All evil is in travail of the eternal good.

SRI AUROBINDO

Vol. XXVII. No. 2. 

April 1970

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 GOLDEN LIFE-LINE

'THIS is not merely children's homesickness; it is a fundamental note of the human nature as it is at present constituted. We always look backward, we always are tied to our roots and it is with great difficulty and much effort that we advance and go forward or

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upward away from our origins. In a nobler language this is called tradition. Often tradition is made identical with and taken for both life and culture. Denying the past is looked upon almost as refusing the source of life and light.

Viewed from another standpoint this harking back to the past, to the roots, as we say, is the greatest obstacle to human progress. Man progresses, indeed, the whole creation advances by breaking with the past. The leap from the mineral to the plant, from the inorganic to the organic, is the first and most significant break. Even so, are the progressive breaks from the plant to the animal and from the animal to man. In man too similar progressive, i.e., radically progressive steps or leaps are recognisable. The ape man without tools and the first man with tools mark very different stages in human consciousness and life. And we have carried on more or less the same manner of progression till today. But against this forward movement of nature, there is a counter pull backward. The principle of inertia, of standing still, is of the very nature of matter, the basic fact of creation. The force of gravity, earth's pull, does not allow you to shoot up; it brings you down, and if you stand erect, the innate tendency of the body is to sit down or he flat, obedient to the earth's attraction. This physical inertia acts also upon the mind, including the vital consciousness. This is translated in the consciousness as an attachment to the past, to what man has been familiar with. Conservation is the term in respect of physical Nature and atavism is its expression in human nature.

It is so difficult for man to leave the beaten track, for that means risk and danger; our thoughts and movements are all shaped in the mould of the past, we carry out what old habits have instructed us; any new thought, any new act we happen to come across we seek to link it to an antecedent or precedent, similar in kind or form. It is a never-ending succession, a causal chain that makes up our life, the present being always produced by its past. That means the present, and so also the future, is only another form or term of the past. What is not in the past is not in the present or the future, that is to say, such is the constitution of our consciousness and nature: there is a natural and inevitable faith and trust in the past, an extension of the past; there is only apprehension for the future, uncertainty in the

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present.¹ It was Buddha's signal achievement to uncover this great illusion, the illusion of an inexhaustible and inexorably continuing past, continuing into the present and into the future. He saw that to be is not continuity but a sequence of discrete moments (and events). It is ignorance that finds a link between these entities; they are in reality absolutely separate and distinct from each other. If you can wake up from this ignorance as from a dream you will find they all disintegrate and disperse and end in nothing. The only reality is that Nothing. Shankara however says that it is not mere Nothing but Pure Existence, instead of an illusion of existences you have the original Existence, the absolute existence.

The Upanishad speaks of the creation as a garland and all the elements of life—that are like precious jewels—are strung upon a secret thread. Indeed, it is not on nothing that this multiplicity which is the creation is standing and holding together. There is however a twofold secret thread—one that binds together a world of ignorance: that is the thread of ignorance which passes through, even keeps alive as it were, all the expressions and embodiments of the ignorance, pain and suffering, greed and hunger, egoism and selfishness and all forms of what is called evil. But it is the apparent world; even so, it is not pure delusion: it is a make-believe or falsehood which keeps behind it the true, the real world. That world lies behind the mask, the present actual world; it is another world of light and truth, power and delight and purity. There the link that binds together the succession of events and realities is a golden thread of pure consciousness. The link of ignorance is, one may say, the iron link, and is open to rust and decay inevitably. It is the link that binds together the ordinary life of ignorance, that pulls always backward, clings to all that has gone by, seeks to extend the past into the present and the future, feels unhappy if that is disturbed.

In a new and higher life we are asked to discard that fink and come out of it, to discover the other inner link, the link of light. That

¹ It is not that the conscious intelligence of man is ignorant of the truth, his reason and higher perception surely sees and acknowledges it; but the life impulse that moves him, his spontaneous energy and instinct turns him away from a dynamic recognition of what otherwise should inspire his movements. The link with the past is of much greater strength than a possibility of the future.

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turns always to the future, directs all impulses and activities towards the realities that are to be.

These are then the two chains binding, each in its own way, our life-movements, each building a whole with a special significance and fulfilment. They are two life-lines, as it were, running parallel to each other. One, as I have said, is the normal mundane life, the other a transfigured spiritual life. The Upanishad, we know, speaks of the path of the Sun and the path of the Fathers—they roughly correspond to the two lines I have just spoken of. But the Upanishadic path of the Sun is a vertical ascension from the normal life-line into a transcendent beyond. What we meant was not an ascension beyond but a parallel growth in transformation, that is to say, what we referred to as the lower iron links are to be transmuted into the golden ones, without breaking or dissolving them. The problem is to find out the secret of this alchemy that transmutes the iron links into the golden ones. Psychologically the Buddhist way is a great help even if it is not the unique and inevitable one towards that consummation. For it dislocates, disintegrates the chain that binds the being to the normal and ignorant life. It teaches one to see and feel life as separate and isolated 'moments', there being no real link between the moments; so if one is to live the truth of life one must learn to live from moment to moment without any thought from the past or of the future. The Biblical motto gains in this connection a deeper significance: sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. One does not carry on his shoulders the burden of the past moments nor a possible burden in the thought of the morrow. One becomes free, absolutely free, with no care but just the need of the moment to note and the immediate gesture to meet it.

That is a way, an effective way, for dissolving life, but we seek, as we have said, not dissolution or disintegration but integration— integration into a higher integer, a greater reality. The lower chain dissolved, we have to find a new status beyond the dissolution. That is perhaps what the Upanishad indicated when it said: one has to traverse death through Ignorance (perception of ignorance) and then through Knowledge (perception of the Knowledge) attain immortality. Buddha has led us across death, now we have to reach immortality. There is a higher line of Karma and a lower fine running parallel as I said to

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each other—the lower (the iron chain) leads from death to death, the higher (the golden) leads from life to life and from light to light.

The transference from the lower chain to the higher is to be effected by the consciousness of nothingness (Shunyam) being filled or impregnated with the new consciousness of Immortality; for the units of the normal or ignorant consciousness are themselves not wholly or essentially ignorant and mortal. They have in them what Buddha did not see or recognise—the immortal soul or self—as the Vedic Rishis said: that which is immortal in the mortal. What is mortal in the apparently mortal unit is the covering that hides the immortal nucleus. This covering is made of, as we know, the mental, the vital and the physical being. These perish, that is to say, change; but that does not affect the immortal being within. Thus the consciousness is to be drawn away or detached from the covering and hitched on to the unchanging reality within. That forms the golden link of the chain of immortality of the Supreme Light. The transference from the lower chain is to be effected through the consciousness of the luminous immortal divine unit. It is the Divine in man, familiarly called 'Antaryamin'.

Naturally, the transference of the consciousness and being from the lower or surface line to the line that lies on a higher and deeper level does not mean, we must note, the rejection or annihilation of the lower in favour of the higher. The consciousness of the soul or self does not negate the consciousness of the body and the life and the mind. It only purifies, elevates, and transmutes them into its true and divine expression and embodiment.

To live in the soul is to live in eternity with the vision and inspiration of the eternal. It is living in the mind and the vital and the body that turns and binds one to the past, renders one a slave to mortality.

The units of this higher chain of consciousness are free from all drag of the past or hold of the present: their being is turned automatically towards the future, the Great Event to which all creation moves; for that is the truth of its inmost reality: the inspiration of its movements comes from that intimate source. The units of one's own life, all its moments share in this freedom and this life-inspiration and all together form the wonderful harmony of the golden chain. The units are not separated or isolated from each other—free-la

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dom of the individual here does not mean isolation: it is a close union, indeed, it is an indivisible unity for all units, all individual formations are identical, for in a sense all are identified with the only reality, the one supreme consciousness.

The soul-consciousness is the golden thread running through the chain of light and when it comes forward and becomes dynamic it gradually engulfs and purifies what was its covering, the life, th&mind and the body and reforms them in its own light and energy expressing and embodying its divine truth and fulfilment here below.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

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FROM THE KARMA YOGIN

NATIONALISM AND NATIONALISTS :

BEPIN CHANDRA PAL (Continued)

MAZZINI was, as I have said, the first great apostle of Nationalism in Europe. "We—the men of the present" he said, in a pamphlet called Faith and the Future, first written in 1835, "are standing between two epochs; between the tomb of one world and the cradle of another; between the boundary line of the individual synthesis and the confines of the synthesis of Humanity." His voice was, as he himself confessed, but one among the many that announced nearly the same ideas. But no one perhaps of his time so clearly recognised the limitations of the gospel of the French Revolution as he seems to have done. Summing up the current ideals about him, he said that the doctrine of rights, the last word of individualism, "rules us still with sovereign sway; rules even that Republican party which assumes to be the party of progress and initiation in Europe; and the liberty of the Republicans—although they instinctively proffer the words duty, sacrifice, and mission,—is still a theory of resistance; their religon—if indeed they speak of any—a formula of the relation between God and the individual; the political organisation they invoke and dignify by the name of social, mere series of defences raised up around laws framed to secure the liberty of each to follow out his own aim, his own tendencies and his own interests; their definition of the law does not go beyond the expression of the general will; their formula of association is society founded on Rights; their faith does not overpass the limits traced out nearly a century ago by a man-himself the incarnation of struggle-in a declaration of rights. Their theories of government are theories of distrust; their organic problem, a remnant of patched up constitutionalism, reduces itself to the discovery of a point around which individuality and association, liberty and law, may oscillate for ever in result less hostility; their people is too often a caste-the most useful and numerous it is true-in open rebellion against other castes, and seeking to enjoy in its turn the rights given

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by God to all; their republic is the turbulent intolerant democracy of Athens, their war-cry a cry of vengeance, and their symbol Spartacus." And thus summing up the life and thought about him, Mazzini declared that this was "the eighteenth century over again—its philosophy; its human synthesis; its materialist policy; its spirit of analysis and Protestant criticism; its sovereignty of the individual; its negation of ancient religious formula; its distrust of all authority; its spirit of emancipation and resistance. It is the French Revolution over again; the past, with the addition of a few pre-sentiments; servitude to old things surrounded with a prestige of youth and novelty." And recognising the character of the times he cried out almost in deep agony of spirit—"The French Revolution crushes us, it weighs like an incubus upon our hearts, and forbids them to beat."

