-03_The Advent 1972 Part Two

THE human being is composed of three beings, his person is made of three persons — it is a trinity, a triptych as it were. The first is the external person whom we recognise by his name and form. It is indeed the physical body in and through which the Nature and character express themselves or try to express themselves as best as they can. For the body, the material body is both an expression and a limitation, the body is not capable of expressing all that is behind it against which it acts as a dam with a few sluices to let something of the inner content flow out. This inner content means the vital world with its desires and impulses and various dynamisms and behind it there is also the mind, the mind with its own activities, its thoughts, ideas, imaginations ; these two seek expression through the body taking the help of the senses. All this forms the outer personality of man—its sign and symbol is the material body.

the subtle person and it expresses itself in a subtle body. The subtle body, because it is subtle does not mean that it is formless. This too has a form which has not the rigidity of the material body, not bound like the physical body in a contour of fixed unchangeable unchanging lineament. The form, supple and flexible, changes in shape and colour—like a mass of cloud according to the nature of its movements and activities and yet maintains its identity and is recognisable as a distinct person from others. Here the movements are free and almost unchecked and one can go far in the direction of the bad and the wrong as also towards the good and the beneficent. It is difficult for this person to make the choice. In the physical body such choice is made by the mental will, in the subtle body the mental will if it remains intact is one among many forces of equal strength.

But the saving grace lies in the third person which is the Divine person, man's true person and real identity. This is composed of true consciousness, true force, and the supreme truth of being, the delight and immortality. This is man's, as we call it, psychic being or soul.

This being made of fight and power and delight is not a vague or almost formless entity but a real being, a person and possesses a name and body, a Divine name and a Divine body recognisable in the same way as a physical body is recognised.

Now this Divine person is in us normally behind the veil almost inoperative acting or influencing only indirectly and can be and has to be brought forward and put in charge of the other personalities over the head of the subtle body and the physical body. Then that true person will be the ruler and guide and control and choose and inspire the movements of the subtle personality and allow only the right and proper activities to pass through and express themselves in the physical body. In this way gradually the three persons will be integrated and unified in a single homogenous perfect personality embodying and expressing only the Divine Truth.

We know the Divine himself has three such bodies or a triple status of his one existence. First, he is Prajna, the being or consciousness that contains the fundamental or typal realities that form the very basis of creation. It is the nucleus or the seed enclosing all the starting-points as in a tight knot, all future elaborations. These elaborations

are made by the second status or person of the Trinity, it has the beautiful name Hiranyagarbha, the golden womb. Here are laid out all possibilities, all probabilities even, endless and infinite lines of development and progression of the forces of existence. Every possible thing is being brought forth and allowed to try its fate. Out of these reckless, as it were, possibilities only some are chosen to appear as physical or material realities. This choice is made by the third person of the trinity, Virat. Each and every possibility in the Hiranyagarbha may have the chance to appear on the material plane but that means perhaps time and a particular creation, for evidently there are many creations or cycles of creations of different types, one following another after a Pralaya as the ancients conceived the process.

The triple person, it may be noted, is psychologically co-related to the three well-known Upanishadic states of consciousness—one, Sushupti (perfect sleep), two, Swapna (dream) and three, Jagrat (wakefulness).

The triple human person, it is evident, exists as a movement parallel to the triple Divine person : it is an application of the latter to a special set of conditions, in a particular frame of reference. The human triplicity in other words is a specialisation of the Divine Triplicity.

INDIAN spirituality—by far the richest and profoundest, the largest, widest and most complex, the most exalted and many-sided spirituality in the world—has two major aspects, the exclusivistic and the synthesizing. It will follow every possible path to the very end, without deflection or distraction from the way and purpose; and it will embrace all paths, in the fullest possible knowledge and living, realized glory. At times the exclusivistic tendencies and the narrower teachings have prevailed; but the synthesis has never been forgotten, and the fundamental need for synthesis has been always present, and working : the power of the divine Unity, that has made this world. Both movements are necessary : the searching into every possibility is eventually an enhancing of the Unity, and an increasing fulfillment of the divine evolution of existence. For the Unity is not a blank and not a uniformity, but a Oneness of many things: the greatest diversity is the greatest Oneness. This teaching, and the living realization of the truth of this teaching, has been given to us by Sri Aurobindo in the fullest measure that we have had.

In the earlier development of his yoga the Bhagavad Gita played a major role, and his study of this great work—monumentally great, and perennially living in its life-giving greatness—his Essays on the Gita, is perhaps the best book of his to read first, if one would understand him. One is of course not obligated to understand him, exactly; and one cannot expect ever to do so with a perfect thoroughness; but if one wants to overcome the difficulties of the present world and the now acute crisis of humanity, he cannot afford to be ignorant of Sri Aurobindo and the solution that he and he alone offers. For the solution may be found only in growing spirituality: not in merely claiming or embracing something "exotic" and mysterious as a kind of spice to the continuance of the accustomed ways, but in finding one' s true self that is universal and transcendent as well as individual, and that is not bound by or dependent on country, race, social status

or condition: that is, in outgrowing the things that make the difficulties: and Sri Aurobindo shows the way with the most complete knowledge and wisdom yet manifested, and gives the guiding and helping light and power, to those who can receive it.

His achievement, his synthesis of yoga, is the greatest that India has made; and he has made it, through Indian spirituality—the Spirit has spoken through him—not for India alone, but for the world. The Gita, called with justice the Bible — the Book — of India, is the greatest synthetic work of the past: not at all an eclecticism, but a living embracing and harmonizing of different paths. Sri Aurobindo has gone beyond the Gita, but in a way that completes its teachings, without abrogating any of them. To study the Gita itself, in the light of Sri Aurobindo, is the best introduction to him.

One need not be put off by the unfamiliar character of the externals. They are easily penetrated, to the truth behind them that is universal and valid everywhere. And the giving an ampler scope to the work, beyond its particular country and epoch, may actually increase its profundity of truth and its efficacious power. Sri Aurobindo has noted that in fact the Gita itself often suggests the possible wider scope. Inwardness is required, of course, and intuitive sympathy; but these are required in any case, if one is to grow in self-knowledge, and liberation from ignorance; if one is to develop spiritually, that is: and the best help is to be obtained from the best guides, and the Source in which the most complete knowledge is to be found. To follow the Bhagavad Gita one need not be a "Hindu"; indeed any creed or dogma or slavery to the dead hand of custom is at best an irrelevance to spiritual growth, and usually — or sooner or later— becomes a positive hindrance to it.

Living as I do in the United States of America, on occasion I have been asked indignantly why India should be the world's spiritual leader: why India should know so much, of all places! Well; the why of it can be understood only by the divine consciousness; but the fact is quite palpable that indeed the spiritual leader of the world is India. If as yet the Western world cannot see this, or cannot see what it means, it is because as yet the Western world has such an extremely limited, inhibited and rudimentary knowledge or rather notion of what spirituality is. It confuses it with intellectuality, with

morality, with emotionality, with aesthetic sensitivity: it does not know it as a whole separate sphere and greater life, that can take up the lower nature and transform it, but that cannot be bound by its lesser terms. But a fully spiritual life is the next stage of evolution. The old mental terms have proved their bankruptcy, as it may be called in a money-minded society; they are inadequate, they are not enough. Humanity must grow beyond them, or admit failure and fall by the wayside.

Growing into spirituality is not a matter of going "back to the womb", at least as our "depth psychologists" understand this adventure; and it is not a matter of relaxing into the irresponsibility of the infra-rational and the infra-moral. It is rather a coming to maturity at last, being born from the womb of Truth an old man deathless and ageless, cutting the cord that ties one to the lower, the ignorant nature of life-and-death, samsara; it is a blooming in the eternal, a rising to Life in one's higher nature, a nature of Knowledge, Truth, Light, Immortality. In Sri Aurobindo's yoga, the further one goes the greater his responsibility becomes for all existence. This is not a "humanitarian" thing, or a kind of weak mental vision or idealism: it is a knowledge of the divine Oneness, and the fundamental Identity of all things. It is in this knowledge alone that there can be genuine brotherhood on earth, the fraternity which must be the basis of a genuine equality and liberty. In spirituality alone is there freedom, and the mutuality and the harmony that is an absolute desideratum for a really good life: in the knowledge of everyone's fundamental identity in the Divine.

One may of course balk, and claim that we must have "Western ways for Western people", and so on; but Truth is not something that conforms itself to individual ways. On the contrary, the individual ways are valid only in the degree that they approach and embody Truth: and as yet no way, whether Western or of the "inscrutable" Orient, has come near to embracing Truth entirely. But the intellect is less than the Spirit, and cannot possibly embrace it; and this the Orient does know. And the Orient has found and explained the distinction between the subconscient nature, the subliminal nature, and the superconscient nature: three distinct and very large and complex spheres: while the most profound and searching Western

psychologists are the veriest children here, fumbling and puddling and playing quite ignorant games of '"interpretation". To insist that Western ways give truth for Western man, or Western man's truth, is idle; or if it is true, it means that Western man is not yet capable of spirituality: that is, that he cannot go beyond his vain and useless mental constructions — useful for game-playing, perhaps, but invariably found wanting for serious purposes. But Sri Aurobindo has come to tell him not only that he can do so, if he will, but that the need for him to do so is imperative.

It is true that what spirituality there has been in the West is a narrow and a slight and precarious thing: and the whole social milieu has always been against a full and large development. Here India has the immense advantage above all other countries both Eastern and Western that its whole society, whatever its faults, is essentially based on spirituality, and works for it more than against it. This is not to say that there is anything spiritual about suffering and poverty (this in fact is a Western, or a Christian conception), or starvation and disease. But the true, the radical solution to all social problems can come only by spiritual knowledge; and by its busy manipulations on the surface of things the Western world has been creating more problems than it has been solving. It has been concerning itself sometimes with partial truths, perhaps, in one place and another, but without large grasp and vision, and with all too much of a self-seeking pettiness: not the less petty, when it poses as the height of the altruistic. Truth itself has not been found and embraced, and the very thought of such a discovery and alliance has been dismissed as meaningless by the "hard-headed" devotees of "progress". But progress not in the spiritual is largely a sham, and is fundamentally ill-founded; and, when it comes to a head, hardness is not the one possible virtue: aside from the fact that it may conceal considerable softness beneath its ossification. So far from being meaningless is the finding and embracing of truth in the Spirit, that it is the only thing that is really meaningful: beyond the merely philosophical capacity though it certainly is. We have as yet had no genuine radicalism, for all our social activity. What is needed is to find the true Roots, which are not of the lower nature but of the higher.

he actually prides himself on coddling and defending. He thinks that in this he is superior to the Oriental man, and to a culture that does not "respect the individual". But the one system in the Orient today that does not respect the individual is the Chinese : that is, the Communism imported from Europe: a strange acceptance for a people so obsessed with the idea of resisting foreign ways. India has not lost its vigor, to collapse so dismally: its society did not break and crumble at one rude touch of the Western hand: and in India indeed is the truest respect that the world has known for the individual consciousness. In fact it is the claim and the acknowledged importance of the individual that has kept India from achieving political unity: for it could never be satisfied with that sham and organized failure, a uniformity externally imposed. A true unity, political and otherwise, can come only in the spiritual realization; it must be a unity of free individuals, each freely flourishing and developing in his own way; and its own way, respecting the groups involved. Such a society has never yet been in the world: the key to it is to be found, whatever the present confusion, in India, and the spirituality of which it is the fountain-head for all mankind.

What stands in the way is just that thing that the West considers so precious and very important: the sense of ego. It is this that separates man from man, nation from nation, and men and nations from Divinity. It is not, be it noted, the individuality that does this: it is that false individuality, that sham and illusory existence, the ego. The true Individual is spiritual - self-contained, full and free, harmonious with itself and with all, satisfied and calm, never envious, never contentious, never in pain, peril or confusion: the true individuality is the Self, the Atman, is identical with Brahman, with
God: Who is everything. The Western idea that the Indians want to lose the individual self in the Absolute is quite false; it comes from a hasty glance at some philosophical expressions, taken with a lack of experience. The individual becomes at once identical with God, with the universe and with all other individuals, this being its own unique and native character: it remains individual without losing its universality, its transcendence, its divinity. This of course being a spiritual thing is a spiritual thing, and not an intellectual idea. Only very inadequately can it be suggested in intellectual terms at all.

