Form cannot unveil the indwelling Power.

SRI AUROBINDO

The Divine gives itself to those who give themselves without reserve and in all their parts to the Divine. For them the calm, the light, the power, the bliss, the freedom, the wideness, the heights of knowledge, the seas of Ananda. - Sri Aurobindo.

EDITORIAL

OLD STORY : NEW LESSON

LAST time I told you the story of the great Rishi Yajnavalkya.

But that was about the later Yajnavalkya when he had become a full-fledged rishi, a guru with an Ashram and disciples. Today I will tell you something of the earlier Yajnavalkya, the beginning of his rishi hood, the start of his spiritual life. You know the structure of the old Indian society, it consisted of four castes, varnas, and four stages, āśramas. I shall speak of the āśramas now. Each individual person had to follow a definite course of life through developing stages. First of all, naturally, when you are a baby, in your early childhood, you belong to the family and remain with your parents. As soon as you grow up and the time for your education arrives, you are initiated into a stage called brahmacarya; you may generally call it as the stage of self-discipline, you go to a guru and pursue your studies through a disciplined life, something like the life of the children who are here like you. In those days a student's life did not mean merely studies, that is to say, reading and writing, book-knowledge,

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but as here a very active life. The physical education in the old time aśramas in certain ways was even more complete than what is given here, for it included the art of warfare also, combatives like serious archery and many other items of physical training. When you have terminated this discipline or brahmacarya, when you have become an accomplished young man you are allowed to return to the world, and take to the worldly life, enrich yourself with all experiences of that life, that is to say, you marry and become a family man. It is the second stage called gārhasthya. Next when you have fully enjoyed or fulfilled the duty of the worldly life, you pass on to the next stage that is called the vānaprastha. That is the hermit life, the beginning of the true spiritual life. Finally at the end of the vānaprastha, you pass still beyond and adopt the life of the sannyasi, abandoning everything, concentrating wholly on the Supreme Truth and merging into it.

Now our Yajnavalkya in the normal course of things has passed through the stage of brahmacarya, he has also pursued the stage of domestic life and is now at the end of it. He thinks the time has now come to him to take to spiritual life and enter into vānaprastha. He had married and had two wives. So one day he called the fir st wife, Katyayani, and said to her: "Katyayani, I am now leaving this life and entering the spiritual life. You have given me comfort and happiness. I am thankful to you for that. Whatever I have, my possessions, moveable and immoveable, I have divided into two. This is your portion." Katyayani accepted the decision without a murmur. She answered: "Since you are my lord and husband, as you ask me so I shall do." Then Yajnavalkya went to his second wife, Maitreyee; to Maitreyee too he said the same thing as he had said to Katyayani: "Maitreyee, I am leaving this life, I am taking to the spiritual life. I have given to Katyayani her share of my possessions. This is your share." But Maitreyee answered: "Wherever you go, I will follow you, I will also give up the world and its life. " Yajnavalkya said: "No, Maitreyee, it is a very hard, very difficult life, particularly for a woman. Follow the life to which you have been accustomed. Enjoy freely the possessions I leave you." Then Maitreyee uttered those famous words which you must have heard and which have been ringing through the centuries down to us also, even today: " All these

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possessions, will they give me immortality?" Yajnavalkya answered: "No, Maitreyee, that they will not give you, it is quite another matter." Maitreyee answered — uttering a mantra as it were - "what am I to do with that which does not give me immortality?" So Yajnavalkya had to accept her and allow her to accompany him. Now Yajnavalkya gives hi s fir st lesson of spiritual life to Maitreyee: "Maitreyee, you love me, so you are coming with me. But do you know the real truth of the matter? The real truth is that you do not love me, but you love the soul that is in you, which is also in me: you love your own self in me. Therefore you love me, And I love you, I love you not for your sake but for the sake of the self in you which is the self in me. All love is like that, A husband loves his wife, the wife loves her husband, the brother loves his brother or sister, a sister loves her sister or brother, it is not for the sake of the person or the relation but for the sake of the self - one's own self which is in everybody, That is the first lesson which you have to learn. Forget the outer person, your own person or another's person, find the self that is in you and everybody else. That is the basis of the spiritual life."