But Mazzini not only recognised the Umitation of the message of the French Revolution, but actually worked out the logic of the great gospel of human freedom in Europe, bringing out its necessary and natural implications more rationally and completely than perhaps any others had done before. The French Revolution had started with the cry of liberty, equality, and fraternity; but it did not fully realise the organic relation existing between them. Equality necessarily followed liberty. There is no liberty without equality, as Fichte declared. You cannot have individual liberty in a society based on inequality. The special privileges of one class would inevitably interfere with the freedom of the less favoured classes. This much the French Illumination fully recognised. Liberty and equality, therefore, formed really an organic whole, one necessitating the other. But, pure individualism has no such necessary relation with fraternity. Fraternity is the formula of association; and the principle of association is very freely grasped by individualism as the French Illumination understood it. Fraternity, therefore, in the gospel of the French Revolution, was either another name for human equality or a mere generous sentiment which had no necessary relation with the general philosophy of that epoch-making movement in Europe. French Humanitarianism was really more sentimental than rational. Philosophical humanitarianism can only grow from a clear conception of the organic unity of the human race. It is an essentially spiritual conception. It is not merely theistic but almost pantheistic in its logical

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implications. It is an almost new conception in Europe. The full significance of it has not yet been grasped by what is called modern humanity. The French Revolution had almost no idea of it. It is completely antagonistic to that ideal of almost absolute individualism which formed the very soul and essence of of the French Illumination. The humanitarianism of the French Revolution was therefore a mere generous sentiment. It was the expression of a broad human sympathy, not the assertion of a systematised philosophy. Claiming freedom for themselves, as the highest good, they wanted it also for others. This was the underlying meaning of the gospel of fraternity preached by the French Revolution. This sympathy was, perhaps, not a little prompted by an intense hatred for royalty and the aristocracy in general. Fraternity, as Mazzini pointed out, "does not supply any general social terrestrial aim; it does not even imply the necessity of an aim. It has no essential and inevitable relation with a purpose or intent calculated to harmonise the sum of human faculties and forces". He pointed out that fraternity, "though a necessary link between the terms liberty and equality,—which sum up the individual synthesis ! —does not pass beyond that synthesis; that its action is limited to the action of individual upon individual, that it might be dominated by charity, and that though it may constitute a starting-point whence humanity advances in search of a social synthesis, it may not be substituted for that synthesis".

Mazzini discovered that synthesis in the conception of Humanity, Equality, Fraternity, Liberty, as summing up the gospel of individualism, must seek and find its legitimate meaning and purpose in this conception of humanity. For the law of the individual, as he said, can only be deduced from the law of the species. The individual mission can only be ascertained and defined by placing ourselves upon an elevation, enabling us to grasp and comprehend the whole. And Humanity is this whole. This is almost an organic conception of humanity, and this conception revealed the necessity "of a general co-operation, of harmony of effort,—in a word, of association, in order to fulfil the work of all. Hence also the necessity of a complete alteration in the organisation of the revolutionary party, in our theories of Government, and in our philosophical, political, and economical studies; all of which have hitherto been inspired solely by

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the principle of liberty. The sacred word Humanity, pronounced with a new meaning, has opened up a new world before the eye of genius— a new world as yet only fore felt—and commenced a new epoch."

This humanity was with Mazzini the Word of this new epoch. "By the affirmation of a new epoch," he declared, "we have found the existence of a new synthesis; a general idea destined to embrace all the terms of the anterior synthesis plus one; and starting from. that new term to co-ordinate all the historical series, all the facts, all the manifestations of life, all the upsets of the human problem, branches of human knowledge that are ranged beneath it. We give a new and fruitful impulse to the labours of intelligence; it proclaimed the necessity of a new encyclopedia, which, by summing up and comprehending all the progress achieved, would constitute a new progress in itself. We placed beyond all controversy, in the rank of ascertained truths, all the terms which have been the aim of past revolutions, the liberty, equality, and fraternity of men, and of peoples. We separate ourselves forever from the epoch of exclusive individuality, and, still more decisively, therefore, from that individualism which is the materialism of that epoch. We close up the paths to the past. And finally, by that affirmation we reject every doctrine of eclecticism and transition; every imperfect formula containing the statement of a problem without any attempt to solve it; every school seeking to conjoin life and death, and to renew the world through the medium of an extinct synthesis. By the very character of the epoch we proclaim, we furnish a new basis to the principle of universal suffrage; we elevate the political question to the height of a philosophical conception; we constitute an apostolate of Humanity by asserting the common law of nations which should be the sign of our faith."

This conception of Humanity as the Law and the Aim, of individuals as well as of nations, and the Principle of Association through which alone this law can be fulfilled and this aim fully realised,— revealed to Mazzini that ideal and philosophy of nationalism of which he was the first, and up till now almost the only distinguished apostle in Europe.

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RISHI DIRGHATAMA'S HYMN TO SURYA

III

(31)

I SAW him who protects, who never stumbles, who moves by paths here below and beyond.

He is with all, he is around all, he circles under cover, within all the worlds.

(32)

He who has created this does not know it and he who has seen it is hidden away from it.

He is enclosed within the womb of the Mother: he produced the many and entered into untruth.

(33)

Heaven is my father who created me: here is my central cord: the Mother, this vast Earth, binds me down.

The twin vessels are turned upward; within there the Lord ordained the birth of the daughter.

(34)

I ask you of the farthest end of the earth; I ask you where lies the nave of this world.

I ask you of the energy that the Horse rains down; I ask you of the supreme status of the world.

(35)

This altar is the farthest end of the earth; this sacrifice is the nave of the world.

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This Soma (the immortal drink) is the energy that the Horse rains down; and Brahman is the supreme status of the world.

(36)

The seven half-embryos are the energising sap of the world. As the infinite Lord ordained, they became the varied laws.

They are the knowers and with their intelligence and thought they encircle all around and they take form everywhere.

(37)

I do not know what this is that I am, I am bound deep within and I roam about with my mind.

But the first-born child of Truth came to me, I had then my portion of the Delight in the Word it uttered.

(38)

The one below goes upward seized by its own self-law: the mortal is one with the immortal at their origin.

They are eternal and move about divergently; one knows the other within oneself, another knows not the other within itself.

(39)

In the luminous world, in the supreme status where the Gods have taken their seat over the universe—

He who does not know it, what can he do with the Word; but he who knows it sits in the company of the Gods.

(40)

You have eaten of the sweet corn, may you possess the Divine Delight, may we too possess the Divine Delight.

None can slay you through all eternity: May you eat of the grass and drink of the pure water and roam at ease.

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(41)

The luminous one measures and gives form to the waters: she has a single status, a two-fold status and a four-fold status;

She has an eight-fold status, a nine-fold status and still becomes the thousand-fold letters in the supreme status.

(42)

From Her the oceans flow out everywhere; by that the four directions live their life.

From there flow out that which does not flow; based upon that the universe lives its life.

(43)

I saw from afar the smoke in its energy spreading high and wide: The heroes prepare the dapple Scattered even like food; such , were the first and pristine laws.

(44)

Three are the Shining Ones who see widely in accordance with the law of the Truth: of them one plants the seed throughout the year, another labours upon the world with his effulgence's, of still another the mighty rushing is seen, not the form.

(45)

Four-fold is the Word as measured into steps: they are known to the poet-seers and to the great minds.

Three are embedded deep within and they do not move; the fourth is the speech that men utter.

(46)

They say, it is Indra or Mitra or Varuna or Agni: it is the divine Bird with wings of beauty.

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The One alone exists: the wise speak of it variously, they call it Agni or Yama or Matarishwan.

(47)

The luminous birds with wings of beauty have clothed themselves with waters and they surge up along a dark path towards the heaven.

They have returned from the seat of Truth and in their bright energy lift up the earth to the wideness.

(48)

Twelve are the spokes, the wheel is one and four are the naves: who indeed has known of them?