The difficulty is simply a matter of the native incapacity of the intellect, and the sober fact that what is lesser cannot encompass what is greater; it is not obscurantism, or "anti-intellectualism". It is, that is to say, not what so often would pass for mysticism, in the Western world. It is not a murky preference of the "blood" to the mind; neither is it a championing of the "vital impetus" as the very ground of things and true reality: not to speak of the ignorant ideas of the Unconscious now so prevalent. The intellect is a very important part of one's nature: it is not the intellect itself, but the incapacity or the unwillingness to go beyond it — the trying to make of the intellect the highest faculty and the sovereign power .— that makes all the difficulty. The intellect can be an excellent servant — for the Spirit, not, as now it so often is, for the lower nature — but it cannot be the master and the leader. Here it has always failed, and here it must fail, because by its very nature it is divisive and not unitive, analytical and not synthetic. It divides what is radically one; the Oneness it can see only partially and as an hypothesis or a remote ideal that it does not know how to realize. Its attempts at unification, at synthesis, are wooden, brittle and problematical, never sure and never sound, lacking the full ness and the harmonious intricacy and the breath of fife. The kind of oneness it imposes is a dead uniformity — a sham and failure.

One does not really need a very large knowledge of Indian culture, to see what a splendid development of the intellect obtains there. But it is not the naked, ignorant, prideful, egoistic intellect, seeking to dominate and impose its own peculiar narrow terms upon everything. For always in Indian creativity, even the most worldly, there is some breath of the spiritual: and even in the most intellectualistic philosophies the intellect is a guide and pointer to something greater than itself. It is an organizer of ideas and impressions, for their transcendence. The ego is overcome, and the intellect is put in its place — its true, and its noble place — as an enlightened servant, a loyal retainer of the spiritual Lord. This is the way to knowledge and perfection and the true solving of the fundamental problems: not in the attempted usurpation by a lesser power of a function and status beyond itself. Truth is of the Spirit, and not of the mind. This whole lower nature of mind and body and vitality is

the instrument and the expression of the spiritual being, and nothing otherwise. It is its painful attempts to be autonomous, cut off from its true source and nature, that makes our difficulties and has now brought humanity close to its own destruction.

The glib dismissal of Indian spirituality as something that itself dismisses the world as "mere illusion", is too glib; but it does have truth. Whatever concern Indian mystics may have had with the world, they have never fully possessed it; and for many centuries they were so much turned toward the a-cosmic, away from the manifestation, and were so strong and pervasive in their influence, that Indian civilization itself lost its hold on life, until it was easily dominated by a foreign power. But still the cultivation of a spirituality divorced from the world is not so "useless", even to the world, as the unspiritual may eagerly enough suppose. It is because India has cultivated this spirituality, because it has such an immense fund of knowledge and power behind its growth, that it can grow, and come to a hold on life such as the world has never seen. For a true hold on life, a true mastery of existence, can come only from and in the Spirit: from having the spiritual light and power, and bringing it into the world and the everyday workings of things. To seek a true and sure life and mastery of the world, without spirituality, is to make the hopeless and desperate confusion of things that is all our most "advanced" and "progressive" societies are able to achieve. Truth does not conform itself to society, or to human failings and human unwillingness to grow. Truth must be found and obeyed within, and only the fullest spiritual realization can save the world.

Sri Aurobindo has brought the world the full realization that it needs: he has opened the way, for men to solve their problems in the surpassing of themselves. But they must co-operate, because their advance must be evolutionary: an unfolding of their true natures in a spiritual aspiration. The best introduction to the greatest and the leading spiritual culture of the world, is the Bhagavad Gita; in his Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo has at once given us the best commentary on this work, and the best introduction to himself and the inestimable gift that he has brought us, if we can receive.

SRI Aurobindo is a believer in the power of inspiration not merely as a theory but a fact of both personal and general creative experience. And though a mysterious, uncertain, variable and essentially unanalysable power from the intellectual point of view, — for it is, as he says, a thing to be felt and inwardly perceived and realised rather than mentally understood and grasped, — it has been, nevertheless, explored and examined and even, one may say, precisely categorised and classified by him so that we may have as adequate a knowledge of its various planes and levels and their distinguishing features as it is humanly possible at present to acquire. Whether or no we are yet ready to understand all of them, particularly the various levels of the Overhead inspiration such as the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Overmind and their various combinations and interminglings, we cannot fail to admit that it is something of a significantly epoch-making work he has done in the field of aesthetics, and bequeathed a whole world of new categories and terms to the aesthetic domains for the use of not only the artists and critics but also the psychologists and metaphysicians of the future.

When we turn to the question of the process of poetic creation and read his views on it, mostly scattered in a number of letters, we find once again that it is something of a revelation which he opens out to us. And once again it is not so much of a theory that he seeks to establish before us, pitted against other theories which may be there in the field claiming our attention. Some of the outstanding publications on the creative process are there to give us a fairly adequate idea of the way in which this question has been regarded and the mystery of poetic creation explored in the West in recent times. The Freudian and Jungian psychological researches as well as the Marxist sociological and materialistic theories have been some of the leading guides or lights there and most poets, artists, literary critics and aesthetic theorists of recent times have chiefly drawn upon them. And yet one does not feel quite satisfied with their discoveries

and theories. It appears that they are still on the fringe of the problem, for they have not yet delved into the deeper depths or scaled the overhead heights of the human consciousness. The creation of poetry like every other human creation is integrally connected with the level of consciousness attained by man, and as the recent Western aesthetic theories are mostly concerned with the lower consciousness of man or his ordinary physical-vital-mental consciousness only, they can but help us understand something of the mystery of the ordinary, the vital and mental, particularly the lower vital and mental, products only of the creative genius: they are altogether inadequate to explain the whence and wherefore of some of the greatest and noblest artistic and poetical works. And as to such creations as the Veda, the Upanishad, the Gita, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata, or the Bible, and the Quoran, they can only mislead us and even pervert our critical approach and understanding.

When, however, we read Sri Aurobindo's views on this point we not only breathe a purer and cleaner air of understanding and feel greater aesthetic and critical satisfaction but also find ourselves on surer and more revealing and illuminated grounds of observation from which to proceed on the right and progressively ascending lines. On the contrary, the Freudians and the Marxists can ultimately lead us but to a blind alley.

With an almost scientific accuracy of a general operative law, Sri Aurobindo tells us that true poetry "comes always from some subtle plane through the- creative vital and uses the outer mind and other external instruments for transmission only".¹ There are, thus, broadly speaking, "three elements, the original source of inspiration, the vital force of creative beauty which gives its substance and impetus and determines the form, and the transmitting outer consciousness of the poet".² "The most genuine and perfect poetry," he continues, "is written when the original source is able to throw its inspiration pure and unaltered into the vital and there it takes its true native form and power of speech exactly reproducing the inspiration while the outer consciousness is entirely passive and transmits without alteration what it receives. When the vital is too active and gives too much of its own initiative or a translation into more or less turbid vital stuff, the poetry remains powerful but is inferior in quality and

less authentic. Finally, if the outer consciousness is too lethargic and blocks, or too active and makes its own version, then you have the poetry that fails. It is also the interference of these two parts either by obstruction or by too great an activity of their own or by both together that causes the labour of writing. There would be no difficulty if the inspiration came through without obstruction or interference in a pure transcription — and that is what happens in a poet's highest or freest moments when he writes not at all out of his own external human mind but by inspiration, as the mouthpiece of the Gods."³

Of the three elements mentioned above, the most important, therefore, is the original source of inspiration which, as Sri Aurobindo says, can come through "without obstruction or interference in a pure transcription". As a matter of fact, as he says in another letter, "a poem may pre-exist in the timeless as all creation pre-exists there too or else in some plane where the past, present, and future exist together. But it is not necessary to presuppose anything of the kind to explain the phenomena of inspiration. All is here a matter of formation or creation. By the contact with the source of inspiration the creative Power at one level or another and the human instrument, receptacle or channel get into contact. That is the essential point, all the rest depends upon the individual case. If the substance, rhythm, form, words come down all together ready formed from the plane of poetic creation, that is the perfect type of inspiration ; it may give its own spontaneous gift or it may give something which corresponds to the idea or the aspiration of the poet, but in either case the human being is only a channel or receptacle, although he feels the joy of the creation and the joy of the dves enthousiasmos, elation of the inrush and the passage."⁴

Thus, the best creator of poetry, according to Sri Aurobindo is one who not only considers himself to be merely "a channel or receptacle" of the creative Power, but by this pure habit or condition of passivity or surrender of his ordinary self is able to establish contact with that power at "the original source of inspiration" itself where, it is said, the whole poem may exist ready-mad and he has only to allow it to come through his perfectly surrendered creative vital, "pure and unaltered". This is what happens when the poet is so

completely possessed by the creative Power that he is said to write "not at all out of his external human mind but by inspiration", when his "outer consciousness is entirely passive and transmits without alteration what it receives." At such moments he hardly writes like a human poet but becomes the "mouthpiece of the Gods". But it is obvious that such a perfect creation happens rarely. Often enough what happens when the poet is working under the influence of inspiration is that "the creative source sends down the substance or stuff the force and the idea, but the language, the rhythm, etc. are found somewhere in the instrument".⁵ That is to say, it is the poet himself who, through the external means of expression like language, rhythm, etc. "has to find the human transcription or something that is there in diviner essence above."⁶ There is no doubt "an illumination or excitement"⁷ working within him or upon him from above but there is also "a conscious labour of creation swift or slow, hampered or facile",⁸ as the case may be a good deal depending, of course, upon the nature and power of the instrument. In such cases "something of the language may be supplied by the mind or vital, something may break through from somewhere behind the veil, from whatever source gets into touch with the transcribing mind in the liberating or stimulating excitement or uplifting of the consciousness".⁹ It is also possible that "a line or lines may come through from some plane and the poet excited to creation may build around them constructing his material or getting it from any source he can tap."¹⁰ Indeed, there may be several possibilities of this nature. Also, quite different results are likely to happen if the original source of inspiration does not flow above the mental or ordinary consciousness but gets work ing "from somewhere within on the ordinary levels, some inner mind, emotional, vital, etc., which the mind practised in poetical technique works out according to its habitual capacity".¹¹ And here again quite a number of variations are possible, though in a different way and with different results.

In this connection it is interesting to note that Sri Aurobindo considers the intellect or the mental activity which is given such a large importance in Western aesthetics to be a rather dangerous instrument for the poet. Even most of the creative artists in Europe seem to think that for the actual task of composition or execution the

use of the mind is a necessity. Without the exercise of the faculty of mental judgment and discrimination, how can they chop and change, select and reject, refine and discipline in order to achieve perfection of expression ? As the process of the selection of the right means of expression and rejection of the wrong ones, as the whole act of disciplining and refining the experience into a perfect form of expression is a conscious activity, this can be best done by the mind, the intellect which is the most conscious instrument or faculty we possess. Such is the substance of their argument for the deliberate use of the mental power and intellectual judgment in works of art. In any case, those who consider themselves to be classicists find it almost impossible to reject the use of the intellect in their artistic creation.¹² But for Sri Aurobindo, on the other hand, whose idea of poetic creation is, as we have seen above, that the poet should make himself as completely passive an instrument as possible for the transmission of the original source of inspiration which itself has the power to create its own true native form and substance of speech while passing through the creative vital and should be, therefore, allowed by the poet to use his outer mind and other external instruments for transmission only, the conscious or active use of the intellect can only prove to be an obstacle in perfect poetic creation. We are reminded here of Housman's statement that "the intellect is not the fountain of poetry... it may actually hinder its production..."¹³ Sri Aurobindo's view, too, is that this intellect being "an absurdly over-active part of the nature always thinks that nothing can be well done unless it puts its finger into the pie and therefore it instinctively interferes with the inspiration, blocks half or more than half of it and labours to substitute its own inferior and toilsome productions for the true speech and rhythm that ought to have come".¹⁴ As such, what happens in the case of the poet who allows his intellect or power of judgment to choose the words, rhythm, images etc. is that he "labours, in anguish to get the one true word, the authentic rhythm, the real divine substance of what he has to say, while all the time it is waiting complete and ready behind, but is not allowed transmission by some part of the transmitting agency which prefers to try to translate and is not willing merely to receive and transcribe".¹⁵ This happens particularly "when the brain is at work trying to fashion out of itself or to give its own version

