It fills my members with a might divine:

I have drunk the Infinite like a giant's wine.

 

Time is my drama or my pageant dream.

Now are my illumined cells joy's flaming scheme.

And changed my thrilled and branching nerves to fine

Channels of rapture opal and hyaline

For the influx of the Unknown and the Supreme.

 

I am no more a vassal of the flesh,

A slave to Nature and her leaden rule;

I am caught no more in the senses' narrow mesh.

My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight,

My body is God's happy living tool,

My spirit a vast sun of deathless light.

Mark that the body is firstly not discarded but transformed and secondly the transformation thus effected is not a mere personal achievement but the body no longer weighed down by its age-old inertia has become God's happy living tool. From the last quatrain of another sonnet we learn what is meant by its becoming God's tool.

My heart shall throb with the world-beats of Thy love;

My body become Thy engine for earth-use;

In my nerves and veins Thy rapture's streams shall move;

My thoughts shall be hounds of Light for Thy power to loose.

The divinized body has to work for the whole earth with its radiance and bliss. The transformation sought after is not for any personal well-being but for God's work in the world. This is further elucidated in his poem 'Jivanmukta'. The Jivanmukta who has achieved complete liberation from the clutches of Desire and its dark brood of sorrows has now no personal need to prolong his stay on earth. But Sri Aurobindo gives to the concept a new turn and thus makes a sharp departure from the aim pursued in traditional yogas. Personal liberation is the first necessity of yoga but then there is the work of

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redeeming the world of Ignorance struggling towards Light. I will read out the last three verses of the poem:

Although consenting here to a mortal body,

He is the Undying; limit and bond he knows not;

For him the aeons are a playground

Life and its deeds are its splendid shadow.

 

Only to bring God's forces to waiting Nature,

To help with wide-winged Peace her tormented labour

And heal with joy her ancient sorrow,

Casting down light on the inconscient darkness,

 

He acts and lives. Vain things are mind's smaller motives

To one whose soul enjoys for its high possession

Infinity and the sempiternal

All is his guide and beloved and refuge.

This is the meaning of liberation in his yoga. It is made further clear by a letter of Sri Aurobindo's where he says, 'My point about my sadhana was that my sadhana was not done for myself but for the earth-consciousness as a showing of the way towards the Light so that whatever I showed in it to be possible—inner growth, transformation, manifesting of new faculties, etc.—was not of no importance to anybody, but meant as an opening of lines and ways for what had to be done.' In another letter he writes, 'I have no intention of achieving the Supermind for myself only — I am not doing anything for myself, as I have no personal need of anything, neither of salvation (Moksha) nor supramentalisation. If I am seeking after supramenta-lisation, it is because it is a thing that has to be done for the earth-consciousness and if it is not done in myself, it cannot be done in others. My supramentalisation is only a key for opening the gates of the Supramental to the earth-consciousness; done for its own sake, it would be perfectly futile.'

Another great contribution of his poetry is that it strikes a note of affirmation, a note which everything that our spiritual vision has seen will be actualised and given a material shape on earth. The

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note of negation has ever shadowed human progress. And when the progress is towards a luminous ideal the word of negation perpetually clouds our vision and saps our will by its depressing murmur, 'The mud is constant; and the stars are ever out of reach'. Sri Aurobindo's poetry is a counterblast to this insistent word of despair.

"Oh, surely one day he shall come to our cry,

One day he shall create our life anew

And utter the magic formula of peace

And bring perfection to the scheme of things.

One day he shall descend to life and earth,

Leaving the secrecy of the eternal doors,

Into a world that cries to him for help,

And bring the truth that sets the spirit free,

The joy that is the baptism of the soul,

The strength that is the outstretched arm of Love.

One day he shall lift his beauty's dreadful veil,

Impose delight on the world's beating heart

And bare his secret body of light and bliss."

(Savitri, Bk. 2, C. VI)

Now I will quote a passage from his long poem 'Ahana' (the dawn of god). The poem opens with a magnificent full-chorded paean sung by the voices of the hunters of spiritual joy who are the first to greet her when she descends on this world of strife and trouble of mortality. The dactylic beat with the interplay of classical quantity and the English stress-beat gives the poem the oceanic surge and sweep of the Homeric epics. This is another contribution of Sri Aurobindo's to the English rhythmic structure and invests the poem with a new motion, a polyphonic freedom and an orchestral sonority. I will read out Ahana's reply to their long supplication:

Voice of the sensuous mortal, heart of eternal longing,

Thou who hast lived as in walls, thy soul with thy senses' wronging!

But I descend at last. Fickle and terrible, sweet and deceiving,

Poison and nectar one has dispensed to thee, luring thee, leaving.

We two together shall capture the flute and the player relentless.

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Son of man, thou hast crowned thy life with the flowers that are scentiess,

Chased the delights that wound. But I come and midnight shall sunder.

Lo, I come, and behind me knowledge descends and with thunder

Filling the spaces Strength, the Angel, bears on his bosom

Joy to thy arms. Thou shalt look on her face like a child's or a blossom,

Innocent, free as in Eden of old, not afraid of her playing,

When thy desires I have seized and devoured like a lioness preying.

Thou shalt not suffer always nor cry to me lured and forsaken:

I have a snare for his footsteps, I have a chain for him taken.

Come then to Brindavan, soul of the joyous; faster and faster

Follow the dance I shall teach thee with Shyama for slave and for master.

Follow the notes of the flute with a soul aware and exulting;

Trample Delight that submits and crouch to a sweetness insulting.

Then shalt thou know what the dance meant, fathom the song and the singer,

Hear behind the thunder its rhymes, touched by Ughtning thrill to his finger,

Brindavan's rustle shalt understand and Yamuna's laughter,

Take thy place in the Ras and thy share of the ecstasy after.

In a footnote he explains the word Ras in these words, 'The dance-round of Krishna with the cowherdesses in the moonlit groves of Brindavan, type of the dance of Divine Delight with the souls of men liberated in the Bliss secret within us.'

Finally, his great contribution to English poetry is the secret of Mantra and how its possibilities can be exploited in English. I cannot here enter into a fuller treatment of the subject but shall content myself with quoting a passage from Savitri where he has crystallized the whole secret of the mantric power. Richard Lannoy has cited this passage in his book 'The Speaking Tree' with these words, 'The following lines by Sri Aurobindo summarize the significance of the Word to Hinduism.' When the mantra falls on the receptive cars, Sri Aurobindo says:

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Its message enters stirring the blind brain

And keeps in the dim ignorant cells its sound;

The hearer understands a form of words

And, musing on the index thought it holds,

He strives to read it with the labouring mind,

But finds bright hints, not the embodied truth:

Then, falling silent in himself to know

He meets the deeper listening of his soul:

The Word repeats itself in rhythmic strains:

Thought, vision, feeling, sense, the body's self

Are seized unalterably and he endures

An ecstasy and an immortal change;

He feels a Wideness and becomes a Power,

All knowledge rushes on him like a sea:

Transmuted by the white spiritual ray

He walks in naked heavens of joy and calm,

Sees the God-face and hears transcendent speech...

(Savitri, Bk 4, C. Ill)

The passage itself emanates mantric vibrations. The verse moves with lovely assonances and alliterations making melody and spreading magic with the blank verse flowing and lucid and yet free from any dissolute overflow or loose liquidity. The separate harmony of the single lines is clearly felt without any arrest of continuity. This is mantra par excellence.

Thank you

RAVINDRA KHANNA

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MY DISCOVERY OF THE LIFE DIVINE

IT seems to me that from the very young age I was taking keen interest in the study and learning of the books in which the fundamental problems of philosophy and their solutions are discussed. I therefore gradually studied all the systems of Indian philosophy, the Sankhya, Nyaya, Yoga, Mimamsa and Vedanta, not excluding Buddhism, Jainism and the materialist charvaka. While studying Shankar's commentary on the Vedanta Sutras, specially his criticisms of other philosophic systems, his arguments appeared to me so impeccable and convincing that I decided to read his philosophy very thoroughly. I therefore studied, all the important works written by his followers. For several years during this period my mind seemed to be floating on water without finding any standing ground. At last after eight years when I studied the 'Advait Siddhi' written by Sri Madhusudan Saraswati in which the philosophy of Shankar reaches its highest culmination, I felt that I found its bottom and I could measure its height and depth and length and breadth.

