None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell.
SRI AUROBINDO
November 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.
THE WORLD TRAGEDY
SHAKESPEARE in giving expression to a most poignant experience of human life says — we all know the most familiar and famous lines — in a most poignant manner:
The world is out of joint O cursed spite!
That ever I was born to set it right —
The poignancy comes not so much from the fact that this is a "naughty world", a cruel world, an unending sea of troubles which you have to brave and bear and fight constantly against: it is not merely that the world is painful and dolorous and even wicked but that it wants to remain so; even if you want to lift it up, out of its maladies, it sinks down back again into its familiar mud, and brings down with it the daring physician. The world does not tolerate its saviour: for this crime it retaliates upon whosoever seeks to meddle in its affairs,
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brands him as an enemy of the people, puts him on the cross. The old law must continue, the wrongs must be preserved, and whatever good happens in spite of everything must also be doomed and swallowed up by the wrong. The great poet declares again:
The evil that men do lives after them
The good is oft interred with their bones.
In the end all traces of good are wiped away: it is sheer black, bleak, cursed track, this creation.
Yes, if you want to cure this ailing and insane world, if you have the ambition to strike a wholesome light in this dismal darkness, if you exert yourself a little to turn it and set it on the right path, pour a little of goodwill in the Mephistophelian stuff that the world is, well, your fate is Hamlet's — you create a yet greater desolation around you. That is the way out of this tragedy.
A celebrated scientist elated with the wonderful discoveries of modern science and its more wonderful promises of the future seems to have said that if he could get a foothold just outside the earth, he meant perhaps outside its gravitational field, he could as it were, twirl the earth upon his finger, with a little push dislodge it from its orbit and its axis. Well, what he said is true and prophetic but the foothold outside has to be outside the gravitational field, not of his physical existence, (the astronauts are trying it today), but outside his physical or normal consciousness. He has to rise above the physical, material status of his being. There is the error that Hamlet committed in spite of his cultured and enlightened mind: not through the enlightened mind alone but through the enlightened heart, through the enlightened vital, even through an enlightened physical consciousness, the remedy of the earthly malady has to be sought, not to meet violence with violence, not to be resentful, not to retaliate — that is what the Bible means when it says, "Resist not evil" — but rise in one's consciousness, above the dualities as the eastern wisdom says, seek a higher source from where springs the infallible energy of a purer
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light. The higher the consciousness, the more effective its action.
Rise in your being and consciousness and by your aspiration and realisation and contagion make others too rise. Then the world will find naturally and spontaneously its lever to shift its old and unhappy basic stand to something higher, greater — diviner.
The complete life is a full circle, one half only is visible to us, real to us: the other half is invisible like the far side of the moon. The ancients used to call these halves, one as the higher half (Parardha) and the other as the lower half (Aparardha). The lower half is the domain of death, the Upanishads declare, the higher half is the domain of immortality. As we start our journey upon earth we begin with the ordinary life, the life of death and we pass through it gaining experience, growing in consciousness; and then when we have crossed the stage we enter into the domain beyond death and begin to learn, to partake of the life immortal.
Dante, the great Christian poet speaks likewise of a life in Hell and a life in Paradise, first, the tragedy, the life of sorrows, transmuted in the end into the Divine Comedy, the fife of happiness and bliss. There is an intermediary passage in between through which the poet leads us from the one to the other: the transition is spoken of as a stage of purification through which one has to pass to shake off the human dross from his nature and put on and become in substance the noble metal.
It is to be noted that death does not mean literally or exclusively the physical event, disintegration and disappearance of the body: it is rather the symbol of the corrosive consciousness of the ordinary ignorant life. There is the ignorant consciousness making up the lower half circle of the integral life and there is the luminous consciousness making up the higher half circle. In between there is, as I have said, a border range which partakes of the nature of both. In psychological terms, the lower is the predominantly vital and physical ranges with a modicum of the mental shading into the higher mental. Up till here it is more or less the region of ignorance. Then comes the higher mind with its aspiring will: this is the purificatory
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agent — the purgatory — the crucible where forces are generated to stir and change and renovate the inferior sphere of our life. Indeed it is the region of the ājnā-cakra in Tantric terminology: in modern terms you may call it the control-room, or in most modern lunar vocabulary, the command-module. It is from here that the first changes towards a higher and purer functioning are initiated in our lower limbs, the body, the vital and even the lower men tal. Beyond is the over-head and over-mental and still higher ranges. The luminous consciousness, the touch of immortality begins with the overhead and the over mental. As we enter the overhead, we shake off the shadow of death upon us and our mortal nature. The Upanishad speaks of two kinds of knowledge that have to be known, two forms of consciousness that have to be acquired in order to become the full integral Divine being. First you have to know, to become aware of the existence of ignorance, the primal or primitive nature and through that awareness or knowledge probe into its character and movement and destiny. Ignorance, pure ignorance leads towards disintegration and death, but to be aware of the ignorance is already a step towards enlightening the ignorance and redeeming it into knowledge. By this knowledge of the ignorance you release it from the grip of death; when you have the full consciousness of the ignorance you transcend the region of death, and free from death, free from ignorance you have the knowledge of knowledge and with the knowledge of knowledge, that is to say, with the full revelation of it you are one with Truth that is Immortality. The delight of immortality is love; love's own status and home is Paradise.
The Paradise, the svargyam lokam of the Upanishads is not necessarily utterly afar and aloof, sundered from this world. The kingdom of heaven instead of being wholly within and absolutely beyond can be and has to be brought out and down upon and into earth, established here below in the fullness of its own glory, That is the material epiphany, the transformation of the physical nature, the ultimate and inevitable destiny of earth and mankind.
Such is the full cycle of human life — in the beginning the birth in mortality and in ignorance, then a process of developing and purificatory consciousness, and then the entry into the full blaze of light and force of Consciousness leading to a rebirth and re-embodiment
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in immortality, transforming the ignorant death-bound body into the glorious luminous body upon material earth, the embodiment of love Divine.
NOLINI KANTA GUPTA
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SRI AUROBINDO
(An Unpublished Early Writing)
CHAPTER VI
1. 'Tis Nature and Self-existence, say one school of the seers. Nay, 'tis Time, says another; both are deceived and bewildered. 'Tis the majesty of the Lord in the world of His creatures whereby this Wheel of the Eternal whirleth continually.
2. He envelopeth this whole universe with Himself for ever, He that knoweth, Maker of Times and the Modes of Nature dwell in Him, yea. He discerneth all things.
And by His governance the law of Works revolveth in its cycle; Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether, of these thou shalt consider (as the substance wherein it turneth).
3. The Lord doeth works and resteth again from His works, He yoketh Himself with the principle of things in their essence. He yoketh Himself, be it one or two or three or eight and with Time and with the Self in its subtle workings.
4. So He beginneth works that are subject to the modes of Nature and settleth all existences to their workings: And when these things are not, thereby cometh annihilation of work that hath been done; and with the perishing of work, He departeth out of them; for in His final truth He is other than they.
5. We see Him to be the beginning, the Informing Cause whereby all standeth together; He dwelleth above and beyond the past, the present and the future. Time hath no part in him.
Worship ye the Adorable whose shape is the universe and
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who hath become in the Universe, worship ye the Lord, the ancient of Days in your own hearts who sitteth.1
6. He is other than Time and Form and the Tree of the Cosmos and He is greater than they, from Whom this world of phenomena becometh and revolveth.
Know ye the Master of Grace who bringeth virtue and driveth away sin. He dwelleth in the spirit of man, the Immortal in whom all things have their home and dwelling place.2
7 Him may we know, the Highest, Prince of Princes and King of Kings, the Summit and Godhead of the Gods,
The High Lord over lords above all highness; the master of the worlds whom we must worship.3
8. He hath nought that He must do nor any organ of His doing; there is none like Him seeing nor any greater.
His might is over all and we hear of it in diverse fashions Lo, His strength and the works of Him and His knowledge, and they are self-efficient and their own cause and nature.4
9. He hath no master in all the world, there is none that shall rule
1. (Alternative version) So we have beheld Him. He is the beginning and the Cause of all causes whereby these elements meet together and form à riseth. The past, the present and the future are this side of Him. Time hath no part in Him.
Let us worship the Ancient of Days, for in our own hearts He sitteth. Let us wait upon God who must be adored, for the world is His shape and the universe is but His becoming.
2. (Alternative version) Time and Form and the Tree of things, none of these is He, for He is more than they and it is from Him that this cosmos beginneth;
We will know this Master of grace and glory, He Cometh to us carrying righteousness in His hands and driveth sin from His strong places, He is the Immortal and the world's foundation.
3. (Alternative version) We wilt know this mightiest One Who is far above the mighty, this Summit of the Gods and their Godhead.
King of Kings and Lord of Lords Who towered high above all summits and greatness. Let us learn of the Lord, for He is the world's Master and all shall adore Him.