There is no doubt, says Sri Aurobindo, that an artist should have in the very act of creation "the guidance of an inner power of discrimination"¹⁷ which has the inherent capacity for "constantly selecting and rejecting in accordance with a principle of truth and beauty which remains always faithful to a harmony, a proportion, an intimate relation of the form to the idea".¹⁸ But this "inner power of discrimination" is not to be confused with, as often it is done in Western literary criticism or aesthetics, with the discrimination of the "critical intellect". With all the emphasis which he can command, Sri Aurobindo tells us therefore, that "the discrimination which works in the creator is... not an intellectual self-criticism or an obedience to rules imposed on him from outside by any intellectual canons, but itself creative, intuitive, a part of the vision, involved in and inseparable from the act of creation".¹⁹ For "it comes as part of that influx of power and light from above which by its divine enthusiasm lifts the faculties into their intense suprarational working".²⁰The fundamental truth being so, the artist who attempts to correct, revise or even recast his work by "rule and intellectual process"²¹really uses "a false or at any rate an inferior method and cannot do his best. He ought rather to call to his aid the intuitive critical vision and embody it in a fresh act of inspired creation or re-creation after bringing himself back by its means into harmony with the light and law of his original creative intuition."²² In any case, Sri Aurobindo is emphatic on the point that "the critical intellect has no direct or independent part in the means of the inspired creator of beauty".²³And yet it is not a fact that Sri Aurobindo would have the poets sit idle until they get the full flow of inspiration from above or within. The instruments of work have got to be kept ready so that when the call comes from above, they are in a position to give the best response. In any case, he is not prepared, in spite of being a full believer in the creative power of inspiration, to subscribe wholly to D. H. Lawrence's view that "one can only write creative stuff when it comes, otherwise it is not much good". To him this statement of Lawrence is no doubt "true in principle" but he cannot ignore the fact, particularly in view of the example of the regular and constant toil of such great poets as Virgil and Milton, that "in practice most poets have to sustain

the inspiration by industry".²⁴ Also, there is the larger fact that there are few poets who "can keep for a very long time a sustained level of the highest inspiration".²⁵ As he says, "the best poetry does not usually come by streams except in the poets of a supreme greatness, though there may be in others than the greatest long-continued winging at a considerable height. The very best comes by intermittent drops, though sometimes three or four gleaming drops at a time. Even in the greatest poets, even in those with the most opulent flow of riches like Shakespeare, the very best is comparatively rare."²⁶

The very best is comparatively rare and comes by intermittent drops mainly because the contact with the inner or higher planes where poems already exist, complete and ready-made, is intermittent and uncertain. Often it so happens that the whole poem does not come from one single plane of consciousness or inspiration; on the contrary, the various parts of it hail from quite different planes. Why it happens like this is explained by Sri Aurobindo thus:

This process of the lifting up of the consciousness of a lower plane by the creative force of the higher planes usually happens on the overhead places. As Sri Aurobindo says......."the Over mind, for instance, is the ultimate source of intuition, illumination or heightened power of the planes immediately below it. It can lift them up into its own greater intensity or give out of its intensity to them or touch or combine their powers together with something of its own greater power or they can receive or draw something from it or from each other."²⁸ This kind of intermixing process can also happen on the

lower places beginning from the mental. But "the working is not the same, for the different powers here stand more on a footing of equality whether they stand apart from each other, each working in its own right, or co-operate."²⁹

It may be stated in this connection that an interesting question was put to Sri Aurobindo by one of his disciples, with regard to the language used by the creative power of inspiration: "Are all the innumerable languages of earth spoken in the higher planes or do the latter possess merely modes or states of consciousness ?"³⁰ To this Sri Aurobindo's reply was equally interesting and revealing:

Such, in brief, is Sri Aurobindo's theory of the process of poetic creation. It is obviously based upon a subtle and profound psychological as well as spiritual experience and realisation. This is why it goes to the very roots of the matter and lays bare to our vision the very fountain-heads of poetic creation. On the other hand, when we go through the views expressed by the leading English poets and critics on the subject,³² we hardly find that they concern themselves with the psychological and spiritual origins of the process, which lie hidden behind the actual form of the poem. They are usually preoccupied with the constituent limbs and features of poetry and, therefore, skim the surface only of poetic creation. Of course, we cannot

say that their analysis becomes superficial on this account. What we may say is that instead of going to the soul of poetic creation, they get confined mostly to the body of it. But here and there we find views which come nearer the truths as revealed by Sri Aurobindo. Among the earlier English critics, Thomas Lodge, Sir Philip Sidney and G. Puttenham appear to have divined that poetry is fundamentally a thing of inspiration and comes to the poet from above......."poetry", says Lodge, for example, "cometh from above, from a heavenly seat of glorious God, unto an excellent creature man.. .it cometh not by exercise of play-making, neither insertion of gauds, but from nature and from above... and whereas the poets were said to call for the Muse's help, their meaning was no other... but to call for heavenly inspiration from above to direct their endeavours.. .when their matter is most heavenly their style is most lofty."³³ The obvious implication here is that when the poet does not try to interfere with the working of inspiration upon him from above, his creation is the best. Even Ben Johnson who like all classicists laid much stress upon "rules", "exercise", study, imitation, etc., was not quite ignorant of the invisible presence of this higher creative Power or source when he said that poetry was uttered "somewhat above a mortal mouth".³⁴ "Then it riseth higher, as by a divine instinct, when it contemns common and known conceptions......Then it gets aloft and flies away with his rider, whether before it was doubtful to ascend........ This the poets understand by their Helicon, Pegasus or Parnassus up of good poets......is so thin and rare among us........"³⁵ But from about the later half of the 17th century until the time of the Romantics we find that inspiration comes regarded as "a dangerous word"³⁶ and its working, too, is ridiculed and condemned by saying that it is "a spiritual fit, derived from the ancient ethmic poets, who then, as they were priests, were statesmen too, and probably loved dominion; and as their well dissembling of inspiration begot them reverence then equal to that which was paid to laws, so these who now profess the same fury may perhaps by such authentic example, pretend authority over the people........"³⁷ It is Hobbes, however, who is the strongest critic of the theory of inspiration during this period and thinks of it as a foolish and unreasonable custom coming of yore, "which a man enabled to speak wisely from the principles of nature and

his own meditation, loves rather to be thought to speak by inspiration, like a bagpipe."³⁸ And in order to break such a foolish "bagpipe" to pieces he set down his own theory of poetic creation thus: "Time and Education begets experience; Experience begets memory; Memory begets judgment and fancy; Judgment begets the strength and structure, and Fancy begets the ornaments of a poem . The ancients therefore fabled not absurdly in making memory the mother of the Muses."³⁹ The critical judgment of Hobbes, therefore, ascribed the source of poetic creation to memory. Another rational critic of the the period, Sir William Temple, sought to explain this ancient mystery of inspiration, by saying that it was nothing more than "a certain noble and vital heat of temper...specially for the brain."⁴⁰

However, we find that the great Romantic poet and critic, Wordsworth, gave a quite deeper meaning to the faculty of memory, stressed so much by Hobbes, and to the theory of the vital brain energy of William Temple. When he made the famous statement that "...poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity; the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this is carried on....."⁴¹ This was quite a big advance on previous theories of the way poetry was born, inasmuch as it sought to relate the poetic process to some of the deeper psychological truths of human nature and consciousness. And when Coleridge came out with his theory or the part played by Imagination and Fancy in poetic composition a further stride was taken in the psychological understanding of the poetic phenomenon. The distinction between these two creative faculties of the poet is admirably brought out by him thus; "How excellently the German Einbil-dungekraft expresses this prime and loftiest faculty, the power of coadunation, the faculty that forms the many into one-In-eins-bildung: Eisenoplasy or esenoplastic power, is contra-distinguished from fantasy or the merriment,-either catoptrics or metoptric repeating simply, or by transposition and, again involuntary (fantasy) as in dreams, or by an act of the will."⁴²

Here, it is just possible, one may say — as for example, even such a finely endowed critic as J. W. Mackail does regarding most of the philosophical-critical passages of Coleridge's —that "it is rhetoric, not criticism...barren word-play.''⁴³ But the fact is that Coleridge is putting forward a very profound truth about the way a poet truly creates, and at the same time, effectively showing up the inadequacy of, and demolishing as well, the theory of Memory and Fancy which Hobbes had put forward before, with all the authority of his philosophical and literary scholarship. It is by virtue of "Eisenoplasy" or "esemplastic power" which in common parlance is the faculty of Imagination, and not "fantasy" or fancy that the poet, according to Coleridge, really creates. The distinction between what he called the primary and secondary Imagination was, it is probable, set forth by him — unfortunately in his typical cryptic and compressed style again — in order to give a fitting reply to Hobbes, Locke and Hartley. Professor Basil Willey has made Coleridge's views on this important classical theory explicit enough thus:

"What of the distinction", Prof. Willey asks, "between the two kinds of Imagination, the Primary and the Secondary?" And he replies, "I fear that some readers are misled by the oracular sublimity of Coleridge's definition of the former: 'The Primary Imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM'.

"This is not to be dismissed as metaphysical babble; a weight of thought, indeed a whole philosophy, lies beneath each phrase. Coleridge is here summarizing the great struggle and victory of his life — his triumph over the old tradition of Locke and Hartley, which had assumed that the mind in perception was wholly passive, 'a lazy looker-on on an external world'......The mind, he now teaches, works actively in the mere act of perception; it knows its objects not by passive perception, but by its own energy and under its own necessary forms; indeed, it knows not mere objects as such, but itself in the objects:...

In speaking, thus, of the Primary Imagination, then, Coleridge is affirming that the mind is essentially and inveterately creative: 'we receive but what we give', and in the commonest everyday acts

of perception we are making out own world. We make it, indeed, not ex nihilo, but of the influxes proceeding from Nature, or as Coleridge preferred to say 'the infinite I AM'. Whatever we perceive is what we have made in response to these stimuli; perception is an activity of the mind, not a merely mechanical registering of impressions. However (and this is now the point to be emphasised), it is the Secondary Imagination, not the Primary, which he proceeds to contrast with Fancy, it is the Secondary Imagination which is at work in the making of poetry. For how does it operate?

"It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates in order to recreate ... it struggles to idealise and unify. It is essentially vital even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead."

"Here speaks the seer, the poet and the romantic; not content with the automatic 'poetry' which we all create, and which we call the world of everyday appearances, he would transcend this for a vision more intense, more true, than is afforded by the light of common day ....

"If we ask, then, what it is which the Secondary Imagination must 'dissolve, diffuse and dissipate;' the answer is ... it is the 'inanimate cold world' of the Primary Imagination all that is allowed to the daily, prosaic consciousness of average humanity, and to poets themselves when power deserves them ... this desire (as Wordsworth expresses it)

is no mere" romantic escapism, though it may sometimes take that form; it is the originating impulse of poets of all times (including our own time), and not merely of poets, but of seers and saints and scientists as well____

"The Imagination, then (we may now drop the word "secondary") is the mind in its highest state of creative insight and alertness; its acts are acts of growth...."⁴⁴

"Fancy, on the contrary," says Coleridge, "has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definite. The fancy is, indeed, no other

than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word choice. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready-made from the law of association."⁴⁵

There is, no doubt, that in so far as it involves acts of selection and arrangement — "that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word choice" —Fancy, as Basil Willey tells us, "is on a higher level than mere perception or mere memory. But it is below Imagination in that, instead of making all things new, it merely constructs patterns out of ready-made materials, 'fixities and definite'. It juxtaposes images, but does not fuse them into unity; its products are like mechanical mixtures (as of salt with iron filings), in which the ingredients, though close together, remain the same as when apart ; where as those of Imagination are like chemical compounds (say, of sodium and chlorine), in which the ingredients lose their separate identities in a new su b st an ce, composed of them indeed, but differing from them both. " .⁴⁶

At another place, Coleridge says that the images of Fancy "have no connection natural or moral, but are yoked together by the poet by means of some accidental coincidence."⁴⁷ On the other hand, in Imagination all the essential qualities of the images are made to interpenetrate; and "as the coordinating, shaping power" its function is "to see all things as one, and the one in all things."⁴⁸

Thus, if we put the matter a little philosophically we may say that according to Coleridge, the poetic power is the Secondary Imagination which is the Universal Being's creative faculty actively at work in the individual, co-existent with the individual conscious will; and it is when this Secondary Imagination acts creatively on the objects of sensation which are the Primary Imagination repeated in the individual, that we get into touch with the original creativity projecting those objects within the Universal Consciousness. And it is then that we see everything as a symbol of the Infinite and thus participating, in our human way, in the significance of the Universe as it exists in the Supreme.