Before I begin to explain my difficulties in understanding the validity of this system, I would like to mention here the contribution which Shankar made to the philosophical thinking of India. Although the Veda, the Upanishads and the Gita, the three great scriptures in which almost all the followers of Vedic culture have absolute faith, are monistic. They hold one and the only one Supreme Reality behind this universe. But the difference or rather opposition between Spirit and Matter (Chetana and jada) appeared to them so great that the philosophers generally were not convinced in their mind and heart by monism. It was very difficult to conceive Matter to be Brahman or vice versa. Hence the dualistic and pluralistic systems like Sankhya, Yoga and Nyaya were born. The Atheistic system of Sankhya based on the verses of Ishwara Krishna was not appealing much to the thinkers. The pluralistic system of Nyaya was more prevalent. It was Shankar who by his subtle arguments and forceful presentation, clarified the Indian thinking and established monism permanently. The influence of his Mayavada can be seen even on Sayana, the well-known

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translator of the Vedas, who belonged to the ritualistic school of Mimamsa. Even the followers of Bhakti school who could not relish the theory of the unreality of the world, explained their systems in terms of monism. Shankar is perfectly logical in proving the sole reality of Brahma behind the universe and so he is rightly respected as the world teacher, Jagadguru.

There is a stage in spiritual sadhana when all the movements in the world seem to be the activities of the Nature and soul remains only an impartial witness. This experience is quite enough to liberate the soul from the bondage of the Prakriti. This solution is offered by Sankhya Darshan. But there is a higher stage in sadhana when behind the soul and the nature some other Reality is seen ( क्षरात्मानौ इराते देव एक: ) The philosophy of Sankhya does not solve completely the problem of the relation of the soul and the Nature. Similarly there is a stage in sadhana when everything in the world, our eating, drinking, social service, human service, even performance of yogic sadhana is seen as illusory, a sort of dream imposed upon the soul, by itself or by some other agency. Just as a man puts on clothes to see some festival, similarly soul puts on these clothes body, mind, life, eating, drinking etc. to see the world. One can see moment after moment putting on and putting off of these garbs. But this is not the highest or the final stage. There are higher stages in which the world and all its activities are seen to be intimately connected with the Divine. In this stage the meaning and the significance of the activities of the world is entirely changed. Everything is seen as the manifestation of the Divine Idea, Will, Consciousness and Force. Shankar's philosophy did not perhaps reach that stage. Shankar therefore while proving the sole reality of Brahman is perfectly right, but when he tried to prove the unreality of the world he was partially right and I could not agree with his arguments.

My difficulties in understanding the unreality of the world were twofold, one from the side of logic and another from the side of authority. There are generally three causes by which a thing is created, the material, the efficient and the instrumental. For example

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for a pot clay is the material cause, potter is the efficient cause and his wheel, stick etc., are the instrumental cause. In the cases of illusory appearances there is another cause called basic cause or adhi-sthana. When a rope appears as a snake, the rope is the adhisthana or basic cause. According to the philosophy of Shankar when a rope appears as a snake an absolutely new snake is created there. There the mistaken identity of the rope is the material cause or upadana for the creation of the new snake. Similarly from the Ignorance of Brahman an absolutely new world is created, Brahman being its Adhisthan cause and its Ignorance the material cause or upādāna. According to the Nyaya philosophy the percipient who mistakes the rope as the snake had actually seen a snake somewhere and now projects that perception on the rope because of their close resemblance This view of Nyaya philosophy is called anyatha-khyati and the theory of Mayavada is called anirvachaniya khyati.

Here arises a question: who is in ignorance? whose ignorance is the cause of the creation of the world? Is it Jiva or Brahman? What is Jiva? According to Shankar's philosophy Jiva is consciousness limited by mind (antahkaranachchinna chaitanya). To pure consciousness illusory appearance is not possible, it is possible only when it is limited or conditioned by mind or antahkarana, and this limitation is possible when the mind is in existence. Mind can function only when there exists a healthy body and senses and that is possible again when the Earth, the Sun, and Nebulae are in existence which means the creation of the world. Thus the ignorance of Jiva can create the illusory world only when the world has already been created. This is a fallacy of mutual dependence (anynonyaasraya). This theory accepts beforehand what it sets out to prove.

Let us say then that it is the pure Brahman who is the subject as well as the object of Ignorance who sees the illusory world. This theory has been accepted by Madhusudan Saraswati.*

The first difficulty in this theory is that Brahman is absolutely static, motionless, immutable, immobile ( कूस्टथ, अक्षर, अचल, अविकाये ), if there would be the least movement in it, it would perish like pot, cloth etc.** Therefore the movement of illusory appearance cannot be possible in Brahman. It may be said that there is another force called Maya which imposes the false appearance of the world upon

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the pure consciousness of Brahman. But Brahman is described in the Upanishad, All-Light ( ज्योतिमय ) All-knowing, Omniscient (सर्बज, सर्बावित्,) Omnipotent ( सर्बशकितमान् ) and Ignorance or Maya is a sort of darkness, how can then we imagine that Brahman's own light cannot dispel this darkness? If somehow Maya is able to cover hi s pure light then Maya must be more powerful than Brahman. In that case we have to accept two equally powerful realities, Brahman an d Maya. And as Brahman is not able to destroy this d ark force, how will it be destroyed? By the mental knowledge of the Jivas who are the creatures of Maya? It seems to be impossible. Maya must be as eternal as Brahman and so the world also must be eternal and there is no hope for men to be free from their ignorance. It may be said that Maya does not really cover the real nature of Bralunan but creates the world without it. But this is not possible. When a man sees a snake in place of a rope, his knowledge is really concealed by the ignorance of the rope. If the percepient knows that it is a rope, the new snake would not be created, would not appear to the percepient, whatever would appear to him would be real. Similarly the world created by Maya without covering Brahman's knowledge would be real.

Another difficulty for me in understanding the unreality of the world in Shankar's philosophy was this: It is said in the Upanishads that Brahman perceived (or thought),' 'I am one, let me become many, let me create worlds, he created these worlds, he became many'¹. As Brahman is All-knowing, pure truth, pure in consciousness, infinite in knowledge², there is no possibility in him of any false idea. All the examples of creation given in the Upanishads show Brahman as the material cause and not the illusory cause. For instance, it is said that from the Spirit came ether, from ether was born air, from air fire, from fire water, from water earth, from earth plants, from plants came forth bodies of living beings³, from body hair, nails etc., and again, from earth pot, from gold ornament, from iron nail-cutter, from milk butter, etc, etc—In the Vedas and Upanishads and the Gita I could not find even a single instance of rope and snake, mother of pearl and silver, mirage and water. In spite of my best efforts I could not be convinced with the logic of the Maya-vada that although Brahman was pure gold (शुद्घम्), pure in existence

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(सत्) pure in consciousness (चित्), pure in knowledge (ज्ञानम्), pure truth (सत्यम्) still the very first idea that occurred in him was false, and not only that idea but from the beginning till the end every thing he created was false. Or that, being omnipotent, all-ruler ( सबैरवर) he could not dispel by his light and force the darkness imposed upon him by some other false agency or that he would perish like an earthern pot if the slightest movement, even of an idea of creation, occurs in him. The Upanishads say that what he created was real⁴ (सत्, याथातथ्यत:); the Mayavada interprets these words as unreal (असत्, अयाथाथ्यत:) We can understand that an ornament made out of pure gold must be pure golden, but we cannot understand that the ornament made out of pure gold would by itself become iron or lead. Thinking in this way I came to the conclusion that as Brahman is true and pure in knowledge, the idea of creation that arose in him was the true idea. This is the seed about which it is said in the Shwetashwataropanishad that God manifested one seed into many forms (एकं वीजं वहुघा करोति). It is that seed according to the Gita, which is cast by the Divine in his womb called Mahad Brahman". As this idea is true idea, the world created out of it must be true not illusory (जगत्सत्यं न मिथ्या), While I was doing research in the Indian Institute of Philosophy, Amalner, I read a paper in this subject explaining that just as an idea of a house in the mind of an engineer materialises in the form of the house, as an idea of a picture in the mind of an artist takes the form of a picture, likewise, the idea in the Mind of Brahman about the creation of the world takes the form of the world. There is no possibility of any ignorance or falsity either in the idea or the creation. During discussion on the paper Dr. R. B. Das, a realist, asked me a question, "what is the difference between the mind of man and the mind of God". I could not give any answer to that question at that time. But afterwards when I pondered seriously over the question, I received the following answer in my mind. Everything in the world requires four causes namely idea, will, action and material. For instance, for the building of a house it needs first an idea of the house in the mind of some man, secondly his will, his determination to build it and thirdly a mason and some labourers and fourthly bricks etc., as material. In human mind these are quite separate from each other. For example some old man,

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feeling some difficulty in living thinks to build a new house for him, he has an idea of it. But he can think that he has become too old to undertake the job, and his grown up children could themselves make it if they so liked. So the idea is there but there is no will to carry it out. If the will is there the house may not be built if some mason and labourers are not available or if bricks etc., the necessary material is lacking. If any one of the four causes is missing no house would be built. But when the idea of world creation comes in the Mind of God, the will to carry on accompanies it. And as all the forces and things are various forms of God himself, the idea contains within itself necessary force and also the material to work it out. Hence idea, will, labour and material all these four causes are combined together in that Idea.