With them fixed together there are three hundred and sixty poles, that appear as though moving and yet not moving.

(49)

That eternal breast of yours yields supreme delight: with that you nourish all desirable things.

That establishes felicity, discovers treasures, gives lavishly: O Saraswati, that do thou here affirm.

(50)

The gods carry out the sacrifice with sacrifice; those were the first and pristine laws.

Those greatnesses cleave to heaven, there where dwell the gods who have been the ancient goal.

(51)

The same waters flow upward and again flow downward, day by day.

The Divine showers give life to the earth; the fires give life to heaven.

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(52)

The Divine Bird, vast in its wings of beauty, is the source of the the waters, the seer of earthly growths.¹

With its showers pouring all around he brings felicity. He flows ceaselessly on and on: him I call for the vast protection.

NOTES

(33)

The higher consciousness, the heaven, is the father, the lower consciousness, the earth, is the mother. Both look upward to the Supreme Divine, and in their union the Divine Child is born. The earth-consciousness is also the daughter of the higher consciousness, for it is created by that and within this earth-consciousness the Divine Child, the soul, is born.

(35)

The earth is the farthest end, for it is the culmination and fulfilment of the Divine's creative energy. Matter is the other extreme end in reference to the Spirit. Horse is the creative vital energy of Nature. Soma is the delight of creation. Vak or the Divine Word is the articulate expression of the supreme Divine, Brahman.

(36)

Each of the seven planes is divided into two halves as Purusha and Prakriti, the male and the female principles. It is this division that produces the infinite diversity in Nature's activity.

The seven are conscious forces in essence and they penetrate and encircle the creation.

(37)

The mind cannot know, it wanders about bound to its ignorance.

¹ Or, is seen in the womb of the waters and of the earthly growths.

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It is only when the Knowledge comes, born of the supreme Truth, then the soul enjoys the delight of uttering, i.e., expressing, the Truth.

(38)

The higher and the lower, the immortal and the mortal, are the twin movements constituting the universe. But of the twins the higher knows the lower, the lower does not know the higher. Even so the Immortal knows the mortal, not the other way.

(40)

The Supreme Light comes down and possesses and enjoys Matter. Even so we mortals with a material body can partake of the supreme Delight when we are in union with the Mother-Consciousness.

(41)

The Supreme Consciousness fashions its child, the human soul, in all the states of being.

(43)

Smoke is the obscure ignorant consciousness beyond which lies the Truth-Consciousness with its embodiments, the Gods, the heroes, the great cosmic Laws.

(44)

The three maned steeds, maned, i.e., with streaming energies (in reference to the gods of the first Rik). (1) Surya, the Sun ruling over the years, the consciousness seated in the highest region and controlling the creation; (2) The Fire is the energy at work upon earth with its blazing flames. (3) The Wind, the vital Energy roams and rages in the mid-region, the subtle world but is not visible to the eye.

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(45)

Each world has its own mode of expression or language. Three are subtle and hidden, that of the vital, the mind and the above-mind. The fourth one, the physical voice, is man's language.

(48)

The creation moves, yet it does not move, even like the supreme Brahman: it changes in its outward manifestation yet remains unchanged and unchangeable in its essential reality.

(50)

Creation is a movement, a progression or ascension, that comes by self-offering, each element giving itself up, abandoning itself to the force of the higher Reality which takes it up and in its own turn moves farther by its own self-offering to a Reality still higher. That is the sacrifice being progressively performed by sacrifice.

(51)

Waters are the streams of consciousness, here streams that flow from above, fires are the energies of earth-consciousness that move upward to establish itself in the higher realms of the Heavens or call them down.

(52)

Growths of the earth mean all the living forces and elements that are born of the earth-consciousness and can be utilised by the higher consciousness for its manifestation and establishment here upon earth.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

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OLD BENGALI MYSTIC POEMS

XXXII

THERE is no wave nor point

nor the sun nor the lunar globe.

The consciousness, a king, is free by nature.

Leaving the straightness of the straight

do not take to the crooked;

The Light is near, do not go far away.

The bangles are on your wrist,

do not take up a mirror.

Understand by yourself your own mind—

Thus can one go to the other shore.

But with the wrong man you go downward.

To the right and to the left he bogs and marshes—

Sarahu says, my boy, the straight road is the best.

Note

The supreme Reality is beyond any form or formulation. The consciousness there is straight, simple, free. You need not go to a foreign land to find it, it is close by, within you. You can know it by yourself, you need no extraneous help. If you seek others' help you are likely to be wrongly guided and lose yourself in bogs and marshes. Go simply and straight. For only that way lies the consciousness that is absolute freedom.

XXXIII

My house is on the top of the mound

and I have no neighbour.

I have no food in my bowl

and everyday there comes a lover.

The worldly life grows on apace:

But does the milk that is drawn go back to the udder?

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A barren cow has given birth to a bullock:

Pailful of milk has been milked these three evenings.

One who understands this has a sharp understanding;

It is the thief who is the guard.

Always there is a fight—an equal fight—

between the lion and the jackal.

The song of Dhendhanpa is comprehensible to a few.

Note

The poem expresses the relation of the ascetic to the world. He lives aloof and alone, and without any ration. Yet the hungers from the world below mount up and try to tempt him. That is the way of the world. But one above the world cannot retrace his steps backward, even as the milk once out cannot go back to the udder. If at all it is another cow, another milk-yielder, another milk. It is not ignorant Nature's phenomenon; it is the consciousness of super-Nature pouring out the great delight. Nirvana is the barren cow, the bullock is its energy or tapas and the milk is the supreme Joy. The three evenings must be the close or end or setting of the three domains of worldly existence —body, life and mind. The thief is the higher consciousness guarding at the top and he has stolen away the world and the worldly objects. Similarly the lion is the Power of the Higher Consciousness and the jackal the prowling creature of the dark world. But the fight between the two is hard and equal, neither wanting to give up.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

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REVIEWS

Chando darsanam By Rishi Daivarata. Pub. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay 7. Pp. 492. Price Rs. 45.00

'THE Vedas themselves declare that the Vedas know no end. The Veda-knowledge is ever-existent, eternal. It is in the form of absolute consciousness established in the high supernals, paramam vyoma, as the indivisible Sabda-Brahman, as the Truth, as the immutable, Akshara. The Rishi, the seer, sees by tapas in his inner vision the ever-existent knowledge, catches the supernal vibrations in his inner audition, Shruti, and the resultant is the body of the Vedic Riks as known to us. But seer hood is not a product of a particular time or place, na rsitoam kālasāpeksam. Given the appropriate conditions, seer hood is always possible, and possible also new revelations of the eternal Veda-knowledge. "Oh, Indra, the reputed old Rishis as well as the new ones gave birth to Mantras; let all those Rishis be friendly and auspicious to us," prays Vasishtha. (R. V. vii. 22.9) The seer Madhuchhandas affirms that Agni is praised by the ancient Rishis as well as the new ones (R. V. 1. 1.2. ). The Rigveda itself acknowledges new dawns, new revelations of the ancient knowledge by new seers coming on the scene.

Such a new seer is Rishi Daivarata Vishwamitra of Rishikula Yogashram, Gokarn, Karnatak. His religious and spiritual activities, his deep erudition in the ancient lore of the land, his child-like simplicity are all too well known. But what is not so well known is that at one time he was a medium through whom Vedic revelations were recorded by his illustrious master, that versatile genius, the seer-poet of Umā Sahsram, Sri Kavyakantha Vasishtha Gana pati Muni. These revelations, the current coins from the old Vedic mint, in the form of Riks, exactly similar to the Riks of old in sty le, language, diction and grammar, were intelligibly arranged, classified, indexed and codified according to Deities in eight sections, Anuvakas, by Vasishtha Gana pati Muni and the name Chando-Darsana was given to the whole collection to distinguish it from the Riks of yore. It was further embellished

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with a preface, bhūmikā, and a commentary, anuaya bhāsya, from no less a person than the Muni himself. It has taken more than fifty years for this remarkable work to appear in print, and the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, have rendered a signal service to Vedic scholarship by publishing these Riks and the commentary in original Sanskrit along with an English rendering to meet the modern needs. The introduction of Sri R. R. Diwakar done with sympathy and understanding provides the proper setting for the whole work.

How is it possible, in this twentieth century, to have direct realisation of the Vedic Riks? Anticipating this question, Sri Vasishtha Muni points out that if the realisation of Brahman is possible in this century, as demonstrated by certain sages, the realisation of Sabda-Brahman is also quite possible. Let us hear the Muni himself on how Sri Daivarata had this revelation:

"Daivarata is one of my disciples. He was devoted to yoga in his boyhood even before he was sixteen. He came away from Gokarna with me for the darshan of Bhagwan Raman Maharshi of Arunachala...On account of his extreme devotion to his guru, that is myself, he followed me to a village called Padaividu. It is a place of pilgrimage of the deity Renukamba in Madras State. Then in the year 1839 of Salivahana Saka (1917 A.D.) in the month of Bhadrapada during Navaratri, Daivarata also began austerities for the first time along with me and my wife Visala-shami, using Mantra japa. When he was performing severe austerities and when in samadhi, some words began to emerge from Daivarata's hps. After observing for two days, I realised that it was Rigvedic metrical expression...I took down what emerged from his lips; the result is chando-darśana... Only those mantras which were complete, clearly audible and which could be taken down in full have been compiled and a commentary has been written by me for their elucidation."