Then, at one place Coleridge also says, "Forms exist before the substance out of which they are shaped."⁴⁹ The idea of the pre-existence

of poetic creation on some higher plane of the infinite is, as stated by Sri Aurobindo, thus clearly adumbrated in Coleridge's poetics as well.

And Shelley says, "Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, I will compose poetry.' The greatest poet even cannot say it____"⁵⁰ Referring to the greatest poets of his own day, he asks whether it is not "an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced by labour and study."⁵¹ "Milton", he continues to argue, "conceived the Paradise Lost as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have his own authority also for the Muse having 'dictated' to him the 'unpremeditated song' .. . a great statue or picture grows the very mind which directs the hands in formation is incapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the gradations, or the media of the process.''⁵² Again he also says about poetry, generally, "It acts in a divine and un apprehended manner beyond and above consciousness.''⁵³In such statements he is in fact suggesting that the sources of poetic creation are somewhere above and not "subject to the control of the active powers of the mind." Shelley, too, therefore, relates the process of poetic creation to the working of some higher consciousness in the psychology of man, and then confirms Sri Aurobindo's experience of it.

There is also a significant passage in E. A. Poe's The Poetic Principle (1844): "The struggle to apprehend the supernal loveliness - this struggle on the part of souls fittingly constituted, - has given to the world all that which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand and to feel as poetic."⁵⁴ Poe's idea here that there is "the supernal loveliness" existing somewhere above the human consciousness, and that "souls fittingly constituted" struggle to "apprehend" it, or make "a wild effort to reach the beauty above"55 is a clear indication once again that in essence poetic creation has a subtler and deeper psychological motivation and process of a higher order that is within the reach of the human intellect. Robert Browning seems to be still more positive and precise about this point when he says, "He (i. e, the subjective poet), gifted like the objective poet with the fuller perception of nature and man, is impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many below,

as to the One above him, the supreme intelligence which apprehends all things in their absolute truth—an ultimate view ever aspired to, if but partially attained, by the poet's, soul. Not what man sees, but what God sees—the Ideas of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine Hand,—it is towards these that he struggles...and he digs where he stands,—preferring to seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute mind, according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak. Such a poet...is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner, and what he produces will be less a work than an effluence.⁵⁶" Here, too the idea is clearly suggested that the whole process of poetic creation by the subjective poet who is not "a fashioner" like the objective poet but "a seer" lies in psychologically and spiritually reaching out to and establishing contact with the higher region above where, "the Ideas of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly in the Hand" exist perennially. Also, it is the poet's soul alone, i.e. the most plastic instrument of the divine consciousness is man which is "the nearest reflex of that absolute mind, according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak".

There are some modern critics, too, who, like Sri Aurobindo, have the feeling that poetry or art is not 'created' so much as that it is brought down from a place where it already exists, complete and ready for transmission. Marcel Prout, for example, says about a work of art in Remembrance of Things Past, " ...we do not create it as we please.. .it pre-exists in us and we are compelled, as though it were by a law of nature, to discover it because it is at once hidden from us and necessary." G. G. Colton in his Mediaeval Panorama (1938) says about Dante, " ...we feel not so much...that he is creating, as that he stands by, removes veil, and eternity...." E. H. Comb rich says nearly the same thing about Michaelangelo in his The Story of Art (1950) that he "always tried to conceive his figures as lying hidden in the block of marble on which he was working. The task he set himself as a sculptor was merely to remove the stone which covered them." Clive Sansom, too, expresses this very view when he says: "It is as if the whole poem, form and all, already exists whether in outer space or inner consciousness doesn't matter. The poet's job is to collect and bring down to earth before the already fading

realisation of it is dispersed again." Even what is known as the poet's craftsmanship, he says, "comes in but to help in deciding whether one's view of the existing poem is correct rather than to help in creating it. The poem, in fact, is there already. All one's faculties, including craftsmanship, are concentrated on extracting it intact."

Thus, we see that the essence of Sri Aurobindo's deeper psychological and spiritual perception of the way poetry is born is, to an appreciable extent, well adumbrated and confirmed in the view of not a few of the English critics, past and present. But mostly they are able to catch the essence only. The details of the whole process, the multiplicity of the planes from which not only the diviner form of expression comes down to the well-known attuned human receptacle, the intermingling of the various planes of consciousness and the consequent difference in the results and motives of the poetic achievement, the distinction between the overhead planes of inspiration and those existing from the mind downwards, the various parts of the same poem coming from different planes and the illuminating reasons given for such a phenomenon which is quite usual, the role of the creative vital, and the outer mind and other external instruments in the over-all process of poetic composition, the precise nature of the pre-existence of a poetic composition, the precise qualification of the true poet as lying in his being merely a most plastic and faithful receptacle, the choice of the language of expression by the creative Power etc,—all these things are given fairly elaborately and precisely by Sri Aurobindo more than anybody else. His theory of poetic creation, provided it can be called just a theory, is, therefore, much more comprehensive and precise, subtle and profound, deeply psychological as well as spiritual, than, we get elsewhere; and it reveals to us the very hidden fountain-heads and not merely the visible expanding bed of the out flowings of the dynamic creative powers of inspiration. And on the basis of what he has to give us on this point we may be quite justified is saying that the process of what is usually known as poetic creation is, in fact, and more properly, but the process of poetic transmission through the fit human channel, and that all the poet needs to do during the act of creation is to concentrate all one's faculties, including the one of craftsmanship or organisation on transmitting "the whole poem, form and all intact from either the

higher planes above or the psychic regions within, where it already exists, ready and complete. And even when the originating source is but the subtle-physical plane or the higher or lower vital or the creative intelligence—for this source, as Sri Aurobindo says, "may be anywhere", — the best way in which the so-called creative poet can respond to it is to render himself a fit channel of transmission only without any let or hindrance from any part of himself. As he compendiously says in another letter, "Poetry is a question of the right concentrated silence or seeking somewhere in the mind with the right openness to the Word that is trying to express itself—for the Word is there ready to descend in those inner planes where all artistic forms take birth, but it is the transmitting mind that must change and become a perfect channel and not an obstacle."⁵⁷ At the same time, although the poet plays his role best by being only a channel or receptacle, he is not quite deprived of "the joy of the creation and the joy of the āveś enthousiasmos, elation of the inrush and the passage."

There is a passage towards the end of The Future Poetry where Sri Aurobindo states the psychological phenomenon of poetic inspiration in as luminous a manner as he does in his letters . He says:

This, at any rate, is the true psychological interpretation or explanation of the kind of strange physical or sensational symptoms

which the artists often say, they feel when the creative mood is theirs or suddenly descends on them. One is reminded here of Housman's personal statement : "Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so the razor ceases to act. This particular symptom accompanied by a shiver down the spine; there is another which consists in a construction of the throat and a precipitation of water to the eyes; and there is a third which I can only describe by borrowing a phrase from one of Keat's last letters, where he says, speaking of Fanny Browne, "everything that reminds me of her goes through like a spear. The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach."⁵⁹ This is quite all right for the creation of vital or emotional or vitalised intellectual poetry but even here it is not quite right to say that the "seat" of such a creative sensational is "the pit of the stomach", or that, as Housman says again, poetry is, "more physical than intellectual." Eliphaz the Temanite to whom Housman refers in that essay puts the matter much more correctly when he says: ' a spirit passed before my face: the hair of my flesh stood up'. But it is not till we come to the luminous psychological interpretation of the true sources of poetic creation by Sri Aurobindo that we get a truer, deeper, subtler and more convincing knowledge of the very origin and the while process of artistic creation, and the accompaniment, if any, of either physical or nervous or cerebral sensation.

O sister mine ask not how I feel

The rapture ineffable, for as I try to express it, it gushes up afresh at each instant.

O from the cradle onwards have my eyes gazed on Beauty and yet they were, never sated.

For aeons unnumbered, I have with my heart pressed close to the heart and yet my heartache is not assuaged.

Night after night I have passed in ravishment and yet the sense of it all has eluded my thought.

The experts sing praises of the nectar but none has traced its source.

Says Vidyapati, not one in a million has slaked soul's unquenched yearning for Bliss.

Love broods on Love

and Love creates the Mood

and Mood on Mood doth dwell.

But from the Mood is born delight.

Delight nestles in the heart

and delight then gushes forth.

The fountain springs from the flow.

But who could taste the rapture there.

Flowers mingle with flowers

and among flowers doth fragrance reside.

The fragrance wafts Four Letters

THE social evolution of the human race is necessarily a develop-ment of the relations between three constant factors,—individuals, communities of various sorts, and mankind. Each seeks its own fulfilment and satisfaction, but each is compelled to develop them not independently but in relation to the others. The first natural aim of the individual must be his own inner growth and fullness and its expression in his outer life. This can only be accomplished through his relation with other individuals. Similarly the community (or nation) seeks its own fulfilment, but it can accomplish its growth only through individuals. Mankind as a whole has not yet any consciously organised common life, but still the idea and the fact of our common human existence, nature, destiny has always exercised its strong influence on human thought and action. One of the chief preoccupations of ethics and religion has been the obligations of man to mankind.

Nature works always through these three terms and none of them can be abolished. If or when the whole of humanity arrives at an organised common life, and seeks a common fulfilment, it can only do it by means of the relation of this whole to its parts, and by the aid of the expanding life of individual human beings and of the communities whose progress constitutes the larger terms of the fife of humanity.

Just as in the life-type there are the three terms, genus, species and individuals, so also in the social organisation of man the three terms are interlinked,—even more intimately in man than in the animal. Therefore it would seem that the ultimate aim of Nature must be to develop all individuals to their full capacity, to develop all communities to the full expression of their many-sided potentialities, and to evolve the united life of mankind to its full common capacity, by taking full advantage of the diversity.

so freedom is as necessary to life as law and regime. Thus, while diversity is essential for power and fruitfulness of life, unity is necessary for its order, arrangement and stability. But unity does not mean uniformity. This latter is only sought for by the reasoning factor in man, because uniformity gives a strong illusion of unity in place of the real oneness. Moreover, uniformity also makes it easiest to impose law, order and regimentation. But on the other hand, diversity, in the present condition of mankind, only leads to strife and disorder and separation. Yet uniformity and regimentation go to the other extreme and only lead to inertia in the society and eventually block the way to progress.

It is only in harmony between our unity and our diversity that the real secret of life lies. For ultimately we find that a real spiritual and psychological unity allows a free diversity based on a free variation, which is also Nature's rule. By liberty, therefore, 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.

Human society progresses in proportion as law becomes the child of freedom. It will reach its perfection when man has learned to know and become spiritually one with his fellow-men. Then the spontaneous law of his society will exist only as the outward mould of his self-governed inner liberty. This is not only an idea, but a practical possibility, as this background survey of modern sociology will endeavour to show.

All mankind may be regarded as a collective being—which is not merely a mind or a body but a soul and a life. Each society develops into a group-soul of humanity and develops also a general temperament, character, type of mind, and evolves governing ideas and tendencies that shape its life and its institutions. There is, however, no discoverable common reason and will; for this group-soul works out its tendencies by a diversity of opinions, of wills and of life. The vitality of the group-life depends largely on the working of this diversity, its continuity and its richness. And it is always the

reason and will of a comparatively few effective men that rules and regulates things with the consent of the half-hypnotised mass.

Man needs freedom of thought and life and action in order to grow, otherwise he will remain fixed where he is. If his individual mind and reason are ill-developed, he may consent to grow, as does the infra-rational mind, in the group-soul, in the herd or in the mass, with that subtle, half-conscient general evolution common to all in the lower process of Nature. As he develops individual reason and will, he needs room for an increasing play of individual freedom and variation. Where there is excessive regulation of life, however, revolt sets in, and may spread. The state, in turn, tends to regulate this by an education adapted to its fixed forms of life, and particularly an education that seeks to drill the citizen in a fixed set of ideas, attitudes and propensities. Also, there will be the suppression of freedom of speech and thinking so as to train and compel all to be of one mind, one sentiment, one opinion and one feeling. This, as we have seen, would be the end of the reasoning man, and a thoroughgoing mechanisation of life.