Moreover in the light of Shwetashwataropanishad I was feeling what is called illusory Maya by the Mayavadins must be the self-power of the Divine (बेवात्म रकित) or the Paraprakriti of the Gita, i. e; his omniscience, omnipotence. Hence as I felt that there was no possibility that such a Divine Power would create an unreal world.

Thinking on these lines I had an aspiration to do Yoga in order to discover a philosophy in which the world should be the real manifestation of Brahman through the true Idea and by his All-Knowing, All-Powerful Divine force. I had discussed this problem with Prof. K. C. Bhattacharya who as a visiting professor was invited to deliver some lectures on certain philosophical problems in the Institute. He suggested me some books to read but I could get no material which could satisfy my thirst. At that very time, under certain mysterious circumstances I reached Pondicherry in November 1937 for Darshan and requested Sri Aurobindo to permit me to stay permanently in the Ashram and do Sadhana there. Sri Aurobindo wrote "It may turn out like that, but at present he is allowed to stay till February Darshan". I wrote him in reply "there is no distinction between the thought and the will and actuality of the Divine. If 'may be' is there 'must be' also must be there." After a few days the Mother sent me words through the Secretary, "The Mother is very much pleased with you. She has given you a room in the Ashram."

While I was doing Sadhana in the Ashram, naturally I began to read The Life Divine published in the Arya. While going through it

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I was extremely delighted to find that the truth which my soul was searching after was in The Life Divine and that was what was needed for the present day world. What I used to call the mind of God, Sri Aurobindo named the Supermind, what I used to call Satya Sanklpa or true idea Sri Aurobindo named it 'Real Idea'. Sri Aurobindo also accepted Maya to be All-knowing Divine Power of God. Apart from that, while I proceeded further in reading The Life Divine I found solutions of many other such problems of philosophy, religion and human life which had been declared insoluble by human thought. In this way I came to the conclusion that the solutions given by Sri Aurobindo in The Life Divine were so correct, reasonable and convincing that they could be given only by one who had created the world. Just as the creator of a machine alone can explain correctly the purpose and functions of each part of the machine, similarly those solutions could be given by none other than one whom the Vedas speak as the World Creator (विरवकमा) the World-Seer (विरवचक्षा). In each and every word of the Life Divine I began to feel as if the world-creator out of compassion for his ignorant creatures had revealed the secrets of his creation by assuming human body.

After having this experience I thought that as the philosophy which I was in search of had already been brought down upon the earth by Sri Aurobindo, there was no need for me to do Sadhana for that purpose. What I could and should do with profit was to receive those truths in my mind, live them in fife and express them, as far as possible, correctly in my own easily understandable language.

Keeping this idea in mind I requested Sri Aurobindo in 1939, when The Life Divine was being printed for the first time in a book form, to permit me to translate it into Hindi. Sri Aurobindo set me words through the secretary "Well, it is a monumental work, we shall consider it later on." In 1942 I requested him again to send me a copy of it for translation with his autograph and blessings. He sent me a copy of it in three volumes with his autograph. After sometime, while going for Pranama to the Mother, I gave her a letter requesting to give me written blessings for its translation. Taking my letter in her hand Mother closed her eyes and went into trance for a few minutes. When Mother opened her eyes she smiled and blessed me by keeping her hand over my head. Next day, Sri Nolini returned

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back my letter on which the Mother wrote "My blessings for the translation of The Life Divine".

I have gone a little astray from the main subject of the article with which we started. The reason being that this article was written as an introduction to my translation of the Life Divine and there it was necessary to tell the readers my discovery and evaluation of The Life Divine and I believe that this part also would be equally interesting to the readers. In the next article I propose to deal with that subject i.e. Sri Aurobindo's contribution to philosophical thinking of the world.

(To be continued)

K. D. ACHARYA

(A free rendering of the author's Introduction to Divya Jivan, his Hindi translation of The Life-Divine)

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OLD BENGALI MYSTIC POEMS

XLVII

BETWEEN the lotus and the thunderbolt my union was made:

The Outcast Woman blazed fierce in utter equanimity; The house of the untouchable woman is burning, it is on fire:

Take up the Moon and pour out the waters upon it.

It does not scorch, it does not burn, nor any smoke is seen.

By the northern pole it enters the heavens.

All the Gods and Godheads are burnt,

Burnt are the sacred threads and the tablet of rules.

Dhama says, he has a clear knowledge now

And the waters rise up the fivefold channel.

 

line. I.	lotus=lotus of the heart.
	thunderbolt=referring to the solidity and luminosity of the Supreme Consciousness, Nirvana.
line 2.	Outcast Woman = the Divine Soul in man; the name Chandali literally means she, the fierce one; outcast because usually not accepted or recognised by the ordinary consciousness.
	We may remember the union achieved in between Ganga and Yamuna spoken of in the Tantras (Gangajamunayormadheya); vide also poem No. 14.
line 4.	Moon = Soma; immortality.
	Waters = streams of immortality,
line 6.	Northern pole: the summit of being or consciousness, the southern pole being the
	lower end corresponding to sahasrdra at the top and mulddhdra at the bottom, of the the Tantras, Sumeru and Kumeru.
line 10.	Fivefold channel: the five senses; also compare the fivefold sheaths of the Upanishads.

 

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XLVIII

(The original text is lost. Only a Tibetan translation exists.)

XLIX

The boat made of the thunderbolt I ply across the bosom of the Padma.

The cruel robbers looted all my burden.

Today, O Bhusaka, truly you have become a Bengali,

Your own wife is taken away by the outcast villains.

The five tablets, the sense-objects are now burnt.

I do not know where has entered my consciousness,

No more do I possess gold or silver;

In my own sphere I dwell in great happiness.

My four-square treasury is now exhausted there is no difference between life and death.

line I.            Padma -the river of life.

line 3.           Bengali = I am now my true self.

line 9.           Four-square = full, complete.

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L

 

In each heaven there is a three-storeyed building: and my hut is an axe;

In my throat is awake the beautiful girl— the jewel of a void.

Abandon the illusion, abandon the delusion, abandon all extreme dualities.

Shalva revels in the great delight with his girl, the void.

I see my three-storeyed house, it is even like the heavens,

It is so well-built as if cotton flowers have opened out in all their whiteness.

Beside the three-storeyed building there rose a moon-beam building;

The darkness burst open as though into flowers of heaven.

The fruits are all rippened, Shabara and his spouse are reveling:

Night and day, Shabara passed in the great delight, he has no other consciousness.

With bamboo sticks a cot was prepared,

Shabara was placed upon it and was burnt.

Alas, vultures and jackals are mad with grief.

The one addicted to birth died in this way, the last rites done, offerings distributed.

Behold, Shabara has attained Nirvana and his shabara hood vanished.

 

(concluded)

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

 

¹Three-storeyed = the body, the life and the mind. There is a double set of this structure— one, is dark, made of ignorance, alongside there is another, luminous, made of moonlight, that is to say, made of pure delight and immortality (Soma).

² Shabara = the original, unregenerate, unclean, impure man, the man of ordinary, ignorant consciousness.

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THE SPIRIT OF INDIA

THE ESSENCE

THERE are, underlying all the multitudinous diversities of India's millennial endeavour, an abiding spirit, some essential characteristics which inform its total movement. "An ingrained and dominant spirituality, an inexhaustible vital creativeness and gust of life and, mediating between them, a powerful, penetrating and scrupulous intelligence combined of the rational, ethical and aesthetic mind each at a high intensity of action"¹ — this in sum is the essence of the Indian spirit. To miss or over emphasise any of these essential things in our past history will be to give an inadequate picture.