4. (Alternative version) God needed not to do anything, neither hath He any organ, there is none greater than He nor do we see any that is His equal,
for His power is far above all. Men hear of it under a thousand names and various fashions..,
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over Him, [verily, He hath no mark, no feature],1
for He is the begetting cause and sovereign over the lords of these natural organs, but [Himself hath no begetter neither any sovereign father.]2
10. As the spider fashioned his web and its threads are from his own body, so the One God than whom nought else existent "wrapt Himself from sight in the web born of eternal matter. May He ordain to us departure into the eternal.3
11. One God alone is hidden in all creatures; for He pervadeth all things and is the inner self of all beings,
Master of their works and home of all that liveth, the great Witness, the Well of conscious life, Absolute, without qualities.4
12. One God and alone He controlleth the many who have themselves no seperate work nor purpose; and He developed one seed into many kinds of creatures;
[Therefore the strong-wise who behold them in their own self where He sitteth, for them is the bliss that endureth for ever and not for others.]5
13. One Eternal of all those that pass and are not, One Conscious in all consciousness, He being One ordereth the desires of many;
He alone is the great Source to which Sankhya and Yoga bring us, if thou know God thou shalt break loose from all sorts of bondages.
1-2 (Alternative version) i. Nor feature nor distinction He hath; ii. there is none that is His father or sovereign.
3 (Alternative version) Even as the spide that out of Himself fashioneth his own web so is God and nought else existeth but of His own nature covereth Himself up with the threads He hath spun out of primal matter. May the One God ordain unto us departure into His eternal.
4 (Alternative version) One God alone is and He lurked hidden in every creature, for He pervadeth and is the inmost Self of all beings,
And he presideth over all works and is the home of all things living, He is the mighty
6 Witness who relateth thought with thought and again He is the Absolute in whom mood is not nor any attribute.
(Alternative version) The strong-hearted behold God in their own self, therefore for them is the everlasting bliss and not for others.
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14. There the Sun cannot shine, and the Moon has no splendour, the stars are blind; these our lightnings flash not neither any earthly fire.
All that is bright is but the shadow of His brightness and by His light shining all these shineth.
15. One Swan of Being in the heart of all this universe and He is Fire that goeth deep in the heart of Water.
By the Knowledge the soul passeth beyond the pursuit of Death and there is no other road for the great passage.
16. He has made all and knoweth all, for He is the womb out of which Self ariseth, He mouldeth Time; mood and attribute are His and He discerneth all things.
[There is eternal Matter and there is the Spirit within that knoweth all field in Matter, He is Lord of both, He ruleth over the modes of Nature; the world and deliverance out of the world and the endurance of things and the bonds of their endurance, of all these He is the One Cause and the Reason.]1
17. [He is purely of Himself, for He is the Immortal manifested in the mighty One and becometh the knower who goeth everywhere and guardeth this cosmos.]2
Yea, He ruleth all this moving world for ever and for ever and there is no other source of greatness and lordship.
18. He ordained Brahma the Creator from of old and sent forth unto Him the Veda,
God who standeth self-revealed in the spirit and in the understanding, I will take refuge in the Lord for my salvation.
1. (Alternative version) And Matter is subject to Him, and the Spirit in Man that cognized His field of matter and the modes of Nature are His servants. He therefore is the cause of the coming into phenomena and of the release from phenomena and because of Him is their endurance and because of Him is their bondage.
2. (Alternative version) Lo, He is Immortal because He is utter existence, but He houseth Himself in the Lord and is the knower, the Omnipresent that standeth on guard over this universe.
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19. Without part, without act, utterly tranquil and faultless and stainless, therefore is He the great causeway that carrieth over to Immortality even as when a fire hath burnt up its fuel.
20. When the sons of men shall fold up ether like a skin and wrap the heavens round them like a garment, then alone, without knowledge of the Lord, our God, shall the misery of the world have an ending.
21. By the Grace of the Lord, by the Energy in his being, Swetaswatara hereafter knew the Eternal.
He declared utterly that most High and Pure God to whom the companies of seers resort for ever.
22. This is the great secret of the Vedanta which was declared in a former time, [not on hearts untranquilled to be squandered nor on men soulless nor on one who hath no disciples.]1
23. But whosoever hath the supreme (soul's) adoration for the Lord, and, as for the Lord, likewise for the Master, [to him the mighty ones reveal these great things that we have uttered, yes, to him indeed they reveal them.]2
1. (Alternative version) thou shalt not bestow it on a soul untranquillised nor on the soulless man nor one who hath no disciple.
2. (Alternative version) these great matters, when they are told, become clear of themselves, yes, to the great soul of him they are manifest.
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THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS
IF THERE is a being or a bureau of beings anywhere, concerned with taking the exact balance of individual men and their contributions to the cultural economy of the world, the conclusions are no doubt not communicable to humanity, which pending growth must get along as best it can with its present instruments or what it considers its own devices; and thus, in attempting to judge a figure like Voltaire, it is the part of wisdom to be tentative, at least, and avoid the cocksureness that Voltaire himself exhibited on most occasions and in most contexts. Thus whether the value of his satire and criticism outweighs his lack of profundity and positive vision we may leave a moot point. Still we may be tolerably sure of one thing, that in his most famous book, Candid,
Of course this world is not the "best possible", in the sense that there is nothing in it or about it that can be improved, either because it is perfect or because it is entirely recalcitrant to happy change. But Leibniz was not such a naive pinhead as to think such a thing, and anyone who can read him and misunderstand him so grossly, either has no capacity for philosophy, or cares more for making a little cheap fun at somebody else's expense than for truth or wisdom. That Voltaire stands eminently, indeed, as a candidate for both these indictments I take to be a phenomenon, the factual nature of which is not open to serious question. Voltaire was a popularizer of ideas, and his admiration for Locke and other English social philosophers
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led him to contribute to the influences making for the French Revolution; but as a thinker he does not rank.
Leibniz however was pre-eminent in this domain, and he probably carried sheer thought as far as it will go. Another non-thinker like Bertrand Russell—being merely a logician based on mathematics, whereas Leibniz was a great mathematician and much more— may make not quite Voltaire an sport with a statement of Leibniz's about the infinitesimal and its populous character—wondering whether the philosopher could support equably a world of little creatures dancing on his nose; but it is as easy to spew stuff like this as it is valueless and inconsequential, and beneath the notice of a serious mind. That important thing, the development of intellect in the race, has been little abetted by lame satire; and perhaps no one has done more than Leibniz to bring out the pure thing in all its strength, and with all the subtlety that attends it. Certainly if the intellect were our highest instrument there might be some reason for considering him an Avatar; if there could be such, in that situation.
In his Theodicy he tries to put himself in the position of God making the world, and faced with all the possibilities. God, he reasons, will of course want to do his utmost, and make a world that contains and orders the most things possible. And so what he made was this difficult and problematical world, and not some bright but relatively narrow world of perfection. That is, this world is preeminently the world, the fullest and most comprehensive, and thus the best.
We can see, in the light of Sri Aurobindo, some of the profundity of this statement. Whatever the possibilities for creation of Sachchidananda, it is this world into which he has put his whole self, so to speak; it is this world that combines the lowest with the highest, containing them, with all the links and stages between. This world is not an intermediate and thus mediocre link in the Great Chain of Being: it is rather the pivot on which the full possibilities turn; and creation is not so much like a chain as like an infinitely complex weaving. But there is of course no figure that can do it justice.
No doubt Leibniz compromised the philosophical character of his statement by using the word "best", thus opening the door for all kinds of ethical and
sentimental considerations. He himself
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had political considerations to think of, and the word hardly conveys his full or his real meaning: and here may be some justification for Voltaire, in so far as political "conservatives" were thus bolstered by Leibniz in their wish to maintain the status quo. But we are free of those particular difficulties now, and can perhaps look more objectively. This world that is the "best" possible is only one of numberless possibilities, whether existing or potential; and to call it the "best" is to convey little meaning, beyond affirming that this world does exist, and is the one we live in, for better or worse. "It is the only world we have", and so it had better be our best, and we had better do our best. But its being an evolutionary world enhances the whole situation and makes it meaningful to the utmost: for better is always possible. For a non-divine being that world is best in which he can become better, and eventually divine. In a non-evolutionary world on the other hand things would be as they were and thus as they "should" be, and "best" would be a meaningless term. The very ground being Divinity, in fact, and the very substance, nothing short of Divinity exists, and nothing short of that is evolving here: all is some aspect of the divine nature, and in a world that grows, what falls short of the divine fullness can be altered, surpassed, outgrown. Thus constant improvement of all kinds is possible, and to take imperfection and misfortune as something ultimate or permanent will not do. This is our glorious world of achievement though "the old order changed": indeed because it is the "best" world the old order does change and pass, that greater possibilities may be realized. While the French Revolution was really no answer to what Leibniz said and no attack upon it, it was a great step forward that Leibniz's German employers were not prepared to take; and perhaps he contributed indirectly to it.
In any case this philosophical statement of his is not incompatible with any amount of progress and change; and while he did not take the evolutionary view himself—or certainly not with Aurobindonean fullness—what he says in no way denies or contradicts it, or precludes the possibility. God harmonizes the world, and no doubt wants a greater harmony as it becomes possible. But what Leibniz says is always extremely subtle, and it would be an intrepid man who would claim fully to have understood him: he kept close,
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as it were. I for one would not be surprised to know of great supra-intellectual influences upon him, that were not to become overtly operative in that "best" of times, the century of the "scientific" revolution.
JESSE ROARKE
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XLV
MIND is the tree and the five senses its branches
And the leaves are the many desires that it carries.
O, cut it down with the axe that is the Guru's word:
Kanhu says, the tree must not grow again.
Good and evil are the waters that nourish the tree;
Directed by the Guru the wise one knows how to fell a tree
And he who knows not the trick
Goes astray, the fool, and accepts the cycle of birth.
