Our life's repose is in the Infinite.

SRI AUROBINDO

Vol. XXVIII. No. 3 

August 1971

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 SORROWS OF GOD

THE Son of Man—the Avatar—suffers with and suffers for the suffering humanity. The Christ with his cross, Ramakrishna with his cancer, Socrates with the hemlock creeping up and benumbing his limbs and Mohammed being hunted from place to place are familiar and poignant pictures. "Verily, verily, the foxes have their holes, the birds their nests, but the son of man hath nowhere to lay his head."

And this is bound to be so, for it is the inexorable law of nature: one who has identified himself with Nature, ignorant nature, of which the ignorant and suffering humanity is part and parcel, one whose body and soul are in unison and union with the body and soul of all beings and creatures, made of the same stuff and substance cannot—and wants not to escape the general fate whatever it is. If misery be the badge of the human tribe, the Divine Man, the representative human being must wear that badge.

And yet there is a difference. In the case of the Divine Man it is

Page-5

a willing acceptance, not an imposition or blind submission. Indeed, it is this difference that makes the unity of creation a progressive unity, instead of a static unity, a never-ending repetition, an eternal recurrence.

There is a consciousness above and a consciousness below: a consciousness above the ignorant nature and a consciousness within that nature. They are not, however, altogether distinct and incommensurable: it is the same consciousness with a double status as in the well-known figure of the two birds in the Upanishad.

The Upanishadic standpoint declares that the being above is a silent witness, inactive, immobile, still. The one below is active and tastes of things both bitter and sweet, in other words, it takes part and is involved in the varied life-experiences. Certain lines of spiritual experience find that the being above is the reality, that the other is only an image, a reflection or illusion; and the image looks like a troubled image because it is, as it were, a reflection in the troubled waters of cosmic ignorance: dispel the ignorance, nothing remains but the transcendent Witness-Being, all alone. Such is the position of māyāvāda or illusionism. But there are other lines of experience giving a different view and a different realisation. Both the transcendent and the immanent are forms of the same Reality, with different functions, standing on different levels. Thus, as we say, the one below is not a vain image, or a mere reflection, but a descent here in the manifestation, of the reality above. This is also as real as that, the other, only it functions differently. The descent means two things, a double operation, first, the assumption of ignorance: what was light becomes obscurity, what was vast and infinite becomes small and finite, what was straight becomes crooked, what was delight becomes pain, what was one and united becomes many and disparate, what was whole becomes fragmentary. The descending being in one part or facet turns into the exact opposite of what it was originally, it is a denial of itself; secondly, in another aspect or part of itself, in its essence and profundity, it remains unaltered, intact as it were, with no change whatsoever in its nature and character. That is the immanent Godhead, the emanation, the extension or projection of the transcendent into the external material appearance. This immanent Godhead has its own

Page-6

function, it is the initiation of the ascent after the descent, in the vast field of an apparent total ignorance it is as it were the catalytic element introducing a reverse movement upward.

Left to itself, Nature, the inferior inconscient Nature would admit of no change, it would only repeat the past; it would be a circular or cyclic movement, at the most it would move in a horizontal line; no upward movement would be possible. It is only when the consciousness descends, sends a shaft of light into the dark inert mass below, uses it as a churning rod, that there occurs the stirring of a new creation; a new formation begins, a new content is added and a new disposition built up. To the human consciousness that appears as calamities and catastrophes. It is truly the great sacrificial horse in the Upanishadic image that shakes its limbs and the elements roar and thunder—the forward marching galloping fiery force of a progressing Consciousness.

At the very outset the light descends as a shower of scattered glowing points into the heart of things, secreted and unobserved; that gives only just a basis for the progressive upward movement. It initiates a mere possibility. For a more effective power, for the dynamic upward drive other descents are necessary, descents of individual formations, individualities and personalities emobdying the light and force of consciousness. This becomes tangible when the light enters into the human creation. All men, all human formations are inividualised specks of light cast into a material shape. And this shape bears all the stigma of inconscient nature. But it is the work and mission of the secret immanent light to corrode into the dense dark material and illumine and new create it. The whole suffering humanity presents the picture of a laboratory where a new laser beam is operating for the realisation of a renovated humanity.

Great souls, Avatars, are a necessity, an inevitability in the process of evolution and ascension, for they are individualisations, impersonations so to say, in whom the consciousness-energy is massively stored and concretised for a greater and radical effective power of realisation. Inevitably this means as I have said the assumption of all the ills of nature; for the very purpose of incarnation is to purify the external nature, so that it becomes one with the inner being. So, all terrestrial human beings share in the impurity of the ignorant

Page-7

ordinary nature and share also, as secretly conscious entities although outwardly almost absolutely unconscious, in the general work of progress and purification. But there are beings who come forward as conscious formations with the mission of uplifting transmuting, divinising humanity.

The higher or deeper the source of the descending or manifesting Consciousness—for there are gradations or various statuses of it—the wider and vaster and more radical is its effective power for redeeming and changing the ignorant common nature, and also, strangely, perhaps inevitably, the more intimate and poignant its participation in the travail of that nature—the participation extends not only to pain and suffering but to death also, for through death the path leads to resurrection and immortality. The Divine Himself in various forms comes down upon and into earth and pays by his pain and suffering for the sins and errors of humanity. That is the ransom he condescends to offer to the deity of ignorance, the reigning lord of the world for securing the freedom of man's soul. The divine emanations bear the burden of ignorance all the more so that the burden on others may be lightened, the pains less painful. Indeed, suffering humanity is also the suffering Godhead himself, suffering multifariously although ignorantly and unconsciously. There is an inner working of the secret godhead in order that the suffering may be gradually transmuted into something else, into the divine delight. The Godhead has taken up this task in order that the Divine may not remain Divine only in its essence and in the other, the transcendent status, but express itself also as the Divine in an earthly form, an earthly form cleared of all dross, made luminously beautiful.

Page-8

SVETASVATARA UPANISHAD

SRI AUROBINDO

(An Unpublished Early Writing)

CHAPTER V

1. Both of these in the Transcendent, the Knowledge and the Ignorance, yea, both have their hidden being in the Eternal and Infinite and are set in it for ever.

But of these Ignorance dieth and Knowledge liveth for ever and he who is master of both is other than they.

2. He being One entereth upon womb and womb, yea, upon all forms of being and upon all wombs of creatures;

He in the beginning filled with (all) kinds of knowledge, Kapila, the seer of old when he was born from his mother, yea, he saw Kapila in his shaping.¹

3. God weaveth Him one net or He weaveth Him another and He maketh it of manifold meshes and casteth it abroad in this field of the body; then He draweth it in again.

Also He created Yatis, the great seekers, and thus He wieldeth, the mighty Mind, the Master, the scepter of his universal Lordship.²

4. Lo, the Sun riseth and driveth the world's wain, then he blazeth illumining all the regions, and above and below and the level grew one lustre;

Even so, this glorious and shining God being One, entereth upon and possesseth various natures of womb and ruleth over them.

¹ Another version: This was That of old filled with many sorts of knowledge, Kapila, the Seer,

² Another version: and thus the mighty Mind, the Master wieldeth the sovereignty over all this creation.

Page-9

5. For He is the Womb of the world, He bringeth each nature to its perfection and all those that are yet to be perfected He matureth.

He indwelleth and presideth over all this, His world, and setteth all the modes of nature to their workings.

6. This is the secret mystery which is hidden in the Upanishads, for the Upanishad is the secret of the Veda; this is that which Brahma knoweth for the Womb of the Eternal.

And the older Gods and the sages knew It, therefore they became That and were immortal.

7. There is One who is the maker of works and their fruits, because the mood-stuffs of nature cleave to Him, He also reapeth from all work that He hath done; and the world is His shape and the stuff of His working is three-fold and three are the paths of His travel.¹

Lo, the Master of Life, by the momentum of his own works He moveth in the centuries.

8. His size is as the size of a man's thumb, but His aspect as the Sun in its glory. And He hath volition and He hath personality.

But there is another we see by virtue of the Understanding and by virtue of the spirit, for the point of a cobbler's awl is not finer to vision.

9. Take thou the hundredth part of the point of a hair, divide it into a hundred parts again; then as is a part of the hundredth part of a hundredth, such shalt thou find this Spirit in man, if thou seek to separate Him; yet it is this in thee that availed towards Infinity.

10. Not woman is He, nor man either, nor yet sexless; but whatsoever body He take, that confineth and preserveth Him.

11. By the allurements of sight, by the witchery of touch, by the magic of volition, as body is born and groweth by food and drink and

¹ Another version: There is One who maketh works and their fruits to them, for the moods of nature cleave to Him; this is He that enjoyeth the work He has done and the world is His body and He hath three modes of His natures and the roads of His travel are likewise three.

Page-10

plenty, so also the Spirit in body progressively attaineth to successive forms in their fit places; according to His works He progresseth and His forms shape themselves to His works.

12. Forms gross and forms subtle, forms many, the Spirit in the body evolveth them all by his own nature in its working;

By the law of action of His works and by the law of action of the Spirit in man, by these He evolveth them. But there yet is Another in whom we behold Cause whereby all these meet together.¹

13. Without beginning, without end, in the welter and the choas who createth the world by taking many figures, and as the One guarded and encompasseth it, He is that Lord and if thou know Him, Him, thou shalt break free from all kinds of bondage.

14. Shiva, the Master of all becomings and not-becomings and from Him this whole creation floweth and it is only one part of Shiva; but He is not named after any nest of the winged Spirit, and the heart alone can apprehend Him. They who know Shiva, the blessed One, abandon body for ever.

¹ Another version: there is yet Another in whom we see the cause wherefore all these stand as one whole and have met together.

Page-11

THE NEW CONSCIOUSNESS

Altered must be Nature's harsh economy.
(Savitri, Bk. I, C.2)

THE first impulse of man, when his thought is awakened and he looks round at the universe with all its multifold immensity, is to discover if there is any law governing the resistless flux of events, any pattern which unfolds itself in the passage of time whether in his individual life or in the vaster aeons of history. He seeks to isolate the sequence of cause and effect, the determinism governing the world around him. He apprehends some recurrences. Fire burns, water drenches, things have a tendency to fall down when unsupported and any failure to adjust oneself with the changes in wind and weather results in physical discomfort and illness. Sometimes when no external cause is traceable to account for some happening then he might attribute it to some occult universal power or being—a god or a devil. Life in a universe where things happen pell-mell and fortuitously would be impossible and therefore some design must either be imposed on it and if it is hidden then it must be discerned and disengaged and neatly formulated. This quest on a higher level finds articulation in his various philosophies, sciences and arts. Science is systematized knowledge and system means an ordered formulation of the empirical data offered to our intellect. All art is an effort to give shape to our inchoate and amorphous feelings and emotions and aesthetic reactions. Drama bodies forth our intuitions about the moral order that rules the conduct of our lives. The doer shall feel the consequences of his actions is the Aeschylean dictum.