I told you there were four stages of fife for an individual in the ancient Indian society. You complete one stage and then proceed to the next, and then to the next and so on. But they also say that you need not go through the stages gradually, step by step in this way; you can skip one or two stages in your stride if you have the capacity to do so; if you want the spiritual life when you are young, even when you have not gone through the worldly life, even then you can jump over, take a leap into the life of the sannyāsin. It is said the day you feel detached from your worldly home, then forthwith you may take to the life of the ascetic. It depends upon the urge in you, the insistence of the truth in you. A large freedom was given to all who really wanted a spiritual life.

I have said that Yajnavalkya had two wives. You did not ask me why: for to us moderns such a thing is not only immoral but inconvenient; it is however another story, a long story. In those days, those far-off early days of mankind, thousands and thousands, millions perhaps, of years ago, it was the law, the social custom and it became a duty, to have more than one wife and the relation too between man and woman was much freer and more loose. That was

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because, as you know, man started his earthly life at a certain stage of creation; before that stage there was no man, there were only animals. The earth was filled with animals, only animals, wild animals, ferocious animals, insects, worms, all kinds of ugly and dangerous creatures. Man came long, long after; he is almost a recent appearance. It was a mysterious, indeed a miraculous happening, how all of a sudden, out of or in the midst of animals there appeared a new creature, quite a different type of animal. Still in whatever way it happened, they were not many in number. The first creation of man must have been a very limited operation, limited in space, limited in number. Perhaps they sprouted up like mushrooms here and there, a hundred here, another hundred there, or perhaps a few thousands — few and far between. So man led a dangerous and precarious life. All around him these animals, some too big, some too small to be tackled withstood against him, and Nature also was as wild and as much against him. So for self-preservation and survival they needed to be numerous, to increase in number as much as possible. It is exactly what is needed in war; the larger the number of troops, the greater the chance of winning the war. So the impulse in man, in the social aggregate was to have more men, increase the number, to strengthen the extent and volume of the force to be able to fight successfully against the enemy. So a necessity became a religious duty to multiply, to procreate and redouble the race. In later days, even when the necessity was not so imperative, even then the habit and custom continued. To beget children was a praise-worthy thing, the more the number the greater the merit. Women who had numerous children were considered favourites of the gods. King Vasharatha had, it appears, a thousand wives, King Dhritarashtra had more than a hundred, Vashishtha had a hundred sons and King Sagar a thousand. Draupadi had five husbands and she was considered the ideal chaste woman.

In the modern age we have gone to the other extreme, we have tided over the danger of under-population. At the present day it is over-population that threatens the existence of mankind. Now we are anxious, we are racking our brains, trying to find out all kinds of means and ways to restrict and control any increase in population.

I said, in the early days the need to marry in any way — a very

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free choice was given in the matter of the way of marriage — and to procreate was a social duty: but note it is not for individual pleasure. Today we have discarded all notion of that kind of action as superstition, a form of tyranny. We are for freedom of the individual. Whatever we do we must do for our personal gain, our personal pleasure. But in those days that was not the ideal nor the custom. Even when you marry, you marry not for the sake of personal enjoyment but for the sake of the society, to give birth to healthy and useful children, to increase the number of able-bodied members of your society. Service for society, not personal pleasure was the aim. Yajnavalkya lifted that ideal on to a still higher level — you exist not for your own sake of course — own means the personal ego individual — but for the sake of your soul, the greater self.

In this connection I am reminded of what Sri Aurobindo said when he was taking leave of his students at Calcutta in his farewell address before starting his public political activity: he said, "When I come back to you again, I hope to see some of you become great, great not for your own sake but for your country, to make your country great. I hope to see some of you become rich, rich not for yourself but to make your country rich": that is the ideal ideal, not individual satisfaction, exclusively personal accomplishment or achievement; one must work in view of the welfare of all, a global well-being. The goal is not one's own little self, but the Great Self in all. This is of course, in the secular way in the secular field. But here also the appeal, it must be observed, is not to the social life as a mere machine of which individuals are dead helpless parts and units meant to serve as obedient instruments in the production of useful goods. The appeal on the contrary is to the soul, the free inner individual, choosing its destiny but with a view to collaborating and uniting with others in the realisation of a global truth.