The Void1 is the tree, the sky2 is the axe:
Cut down the tree so that neither the roots nor the branches are left.
XLVI
One sees in a dream as though in a mirror:
Even so the illusion is there within.
When the mind is freed from the illusion,
Then only cease the coming and the going.
Fire does not burn it nor waters moisten it
nor is it ever torn;
Still behold, again and again it binds itself
to one illusion or another.
The shadow, the image, the body are all one
and the same:
In true knowledge there is no taking sides.3
Purify your consciousness with truth-nature:
Jayanandi says, there is then no fall any more.
NOLINI KANTA GUPTA
1 Void = the Supreme3 the Zero.
2 Sky = the wide pure consciousness (of the mind).
3 i.e. it is beyond the dualities.
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SRI AUROBINDO AND THE INDIAN TRADITION
(Continued from the August issue)
THE Indian tradition has shaped itself within a particular frame work of geography. It has for its background a people consisting of several sub-nations, each with its own language and peculiar characteristics. It has had distinct lines of political development which has had an influence on its growth. This is what we now propose to study in the light of Sri Aurobindo.
THIS LAND OF INDIA
"We bless today this land of ours which has been even as a mother unto our nation," wrote Sri Aurobindo in an inspired message on the occasion of India's first Union Day, when the Partition of Bengal was annulled and rejected in spirit by the people of India, in 1906. "We bless her sunlit skies, her cool fragrant breeze, her green fields holding the promise of plenty to her starving people, her rushing rivers carrying the produce of distant lands to her rural homes, her snow-covered mountains revealing the glory and majesty of God to her devotees, her orchards resonant with the song of her birds, her woods offering shelter to her beasts, her changing seasons that bring health and joy to man and freshness and fertility to mother earth..."1
The beauties of this land have always had a strange fascination. "The flowers that herald the advent of autumn..., the Shephali, the Kumud, the Kalhar, and preeminently the lotus proclaim the richness of India's wealth and symbolise as it were the sweet, pure and beneficent influence of her civilisation which warns us against giddiness and intoxication even amidst power and plenty, which only teaches self-abnegation and the service of others....."2 It is rare indeed
1 Bandematarcm. 10.10.1906. "The Rakhi Day".
2 Ibid.. 13.10.1907. "The Pujah and Patriotism".
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to find this splendid association of the national spirit with the natural beauties of the land.
But the land is more potent than its influence on men. It is a Divinity incarnate. "Others know their land of birth only as an inert mass, a collection of fields and meadows, mountains and forest tracts. I know my land of birth as the Mother. I adore Her, offer Her worship.......1" Is this a fine fantasy ? Not so, for "it is not till the Motherland reveals herself to the eye of the mind as something more than a stretch of earth or a mass of individuals, it is not till she takes shape as a great Divine and Maternal Power in a form of beauty that can dominate mind and seize the heart that... the patriotism that works miracles and saves a doomed nation is born. To some men it is given to have that vision and reveal it to others...."2
RACE AND LANGUAGE
This Divinity which is India is "a well-defined Collective Personality which is already there, and all these various personalities and types of the Indian nation are its formations, so to say; it is That which expresses itself in these."3 The "types of the Indian nation" are indeed many, but these are primarily psychological and not racial types. This is a point that needs to be emphasised.
"The philologists have, for instance, split up, on the strength of linguistic differences the Indian nationality into the northern Aryan race and the southern Dravidian."4 The philological argument however rests on slender foundations. "For", observes Sri Aurobindo, "on examining the vocables of the Tamil language, in appearance so foreign to the Sanskritic form and character, I yet found myself continually guided by words or by families of words supposed to be pure Tamil, in establishing new relations between Sanskrit and its distant sister Latin, and occasionally between the Greek and the Sanskrit. Sometimes the Tamil vocable not only suggested the connection, but proved the missing link in a family of connected words......It certainly
1 Sri Aurobindo's letter to his wife (in Bengali).
2 Bankim-Tilak-Dayananda, "Rishi Bankim Chandra".
3 Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, Second Series, p. 289.
4 Sri Aurobindo, On the Veda, 1st ed., p. 640.
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seems to me that the original connection between the Dravidian and Aryan tongues was far closer and more extensive than is usually supposed, and the possibility suggests itself that they may even have been two divergent families derived from one lost primitive tongue....... "1
The ethnologists, with their skull measurements, have gone a step further and divided the Indian population into a number of distinct races, "always supposing that ethnological speculations have at all any validity. The only firm basis of ethnology is the theory of the hereditary invariability of the human skull, which is now being challenged."2 Here too, Sri Aurobindo introduces a personal note based on his actual observations. "I could not... belong in Southern India without being impressed by the general recurrence of northern or "Aryan" types in the Tamil race. Wherever I turned seemed to recognise with a startling distinctness, not only among the Brahmins but in all castes and classes, the old familiar faces, features, figures of my friends of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Hindustan, even, though this similarity was less widely spread, of my own Province, Bengal. The impression I received was as if an army of all the tribes of the North had descended on the South and submerged any previous populations that may have occupied it....And in the end I could not but perceive that.. .there remains, behind all variations, a unity of physical as well as of cultural type throughout India."3
As with race, so with the regional languages, of present day India. Sri Aurobindo is emphatically at variance with many accepted opinions. "In India, the pedants enumerate I know not how many hundred languages. This is a stupid misstatement. There are about a dozen great tongues; the rest are either dialects or aboriginal survivals of tribal speech that are bound to disappear." 4 Each of these "great tongues" represents the soul-type, "is the sign and power of the soul of the people which naturally speaks it. Each develops therefore its own peculiar spirit, thought-temperament, way of dealing with life and knowledge and experience"5
1 Ibid., p. 45.
2 Ibid., p. 44, note 2.
3 Ibid., p. 44.
4 The Ideal of Human Unity, chapter 28.
5 Ibid.
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THE SUB-NATIONS
India has been described as "a congeries of diverse peoples..., sub-nations with a marked character of their own....For there had grown up, out of the original elements, a natural system of sub-nations with different languages, literatures and other traditions of their own: the four Dravidian peoples, Bengal, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Sind, Assam, Orissa, Nepal, the Hindi-speaking peoples of the North, Rajputana and Behar."1 These sub-nations have psychological traits that deserve to be noted; Sri Aurobindo has given a full account. Each of these peoples keep the impress of their historical origins.
"Bengal, colonised from the west.. .and from the north.. .contains at present the most gentle, sensitive and emotional of the Indian races, also the most anarchic, self-willed, averse to control and in all things extreme....Bengal has accordingly a literature far surpassing any other in an Indian tongue for emotional and lyrical power, loveliness of style and form and individual energy and initiative..."2
"The Bengali has...in a greater degree than other races the yet undeveloped faculty of direct knowledge latent in humanity and now to be evolved, which is above reason and imagination, the faculty which in Sri Ramakrishna, the supreme outcome of the race, dispensed with education and commanded any knowledge he desired easily and divinely.....In addition, the race has a mighty will-power which comes from the long worship of Shakti and practice of the Tantra.....But...he is inferior to other Indian races, such as the Madrasi and Mahratta, in the capacity of calm, measured and comprehensive deliberation......The rest of India is largely dominated by this faculty and limited by it..."3
Of this we have instances galore. For example, "the North-West [this was the accepted term in those days for what is now Uttar Pradesh] has...produced the finest modern Vedantic poetry, full of intellectual loftiness, insight and profundity, the poetry of Surdas and Tulsi; its people are still the most sincerely orthodox and the most attached to the old type of thought and character...
1 Message to Andhra University.
2 Pathmandir Annual, 1953, "Kalidasa.':
3 The Brain of India, Chapter 1.
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"The Rajputs who are only a Central nation which has drifted westward preserved longest the heroic and chivalrous tradition of the Bharatas......Similarly, the West also preserves its tradition. The Punjab is typified by its wide acceptance of such simple and practical and active religions as those of Nanak and Dayananda Saraswati, religions which have been unable to take healthy root beyond the frontier of the five rivers.
"Gujarat and Sindh show the same practical temper by their success in trade and commerce; but the former has preserved more of the old western materialism and sensuousness than its neighbours."1 But Gujarat, Sri Aurobindo notes, "also has great traditions of old, traditions of learning, traditions of religion, traditions of courage and heroism. Gujarat was once part of the Rajput circle and her princes fought on equal terms with Mahmud of Ghazni..."2
"The Dravidians of the South, though they no longer show that magnificent culture and originality which made them the preservers and renovators of the higher Hindu thought and religion in its worst days, are yet, as we all know, far more genuinely learned and philosophic in their cast of thought and character than any other Indian race."3 Sri Aurobindo refers in laudatory terms to the political and cultural achievements of the Andhras, "a robust and virile and energetic race",4 and of the "Pallavas, Chalukyas, Pandyas, Cholas and Cheras", the peoples of modern Tamil Nadu, Mysore and Kerala, whose performance in the early days he ranks only as second in importance to the best that ancient India produced.5
"Finally, the Mahratta, perhaps the strongest and sanest race in India today, present a very peculiar and interesting type. They are south-western and blend two very different characters. Fundamentally a material and practical race,—they are, for instance, extremely deficient in the romantic and poetical side of human temperament— a race of soldiers and politicians, they have yet caught from the Dravidians a deep scholastic and philosophical tinge which, along
1 Pathmandir Annual, loc. cit.
2 Bandemataram, 22. 12. 1907.
3 Pathmandir Annual, loc. cit.
4 Message to Andhra University.
5 The Ideal of Human Unity, Chapter I.
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with a basic earnestness and capacity for high things, has kept them true to Hinduism, gives a certain distinction to their otherwise matter-of-fact nature and promises much for their future development..."1
POLITICAL EVOLUTION
(a) The Undated Centuries
These regional peoples (and others like the Assamese, the Oriyas, the Biharis who form a blend and share the characteristics with their neighbours) have grown up as parts of "a natural system of sub nations" out of the original elements that constituted the Indian people, through a process of cultural and political evolution.2 We must have a broad view of this evolution—the political evolution first—before we can hope to understand the Indian tradition in its true perspective.