"The note of spirituality is dominant, initial, constant, always recurrent; it is the support of all the rest."² India has always been enamoured of the Infinite; it has been the ruling passion of its highest spirits to seek the Eternal, enter into some communion with it, express in whatever way its truth and beauty and delight through philosophy and thought, art and poetry, religion and the fife's joy. A sound and stable social order, an opulence of material fife unparalleled elsewhere until modern times, a political system that until its disruption by the medieval upheaval had provided an adequate guarantee for the unfettered development of the people's culture and life; these too, the things of "mundane" existence, derived their sap and support from the spiritual urge and experience.

It is important to grasp this synthetic quality of the Indian spirit, its ever-recurring tendency to create a bridge between the abstract and the concrete. "The Hindu has been always decried as a dreamer and mystic. There is truth in the charge, but also a singular inaccuracy. The Hindu mind, in one sense, is the most concrete in the world. It seeks after abstraction, yet is it never satisfied so long as it remains abstraction It is this double aspect of Hindu temperament which is the secret of our civilisation, our religion, our life and literature: extreme spirituality successfully attempting to work in harmony with extreme materialism."³

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The synthetic approach to the problem of existence in all its varied aspects is the natural outcome of India's spiritual vision.

THE SPIRITUAL ASPIRATION

The essence of Indian spirituality lies in "a recognition of something greater than mind and life, the aspiration to a consciousness pure, great, divine, beyond our normal mental and vital nature, a surge and rising of the soul in man out of the littleness and bondage of our lower parts towards a greater thing secret within him."⁴

This "recognition of something greater than mind and life" opened up an endless vista of supra-physical realms, "worlds" as they are called in the Vedas and the Puranas, each with its corresponding plane or level of consciousness within man himself, the "sheaths" of the Upanishadic and later philosophic and Tantric terminology. Each of these worlds or planes of consciousness has its own peculiar powers of knowledge action and delight, its denizens and embodiments fully conscious in their own fields and sometimes exerting an influence on the other planes. They are in fact so inextricably mixed up one with another that the Upanishads and the Gita use the metaphor of weaving—woven as in a weft and woof—to describe concretely their texture.

But all this complexity of the visible and invisible worlds finds its unity and harmony in the Indian view through its recognition of Something or Someone unique that is manifested in all this diversity. The Veda calls it "the One of whom the sages speak variously".⁵ The Upanishads dwell on it as the "Self, the Spirit, the Godhead in man and creatures and Nature and all this world and in other worlds and beyond all cosmos, the Immortal, the One, the Infinite".⁶ The Gita's Purushottama who is the All and is beyond the All, the Tantra's Mahashakti creatrix and upholder of the universe are but other names of this One and Unique. It is This that provides the base for the synthetic spiritual vision of India.

It is This also that lies at the root of the practical side of Indian spirituality, which is known by the generic term Yoga. "The principle of Yoga is the turning of one or of all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching the divine Being."⁷ Here too there is

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an endless complexity of approach and result; the variations spring from the particular instrument chosen as the leverage and the result intended or aspired for. The Hathayoga fixes on the powers of the body and the life-force latent in the body; its primary aim and result is an immense capacity for the body's well-being and capacities. The Rajayoga chooses the mental being and primarily aims at the mastery of the whole apparatus of thought and consciousness. The Yoga of Knowledge selects the reason and the mental vision, the Yoga of Devotion selects the emotional and aesthetic powers of the soul, the Yoga of Works the will to work and action. The different schools of Tantric Yoga seek to convert the whole man and his lower nature of the senses into some figure of perfection.

But whatever the divergences in method and primary aim, all the systems of Indian Yoga find their essential unity in the final objective. That objective is liberation, "the liberation of the soul of man from its present natural ignorance and limitations, its release into spiritual being, its union with the highest self and Divinity."⁸ The nature of the liberation aimed at varies with the particular view of the human personality and the supreme Divinity. It may be the "self-oblivious abolition of the soul's personal being in the absorption of the One, sāyujya-mukti....There is an eternal ecstatic dwelling in the highest existence of the Supreme, sālokya....There is an eternal love and adoration in a uniting nearness...sāmīpya. There is an identity of the soul's liberated nature with the divine nature, sādrśya-mukti."⁹ There is the Buddhist nirvana; the Jaina aims at kaivalya, the sole purity of soul-existence sheer and absolute. But the ultimate result of all this striving, the essential nature of all Yoga is "a high effort of the human spirit to rise beyond the fife of desire and vital satisfaction and arrive at an acme of spiritual calm, greatness, strength, illumination, divine realisation, settled peace and bliss."¹⁰

RELIGION IN INDIA

Nowhere else perhaps in the whole range of the Indian endeavour is the spirit of widest catholicity more apparent, nowhere its ability to found all diversities on a secure sense of order more persistent than in its dealings with popular religion. Indian religion gave

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itself no name—"Hinduism" is a modern invention, it is unknown to any of our scriptural texts,—because it admitted all possible forms of human worship within its fold. It had no single authoritative scripture; the Veda, the Upanishads, the Gita, Puranas, Tantras, sayings of the Buddha, Mahavira, Kabir, Sri Chaitanya, songs and poems of the southern saints, of Nanak and the mystics of medieval Maharashtra—to mention only the best-known names—are all reckoned as "scriptures"; deference is paid to them entirely according to the bent of the particular worshipper, no one compels obedience on pain of eternal hell. This is not to say that all of them are of equal worth: the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Gita rank among the highest that the religious spirit in man has created, and we shall have to devote more than one essay to study them in the barest outline. The point to emphasise here is that these numerous scriptures are an index of the Indian spirit of toleration, a sign of its ever enlarging tradition; they also serve to maintain the long continuity of this tradition over the past three thousand years and more.

It is well to understand the real source of strength of this millennial effort. Indian religion, it is often pointed out by foreign observers, is a medley of confusions. It is animism, anthropopathy, ancestor-worship; it is pantheism and henotheism; in fact it is no "religion" at all, only a way of life, a socio-religious system.¹¹ It is precisely here, in this "confusion", that lies its strength. For "its method has been the method of evolutionary Nature herself, to allow all developments, all means of communication and action of the spirit upon the members, all ways of communion between man and the Supreme or Divine."¹² The aim of a spiritual culture "must be not only to raise to inaccessible heights the few elect, but to draw all men and all life and the whole human being upward."¹³ This it could do only by taking each man at the stage of evolution he has reached and providing him with the kind of spiritual support he can understand and utilise. "To the soul that knows...God is all and all is the Godhead....Ordinary religion is a sacrifice to partial godheads, other than the integral Divinity....Men consecrate their life and works ordinarily to partial powers or aspects of the divine Existence as they see or conceive them —mostly powers and aspects that ensoul to them things prominent in Nature and man or else reflect to them their own humanity in a divine

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exceeding symbol. If they do this with faith, then their faith is justified; for the Divine accepts whatever symbol, form or conception of himself is present to the mind of the worshipper...and meets him according to the faith that is in him....However small or low the form of the worship, however limited the idea of the godhead, however restricted the giving, the faith, the effort to get behind the veil of one's own ego-worship and limitation by material Nature, it yet forms a thread of connection between the soul of man and the All-soul and there is a response."¹⁴

This is the entire rationale of the "medley of confusions" presented by Indian religion to the positivist thinker.

This religion took each man at the stage where he was, offered him a ritual that satisfied his heart, trained him in beliefs that suited his mind, and promised him benefits here and in the hereafter if he had faith. It also permeated his daily living with symbols of sacrifice that he might not forget his indebtedness to the cosmic Powers that preside over the movements of the universe. For it saw behind the outward phenomena the will and the activities of conscious Beings, far more powerful than man, Beings that could be approached through prayer and faith. The result was that there remained nothing that was "secular" in the Indian scheme of fife.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL OUTLOOK

If faith links the soul of man to the highest Reality, it is reason that acts as a bridge between the inate spiritual urge and the strong feeling for fife natural to the healthy soul. Philosophy in India has been the most powerful aid in explaining with the analytical reason the truth of spirituality and Yoga, and justifying the faith on which popular religion finds its support.¹⁵ Here too we shall find the same bewildering diversity founded on an essential unity of aim and method, the same pursuit of the ultimate truths knowable to thought never for a moment losing sight of the possibility of their practical translation into life-experience, the marriage of the abstract with the concrete that marks the Indian spirit.