To make a larger and better development of life possible, on a basis of harmony and not of conflict and struggle, the soul in man must discover itself in its highest and completest spiritual reality. Only then can a progressive upward transformation of its life-values be effected into those of the spirit. For the spiritual is the one truth of which all others are the veiled aspects and in which they can find their own right form and true relation to each other. This is the work the reason cannot do. The business of the reason is to observe and understand this life by the intelligence, and discover for it the direction in which it is going and the laws of its self-development on the way. But the integral truth of things is truth not of the reason but of the spirit. As we have seen, the reason mechanises in order to arrive at fixity of conduct and practice amid the fluidity of things. Such mechanisation can never truly succeed in dealing with conscious life, because there it is contrary to the law of life. Thus, reason can never arrive at perfection by its own methods. Reason must call in a higher spiritual principle of life.

This means that the collectivity itself must allow for a free individual development on the basis of unity and a closely harmonised

common existence. To do that, there must be the acceptance of the basic spiritual principles as a science of spirituality. In this way spirituality itself will enlighten through the reasoning faculty.

Anarchism in its idealistic form is not lawlessness and chaos, but a condition of non-government where each person has the knowledge and will to live in harmony with everyone else in the collectivity. In such a state social law or compulsion would be unnecessary. But the principle of social compulsion, which has operated so largely in the past is the necessary law of man's present imperfect nature. In the earliest stages of his social evolution it was clearly inevitable. For until man has grown out of the causes of its necessity, he cannot be really ready for the anarchistic principle of living.

However, it is clear that the more the outer law is replaced by an inner law, the nearer man will draw to his true and natural perfection. And the perfect social state must be one in which governmental compulsion is abolished and man is able to live with his fellow-men by free agreement and co-operation. This might be aided by the principle of fraternity,—a free equality founded on spontaneous co-operation, not on governmental force and social compulsion.

All efforts to build such a collectivist society have failed to take account of the infra-rational element in man, the vital egoism to which the most active and effective part of his nature is bound. If, however, the ego-force is overshadowed, cowed and depressed, then the life of man becomes artificial, mechanical and uncreative. We are, therefore, in the end compelled to aim higher than the rational and intellectual solution and go farther.

The solution lies not in the reason but in the soul of man, in its spiritual tendencies. It is a spiritual and inner freedom that can alone create a perfect human order. A deeper brotherhood, a yet unfound law of love is the only sure foundation possible for a perfect social evolution. No other can replace this. And it is only in the soul that this brotherhood and love will find its natural roots. For such spiritual comradeship is the expression of an inner realisation of oneness. Only in this way can egoism disappear, and the true equality and oneness of all take its place.

From the viewpoint of the spiritual evolution, this beginning will imply the descent of an influence that will alter the whole life of

mankind in its orientation and enlarge, as did the development of his reason in the intellectual sphere, its potentialities and all its structure in the spiritual sphere.

At its best normal human society establishes, against the interests which lead to conflict, the interests which call for association and mutual assistance. It creates or stimulates sympathies and habits of helpfulness that give a psychological support and sanction to its mechanism of law, custom and contract. While society deals only with the life, mind and body as the three terms of existence with which it can completely handle, it develops a system of mental growth efficiency, and an intellectual, aesthetic and moral culture. It also evolves the vital side of life and creates an ever-growing system of economic efficiency and vital enjoyment. By systems of physical culture and a cumbrous science of habits and remedies society attempts to right the balance of vital excesses and mental depressions. But in the end, experience shows that society tends to disintegrate through some radical deficiencies. This is proof that its method of development does not correspond to all the reality of the human being and to the aim of life which that reality imposes.

It is found that civilisation has created many more problems than it can solve. It has multiplied excessive needs and desires the satisfaction of which it has not sufficient vital force to sustain. And it has developed a mass of claims and artificial instincts in the midst of which life loses its way and has no longer any sight of its aim. At present the cure is aimed at by more and more mechanical devices, a more scientific organisation of life, which means that the machine will replace life.

Just as in the individual a healthy body, a strong vitality and an active clarified mind carry man no more than a certain distance, so these three things alone leave a deficient development in society. Even a religious system and widespread spirit of belief cannot in themselves bring the means of social salvation, as it has repeatedly failed to do in the past. It is only in its new turn inwards, towards a greater subjectivity now in its beginning stages, that there

is a better hope. For by that inner turn it must discover that the real truth of man is to be found in his soul. That indeed is the possibility if the inward turn is in right earnest.

Religion in the past failed because in taking the inward turn it looked beyond the earth for its fulfilment, the earth being only a preparation for individual salvation or release from the burden of life. Human society has never seized on the discovery of the law of its own being, or on a knowledge of the soul's true nature and need as the right way of terrestrial perfection. It is only now, by a new growth and awakening in spirituality, that society can assimilate this knowledge for the common good.

The true spiritual aim in society will regard man as a soul incarnated for a divine purpose on earth. Life, mind and body are not ends in themselves, but are instruments—though as yet imperfect instruments of the soul. The destiny of life, mind and body is to become spiritualised, in order to grow into visible members of the spirit, illumined, more and more conscious and perfect.

The spiritualised society will accept the truth of man's soul as a thing entirely divine in its essence. It will accept also the possibility of his whole being becoming divine in spite of Nature's first contradiction of this possibility. It will also regard the collectivity as a soul form of the Infinite, a collective soul myriadly embodied upon earth for a divine fulfilment or purpose.

It will hold up this creed and ideal as a light and inspiration to all parts of man's natural being to grow with the godhead from within themselves, to become freely divine. For a spiritualised society will not seek to imprison or impoverish, but to let in the widest air and the higher light. The spiritual aim will recognise that man as he grows in his being must have as much free space as possible for all the potentialities in man to develop.

The way of spirituality is to present, even to the lower parts of man's being, the truth of the spirit translated into their own field of action. It aims to show man the way to seek for the Divine in every way of his being, and to live and act in the Divine,

Man seems to be a double nature. On the one hand there is an animal nature of the vital and physical being which lives according to instincts, impulses, desires and automatic reactions. On the other hand there is the nature of the self-conscious intellect, which has ethical, aesthetic, intelligently emotional and intelligently dynamic motives. While the aim of the animal part is merely to possess and enjoy, the aim of the intelligent and aesthetic part is to use the powers of mind much more than the powers of life and body, especially in the direction of what is true, good and beautiful.

But in our day-to-day life these two elements live together in a continual perplexity, which is made perpetually uneasy and ineffectual to each other. All the uneasiness, dissatisfaction, disillusionment, weariness, melancholy, and pessimism of the human mind comes from man's practical failure to solve the riddle and the difficulty of his double nature.

In a materialistic age, such as the one we have been passing through, the intellect of man is bent on studying Life and Matter only, and recognising Mind only as an instrument of Life and Matter. All its knowledge is devoted to a tremendous expansion of the vital and physical life, its practicality, its efficiency, its comfort and the splendid ordering of its instincts of production, possession and enjoyment. All this dominated the commercial and economic activities of mankind.

The natural result has been a struggle—an economic or "cold" war—between the most efficient and civilised or advanced nations for the possession and enjoyment of the world, of its wealth, of its markets, and its available spaces.

Amidst all this struggle there have been attempts to return to an older ideal, with a will to use the reason and the ethical mind better and more largely in the ordering of individual, of national, and of international life. But such attempts have proved that they cannot be the real and final solution. The solution lies, as it has been previously hinted, in an awakening to our real self and nature. This is our hidden self, or soul, which we have yet to become aware of. It is only by awakening to this highest in us that we can overcome the

conflicts of the lower nature and establish the needed harmony in ourselves and in the world.

The science of spirituality teaches us that the secret of the transformation of human life lies in our attaining a higher consciousness. This will be a greater step in the evolution than was made in the past from the vital mind of the animal to the thinking mind of man. In the greater step a spiritual will must replace the present vital will. This spiritual will is above mind,—a supramental power, (just as mind is above the life-force).

At present our will and power is centred in the mental plane, where we live in the strength of the Idea. But this Idea is still the mental idea, and is intermediary, and not the final attainment of the evolutionary ascent. It is because of this intermediary status that there are two opposite pulls—one downward and outward towards the vital and physical life, and the other inward and upward towards the spirit. We see this opposition in thought, in art, in conduct and in life where we are divided between two tendencies, one idealistic and the other realistic.

Of the two, the realistic tendency seems more solidly founded, more in touch with actualities, because it relies upon a reality which is seen, can be felt, and is already accomplished. The idealistic tendency, on the other hand, seems to us something unreal, fantastic, unsubstantial, nebulous, a thing more of thoughts and words than of living actualities, because it is trying to embody a reality not yet accomplished. In other words, our idealism has to convert itself into a spiritual realism which will help this lower reality of our sensational, vital and physical nature to grow upwards.

At this stage, the domination of the vital elements must be replaced by the domination of the spirit. In this direction lies the perfection of man. This higher perfection will come by a spontaneous obedience of spiritualised man to the truth of his own realised being, when he has discovered his own nature. For this spontaneity will be intuitive and internally conscious. It will be a glad obedience to a spontaneous principle of spiritual light, to the force of a unified and integralised highest truth, largest beauty, good, power, joy, love and oneness. Our insight into the workings of this spiritual principle will become clearer only as we go deeper into the study of spirituality.

When man boldly declares that all he has yet developed, including the intellect, are now no longer sufficient for him, he will then begin to set free the greater light within. His philosophy, art, science, ethics, and social organisation will then be no longer an exercise of mind and life, but a means for the discovery of a greater truth behind mind and life, and for bringing its power into our human existence. This is the essence of the change from the mental and vital to the spiritual order of life.

Such changes must necessarily be accomplished in the individual first, and in a great number of individuals (aided by a broader educational curriculum). For Nature intends in man, unlike the animal, a more and more conscious evolution, and therefore the developed individuality is of paramount importance and indispensable. The mass follows the individual achievement, although in a very imperfect and confused fashion, which often ends in failure or distortion of the thing created.

Therefore if the spiritual change is to be effected, it must unite two conditions which have to be simultaneously satisfied but are most difficult to bring together. Firstly, there must be the individuals who are able to see, to develop, and re-create themselves in the image of the Spirit, and to communicate both their idea and its power to the mass. Secondly, there must at the same time be a society, or at least the constituents of a group-body, which is capable of receiving and effectively assimilating and ready to follow.

In the past, either the individual has not been sufficiently developed, or the collectivity has not been ready for any far-reaching message, with the result that the final acceptance of the spiritual ideal by the society has been the beginning of a distortion or diminution of the spirit, rather than an enlargement.

The first step is that the common human mind begins to admit the ideas proper to the higher order that is in the end to be. The heart of man also must begin to be stirred by aspirations born of these ideas. The first sign in this direction is the growth of the subjective idea of life,—the idea of the soul, the inner being, its powers, its possibilities, its growth, its expression, and the creation of a true,

beautiful and helpful environment for it as the one thing of first and last importance.

Centred on a sturdy science of spirituality, these ideas will influence philosophy, philosophical things, the creative arts and poetry, as well as painting, sculpture, music and the main ideas of ethics and social well-being, — and naturally politics and economics. This will also lead to new lines of scientific research which will then break the walls between soul and matter. There will be an extension into a more exact knowledge of the psychological and psychic (or subliminal) realms with a realisation that these have laws of their own which are other than physical. Religion, too, will reject much of the dead weight of the past and revivify its strength in the fountains of the Spirit.

The basis of this spirituality will be established as a living force when the higher idea of man as a soul develops itself individually and collectively in the life and body. The elevation of human life will thus come not through material efficiency alone or the complex play of man's vital and dynamic powers mastering the energies of physical Nature for the satisfaction of the life-instincts, but through the greatness of his mental and psychic being. Through this inner turn, the organisation of man's vast subliminal nature and its forces will be discovered and brought forward. The basis will be laid for the joy and power of knowledge, for the joy and power of beauty, for the joy and power of the human will mastering not only physical Nature, but the vital and mental Natures. The inner secrets of mind-powers and life-powers will be discovered and used for a freer liberation of man from the limitations of his shackled bodily life.