From this account, it is clear that Daivarata, due to his utter devotion to his guru Vasishtha Muni got identified in samadhi with the consciousness of the latter and was able to act as a medium

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receiving the revelations, which were assiduously recorded by Vasishtha Muni. This is borne out by the fact that Vasishtha Muni was able to see the profound sense in the revealed Riks and write a masterly commentary bringing out the full import of the revelation.

In fact, more than the newly revealed Riks, the Anvaya Bhashya of Vasishtha Muni is of great interest to the modern Vedic scholar. We do not refer here to the inimitable style, the uniqueness of method, the rich and profound thought-content of the commentary, as we naturally expect these from the seer-poet of Umā Sahasram. Even for a superficial reader of the commentary, it will be quite evident that Vasishtha Muni does not blindly follow the ritualistic interpretation of the Veda according to Sayana; he is quite aware of the esoteric significance of the Vedic Riks, and does not fail to stress the esoteric meaning. It is true that he did not systematically seek after the Secret of the Veda like Sri Aurobindo, neither did he build a system of cogent, logical interpretation of the Vedic Mantras like the latter, on esoteric lines. But it is remarkable that there exists a great similarity of approach in esoteric interpretation between these two seer-poets. To quote a very few examples: "Mitra, the friend of all living beings"; "Tataveda, the knower of births by name, form, quality and action"; "Sarasvan, possessed of rasa, that is knowledge"; "Brahmanaspati, the lord of Sabda-Brahman"; "Madhu, the essence of bliss that is dear to the whole universe"; "Yajna, sacrifice in the form of knowledge, meditation and works"; "Varuna, Prachetas, one who covers the universe with his consciousness"; "go, light or speech etc". A serious study of this magnificent Anvaya Bhashya of Sri Vasishtha Ganapati Muni will amply reward the earnest seeker after the lost Vedic wisdom.

S . SHANKARANARAYANAN

The Relevance of Mahatma Gandhi to the World of Thought

(Gandhi Centenary Volume), University of Madras, Madras 5. Pp. 182. Price Rs. 10.00

As one of the contributors to this volume of papers read at the

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Gandhi Centenary Seminar (under the auspices of the University of Madras) observes, Gandhiji disclaimed any originality in the thought that underlay his political and other activities. There is no such thing as Gandhism, he said, and desired that there should be no follower of Gandhi. All the same, there is a plethora of books on the contribution of Gandhian thinking to human heritage. The present volume propounds the influence of this way of interpretation on current Indian Social Philosophy, Political Morality, Ethics, Economics etc. They underline Gandhiji's emphasis on village economy, communal harmony, non-violence and satyagraha in the service of truth; some of the papers examine how far they have governed the life of post-independence India and one of the writers quotes Nehru: "We have not often thought of Gandhiji and his great doctrine, and while we praise it often enough, we feel we are hypocrites, talking about it and being unable to live up to it. Are we deluding ourselves and the world?"

Brihat Purascharana (Part I) Compiled by H. H. M. Pratapa Simha Shaha Deva. Pub. Dhanshagsher, 20/365 Naxal, Kathmandu, Nepal. Pp. 362. Price Rs. 25.00

This is a good compilation of extracts from various Tantric texts, well-known and less-known, on the usual subjects under convenient heads. The present volume consists of four tarangas, chapters. The first chapter deals with various Deities, the sanctioned paths and the characteristics of the Chakra. The second dwells on the right times for diksā, the location, etc. The third is by far the most interesting and it gives directions on the choice of the Guru, the characteristics of the right Guru, Mantra and worship. The fourth chapter is on various Hara Kundas, sacrificial fire, etc. Spread through the pages are certain valuable precautions and instructions regarding the proper use of the mantra, the dangers of wrong enunciation or procedure and other relevant details which are usually lost sight of.

The volume creates interest in the Tantric literature and we look forward to the publication of the next volume.

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A useful index of the Bija-mantras has been added.

Prajna Ke Pathpar By Rohit Mehta. Pub. Hindi Pracharak Sansthan, Pishacha rnochan, Varanasi I. Pp. 224. Price Rs. 8.00

The special feature of this presentation (in Hindi) of the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita is its positive note. The author points out that the Gita does not preach withdrawal from life or even indifferent participation in the life of the world as long as the body lasts, but calls upon man to use the opportunity given to him by human birth to rise in the scale of his spiritual evolution and help others also to do so. It shows the way to spiritual fulfilment through the circumstances of life. The Yoga that the Gita prescribes as the means for this achievement is not what it is commonly understood to be. Sri Mehta underlines the-triple character of this Yoga: it is fir st a yoga of detachment from things that bring in misery; it is a yoga of equality, equality of soul to action and inaction, pleasure and pain, to all dualities; it is a yoga of skill in works, i.e. to do works that come to one's share but without being involved in it, to work in a spirit that absolves one from the bondage of works.

A happy exposition with apposite quotations from the text, chapter-wise.

Yoga Vasishtha Katha. By Dr. Raghunath Singh. Pub. Hindi Prachar Pustakalaya, Varanasi I. Pp. 632. Price Rs. 15.00.

Interest in Yoga Vasishtha, one of the most interesting classics on Advaita, is growing. The latest book on the subject is' Yoga Vasishtha in legends-a happy idea of Dr. Raghunath Singh who has imbibed the substance and spirit of the work from his very childhood. In a brilliant introduction he narrates how he used to listen-even as an infant-to readings from the book in Hindi by his aunt, every night. Later he had occasion to make a thorough study of it in his terms of incarceration in jail during the political movement for Independence.

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There are in this volume sixty-four chapters, each narrating a story in chaste, simple Hindi. It covers all the six sections and the content of philosophy is presented in a dehghtful manner. This is a book that deserves to be rendered in all the main languages of India. It reflects the ancient culture of the epics and communicates something of the intellectual ferment of that age.

Adhunik Yug Me Dharma By S. Radhakrishnan. Translated in Hindi by Prayag Shukla. Pub. Rajkamal Prakashan, Delhi 6. Pp. 131. Price Rs. 7.00

This is a fluent translation of Dr. Radhakrishnan's Religion in a Changing World. The author analyses the causes of the decay in the influence of religion in modern society and pleads for a salvage of the essential values of the world religions which have much to contribute to the future of man. Universal tolerance, rational application of the eternal principles of truth, harmony and oneness enshrined in the traditions of ancient religions, and a synthesis between the claims of Matter and Spirit are advocated as the foundations of a possible World-Brotherhood.

A progressive contribution testifying to the wide learning and keen intellect of the author.

M. P. PANDIT

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PAST EDITORIALS

Vol. II. No. 2 

April 1945

PANACEA OF "ISMS"

COMMUNISM

COMMUNISM cannot save humanity. For if it means the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, well, a healthy normal society will not bear or tolerate it long—no Dictatorship, whether of one or of many, is likely to endure or bring in the millennium. In that sense communism is only a "fascismo" of "small" people (fighting against a fascismo of big people). A society is not normally made up of proletarians only: it does not consist merely of lotus-eaters nor does it consist of hewers of wood and drawers of water alone (peasants and labourers). Even a proletariate society will slowly and inevitably gravitate towards a stratification of its own. In its very bosom the bureaucracy, the military, the officialdom of a closed body will form a class of its own. A Lenin cannot prevent the advent of a Stalin. Even if the proletarians form the majority, by far a very large majority, even then the tyranny of the majority is as reprehensible as the tyranny of the minority. Communism pins its faith on struggle, which it says, is historically true and morally justifiable. But this is a postulate all are not bound to accept. Then again if communism means also materialism (dialectical or any other), that also cannot meet and satisfy all the needs and urges of man, indeed it leaves out of account all the deeper yearnings that he imbedded in him and that cannot be obliterated by a mere denial. For surely man does not live by bread alone, however that article is indispensable to him: not even culture, the kind admitted by communism, severely intellectual, rational, scientific, pragmatic, can be the be-all and end-all of human civilisation. Communistic Russia attempted to sweep away all traces of religion and church and piety; the attempt does not seem to have been very successful.

As a matter of fact Communism is best taken as a symptom of the disease society suffers from and not as a remedy. The disease is a two-fold bondage from which man has always been trying to free

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himself. It is fundamentally the same bondage which the great French Revolution sought most vigorously and violently to shake off—an economic and an ideological bondage, that is to say, translated in the terms of those days, the tyranny of the court and the nobility and the tyranny of the Church. The same two-fold bondage appears again today as combated by communism, viz., Capitalism and Bourgeoisie. Originally and essentially, however, communism meant an economic system in which there is no personal property, all property being held in common. It is an ideal that requires a good deal of ingenuity to be worked out in all details, to say the least. Certain religious sects within restricted membership tried the experiment. Indeed some kind of religious mentality is required, a mentality freed from normal mundane reactions, as a preliminary condition in order that such an attempt might be successful. A perfect or ideal communism may be possible only when man's character and nature has undergone a thorough and radical change. Till then it will be an Utopia passing through various avatars.