Indian philosophy is ultimately founded on spiritual experience;¹⁶ the Veda, and to a much greater degree, the Upanishads are its mainstay,

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the intuitive knowledge embodied in them forms its basis and starting point. By that it does not become irrational or dogmatic, as some critics are inclined to suppose. The methods of Indian philosophy as developed in the various schools are entirely logical; indeed it was through a continuous process of acute debate among the exponents of particular points of view that these schools developed. Each had therefore to perfect its line of argument and meet those of the other schools with cogent reasons of its own. It is true that scriptural authority, śabda, was recognised as one of the means of proof. But even here, even in appealing to scripture, logic was not dispensed with. Far from it, for a whole system of philosophy, the Purva-mimansa, grew up around the science of interpretation, and its findings can be usefully adapted to any kind of interpretative work, legalistic or otherwise.

It may be asked, if scripture were held in such high esteem, why should there have been any debates at all? The answer is that the Vedas and the Upanishads looked at Reality in Its many different aspects; each of the philosophical schools fixed on one or more of these aspects and built its system on that basis. In such a method of approach, differences were bound to arise. And as is the habit of the human reason, it gets attached to a particular point of view and becomes its partisan.¹⁷ Hence arose the different view-points represented by the different schools. Here we find illustrated in striking fashion one peculiar tendency of the Indian mind to which Sri Aurobindo draws pointed attention: "to follow each motive, each specialisation of motive even, spiritual, intellectual, ethical, vital, to its extreme point and to sound its utmost possibility When it formulated a spiritual atheism, it followed that to its acme of possible vision. When, too, it indulged in materialistic atheism, — though it did that only with a side glance, as the freak of an insatiable intellectual curiosity, — yet it formulated it straight out, boldly and nakedly, without the least concession to idealism or ethicism."¹⁸

But a notable feature of Indian philosophic thought, as indeed of every other formulation of the Indian spirit, is that this extremism never resulted in disorder. "In every extreme the Indian spirit seeks for a law in that extreme and a rule, measure and structure in its application. Besides, this sounding of extremes is balanced by a still more

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ingrained characteristic, the synthetical tendency, so that having pushed each motive to its farthest possibility, the Indian mind returns always towards some fusion of the knowledge it has gained...."¹⁹ This synthetic tendency is clearly apparent in the philosophical substance of the Gita, the Puranas, the Tantra. It is equally noticeable, though perhaps not so clearly, in the assimilation of nihilistic Buddhist thought in Shankaracharya, in the appropriation of Buddhist logic by the Nyaya and Mimansa systems, in the acceptance of the Sankhya cosmology in much of later Vedantic thought. It was again this synthetic spirit that enabled almost all the systems to present a composite picture of their world-view: metaphysics, epistemology, logic, psychology, and ethics were inextricably linked together in their system. Still more important, it enabled them, or most of them, to accept as common ground the theories relating to Karma, rebirth, other worlds, the possibility and the necessity of man getting "liberated" from his ordinary lower nature of mind, life and body; they also shared in large measure a certain contempt for life on earth and the body in particular. A high code of ethical conduct is their common property. And whatever their particular differences, the total effect of philosophic thought on the mind of India can hardly be exaggerated.

DHARMA AND SHASTRA

But the work of the philosophical mind, the reasoning intelligence, was not confined to philosophy itself. It examined in the minutest detail the life of man in society and all his action social, economic and political, as well as all that concerns his individual well-being and progress moral, physical and aesthetic. It thus erected a science, a Shastra, in all these fields; and as a basis and principle of the Shastra, it sought for the particular law or laws that governed or should ideally govern physical nature in man and the world, and all man's activities individual and social. This was the Dharma. Dharma and Shastra thus understood give expression to the Indian spirit in one of its major aspects.

Here too there is a bewildering variety harmonised by a deep underlying oneness.

To take the physical sciences first, India, our critics tell us, sadly

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lacked the scientific spirit, was too immersed in the search for the Beyond to care much for the physical world of material realities. This criticism omits to take into account the record of history. "The plain truth is that no nation before the modern epoch carried scientific research so far and with such signal success as India of ancient times. Not only was India in the first rank in mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, surgery, all the branches of physical knowledge which were practised in ancient times, but she was, along with the Greeks, the teacher of the Arabs from whom Europe recovered the lost habit of scientific enquiry. In many directions India had the priority of discovery — to take only two striking examples among a multitude, the decimal notation in mathematics or the perception that the earth is a moving body in astronomy."²⁰ Here too, we may point to the practical aim always kept in view. The principles, the Dharma of each phenomenon once discovered, were at once utilised for the practical benefits they could confer — this not only in chemistry, medicine and surgery but also in mathematics and astronomy which were used in large measure for the religious ritual and for ascertaining man's fate astrology it must be remembered was raised in India almost to the position of an exact science, not less exact than modern medicine. And Indian science, in its multitude of details and sometimes conflicting theories, never lost sight of the fact that "the same general laws and powers hold in the spiritual, the psychological and the physical existence,"²¹ a remarkable evidence of the synthetic spirit.

In the social sciences, the primary aim was to find a norm, Dharma, or shall we say a number of governing principles, that should govern in each case the inner attitude and the external activity of men in their social, economic and political life, in their ethical and aesthetic endeavour. This life and this endeavour is a complex of many strands; and not only must there be an endless difference of detail, but also a necessary adaptation to the needs of each individual or well-defined group. The Dharma had also to be adapted to the changing needs of particular epochs: the theory held in some quarters that the East does not change is a complete myth. All this multiform pattern of Dharma is the basis of the numerous types of Shastra. Dharma-shastra, the composite science of sociar living

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that includes in its scope ethics, sociology, economics, polity, civil and criminal law as we understand them today but all interwoven as a single whole in the synthetic Indian manner, is the Shastra par excellence. But each of these different sciences had its particular Shastra as well that elaborated the details: Niti-shastra for ethics, Artha-shastra for economy and polity with a fairly detailed study of law, the various compendia on ācāra (social theory and practice), vyavahāra (legal theory and practice), dvandva-nītī (political theory and practice). All this Shastra, again in the typical Indian manner, aimed not merely at enunciating theories and principles, but kept always prominently in view their effective application in practice. And in order that the practice followed the precepts, "all Shastra was put under the sanction of the names of the Rishis",²² names which carried in ancient and medieval India an unquestioned authority.

To sum up the position in the words of Sri Aurobindo, Dharma was "in the view of Indian culture .. a living according to a just understanding and right view of self-culture, of the knowledge of things and life and of action in that knowledge.... Shastra meant any systematised teaching and science... founded on detailed observation, just generalisation, full experience, intuitive, logical and experimental analysis and synthesis, in order to enable man to know always with a just fruitfulness for life and to act with the security of right knowledge."²³'

THE ETHICAL IMPERATIVE

The clearest expression of Dharma, as was but natural, took shape in ethics. "The ethical aspect of life, contrary to the amazingly, ignorant observation of a certain type of critic, attracted a quite enormous amount of attention, occupied the greatest part of Indian thought and writing not devoted to the things of pure knowledge and of the spirit."²⁴ Some features of the Indian ethical idea therefore deserve to be mentioned here, in however brief an outline. Here too there is a perplexing fullness of varying emphasis based on a basic unity of purpose.

Indian ethical thought does not prescribe a single body of commandments that must be observed by all under all circumstances,

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knowing well that that is a demand that can never be fulfilled. "The man of knowledge, the man of power, the productive and acquisitive man, the priest, scholar, poet, artist, ruler, fighter, trader, tiller of the soil, craftsman, labourer, servant cannot usefully have the same training, cannot be shaped in the same pattern, cannot all follow the same way of living. All ought not to be put under the same tables of the law; for that would be a senseless geometric rigidity that would spoil the plastic truth of fife. Each has his type of nature and there must be a rule for the perfection of that type; each has his own proper function and there must be a canon and ideal for the function".²⁵ This explains what seems otherwise obscure why so much stress has been laid in Indian thought on the different norms prescribed for the different castes and occupations. To take a crucial example: "non-injuring is the very highest of its laws, ahimsā paramo dharmah; still it does not lay it down as a physical rule for the warrior."²⁶ Sri Krishna is made to say in the Gita, to Arjuna the warrior, "If thou doest not this battle for the right, then hast thou abandoned thy duty and virtue...and sin shall be thy portion."²⁷

There is hardly an ethical injunction devised by man that does not find a place in the Indian scheme. But the point on which great stress is laid here is in the inwardness of the ethical demand. "Morality is for the Western mind mostly a thing of outward conduct; but conduct for the Indian mind is only one means of expression and sign of a soul-state Hinduism enjoins a spiritual or ethical purity of the mind with action as one outward index."²⁸ Another feature of the Indian ethical idea — this it shares with Zoroastrianism — which springs from the inwardness of its ethical motif, is its view of the constant conflict between the representatives of good and evil in the cosmic scheme. "The fundamental idea...is a struggle between the Gods and their dark opponents...a battle in which man takes part and which is reflected in all his inner life and action."²⁹

But what gives the Indian view of ethics its characteristic stamp is that all these divergent traits find their unity in certain ideals of conduct and inner feeling which mark out the śrestha, the good or noble man, who is always held up as the example to follow. And it is always stressed that the ethical rule is only an intermediary between the unbridled license of the lower propensities, the satisfaction of

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desires and self-interest, kāma, artha, and the highest end of man, moksa or liberation from the bondage of the lower life into the freedom of the Spirit. Ethics becomes imperative if man is to reach his highest goal.