Reason, in the widest sense of all, says Thomas Whittaker, is "the relational element in intelligence, in distinction from the element of content, sensational or emotional", and he points out that both the Greek term Logos and the Latin ratio, from which reason has largely drawn its meaning were sometimes used to denote simply 'relation' or 'order'. And P. G. Adams observes: "I shall take the common denominator of reason to be the existence, the awareness and, it may be,

Page-12

the employment of organizing principles". A rationalist will hold that the truths apprehended through intellect are the most important and certain that we possess, and probably also that they reveal at least in a fragmentary fashion, an intelligible structure in the world.

This belief in reason, I may say in parenthesis, had been a cardinal component of western culture. The good life was the rational life. But August 1914 marks the breaking of a dam and the submergence of a civilization. F. L. Lucas, wrote, as he looked back from the middle fifties: "The irrational, now in politics, now in poetics has been the
sinister opinion of our tormented and demented humanity'. G .Lowes Dickinson had already commented, 'Modern literature is a hospital'. The foundations of the rationalist structure were undermined and eroded by a rapid succession of waves. The defenders of the old order raised cries of alarm and threw up such breakwaters as they could, but the blows followed each other so fast and with such mounting force that all resistance melted away. The assaults bear the not very inviting names of realism, naturalism, pragmatism, existentialism and the philosophy of analysis.

But everywhere, rings the consensus of voices, the law which regulates the balance of this world is a cruel and harsh one. One wrong step might throw us down the precipice

A single word lets loose vast agencies

(Savitri, Bk. VI., C.1)

An idiot hour destroys what centuries made

(Savitri, Bk. VI. C. 2)

The ancient Hebrew wisdom laid down the Mosaic dispensation wherein Jehovah appears not only as a stern justicer but a jealous God. The modern scientific discovery while repudiating the time-hallowed revelation substitutes a still worse one of the survival of the fittest in a world where Nature is red in tooth and claw. But even in the Darwinian' world there prevails a subtle but potent economy which prevents the world from running down and has so far kept secure the curve of evolution. Natural selection even though haphazard has evolved more and more complex and subtle and developed organisms

Page-13

which can not only adjust and adapt themselves with the changes in the environment but in some way modify it to suit their existential ends.

Wars, pestilences and human barbarity might disturb the balance for a while but it is soon set right and life forges ahead surviving the most ravaging cataclysms. There is the moral balance which is disturbed by man's hubris and the nemesis redresses it by putting actions on one side and the weights of retribution on the other. How to alter or abrogate this dreadful Ixion's wheel, is the anguished question which punctuates human history. In George Meredith's famous sonnet 'Lucifer in Starlight' the rebel archangel makes an ineffectual attempt to recapture the celestial kingdom but sinks back on beholding.

The army of unalterable

Prometheus, the symbol of the painful and chequered human progress still hangs impaled on the rock torn by Jupiter's vultures. Milton wrote twelve books of his epic:

To justify the ways of God to men

but we find more justification in Satan's revolt than in God's tedious arguments to vindicate his harsh dealings with the frail couple that he created in his own image.

Ancient Indian wisdom also discovered the wheel of Karma to which we are bound and showed the way of release from the bondage by Nirvana but at the same time declared that the harsh economy of the world cannot be altered. The world will go on as ever. Only some heroic souls here and there can rise above it and win immortality for themselves and a few others who undertake to tread the strait path. Illusory Maya or the mechanical psycho-physical Parkriti are constant and will endure though the stars are not out of reach. Therefore, in spite of a long roll of the liberated and enlightened ones life on earth remains unredeemed. But a path which is accessible to the tread of one out of millions can scarcely assuage the Angst and sorge (the anxiety and care) that shadow human life-bound hand and foot to the wheel of Karma . 1 :11l find s himself floundering desparately:

Page-14

In this dense field where nothing is plain or sure,

Our very being seems to us questionable,

Our life a vague experiment, the soul

A flickering light in a strange ignorant world,

 

The earth a brute mechanic accident,

A net of death in which by chance we live.

(Savitri, Bk. I, C. 4)

And

The Dragon of the dark foundations keeps

Unalterable the law of Chance and Death.

(Savitri, Bk. III, C.4)

Sophocles, the greatest dramatist of ancient Greece, about whom Matthew Arnold wrote 'he saw things steadily and saw them whole' came to the sad conclusion that the most fortunate are those who are never born and next come those who die in their infacy. Virgil found, "Tears in the nature of things" and made this comment with a stoic resignation

Dead Pallas who now owes nothing to any of the gods,

which Shakespeare renders in profane words:

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.

Hamlet's last words find an echo in every sensitive soul:

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain

Our sensibilities feel outraged by the spectacle of ubiquitous physical pain and emotional suffering that shadow man's brief sojourn on earth. Savitri's mother cries out in distress to Narad the heavenly sage:

Page-15

O seer, in the earth's strange twi-natured life,

By what pitiless adverse Necessity

Or what cold freak of a Creator's will,

By what random accident or governed Chance

That shaped a rule out of fortuitous steps,

Made destiny from an hour's emotion, came

The direr mystery of grief and pain?

Is it thy God who made this cruel law ?

Or some disastrous Power has marred his work

And he stands helpless to defend or save ?

(Savitri, Bk. VI, C .2)

And Narad lays down the eternal law:

Where Ignorance is, there pain must come...

This single line not only puts the finger of light on the root cause of suffering but also points the way by which it can be healed. If man's Ignorance can be cured then man's soul can be set free from the rack of torment. But that again is a prescription which as we have noted lies beyond the capacity of human power. Can there be any other resource which yet lies somewhere untapped ? Yes, an evolutionary decisive leap into the supreme Truth-Consciousness, in which the law of existence is characterized by unity, mutuality and harmony. There has been the evolution from Matter to Life and from Life to Mind and the evolutionary elan has not flagged but has become conscious and more and more intense and urgent. Man's divine discontent is a signal proof that Mind is not the final resting place of his forward march. "The apparent Inconscience of the material universe holds in itself darkly all that is eternally self-revealed in the luminous Superconscient; to reveal it in Time is the slow and deliberate delight of Nature and the aim of her cycles."

The following passage from The Life Divine deftly crystallise in a brief compass the whole meaning of evolution and the inner sense of man's aspiration for a harmonized individual and collective life:

"Man is there to affirm himself in the universe, that is his first business, but also to evolve and finally to exceed himself: he has to

Page-16

enlarge his partial being into a complete being, his partial consciousness into an integral consciousness; he has to achieve mastery of his environment but also world-union and world-harmony; he has to realize his individuality but also to enlarge it into a cosmic self and a universal and spiritual delight of existence. A transformation, a chastening and correction of all that is obscure, erroneous and ignorant in his mentality, an ultimate arrival at a free and wide harmony and luminousness of knowledge and will and feeling and action and character, is the evident intention of his nature; it is the ideal which the creative Energy has imposed on his intelligence, a need implanted by her in his mental and vital substance. But this can only be accomplished by his growing into a larger being and a larger consciousness: self-enlargement, self-fulfilment, self-evolution from what he partially and temporarily is in his actual and apparent nature to what he completely is in his secret self and spirit and therefore can become even in his manifest existence, is the object of his creation. This hope is the justification of his life upon earth amidst the phenomena of the cosmos. The outer apparent man, an ephemeral being subject to the constraints of his material embodiment and imprisoned in a limited mentality, has to become the inner real Man, master of himself and his environment and universal in his being. In a more vivid and less metaphysical language, the natural man has to evolve himself into the divine Man; the sons of Death have to know themselves as the children of Immortality. It is on this account that the human birth can be described as the turning-point in the evolution, the critical stage in earth-nature."

It is for the birth of this new consciousness that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have been preparing humanity over the decades and all the upheavals and convulsions which have engulfed our age which was characterized as The Age of Anxiety but has now graduated into the Age of Explosions are merely the premonitory tremors and quakes of the new consciousness, that is massively pouring itself into the earth-atmosphere. Thinkers like Charles Reich have already become aware that a new consciousness is uprooting the old world of soulless conventions and hypocritical morality gilding man's unregenerate animality. The new generation is sick of its deadening effects and is hungering for a truer and sincerer leadership in every field.

Page-17

But there is no future in merely burning incense to the future. We have to suffer and strive for this inner and outer revolution. As has been pointed out by Charles Reich the opposite of joy is not pain but apathy and numbness. If we can break out of apathy and numbness and kindle in our hearts the aspiration for Truth, Light, Freedom and Immortality then we can

Make earth the home of the Wonderful and life Beatitude's kiss

(Sri Aurobindo, Rose of God)

(to be continued)

RAVINDRA KHANNA

Page-18

OLD BENGALI MYSTIC POEMS

XLIII

THE Simple,¹ even like a mighty tree has spread itself in all the three worlds;

In a state of perfect delight who is bound, who is free ?

Water poured into water shows no difference:

Even so the jewelled mind melts and enters into the one and equal taste of the spaces.

Where there is no oneself, the other does not exist.

That which is uncreated has neither birth nor death.

Bhusuku says, even Raoutu says and all say the same thing;

Here nothing goes, nothing comes, there is neither presence nor absence.

XLIV

Where the void unites with the void,

There arises the All-Law.²

But I am four square with the perfect consciousness:

In between all else is shut out and there is the un surpassing knowledge

The creative Sound did not enter into my heart:

I looked to one side and the other vanished.

You must know wherefore you have come here:

Hold yourself mid wise and from there deal with things.

Loudly declares Kanakadasa: the roar of the Truth disintegrates the universe.

¹ Simple—Self-born, Absolute

NOTE

The ultimate reality is a very simple thing: it is utterly simple, beyond alt the complexities and contradictions- and divisions, all the dualities that make up this creation, this illusory world.

It is as simple as the tree growing spontaneously and effortlessly and spreading and filling up the great space, one with its silence and equal calmness.

It is simple for it is zero, as the next poem says.

² All-Law Dharma

Page-19

PARAPHRASE

1. When the ordinary consciousness—the world consciousness— dissolves, becomes zero and vanishes into the transcendent zero.

2. Then that supreme zero-consciousness expresses, embodies the dharma, the supreme law of right living.

3. There the individual is one with the Supreme Reality on all the four levels of consciousness—the soul or self, mind, life and body.

4. Because of this inmost consciousness in the middle, that is to say, the intervening or intermediate consciousness, the world itself is shut out, becomes an illusion.

5. One passes by the vibrations that create the illusory world.

6. For when one's consciousness is fixed upon the transcendent the relative, the cosmos disappear.

7. The true source of all becoming is this transcendent zero.

8. The middle course, the course of the heart is the course of the truth, that turns neither to the left nor to the right but moves straight upward.

9. The voice of the void has another vibration and effect, it does not create the world of ignorance, it disintegrates that world.