Such a turn of human thought, effort, and ideas of life, if it took hold of the communal mind, would lead to a profound revolution throughout the whole range of human existence. It would give it a new tone and atmosphere, a loftier spirit, wider horizons and a. greater aim. It would develop a Science which would open the doors of other worlds. It could develop an achievement of Art and Beauty which would make the greatness of the past a comparatively little thing, and would save the world from the astonishingly callous reign of utilitarian ugliness. It could open up a freer and closer interchange between human minds, and also a kindlier interchange between

human hearts and lives. But first it is essential that, if mankind is to be spiritualised, it must first in the mass cease to be the material or the vital man, and become the psychic and the true mental being.

From this conversion the idea will become strong that mind itself is no more than a secondary power of the Spirit working, and that Spirit is the great Eternal, the original, and sole reality. The spiritual age of mankind will only be possible on the basis of this realisation.

A spiritual human society would start from and try to realise three essential truths of existence,— God, freedom and unity. These three are really one, for you cannot realise freedom and unity unless you realise God, you cannot possess freedom and unity unless you possess God, and at the same time possess your highest self and the self of all creatures. God is only waiting to be known, while man seeks for him everywhere and creates images of the Divine, which are only projections of his own ego.

Each man has to grow into the Divine within himself through his own individual being, therefore a certain growing measure of freedom is a necessity of the being as it develops,—and perfect freedom is a condition of the perfect life. But also, the Divine whom he thus sees in himself, he sees equally in all others and as the same Spirit in all. Therefore a growing unity with others is a necessity of his being, and perfect unity the sign and condition of the perfect life. He will thus seek not only his own freedom, but the freedom of all, not only his own perfection, but the perfection of all.

The awakening to a spiritual ideal in life is only a first step. But in order to have a dynamic re-creating of individual manhood, a general spiritual awakening and aspiration in mankind is the necessary motive power. For spirituality is a subjective element and not mechanical. Therefore it has to be lived inwardly, and the outward life must flow out of this inward living. Unless spirituality is lived it can have no meaning.

The individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the

destiny and therefore the great need of the human being. An evolution or conversion of the present type of humanity into a spiritualised humanity is the need of the race, as well as the intention of Nature. Men must be left to resort to the belief and forms to which they are naturally drawn,—a wanton destruction of past traditions and beliefs is not what is required. What is essential is the faith in the spiritual conversion, and the attempt to live it out.

If the light that is being born increases, if the number of individuals who seek to realise the possibility in themselves and in the world grows large and they get nearer the right way, then the spirit who is here in man, now a concealed divinity, a developing light and power, will descend more fully as the messenger of a yet unseen and un guessed Godhead from above into the soul of mankind and into the great individualities in whom the light and power are the strongest. The earthly evolution will have taken its great impetus upwards and accomplished the revealing step in a divine progression of which the birth of thinking and aspiring men from animal nature was only an obscure preparation and a far-off promise.

Although confusion seems to reign everywhere, the present world outlook (nearing the fourth quarter of the 20th century) is really one of active preparation for the manifestation of a higher light and power in the world,—known to present-day spirituality as the Gnosis. Even now the pressure of the Gnosis on life itself is acting in the three spheres of human endeavour. Firstly in the sphere of political power; secondly in the sphere of economics, or the distribution of the world's resources and money power; and thirdly in the sphere of personal and family life. Let us examine each of these spheres of human life in turn.

Present-day political power is directly descended from an ancient idea that kings are delegated by God to frame the laws and uphold the customs and traditions of their people. But today the old kings have been replaced by rulers who, having been voted into power, claim to be supported by the mass of the people. Prior to the Second World War there were three or four powerful dictators and an equal

number of imperialistic powers, who each tried to impose their suzerainty over large areas of Europe, Africa and Asia. But after the downfall of these dictators (of the totalitarian type), there has been the world-wide movement of the breaking up of all the old empires and the recognizing of individual states, each with a national status and representation in the United Nations. In this process France and Great Britain and other European powers have ceded their old empires, while endeavouring to retain friendly links with their former possessions. But the United States and the Soviet Union, as the dominant world powers of today, have stepped in to form their own separate groupings and alliances. The present situation has forced many of the newly-formed states to become dominated by small, nationalistic or regional dictators, risen mostly from the military ranks. Other states, for their own protection against the growing power of America and Russia, have formed separate groups, — such as the Common Market group in Western Europe, and the various tentative groups of Asia and Africa.

The present political picture is therefore characterized by fierce, though localized, disputes between rival groups or states who find themselves uneasy neighbours. These quarrels are chiefly centred on the question of land, boundaries, and navigable communication links (such as the Suez area). Although America and Russia have made various attempts to intervene in these disputes, both countries are acting very cautiously in order to prevent a major war spreading to and directly involving their own countries. India also in her divided condition is suffering because of the constant border quarrels. The new states of Africa are likewise on their guard to retain their newly-won powers of national freedom and growth.

So at present all the new states are clinging precariously to the United Nations as a bulwark against a more widespread and calamitous confrontation. But there is no doubt that the increasing division into small, sovereign states has increased the quarrels and has created tensions which may either be decided by another widespread war, or more slowly by a series of localized wars.

It does not seem possible, in the present pattern of things, that the two powerful and opposing forces — such as America and Russia are at present — can come to terms with the great challenge

facing humanity today, — the formation of a World Body which has the political power and sovereignty to unite all nations into one comity of nations, in place of the present rival groupings. A series of localized wars involving the densely populated countries of China, South-East Asia, India and the Middle East seem therefore more probable. It might indeed be the only means of breaking the present deadlock and deciding the sovereign nation, or rather the combined group of nations, which will be powerful enough to bring together without opposition the diverse states of the world into the desired political unity, — with, at least, a working agreement between them for peaceful, progressive and harmonious living.

While for the major part of this century there have been widespread political forces at work of an extreme socialistic type, attempting to break up the personal and family groups and to replace them with some amorphous collective life, — the political state, — this process has only tended more and more to restrict individual development and initiative. The individual has been made subordinate in most countries of today to the collective or mass needs and movements. Yet the true purpose of the collectivity, as we have stressed in the previous chapters, is to produce the developed individuals who will be equipped to lead the evolutionary growth of nations, — and not merely to seek the power to dominate over others (as is the present state of affairs). The present indications are that it is still the family-like unit, and not any collective mass, which is the natural and most effective protective body for the complete upbringing and education of the individual.

Under present conditions the problem of meeting the needs of individual development through education is almost nullified in most countries because of the collective efforts to establish mass education. Although in the most progressive countries, the basic material needs such as housing, food and health are cared for by the state, yet this is far from sufficient for human progress on the psychological level. For if education, with its psychological disciplines, lacks the human element, then it becomes merely a mechanized system without any spiritual aim, motive or content.

It is true that governments, large and small, have turned their attention to the application of Science for mass-production and

constructive purposes, but at the same time there is a greater deterioration in the psychological factors which support a fair economic distribution of the basic human needs. In business affairs competition has reached a destructive level, with greater power-seekers in the field. Such factors as a common feeling of brotherhood, honesty, fair dealings and trust, not only between nations, but within the nation itself, have been obliterated through excessive or unrestricted competition. Both competition and freedom are in fact among the great developments of the modern world, but when these two otherwise very helpful principles come under the sway of the vital ego in man, they become wholly destructive and vengeful forces, opposing man's true progress. In fact it now looks as though the great material advances that have taken place in recent years have only produced a backward step in man's psychological development, wherein greed and jealousy are the common motives. This points to the more pressing need of a spiritually infused education, especially at the higher levels, which can give a lead and directive enlightenment to the new generation.

The unrest of youth throughout the world is no doubt deeply rooted in this rapid deterioration of the psychological factors in human relations. In the years before the second World War it was women who strove to establish their rightful place in the management of world affairs, but although women have gained a voice in recent years, this did not succeed in overpowering the male 'supremacy'. Women are still dependents economically, and have to be content with a background influence in the serious affairs of world diplomacy. The youth of the world is thus conscious of the inability of their fathers' generation to guide the world towards peace, harmony and unity. Young men and women everywhere — especially the more highly educated ones — are strongly opposed to the authority of their elders, and are trying in their own way to restore a new balance in social life. But although they are aiming to wipe away hatred and traditional prejudices, in order to usher in an era of universal love, present-day youth is still raw and ill-equipped educationally for the task. In fact they are like immature children, without the power to exert a positive influence. That is why their attempts are mainly negative, ending in frustration, escape from life, or destruction. For

the real need is a living spirituality, bringing with it a wider understanding between people, which will help God's Love and Power to save the world from its own self-annihilation.

It is obvious that without the genuine spiritual love on earth, the world cannot live in peace and harmony, but must continue to fight and struggle until the entire hostile and non-progressive elements are subdued or transformed. The promised new era of cooperation, love and unity will then arise from a changed psychological condition. It will in fact be a rebirth of embodied spiritual forces which have the will, power and vision to build a new world-order.

SRI Aurobindo brings a message of hope based on an absolute certitude. His call is to the elite of humanity to overpass the limitations of the past. He effects a synthesis on which both the East and the West can assuredly build their future. He offers a new Yoga which will prepare the future of man for a divine life on earth. He embodies in himself all that he has promised for the race.

"Not to go on for ever repeating what man has already done is our work, but to arrive at new realisations and undreamed-of masteries......

"What is there new that we have yet to accomplish? Love, for as yet we have only accomplished hatred and self-pleasing; Knowledge, for as yet we have only accomplished error and perception and conceiving; Bliss, for as yet we have only accomplished pleasure and pain and indifference; Power,, for as yet we have only accomplished weakness and effort and a defeated victory; Life, for as yet we have only accomplished birth and growth and dying; Unity, for as yet we have only accomplished war and association. In a word, godhead, to remake ourselves in the divine image......¹

"This is thy work and the aim of thy being and that for which thou art here, to become the divine superman and a perfect vessel of the Godhead........

"It is to be the master of thy mind, thy life and thy body; it is to be a king over Nature of whom thou art now the tool, lifted above her who now has thee under her feet. It is to be free and not a slave, to be one and not divided, to be immortal and not obscured by death, to be full of light and not darkened, to be full of bliss and not the sport of grief and suffering, to be uplifted into power and not cast down into weakness. It is to live in the Infinite and possess the finite..........

"To live in the divine Being and let the consciousness and bliss, the will and knowledge of the Spirit possess thee and play with thee and through thee, this is the meaning...."²

"Whosoever is weary of the little nesses that are, whosoever is enamoured of the divine greatnesses that shall be, whosoever has any glimpse of the Supreme within him or above him or around him, let him hear the call, let him follow the path. The way is difficult, the labour heavy and arduous and long, but its reward is habitation in an unimaginable glory, a fathomless felicity, a happy and endless vastness........."³

The elite are always looking for an ideal. "What then shall be our ideal? Unity for the human race by an inner oneness and not only by an external association of interests; the resurgence of man out of the merely animal and economic life or the merely intellectual and aesthetic into the glories of the spiritual existence; the pouring of the power of the spirit into the physical mould and mental instrument so that man may develop his manhood into that true super-manhood which shall exceed our present state as much as this exceeds the animal state from which science tells us that we have issued. These three are one; for man's unity and man's self-transcendence can come only by living in the Spirit."⁴

For the illusionist philosopher and the materialist, all this is moonshine. Life is a vain turmoil of the spirit, man as he is now is the utmost limit of his possibility; he must resign himself to this unalterable fact that human nature always returns to its native crookedness like the proverbial dog's tail however much we may try to keep it straight. An escape from mundane existence into the beyond, or else a final dissolution into the Neant is then the only ultimate issue.

Sri Aurobindo affirms that man and the world in which he lives are not an illusion, matter is riot the sole or ultimate reality. "The world is a manifestation of the Real and therefore is itself real. The

reality is the infinite and eternal Being, Consciousness-Force and Bliss. This Divine by his power has created the world or rather manifested it in his own infinite Being. But here in the material world or at its basis he has hidden himself in what seem to be his opposites, Non-Being, Inconscience and Insentience........The Being which is hidden in what seems to be an inconscient void emerges in the world first in Matter, then in Life, then in Mind and finally as the Spirit........This is what we call evolution, which is an evolution of consciousness and evolution of the Spirit in things and only outwardly an evolution of species........."⁵This is the key to the riddle of the universe.