THE AESTHETIC APPEAL

India in its obsession with the spiritual ideal did not shut out the appeal of beauty; ethicism seldom was puritanical enough to discourage art and literature. On the contrary, Indian aesthesis was founded like everything else in the Indian endeavour on the highest spirituality and the deepest concepts of Dharma.

Three things mark out Indian aesthesis in particular. "It is in a great part of the literature the same turn of inspiration and self-expression that we see in the architecture, painting and sculpture. Its first character is a constant sense of the infinite____ Its second peculiarity is a tendency to see and render its spiritual experience in a great richness of images taken from the inner psychic plane or in physical images transmitted by the stress of a psychic significance And its third tendency is to image the terrestrial life often magnified...or else subtilised in the transparencies of a larger atmosphere, attended by a greater than the terrestrial meaning—"³⁰ Perhaps no better illustration can be given than in the single example of Kalidas, our national poet in classical Sanskrit: "after reading a poem of his the world and life and our fellow creatures human, animal or inanimate have become suddenly more beautiful and dear to us than they were before.."³¹

Much of the misunderstanding and adverse criticism of Indian art and literature spring from the inability to grasp the underlying spirit, irr seeking to find what they do not seek to give. The aim in Indian sculpture and painting, even when it treated of mundane subjects, was not to present the beauty of mere external form, but to reveal the spirit, a soul-state, an emotional mood; where the subject was avowedly religious, as in the best surviving work, the spiritual idea or power or delight was all that mattered. The artist has to be judged by the fidelity with which he has succeeded in this essential aim. Indian religious architecture is an aspiration to the

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Infinite rendered in stone or brick; it is vain to expect here a fidelity to the Greek canons. The greatness of Indian literature, the flexible and many-sided self-expression of the Indian spirit, lies "first in the greatness and worth of its substance, the value of its thought and the beauty of its forms, but also in the degree to which, satisfying the highest conditions of the art of speech, it avails to bring out and raise the soul and life or the living and the ideal mind of the people".³² The appeal of Indian aesthetic creation derives primarily from this "soul-touch".

Indian literature pulsates with the movement of life. But "it does not seek to represent life and character primarily or for their own sake; its aim is fundamentally aesthetic It did not attempt to seize a man's spirit by the hair and drag it out into a storm of horror and pity and fear and return it to him drenched, beaten and shuddering Still less could it have consented to occupy itself with the problems of disease, neurosis and spiritual medico logy generally which are the staple of modern drama and fiction. An atmosphere of romantic beauty, a high urbanity and a gracious equipoise of the feelings, a perpetual confidence in the sunshine and the flowers are the essential spirit of a Hindu play."³³ These remarks apply with equal cogency to the best work in the plastic arts. "It is an art like this that the soul finds the repose, the opportunity for being confirmed in gentleness and in kindly culture, the unmixed intellectual and aesthetic pleasure in quest of which it turned away from the crudeness and incoherence of life to the magic regions of Art."³⁴ To get at the true spirit of Indian artistic creation, "it has to be seen in loneliness, in the solitude of one's self, in moments when one is capable of long deep meditation and as little weighted as possible with the conventions of material life."³⁵ To appreciate this art and this literature—one might include here music and the dance as well—one needs a more than aesthetic sense. "There is a spiritual insight or culture needed if we are to enter into the whole meaning of Indian artistic creation; otherwise we get only at the surface external things or at the most at things only just below the surface."³⁶

It must be remembered that Indian art and literature have a long continuous tradition extending over at least three thousand years. This accounts for the splendid opulence of styles and genres

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which give such widely varying expressions to the one underlying spirit. To cite a few instances; the crowding detail and the massive-ness of the Dravidian temples, the grace and lightness of the northern school, the magical beauty of the mid-worlds shining through the marble of Indo-Saracenic mausoleums, the epic power and grandeur of the earlier Vedantic Jain and Buddhist sculpture, the later Puranic turn towards grace and lyric ecstasy and movement in the surviving specimens of the painter's art, the wealth of work done in almost all the possible forms of literary expression, epic and lyric, drama and romance and the didactic tale, the ode and hymn and gnomic verse,—all this bears testimony to the fecundity of the Indian spirit, which at the same time never misses its primary aim of making the abstract concrete, which "insists on mapping the infinite, on seeing the unseen, on visualising the spiritual."³⁷

THE JOY OF LIFE

It is but a truism to say that all this magnificent creation could not have been the product of a national mind sicklied over by a palsied life-force. A dreamy, pessimistic, other-worldly people with no interest in and little hold on the realities of life, bereft of all joy in living, looking on the world as Maya and human life the bubble of a minute,—the grotesque picture concocted from nowhere by critics who could not have studied with any understanding the patent records of the civilisation—such a people never existed in India even in the worst days of decline. A lifeless India is a myth.

"What," Sri Aurobindo asks in a memorable passage, "what is meant after all by life and when is it that we most fully and greatly five?...It is religion and philosophy and thought and science and poetry and art, drama and song and dance and play, politics and society, industry, commerce and trade, adventure and travel, war and peace, conflict and unity, victory and defeat and aspirations and vicissitudes, the thoughts, emotions, words, deeds, joys and sorrows which make up the existence of man.... All this mass of action was not accomplished by men without mind and will and vital force, by pale shadows of humanity in whom the vigorous manhood had been crushed out un-der*the burden of a gloomy and all-effacing asceticism, nor does it

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look like the sign of a metaphysically minded people of dreamers averse to life and action."³⁸

The ancient and medieval literature of India and to a lesser extent some of the surviving monuments of art give a clear enough view of the Indian attitude to life. The general picture that emerges is that of an opulent and vigorous society which allowed the fullest opportunities for the satisfaction of man's natural propensities. "Man was allowed to fathom on his way all experience, to give to his character and action a large rein and heroic proportions, and to fill in life opulently with colour and beauty and enjoyment."³⁹ And it must be remembered that these opportunities were available not merely to a selected few, but to the community at large. "Though the higher classes led and had the lion's share of the force and wealth of life", as in all countries in the past, "the people too lived and until much later times intensely though on a lesser scale and with a more diffused and less concentrated force. Their religious life was more intense than that of any other country They produced some of the most delicate and beautiful poetical literature ever produced They gave India her artists and architects and many of the famous poets in the popular tongues The life portrayed in the literature of the country is glad and vivid, and even now, despite certain varieties of temperament and many forces making for depression, laughter, humour, an unobtrusive elasticity and equanimity in the vicissitudes of life are very marked features of the Indian character."⁴⁰

But it must be emphasised that although Indian culture gave a large recognition to the powers of the natural ego in man, his insistence on the satisfaction of desire, sense-attraction and self-interest, it emphasised in no uncertain terms that "these powers have to be... put in order This element must be kept from making any too unbridled claim or heading furiously towards its satisfaction; only so  can it get its full results without disaster India has felt the call of the senses not less than Greece, Rome or modern Europe; she perceived very well the possibility of a materialistic life But this could not take full hold or establish even for a time any dominant empire Another power claims man and overtops desire and self-interest and self-will, the power of the Dharma."⁴¹ The rule of Law was everywhere imposed as a check to license; it prepared the life-force in man for its

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true purpose, namely, that of becoming a powerful instrument for realising the true goal of man, the Liberty of the Spirit. For, in the Indian view of life, man is not the ephemeral creature with a mortal body and a precarious life-force destined to exhaust all his possibilities within the span of a brief existence on earth, but an immortal soul that takes repeated births in a material frame for the purpose of widening its experience and knowledge and powers, until it becomes full-grown enough to aspire to divinity and earns the title to be free of all bondage to birth and death, which is its true Liberty. "By liberty we mean the freedom to obey the law of our being, to grow to our natural self-fulfilment, to find out naturally and freely our harmony with our environment And all repressive or preventive law is only a makeshift, a substitute for the true law which must develop from within and be not a check on liberty, but its outward image and visible expression. Human society progresses really and vitally in proportion as law becomes the child of freedom."⁴²

THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC ORDER

Did the organisation of Indian society and economy allow of this vital condition of progress ? What was the element of law and regimentation in it, and what the provision for freedom? These are questions of immense importance, as a negative answer based on a superficial study has long prejudiced the issue.