NOTE

There is a suggestion here of the Raja-yogic process. In the Rajayoga-image the consciousness ascends and descends with the rise and fall of respiration along two ducts on either side of the spine (naturally on the subtle plane): there is a third duct in between along which operates the holding of the breath and the withdrawal of consciousness leading towards the Super-consciousness beyond, the dual

Page-20

movement on either side represents the illusory worlds outside; the middle path absorbs all the noises of creation which are transformed into the final cry of the concentrated consciousness at its apex leaping into the great void.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

Page-21

"ROCK MUSIC"

"Not long ago we had rioting here in Albuquerque. It went on sporadically for two days, of shooting, rock-throwing, smashing, burning and looting, in a spirit of destructiveness for its own sake. This is something that has not been rare in America these last few years, and as usual this time too it was accompanied with the taking of drugs, and the listening to that recently developed "music" called "hard rock".

This deadly disintegrating noise apparently is a thoroughly bad influence, and I do not see how it can be otherwise. There have been experiments made in which plants died from exposure to it: first they turned from it as far as they could get, and then succumbed."

This is indeed interesting, poignantly interesting I would say. We have all heard of the soothing qualities of music. We have also known of the creative power of sound. In the Indian spiritual tradition especially, the Word, nāda the vibration of sound, is known to have fathered this creation. The creative Divinity, when it is seized with the impulse to manifest, gives out a throb, spanda, which develops into a supreme sound-vibration in the profoundest Ether, parame yo man, and that is the original cause of this universe. Even after the creation has taken place, this subtle sound-vibration continues in the finer ranges of Existence and if one can get at this sound power by any means-it is possible to create. This truth has been repeatedly testified to by occultists all over the world. However, what we have before us now is quite different. It is the destructive power of sound. We have heard of experiments in laboratories by which particular vibrations of sound have shattered glass. But that music can be destructive is something new and deserves to be pondered over. Theoretically it stands to reason. For if sound-vibrations,

Page-22

organised in a particular way can be creative, the same vibrations differently massed could be destructive. In the occult language we would say that the music of the gods or god ward music is productive of elevating and beneficent results; the music of the devil or devilish and weird music is malignant in its effects. Does that represent the position in the case described by our friend ?

I reported the contents of this letter to the Mother and awaited her reactions. The Mother became thoughtful, serious and remained preoccupied for a while. Then she remarked that it was very bad that such a development should have taken place. She asked: In which country has this taken place ?

America, (I replied).

She nodded as if to say, understandable.

I asked her whether this unfortunate turn was a mere result of a movement in Ignorance or a twist given by the hostile Agents to the upward evolution of humanity.

Mother was emphatic. She said categorically that it was not simply an error or a turn of Ignorance but that it was a deliberate working of the vital beings who want to bring down the vital world here on earth.

She again became pensive. I asked her if She would hear a specimen of this type of music. She said "No, no. I do not want it to be played anywhere in the Ashram". After a pause she added: "I hope it will not come to India. If it does that would be the end".

To sum up, the pervert and perverting inspiration from the dark world that has led to the widespread use of drugs today, under some specious plea or other, is also responsible for the spread of this kind of malevolent music with pernicious influence. Whether one calls it rock music or by any other name, the fact remains: It is a battery of destructive forces robed in notes of music that impinge upon the lower vital being of the listeners and stampede them into its characteristic wild revelries of uncontrolled passion, lust and animality.

I did not mention to the Mother that something of this influence has already entered the film world in our country and has played havoc in depraving and corrupting the tastes of the younger section of the society. It is no mere cacophony of loud and vulgar sounds. It is a positively disintegrating force that disturbs all harmony in the environment

Page-23

and sets up waves of excitement, feverish agitation and retrogressive impulses. It is not merely unaesthetic; it is unspiritual, inhuman.

M. P. PANDIT

Page-24

SRI AUROBINDO AND THE INDIAN TRADITION

A GREAT TRADITION

INDIAN civilisation has been the form and expression of a culture as great as any of the historic civilisations of mankind, great in religion, great in philosophy, great in science, great in thought of many kinds, great in literature art and poetry, great in the organisation of society and politics, great in craft and trade and commerce...

"More high-reaching, subtle, many-sided, serious and profound than the Greek, more noble and humane than the Roman, more large and spiritual than the old Egyptian, more vast and original than any other Asiatic civilisation, more intellectual than the European prior to the eighteenth century, possessing all that these had and more, it was the most powerful, self-possessed, stimulating and wide in influence of all past human cultures..."¹

SRI AUROBINDO'S INTEREST

One need hardly wonder why India looms large in Sri Aurobindo's vision. More than half the bulk of his published works is devoted entirely to a study of the Indian scriptures—the Veda, the Upanishads, the Gita,—Indian yoga, and the other aspects of the Indian tradition; the major part of his earlier (and not yet fully published) writings—the Bandemataram and the Karmayogin-is devoted to India and her problems; even the other works, like The Life Divine, The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity, The Future Poetry, even Savitri and the smaller poems are not only permeated with the Indian spirit; they need for their full appreciation a thorough acquaintance with the achievements of India's past.

A question naturally arises: why should India have been given this place of honour in the writings of one who, although Indian by birth, has the fairest claim to be the first citizen of the world ? After all, as the Mother has made it abundantly clear, Sri Aurobindo does not belong to the past, he has come to prepare the way for the

Page-25

future, he belongs to the centuries to come. It is precisely here that we have to look for an answer. Sri Aurobindo's interest in India is not an antiquarian's interest in a thing that is dead, nor is his in look into things Indian a parochial view. He sees in India and its past evolution a sure indication of the future growth of man; India to him is a symbol of what the world is to be. India no doubt has had a great and glorious past which is worth knowing for its intrinsic Worth. But the more important thing is to know what significance it has for the future; and that is his primary concern.

A NOTE OF WARNING

This is a point of view that needs to be emphasised. It is a point of view that is not common among those who profess to know India and have some liking for it, and therein lurks a danger. Ignored for the most part by India's own sons as a museum piece fit for occasional admiration and constant neglect, Indian civilisation and all it stood for till yesterday may soon become wholly a thing of the past. "Certain minds would see in this contingency no disaster......It would mean, in their view, that India had given up her spiritual separation and undergone the much needed intellectual and moral change that would at last entitle her to enter into the comity of modern nations.......Ancient India would have passed like ancient Greece, leaving its contributions to a new and more largely progressive life of the race"²

Sri Aurobindo himself has emphasised that the civilisation of the future is likely to be a composite whole; and if that be so, there seems no particular advantage in trying to keep up India's separateness from the rest of the world's culture. "The world is in travail now of one common large and flexible civilisation for the whole human race into which each modern and ancient culture shall bring its contribution and each clearly defined human aggregate shall introduce its necessary element of variation...."³ But it is precisely here, in this need for variation, that lies the indispensable necessity of guarding intact the ancient spirit of India. "By the absorption of the Graeco-Roman culture by the later European world...there was a deplorable loss of its high and clear intellectual order, a still more calamitous perdition of the ancient cult of beauty.....A much greater diminution

Page-26

of the world's riches would result from the disappearance of a distinctive Indian civilisation, because the difference between its standpoint and that of European modernism is deeper, its spirit unique and the rich mass and diversity of its thousand lines of inner experience a heritage that still India alone can possess in its intricate truth and dynamic order..."⁴

IMPORTANCE FOR THE FUTURE

What is this peculiar distinctness of Indian culture, and what its value for the future: this is the important question. The answer can be summed up in a single word, spirituality. "Spirituality", Sri Aurobindo hastens to add, "is not the monopoly of India, it is a necessary part of human nature. But the difference is between spirituality made the leading motive and the determining power of both the inner and outer life, and spirituality suppressed, allowed only under disguises or brought in as a minor power, its scope denied or put off in favour of the intellect or of a dominant materialistic vitalism. The former way was the type of the ancient wisdom at one time universal in all civilised countries—literally, from China to Peru. ... India alone, with whatever fall or decline of light and vigour, has remained faithful to the heart of the spiritual motive....India alone, as a nation, whatever individuals or a small class may have done, has till now refused to give up her worshipped Godhead or bow her knee to the strong reigning idols of rationalism, commercialism and economisms, the successful iron gods of the West..."⁵

Granted, but has she done wisely in thus sticking to an old "superstition" ? The question is really for the future to decide. But it raises a fundamental issue as to the future of man and his civilisation. "Does the future of humanity," asks Sri Aurobindo, "lie in a culture founded solely upon reason and science ? Is the progress of human life the effort of a mind...stumbling about in search of some cleat light and some sure support amid its difficulties and problems ?... Or is not the truth of our being rather that of a Soul embodied in Nature which is seeking to know itself, to find itself, to enlarge its consciousness, to arrive at a greater way of existence, to progress in the spirit and grow into the full light of self-knowledge and some

Page-27

divine inner perfection ?"⁶ "It may well be", he concedes, "that both tendencies, the mental and the vital and physical stress of Europe and the spiritual and psychic impulse of India, are needed for the completeness of the human movement. But if the spiritual ideal points the final way to a triumphant harmony of manifested life, then it is all-important for India not to lose hold of the truth, not to give up the highest she knows....It is important too for humanity that a great collective effort to realise this highest ideal should not cease but continue."⁷

This makes it imperative that the Indian tradition as it has shaped itself through the millenniums should find an able and adequate defence. It is also necessary to point out the way to which it should be directed so as to meet the needs of the present and the future. This and no other is the object Sri Aurobindo constantly keeps in view.

THE QUESTION OF INTERPRETATION

A question of great practical importance that arises in this connection is this. How is one to know what exactly is this Indian tradition, what are its main landmarks, what the chief criteria of judgment ? How in other words are we to assess its true value—and its deficiencies, for it is idle to pretend that it had no defects ? Where is the culture that has no dark or even hideous spots ?

Sri Aurobindo's contribution in this field is of supreme importance, not only in relation to the Indian tradition, but as a guide to the study of all great cultures ancient, medieval or modern. And to this point we may refer in brief before proceeding to an examination of his findings on India.

An idea is abroad that in any "scientific" view of history the personal element, the subjective standpoint should be wholly abandoned in favour of the objective. Reduced to its logical consequence, this view would want us to believe that one can never know what one is in reality, the true judgment about oneself can be formed only by others. Extended to the field of Indian culture, this would imply that a Max Muller or a Vincent Smith is a much better judge of Indian achievement, than, say, a Vivekananda or a Rabindranath Tagore, because

Page-28

the latter's viewpoint must always be "subjective". This is one of those absurdities of the rational intellect which mistakes logic for fact.

SOURCES OF MISUNDERSTANDING

"There is no doubt plenty of retrogressive sentimentalism about and there have been some queer violences on common sense and reason and disconcerting freaks that confuse the real issue"⁸—an instance that readily comes to mind is the opinion held among a certain class of Indians that all the knowledge in the world is to be found anticipated for all time in the Vedas.