SOCIALISM

Nor can socialism remedy all the ills society suffers from, if it merely or mainly means the abolition of private enterprise and the assumption by the State of the entire economic and even cultural or educational apparatus of the society. Even as an economic proposition state socialism, which is only another name of Totalitarianism, is hardly an unmixed good. First of all, however selfish and "profiteering" the individual may be, still, one must remember that it is always the individual who is adventurous and inventive, it is he who discovers, creates new things and beautiful things. A collective or global enterprise makes for massiveness and quantity, but it means also uniformity, often a dead uniformity: for variety, for originality, as well as for the aesthetic tone and the human touch, the personal element is needed, seems to be indispensable. Education in such a system would mean a set routine and pattern, an efficient machine to bring out consistently and continuously uniform types of men who are more or less automatons, mechanical and regimented in their make-up and behaviour. An all-out socialistic Government will bear

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down and entomb the deeper springs of human consciousness, the magic powers of initiative and creativity that depend upon individual liberty and the free play of personal choice. We do not deny that socialism is an antidote to another malady in the social body—the parcellation, the fragmentation into a thousand petty interests, all aggressive and combative of the economic strength of a community, and also the stupendous inequality and maldistribution of wealth and opportunity. But it brings in its own poison.

It is a great illusion, as has been pointed out by many, that a collective and impersonal body cannot be profiteers and warmongers. A nation as a whole can very well be moved by greed and violence and Sieglust (passion for conquest)-Nazism has another name, it is also called National Socialism. Everything depends not upon the form, but the spirit that animates the form. It is the spirit, man's inner nature that is to be handled, dealt with and changed: outer systems and forms have only a secondary importance.

NATIONALISM

Again, Nationalism is also not the summum bonum of collective living. The nation has emerged out of the family and the tribe as a greater unit of the human aggregate. But this does not mean that it is the last word on the subject-larger units are not to be found or formed. In the present-day juncture it is nationalism that has become a stumbling-block to a fairer solution of human problems. For example, India, Egypt, Ireland, even Poland, whatever may be the justifying reasons, are almost exclusively-chauvinistically-nationalistic. They believe that the attainment of their free, unfettered separate national existence first will automatically bring in its train all ideal results that have been postponed till now. They do not see, however, that in the actual circumstances an international solution has the greater chance of bringing about a happier solution for the nation too and not the other way round. The more significant urge today is towards this greater aggregation-Pan-America, Pan-Russia, Pan-Arabia, a Western European Block and an Eastern European Block are movements that have been thrown up because of a great necessity in human life and its evolution. Man's stupidity, his failure to grasp

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the situation, his incapacity to march with Nature, his tendency always to fall back, to return to the outdated past may delay or cause a turn or twist in this healthy movement, but it cannot be permanently thwarted or denied for long. Churchill's memorable call to France, on the eve of her debacle, to join and form with Britain a single national union, however sentimental or even ludicrous it may appear to some, is, as we see it, the cry of humanity itself to transcend the modern barriers of nationhood and rise to a higher status of solidarity and collective consciousness.

INTERNATIONALISM

And yet internationalism is not the one thing needful either. If it means the obliteration of all national values, of all cultural diversity, it will not certainly conduce to the greater enrichment and perfection of humanity. Taken by itself and in its absolute sense it cannot be a practical success. The fact is being proved every moment these days. Internationalism in the economic sphere, however, seems to have a greater probability and utility than in the merely political sphere. Economics is forcing peoples and nations to live together and move together: it has become the soldering agent in modern times of all the elements—the groups and types of the human family that were so long separate from each other, unknown to each other or clashing with each other. But that is good so far as it goes. Powerful as economic forces are, they are not the only deciding or directing agents in human affairs. That is the great flaw in the "International", the Marxian type of internationalism which has been made familiar to us. Man is not a political animal, in spite of Aristotle, nor is he an economic animal, in spite of Marx and Engels. Mere economics, even when economics is working for a greater unity of mankind, tends to work more for uniformity: it reduces man to the position of a machine and a physical or material machine at that. By an irony of fate the human value for which the international proletariate raised its banner of revolt is precisely what suffers in the end. The Beveridge Plan, so much talked of nowadays, made such an appeal no doubt because of the economic advantages it ensures, but also, by far and large, because it views man as a human being in and against the machine to which

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he belongs, because it is psychologically a scheme to salvage the manhood of man, so far as is possible, out of a rigidly mechanistic industrial organisation.

HUMANISM ,

So the cry is for greater human values. Man needs food and shelter, that goes without saying, but he yearns for other things also, air and light: he needs freedom, he needs culture—higher thoughts, finer emotions, nobler urges—the field and expression of personal worth. The acquisition of knowledge, the creation of beauty—philosophy, art, literature, science, in their pure forms, pursued for their own sake, are things man holds dear to his heart. Without them life loses its charm and significance. Mind and sensibility free to roam, not turned and tied to the exclusive needs and interests of physical life, free, that is to say, to discover and create norms and ideals and truths that are values in themselves and also lend values to the matter-of-fact terrestrial life. It is not sufficient that all men should have work and wages, it is not sufficient that all should have learnt the three R's, it is not sufficient that they should understand their rights—social, political, economic—and claim and vindicate them. Nor is it sufficient for men to become merely useful or indispensable—although happy and contented—members of a collective body. The individual must be free, free in his creative joy to bring out and formulate, in thought, in speech, in action, in all the modes of expression, the truth, the beauty, the good he experiences within. An all-round culture—a well-developed mind, a well-organised life, a well-formed body—a harmonious working of all the members of the system at a high level of consciousness—that is man's need, for there lies his self-fulfilment. That is the ideal of humanism—which the ancient Greco-Roman culture worshipped, which was again revived by the Renascence and which once again became a fresh and living force after the great Revolution and is still the high light to which Science and modern knowledge turns.

THE MORE BEYOND

And yet this is not the grand finale, the ne plus ultra. For man

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does not stop with man—in the tremendous phrase carved by Nietzsche, "Man is a thing that shall be surpassed". Until and unless man surpasses himself, finds a focus and fulcrum outside and beyond his normal human—too human—self, he cannot entirely and radically change his nature and rebuild his society on an altogether different pattern. Man has to reach his divine status, become the Divine, within and outside, body and soul; then only can the ills to which he is exposed totally vanish and then alone can he enjoy individually and collectively a perfect life on earth. Naturally man is not expected to accomplish this mightily work alone and unaided, he can rest assured and comforted, for Nature herself is moving inexorably towards that consummation.

SECTARIANISM OR LOYALTY

Modern culture demands that one should not be bound to one creed or dogma, swear by one principle or rule of life, or be led blindly by one man. Truth, it is said, has many facets and the human being * is also not a Cyclops, a one-eyed creature. To fix oneself to one mode of seeing and believing and even behaving is to be narrow, restricted, sectarian. One must be able to see many standpoints, appreciate views at variance with one's own, appraise the relativity of all standards. Not to be able to do so leads to obscurantism and fanaticism. The Inquisitors were monomaniacs, obsessed by an idée fixe.  On the other hand, the wisest counsel seems to have been given by Voltaire who advised the inquirers to learn from anywhere and everywhere, even Science from the Chinese. In our Indian legends we know that Udbhavn did not hesitate to accept and learn from more than a dozen Gurus. That is as it should be if we would have a mind and' conscious ess large and vast and all-encompassing.

And yet there is a question. While attempting to be too liberal and catholic one may happen to turn into a dilettante. A dilettante is one who takes an interest, an aesthetic, a dispassionate and detached interest in all things. His interest is intellectual, something abstract and necessarily superficial; it is not a vital interest, not a question of his soul, an urgent problem of his living.

A spiritual interest is nothing if it is not in this way a question

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that touches life to its core. That means a definite goal and appropriate means to reach that goal, and that again necessarily involves a choice, a process of acceptance and rejection. The goal is also called the ista, the godhead that one seeks, the Divine that is fulfilled in oneself. Being a personality, an individual, one has to choose, one can best follow the line of evolution and growth and fulfilment of that personality and individuality-that is the call of the Psyche, the direction of the Jiva. In other words one has to be loyal and faithful to one's nature and being. That is why it is said, better to perish while fulfilling one's own law of life than to flourish by fulfilling another's law. Being curious with that kind of curiosity led to the original fall of man, according to the Bible-that is to say, if one is vitally curious, allows oneself to be influenced and so affected and diverted by what is an outside and foreign force, because not in the line of one's own truth and development, one asks for a mixture and intervention which bring confusion, thwart the growth and fulfilment,
as that falsifies the nature.

It is not only bad influences that affect you badly, even good influences do so—like medicines that depend upon the particular constitution for their action. In ancient times this was called varnasan-kara or adharmasankara, as, for example, when a Kshatriya sought to follow the rule of life of a Brahmin or vice versa. This kind of admixture or mesalliance was not favoured, as it was likely to bring about an obscurity in the consciousness and in the end frustration in the spiritual life. That was the original psychological reason why
heresy was considered such a dangerous thing in all religions.