In the spiritual sphere also Sri Aurobindo gives us the same ideal and outlook. In the early days spiritual realisation was sought for personal salvation, a complete renunciation of the world, absolute freedom from this transient unhappy world — anityam asukham lokam imam. The individual person leaves his individual existence upon earth and retires and merges into the Infinite Brahman. But here in Sri Aurobindo's Revelation we are taught that the individual

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realisation and spiritual attainment is not to dissolve oneself into the nameless formless Beyond but to maintain it, preserve it in a pure divine form, for the sake of the sorrowful ignorant world. The knowledge, the power, the delight that the individual gains — not as something mere individual but as the result of one's identity with the universal — are at the service of earth and humanity so that these may be transformed and share in the same realisation. One becomes spiritually free and complete and enters into all so that all may be transformed into a new divine reality.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

To whatever living form I turn

I see my own body with another face.

SRI AUROBINDO

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DHAMMAPADA

THE CANTO OF DESIRE

( 1 )

THE desire of the man of deluded movements grows like the golden creeper.

And as the monkey in pursuit of fruits in the forest leaps from tree to tree even so the man wanders from birth to birth ceaselessly.

(2)

For one who is overpowered by this poisonous growing desire, The miseries increase overwhelmingly like wild weeds.

(3)

For one who overpowers this growing desire, so hard to tame, the miseries slip off like water-drops from the lotus-leaf.

(4)

To all who are gathered here, I say, for your welfare: Dig out the roots of desire even as you dig out the roots of wild weeds.

(5)

If the roots are left intact, even when the tree is cut down, it will grow again;

Likewise when the very source of desire is not destroyed, these sorrows will come back again and again.

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(6)

If your mind takes delight in the three dozen streams that are in you

Your will becomes a product of your desire;

it will give you a wrong vision and lead you to grief.

(7)

Desire streams out everywhere; like a creeper it crops up and grows.

If you see it sprouting anywhere, cut out its roots with all the force of your conscious will.

(8)

Things that pass, things that bring comfort are attractive to creatures:

It is those men who flow with the tide, who seek pleasures that go the round of birth and age.

(9)

With desire in forefront creatures go round and round, even as does a rabbit caught in a trap:

Bound by the chains of attachment they go through sorrows again and again for ever.

(10)

With desire in forefront creatures go round and round, even as does a rabbit caught in a trap:

Therefore, to remove desire the aspirant seeks detachment of self.

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(11)

He who desires Nirvana and has come out of desire and is free from desire and yet runs after it, behold, the man even when freed runs towards bondage.

(12)

The wise do not call that a strong bondage which is of iron or of wood or of rope, but that hankering for jewels and ornaments and for wife and children, considering them as most substantial things.

(13)

That the wise call a strong bondage which pulls you down, which seems to be loose, but hard to remove.

This too they cut away and take to the wandering path, they who have no more hankering, they who have discarded the pleasures of desire.

(14)

They who are attached to their passions are dragged into the Stream even like a spider drawn into his self-woven web.

This too the wise cut away and take to the wandering path: they have no hankering, they have discarded all sorrowing.

(To continue)

NOTE:

An English translation of the Mother's Talks on Dhammapada with text and commentary in French was published serially in the Advent. A chapter (Chapter 24) was omitted in that version. That chapter is now being translated here for completing the English text.

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SRI AUROBINDO AND THE BHAGAVAD GITA

V THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE

THE consummate worker is the worker perfected by Knowledge and Devotion. Our nature is not rigidly divided into compartments, and one cannot be solely a worker and nothing more. The awakened man seeks not only to do rightly his proper task, but to know and understand, and to love, to live in blessedness. He is not just a worker in the world, not just a knower of the absolute Truth, not just a devotee immersed in divine Love, but all together.

To Arjuna in the crux of battle it is not a "pep-talk" that is given, not a kind of bolstering in camaraderie for the clash ahead . Krishna gives him an entire view of existence, in which the transcending of existence is much emphasized. For he is not just a warrior, born exclusively to cultivate the heroic virtues and demonstrate them; he is a man, a mental being, and he has the well-developed mind without which he could not be an exemplar of humanity, the mind being the human mark and the fundamental in strumpet of mankind. He cannot just do, in loyalty of spirit; he must also know, and understand his actions and their meaning, his own nature and hi s place in the large context of existence.