But this does not validate the "objective" assessments of India's past by the scholar and critic, that "swiftly leaping ingenius mind of his which gives in a trice a Schythian or a Persian Buddha, identifies conclusively Murghab and Maurya, Mayasura and Ahura Mazda and generally constructs with magical rapidity the wrong animal out of the wrong bone...."" As Sri Aurobindo has observed elsewhere, "the German scholarship possesses infinite capacity of acuteness, labour, marred by an impossible and fantastic imagination, the French of inference marred by insufficient command of facts"; above all "the European cannot hope to possess" that "instinctive feeling of what is or is not possible unless he sacrifices his sense of racial superiority and lives in some great centre like Benaras as a Pandit among Pandits"¹". This is not to say that the necessary humility or scrupulousness has been totally wanting on the part of our Western interpreters. But there is a congenital difficulty from which it is next to impossible for them to wholly escape, even when they manage to shed off the subconscious prejudice against things "oriental" that has been natural to their environment.

On this point, Sri Aurobindo has dwelt at some length, because it is vital to the issue of an East-West rapprochement in the cultural sense. The difficulty, he explains, springs from the totally different viewpoints on life and culture developed in the two hemispheres in the course of the ages, so that however sympathetic he may be towards things oriental, a westerner of sufficient culture finds it really difficult to appraise at their true value the creations of the Eastern, particularly the Indian mind. Everything here is "of the wrong

Page-29

shape", as in a wonderland. Confronted with a religion which seems to admit all possible kinds of faith and ritual within its fold, a religion without a fixed dogma, an infallible Papacy or Church, a fixed set of moral codes, a religion where "are temples, images, a priesthood, a mass of unintelligible rites and ceremonies, the daily repetition of Sanskrit Mantras and prayers, some of them of a prehistoric creation, a belief in all kinds of supraphysical beings and forces, saints, Gurus, holy days, vows, offerings, sacrifices, a constant reference of life to powers and influences of which there can be no physical evidence."¹¹ Face to face with monstrosities which the occidental mind has long over passed, our Western critic feels bewildered. He knows that it is this religion that governs the life of India's millions, this religion that takes its stand on a peculiar system of philosophy. This philosophy is a" subtly unsubstantial cloud-weaving; it turns away from life, nature, vital will and the effort of man on earth; it denies all value to life, it leads not towards the study of nature but away from it, it expels all volitional individuality, it preaches the unreality of the world detachment from terrestrial interests, the unimportance of the life of the moment compared with the endless chain of past and future existences. It is an enervating metaphysic tangled with false notions of pessimism, asceticism, karma and reincarnation..."¹²

SOME COMMON ERRORS

To read these comments one would imagine that in all Indian thought there was nothing but the nihilistic school of Buddhism and monistic illusionism of Shankar. With such a view of Indian religion and Indian philosophy, one can hardly be surprised to hear that "life is conceived as a shore less expanse in which generations rise and fall as helplessly and purposelessly as waves in mid-ocean, the individual is everywhere dwarfed and depreciated. The characters of drama and poetry are lifeless exaggerations or puppets of supernatural powers; the art is empty of reality, the whole history of the civilisation makes a drab, effete, melancholy picture. There is no power of life in this religion and this philosophy, there is no breath of life in this history, there is no colour of fife in this art and poetry; that is the total result of Indian culture..."¹³

Page-30

This in sum is the true judgment of the Western student of Indian culture, however well he might try to trim the harsh edge of this criticism.

This has led to a fatal misunderstanding of the greatest creations of the Indian mind—the Veda, the Upanishads, the Gita, the Maha-bharata,—and the total drift of the Indian achievement. The Veda, long considered by the Hindu as the fountainhead of his religion and philosophy is in this view nothing more than the primitive outpourings of rude barbarians; the Upanishads are the product of a revolt against the Vedic worship, with strange contributions from early civilised Dravidian inhabitants of a pre-Vedic India; the Gita is a hopelessly confused amalgam of diverse systems of thought; the Mahabharata an early war ballad "worked up, deterred and defaced by those wicked Brahmins, who are made responsible for all the literary and other enormities which have been discovered by the bashful."¹⁴

Some of the strictures of these foreign critics are no doubt true, for "they have the immense advantage of attacking India when she is prostrate in the dust..., in a period of the eclipse of her civilisation when after at least two thousand years of the most brilliant and many-sided cultural activity she had for a time lost everything except the memory of her past and her long depressed and obscured but always living and now strongly reviving religious spirit."¹⁵

TASKS OF INDIAN-SCHOLARSHIP

How are we to deal with this criticism ? "When we try to appreciate a culture and when that culture is the one in which we have grown up or from which we draw our governing ideals and are likely from over partiality to minimise its deficiencies or from over familiarity to miss aspects or values of it which would strike an unaccustomed eye, it is always useful as well as interesting to know how others see it. It will not move us to change our viewpoint for theirs, but we can get fresh light from a study of this kind and help our self-introspection."¹⁶

It is a fact that "Indian scholars have not been able to form themselves into a great and independent school of learning, due to two causes: the miserable scantiness of the mastery in Sanskrit provided

Page-31

by our universities, crippling to all but born scholars, and that lack of a sturdy independence which makes them over ready to defer to European authority. These, however, are difficulties easily surmountable."¹⁷

But in order to achieve success in this field, "we have to combine the laboriousness of the Pundit, the slow and patient conscientiousness of the physical scientist abhorrent of a too facile conclusion and the subtlety of the psychologist.. .."¹⁸ Indian scholarship can easily acquire these qualities, and bring them to bear on the task of Indian research, as Sri Aurobindo himself has done and shown the way.

"In our past", he says, "we must distinguish all that was great, essential, elevating, vitalising, illuminating, victorious, effective. And in that again we must distinguish what was close to the permanent, essential spirit and the persistent law of our cultural being and separate from it what was temporary and transiently formulative.. ..But we have to distinguish too what was deficient, ill-grasped, imperfectly formulated or only suited to the limiting needs of the age or un favorable circumstances....Afterwards we have to make a comparison of this past with our present and to understand the causes of our decline and seek the remedy of our shortcomings and ailments....Neither flattering or glossing over our downfall nor fouling our nest to win the applause of the stranger, we have to fix too our eyes with still firmer attention on our elements of strength, our abiding potentialities, our dynamic impulses of self-renewal."¹⁹

STANDARDS OF JUDGMENT

Here we get charted out as on a map the lines we have to follow in a true and full assessment of the Indian tradition.

There are in every great culture three things one must distinguish: its inmost spirit, the forms in which this spirit expresses itself, and finally the ebbing of the spirit and deterioration of the forms ultimately leading to decay and death, unless the culture has sufficient vitality to renew itself in time and enter into another cycle of development. "If we would understand the essential spirit of Indian civilisation, we must go back to its first formative period, the early epoch of the Vedas and the Upanishads, its heroic creative seed-time. If we would study

Page-32

the fixed forms of the spirit and discern the thing it eventually realised as the basic rhythm of its life, we must look with an observing eye at the later middle period of the Shastras and the classic writings, the age of philosophy and science, legislation and political and social theory and many-sided critical thought, religious fixation, art, sculpture, painting, architecture. If we would discover the limitations, the points at which it stopped short and failed to develop its whole or its true spirit, we must observe closely the unhappy disclosure of its period of decline. If finally, we would discover the directions it is likely to follow in its transformation, we must try to fathom what lies beneath the still confused movements of its crisis of renascence."²⁰

Through it all there runs an abiding principle that it would not do to miss in any just valuation of the Indian achievement. "The whole aim of a great culture is to lift man up to something which at first he is not, to lead him to knowledge though he starts from an unfathomable ignorance, to teach him to live by his reason...,by the law of good and unity.. .,by a law of beauty and harmony.. .,by some high law of his spirit, though at present he is egoistic, material, unspiritual, engrossed by the needs and desires of his physical being."²¹

It is not claimed that India succeeded where all other civilisations so far evolved by man have failed. India made a serious attempt to progress on all of these lines. "But the last of these aims, as conceived by ancient India, is the highest of all because it includes and surpasses all the others. To have made the attempt is to have ennobled the life of the race; to have failed in it is better than if it had never at all been attempted; to have achieved even a partial success is a great contribution to the future possibilities of the human being."²²

Each of the great cultures has made a distinct contribution to the human advance. "Greece developed to a high degree the intellectual reason and the sense of form and harmonious beauty. Rome founded firmly strength and power and patriotism and law and order; modern Europe has raised to enormous proportions practical reason, science and efficiency and economic capacity; India developed the spiritual mind working on the other powers of man and exceeding them, the intuitive reason, the philosophical harmony of the Dharma informed by the' religious spirit, the sense of the eternal and the infinite......."²³

Page-33

All these are important elements in man's future growth; India's share has been not entirely negligible.

SPRINGS OF VITALITY

India has not only added immense riches to the human endeavour; she has also shown an amazing power of persistence through the ages, which no other ancient culture can parallel, perhaps with the sole exception of China. An explanation is to be found for this millennial longevity.

"A people," says Sri Aurobindo, "a great human collectivity, is in fact an organic living being, with a collective, or father...a common or communal soul, mind and body. The life of the society, like the physical life of the individual human being, passes through a cycle of birth, growth, youth, ripeness and decline....But the collective being has too the capacity of renewing itself, of a recovery and a new cycle........A people which learns to live consciously...in the soul and spirit may not at all exhaust itself, may not end by disappearance......And even if at any time it appears to be on the point of absolute exhaustion and dissolution, it may recover by the force of the spirit and begin another and perhaps a more glorious cycle. The history of India has been that of the life of such a people."²⁴

The spiritual motive being throughout its history the one that dominated the life of the Indian people, it is no wonder that India has managed to survive so long, and recuperated her energies from time to time by a series of new spiritual movements: "the high Vedic beginning, the grand spiritual stir of the Upanishads, the wide flood of Buddhism, Vedanta, Sankhya, the Puranic and Tantric religions, the flowering of Vaishnavism and Shaivism in the Southern kingdoms,"²⁵ and later, during the period of decline, the great efforts of the saints of Maharashtra, Bengal and the North. India owes the miracle of national survival in the face of the Islamic invasion, to Shankara, Ramanuja, Kabir, Chaitanya, Tukaram, Ramdas and Guru Govind, than to any formal compendia of the old Shastra.²⁶

"Whenever death claims his portion, the Hindu race takes refuge in the source of all immortality, plunges itself into the fountain of spirit and comes out renewed for a fresh term of existence...."²⁷ It is

Page-34

this peculiar power that has enabled her in the period of her vigour to assimilate into herself without detriment to her spirit all that flowed in from lesser cultures abroad; she even sought, in the period of her decline, to develop a sort of approach ment with the uncompromising creed of Islam, in the concept of alakh niranjan developed by Guru Nanak; the times were not yet ripe for this kind of spiritual synthesis in the light of the ancient Vedanta.²⁸

