The Land of India— Its Meaning'. The next four chapters on 'The Age (s) of the Spirit', 'of the Dharma', 'of Classical Achievements, 'of Convention' show the soul of India evolving towards a Higher goal. The next two: 'A New Life Dawns', 'Awakened India' are exhilarating accounts of India's awakening and renaissance. The last chapter on 'Towards a Perfect World' is pure pabulum for the soul.

At a time when upon India has fallen the Call of the Supreme to perfect herself by the force of the New Light and prepare for service to the world, when most in India are innocently unaware of her depths, the book, thanks to the author and the publisher, has been an admirably befitting and timely publication.

T. M.

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PAST EDITORIALS

Vol. I. No. 4 

November 1944

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

INDIA ONE AND INDIVISIBLE

INDIA is one and indivisible, culturally and spiritually; politically too she must be one and indivisible and is, as a matter of fact, already on the way towards that consummation, in spite of appearances to the contrary. It has got to be so, if India is to be strong and powerful, if her voice is to be heard in the comity of nations, if she is to fulfil her mission in the world.

It is no use laying stress on distinctions and differences: we must, on the contrary, put all emphasis upon the fundamental unity, upon the demand and necessity for a dynamic unity. Naturally there are diverse and even contradictory elements in the make-up of a modern nation. France, for example, was not one, but many to start with and for long. We know of the mortal feud between the Bourguignon and the Armagnacs and the struggle among the Barons generally, some even siding with foreigners against their own countrymen (an Indian parallel we have in the story of Prithwiraj and Jayachand), poor Jeanne d'Arc lamenting over the "much pity" that was in sweet France. There were several rival languages—Breton, Gascon, Provencal, besides the French of Isle de France. Apart from these provincial or regional rivalries there were schisms on religious grounds —Huguenots and Catholics, Jansenists and Arians were flying at

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each other's throat and made of France a veritable bedlam of confusion and chaos. Well, all that was beaten down and smoothed under the steam-roller of a strong centralised government. It was the invincible spirit of France, one and indivisible and inexorable, that worked itself out through Jeanne d'Arc and Francis the First and Henry the Great and Richelieu and Napoleon. But all nations have the same story. And it is too late now in the day to start explaining the nature and origin of nationhood: it was done long ago by Mazzini and by Renan and once for all.

Indeed, what we see rampant in India today is the mediaeval spirit. This reversion to an older—an extinct, we ought to have been able to say—type of mentality is certainly a fall, a lowering of the collective consciousness. It has got to be remedied and set right. Whatever the motive forces that he at the back of the movement, motives of fear or despair or class interest or parochial loyalty, motives of idealism, misguided and obscurantist, they have to be taken by the horns and dominated and eliminated. A breath of modernism, some pure air of clear perception and knowledge and wider consciousness must blow through the congested hectic atmosphere of the Indian body politic.

It will do no good to any one to try to Balkanise India. The Balkan malady is no longer tolerated even in its homeland: it cannot be transported to India in this century and after this Great War.

To be and remain free and strong and invincible, India must be and remain indivisible. The strength of the United States of America, of the united Soviets of the Russias, of the British Commonwealth (pace Churchill) lie s precisely on each one of them being a large unified aggregate, all members pooling their resources together. India cannot maintain her freedom, nor utilise her freedom to its utmost effectivity unless she is one and indivisible. The days of small peoples, of isolated independence are gone-gone for ever even like Thebes and Nineveh, like Kosala of Dasarath and Mathura of Yadupati.

India can be and is to be a federation of autonomous units. But then we must very carefully choose or find out the units, those that are real units and not fractions (esp. irrational fractions) and at the same time lay as much stress on federation as on autonomy. To choose or create units on the basis of religion or race or caste or creed, that is

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exactly what we mean by irrationalism, in other words, medievalism. The Units must be, on one side, geographical wholes, and, on the other, cultural (or spiritual—not religious) wholes.

THE BASIC UNITY

There is one unity which cannot be denied to India, because Nature has given it and man cannot withdraw or annul it. It is the geographical, the physical unity. It is so clearly and indelibly marked that it has always been looked upon as a definite unit by all outside its boundaries; one may call in question the cultural unity, if one chooses, one may be sceptic about the spiritual unity, but the unity of the body leaps to the eyes, even as the clear contour of a living organism. As we know, however, an individual human frame may contain many personalities, many Jekyls and Hydes may lodge in the same physical tenement, even so, the physical unity that is India may harbour many and diverse independent elements. Admitting even that, the problem does not end there, it is only the beginning. The problem that is set in such a case is, as has been pointed out by the psychologists, the problem of the integration of personality.

A firm physical unity presupposes, at least posits the possibility of an integral unity. Otherwise the body itself would tend to break up and disintegrate. Such physical cataclysms are not unknown in Nature. However, a geographical unity cannot remain exclusively limited to itself; it brings about other unities by the very pressure, by the capillary action, as it were, of the boundary. The first unity that is called into being is the economic. A Zollverein (Customs' Union) has almost always been the starting point of a national union. Next or along with it comes the political unity. India's political and economic unity has been the great work of the British rule, however that rule might be distasteful to us. It is an illustration of Nature's method of compulsion and violence, when man's voluntary effort fails. India possesses a resounding roll of great names who endeavored to give her this solid political and economic unity: Bharata, Yudhishthira, Asoka, Chan-dragupta, Akbar, Shivaji have all contributed to the ever-growing unification of Indian polity. But still what they realised was not a stable and permanent thing, it was yet fluent and uncertain; it was

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only the hammer blow, the plastering, as one would say today, from an outside agency that welded, soldered and fixed that unity.