It is not sufficient to say that God is one and therefore where-ever He is found and however He is found and whoever finds Him one must implicitly accept and obey and follow. God is one indeed: but it is equally true that he is multiple. God is not a point, but a limitless infinity, so that when one does reach Him one arrives at a particular spot, as it were, enters into only one of his many mansions. Likewise God's manifestation upon earth has been infinitely diverse, his Vibhutis, Avatars, his prophets and viceregents have been of all sorts and kinds. Precisely because God is at once one and infinitely multiple and because human nature also is similarly, if one in essence, infinitely multiple in expression, each one while seeing and finding

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the one God seeks and finds him in and through a particular formulation. That is the original meaning, the genesis and justification of creeds and dogmas. Only it must be borne in mind, that one can be faithful even to a particular creed and dogma and yet transcend it, five a particular mode of life and yet possess at the back of it and as its support the very sense and consciousness of infinity itself. Where there is this synthetic and transcendent experience dogmatism has no place, nor conflict between creed and creed.

One can be as catholic and boundless as infinity, still one can and has to bow down to a special figure of it, since or if one who approaches it has a figure of his own. Just in the same way as when one is in the body, one has to live a particular life framed by the body, even the mind as well as the life are canalised in the mould of the body consciousness, and yet at the same time one can five in and through the inner consciousness immeasurably, innumerably, in other bodies, in the unbarred expanse of the cosmic and the transcendent. The two experiences are not contradictory, rather they reinforce each other.

Uddhava might have had numberless teachers and instructors, but the Guru of his soul was Sri Krishna alone, none other. We may learn many things from many places, from books, from nature, from persons; intuitions and inspirations may come from many quarters, inside and outside, but the central guidance flows from one source only and one must be careful to keep it unmixed, undefiled, clear and pure. When one means nothing more than playing with ideas and persons and places, there is no harm in being a globe-trotter; but as soon as one becomes serious, means business, one automatically stops short, finds and sticks to his Ishta, even like the Gopis of Sri Krishna who declared unequivocally that they would not move out of Brinda-ban even by a single step.

SINCERITY

The first condition of the spiritual life, and the last condition as well, is sincerity. One must sincerely want the spiritual life in order to have it. The soul—the psychic being—is always sincere: it is made of the very stuff of sincerity for it is a part, or a spark, of the divine Consciousness itself. When one feels the call, turns one's

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back to the worldly life, moves towards the life spiritual, one follows then the urge of one's true being, the psychic being: one is then naturally sincere, firmly and spontaneously devoted to the Divine, unequivocally loyal and faithful to the Beloved and the Master.

This central sincerity, however, has to be worked out in actual life. For, one may be true in the spirit, but false—weak, that is to say— in the flesh. The light of the central being usually finds its way first into the mind. One becomes then mentally sincere; in other words, one has the idea, the thought that the Divine is the goal and nothing else can or shall satisfy. With the light in the mind, one sees also in oneself more and more the dark spots, the weaknesses, the obstacles— one becomes conscious of one's failings, discovers elements that have to be corrected or purged. But this mental sincerity, this recognition in the understanding is not enough: it remains mostly ineffective and barren with regard to life and character. One appears in this stage to lead a double life: one knows and understands, to some extent at least, but one is unable to act up even to that much knowledge and understanding. It is only when the power of sincerity descends still further and assumes a concreter form, when the vital becomes sincere and is converted, then the urge is there not only to see and understand, but to do and achieve. Without the vital's sincerity, its will to be transformed, one remains at best a witness, one has an inner perception or consciousness of the Divine, but in actual living one lets the old ordinary nature go its own way. It is the sincerity in the vital, its will to possess the Divine that brings about the crucial, the most dynamic change. Sadhana instead of being a mere mental occupation, an intellectual pursuit, acquires the urgency of living and doing and achieving. Finally, the vital sincerity, when it reaches its climax, calls for the ultimate sincerity—sincerity in the body. When the body consciousness becomes sincere then we cannot but be and act as decided and guided by the divine consciousness; we live and move and have our being wholly in the divine manner. Then what the inmost being, the psychic, envisages in the divine light, the body inevitably and automatically executes. There is no gap between the two. The spirit and the flesh—soul and body—are soldered, fused together in one single compact entity. One starts with the central sincerity in the psychic being and progress of sadhana means the extension of his

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sincerity gradually to all the outlying parts and levels of the being till, when the body is reached, the whole consciousness becomes as it were a massive pyramid of loyalty.

THE TRAGIC SPIRIT IN NATURE

The wages of sin, it is said, is death. Well, it can, with equal if not greater truth, be said that the wages of virtue too is death! It seems as though on this mortal earth nothing great or glorious can be achieved which is not marred somehow or other, sometime or other. The blazon of virtue goes very rarely without a bar sinister branded across. Some kind of degradation, ignominy or frustration always attends or rounds off the spectacle of wonder. In the moral world too there seems to exist an inexorable law that action and reaction are equal in degree and opposite in kind.

The glorious First Consul and Emperor did not end in a blaze of glory: he had to live and die as the commonest of prisoners. Even his great prototype, the mighty Caesar, did not meet a different fate —he too fell.

O what a fall was there, my countrymen!

Then I and you and all of us fell down—

A Jeanne d'Arc, another glorious creature, Deliverer of France, the sweetest thing that ever put on a human body, was burnt as a witch. Socrates had to drink the hemlock for having brought down heavenly knowledge upon earth. The Christ, God's own son and beloved, perished on the Cross. Krishna, the Avatar, was killed by a chance arrow; and Arjuna, the peerless hero of Kurukshetra, Krishna's favourite, had to see days when he could not even lift his own bow with which he once played havoc. And in our own days, a Ramakrishna, who could cure souls could not cure his own cancer. This is the "tears of things"—spoken of by a great poet—the tragedy that is lodged in the hearts of things.

There runs a pessimistic vein in Nature's movement. Due to the original Inconscience out of which she is built and also because of a habit formed through millenniums it is not possible for her to

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expect or envisage anything else than decay, death and frustration in the end or on the whole. To every rise there must be a fall, a crest must end in a trough. Nature has not the courage nor the faculty to look for any kind of perfection upon earth. Not that within her realm one cannot or should not try for the good, the noble, even the perfect, but one must be ready to pay the price. Good there is and maybe, but it is suffered only on payment of its Dane geld to Evil. That is the law of sacrifice that seems to be fundamental to Nature's governance.

The Evil we have said, is nothing else than the basis of unconsciousness or Inconscience in Nature. It is this which pulls the being— —whatever structure of consciousness can be reared upon it—down to decay and frustration. It is the force of gravitation, of inertia. Matter is unconsciousness ; the body, formed basically of matter, is unconsciousness too. The natural tendency of Matter is towards disintegration and dissolution; the body therefore is mortal—bha-smantamidam śarīram. The scope and range of mortality is measured by the scope and range of unconsciousness. Matter is the most concrete and solid form of unconsciousness; but it casts its shadow upon the higher levels too-life and mind always lie in the penumbra of this original evil.

A great personality means a great rise in consciousness; therefore it means also a strain upon the normal consciousness and hence a snap or scission sometime and somewhere. As the poet describes the tragic phenomenon—

.........Poised on the unreachable abrupt snow-solitary ascent,

Earth aspiring lifts to the illimitable light, then ceases broken and

spent—

The tragedy can happen in either of two ways. The individual's own unconsciousness can reach and overthrow and spoil his higher poise, or the collective unconsciousness too can invade and overwhelm the individual in his high status, who is declared not unoften the highbrow, an enemy of the people—although atonement is sometimes attempted at a late period (as in the case of the Christ or Jeanne d'Arc, for example). A way however was discovered in India by which one

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could avoid this life's inevitable tragic denouement. It was very simple, viz., to rise up from the inert ignorant unconsciousness, rise sufficiently high and fly or shoot into the orbits of other suns from where there is no more downfall, being totally free from all earthly downpull.

But this need not be the only solution. Matter (the basic unconsciousness) was the master in this material world because it was not properly faced and negotiated. One sought to avoid and by-pass it. It was there Sphinx-like and none stopped to answer its riddle. The mystery is this. Matter, material Nature that is dubbed unconsciousness is not really so. That is only an appearance. Matter is truly inconscient, that is to say, it has an inner core of consciousness which is its true reality. This hidden flame of consciousness should be brought out from its cave and made manifest, dynamic on the surface. Then it will easily and naturally agree to submit to the higher law of Immortality. This would mean a reconditioning, a transmutation of the very basis of mind and life. The material foundation, the body conditions thus changed will bring about that status of the wholeness of consciousness which holds and stabilises the Divine in the human frame, which never suffers from any scar or diminution even in its terrestrial embodiment.