This continual resort to the spiritual foundations of our being gave to ancient Indians a power of calm thought, and a capacity of looking straight at the facts of life which enabled them to build lasting edifices. "In the large heroic age of this Aryan nation, they did not make so much noise or indulge in vital excitement as we do. Whatever enterprise they took in hand lasted unabated for centuries........Our ancestors went through vast sea of thought, received a vast knowledge, erected a vast civilisation........"²⁹ But this was not done in the way of the moderns who would divorce reason from life and build on the basis of abstract principles without considering in full the needs of life and its laws. If one wants to arrive at something true and lasting, whether in thought or in social or political institutions, one has to look at fife and learn from it. This is what the ancient Indian thinkers on society and polity did. They did not "construct" anything out of the reasoning intelligence, but merely "shaped, developed, systematised" in order to prepare "a strongly stable vital order natural to the mind, instincts and life intuitions of the Indian people."³⁰

A SUMMARY OF ACHIEVEMENT

"Thus founded, thus trained, the ancient Indian race grew to astonishing heights of culture and civilisation; it lived with a noble, well-based ample and vigorous order and freedom; it developed a great literature, sciences, arts, crafts, industries; it rose to the highest possible ideals and no mean practice of knowledge and culture, of arduous greatness and heroism, of kindness, philanthropy and human sympathy and oneness; it laid the inspired basis of wonderful spiritual philosophies; it examined the secrets of external nature and discovered and lived the boundless and miraculous truths of the inner being; it fathomed self and understood and possessed the world..."³¹

Page-35

REFERENCES

1. The Foundations of Indian Culture, 1.3

2. Ibid., 1.2

3. The Ideal of Human Unity, Chapter

4. The Foundations of Indian Culture, 1.2

5. Ibid., 1.1

6. Ibid., 1.2

7. Ibid.,

8. Arya, "A Preface on National Education",

9. Idid, "Sanskrit Research",

10. Vyasa and Valmiki, "The Problem of the Mahabharata

11. The Foundations of Indian Culture, 11.4

12. Ibid., 11.3

13. Ibid., 11.5

14. Vyasa and Valmiki, "Notes on the Mahabharata"

15. The Foundations of Indian Culture, 11.3

16. Ibid., 11.1

17. Vyasa and Valmiki, "The Problem of the Mahabharata

18. Arya, "Sanskrit Research",

19. The Foundations of Indian Culture, 1.3

20. Ibid., 11.6

21. Ibid., 111.4

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid., in. 16

25. Ibid., 11. 4

26. Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 1953, "On Original Thinking"

27. Bandemataram, 1908, "The Asiatic Role"

28. Advent, February,

29. Letter to Barin (in Bengali),

30. The Foundations of Indian Culture, 111. 16

31. Ibid., 11. 6

SANAT K. BANERJI

(To be concluded)

Page-36

THE DETERMINISM OF THE PAST AND THE FREEDOM OF THE FUTURE

THE SUBCONSCIOUS AND THE SUPERCONSCIOUS

WHETHER in nature or in human life when we seek the cause of " an event, to understand and to control it, we normally look for an antecedent event i.e. we peep into the past. In Science, this attitude has been formulated into a basic law, which says that the cause is the invariable and the unconditional antecedent. An antecedent, of course, is the cause, but not any antecedent, but the one that is invariable i.e. always precedes the event in question and not only occasionally and is also 'unconditional' i.e. the cause and effect do not depend upon a third thing for their happening. For example, day and night both depend on the earth's revolutions on its axis and, therefore, they cannot be said to be the cause and the effect, even though they invariably precede each other.

The philosophical thought behind this attitude, whether of the layman or of the scientist, is that each thing has a form and character and that its behaviour is in accordance with it and that the form and character depend upon what it has slowly become in interaction with other things. Applied to human life, we would say, we are what we have become and our becoming is determined by what we have lived through and experienced, what we have thought, felt, willed and done, how we have acted and reacted.

All this is, one might say, an obvious truth and the same has been embodied in the law of causality of Science so far as nature is concerned and the law of Karma of Indian philosophy so far as human life and behaviour are concerned. One represents the determinism of nature and the other of human life. In the latter case, the determinism is a little modified by the consideration that man has also the capacity to build up new Karma while reaping the old Karmas.

All this thought is rooted in the nature of the evolutionary process. All nature is a slow growth from matter to life and from life to mind. And as we see this long process, we find new things emerging

Page-37

in slow graded forms from forms preceding them. Therefore the past determines the future.

This is how evolution has been conceived in the West. But the beginnings of life and of mind present serious problems. We are not able to say how life actually began and how rational thinking started.

Sri Aurobindo says that we should not limit ourselves to a delineation of the process of changes, but consider the phenomenon of evolution as a whole. If we do so and do it deeply enough, then we will possibly be able to appreciate that the evolutionary movement as a whole is a movement from a base or an initial position of a disorganised stuff into greater and greater organisations. But unless the principle of organisation were inherently present in the original stuff, how could successive organisations at all emerge. And does this inherent possibility in the original stuff not posit the existence of this principle in its own full right, of which it must be an effect. Thus evolution becomes a collaboration between the Higher and the lower. There is a movement going from below upwards egged on by the higher present in it in a latent form. And there is the second action of the Higher on the lower drawing it constantly towards its own full expression. Of course, the lower disorganised stuff also needs an explanation, as to whether it exists in its own right or is somehow a derivative from the Higher. The very fact that it has a mass: ive impulse towards the Higher would suggest that it has a strong affinity and kinship with that. And philosophically it is conceived to be so. Thus ultimately there is one original Reality, which is an integral unity, the highest organisation, essentially a conscious principle.

The universe is thus the working out of a Highest Supreme Consciousness and the unconscious stuff on which the evolutionary process rests and which already contains it in some form. The evolutionary process thus becomes a systematic philosophy and no longer merely a description of the series of changes taking place in the apparent forms of things.

The determinism of nature and of human life will really need to be viewed in the light of this philosophy of evolution. In this connection, it will be useful to consider the growth of the forward-looking attitude in nature. Matter in its atomic form and general behaviour already presents an elaborate organisation. But its action is all a

Page-38

determinism. It is only with life that the incipient forward-looking attitude comes into being. All attention, it is said, is prospective i.e. it involves an interestedness or apprehension of the coming event or the future. With the rational thinking of man, the capacity to plan elaborately for the future comes into a large play. And yet his life is predominantly determined by the attitude that looks to the past, relies" on habits, social and individual and the external environment. He is rarely able to live by an ideal and for an ideal, by and for a future possibility.

However, in the course of yogic development, when an individual discovers his central spiritual reality, the psychic being as Sri Aurobindo calls it, and lives in it and by it, he becomes vividly aware of the Supreme Consciousness and turns all towards It and begins to live more and more by It and for It. Then the determinism of the Lower, the original evolutionary impulsion, the past, tends to become less and less and the influence of the Higher, the new possibility, the future realisation becomes more and more. The determinism of the external and the past always carries a sense of compulsion, a necessity, a limitation. Inanimate matter is all subject to external action. It is, in fact, governed by what Newton called the first law of motion or the law of inertia, viz., that a thing remains at rest or in a state of continuous motion unless acted upon by an external force to act otherwise. There is no spontaneous action in inanimate matter. In life, spontaneous action and a degree of inwardness arises, but it is yet dependent on the environment. In the self-consciousness of mind, its self-awareness and the consequent capacities of conscious remembering, imagining, thinking, voluntary reflection, choice and decision, the principle of inwardness reaches a high level and yet mind is by nature environment-dependent, draws its normal material of awareness through the senses from the environment. But the psychic being has a complete sense and feeling of self-existence, of self-sufficiency, of its own inherent joy, of its. uninterrupted and inviolable continuity of life and of an innate confidence of mastery over the environment, immediate— of its own mind, life and body and farther — of the life and existence all around. At this level, spontaneity comes to its own and freedom has its full and free play. All sense of external control, whether of the immediate situation or of the past situations lived through and

Page-39

carried along in one's nature and character slowly drops off as the emergence of the inmost fact of life and the building up of a full identification with it and a consequent misidentification with the body, life and mind proceeds.

The essential attitude of the psychic being towards total existence is that of an inner relation and interchange with the Supreme Consciousness, the inner fact in the universal phenomenon. Our "outer personality has a similar relation with the apparent universal reality. The apparent nature is a field of concatenation of cause and effect and external determination. If we live in our outer personality, we share in the working of apparent nature and are subject to its determinism. But when we live in our inmost fact of the psychic being, we enjoy the completeness of its self-existence and participate in the absolute consciousness of Universal Existence and thus enjoy freedom and mastery within ourselves and in our relations with the objective fact.

But our normal life is a slow growth out of matter and life under interactions of the environment and is, therefore, subject to it. We have only lately in our growth slightly become aware of the possibility of a life of freedom and inner spontaneity and inner self-existence. How are we to get it in the full measure? The Mother has said, "Blessed are those who take a leap towards the future." Evidently, if we can see this possibility clearly and vividly enough, feel moved by it, then it can be easy enough to take a leap towards it, shaking off or disowning the character and the personality created and governed by the determinism of nature and past life.

The most important thing is obviously to be able to see the possibility and to recognise and appreciate the wonderful implications of it. If this is heartily done through repeated aspiration, contemplation, adoration and anticipated enjoyment, then the will to take the leap will possibly acquire strength. And off and on, the individual might find himself in a full mood of taking a leap into that marvellous realm of spiritual life and complete freedom and invulnerable existence. Let us hope that this happens to many of us.

The determinism of nature and the freedom of the spirit are connected with the Subconscious and the Superconscious of our personality. But what are the Subconscious and the Superconscious ? The

Page-40

Subconscious is the whole life of our past experiences carried along in us as our present personality and character. But this vast body of past experiences abides in us at a much diminished consciousness and we are not aware of its contents at our normal waking consciousness. It is, therefore, called Sub consciousness. We might recall the experience of our becoming aware of the stopping of a clock in the room, while being unaware of its going on. Surely we were somehow aware of its going on, otherwise how could we become aware of its stopping. The fact is that our awareness of its going on was subconscious, but when it stopped we became conscious of it, because of our interest in its going on.

To become aware of the Subconscious and its working is an achievement. It is an immense extension in ones self-awareness and then one can turn that vast body of past experiences to good use as also be on guard against the unhelpful experiences of the past. The psychologists talk of "tapping the Subconscious."