"The ancient world", says Sri Aurobindo, "started from the tribe, the city state, the clan, the small regional state—all of them minor units living in the midst of other like units which were similar to them in general type, kin usually in language and most often or very largely in race, marked off at least from other divisions of humanity by a tendency towards a common civilisation and protected in that community with each other and in their diversity from others, by favorable geographical circumstances—Within that loose unity, the tribe, clan or city or regional states formed in the vague mass so many points of distinct, vigorous and compact unity...but could feel also and offer much more nearly and acutely their own divergences, contrasts and oppositions."3
This is the broad picture that emerges from the tangled traditions preserved in India's ancient records, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana and the Puranas and other riligious textes, long before archaeology and dated documents come to our aid.
1 Pathmandir Annual, loc. cit.
2 Message to Andhra University.
3 The Ideal of Human Unity, Chapter 12,
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The Epic tradition suggests—and this seems to be corroborated to a large extent by the scriptural record—that "ancient India was a sort of continent, made up of many great and civilised nations who were united very much like the nations of modern Europe by an essential similarity of religion and culture rising above and beyond their marked racial peculiarities; like the nations of Europe also they
were continually going to war with each other.....Like the continent of Europe the ancient continent of India was subject to two opposing forces, one centripetal which was continually causing attempts at universal empire, another centrifugal which was continually impelling the empires once formed to break up again into their constituent parts.......
"Five distinct times had these great congeries of nations been welded into Empire, twice by the Ikshwakus (of Koshala or eastern Uttar Pradesh), afterwards by the Haihaya (an offshoot of the Ikshwakus), again by the Ikshwakus...and finally by the Kuru (a Central people with headquarters in central Uttar Pradesh who later moved north-west)."1 But there is evidence that these empires, as well as the one founded last as a result of the Kurukshetra War which forms the main subject of the Mahabharata story, had been of the nature of a hegemony rather than a firmly knit administrative structure like the empires of the historic period. "It is evident that if any hegemony had previously existed, it had failed to discover a means or system of enduring permanence."2
Sri Aurobindo has a word to add in explanation of this failure. The failure did not come from an incapacity of the political mind of ancient India; indeed it showed an unmistakable proof of the sagacity of that mind.
"The Vedic Rishis and their successors made it their chief work to found a spiritual basis of Indian life and to effect the spiritual and cultural unity of the many races and peoples of the peninsula. But they were not blinded to the necessity of a political unification. Observing the constant tendency of the clan life of the Aryan peoples to consolidate under confederacies and hegemonies of varying proportions,
1 Vyasa and Valmiki, "The Problem of the Mahabharata (I)".
2 The Foundations of Indian Culture, Book 3, Chapter 18,
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they saw that to follow this line to its full conclusion was the right way and evolved therefore the ideal of the Chakravartin, a uniting imperial rule, uniting without destroying the autonomy of India's many kingdoms and peoples, from sea to sea. This ideal they supported...with a spiritual and religious sanction,...and made it the Dharma of a powerful king, his royal and religious duty, to attempt the fulfilment of the ideal. He was not allowed by the Dharma to destroy the liberties of the peoples who came under his sway.....His function was to establish a suzerain power possessed of sufficient military strength to preserve internal peace and to combine at need the full forces of the country."1
But there were defects inherent in the system that led to its impermanence. A king with sufficient military force behind him might well become the "emperor", but there was little likelihood of the proud Kshatriya clans continuing their allegiance to his weaker successors. The temporary hegemony of one among their number naturally kindled jealousies which proved fatal to a permanent unity. All that therefore could be ultimately achieved—and this was the lasting work done in the political field by that great statesman of ancient India, Sri Krishna—was to break the pride and power of the innumerable Kshatriya clans in the War of Kurukshetra, a landmark in Indian history, and prepare the ground for the later administrative unities of the Mauryan type.2
(b) THE HISTORIC EMPIRES
"The political history of India is the story of a succession of empires, indigenous and foreign, each of them destroyed by centrifugal forces, but each bringing the centripetal tendency nearer to its triumphant emergence. And it is a significant circumstance that the more foreign the rule, the greater has been its force for the unification of the subject people."3
Here we get a clue on which it might be useful to dwell a little. It provides an explanation for the unending series of ups and downs
1 Ibid.
2 Gitar Bhumika: "Sri Krishner Rajanaitik Uddeshya" (in Bengali) '
3 The Ideal of Human Unity, Chapter 5,
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that render the study of Indian history so perplexing and seemingly meaningless to the casual student. It may also conceal a lesson for those who build Utopias for the future.
The regional kingdoms and smaller republics that succeeded the the older clan-nations of the pre-Kurukshetra age and whom we meet in the historical accounts of the Buddhist books and the Classical writers of the West, were jealous of their autonomy but' were powerless to preserve it in the face of a determined attack from without. The Persian occupation of the ces Indus tract that once formed part of India and guarded its north-west frontier, and two centuries later the sudden incursion of Macedonian armies into the western frontier of Arya varta itself "brought home the magnitude of the danger to the political mind of India, and from this time we see poets, writers, political thinkers constantly upholding the imperial ideal thinking out the means of its realisation. The immediate practical result was the rise of the (historic) empire.... At the same time, this empire suffered by the inevitable haste, violence and artificiality of its first construction to meet a pressing need......The attempt to establish a centralised imperial monarchy brought with it not a free synthesis but a breaking down of regional autonomous.....These could not really flourish under the shadow of the imperial centralisation."1
This first historica empire was a magnificent construction, "constantly maintained or restored through eight or nine centuries, in spite of periods of weakness and incipient disintegration, successively by the Maurya, Sunga, Kanwa, Andhra and Gupta dynasties.... It ranks among the greatest constructed and maintained by the genius of the earth's great peoples."2 But it contained in its very principle and method the seeds of its own destruction and failure. "The advantages gained were those of a stronger and more coherent military action and more regularised and uniform administration, but these could not compensate in the end for the impairment of the free organic diversified life which was the true expression of the mind and temperament of the people. A worse result was a certain fall from the high ideal of the Dharma. In the struggle of kingdom with
1 The Foundations of Indian Culture, Book 3, Chapter l8.
2 Ibid,
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kingdom for supremacy, a habit of Machiavellian statecraft replaced the nobler ethical ideals of the past—The deterioration, held in abeyance by a religious spirit and high intelligence, did not come to a head till more than a thousand years afterwards, and we only see it in its full force in the worst period of the decline.....''1
A peculiar feature of the history of empire in India was that whenever the empire grew weak, it received a fresh impulse to life by the irruption of foreign barbarians from beyond the north-west frontiers. "The empire was weakened by the suspension of the need which created it, for then the regional spirit reawake in separatist movements disintegrating its unity or breaking down its large extension over all the North. A fresh peril brought about the renewal of its strength under a new dynasty. But the phenomenon continued to repeat itself until, the peril ceasing for a considerable time, the empire called into existence to meet it passed away not to revive."2 This applies both to the Hindu as well as the Muslim empires ending with that of the Mughals in the 18th century. The last attempt at imperial unity made by the Mahrattas on the failure of the Mughals proved to be still-born. "The Peshwas for all their genius lacked the vision of the founder [Shivaji] and could only establish a military and political confederacy. And their endeavour to found an empire could not succeed because it was inspired by a regional patriotism that failed to enlarge itself beyond its own limits and awaken to the living ideal of a united India."3 In the end as the problem proved insoluble, or at least, was not solved, "Nature had to resort to her usual deus ex machina denouement, the instrumentality of a foreign rule," this time by a totally alien people who refused, unlike the Pathan and the Mughals, to make any terms with the indigenous civilisation. This created in the end a force of reaction from below which united the discordant elements in a single-minded resistance to the foreigner and led to his ultimate expulsion. India became independent, though not yet wholly united. But Pakistan does not exist in Sri Aurobindo's vision of the future, as a separate entity distinct from India.4
1 Ibid.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Message on India's Independence.
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(C) ASSESSMENT OF WORK
What has been the work done by each of these phases of India's political evolution? Sri Aurobindo gives an answer that runs counter to many of the accepted notions.