DYNAMIC FATALISM

"The supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable". If it is so, then what is the necessity at all of work and labour and travail —this difficult process of sadhana ? The question is rather naive, but it is very often asked. The answer also could be very simple. The change decreed is precisely worked out through the travail: one is the end, the other is the means; the goal and the process, both are decreed and inevitable. If it is argued, supposing none made the effort, even then would the change come about, in spite of man's inaction ? Well, first of all, this is an impossible supposition. Man cannot remain idle even for a moment : not only the inferior Nature, but the higher Nature too is always active in him—remember the words of the Gita—though behind the veil, in the inner consciousness. Secondly, if it is really so, if man is not labouring and working and

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making the attempt, then it must be understood that the time has not yet come for him to undergo the change, he has still to wait: one of the signs of the imminence of the change is this very intensity and extensiveness of the labour among mankind. If, however, a particular person chooses to do nothing, prefers to wait and see—and hopes in the end to jump at the fruit all at once and possess it or hopes the fruit to drop quietly into his mouth—well, this does not seem to be a likely happening. If one wishes to enjoy the fruit, one must share in the effort to sow and grow. Indeed, the process itself of reaching the higher consciousness involves a gradual heightening of the consciousness. The means is really part of the end. The joy of victory is the consummation of the joy of battle.

Man can help or retard the process of Nature, in a sense. If his force of consciousness acts in line with Nature's secret movement, then that movement is accelerated : through the soul or self that is man, it is the Divine, Nature's lord and master who drives and helps Nature forward. If, on the contrary, man follows his lesser self, his lower ego, rajasic and tamasic, then he throws up obstacles and barriers which hamper and slow down Nature's march.

In a higher sense, from a transcendental standpoint, however, this too is only an appearance. In reality man neither helps nor hinders Prakriti. For in that sphere the two are not separate entities. What is viewed as the helping hand of man is really Nature helping herself : man is the conscious movement of Nature. In that transcendent status the past and the future are rolled together in the eternal present and all exist there as an accomplished fact: there is nothing there to be worked out and achieved. But lower down there is a play of forces, of conflicting possibilities and the resultant is a balance of these divergent lines. When one identifies oneself with the higher static consciousness one finds nothing to be done, all is realised— "the eternal play of the eternal child in the eternal garden". But when one fives in the Kurukshetra of forces, one cannot throw away one's Gandiva and say, "I will not fight!"

THE RIGHT OF ABSOLUTE FREEDOM

A nation cannot claim the right, even in the name of freedom, to

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do as it pleases. An individual has not that right, the nation too has not. A nation is a member of humanity, there are other members and there is the common welfare of all. A nation by choosing a particular line of action, in asserting its absolute freedom, may go against other nations, or against the general good. Such freedom has to be curbed and controlled. Collective life—if one does not propose to live the life of the solitary—the animal or the saint—is nothing if not such a system of controls. "The whole of politics is an interference with personal liberty. Law is such an interference; the rule which makes the will of the majority prevail is such an interference. The right to prevent such use of personal liberty as will injure the interests of the race is the fundamental law of society. From this point of view the nation is only using its primary rights when it restrains the individual from buying or selling foreign goods." Thus spoke a great Nationalist leader in the days of Boycott and Swadeshi. What is said here of the individual can be said of the nation too in relation to the greater good of humanity. The ideal of a nation or state supreme all by itself, with rights that none can challenge, inevitably leads to the cult of the Super state, the Master race. If such a monster is not to be tolerated, the only way left is to limit the absolute value of nationhood, to view a nation only as a member in a comity of nations forming the humanity at large.

A nation not free, still in bondage, cannot likewise justify its claim to absolute freedom by all or any means, at all times, in all circumstances. There are times and circumstances when even an enslaved nation has to bide its time. Man, in order to assert his freedom and individuality, cannot sign a pact with Mephistopheles; if he does so he must be prepared for the consequences. The same truth holds with regard to the nation. A greater danger may attend a nation than the loss of freedom—the life and soul of humanity itself may be in imminent peril. Such a cataclysmic danger mankind has just passed through or is still passing through. All nations, however circumstanced in the old world, who have stood and fought on the side of humanity, by that very gesture, have acquired the right,—and the might too,—to gain freedom and greatness and all good things which would not be possible otherwise.

Within the nation all communities must be ready to give and take

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and settle down amicably. Within humanity too all nations must live the same principle. The days of free competition must be considered as gone for good; instead the rule of collaboration and co-operation has to be adopted (even between past enemies and rivals). In mutual aid and self-hmitations he also the growth and fulfilment of each collective individuality. That is the great Law of Sacrifice enunciated ages ago by Sri Krishna in the Gita—by increasing each other all will attain the summum bonum.

TRUE HUMILITY

It is not by repeating mea culpa ad infinitum that one can show one's true humility. In owning too much and too often one's sins, one may be just on the wrong side of virtue. There lurks a strain of vanity in self-maceration: the sinner in an overdose of self-pity almost feels himself saintly. Certainly one must stand before oneself face to face, not hide or minimise or explain away one's errors and lapses, all one's omissions and commissions. But one need not brood over them, merely repenting and repining. One sees steadily, without flinching, what one actually is and then resolutely and sincerely takes to the ways and means of changing it, becoming what one has to be. A fall, the discovery of a new frailty should be an occasion not to chastise and punish yourself, thus to depress yourself and harden your nature, but to enthuse you with a fresh resolution, to rekindle your aspiration so that you may take another step forward. And, naturally, you cannot succeed or move forward by any inherent capacity of yours-your failures are there always as standing eye-openers to you. No, it is not your self but the Divine Self that will come to your succour and lift you up tapmva esa ornute tanum submit him alone it unveils its own body. That is the humility to be learnt. But it does not mean that you are to remain merely passive, inert-you cannot but be that if you are only a "weeping willow"-a deadweight upon the force of Grace that would carry you up. Rather you should throw your weight, whatever it is, on the side of the Divine. An atmosphere of alacrity and happiness and good will goes a long way to the redemption and regeneration of the consciousness. This is demanded of you; the rest is the work of the

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Divine. It is under such conditions that the Divine's help becomes all the more speedy and effective. Otherwise, mere contrition and lamentation and self-torture mean, as I have said, a ballast, a burden upon the force of progress and purification, as Sri Krishna says in the Gita, by oppressing oneself one oppresses only the Divine within. Humility, in order to be true and sincere, need not be sour and dour in appearance or go about in sack-cloth and ashes. On the contrary, it can be smiling and buoyant: and it is so, because it is at ease, knowing that things will be done—some things naturally will be undone too— quietly, quickly, if necessary, and inevitably, provided the right consciousness does not, of course, take credit for what is being done for it, nor does it concentrate wholly or chiefly on its utter futility and smallness. It feels small or helpless not in the sense as when one feels weak and miserable and almost undone, but as a child feels, naturally and innocently, in the lap of its mother: only perhaps it is more awake and self-conscious than the child mentality.

Humility is unreservedly humble, as it envisages the immensity of the labour the Divine has undertaken, sees the Grace, infinite and inscrutable, working miracles every moment; and it is full of gratitude and thanksgiving and quiet trust and hopefulness. Certainly it means self-forgetfulness and selflessness, as it cannot coexist with the sense of personal worth and merit, with any appreciation of one's own tapasya and achievement; even so it thrives ill upon self-abasement and self-denigration, for if one is rajasic, the other is tamasic egoism-egoism, in any case. Absolute nullity of the egoistic self is the condition needed, but anything less than that, any lowering of the consciousness beyond this zero point means reaffirming the ego in a wrong direction. True humility has an unostentatious quietness, as it has a living and secret contact with the divine consciousness.

THE SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK

The spiritual outlook is a global view, unlike the mental which is very often the view from a single angle or in rare cases, at the most, from a few angles. The ordinary man, even the most cultured and enlightened, has always a definite standpoint from which he surveys and judges, indeed without such a standpoint he would not be considered

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educated and worthy of consideration. In other words, he regards one side of his object and thus perceives only a partial truth. That there are other standpoints, that other people may view the same thing from other grounds does not trouble him or troubles him to the extent that he considers them all mistaken, illusory. He condescends to admit other standpoints if they are near enough to his, if they support or confirm it. Otherwise if they are contrary or contradictory to what he perceives and concludes, then evidently they are to be discarded and thrown away into the dustbin as rubbish.

The spiritual consciousness dawns precisely with the rejection of this monomania, this obsession of one-track mentality. It means, in other words, nothing less than coming out of the shell of one's egoism. To be able thus to come out of oneself, enter into another consciousness, see things as others see them, that is the great initiation, the true beginning of the life of the spirit. For the spirit is the truth of all things: all things, even what appears evil and reprehensible, exist and have their play because of a core of truth and force of truth in each. Mind and mind's external consciousness and practical drive compel one to take to a single line of perception and action and that which is more or less superficial and immediately necessary. But it is only when one withdraws from the drive of Maya and gets behind, gets behind all opposing views and standpoints and tries to see what is the underlying truth that seeks to manifest in each, that one enters the gateway of the spiritual consciousness.

The spiritual consciousness is global, not in the sense that it is eclectic, that is to say, the sum total of all the superficial views, but in the sense that it experiences the one dynamic truth that under lies all and which manifests its varying powers and potentials in various objects and forces, which expresses itself in multiple standpoints and modes and angles of vision.