The experiences in the subconscious are not only of a lower degree of consciousness, but they are also not in an organised form. The subconscious is actually said to be "chaotic", since there are all kinds of experiences in it. In fact, the experiences as they occur at the conscious level are of all kinds, good, bad and indifferent. They are not harmonious, but much varied and contradictory. Now they are just allowed to drop off into the subconscious, without our exercising a careful discrimination and an attempt to coordinate and organise them. The result is the persistence of these contradictions and unpleasant nesses in us almost perpetually. And they continue to exert themselves and exercise their influence on our conscious level. We are so often sad without an identifiable cause. The reason possibly is that some unpleasantness of the past acquires through some favorable circumstances more than its usual intensity and we become sad without being able to identify it. But one who has an eye on his subconscious might be able to do so and thus soon liberate himself from its influence.

The subconscious is out whole past continuing to five with us and exercise its influence and determination on our present as also the future. To live under its determination is to continue to live as we have lived in the past more or less. This is the psychological foundation

Page-41

for the general opinion that the nature of man does not change.

The Superconscious, on the other hand, is the range of consciousness not yet realised at a particular level of evolution. The human consciousness is superconscious to the animal and a unified and an integrated consciousness is superconscious to the ordinary human consciousness, which is so subject to conflicts, divisions, vacillations and regrets. A unified and an integrated consciousness capable of wholeness in its quality and character and its action in thought, feeling and will is evidently a clear possibility indicated by the growth of consciousness at the animal and the human ranges of consciousness already covered by evolution.

The yogic pursuit, which intensively cultivates self-awareness, slowly brings the subconscious and the Superconscious into a direct relationship with the waking consciousness and makes them clearly observable. It is a great thing when that happens and it brings with it a wonderful feeling of self-knowledge, self-direction and self-mastery.

As the Subconscious is a thing of the past, so is the Superconscious a thing of the future. And as the subconscious means a perpetuation of the conflicts, contradictions, divisions and imperfections of the past, so the Superconscious means wholeness, integration, unity, effectivity and perfection in the varied activities of our mental life.

Ordinarily, man is unaware of his subconscious as well as his superconscious. He lives too much centred in the waking moment of the present, unconsciously controlled by the subconscious and occasionally and vaguely guided by his superconscious. But a conscious aspiration can change this scheme of ordinary life. If we generally become aware of these two other vast dimensions of personality and recognise their true qualities and then make up our minds to live for and by the Superconscious and take a hearty leap towards it, a most marvellous new dynamism of life can begin to function and radically change life. The call of the Mother is really to that effect.

INDRA SEN

 (A paper of the Tapogiri Seminar, 1971)

Page-42

THE SOCIOLOGICAL OUTLOOK

CHAPTER 2

THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN SOCIETY

I

TN the first chapter we saw that the individual has acquired the freedom to develop both according to the general law of Nature and the general law of his type (that is, obeying the group or mass law), and also according to the individual law of his being. But there is the conflict between the two,— the imperative demands of the collectivity on the one hand, and the natural demands of the individual on the other.

Yet it is the individual who can rise above the slower, mass mentality, and thus take the lead in the progress of society. Thus, as the individual grows conscious of his real being, nature and destiny, so society should provide the conditions of life and growth by which the individual—that is, all individuals according to their capacity—can progress towards perfection. This perfection will also be the perfection of the collectivity.

Freedom and harmony in society represent the two necessary spiritual principles of variation and oneness. There is the freedom of the individual as well as of the group. And there is the coordinated harmony of the individual's forces and of all the individuals in the group. To combine these two conditions of a healthy progression has been the effort of mankind throughout its history from the dawn of civilisation. But it is only as man develops in spiritual knowledge— the knowledge of the underlying unity between all men—that a firm basis can be established for the needed harmony between the individual and the group of which he is a part.

A step forward in this direction of greater harmony is achieved when any individual nation attains some illumination or intellectual mastery over the environment and thus adds something to human

Page-43

progress as a whole. Science is a universal knowledge which has, and must always have, this aim in view. The individual also can help in the general progress only when he can grow freely from within. This is a basic law of spirituality, and the way of true harmony, as well as of freedom.

The individual belongs not only to humanity but to the nation in which he is born, and from which he has sprung. It is the tendency of the individual to enrich himself with the largest possible material constantly assimilated and changed by the law of his individual nature into stuff of his growth and expression. The community or nation thus stands as intermediary between the individual and humanity. The nation exists for the one and the other, and to help them to fulfil each other.

The nation is therefore an aggregate life that expresses itself, and by this expression aids the development and destiny of mankind. Like the individual, it has a just claim against any attempt at domination by other nations or of attack. But the nation also, like the individual, must be open to mental or physical commerce and interchange with the rest of the world. This does not mean that the rule of another nature is imposed upon it by force.

The law of the individual is therefore to harmonise his life with the life of the social aggregate. The law for the community or nation is equally to perfect its corporate existence by a free development from within; but also to aid and be aided by the same free development of other communities and nations. Equally the law for humanity is to peruse its upward evolution towards the finding and expression of the divine Perfection in the type of mankind (according to the secret Will inherent in the spiritual evolution). A basic condition for this is the establishment of some form of union between nations and peoples of the world.

Naturally, this is an ideal which the human race is striving, though cumbrously, to attain. But however long it might take to attain this perfection, the direction must be fixed and the steps firm. Above all, men must have the wideness of knowledge and the flexibility of mind to follow the law of liberty and harmony, rather than the law of discord regimentation and compulsion.

Page-44

Let us now examine the development and progress of society, both past and present, from the point of view of evolution. For there is no doubt an evolution of Man which has emerged out of the dim past will continue into the future. It is not surprising to find that man's whole social development has really followed the evolutionary tendency,—that is, considering Man, the mental being, in face of both material problems and the problems of life.

It is the new science of spirituality which shows us that the biological evolution (and even the psychological evolution) are only a part of one movement which has a spiritual basis and motive. Evolution, in fact, is revealed to have a wide spiritual aim, for it is through spirituality that the perfection both of the individual and of the community can ultimately be attained. Experiments in spiritual living show that a dynamic spirituality can integrate man's rationalism, his aestheticism (or artistic endeavour), his ethicism (or religious ideal), as well as his complete life and physical being. It will equally reconcile and illumine his aspiration towards knowledge, his attraction towards beauty, his need of love, his urge towards perfection, and his demand for power and fullness of life. Thus a spiritualised society would be the ideal condition and natural aim.

From the point of view of the spiritual evolution it is seen that there are three broad stages of the social evolution. Thus, the human evolution starts with an infrarational stage, in which men have not yet learned to refer their life and action in its principles and its forms to the judgement of the clarified intelligence. Here men still act principally out of their instincts, impulses, spontaneous ideas, or obey a customary response to desire, need and circumstance.

The second stage is the rational age in which man's intelligence is developed. Reason here becomes the presiding motive of his thought, feeling and action. The third stage of the social evolution would thus move through a subjective phase towards a suprarational or spiritual age. Men will then be more conscious of the higher aims of life.

These stages are not rigidly marked off from each other in their action or time, but they co-exist in different parts of the earth al the

Page-45

same time. And, even in countries where the culture is highly developed in certain respects, acts of barbarism may break out and cause widespread destruction. Conversely, even in primitive and so-called savage societies there is often an artistic attainment of a high order, whether in music, painting or dance, and often a subtle insight into the nature of things,—for example, primitive medicine, which might in its own way be very effective.

Thus we should not exclude the fact that an infrarational period of human and social development had also some elements of reason and spirituality. So, the old Hebrew tribes,—as well as the Aryan tribes of Northern India, had their prophets and seers. Modern man has also lost much of the symbolical vision which some of these earlier tribes possessed. Present day man has to put aside much of his reasoning and intellect in order to see the real truths behind these symbols which require a degree of intuitive insight.

A relatively unmixed form of suprarational society was that of the early Greek civilisation of Athens (about the time of Pythagoras), as well as the old Aryan Indian culture (somewhat earlier, about the time of the Upanishads). But such isolated growths could not endure, because the bulk of mankind was not ready for the higher flights of thought and imagery which they produced. A basis of rationalism is necessary for stabilising the mass of society on that base.

The evolutionary movement of Nature, in fact, is toward a greater application of reason and spirituality on the general life of societies. We see this in the development of thought, reason and spirituality by exceptional individuals, as well as by exceptional communities or nations. But sooner or later that nation is endangered by the mass of infrarational humanity which surrounds it.

There are also forces within the communities themselves which influence the higher enlightened elements, so that they become mixed with the infrarational parts. It is only fresh waves of intellectual or spiritual enlightenment—in the form of a renaissance or other powerful wave of influence—which can revivify the failing life and help to bring about a broadening and an enlarging, and thus drive the dominant reason or spirituality deeper down into the infrarational mass.

N. PEARSON

Page-46

THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY

AN OUTLINE

CHAPTER 10

THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE

THE dominant trend of the nineteenth century was in the growth of the free, sovereign, democratically governed nation. This was the main result of the French Revolution in the international field, and this idea born of the Revolution has been accepted by America and Asia as well as Europe.

But before the idea of liberty could fully realise itself even in Europe, a new idea, based on equality, has come into the field—the idea of socialism.' Socialism plans to abolish the existing inequalities in society by means of state control and by the abrogation of many of the liberties of citizens.

Socialism grew in Europe out of an inner and outer necessity, out of circumstances created by war and the industrial revolution. It has now shown itself to be a feasible proposition, and it hopes to reconcile itself to the idea of democratic control.

Socialism developed first in nineteenth century Get many where its main idea, of a perfectly organised state, was given concrete shape. From Germany the idea has been spreading to other countries. The defeat of Germany in war will not stop the victory of its ideas.

But democracy and socialism are not the only ideas in the field; imperialism too is in the ascendant. Most of the European nations are in possession of empires, and the idea of empire has not yet been forsaken.

Page-47

Unless therefore the existing empires consent to grant a considerable measure of autonomy to their members, it is idle to hope for an early realisation of the ideal of a free grouping of nations; all that we can expect is a closer association among the free nations and the empires.

In the meanwhile some thought has already been given to creating some kind of close association among the nations of Europe. One such idea was that of the elimination of war by tightening the control of international law. This however will not be possible unless Europe comes under the control of some sort of federal government, becomes in fact a United States of Europe.

Such a federation, if it comes into being and manages to survive, will prove to be a retrograde step. It will lead to the creation of similar unions on a continental basis in Asia and America, whereas the world is getting ripe for a supra-continental unity.

Europe itself is trying to overpass the idea of continental solidarity. This was evidenced by the suggestion made during the War that the national or even the Pan-European idea should now be replaced by the sense of solidarity among all those nations, including those of America and Japan who accept the principles of European civilisation as the basis of their life.

Moreover, a United States of Europe would in effect mean the permanent domination of a great part of the world which is now under European control, and this is likely to be violently resisted by Asia and America.

Therefore, any feasible plan of world-union must include the entire world in its scope. The first form that it might take would be a union of the sovereign non-imperial nations with the empires that

Page-48

hold other nations in subjection. If these empires can manage to grant some kind of autonomy to their dependencies, then a further step will have been taken towards the ultimate goal of a free union of sovereign states.