With man and the establishment of mentality, just "life" is no longer possible. A human being must bring his mind to bear on his life, he must understand and direct it, control and refine it from his larger and higher status. Above all he must know. To Aristotle the very desire to know was the mark and distinction of a human being, that is a being with a developed mind. By analysis, discrimination, the clear observation of things and the refusal to admit lower terms of sentience, passion or vital desire as valid against thought and calm reason, one develops his true humanity. He is not content to carry on the old animal existence; he must see his life, and not just live it. The vital nature is not interested in truth, it does not care about that or even believe in it; its one concern is being, insisting and asserting itself. But as Socrates, that noble man and tireless seeker for truth

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and clear knowledge, has said in one of the deathless statements of philosophy, expressing in fact its very base and apology, the unexamined life is not worth living.

A man, a being in the human form who has genuinely developed his humanity, is a philosopher — that is, he loves wisdom, he will know the True, the Good and the Beautiful, and make them live in his existence. For the moral and the aesthetic sense are also specifically human things, in that they do not come before man in the evolution. A man will know truth, and how to act truly and rightly, and enjoy the beauty of the creation. To find some status or base of truth in the mental terms, with high standards of conduct and appreciation and enjoyment of the graces, the splendors, the beauties of the world, this is the ultimate human achievement, beyond which the man can only begin to pass into his higher spiritual being. A real man, or woman, aspires not only to this ultimate human development, but also beyond humanity itself, drawn and driven by the divine nisus that is the evolutionary manifestation.

For to know is not sufficient: knowledge on the human level is problematical and paradoxical, and Knowledge is what is required. This is of the sun-clarity of the Supermind and the upper hemisphere, wholly above mentality and its utmost range. This means that a man, philosophically developed and seeking truth, must become more than a philosopher: he must seek in a true ultra-philosophical spirit, in the spirit of Yoga, for the jñāna, the knowledge that is perfected and brought to its full nature and capacity in the serological and supramental being. He must develop and perfect his mind in the utmost reach and possibility of mental penetration and embracing strength, sharp clarity and radiant large vision, passing from philosophical speculation into Jnana Yoga: through this he comes to cease looking purblindly into mirrors, and rises to the direct and immediate Knowledge that is divine.

But most of humanity as yet is hardly capable of assuming the full human status or even of appreciating it from afar. It clings to its animalism, and the dullness of un awakened nature. It is somnambulistic, and recoils from the thought, in so far as it can have such a thought, of light and full consciousness. Drawing largely on American experience, one may suspect that most people, that is the large

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majority of the non-literate, suppose a book to be only a set of instructions for "doing" something, or an "escape". The very nature of genuine literature escapes them, not to speak of its value; and philosophical literature to them is simply a preposterous play of words, if they "think" of it at all. They do not know how serious reading can improve and elevate the inner nature, for they hardly know that they have any inner nature to improve and elevate; to refine, strengthen, develop the mind and the aesthetic nature is just the notion of a "dreamer", to the "practical" man. To him reading just fills the head with "theory", whereas what is important is what he has, that is, "common sense". To him philosophy, that is all that he can respect of philosophy, is only a kind of "worldly wisdom". There is very little that such a primitive being can truly respect; it is all on the grossest level. To him if a man says that he thinks that team sports develop team-work and team-spirit, or that red roses show up better than yellow roses against a white wall, that is his "philosophy"; and if the "philosopher" is "successful", that is has made money, it is respected. But anyone who seriously asks the serious philosophical questions is just a freak, who unaccountably has not yet learned what "everybody knows". But what "everybody knows", on the present average level of things, is only the unreasoned and unintelligent assumptions that "everybody" has breathed in, as it were, from the societal ambience. It has been well observed that the "common sense" of today is the "science" of yesterday: that is, the advanced ideas of the superior man, the true leading men of society (or those who are accepted as such), come gradually filtered down to the common level, corrupted to the common capacity.

What "everybody knows", that is what the un philosophical think they know, is to a philosopher only "opinion". It will not satisfy his careful scrutiny and his clear and dispassionate examination. It is like "Rumor with many tongues", none of which can be believed. It is entanglement in "appearance", phainomenon; it does not rise to the noümenon, the mental grasp; and still less does it come to the Knowledge of the "thing-in-itself", the Reality. But all this is "just words" to the sub-rational man, the great majority to whom only the crudest words and terms can be anything like living powers, inspirers and beacons of light. Philosophy does not use

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"common language" because it does not deal with common things, and seek to perpetuate common lack of understanding. It is not a dim and inchoate apprehension, but the un common development of a high comprehending power that philosophy seeks and cultivates.