"The problem which Indian culture had to solve was that of a firm outward basis on which to found the practical development of its spirit and idea of life. How are we to take the natural life of man and while allowing it sufficient scope and variety and freedom, yet to subject it to a law, canon, Dharma...? And how again are we to point that Dharma towards its exceeding by fulfilment and cessation of its disciplinary purpose in the secure freedom of the spiritual life?"⁴³ It found the key to a solution of the problem in its scheme of socioeconomic organisation described by Sri Aurobindo as the "triple quartette", of the four great ends of life, cāturvargya, the four graded classes of society, cāturvarnya, and four successive stages of a developing human life, caturāśrama. To each of these we must devote some attention if we are to get at the spirit of Indian fife.

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"The ancient civilisation of India founded itself very expressly upon four human interests: first, desire and enjoyment, next material, economic and other aims and needs of the mind and body, thirdly, ethical conduct and the right law of individual and social life, and lastly, spiritual liberation, kāma, artha, dharma, moksa........Except in very rare cases, the satisfaction of the three mundane objects must run before the other; fullness of life must precede the surpassing of life—There was no preaching of a general rush to the cave and the hermitage."⁴⁴ Buddhism no doubt disrupted this ancient balance for a time by its insistence on the monastic life, and for this it has been severely criticised in some of the great Law books and the Puranas. But on the whole, this ancient scheme was ensured by the caturāśrama system until the whole fabric of Hindu society was broken up by the incursion of modernism.

Under this system, "life was divided into four natural periods and each of them marked out a stage in the working of this cultural idea of living. There was the period of the student, the period of the householder, the period of the recluse or forest-dweller, the period of the free super-social man, parivrājaka."⁴⁵ Each of these stages provided for a particular kind of discipline appropriate to its needs; each allowed of a preparation for the next stage. Thus, the student, at least in the earlier days, was grounded in the ideals of Aryan living, the householder was allowed the legitimate satisfaction of desire and material aims subject to the observance of the right law in each of these things, the recluse "worked out in a certain seclusion the truth of his spirit", the parivrājaka was free from all the forms of social life, "making his soul ready for eternity". But the important thing to note is that "this circle was not obligatory on all. The great majority never went beyond the two first stages." And an opening was always provided for the advanced spirits who would opt for an early sanyāsa.

In considering the cāturvarnya, the ancient Indian scheme of the four graded classes which incidentally has little in common with its later travesty in the chaotic proliferation of castes and subcastes, one is often apt to forget that "there is no national life perfect or sound without the cāturvarnya. The life of the nation must contain within itself the life of the Brahmin,—spirituality, knowledge, learning, high and pure ethical aspiration and endeavour; the life of the Kashatriya,

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—manhood and strength moral and physical, the love of battle, the thirst for glory, the sense of honour, chivalry, self-devotion, generosity, grandeur of soul; the life of the Vaishya,—trade, industry, thrift, prosperity, benevolence, philanthropy; the life of the Shudra, —honesty, simplicity, labour, religious and quiet service to the nation even in the humblest position and the most insignificant kind of work."⁴⁶ It is the cultivation of these inner qualities and not mere outward function that in the view of Indian thinkers constituted the essence of varna. True, in the actual application of ideals to life, they had to accept the status determined by birth as the principal criterion —and in the Indian view birth was largely determined by character as it had been developing in the course of previous lives. But in the best ages of the culture, an appropriate training was provided for at least the three higher orders that helped them immensely in shaping the inner temperament in accordance with the demands made on them by the ideal system.

More than that, and here lies the peculiar value of the system, each member of the various orders was assured of spiritual perfection through the right and careful performance of the duties assigned to him by his birth and vocation and inner bent. "If he performs his natural function in the right spirit...serves with it the Spirit manifested in the universe or makes it a conscious instrumentation for the purposes of the Divine in humanity, he can transmute it into a means towards the highest spiritual perfection and freedom."⁴⁷ This is not to imply that a fixed hierarchy based on birth is the best means of social progress. But one has to remember that it gave an astonishing durability to Indian society in the face of many attacks from within and without—at one stage Buddhism appeared to be cutting at the very roots of the system and barbarian inroads offered a continuous challenge. Much of its apparent rigidity was mollified in practice and winked at by the Law books through the constant intermarriages and mesalliances, through local and regional variations, and through a confused medley of functions actually performed by the diverse groups often at variance from the prescribed norms,—witness the long list of Shudra kings and Brahmin generals in the annals of ancient India,—to give but another, striking illustration of the catholicity of the Indian spirit and its turn towards spiritual practicality.

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This sense of practicality appears in clear relief in the economic organisation too. In its economic aspect, the system of cāturvarnya is the finest example in pre-modern times anywhere of the division of labour principle on which the success of any economic organisation so much depends. "The economic order of society was cast in the form and gradation of these four types. The Brahmin class was called upon to give the community its priests, thinkers, men of letters, legislators, scholars, religious leaders and guides. The Kshatriya class gave it its kings, warriors, governors and administrators. The Vaishya order supplied it with its producers, agriculturists, craftsmen, artisans, merchants and traders. The Shudra class ministered to its need of menials and servants."⁴⁸

What lent a special value to the system was that "even the most despised pursuits had their education, their law and canon, their ambition of success, their sense of honour in the discharge and scruple of well doing, their dignity of a fixed standard of perfection."⁴⁹ This it is that accounts in large measure for the fact that "no people before modern times reached a higher splendour of wealth, commercial prosperity, material appointment....The splendour of Asiatic and not least of Indian prosperity, the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind, the "barbaric doors rough with gold", barbaricae postes squalentes auro, were once stigmatised by the less opulent West as a sign of barbarism!"⁵⁰ Whatever one may think of the charge,—"the opulent barbarism and a much less artistic ostentation of wealth are to be found in London, New York and Paris"⁵¹—it has to be emphasised that India never upheld the ideal of compulsory poverty for anyone outside the monastic orders and other schools of spiritual discipline. Indeed there is a sizeable literature in epic and classical Sanskrit extolling the supreme importance of wealth. To cite only one among many instances: "Valmiki, our ancient epic poet, includes among the signs of a just and enlightened state of society not only universal education, morality and spirituality, but this also that there shall be none who is compelled to eat coarse food, none uncrowned and unanointed, or who lives a mean petty slave of luxuries."⁵²

The last phrase is significant and brings out the true Indian spirit. India has lived richly in the purely material sense. But it has also spent magnificently. Rare indeed have been the instances—we are

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not here referring to the enervating luxuries of the period of decline —where a surfeit of wealth has led to proud ostentation or a slackening of the moral fibres. Ramachandra or the Pandava brothers relinquishing an empire in order to honour a doubtful pledge, Buddha renouncing the promise of far-flung dominion, Harshavardhana, or perhaps even Chandragupta Maurya emptying his accumulated treasure for the benefit of the needy and putting on borrowed garments stand out among the finest embodiments of the Indian ideal. Sacrifice is the keynote of the socio-economic harmony created by ancient India. Indeed it is the master idea of life in the Indian view. For, "sacrifice is the law of the world and nothing can be gained without it, neither mastery here, nor the possession of heavens beyond, nor the supreme possession of all," the spiritual liberation and the felicity it brings.⁵² That is the reason why every important act in the social or economic life of the individual or the community was associated in the Indian scheme with a religious act, and what is religion if it is not a way of commerce between man and the Powers that govern the cosmos. The attempt of Indian social and economic life was to turn it into a sacrament, and thus to prepare it for self-exceeding into something approaching the spiritual. The purely materialistic view of sociology and economics is a modern invention, it is not Indian.