"Hitherto", he says, "the experience of mankind has not favoured the view that large aggregations, closely united and strictly organised, are favorable to a rich and puissant human life. It would seem rather that collective life is more at ease with itself, more genial, varied, fruitful when it can concentrate itself in small spaces and simpler organisms.....Nor was any age in Asia so rich in energy, so well worth living in, so productive of the best and most enduring fruits as that heroic period of India when she was divided into small kingdoms, many of them no larger than a modern district. In comparison she received little from the greater empires, the Mughul, the Gupta or the Maurya—little indeed except political and administrative organisation, some fine art and literature and a certain amount of lasting work in other kinds, not always of the best quality. Their impulse was rather towards elaborate organisation than original, stimulating and creative.........."1
This stricture applies with particular force to the last of the Indian empires, the British. "The Pax Britannica is now seen to be the cause of our loss of manliness and power of self-defence, a peace of death and torpor, security to starve in, the ease of the grave. British law has been found to be a fruitful source of demoralisation, an engine to destroy ancient houses, beggar wealthy families and drain the poor of their little competence. British education has denationalised the educated community, laid waste the fertile soil of the Indian intellect, suppressed originality and invention, created a gulf between the classes and the masses, and done its best to kill that spirituality which is the soul of India. The petty privileges which British statecraft has thrown to us as morsels from the rich repast of liberty have pauperised us politically, preserved all that was low, weak and dependent in our political temperament and discouraged the old robust manhood of our forefathers."2
1 The Ideal of Human Unity, Chapter I.
2 Bandemataram, 26.3.1908, "Freedom of Speech''.
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Nevertheless, England had a work to perform, a salutary work for which she was admirably fitted. "The spirit and ideals of India had come to be confined in a mould which, however beautiful, was too narrow and slender to bear the mighty burden of our future. When that happens, the mould has to be broken and even the ideal lost for a while, in order to be recovered free of constraint and limitation.... For the work of destruction England was best fitted by her stubborn individuality and by that very commercialism and materialism which made her the anti-type in temper and culture of the race she governed...."1
(d) THE QUESTION OF THE FUTURE
The mould has been broken, and India has to build for herself a new form of political life which will best express her spirit. Where will she find a suitable model for that new form? Sri Aurobindo's dictum that "the root of the past is the source from which the future draws its sap" holds here as in every other field of national endeavour. The question is: how far back in our past are we to go in order to find this root?
"India, since the Mussulman advent, has accepted the politics of Chanakya in preference to Vyasa's.... He did not... accept the Jesuitical doctrine of any means to a good end.... Vyasa's imperialism... demands that empire should be won by noble and civilised methods, not in the spirit of the savage, and insists once it is won not on its powers but on its duties. Valmiki too has included politics in his wide sweep; his picture of an ideal imperialism is sound and noble and the spirit of the Koshalan Ikshwakus that monarchy must be broad-based on the people's will and yet broader-based on justice, truth and good government...."2 This must, it would seem, be our guide-line. Monarchy in its ancient form cannot now be revived; the modern mind will not accept it. And "imperialism" is anathema. But the ideal of Dharmarajya so beautifully portrayed in our two Great Epics can certainly be enshrined in our future polity.
1 Karmayogin, 25.9.1909, "The Past and the Future".
2 Vyasa and Valmiki.
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The great truth underlying this ideal was a clear recognition of the fact that unity is not synonymous with uniformity, that the first business of good government must be to ensure its willing acceptance by the people. This cannot be done in a vast country of continental proportions, with so many different psychological types represented by its regional peoples, by passing a steam roller over all. It can only be done by creating "the sense of a community in something dear and precious which others do not possess; there must be a sense of difference from other communities which have no share in our common possession; there must be a supreme determination to cherish, assert and preserve our common possession from disparagement and destruction."1
Thus assured of continuity, "the nation-idea in India will realise itself, in all its departments, along what may be called, federal lines. It will be a union of different nationalities, each preserving its own specific elements, both of organisation and ideal, each communicating to the others what they lack in either thought or character, and all moving together towards one universal end, both in civic and social life, progressively realising that end along its own historic and traditional lines, and thus indefinitely drawing near to each other, without, for an equally indefinite period, actually losing themselves in any one particular form of that life whether old or new."2
Thus will the past political evolution of India find its goal.
SANAT K. BANERJI
1 Bandemataram, 2.5.1907. "Shall India be Free ?''
2 Hid., 17.9.1906. "Last Friday's Folly".
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THE CONCEPT OF THE UPANISHADIC "KOSHAS" VINDICATED BY MODERN THOUGHT
THE Taittiriyopanishad (Bhriguvalli Section) says that the self is manifested as the ego or the Jivatman in a system of fivefold sheaths (Koshas) viz., the Annamaya Kosha, Pranamaya Kosha, Manomaya Kosha, Vignanamaya Kosha and Anandamaya Kosha; that these "Koshas" exist in hierarchical order and futher says with reference to each (Kosha) sheath in relation to its next inner sheath "Tenaisha Purnah", meaning that by the inner and subtler sheath the outer and the grosser one is filled. This statement means that the sheaths are not rigidly exclusive; that the inner and subtler sheaths, extending beyond the grosser ones, also interpenetrate them. This statement also implies, as expounded by Dr. S. Radhakrishnan in his "The Principal Upanishads" that "the lower is the material for the higher; that life is the matter for mind, and mind is the matter for spirit". (The Principal Upanishads edited in the Muirhead Library of philosophy, p. 58). A study of the modern thought in the academic sciences of physiology and psychology as well as the nonacademic psychical research bears out the Upanishadic statement in all respects:
Academic psychology itself reveals that the physical body of man and what he consciously thinks and feels i.e. the surface personality, does not constitute his entire personality. The upsurge of affects such as fear, disgust etc., in traumatic events, the compulsive idea that forces itself upon the patient in cases of obsessive neurosis; the uncontrollable thought that presses into consciousness with undue and painful frequency; the apprehensiveness which suddenly erupts into consciousness without being called for by a train of thought and the unconscious determination of hysterical symptoms by repressed affects—all these facts of abnormal psychology as well as the experience of being sometimes possessed by an emotion or overcome with rage, when we excuse ourselves saying "I was not myself or I really did not know what came over me in normal life"—all these facts prove that the psychic affects are dynamic psychological
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influences quite different from the vital feelings, the vim and vigour experience of mere physical health. The psychological elements constitute interrelated and enduring systems of affects by themselves, which use the physical body only as a medium or instrument for expression in physical terms. Prof. C. J. Adcock's exposition in his "Fundamentals of Psychology" that "the instinctive drives or the affects are only correlated with physiological needs via physiological mechanism on the average but are not completely so; that it is only in terms of drives that a person's activity is continued or terminated", also upholds this distinction between the functions of the psyche and the physical body. This distinction is made more clear by Prof. W. Mc Dougall's postulate of an enduring psychic structure as being the basis of the different emotions, sentiments and other psychic manifestations of man. He says, "I assume that underlying and determining the main lines and limits of mental activity is a complex organisation which we conveniently call its mental structure" (The Energy of Man,) P XIV. Expounding the concept further in another place he says "we may distinguish clearly between facts of mental activity and mental structure. Mental structure is that enduring framework of mind which we infer from observed manifestation of mind in experience and behaviour and we may properly describe it and its parts in substantial terms" (An outline of Psychology, p. 41).
As influencing the development of a person's behaviour in a particular way, these tendencies and capacities have further to be considered as constituting innate psychic structures with which a man is born and which also grow and develop analogous to his physical body during the course of his life. A closer study of these facts of motivation further reveals that an intellectual urge for analytic perception and conceptual thought is psychologically different from the effective drives. Intellectual activity says Prof. Mc
Doug all, "is essentially a grasping of relations and expounding this activity in relation to aesthetic experience." He says "a thing is beautiful in so far as it presents a system of relations that evoke in us a smoothly flowing stream of perceptive activity adequate to the object and more complex the design (i.e., richer its system of relations) so long as they are within our powers of apprehension the more pleasant is the perceptive activity". Similarly, a distinct Organisation should also underline
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conceptual thinking and synthetic understanding, which are quite different from the intellectual activities in relation to concrete objects. This organisation in its developed form results in generalised scientific and philosophic concepts and in apprehension of moral and religious values. These concepts of there being different psychic structures for affective drives, for concrete intellectual urges, for Conceptual thoughts and for mystical experiences of spiritual communion and ecstasy respectively broadly correspond to the conception of Manomaya, Vignanamaya and Anandamaya Koshas of the Upanishadic teaching.
In view of the fact that the influences of these structures in the process of personality development remain hidden as factors motivating one's behaviour the modern depth psychology designates them compendiously as the unconscious mind. But repudiating the view that they are merely amorphous elements, C. G. Jung, the eminent depth psychologist, ascribes structure also to the unconscious. He
explicitly says, "The variety of psychic constitution is untold. A study of the psyche, racial as well as individual, in as many manifestations of it as possible, enables us to formulate certain theories about its structure. Every human child prior to consciousness is possessed of a potential system of adapted psychic functioning. In the conscious life of the adult as well this unconscious instinctive functioning is always present and active" (Modern Man in Search of a Soul pp. 63, 89 and 214). In another place he says, "the contents of the unconscious are quite obviously products of an autonomous independent functioning never before known or experienced. The unconscious, as a whole, is far from being a relic of consciousness; it is the whole reality in
potential." (Integration of Personality pp. 7, 11 and 13). In the course his theory of memory Dr. W. R. Bousfield F. R. S. also develops a concept of "Psychical structure" like Prof. W. Mc. Dougall and Dr. C. G. Jung. Bousfield says, "there are various psycho-physiological phenomena which appear to demand postulation of a psychical structure for their satisfactory explanation. An immaterial psychical structure involves the conception of a substance of which it is built. This substance which we may call psychoplasm is as hypothetical as the ether. Psychoplasm in our vocabulary stands for the immaterial substance of which the psychical
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structure is built" (The Basis of Memory—p. 41.).