For, again, the mind is the distinguishing characteristic and instrument of humanity, and is an indispensable link in the evolution. It is only by and through the mind that one can develop to higher things. To sink or plunge into sub rationality is to go backward and downward; if it is an actual choice and more or less willed movement, such as now obtains among many who speak of "enlightenment" and "expansion", it is worse than just plodding and revolving in inertia, like the majority: it is not just the heavy drag of ignorance, but a positive perversion and degeneracy inimical to human advance. The mind must be developed; one must become rational, logical, dispassionate and clear. This does not mean that everyone must be an intellectual giant, but it does mean that in the spiritual aspirant and even the truly human being the mind must be respected and cultivated, not abused or allowed to atrophy, certainly not positively forced to degenerate, or allowed to do so by default and inertia, the too ready acceptance of contemporary movements and influences just because they are movements and influences, "trends". The worship of the "time spirit", as apprehended on the surface, is a poor substitute for genuinely human endeavor. One is not to flow abjectly with the stream, but to rise above it.

European philosophy has been largely a cultivation of the logical mind as if it were all-sufficient, or as if it should be. A higher faculty has been seldom recognized, and hardly ever truly cultivated. It has been purely a human thing and even "human-all-too-human", and not infrequently has become nothing but a game of the intellect — the intellect enjoying its own nature and the manipulating of its special terms, and losing the real fight of the mind, its need of truth. And we can see from its history how precarious and uncertain "progress" is, in the purely intellectual sphere. There is a point beyond which the intellect can "progress" only around in a circle. On the other hand, philosophy in India has always been based on direct suprarational experience, and has never forgotten it. Indian philosophies, the philosophies that have developed with the world's

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spiritual leaders, are darśans, views: they are formulations of a direct vision of things, and they are designed to lead the mind beyond itself, to this direct vision and immediate experience. European philosophy at best looks up toward truth: Indian philosophy starts from truth or some aspect, expression or facet of it, and lifts the seeker. The Six Systems, the several Buddhist philosophies and all the various and special schools are alike in this, that they are based on spiritual experience and lead to it. They do not stop short with intellectual formulation. The one system not spiritual, the materialistic Charvaka akin to the now dominant semi-philosophy of the Western world, did not have a wide acceptance or last long in India, among mature seekers. The Jnana Yogin may learn from all serious philosophy and even attempts at philosophy to analyse, discriminate and seek seriously, maturely; but must remember that what he seeks is above the mental terms and the mental order as well as all the lower terms and ways of the ignorant "three worlds", and that at best his analysis and serious intellectual usage can help to lead him beyond itself, to a larger sphere.

This yoga like all yoga must overcome the ego; it must withstand, be dissociated from, conquer and dissolve the propensity of the ego to live in less than the truth and identify itself with that part of the outer nature — the physical, the vital or the mental, with which it is most at home. It is quite possible to be oriented primarily in one of these without being aware and able to discern and discriminate, and this in fact is the usual thing. But a philosopher and much more a yogi must go beyond the usual thing, and be able to distinguish the three, and without considering one the fundamental and the others only its functions or by-products. There is an intimate connection and interaction, but by increasing detached awareness one must be able to disentangle it, and know the three natures in their purity and eventually master them. But his first and primary search is for his true Self, which is beyond them all, both separately and in combination. The body, the life-nature and the mentality are instruments, and not the sovereign being, expressions and actualizations, not the Reality. That is to be found, not by intellectual cultivation alone, but by the cultivation of the Jnani, the perfection of the mental nature of the human being who will Know.