THE INDIAN IDEAL

We have already, on an earlier occasion dwelt at some length on the Indian view of polity, and that need not detain us now.⁵³ Suffice it to say that here as elewhere, unity in diversity, a strong sense of liberty coupled with an ordered arrangement, all leading towards the best out flowering of the human potential are the principal elements. The ideal of Dharma preparing for the highest spiritual good of the individual and the race: this is the keyword.

We may however take this occasion to summarise in the words of Sri Aurobindo what exactly was this Indian ideal that sought to give a body to the Indian spirit.

"The universal embracing Dharma in the Indian idea is a law of ideal perfection for the developing mind and soul of man This ideal was not a purely moral or ethical conception, although that element

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might predominate; it was also intellectual, religious, social, aesthetic, the flowering of the whole ideal man, the perfection of the total human nature. The most varied qualities met in the Indian conception of the best, srestha, the good and noble man, dry a. In the heart benevolence, beneficence, love, compassion, altruism, long-suffering, liberality, kindliness, patience; in the character courage, heroism, energy, loyalty, continence, truth, honour, justice, faith, obedience and reverence where these were due, but power too to govern and direct, a fine modesty and yet a strong independence and noble pride; in the mind wisdom and intelligence and love of learning, knowledge of all the best thought, an openness to poetry, art and beauty, an educated capacity and skill in works; in the inner being a strong religious sense, piety, love of God, seeking after the Highest, the spiritual turn; in social relations and conduct a strict observance of all the social Dharmas, as father, son, husband, brother, kinsman, friend, ruler or subject, master or servant, priest or warrior or worker, king or sage, member of clan or caste: this was the total ideal of the Arya..."⁵⁴

THE INDIAN ACHIEVEMENT

How far was this ideal translated into fact? This is the important test by which the spirit of India has to be finally judged. Here too the records speak for themselves. "Of her spiritual and philosophic achievement there can be no real question. They stand there as the Himalayas stand upon the earth.. .mediating still between earth and heaven, measuring the finite, casting their plummet far into the infinite.......⁵⁵ She saw the myriad gods beyond man, God beyond the gods,and beyond God his own ineffable eternity Then with that calm audacity of her in tuition... she declared that there was none of these things which man could not attain But.. .spirituality does not flourish on earth in the void, even as our mountain tops do not rise.. .out of the clouds without a base.

"When we look at the past of India, what strikes us next is her stupendous vitality......She has been creating abundantly and incessantly, lavishly, with an inexhaustible many-sideness, republics and kingdoms and empires, philosophies and cosmogonies and sciences

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and creeds and arts and poems and all kinds of monuments, palaces and temples and public works, communities and societies and religious orders, laws and codes and rituals, physical sciences, psychic sciences, systems of Yoga, systems of politics and administration, arts spiritual, arts worldly, trades, industries, fine crafts,—the fist is endless and in each item there is almost a plethora of activity...

"The third power of the ancient Indian spirit was a strong intellectuality, at once austere and rich, robust and minute, powerful and delicate, massive in principle and curious in detail....The mere mass of the intellectual production during the period from Asoka well into the Mahomedan epoch is something truly prodigious......There is no historical parallel for such an intellectual labour and activity before the invention of printing and the facilities of modern science; yet all that mass of research and production and curiosity of detail was accomplished...with no better record than the memory and for an aid the perishable palm-leaf..."⁵⁶

And we must always remember that "India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples."⁵⁷

SANAT K. BANERJI

REFERENCES

I. Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, I. 2. Ibid. 3. SRI AUROBINDO, Kalidasd, second series, IV . 4. SRI AUROBINDO, The Foundations of India n Culture, 11.3. 5. Ibid., III. I 6. Ibid . 7. SRI AUROBINDO, T he Synthesis of Yoga, IV.1. 8. Ib id. 9. SRI AUROBINDO, Essays on the Gita, chapter 35. 10 . The Foundations etc ., II. 3. I I . I bid. , 11.4 , IILA.. 12. S RI AUROBINDO, The Life Divine, n. 2 4 . 13 . The Foundations erc., III. 2. 14 . Essays 011 the Gita, chapter 30 . ]5. The Foundations eta ., 11.2. 16. The Life Diuine , lac. cit. 17. SRI AUROBINDO, The Human Cycle, Chapter 12. 1 8. The Renaissance erc., I. 19. Ibid. 20 . The Foundations erc., II. 3. 2 J . Ibid . 22 . Ibid ., 111.3. 23. I bid. 24. Ibid 25 . Ibid ., II. S. 26. Ibid. , 11.4 . 27. Essays on the Gita, chapter 7. 2 8. The Foundations etc ., II . 4. 29 . Essays on the Gita, chapter 40 . 30 . The Foundations erc., III. 10 . 31. Kalidasa, second series, IV . 32. The Foundations ere., III. 10. 33 . Kalidasa, second series , IV . 35. The Foundations erc., III. 7 . 36 . Ibid. 27 . Kalidasa, second se ries, IV . 38. The Foundations etc., III. 5. 39. I bid. , II. 5. 40. I bid. , III. 5. 4 1. Ibid ., II . 5. 42. SRI AUROBINDO, The Ideal of Human Unity, chapter 17. 43. The Foundations erc., II . 6 . 44. lbid., 11. 3. 45. Karma yogin , 3.7.09. 46 . Essays on the Gita, chapter 43. 47. Th e Foundations erc., II. 6. 48. Ibid. , 49. Ibid., II. 3. 50. I bid. 51. SRI AUROBINDO, Thoughts and Aphorisms, "Joa na.. ' 52 . Essays on th e Gita , chapter 12. 53 . The Advent, 1966-67. 54 . The Foundations etc., II . 5. 55. I bid ., 111.5. 56 . Th e Re naissance et c., I. 57. The Foundatigns erc., III. 18.

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REVIEW

Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa in Australia: Edited by Peter Hunt. Published: Shree Gurudev Meditation Centre, Melbourne, Australia.

In this attractive presentation of the talks given by Swami Muktananda in Australia during his visit to that country in 1970, one gets a clear idea of the philosophy and its realising Yoga popularised by the saint. As Baba himself says there is little that is novel or absolutely new in his teaching. The truths of God, Man and Nature are eternal. It is in their application that men differ according to the goals they choose or are led to choose. The central teaching here is that the Divine Power that has created the universe and guides the cosmos on its journey God ward, is also embedded in man as a latent power. When it is awakened and set into action, it changes the direction of the consciousness and turns it God ward. It effects a series of changes in man and leads him to an identity with the Divine Spirit presiding over the human embodiment. The awakening of this Power, called Kundalini in the Tantras, is brought about by various means, but the one recommended by Baba is the intercession of the Guru, his śaktipāt. Devotion to and love for the Divine in the Guru is the surest means towards that end.

What is this śaktipā? The editor, Mr. Peter Hunt, answers: "Kundalini (Shakti), according to the scriptures, is the Power of God Himself; it is the divine Power which can create and dissolve universes. This infinite Power becomes finite without losing its infinity and takes seat at the base of the spine in the human body, remaining dormant until aroused. After being awakened, it is led upward through the spinal column (śusumnā) to the cerebrum (śahasrārd). On its way it completely purifies the individual's body, mind and psyche, and on reaching the śahasrāra, allows one to realise his essential unity with the universal Self." "The most secret method of awakening the Kundalini, is that of saktipdt or the transmission of the grace of a Siddha Guru. In such a Guru the Kundalini is not only

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awake, but also fully developed. He has realized his identity with Shiva (the Lord) and so is the master of Kundalini Shakti and not its servant. The scriptures say that he can awaken one's Kundalini by his touch, word, look or thought, regardless of distance, and it is he who guides and controls Kundalini during Her upward journey to the sahasrāra.

"The ease of the path through grace is self-evident. The susumnā is like a maze which has to be traversed by Kundalini. If one tries cross it unaided much time and effort is wasted by following dead-ends. However, if one is aided by the Guru who knows the way, imagine how effortless the journey becomes!

"This inner awakening may occur even without any deliberate thought on the Guru's part. Sometimes a seeker whose Kundalini is fully active also serves as a channel for the flow of grace. It is like one lamp lighting another. However, in the Siddha Guru, this channel is fully and perfectly developed. Thus, through him, grace flows most readily. Even one may be physically separated from him, by devotion (Gurubhakti) and service (Guruseva) to him one interesects this mighty channel of grace and enjoys untold blessings."

A very helpful guide to Kundalini Yoga.

M. P. PANDIT

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