Theosophy definitely recognises the substantival aspects of these psychic systems and also their existence in hierarchic order and calls the two of them, that exist next in order to the physcial and vital bodies, as astral and mental bodies with which a man is born in each life i.e., in the period of his embodiment in physical matter. In the astral body the sensations and emotions, affects and desires arid in the mental which is itself of two orders, the lower mental and the higher mental, concrete thoughts in the lower mental and abstract and conceptual thoughts in the higher mental are the conditioning factors.
The discoveries made in psychic research in recent times further support the conception of the 'Koshas' and their hierarchical organisation. Dr. Gustave Geley says, "There are in the individual different modulations of energy and these modulations, even though theoretically conceived as proceeding from a single energy, are not equivalent. There are material energy, dynamic energy, as it may be termed and psychological energy and these modalities of energy appear to us to be both distinct in themselves and graded with respect to each other. We may conceive of a dynamic and psychological complex above the material and the organic complex might itself be capable of rational subdivision up to the discovery of the central entity, the real self, one and indivisible. One must have courage to accept the notion of a dynamism superior to organism and conditioning it. These cadres or hierarchies series are not necessarily different in essence, but they have different activities and capacities. In a word everything takes place in normal and supernormal physiology; as if the organic complex were built up, organised, directed and maintained by a superior dynamism. The directing dynamism itself obeys a directing idea" (From the Unconscious to the Conscious, pp. 38-39, 49 and 66).
As regards the Pranamaya sheath, Sir John Woodroffe writes, "The Vedantists hold life, which is called Prana as a separate substantive, quasi-material principle, pervasive of the organism and that this is not a gross natural force or material energy but a form of regulative activity or motion phenomenally immersed in matter" (Power as Life, p. 26). Eminent psychic researches also hold similar views
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regarding the life-force. Dr. Here ward Carrington says, "vitality is not a simple material force but is something distinct and separate per se, it is a living force, non-material that gives the body its life here on earth. It forms the connecting link between mind and matter" (Eusapia Palladino and Her Phenomena, p. 296). The psychic researchers have also identified the vital body as an ovoid sphere of energy surrounding the physical body and also interpenetrating it and giving out non-material emanations.
Karl Von Riechenbach, a reputed Austrian chemist and metallurgist, who studied these emanations called them Odyle or Odylic force and published a book in 1866 embodying the findings of some of his sensitives on these emanations. Later Dr. Walter J. Kilmer M. R. C. P. a physician at St. Thomas Hospital, London who also studied these emanations called them human aura and published in 1911 a book entitled "Human Atmosphere", embodying his extensive research in this matter. The book has been revised and edited in 1965 by Leslie Shepard embodying the findings of further research in this matter.
There have also been many sensitives who have personally seen these vital fluid or emanations and who have also manipulated it in various ways. Mons. de Fleuriere, a sensitive of Dr. Eugene Osty, perceived these emanations under the semblance of "coloured visions and tactile sensations so precise and sharply characterised that they were to him complexes which delineated human individualities. The touch of no two persons gave him the same total sensations." (Supernormal Faculties in Man by Dr. Eugene Osty, p. 122). The perception of M. Fleuriere of the vital emanations corresponds to what Sir John Woodroffe says about them. He says, "The Tantras on the yoga side give the colours of the several vital forces observable by yogic vision" (Power as life p. 144).
Manipulation of these vital forces, which can be superbly charged with feelings and directed by thought unlike the material energy, is the essence of the therapeutic practice known as Mesmerism. Dr. James Esdaile, Presidency Surgeon at Calcutta, from 1845 to 1851 performed over 300 major operations placing his patients under mesmeric trance, as recorded in the Bengal Govt. Records of the period. Prof, Emile Boirac, Baron Jules De du Potet, Marquis de Puysegur,
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J. P. F. Deleuze, Dr. Joseph Ennemoser of the University of Bonn, Col Albert de Rochas, commandant Darget of Paris, Dr. Hector Durville and a number of others have made several experiments on different aspects of this vital force about which Frank Pod mores says "Unlike material energy the operations of this vital force are directed and intensified by the human will."" (Modern Spiritualism, Vol. i. p. 57). In view of these disclosures it can be presumed that the ancient Indian practice of mantric treatment was evidently a system of therapeutics based on the operation of the vital forces.
Modern scientific thought gives a clue also to the integration of these psychic bodies on the lines stated in the Taittiriyopanishad. Dr. W. Mc. Dougall says "The nervous system is built up in layers of which the oldest are the lowest and are relatively of simple functions. The spinal cord, the cerebellum with basal ganglia and cerebral hemispheres exist in hierarchical order. All evidence regarding the functioning of these layers converges to show that each layer modifies and controls the functions of the lower layers without superseding those functions." (The Energies of Man, pp. 319-320). Similarly Sir Charles Sherrington says, "The spinal reflex in man is never capable of a motor act of external relation with the fineness and precision of the normal act. The roof-brain component increases the fineness, skill, adaptability and specificity of the motor act. The component from the roof-brain alters the character of the motor act from one of generality of purpose to one of specific purpose fitting a specific occasion. By this change the motor act becomes correlated with the finite mind" (Man on His Nature, p. 192).
Thus the influences of the lower anatomical centres are not only controlled by the higher contre, they are also enriched and become of higher significance only by the modifications effected by the higher centre. On similar lines the expressions of a lower psychic body are controlled and modified in the course of egoic evolution, rather the un fold ment of Jivatman powers. The functioning of the lower body thus becomes more significant and enriched with the permeating influence of the higher body.
In the course of evolution i.e. in the process of the un fold ment of the spiritual powers of Jivatman through a series of reincarnations, it is always the outermost of the sheaths that functions effectively
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as the organised vehicle of consciousness, while all other sheaths remain latent, registering their influences through the outermost of the sheaths, whichever be in active manifestation at the time. In this way the innate spiritual powers of the Jivatman are unfolded as self-conscious powers sheath after sheath, as each sheath is organised to function effectively as a vehicle of consciousness, starting from the grossest of them, the Annamaya Kosha, the physical body. While the ego is in physical embodiment the influences of these psychic bodies register through the physical body, those of the mental through the cerebrospinal system and those of the astral through the hypothalamus and the automatic nervous system. In the course of this inter-play of the astral and mental influences through the mechanism of the physical body the astral influences are progressively integrated with the mental and the nature of the astral itself is uplifted through being irradiated by the mental influence. It is this irradiation which causes the development of cultural values in the course of civilisation and it is this process which is referred to by the term sublimation in psychology. The manipulation of the physical more efficiently through intellectual means leads to scientific development and to the growth of technological society. The irradiation of the astral and the concrete intellectual with the higher mind leads to development of humanistic values, spiritualisation of man's activities and to the pursuit of philosophical studies. In this matter, as it is pointed out by Dr. Annie Besant, the ego has to begin his spiritual evolution i.e., the un fold ment of his innate spiritual powers or to gain Dharma Bhuta Jnana in the terminology of Sri Ramanuja first on the physical plane, whose limiting conditions, externally correspond to the dawning powers of his consciousness on the subjective side. To consciously work i.e., as self-conscious entity on the astral and higher planes man has deliberately to transcend the limitations of his waking-consciousness by yogic practices. The dynamics of the astral and mental planes shown in terms of the physical become various Siddhis or occult feats.
Correlated with different subtle bodies of man, there are also corresponding subtler planes of existence, as is envisaged even by modern thinkers, viz. Dr. F. C. S. Shiller, Prof. C. D. Broad, Dr. Raynor C. Johnson, A. W. Osborn and others. Osborn specifically
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says, "Corresponding to each of these bodies there are planes of real objective experience more real in fact than our normal physical world. There are individuals who claim to have verified the existence of the subtle bodies and the planes on which they function". (Axis and the Rim, p. 98). Prof. Hornell Hart writes, "Hundreds of individuals are on record as having been projected outside their physical bodies. Dr. Robert Crook all has analysed and compared hundreds of such out-of-the body experiences". (New philosophical basis for Paranormal Phenomena, p. 17). Similarly Sir John Woodroffe observes "there are also states of existence or worlds which are also supersensible and quite as real, if not in a sense more so than the gross world of ordinary experience. These supersensible worlds are as real as the material and as much the body of and in correspondence with the Metaphysical Real as is the latter". (The World as power).
V. VARADACHARI1
31 - 8-71
1 Author of 'Psychic Research, occultism & Yoga.'
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AN OUTLINE
CHAPTER II
THE SMALL FREE UNIT AND THE LARGER CONCENTRATED UNITY
A FIRST step towards some kind of external unity is not only possible but is more or less urgently demanded by a sense of need in the race. This sense of need is born mainly of certain intellectual ideals and emotional sympathies; parody it is due to the economic convenience of a closer union and the political ambition of a few of the leading Powers to dominate and exploit the rest of the world without serious rivalry. We may therefore expect some kind of world-union within a comparatively short time.
This union is likely to be formed among the free nations and colonising empires. At first they will unite to settle the most pressing problems, these relating to commerce, settlement of disputes, questions of peace and war, policing the world. Later on, the union may develop into a closer unity which finally may take the form of a world government. But such a government is bound in the long run to be challenged by the forces of freedom; for once set on its course, the world government cannot escape the trend towards totalitarianism. It is however quite possible that before the plan of a world union on the lines of a close-knit political unity is finally achieved, other forces might intervene and lead to a very different result.