When the Divine acts, it acts always in and through this transcendental and innermost truth of things. When it helps the seeker, it touches and inspires the secret soul in him—his truth—not like the human teacher or reformer who addresses himself to the outer personality, to laws and codes, prohibitions and injunctions, reward and punishment, for the education and instruction of his pupil. Indeed the Divine chastises, also, in the same way. The Asura or the antidivine

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he does not kill with one blow nor even with many blows of his thunderbolt or burn away with his red wrath. The image of Zeus or Jehovah is a human figuration; it depicts the human way of dealing with one's enemies. The Divine deals with the undivine in the divine way, for the undivine too is not something outside the Divine. The Asura also has his truth, his truth in the Divine, only it has been degraded and deformed under circumstances. The Divine simply disengages, picks up that core of truth and takes it away so that it can no longer be appropriated and deformed by the Asura who now losing the secret support of his truth automatically crumbles to pieces as mere husk and chaff. If there is something more than the merely human in the image of Durga, the Goddess transfixing her lance right into the heart of the Asura may be taken as indicative of this occult truth.

There is then this singular and utter harmony in the divine consciousness, resolving all contraries and incompatibles. Neha nānāsti kiñcana, there is no division or disparity here. Established in the consciousness, the spiritual man naturally and inevitably finds that he is in all and all are in him and that he is all and all are he, for all and he are indivisibly that single "yet multiple" reality. The brotherhood of man is only a derivative from the more fundamental truth of the universal selfhood of man.

THE MESSAGE OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

The moralist—the Christian moralist particularly—has dubbed the atomic bomb as the Devil's engine while the practical politician retorts that the accursed machine has cut short the work, saved more lives on the whole and reduced the extent and duration of suffering and agony. In any case the new weapon is so radical and devastating in its effectiveness that even politicians do not seem to be without a qualm and heart-burning, not in the moral but in the physical and nervous sense. The atom bomb is a bombshell not upon your enemies alone but it is a boomerang likely to turn back upon yourself, upon the whole of humanity and human civilisation. Archimedes asked for a fulcrum outside the earth to be able to move it out of its orbit; we have found out something with which one hopes and fears one would do much more.

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Man's invention of death-dealing weapons has an interesting history. It is, curious to say, the history of his progress and growing civilisation. The primitive man fought with the strength of his God-given limbs—tooth and nail—to which he subsequently added the crudest of weapons, clubs of wood or flint. A revolution was brought about when iron was discovered and archery invented. The next revolution came with the appearance of gunpowder on the stage. And then the age of guncotton and T. N. T. which held sway till the other day. An interim period of poison gas and chemical warfare was threatened, but everything now has gone overboard with the advent of the atomic bomb and the threatened advent of the Cosmic Death Ray.

In one sense certainly there has been a progress. This march of machinery, this evolution of tools means man's increasing mastery over Nature, even though physical nature. The primitive man like the animal is a slave, a puppet driven helplessly by Nature's forces. Both lead more or less a life of reflex action : there is here no free, original initiation of action or movement. The slow discovery of Nature's secrets, the gradual application and utilisation of these secrets in actual life meant, first, a liberation of man's consciousness being originally imbedded in Nature's inertial movements, and then a growing power to react upon nature, and mould and change it according to the will of the conscious being. The result at the outset was a release of an organisation on the mental level, in the domain of reason and intelligence. Of course, man found at once that this increasing self-consciousness and self-power meant immense possibility for good, but, unfortunately, for evil also. And so to guard against the latter contingency, rules and regulations were framed to control and canalise the new-found capacities. The Dharma of the Kshatriya, the honour of the Samurai, the code of Chivalry, all meant that. The power to kill was sought to be checked and restrained by such injunctions as, for example, not to hit below the belt, not to fight a disarmed or less armed opponent and so on. The same principle of morals and manners was maintained and continued through the centuries with the necessary changes and modifications in application and finds enshrined today in International covenants and conventions.

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But a new situation has arisen for some time past. The last Great War (World War No. One) was crucial in many ways in the life of humanity. It opened a new direction of man's growth, opened and then closed also apparently. I am referring to the tragedy of the League of Nations. That was an attempt on the path of man (and nature) to lift the inner life and consciousness to the level of the outer achievements. The attempt failed. Man could not rise to the height demanded of him. Now the second World War became logically more devastating and shattering; it has given the go-by to all ethical standards and codes of honour. The poison gas was not used because of any moral restraint or disinclination, but because of practical and utilitarian considerations. The Atom Bomb, however, has spoken the word.

That word is a warning that unless man changes, becomes master of himself, he cannot be truly master of the world. He cannot command the forces he has unleashed unless he has command over his own nature. The external immensity, the blotted mass that his physical attainments are, unless armoured and animated by an inner growth, will crack by its own weight. The mammoth, the mastodon, the huge pachyderms, in spite of, rather because of their inordinately one-sided growth could not stand the demand of life and perished. Likewise man will not possess the world, but the world will engulf and devour him in its aboriginal hunger of unconsciousness if he does not take a right about turn and declare his conversion. The Frankenstein that man has raised can no longer be met by merely human devices—reason and morals—but by a higher discovery and initiation.

The Bomb has slackened the physical atmosphere of the earth as no other engine has done. It has slackened the moral atmosphere too not in a lesser degree. Reason and moral sense could not move man, so Fear has been sent by the Divine Grace. Dante said that God created Hell in his mood of infinite love and justice—that seems to be the inevitable gate through which one has to pass to arrive at the Divine. We are indeed in hell today upon earth, a worse can hardly be tolerated.

Indeed this is the bleak winter of human consciousness—yet can spring be far behind ?

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NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL

A leading Nationalist has opined—somewhat pontifically, I am afraid—that he does not understand "slogan" of viewing the nation against a background of internationalism. We can only say that the pontiff has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing, always like the old guards attached to the old regime who do not see how much water has flown below their feet while they stood gazing at the sky or shut themselves up in their ivory tower. Well, a village headman could in the same way assert that he does not know and cares not to know how to look upon his village against the background of the whole nation : still the village exists only in and through the life of the nation. Even so, the nation which grew out of the fusion of clans and tribes has to outgrow itself : it has to live today, if it wishes to live, in and through the life of humanity as a whole.

Kurukshetra is a turning-point in history. The battle was between an old order that had to go and a new order that was taking birth. The old order was supported, on the one hand, by Bhishma and Drona personating its codes and laws, its morals, and, on the other, by Duryodhana and Shishupala as its dynamic actors and executors. The new order was envisaged by Krishna and its chief protagonists were the five brothers. The old order meant the supremacy of the family and the clan : that was the central unit round which society grew and was held together. Krishna came to break that mould and evolved a higher and larger unit of collective fife. It was not yet the nation, but an intermediary stage something like a league of clans, (as we in our day are trying another higher stage in the League of Nations). The Rajasuya celebrates the establishment of this New Order of a larger, a greater human organisation, Dharmarajya, as it was called.

You have just passed through another, a far greater, a catastrophic Kurukshetra, the last Act (Shanti Parbam) of which we are negotiating at the present moment. The significance of this cataclysm is clear and evident if we only allow ourselves to be led by the facts and not try to be to squeeze the facts into the groove of our past prejudices and set notions. All difficulties that are being encountered on the way to peace and reconstruction arrived mainly out of the failure to grasp what Nature has forced upon us. It is as simple as

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the first axiom of Euclid : humanity is one and all nations are free and yet inter-dependent members of that one and single organism. No nation can hope henceforth to stand in its isolated grandeur—not even America or Russia. Subject of dependent nations too who was struggling to be free will be allowed to work out their freedom and independence, on condition that the same is worked out in furtherance and in collaboration with the ideal human unity. That ideal has become dynamic and insistent—the more man refuses to accept it, the more he will make confusion worst confounded.

PEOPLE'S WAR

A correlated issue is whether the present war was a people's war or not : some wiseacres say it is not, it is an imperialist's war all over— Germany or Japan or Britain or America (or Russia) all, all are imperialists and the war was nothing but scramble for power and dominion among these different Names of Imperialism. Well, it is as easy to coulter as it is to whitewash. But to distinguish shades and colours, degrees and qualities, modes and magnitudes in human movements needs a less simple and radical procedure. Answer but one question. If Germany had won, do you think the world would have been as it is now (in spite of the sorry mess we are in) ? The whole earth would have been a vast Belsen. In India we would not have been crying for independence, vaunting our claims and capacities, demanding our own lebensraum—all would have been a dead dumb waste land, a Lidice on a continental scale. That the danger was not a mere possibility or contingency, but actually imminent, that the Allies just manage to escape, as the saying goes, by the skin of their teeth has been admitted and disclosed even the other day by the General Marshall. But for the victory of the Allies there would have been no people, no people but mere herds or, worse still, corpses. Today the people exists, it has survived the death trial: although wounded and mangled, which is but natural after such a travail, it has still life and hope and a future. What is now required is time and goodwill on all hands. Thus there was really an alignment, a definite demarcation of the forces that clashed. And there is merit or demerit according to the side that one might have taken and supported. If

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you cannot distinguish, if you are colour-blind, it is as it were you close your eyes and daubed all in black. The character of the war has not changed if we Indians did not or could not avail ourselves of the opportunity it offered us. What the war faced was a human problem and it cannot be blamed if it could not or has not yet solved the national problem, it has saved humanity and the next problem comes next.

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