Fissures of late have opened again and they seem to be increasing in depth and width and in number. What appeared to be a unified structure, of one piece, whole and entire, now threatens to crash and fall to pieces. We are asked to deny the unity. The political unity, it is said, is an impossibility, the geographical unity an illusion.

In such a predicament the vision of a prophet counts more than the arguments of a political huckster. That an Indian consciousness is there and has grown and taken more and more concrete shape through the ages is a fact to which history bears testimony and honest common sense pays homage.

THE WAY TO UNITY

Common love, common labour and, above all, as the great French thinker, Ernest Renan, pointed out, common suffering— that is the cement which welds together the disparate elements of a nation—a nation is not formed otherwise. A nation means peoples differing in race and religion, caste and creed and even language, fused together into a composite but indivisible unit. Not pact nor balancing of interests nor sharing of power and profit can permanently combine and unify conflicting groups and collectivities. Hindus and Muslims, the two major sections that are at loggerheads today in India, must be given a field, indeed more than one field, where they can work together: they must be made to come in contact with each other, to coalesce and dovetail into each other in as many ways and directions as possible. Instead of keeping them separate in water-tight compartments, in barred cages, as it were, lest they pounce upon each other like wild beasts, it would be wiser to throw them together; let them breathe the same air, live the same life, share the same troubles, face the same difficulties, solve the same problems. That is how they will best understand, appreciate and even love each other, become comrades and companions, not rivals and opponents.

To have union, one must unite—division can never lead to unity. Also this unity is established automatically and irrevocably, not by any abstract sense of justice and equality, nor by any romantic or imaginative

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feeling of fraternity, but by a dynamic living together. A common political and civic and economic life creates a field of force that can draw together into a harmonious working the most contrary and refractory elements.

We have said, however, time and again, that the present war is a great opportunity offered by Nature and Providence, opportunity that comes only once in a way: it is precisely the field of which we speak, the field par excellence, which can compel all centrifugal elements to come together, labour together, enjoy and suffer together and turn and transmute them into the very strongest centripetal components.

THE "LONDON TIMES" AND SRI AUROBINDO

The London Times in its LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, dated July 4, 1944, in the course of a review of Sri Aurobindo's Collected Poems and Plays, says:

"After the collapse of France he returned to his home town where h e now live s, surrounded by a growing band of admirers. "

The information is, of course, quite incorrect, as everybody in India knows. Sri Aurobindo has never left Pondicherry (French India), he has always been there since he went into retirement. The reference to his "home town" sounds also somewhat strange. For, Calcutta, although his birth place, can hardly be called his home; by far the longest periods of his life he passed in England, in Baroda, in Pondicherry, not in Bengal. Besides Sri Aurobindo was never—he will allow us to say—a "homely" or domestic man, his home was always within him.

The reviewer refers to another legend—which is more current— that Sri Aurobindo tried and could not pass the Civil Service test and became chagrined and disappointed and disgruntled and turned Nationalist. Well, it is nothing short of a legend. The real fact is that he purposely and deliberately failed to be present at the riding test, because he did not want to enter the Service: it was only to please his father that he at all consented to prepare for the Service. There was no question of his being sad or disappointed; he was never so even in more serious circumstances.

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There is still another story referred to by the reviewer—which is more strange and which we hear for the first time—that the Japanese tried to win over Sri Aurobindo, but he did not deign to reply. We do not know how the Japanese tried; if it was through the Tokyo Radio, the appeal naturally fell on unlistening ears. Sri Aurobindo's views in this matter of the war are well-known and have been broadcast far and wide.

Another error is worth correcting. The reviewer seems to assume that Sri Aurobindo was sent straight from India to King's College, Cambridge, and that he had to learn English as a foreign language. This is not the fact; Sri Aurobindo in his father's house already spoke English and Hindustani; he thought in English from his childhood and did not even know his native language, Bengali. At the age of seven he was taken to England and remained there consecutively for fourteen years, speaking English and writing in English and no other tongue. He was educated in French and Latin and other subjects under private tuition in Manchester from seven to eleven and studied afterwards in St. Paul's School, London, for about seven years. From there he went to study English at all as a subject; though it was not his native language it had become by force of circumstances from the very first his natural language.

The reviewer's judgment of Sri Aurobindo's poetry and philosophy, with a few lacunae here and there, is appreciative and even illuminating, as, for example, when he says:

"In fact, he is a new type of thinker, one who combines in his vision the alacrity of the West with the illumination of the East. To study his writings is to enlarge the boundaries of one's knowledge."

Or again,

"And he has crystallised the mellow wisdom of a lifetime into luminous prose in "The Life Divine", which, it is not too much to say, is one of the master works of our age. The book has length, breadth and height. In a real sense, it enriches our experience."

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