But we shall assume for the present that no such revolution takes place. The question arises: what will be the nature of such a close-knit union. The types of political unity hitherto evolved by man, the nation, the homogeneous empire and the heterogeneous empire, may give us some indications on this point.
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Wherever a form of unity has been created by external and mechanical processes, it has in the first place led to the strict curtailment of the liberties of the smaller component units; next, it has meant the creation of a central governmental agency to which these units have had to submit; further, it has led to a rigid organisation of society, either on the basis of caste as in India or on a hierarchical pattern of classes as in feudal Europe; and lastly, it has meant the concentration of the life of the nation or empire at a single centre or in the hands of a governing class or classes while the rest of the community is left to vegetate. We cannot escape a similar result in any attempt at a world-wide union on administrative lines.
Political freedom and a certain democratic trend was inevitable in the earlier communities which consisted of a single city or a small clan or region. Monarchy or a despotic oligarchy, a Papacy or sacrosanct theocratic class cannot flourish in such conditions, because they lack the advantage of distance and cannot find any justification for a close uniformity which a larger organisation demands. Such has been the case in ancient Greece, Rome and India.
They also developed inevitably a strong spirit of social equality, for rigid caste hierarchies cannot flourish in conditions of close intimacy. Thus in Athens the lowest ranks could occupy high positions, and in India the sacred functions of the Rishi were open to all classes.
Lastly, the opportunities which the individual had of sharing in full in the common life of the community gave these small early societies a vividness of life and dynamic force of culture and creation which enabled them to shape the course of future evolution in Europe (Greece and Rome) and Asia (Vedic, Upanishadic and Buddhist India).
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If these small communities could find a solution to some of their pressing problems and formed themselves into bigger aggregates without losing their individuality, then we might have escaped many of our difficulties. But in this they failed, and hence the question of larger aggregates had to be tackled later in another fashion, by the creation of the nation-unit.
The difficulties which these early communities faced were internal as well as external. In their internal life, they could not solve the problem of the slave and economic serf, and the woman. Both the serf and the woman continued to be denied the privileges of culture and political equality. This was true of Greece, Rome and India.
In their external relations, they could not evolve the notion of peaceful coexistence with other units; war remained their main relationship. This was born out of the insularity created by their geographical position and they could not get rid of it even in spite of larger philosophical ideas that had developed.
The result was that the small communities had to give place in the first place to the huge aggregations of empire, supranational entities which were doomed to failure until they had created a true psychological unity. The nations that came into being after the failure of the early empire had at first to forego many of the advantages of the earlier communities in order to assure its existence; and it was only after it had ensured its permanence that it could safely devote itself to the problem of freedom.
SANAT K. BANERJI
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CHAPTER II
THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN SOCIETY
(III)
THE present stage of mankind is largely dominated by reason; it is still part of the rational age. As already seen in the earlier sections of this essay, it is individualism which opens the way to the age of reason. This individualism got its impulse and chance of development because it followed an age of dominant conventionalism.
The nature of Reason is to understand and interpret life by one kind of symbol only, the idea. Having got hold of an idea it looks for its largest general application. But the idea must correspond to established facts. Therefore, the work of reason is to question facts, so that the idea can explain the facts or arrange them as required. At the same time the ideas have to be questioned, to see that they square with actual facts, or whether new facts have to be re-assorted to suit the ideas. This latter is necessary because reason lives not only in actual facts, but in possibilities. Thus the age of reason is also an age of progress, where many possibilities are sought to be actualised.
Man may for a time, for a long time even, live by the mere tradition of things whose reality he has lost, but not permanently. The necessity of questioning all his conventions and traditions sooner or later arises, and by that necessity reason gets her first real chance of an entire self-development. Reason must first question whether the tradition, however ancient it is, still contains any living truth, and also whether this truth is the best available for the government of man's life. There thus arises the strong idea that society can only be perfected by the universal application of the rational intelligence to the whole life, to its principles, to its details, to its machinery and to the powers that drive the machine.
The reason which is to be universally applied cannot be the reason
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of a ruling class, nor can it be the reason of a few pre-eminent thinkers. It must be the reason of each and all seeking for a basis of agreement. Thus arises the principle of individualistic democracy, in which the reason and will of every individual in the society is allowed to count equally with the reason and will of every other in determining its government, in selecting the essential basis and in arranging the detailed ordering of the common life. Also, each individual must be allowed to govern his life according to the dictates of his own reason and will, so far as that can be done without impinging on the same right in others.
In practice it is found that these ideas will not hold for a long time. For the ordinary man is not yet a rational being. He is still emerging from a long infrarational past, and is not able to form a reasonable judgement. He thinks either according to his own interests, impulses and prejudices, or else according to the ideas of others more active in intelligence, who are able by some means to establish an influence over his mind. Also, he does not yet use his reason to come to an agreement with his fellows, but rather to enforce his own opinions by struggle and conflict with the opinion of others. Hence arises a disparity between fact and idea which must lead to inevitable disillusionment and failure.
This individualistic democratic ideal thus brings us to the rule of a dominant class in the name of democracy over the ignorant, numerous and less fortunate mass. This might lead to a war of classes, where the exploited masses endeavour to assert their downtrodden right. Otherwise there is a perpetual strife of parties, all of which lift the barrier of conflicting ideas or ideals, which is nothing else than the battle of conflicting interests. There is also the increasing stress of competition which ends in the survival, not of the spiritually, rationally, or physically fittest, but of the most fortunate and vitally successful. The result is thus not at all the perfection which the reason of man had contemplated as its ideal.
One natural remedy for avoiding these defects is education. Universal education is then the inevitable step of the democratic movement in its attempt to rationalise human society. A rational education means firstly, to teach men how to observe and know rightly the facts on which they have to form a judgement. Secondly,
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it aims to train them to think fruitfully and soundly. And thirdly, it should fit them to use their knowledge and their thought effectively for their own and the common good. Capacity of observation and knowledge, capacity of intelligence and judgement, capacity of action and high character are required for the citizenship of a rational order of society. But yet the actual education in most countries—especially the education of the masses under the name "compulsory" education has not had the least relation to these necessities.
The gains, however, of this more wide-spread education and freedom has been to make people active and alive, and also to apply intelligence to life problems. But even these have been hampered to a large extent by the development of a huge organised compete-tive system, a rapid and one-sided development of industrialism and an increasing plutocratic tendency. This has put the wealth and naturally opportunity also, in the hands of the few (the "haves," as opposed to the large mass of "have-nots").
The first natural result has been the transition of the rational mind from democratic individualism to democratic socialism. Such socialism, starting from an industrialised social system has been compelled to work itself out by a war of classes, an uprising against the successful bourgeois and the plutocrat. But the real aim of socialism is to get rid of the tangle of unbridled competition, which becomes a giant obstacle to any decent ideal or practice of human living. It aims to replace organised economic warfare by an organised order and peace.
In order to achieve this organised state of affairs, socialism does away with individual liberty, even though it professes to be marching towards a more rational freedom. It thus attempts to erect an equality of opportunity for all, as well as equality of status for all. To this end an extreme form of socialism will abolish the right of personal property as it is now understood and makes war on the hereditary principle. The individual himself thus belongs entirely to society, not only his property, but his labour, capacities, education, his knowledge, his family life, and the life of his children. Ultimately, the collective reasoning mind and will of the community has to govern.
But yet within the socialistic order there remains an uneasy poise between two opposing principles,—the socialistic regimentation on the
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one hand, and the democratic liberty of the individual on the other. But it is a state of affairs where the individual, though materially well-fed, is systematically starved of his inner spiritual growth. Individual genius or originality is suppressed, unless it can be geared to the machinery of the State and thus became its depersonalized property.
Thus, just as individualistic democracy led up to difficulties that -brought about its discredit, so the collectivist democracy may find itself in difficulties that must lead to its discredit. The liberty, protected by the State which was the aim of individualistic democracy, and equality which is the leading idea of socialistic democracy, will be forced to call in the third element, fraternity or brotherhood, in order to restore the balance. It is this third element, in fact, which requires the spiritual force behind it if society is to move forward towards harmony and perfection.
Comradeship without liberty and equality can be nothing more than associations of functional classes, guilds or syndicates, in common service to the life of the nation under the absolute control of the collectivist State. This only leads to what has become known in Europe as totalitarianism. This means the governance and strict organisation of the total life of the society as a whole. There all exploitation by individual or class is eliminated, internal competition is removed, as well as confusion and waste.
This pattern of government has given rise in many countries to the rule by a Dictator, a dominant individual leader, who in fact heads a small active, ruling minority and is supported by a militarised force. The result is a compulsory casting of thought, education, expression, and action into a set iron mould. There is often a sanguinary repression of all that denies and differs. And there is total unprecedented compression of the whole communal existence so as to compel a maximum efficiency and a complete unanimity of mind, speech, feeling and life.
This appears to be the end of the age of Reason, since reason can no longer work, act or rule if the mind of man is refused freedom to think, or freedom to realise its thoughts by action in life. It is a state of affairs where the robot and automaton rule over man and society.
N. PEARSON
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1. Old age, Jara, is a problem recognised perhaps since thinking began, along with sickness and death. As are sickness and death so is old age. But what exactly is the problem of old age ?
2. The body becomes weak and incapable of the activity it has had all along and found so enjoyable. Further, the present care of the body itself becomes a large issue, which was not so before, and this requires more attention and help from others too. And this attention and help from others now becomes rather difficult and even scarce.