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Being such a knower, or having something of the light of this ideal, even in purely rational terms one can discriminate and rise above "opinion", going a long way. He will not respect the assumption, common to barbarians and "scientists", that the body, the material nature, the physical world is the sole and entire existence and reality. Because it is made of parts and subject to dissolution it cannot be Real, or the true foundation of things. The fact that the "scientists" have no methods by which to deal with any other kind of nature is not a relevant consideration to the serious, the philosophical mind. Better methods and different, more appropriate approaches must be developed, if the Truth is to be known; nothing real can be "scientifically" demonstrated or grasped by present means. It is not "chemistry" that makes the man, but the Divine that makes the "chemistry", as one aspect of the lower existence. Indeed no human being with even a modicum of the higher light can really believe that he is only a physical body subject to corruption, and that he was nothing before his inexplicable birth and will be nothing, non-existent, after his certain death in the not distant future. But, as Empedocles observed, for base men such things are possible; and this is really all that need be said about the matter. As one grows in his human nature his ego withdraws from identification with the physical, and he is able to live most intimately on a higher plane.

Rising to the vital nature and identifying himself with its vivid and vigorous urgencies, the man feels himself to be fundamentally life, a driving impetus, an elan vital. Bergson may be taken as the type of the "vitalistic" philosopher, and his eloquent formulation as the greatest expression of the philosophy. This expression may carry one far, even to a nearly spiritual exultation; but it stops short of the decisive turn-about and the elevation to the true thing. It is still earth-bound, nature-bound, and the impetus, the elan, is a blind surging and groping, that seeks and needs something else, it knows not what, for its completion. Those who can be satisfied with the surging and groping itself, however radiant and glorious may be its crestings and its joys, are sub-philosophical, and are not seeking Truth. The impetus that is so noticeable in the vital nature is the universal impetus, the evolutionary drive, to something superior. By perversion to self-satisfaction it is not truly satisfied; and a thing

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that is restless and unsatisfied, that needs something more, is not Reality; this much one can grasp or accept even by a purely rational analysis. The "scientist" cannot grasp anything here, of course, for he subsumes, as it were, the vital under the physical: the two being closely and intricately associated, and not to be distinguished by physical instruments of quantitative measurement. But they are separate, and neither is the product or function of the other. The Bergsonian idea that matter is only the residue, as it were, the consolidated ashes and waste-matter of the life-flame, the form left behind when life is gone, the clog to the surge, also will not withstand analysis: it is only the false analogy and loose metaphor that so often is a substitute for thought among humankind. But to Bergson the world was not just blind vitality to which the ego attaches itself in most men, where it is confused with the physical - the vital-physical being as yet the furthest common development; to him the world was indeed far more than this, it was a mechanism for the making of gods. But he had not risen to the higher and penetrated to the deeper nature in which the gods live. He did recognize that the mind, whatever the inadequacies of the intellect, is an entity in its own right and being, he was convinced of its separate existence not depending upon embodiment and desiderated a genuine science of mind and made a distinguished pioneering attempt to establish it. Bergson can be a very suggestive philosopher, and can lead toward mysticism; but he himself did not enter that higher sphere.

He saw that the intellect cannot grasp or deal with the living reality, but can only cut up what is left after the life has departed. This was the fundamental insight of Zeno of Elea, expressed in his famous Paradoxes: Achilles cannot catch the tortoise, the arrow can never leave the bow, if the action must depend on rational terms, that divide what is indivisible, and make of a continuous action and process a series of instants and intervals.¹ The intellect can only follow after the event, and give an "understandable", or a "paradoxical", analysis that does not touch the reality. It can only measure the outward appearance of something past, it cannot grasp the living movement.

¹ Zeno however was not Bergsonian; his concern was to prove that motion was unreal because illogical. Anyone who does not believe that the unreality lies with logic may try to make himself into a perfect motionless figure, that is a sphere, if he can.

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Logic is fundamentally static and rigid, and thus fundamentally inadequate, at best only a provisional tool to be used with the proper discretion and allowance; it cannot understand anything but its own terms, it cannot grasp either the vital or the spiritual, or the substance of mind itself, and even its grasp of the physical is more a "working knowledge" than an understanding, a really clear vision and grasp. Indeed the radical and fundamental inadequacy of the intellect has long been recognized by philosophers. Greek philosophy, except in its mystical developments, culminated in Skepticism, that is the uncompromising Examination that does not blink the fact that existence and reality cannot be grasped and understood in logical terms. This has always been recognized in India, and in the Madhya-mika, one of the philosophies of the Mahayana, the intellect is thoroughly stripped of all its pretensions, and every possible intellectual formulation is negated, in quite rational terms, to the negation of these terms themselves: whence in maturity one can rise to the supra-rational Void that is All. Even negation is negated, which is the utmost that logic can achieve and its real purpose for the seeker.¹ But unfortunately most of the philosophy of Europe has lacked the larger awareness and purpose. From the time of Hume it has fought a desperate battle against his unanswerable sceptical conclusion because it has known nothing higher than the terms and methods that it denies. Now philosophy has even come to deserve the scorn of "common sense", for it has degenerated to the most sterile and futile "critical" game of words, a slave to the ignorance of "science" and "critical" just for the activity, a kind of exercise of the mind, going around in circles. At best there is a lame and half-blind intellect that must be borne on the shoulders, as it were, of a totally blind but strong and vigorous sub-rational nature. The higher, the spiritual synthesis of knowledge and activity, vision and support in Reality, remains unknown.