If this is accepted as the true truth of things, then the whole picture assumes a different aspect. Life on earth and the physical body of man acquire a new significance. For it is on earth that the evolution takes place, the growing manifestation of the Spirit; it is on earth, this "little midget in Infinity" that the steps of this manifestation are visible. And man, only so long as he remains in the physical body is capable of progressing; between death and another life there is no progress, only an assimilation of past experience and a discarding of elements no longer of utility. And the possibilities of progress on this earth in a physical body are endless, because the Divine is the Infinite and our progress is merely an expression of what the Divine chooses to manifest of this Infinity. More important still, life in the world and not in some remote forest or hill-top is to be made the occasion and the field of all our progress; it is not by rejecting life but by transforming it that man attains to divinity.

"Man is an abnormal who has not found his own normality"⁶This is the position from which Sri Aurobindo starts. The entire burden of his work lies in showing the way and helping man progress towards this normality.

Man is an abnormal because he is unique in the whole of manifested existence. There is not the like of him anywhere, nor among the denizens of earth, nor among those who live in the other worlds,

For, these latter are all fixed in their own types, and they have no desire to change or grow into something else; they are too satisfied with themselves. Man alone has been endowed with a divine discontent, he alone does 'pine for what is not'. He may sometimes come to believe that he has reached his goal. But in this he is soon deceived, for the Daemon within him will not let him rest.

Nevertheless, even an unending journey must have its staid, places of temporary halt to give one some breathing space. These are the ideals that man erects from time to time; he seeks refuge in these ideals in the course of his march. His ideals have been many but they may be broadly classed into two main categories, the mundane and the supra-mundane. The supra-mundane ideal fixes the goal of man's journey in a more or less permanent escape from the terrestrial existence into a heaven or a state of Nirvana whether of the Buddhistic or the Adwaitic kind where one is no more bothered by the problems of mind in a living body. This ideal has exercised a tremendous influence on some of the choicest spirits throughout the ages in every civilised country; its hold has been particularly strong on the mind of medieval man, and in India almost throughout its history since the failure of the Upanishads to give a practical turn to the high hope of the Vedic mystics.⁷

The other ideal, the mundane, accepts the possibility of some measure of perfection in the terrestrial life itself. The perfect individual in a perfected society, this is its broad formula. Within this formula, there are differences of detail born of variations of stress. The ancient Hellenic ideal, of a healthy mind in a healthy body, emphasised the need for a strong and beautiful body "well-fitted for the rational use and enjoyment of fife".⁸ And by a sound mind was meant "a clear and balanced reason and enlightened and well-trained mentality ... trained to ... range freely, intelligently and flexibly in all questions and in all practical matters of philosophy, science, art, politics and social living⁹". Its idea of collective progress was to create a form of social and political organisation which might ensure a sufficient liberty to the individual that would enable him to grow along with his compeers in sufficient dignity and leisure.

The modern Western ideal, born partly of the ancient Greek idea but considerably modified by the Roman practical and utilitarian

spirit and the long centuries of Christian-Hebraic training in serious righteousness, presents a number of interesting features. In place of the medieval Christian ideal of a City of God to be established on earth by a miraculous divine Intervention, it looks forward to a City of Man, a world perfected by the scientific reason and the ethical endeavour of man. It erects man as the godhead to be worshipped and served. "The body of man is to be respected, made immune from violence and outrage, fortified by science against disease and preventible death. The life of man is to be held sacred, preserved, strengthened, ennobled, uplifted. The heart of man is to be held sacred also, given scope, protected from violation, from suppression, from mechanisation, freed from belittling influences. The mind of man is to be released from all bonds, allowed freedom and range and opportunity, given all its means of self-training and self-development and organised in the play of its powers for the service of humanity. And all this too is not to be held as an abstract or pious sentiment, but given full and practical recognition in the persons of men and nations and mankind."¹⁰ The modern mind has—or shall we say had until quite recently-an immense faith in its capacity to realise this ideal.

But both these mundane ideals, the ancient Hellenic and the modern European, seem to ignore or belittle the importance of that hidden Something within him which marks out man from the rest of creation. "If a spiritual unfolding on earth is the hidden truth of our birth into Matter, if it is fundamentally an evolution of consciousness that has been taking place in Nature, then man as he is cannot be the last term of that evolution; he is too imperfect an expression of the spirit, mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation; mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being."¹¹

It is not that glimpses of this truth have not visited man from time to time, both in the West and in the East. The urge to a dynamic spiritual change, "the aspiration to a spiritual mastery and mutation of Nature, to a spiritual perfection of the being, a divinisation of the mind, the heart and the very body,"¹² has not been wholly absent. But this aspiration has so far been confined to a limited few, and even among these it has seldom found the right method of fulfilment.

At best, the task has been left unfinished, perhaps because it was found to be too difficult, perhaps because the time had not yet come. And in any case, the aspiration could never yet be generalised in the mind and heart of the race. And unless that is done, unless there is a collective mind open to receive the spiritual ideal as the one thing worth pursuing, the aspiration to divinise humanity remains a chimera. "Therefore, if the spiritual change of which we have been speaking is to be effected, it must unite two conditions which have to be simultaneously satisfied but are most difficult to bring together. There must be the individual or individuals who are able to... recreate themselves in the image of the Spirit And there must be at the same time a mass... which is capable of receiving and effectively assimilating, ready to follow.... "¹³

There is no other way for mankind than this. Man has been trying every means in his power—philosophy and religion, ethics and education, art and literature, sciences of all kinds, physical and biological, social and political, psychology and occultism and systems of yoga. They have all failed him. Sri Aurobindo examines the reasons for this failure.

"Philosophy, sometimes spiritual or at least intuitive, sometimes abstract and intellectual, sometimes intellectualizing spiritual experience or supporting with a logical apparatus the discoveries of the spirit, has claimed always to take the fixation of ultimate Truth as its province. But... intellectual philosophy... has been sometimes powerful for high speculation, pursuing mental Truth for its own sake, sometimes for a subtle gymnastic of the mind in a mistily bright cloud-land of words and ideas, but it has walked or acrobatised far from the more tangible realities of existence. Ancient Philosophy in Europe was more dynamic, but only for the few; in India in its more spiritualised forms, it strongly influenced but without transforming the life of the race____

"Religion... professed to build a bridge between spiritual Truth and the vital and material existence; it strove to subordinate and reconcile the lower to the higher, make life serviceable to God, Earth

obedient to Heaven. It has to be admitted that too often this necessary effort had the opposite result of making Heaven a sanction for Earth's desire— Religion, leaving constantly its little shining core of spiritual experience, has lost itself in the obscure mass of its ever extending ambiguous compromises with life......At the same time in a vain effort at self-defence against this downward gravitation, Religion was driven to cut existence into two by a division of knowledge, works, art, life itself into two opposite categories, the spiritual and the worldly— But this aggravated rather than healed the disease."¹⁴ Man under the influence of religion turned to heaven for a final solution of his problems, reason turned away from Religion in disgust and sought its salvation elsewhere. Art and the pursuit of beauty severed all connection with Religion and Ethics.

Ethics, long an ally of Philosophy and Religion, has claimed its right to regenerate man. But "an ethical rule merely puts a bit in the mouth of the wild horses of Nature and exercises over them a difficult and partial control, but it has no power to transform Nature......At best its method is to lay down limits, to coerce the devil, to put the wall of a relative and very doubtful safety around us......Ethics is a mental control and the limited erring mind is not and cannot be the free and ever luminous Spirit......."¹⁵ The ethical rule fails in the end, because it seeks to impose impossible conditions on the natural vital man. "Commencing with discipline and subordination, they (that is, Religion and Ethics acting together) proceed to complete mortification, which means when translated, the putting to death of the vital instincts, and declare that life itself is an illusion to be shed from the soul...."¹⁶

Education is now expected to do what the earlier religio-ethical systems failed to do. "The necessity and unmixed good of universal education has become a fixed dogma in the modern intelligence, a thing held to be beyond dispute by any liberal mind or awakened national conscience."¹⁷ And how is this miracle to be achieved? "The intelligent thinking being, moralised, controlling his instincts and emotions by his will and his reason, acquainted with all that he should know of the world and his past, capable of organising intelligently by that knowledge his social and economic life, ordering rightly his bodily habits and physical being, this is the conception that now governs

civilised humanity."¹⁸ This is the theory. "But it has not been found in experience, whatever might have once been hoped, that education and intellectual training by itself can change man; it only provides the human individual and collective ego with better information and more efficient machinery for its self-affirmation, but leaves it the same unchanged human ego."¹⁹

The ancients attached a great deal of importance to the training of the aesthetic faculties, through the cultivation of art and literature. "The imperative instinct for beauty and the aesthetic demand which set that among the first needs and was not satisfied with anything else if this were neglected or put second in importance, are now things that are almost lost."²⁰ In an age of dominant commercialism of which the acme was reached during the last hundred years or so, "the aesthetic instinct and intelligence flourished as a rather glaring exotic ornament, a sort of rare orchid in the button-hole of the vital man......"²¹ But to the men of old, "the poet was a seer, a revealer of hidden truths.....The image was to these seers a revelative symbol of the unrevealed."²² Art and literature have, even when they do not keep to these high standards, a great educative value. They open the doors of the inner being, and by developing a taste for the beautiful may to a certain degree help smooth out "the rough, uncouth and excessive in action and manner."²³ They can certainly be used, as everything else in human life, as a means of our progress towards the divine. But to expect them to "transform" the outer human nature is to ran after a chimera. "Literary people are often the most impossible on the face of the earth",²⁴ Sri Aurobindo once commented in a half-humorous vein.

Science today occupies a particularly honoured place in the minds of men because of its enormous strides within a brief space of time and the "miracles" it has performed in applying its principles to practice. In both these regards, it has rendered very useful service. No doubt it has in the modern age severely limited its field of inquiry to the physical and the sensible, and it still regards with suspicion anything supraphysical. But "the supraphysical can only be really mastered in its fullness...when we keep our feet firmly on the physical.... And it is certainly the fact that the wider we extend and the surer we make our knowledge of the physical world, the

wider and surer becomes our foundation for the higher knowledge, even for the highest, even for the Brahmavidya."²⁵ In the practical field, in its conquests over matter and space and time, in its wide-ranging attempts at making life more enjoyable — it hopes one day even to render immortal the physical frame — it has given high hopes to a perfected life on earth. But all this need not blind us to its limitations. In the first place, "even the truth of physical things cannot be entirely known, nor can the right use of our material existence be discovered by physical science and outward knowledge alone or made possible by the mastery of physical and mechanical processes alone."²⁶ Secondly, "physical science, with all its achievements, though it may accomplish comfort, can never achieve happiness and fullness of being for the human race."²⁷ Last and most important, science, by its constant ministering to the needs of the animal being in us has been a force of retardation, it has been pointing the race to a new barbarism, the barbarism of the vital and economic man. "In a commercial age with its ideal, vulgar and barbarous, of success, vitalistic satisfaction, productiveness and possession, the soul of man ... cannot permanently rest."²⁸

The scientific attitude, with its emphasis on reason and justice, and efficiency and practicality, has largely moulded the socio-economic and political life of the modern age. In earlier times, there were eminent thinkers who sought to guide this external life of the race, not through any radical change in its principles but by means of minor adjustments as they became necessary with the changing habits and needs of the people. By this means they managed to give a certain stability to the socio-political order, but at the same time they helped perpetuate a number of sanctified tyrannies which the social reason awakened by the touch of science could no longer tolerate. But the vice of reason, once it takes up the guidance of life, is that it ignores the basic principle of life, and by so doing it defeats its own ends. Thus, the ideals of freedom, equality and unity which the social reason of modern man has erected as its godheads, have been sought to be applied mechanically, uniformly, without regard to the subtle distinctions, the plasticity and diversity inherent in life. That is why at every step the idea comes into collision with facts. Democracy with its ideal of liberty leads to gross inequalities, socialism with its idea of

equality spells the end of freedom, the hope of fraternal unity gives way to a never-ending discord. "Freedom, equality, brotherhood are three godheads of the soul; they cannot be really achieved through the external machinery of society or by man so long as he lives only in the individual and the communal ego."²⁹ The problem of social living can only be solved by man attempting to live in his soul; from within outward is the ideal law. It is only by finding that "deeper principle of our being to which oneness and integrality are native ... that we can solve the problem of our existence and with it the problem of the true way of individual and communal living."³⁰

THE ancient world started with a distinct geographical unit (Greece, Italy, Gaul, Egypt, China, Persia, India, Arabia, Israel) which formed a loosely united cultural group, containing within it a number of smaller but much more compact units (clans, tribes, cities, regions). There was a close and vivid form of collective life within these smaller units but they were very often in relations of hostility with similar units within the bigger geographical group. Wherever the sense of difference among these component units of the group was more acute, the difficulties of national unification were correspondingly greater.