(To be continued)

SANAT K. BANERJI

Page-49

REVIEWS

BENGALI-ENGLISH

Ahaituki Kripa: By Baidyanath Mullick. Price: Rs. 1.50. (Copies from Sri Aurobindo Pathamandir, 15, Bankim Chandra Street, Calcutta 12)

A haituki Kripā, Causeless Grace, is the apt title of a charming little book giving an account of the sudden turn in the life of the author following a catastrophe in the family and the solace and uplift he received from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother at that critical juncture. Written in Bengali and English it gives a vivid portrayal of the collective life in the Ashram in the thirties, the great occasions of Darshan which changed the lives of so many, and reproduces some of the letters written by Sri Baidyanatha Mullick and the replies he was privileged to receive from Sri Aurobindo.

Coming to the Ashram as he did in the wake of the untimely death of his wife, it is natural that one of the main questions he was to ask of Sri Aurobindo related to death. He questions, what is the cause of death ? Does death take place when the life-force of the jīva is exhausted? Or does the soul leave when its work in the present life is finished, the external circumstances being only incidental?

Sri Aurobindo answers: "Most people die before the vitality of the body is exhausted. It is due to many causes of which one is the destiny prepared by past lives, another the inner purpose or vitality of the present life being completed—but there are subtler and several reasons. Illness, accident, violence or other causes are only the exterior machinery."

Another important question is the dilemma which faces many an aspirant when the spiritual horizon dawns all of a sudden. Must one renounce life and retire in exclusive pursuit of the Divine? Should one abandon the responsibilities, family and other kinds, with which one is entrusted, by choice or by fate ? The author, evidently a keen student of the Gita, quotes chapter and verse on action—karma;

Page-50

inaction—akarma; self-law-svadharma; duty-kartavyam karma, and what not, confesses his predicament and seeks guidance. Sri Aurobindo's answer is forthright:

"Everything depends upon the aim you put before you. If for the realisation of one's spiritual aim it is necessary to give up the ordinary life of the Ignorance (Sansara) it must be done; the claim of the ordinary life cannot stand against that of the spirit.

"If a Yoga of Works alone is chosen as the path, then one may remain in the Sansara but it will be freely, as a field of action and not from any sense of obligation; for the Yogin must be free inwardly from all ties and attachments. On the other hand, there is no necessity to live the family life — one can leave it and take any kind of works as a field of action."

"All are not so circumstanced that they can cut loose from the ordinary life; they accept it therefore as a field of experience and self-training in the earlier stages of sadhana. But they must take care to look at it as a field of experience only and to get free from the ordinary desires, attachments and ideas which usually go with it, otherwise, it becomes a drag and hindrance on their sadhana. When one is not compelled by circumstances, there is no necessity to continue the ordinary life."

Does not one get tamasic and lazy when one gives up the active life of the world ? Not necessarily, says Sri Aurobindo: "One becomes tamasic by leaving the ordinary actions and life only if the vital is so accustomed to draw its motive of energy from ordinary consciousness and its desires and activities that if it loses them, it loses all joy and charm and energy of existence. But if one has a spiritual aim and an inner life and the vital part accepts them, then it draws its energies from within and there is no danger of one's being tamasic."

In another interesting letter Sri Mullick refers to the delight and happiness he gets in the presence of the Mother and wonders why he does not feel the same joy and inspiration from Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo's reply contains a profound truth in one sentence: "Whatever one gets from the Mother, comes from myself also—there is no difference, so too if I give anything, it is by the Mother's force that it goes to the sadhaka."

Both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are, as they have told

Page-51

us repeatedly and as we have often experienced so vividly, One Consciousness embodied in two forms for the purposes of the Divine Work which is to manifest and establish on Earth the Truth Supra-mental.

And there are more questions, natural and pertinent to every newcomer to the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. What exactly is the psychic being ? What is the vital being, is it what we feel as the I ? Do the psychic being and the vital being correspond to the famous two birds on the common Tree in the Upanishad ?

An interesting book readily welcome to the growing literature on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

M. P. PANDIT

Japasutram by Swami Pratyagatmananda Saraswati. Publishers: Ganesh & Co. (Madras) Private Ltd., Madras-r-r. Price: Rs. 15/-

We understand that Swami Pratyagatmananda Saraswati wrote in Sanskrit over five hundred original Sutras, adding to them over two thousand original Sanskrit Karikas along with a comprehensive commentary in Bengali and that the whole work was published in six volumes as Japasutram years ago. The present work consists of the short resume of Japasutram written by the Swamiji himself in English in 1961 along with an enlarged version of the same resume and certain other articles bearing on the subject by Swamiji competent followers.

Japa is generally understood as the muttering or repetition of a Mantra or a name, done with a prayerful attitude. Here, Japa is defined as "a way of ascent to Supreme Realisation and as a coming back to one's own real being from its exile into the lower realms of being and behaviour". The rationale and the significance of Japa can be appreciated only when one understands the metaphysics and science of sound.

Sages all over the world affirm that creation proceeds from sound. When the Transcendent Absolute desires to manifest out of its own volition, there is an urge, a throb, a stir which immediately starts a series of vibrations. These take the form of sound which is the precursor of the creation of objects. An object is nothing but a form

Page-52

created by vibrations, by a flux of forces. Everything is made up of constant movement and the whole cosmic rhythmic movement can be viewed, says Swamiji, with the aid of the imagery of a Great Wheel. The wheel has three parts, the centre of the wheel, the nave, the navel, nābhi, the spokes arā radiating from the centre and the circumference or periphery, nemi. Everything in the cosmos has a central nābhi, the radiations from it and a particular periphery of operation. As an object is the form of sound, the nave is the bindu, sound concentrated in a drop which radiates like the spokes of a wheel into nāda over an arc of circumference kāla. Thus, everything is constituted of nābhi; arā and nemi or in other words bindu nāda and kāla.

Swamiji goes a step further and declares that we have to get at the heart of the matter and everything in this world has its own hrllekhā, heart-diagram. This is the immutable seed of sound bijaksara. Vibration is the mantra, the form pattern created by the vibration is the yantra and the field of operation is the tantra. And Japa is a process by which one proceeds from the periphery to the spokes and then to the nave of the great wheel, from kāla to nāda and then to bindu. The physical method is to start a movement, by the repetition of a Mantra, if necessary with the help of rolling a rosary or rotating a wheel as the Tibetans do. Japa is a means of going from the world of appearances to the real crux, the heart of the matter, from bhāsa to bhāna as the Swamiji calls it.

In a striking study of the significance of the ndsadiya Sukta in the Rig Veda, Swamiji points out that the primal darkness covering the darkness has involved in it the light to come. Drawing a parallel from the Puranic imagery of Vishnu sleeping on his serpent-couch in the milky ocean, Swamiji explains how Vak creates the worlds. The all-pervasive principle Vishnu rests on infinity, ananta, stretched on the inconscient ocean and has his superconscient slumber yoganidrā. From his nābhi, navel, shoots forth the lotus, the symbol of un fold ment with Brahma, the Word on it, Brahma, the Vedic name for Word is Prajapati, the Creator. But before he creates, before the Sound manifests, he is confronted by obstructions, the hostiles Madhu and Kaitabha who come out of the ear-wax kama mala of Vishnu. Just as wax obstructs the transmission of sound in the ear, these hostiles obstruct the free movement of Brahrna, the sound that creates,

Page-53

Brahma goes to his source, the nave of the Supreme, concentrates on hrllekhā and prays to the Great Measurer Mahāmāyā who stirs the pervasive principle Vishnu into action. The obstructions are annihilated and the sound surges forth freely creating the worlds.

When sound creates, life appears. This is the dual poise in which everything is cast—Vak and Prana, Shakti, and Siva, Prakriti and Purusha, having their incessant play in all created things. The success of Japa lies in unifying Vak with Prana. Then the very breath flows in the rhythm of the Mantra. This leads us on to the fourfold division of Vak as para, the Supreme unmanifest turned towards manifestation, paśyanti, the seeing word which perceives the coming creation, madhyama, the intermediate stage and the vaikhāri, articulated sound. Yak as Vaikhari is represented by language and the letters of the alphabet by which the language is articulated, uarnamālā, Each letter is a Varna, belongs to a colour scheme of the white Radiance of Yak. Mantra consists of letters, no doubt; but these are articulated expressions of the sound heard in the inner audition of the Risi, of the Truth revealed in the secret depths of his being. The mystery of Creative Harmony, chandas; is caught in the vibrations of the Mantra which create the form, sound-body of the luminous god-head, devatā. Apart from Risi, chandas and devatā, Mantra has viniyoga, field of application. The Mantra of Mantras is the Pranava Om with its letters A U M and the unexpressed ardha mantra, evolving measure. So it is prefixed to all Mantras.

Mantra is a mere combination of letters if it is not imparted by a Guru, if the mantra caitanya, the consciousness packed in the Vaikhari Yak is not aroused by the mantra-siddha, If the Guru's Grace is there, one can in doing Japa, pass on from the articulated word to the intermediate region, madhyama, then to the perception embodied in the Mantra, paśyanti and ultimately to the Supreme poise para. In a Japamala, the rosary of beads, there is a bead bigger than all the other beads known as meru which denotes the end of the count and should not be crossed. Swamiji says that there is a limit kāstha which should not be transgressed, a climax meru which should not be crossed in Japa. For example, one should know where to stop in Vaikhari Japa. Then only, having known the meru, the claimax, one will know the sandhi, the link between Vaikhari and Madhyama and

Page-54

then arrive at the setu, the bridge that closes the gap between the two states. Otherwise one will be lost in the mechanical round of articulated Japa. For, the consummation of Japa is Ajapa, Supreme Silence.

The whole book bears eloquent testimony to the fervour of the author to apply "the method of basic mathematical analysis and logical reasoning" to the field of mysticism and philosophical thought. In the process, the author is obliged to interpret and throw light on hidden significances; and like all etymologists, down from the old Yaska of the Nirukta fame, he also provides in certain places ingenious and impossible interpretations; but this should not in any way detract from the signal contribution the Swamiji has made to the field of spiritual literature with such luminous insight and critical acumen.

S. SHANKARANARAYANAN

Principles of Tantra: By Sir John Woodroffe. Fourth edition. 2 Vols. (pp. 953 ). Price: Rs. 40/-. Publishers: Ganesh & Co. Madras Private Ltd., Madras 17.

First published in 1914, this rendering in English of the voluminous treatise Tantratattva of Sri Sivachandra Vidyamava Bhattacharya has deservedly run into four editions. The original in Bengali is translated by Sri Jnanendralal Majumdar, revised by Sir John Woodroffe who has added helpful explanatory notes. The work carries an elaborate Introduction to the first part by Woodroffe and a powerful, convincing Introduction to the second by Sri Barada Kanta Majumdar.