But more than the body, the mind gets into a worse form. It becomes a great deal fossilised and tends to live in the past and by the past. It seeks importance and self-satisfaction from what it once was. From its very form it becomes almost unserviceable for the present.
The result is that old age claims much from others for its body and mentally it is able to contribute very little and even here it demands continuing recognition for its past actions and achievements. This is not forthcoming in the measure desired and that constitutes possibly the apparent problem of old age.
3. Under the social changes now coming about, where larger family living is found disagreeable, old age has assumed an added difficulty. Previously parents in advanced age were looked after with joy and satisfaction by the children; at present this is found impracticable for other reasons too.
4. What is now the solution of this problem? A problem must have a solution. One might say, problem means a solution. A problem virtually is a solution not yet known. A solution may be easy or difficult, may be obtained soon or after long persevering effort, that is another matter.
5. Now each stage of life needs a preparation. Man has the longest childhood among living beings to provide for, as it were, a longer preparation for its unique responsibilities of life. There is then a long youth of educational training for the adulthood of life.
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Old age certainly needs to be prepared for carefully in advance a good deal. During the active period of life if the body is well taken care of and not used in a thoughtless involvement in activity, it will keep better in old age too. Similarly, if the mind is used without undue strain and inner conflict, it will retain its powers in a better form. In all, if a person has faith in a Higher Governance of life, in moral order and spiritual guidance and help, he will have better contentment and put in more effective effort in life and enjoy a better old age too.
But the will to live, a sense of purposive ness and meaningfulness in life, a seeking for a spiritual fulfilment of it, is the basic condition for living well at the adult stage as well as in old age. And to look forward to a fuller and an entire dedication to the cultural and the spiritual ideal is possibly the best preparation one can have during the working phase for the latter part of life, the period of our traditional vdnafrastha
6. Retirement from service or adult life's work is ordinarily seen to be much dreaded and extensions or re-employments in service much cherished and sought for. But if there is a due preparation for the latter part of life and the cultural work to be done intensively then, we would possibly cherish an early retirement and be happy to take up the best work of life deferred so long unavoidably.
7. The cultural work, i.e., the inner refinement of life is a large, most engrossing and highly rewarding preoccupation. A cultivation of thought or understanding of oneself and the world, of truth and existence; a cultivation of emotional life or the widening and intensification of aesthetic pleasure, moral and spiritual joys and satisfaction and a progressive elimination of the joy-killing emotions like anger, fear, hatred, jealousy, envy; and a reintegration of one's impulses into a unified harmonious will, are most wonderful pursuits. They afford a deep joy exceeding that ever experienced before in any ordinary achievement of life.
In the essential spiritual form, the cultural work becomes the
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search for one's soul, the inner inexhaustible reserve and source of light and love and delight or the search for the Supreme Truth, the Highest Bliss, the Divine Reality.
8. This pursuit, in whatever form it may come to a person, will certainly give a keen will to live and that will constitute his best strength in the latter part enabling him to get along well enough despite the various normal weaknesses and deficiencies of old age.
(a) The inner satisfactions of the cultural pursuit will help him very effectively in overcoming the earlier cravings for external satisfactions of eating, movement, social attention and others. And the growth of inner contemplation and its joy will not let him feel a deprivation in life when the senses grow weaker and begin to fail. The inner joy could be much greater than any experienced in sense gratifications.
However, the fulfilment of this process comes to a person when he finds his soul and is able to live in its self-existing inherent joy at will. Then comes also the sense of a continuing inner existence and a sense of the body as an external instrument for a limited use, and in consequence death loses its fear.
(b) The sense of the pursuit and the will to achieve the highest cultural goods of life will also not permit a person to live in the past and by the past. He will seek a greater future, a state of living not yet lived and enjoyed, and his attention will primarily be focused on that.
(c) And, even when the progress and achievement in the cultural pursuit is modest, he will be able to look forward to a longer future in the hereafter, which will be a fine motive for the quality of the next incarnation. When we are very old, surely our new fresh life is near enough.
INDRA SEN
For Further Study
SRI AUROBINDO
1 "The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth," Chs. 'Perfection of the Body' and 'The Divine Body'.
2 "On Yoga," II, Tome One, Ch. 'Rebirth.'
The Mother
3 "On Education," particularly the section, 'Four Austerities and Four Liberations.'
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India's Contribution to World Thought and Culture-Viveka nanda Commemoration Volume. Published by Vivekananda Rock Memorial Committee, 12, Pillayar Kovil Street, Madras 5. pp. 705. Colour Plates 12. In Black & White plates 91. Price: Rs. 150/-
Produced on the occasion of the inauguration of Vivekananda Memorial Temple on the famous Rock at Kanya Kumari, this magnificent Volume is a fitting tribute to the cause of India's service to humanity so ably served by Swami Vivekananda. It was on this holy rock that Swamiji received the inspiration that took him to lands far and wide across the oceans to blazon the spiritual Message of India.
In setting out on his great journey towards the close of the 19th century A.D., Swami Vivekananda revived a tradition that had been India's since times immemorial. What this tradition was, what was its content and its consequence to the world abroad is the theme of more than 70 scholarly papers presented in this Volume by competent authorities.
As Dr. S. P. Gupta points out in his paper: "The dispersal of Indian culture, at least in Soviet Central Asia, can be traced from the early Stone Age which takes us back to about a half a million years." Our definite knowledge, however, begins from the third century B.C. and "we are in a position to say that in the course of ages that culture was spread almost all over Asia, from Armenia to Japan, and from Eastern Siberia to Ceylon and the islands of Indonesia; even further beyond."
The Indian civilisation has gone abroad not merely in Religion, trade and commerce as generally assumed, but equally in art, literature, language, sciences of grammar, astrology, medicine etc. Indian life has shown, as described by Sri M. C. Joshi, an amazing capacity for self-renewal in diverse fields of activity and her diffusion of knowledge and dynamism in the rest of the world has been equally long and varied. This work of
encyclopedic range is a glorious testimony
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to the contribution of this ancient land to the Thought and Culture of the World.
The production of this sumptuous and solid Volume is a satisfying tribute to the organising genius and zeal of Sri Eknath Ranade, the dynamic secretary of the Rock Memorial Committee. Both the Rock Memorial and this great book will stand as his permanent contribution to the cause of the regeneration of India for the good of humanity.
Contribution of Yamuna to Visistadvaita: By Dr. M. Narasim hachari. Pub: Prof. M. Rangacharya Memorial Trust, Madras-5. pp. 340. Price Rs. 15/-
Ramanuja did not originate the Visistadvaita, philosophy of Qualified Monism, even as Shankara did not start the advaita system. Great teachers and God-seekers like Nathamuni and Yamuna charya preceded Ramanuja and laid the foundation of this Thought which the latter developed into a regular system in his times. Dr. Narasimachary traces, in this volume, the contribution of Yamuna charya to this philosophy and underlines his influence on the thought and personality of his grand disciple, Ramanuja. For this purpose he examines the contents of his extant works against the background of the standpoints and opposition of other systems of philosophy, e.g. Mimamsa, Sankhya, Yoga, Advaita etc. and spares no pains in bringing out the fine logical intellect and tones of inner experience that are unmistakable in the writings of Yamunacharya.
A most rewarding chapter in this book is on Shakti, the evolution of the concept of the Mother-Power from the Vedic beginnings up to the firm establishment of Lakshtni or Sri as the Supreme Creatrix, Ambassadrix and Saviour in the Pancharatra. In an interesting note on the difference of viewpoints of the two schools of Vishishtadvaita the northern and the southern schools (Vadagalai and Tengalai), the author states:
"The Vadagalais hold Sri to be essentially of the same nature as Her Lord, infinite and uncreate, and as constituting the godhead together with Him. She can also mediate between Him and
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the devotee because of Her close association with the former. The Tengalais, on the other hand, consider Her as essentially belonging to the category of the individual selves (jivas). Though finite, She has the power to assume magnitude, unlike the Jivas, and can thus mediate between God and man. This is one of the eighteen doctrinal differences (astadasabhedas)
A scholarly and informative treatise on the evolution of Visis-tadvaita philosophy.
M. P. PANDIT
'Shree Arvindayan': By Panditrao Raval: Published by Ram-bhai Nathbhai Amin, 'Ramhome', Gulabbhai's Tekra, Behind New Patel Society, Ahmedabad-6.
'Shree Arvindayan' is the life-story of Sri Aurobindo, written for the first time in simple Gujarati and in a flowing style at once direct and appealing to the dreaming imagination not only of children and young students, but of all alike, be they young or old.
The writer is telling us this interesting and deeply inspiring story in the vivid manner of traditional story-tellers with an ease and earnestness which straightaway fills the heart of the reader with enthusiasm and admiration for the admirable character of the hero of the story.
The life of Sri Aurobindo is in reality the life of a human soul passing through human greatness to the glory of God made living in the human mould of the great Patriot, the great Yogi, the great Seer, the Deliverer, the Avatar of this age, the golden attainment of toiling millenniums. The Divine arrives at a critical evolutionary stage when the life of our aspiring earth is in sore need of the intervention of God himself.
It would be well if this life-story of Sri Aurobindo is translated in all our languages for the benefit of the young of our entire country; for Sri Aurobindo is the one whom we all need to adore as our ideal
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and follow in our life. India following Sri Aurobindo will attain to its true divine self and rise from greatness to greatness, from glory to glory and be God's beacon-fire for all mankind.
PUJALAL
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