In many cases an attempt was made towards such national unification. In some instances (e.g. Israel and Egypt) the attempt seemed to succeed, primarily because a real sense of need had been forced on them by foreign aggression. Where this element of need was lacking, the task of unification was undertaken by a single city or clan subduing the others by force. But in such cases, the conquering state was impelled by its ambition to push beyond the national borders and found empires, before the national consciousness had had time to fix firmly. Hence these empires could not last and had to give place to another cycle of nation-building.

Some like the Roman empire lasted a little longer than the others like the Greek. The reason was that Rome lacked men of sufficient talent and ambition after Augustus, like Alexander who spoiled the work of Philip. Italy was better organised than Greece; but even there the old elements of variation had not been thoroughly assimilated to the Italian nation-idea before she undertook her world-conquest. Hence she too collapsed in the end.

The reason for this collapse is to be sought in the method followed by these early empires, of which the Roman example is typical.

The problem of human unity has been to unite the small living groups (the city, the clan, etc.) into the bigger nation-unit. By common association these originally hostile groups develop a sense of community and some of the bluntness of the old opposition disappears. But there also develops a tendency to exploit and devour the smaller and weaker units in the interests of the more powerful; when this happens there is no true unification but a destruction of the smaller by the bigger units.

It is this that happened in the case of Rome. She withdrew to herself the entire vital and mental energies of the nations which she brought within her orbit. The result was that when these latter were denuded of their old vitality, Rome herself had no more resources left and she fell an easy prey to outsiders. It was the vigour of the barbarians that restored life to Christendom, after they had destroyed the Roman empire.

But the Roman steam-roller had served a useful purpose. It had crushed out of existence the old separative ess of the clan-life in Gaul, England and Spain, and the Greek city life. These could not offer any resistance to the later work of nation-building. They helped on the other hand in the formation of the large baronial fiefs and the vigorous municipalities of Flanders and France which gave it a needed element of local variation, which was not needed in the case of England owing to its marked differences in race.

In the absence of such levelling down of the old regional barriers, India on the other hand could not evolve a strong nation-unit until after the British pressure.

The clan-life of Scodand, Ireland and Germany which had been left untouched by the Romans offered a similar obstacle to nation-unity. The city-life of Italy had been allowed to continue even under the Roman empire, and this proved a great stumbling-block to Italian unity, although it proved to be of inestimable benefit to civilisation.

In the European cycle of nation-building, some of the errors in the Roman experiment have been rectified. First, the new nations did not overstep the national bounds immediately on attaining unity; secondly, they have passed through three successive stages which served to keep alive the vigour of the smaller units.......There was at first a long balancing of centripetal and centrifugal tendencies; next there was a movement of uniformity, with a centralised capital, a strong despotic monarchy which also headed the religious life; and last, the most distinctive feature, there was a movement of expansion which was aimed at liberty and equality for the entire nation.

This last stage of the nation-building process makes us hope that a larger measure of devolution to communes and other centres of regional life will provide a secure basis for keeping the nation-unit firmly united.

The method of unification by external means is to create a sense of unity through pressure of circumstances and with the help of institutions rather than by a direct creation of the sense of oneness from within. It is this method that has been followed in the evolution of the nation-unit.

The type of loose unity with which this new development began shows a common feature everywhere. It was a system of fixed social hierarchies based on the four main types of social and economic function, the spiritual, the military, production and exchange, and service. The main motive force was the fixity of status, the aim a form of unity sufficient to keep the structure from breaking. Where this hierarchical system was missing, the nation-unit failed to develop, as in the Islamic countries.

Another essential condition for the growth of this type of unity was the creation of a secular centre which would build around itself a clear political self-consciousness, and gather in its hands the reins of government. China and Japan early developed such a secular centre; India did not, for here the sacerdotal class never lost its superiority in

A first condition for the creation of such a secular authority was that the church should be subordinated to the state. This was secured in France, Spain, and the Protestant countries of Europe; in Italy where the Pope continued to hold sway, the nation-unit took long in forming. In China and Japan the secular authority combined in itself the headship of the church and the state. In India, the people who first developed a sense of nationality, the Sikhs, the Rajputs, the Mahrattas, succeeded in doing this by endowing the secular authority with the true headship of the nation. It is only now when the Brahmin sacerdotal authority has largely secularised itself that India has developed a true political self-consciousness.

This new centre of authority was the king. He gathered power in his hands by taking away all the existing liberties, and gave to the nation a cohesion which it could not have had otherwise. The examples are the Plantagenet and Tudor kings of England, the Capets, Valois and Bourbons in France, the House of Castile in Spain, the Ivans, Peters and Catherines of Russia, the Hohenzollerns of modern Germany, the king-hunting expeditions in the Balkans, the resurrection of the Mikado, the modern dictators in China and Europe. It is a sense of this great role of the king at the most critical stage in the growth of national life which explains the high honour and prestige of monarchy both in the East and the West until modern times.

The harsh attitude of the modern mind towards this great institution springs from the fact that the king, by the nature of his work, had to abrogate the liberties of the nation, impose a common rule, law, one central authority, and suppress all free variation. The king had to make the life, thought and conscience of the people one, single, undivided, perfectly efficient, — this is the parent of the totalitarian idea. This meant the imposition of tyrannical authority and religious uniformity on the entire people. This also explains the action and attitude of the Tudor and Stuart kings, the religious wars in France, the Inquisition in Spain, the oppressive rule of the Czars and their successors in Russia, Germany and Italy. Where, as in Poland, the

attempt of the king did not succeed, the nation fared very badly. Elsewhere as in England where the king finally had to give way, a similar result did not follow because the nation-unit had been fully formed in the meanwhile.

The king made the church and the aristocracy his servants, left them their privileges but broke their power, withdrew the real privileges of the bourgeoisie after using it to break the power of the barons, utilised them all for his own purposes.

But the king's autocracy was tolerated only so long as he was really needed by the nation. He had actually weakened his position by reducing the church and the aristocracy to a nullity; for when the newly awakened middle class began to question the rights of the king and church and nobility to special privilege, they found an easy support among the masses and little resistance could be offered by the higher orders. Hence came the collapse of the monarchy and the beginning of a new order.

The purpose served by this third stage of national development was to generalise the benefits of the new order, make them available to all the members of the nation-unit; because that was the main object in creating this larger unity. Therefore the church had to be forced to allow freedom of thought and deprived of its power over the life of individuals and the society. The king and the aristocracy had to be made to part with their monopoly of power. The bourgeois capitalist had to be induced or compelled to a more equitable economic order. This could not be done so long as the nation-unit was not assured of its continued existence; but once the danger of disintegration was no longer there, the cry for liberty and justice could not be ignored.

The aim in view is to make the benefits of civilisation available to all, to give them equal opportunities and an equal training to develop their faculties and use them. This might have been conceivably done better through a system of free cooperation guided and helped by a wise and liberal central authority expressing the common will. But actually it is now proposed to be done through the machinery of the State, a secular, democratic, socialistic authority which does not

hesitate to sacrifice liberty in the name of efficiency and equality. The reason why we had to revert to this mechanical method was probably that so long as man lives by egoism, he cannot reconcile liberty and equality. It is only a psychological change and a true inner oneness which can solve the difficulty; but that cannot be achieved by any mechanical method.

If the unity of the human race is to be achieved through external means, we may expect it to follow the same stages of development as have been noted in the case of the nation. That seems to be the most visible probability.

A loose form of chaotic unity, like that of the feudal order, seems to be the inevitable starting point. Although the first world war brought out clearly the need for achieving human unity in the future, it would be idle to hope that the world is as yet ripe for a total change of the basis of our life or the establishment of a complete or real unity. There has not yet been an adequate preparation for such a change, as was ushered by the socialist revolution within the nation-unit.

In the absence of such preparation, the future will be shaped by the practical mind of the politician, who has to follow the average mentality of the race and who has limitations of his own which prevent him from embarking on new and uncertain adventures.

If the political mind alone were to be left in charge, we could not expect a better ordering of the international life than a state of unstable equilibrium which would not prevent future conflicts. There is hope that the moral collapse and the reaction produced by the War would give time for new ideas and forces to emerge. The creation of the League of Nations was an indication of the lines of change.

Two main ideas about the reshaping of international life took shape as a result of the War. First, it was strongly felt that such a

catastrophe must not recur. And secondly, steps should be devised to prevent a similar dislocation of the economic life in the future.

It was therefore to be expected that some attempt should be made towards the elimination of war and of commercial conflicts, through a settled and effective machinery. If this provided for the beginnings of international control, then, in spite of its initial defects, it might pave the way for a better future.

It would however be idle to hope that the control would be fully effective during the initial stages, for the new arrangements will proceed on the old lines, on the basis of national egoisms, and will merely try to prevent too disastrous collisions. The causes of strife will remain, and the limitation of armaments or of national armies will prove to be illusory. Wars cannot be wholly prevented except by the erection of a machinery which humanity has not yet been able to devise.

The Great War came because all the leading nations of the world had been so acting as to make it inevitable. Even if Germany were to be eliminated and the Balkan question or the problem of the Near East or Far East were to be settled, new causes of strife must necessarily develop where the spirit of national egoism and cupidity seeks satisfaction.

The limitation of armies or armaments will be an illusory remedy. Apart from the difficulty of effective control in peace time, the limitation will disappear as soon as war breaks out. The ability of England to convert itself during the Great War from a peaceful nation into a great military people is an object lesson on the point. Nor will a more stringent application of international law be a true solution.

Law within the nation derives its power from the fact that a dominant section of the people or the community as a whole is interested in maintaining it, and there is always an authority with a monopoly of armed power behind it to uphold its decrees; there can be no security if the armed force of the state is balanced by any other within the state. Even with this monopoly of armed strength, law within the nation has not been able to prevent civil strife or crime.

In any loose international formation that is all that we can hope for at the present. Each of the constituent units would be in full possession of its own armed strength, just as the feudal lords did in the medieval age.

To set up a composite international police force would not be of much use under existing conditions; it would break apart into its component units as soon as war breaks out. Within the nation, the policemen or the individual soldiers dare not revolt against the established authority for fear of public opinion. The members of the international force would belong at heart to their respective nations, and these nations or empires who would furnish the soldiers could very easily raise the standard of revolt with impunity, when the occasion arose.

Unless therefore an international authority resembling a world-state were to come into existence, we could not hope for the elimination of war. If actual war does not take place, it could always be replaced by more disastrous forms of strife, like the general strike within the nation used as a means of class war.

It is clear that there must come into existence a much more stringent form of international organisation, as the next step in our evolution towards a durable state of world-union.

KNOWLEDGE is awareness of objectivity, of truth, of existence. Subjectivity is egoity or self-centeredness. The child is largely identified with its own wishes and it becomes adjusted to the external world rather slowly. But that just creates social communicability and make social existence possible. Subjectivity, in fact, persists obstinately and creates difficulties in the pursuit of knowledge as in social adjustments and in administration.

Physical science seeks to control objectivity through external physical checks and measurements. But the truths thus obtained are of the physical plane of existence. The truths of the biological and the mental planes are more elusive.

In fact, the objectivity obtained through external checks is not the right objectivity. A mind freed from its identification with personal wishing, i.e., its subjectivity, could alone be a confident seeker, pursuer and realiser of knowledge. Being basically free from self-centeredness or selfishness, it could also confidently avail of the truths thus discovered in the interest of the total well-being of man.

At present our unhappiness over science and its great discoveries is due to the fact that great cosmic truths are possessed by an egoistic mind and sought to be used egoistically. Cosmic truths could be rightly used only by a cosmically wide mind. It is certainly dangerous that a small mind should possess great truths of enormous power.

Further, it is necessary to know the integral truth in order that truths of the physical plane or of the biological and mental planes are rightly availed of.

This involves a conception of education where intellectual pursuit goes hand in hand with Sadhana or where personal integration is recognised as a means of progress in knowledge.

Sri Aurobindo's entire thought involves this attitude and, it appears, it could be, in the present times, a great help in giving the needed re-direction to our pursuit of knowledge and cultural life.