In their Introductions both Woodroffe and Majumdar bring out the salient features of Tantra Shastra and rebut much of the unthinking and ill-informed criticism that has been voiced in many quarters. They explain how the Tantra is not a revolt but a continuation of the Veda. Sri Aurobindo has shown how the Tantra takes up the esoteric tradition of the ancient Veda and goes on to develop it in terms suitable to a later-day humanity. The Tantra is a practical science, sādhanā śāstra, and the practicing gets convincing proof of its truth at each step of his sādhanā. One does not have to accept any Doetrlne on faith only. Further, the system is catholic and open to all, irrespective

Page-55

of caste or sex. Sir John points out how the woman has been given the right to be a Guru, a feature which is not found even in the modern West.

The main contents of the work deal with the relation between the Veda and the Tantra, the principles of Siva, Shakti, Guru, Mantra, Worship—with all its apparatus, physical and psychological—and the requirements of successful Sadhana. The unique nature of the goal which is both mukti

"Yoga, which liberates, and Bhoga (enjoyment), which chains down, have been treated as though they were poles asunder in other schools of thought, which make it incumbent upon the pursuer of the one to shun the other as one would shun a deadly cobra. The effect of this has been referred to more than once in this essay. The Tantra Shastra reconciles the two, not only in theory, but in practice. The testimony of thousands of Tantrik Yogis from remote antiquity corroborates its truth.

"According to the eight-limbed Yoga process, Kula-kundalini can be united in the thousand-petalled lotus with Parasiva. This is the union of Siva and Shakti, and the fluid arising from this union is wine which the Yogi drinks." (Pp. 151—2nd vol.)

Beautifully produced, these two volumes give a bird's-eye view of the history of Indian Religion and Culture and present the tantra in its proper perspective as the custodian of the fundamentals of Hinduism deriving from the dateless Veda.

Prem Yoga: By Paramanand Swamp Shree Champakbhai. Publishers: Paramanand Prakashan Mandir, 72, Nagindas Master Road, Bombay. Pp. 175. Price: Rs. 4/-

A happy collection of discourses of the author on the 15th Chapter of the Gita, as also three talks on topics germane to spiritual life, e. g, Guru, Sat-sang, Love for God, attitude of the Sadhaka etc.

Page-56

He illustrates his precepts from his own experiences as also from the lives of saints like Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.

Sri Champakbhai brings out in simple language the significance of the Ashwatha Tree with which the 15th Chapter of the Gita opens.The cosmic tree appears in the Upanishad also and forms an important symbol-concept in the Indian tradition. We may profitably quote from Sri Aurobindo on this subject:

"This tree of cosmic existence has no beginning and no end, nanto na cadih, in space or in time; for it is eternal and imperishable, avyaya. The real form of it cannot be perceived by us in this material world of man's embodiment, nor has it any apparent lasting foundation here; it is an infinite movement and its foundation is above in the supreme of the Infinite. Its principle is the ancient sempiternal urge to action, praortti, which for ever proceeds without beginning or end from the original Soul of all existence, adyam purusam yatah praorttih prasrta purāni. Therefore its original source is above, beyond Time in the Eternal, but its branches stretch down below and it extends and plunges its other roots, well-fixed and clinging roots of attachment and desire with their consequences of more and more desire and an endlessly developing action, plunges them downward here into the world of men. The hymns of the Veda are compared to its leaves and the man who knows this tree of the cosmos is the Veda-knower. And here we see the sense of that rather disparaging view of the Veda or at least of the Vedavada, which we had to notice at the beginning. For the knowledge the Veda gives us is a knowledge of the gods, of the principles and powers of the cosmos, and its fruits are the fruits of a sacrifice which is offered with desire, fruits of enjoyment and lordship in the nature of the three worlds, in earth and heaven and the world between earth and heaven. The branches of this cosmic tree extend both below and above, below in the material, above in the supraphysical planes; they grow by the Gunas of Nature, for the triple Guna is all the subject of the Vedas, traigunya uisays oeddh: The Vedic rhythms, chandamsi, are the leaves and the sensible objects of desire supremely gained by a right doing of sacrifice are the constant budding of the

Page-57

foliage. Man, therefore, so long as he enjoys the play of the Gunas and is attached to desire, is held in the coils of Pravritti, in the movement of birth and action, turns about constantly between the earth and the middle planes and the heavens and is unable to get back to his supreme spiritual infinitudes. This was perceived by the sages. To achieve liberation they followed the path of nivrtti or cessation from the original urge to action, and the consummation of this way is the cessation of birth itself and a transcendent status in the highest supracosmic reach of the Eternal. But for this purpose it is necessary to cut these long-fixed roots of desire by the strong sword of detachment and then to seek for the highest goal whence, once having reached it, there is no compulsion of return to mortal life. To be free from the bewilderment of this lower Maya, without egoism, the great fault of attachment conquered, all desires stilled, the duality of joy and grief cast away, always to be fixed in a pure spiritual consciousness, these are the steps of the way to that supreme Infinite. There we find the timeless being which is not illumined by sun or moon or fire, but is itself the light of the presence of the eternal Purusha."

The Mission of Philosophy: By Prof. M. Hiriyanna. Publishers: Kavyalaya, Mysore. Pp. 78. Price: Rs. 7.50

Prof. Hiriyanna was a leading thinker in philosophy, ethics, literary art and culture. His judgment and views always commanded attention and it is an intellectual treat to go through the series of essays collected in this slender volume under the connecting title of The Misson of Philosophy.

Philosophy, says the writer, is the connecting and fulfilling link between Science and Religion "Philosophy, like religion but unlike science, is interested in the higher values; again like science but unlike religion, it is extremely wary in its investigations. There is thus a conflict between religion and science, and philosophy bridges the gulf between them." He notes: "The function of philosophy is thus twofold: On the one hand, it must envisage the ideal as best it can,

Page-58

utilising all the data of experience known; and, on the other, it must devise a suitable means of effecting this result; or, in other words, it should determine the precise place which the satisfaction of natural impulses should occupy in relation to man's higher aspirations and define the relation between empirical and spiritual values. Thus the aim of philosophy is both theoretical and practical. It is concerned with the ascertainment of the nature of philosophic truth and ethical goodness, the two chief among the higher values; and its final aim is the realisation, with their aid, of the highest value of perfection."

There are many other important questions that are considered with cogent analysis: Is duty only a means to an end or an end in itself? How is it that religions which are meant to bring man nearer God, the fount of Harmony and Peace, have led to intolerance and conflict ? What is the precise significance of Ideals in life ? How far does philosophy help in the formulation and realisation of ideals ? Is ethics self-sufficient or does it need the help of philosophy to be an effective force in life ?

Throughout these studies philosophy has been considered as a fine product of the thinking mind shedding light on the various branches of human knowledge, bridging them, completing them and generally helping to lift up human life from the lowly plains of Nature in Ignorance to the heights of the sattwic mind. Its role as the intellectual mouthpiece of spiritual experience and wisdom is hinted rather than treated.

The book clarifies many concepts in the realm of philosophy and compels systematic thinking.

M. P. PANDIT

Pagal Haranath: By Dr. U. C. Khambholja, Publishers: Sri Kusum Haranath Mission, Umreth. Pp. 316. Price: Rs. 4/-

A collection of essays and reminiscences and sketches of the life and work of 'Pagal' Haranath. The author gives a rapid account of the humble beginnings of Haranath, the sudden change that came over him at a critical period in his life and his subsequent ministry of divine Love.

Page-59

The book would appeal better with judicious editing and revision.

M. P. P.

HINDI

Vidyapati: By Dr. Shivaprasad Singh. Publishers: Lokabharati Prakashan, Lokabharati Prakashan, I5-A, Mahatma Gandhi Marg, Allahabad. Pp. 300 . Price: Rs. 12.50 (Students' edition Rs. 8.50)

Vidyapati is the first to bring Krishna poetry to the masses, close to their own language, their own thoughts and emotions. This poet who lived in the 14th century A.D., is called the nightingale of Maithili and he wrote in hi s native tongue Avahatta. His songs came to be adored by Sri Chaitanya; they are spontaneous outpourings of Love for the Divine and carry a unique sweetness in them.

The author, Dr. Shivaprasad Singh, has in this remarkable study in Hindi (now running its fourth edition) dwelt upon the life and poetry of Vidyapati, his attitude to nature, religion, his bequest to the masses and influence on succeeding Krishna literature up to the age of Tagore. Two chapters are added in this edition on the poet's conception of Radha and Krishna, the twin formulations of the One for purposes of the divine play. Dr. Singh describes how Vidyapati's Radha, though growing in love, is not fully evolved in the purer heights of perfect Love; she is drowned in the seas of viraha, pain of separation. He also points out that the poet is concerned only with the Love aspect of Krishna the Avatar, and not with hi s other glories in manifestation.

A scholarly, informative and discriminating study of Vidyapati.

 SADHANA

Marxian Mirage: By Satyavrata Patel. Publishers: New Horizon Publishers, Baroda, pp. 225, Price: Rs. 5/-

'The Marxian Mirage' is devoted to an enquiry into the origin, nature and ideal of Marxism. In a very detailed scrutiny of its very

Page-60

roots, the author subjects its philosophy, economics, basic assumptions of human nature, methodology, principles as well as its practice as obtains in countries where it is claimed to be implemented to a thorough cross examination. The able discussion is very neatly presented in summary by a chapter written as a dialogue between Capitalism and Communism each defending its fundamentals and denouncing the other's claims.

On property he devotes a chapter and arrives at the conclusion that private property is essential and in the famous words of Lincoln appeals to produce more instead of depriving the already created ones. He does not concede that Marx was original enough, much less Marxism. It is a "glib rehashing the state but current commonplaces and platitude of his age". Nor is communism a great discovery of Marx. It is "an aberration of human mind, a mind driven to the lunatic fringe by the stress and strain of life."

Man's salvation lies, he says, in 'self-knowledge where man is his own giver.' The welfare-state, state capitalism and their like are gimmicks to catch the eye of the unenlightened, he declares.

The writer has chosen to couch his narrative in story language which he says was consciously employed. No creed, however crude, need be denounced in strong terms. Such employment reveals only the mental bent of the writer. All great human movements progressive or otherwise have been preceded by great thinkers who have really given birth to them. Man in organising the functions of collective existence slowly moved from collective management to individual ruler ship. In the second phase there appears to be a decentralising bent of a higher order, perhaps it may culminate in self-knowledge making man the most powerful centre of social administration. In this long process of moving towards the centre and away from it communism found itself at a necessary or inevitable stage next to democracy, though in implementation it degenerated ending in failure. It is difficult to subscribe to the view of the writer when he feels that the very edifice of the communist theory had its origin in Marx's abysmal poverty and inability to secure employment. Besides being an over-simplification, it misses the historical place in the movement, in fact, occupies.

T. NATARAJAN

Page-61