The developed mental ego is a very tenacious and militant thing, and the "intellectual" hates "like poison" and "worse than toad or

¹ This school is based on the insight that nothing either is or is not. The Yogacara school, another "illusionism" with a difference, is based on the insight that everything both is and is not. These developments are a considerable advance on Greek logic, with its debilitating bugbear of the "excluded middle".

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asp" to acknowledge that there may possibly be something, that is some being, greater than himself, some high possibilities beyond his awareness, but realized by others. This is the danger that can stultify philosophy before it rises to a yogic progress. For this development, this going beyond, it is necessary to overcome attachment to one's ideas, one's mental processes, even one's intellectual being. One must be equable, clear, dispassionate, and really, sincerely concerned primarily with "following the argument wherever it leads", and seeking the truth. One must be prepared entirely to transcend the intellect, one must be receptive to the influences and possibilities of greater things than that inflexible and coarse instrument that often tears and bruises rather than cutting, and more often cuts ineptly, making false distinctions and missing the true ones because they are too subtle for it; one must not be tied up in a knot with his accustomed limitations that have proved a failure and a bondage: no longer hostile to experience of something higher, some true peace and really clear and unquestionable certainty; or to those who have achieved it, or purported to.

This stubbornness of the mind, the "intellectual", the philosopher and semi-philosopher is a good thing in a way, for it resists a falling below the mind, and insists that the mind is the highest development and instrument after all. And in the best of these resisters there is a feeling that the mind is capable of further development, and should be developed. The idea that Reality and God Himself is mental is a delusion and a debility, but this Idealism is an important stage for humanity, that will not let it fall back wholly on the "animal faith" of a Santayana from its hopeless "scepticism". It will rise, and have something greater; it is certainly groping and probing in the right direction, and the truly cultivated mental capacity must eventually come to its perfection and its largest grasp and range, from which one can rise Beyond. In the sense that the rising must be through the mind — into and above the high spiritualized ranges and levels of the mind — Idealism is right after all, and for it to fade in favour of what is now called "realism" and "naturalism" is a step backward, though it may have been necessary for a time. But what is ultimately to be found is nothing mental at all, but something fully spiritual, something divine.

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What is to be known is the Atman that is Brahman, that by which all things are known and without which all knowledge is ignorance. As the Upanishad says, one identifies himself, and thus reality, Brahman, with the physical, the vital, the mental, until at last he comes to the real thing in the Transcendence. Gradually as he cultivates his mind, in poise and serenity, he rises, and can take an increasingly larger view; he becomes progressively free of his bondage to sense and passion and egoistic preference and desire, and learns really to think, with equability seek, analyze and discriminate, take as full and comprehensive a view as is possible in the mental terms and limitations. He is not moved by the old lesser things: does not sink to the drag of natural inertia, or run wild in the lower nature: he rises above attachment to the lower things and terms, and eventually even above attachment to his intellectual formulations and the whole activity of formulating; he can take any expression for what truth it contains or may contain, being beyond the expression; he knows that he cannot be satisfied with anything short of direct, immediate experience. He knows that he is not the physical, the vital, the mental, any combination of two of them, or even the whole intricate complex of these three separate existences; they are his instruments, not himself. He recognizes the hierarchy of higher and lower, but also the necessity of every term within it; he knows that all depends on a Higher not yet manifested or attained, that the Divine alone is the base and ground of things and their very substance. He continues to rise, every new height a step to a newer and a higher. His thought becomes subtler and rarefied more and more, and more and more luminous: until at last he awakens, beyond thought, in his true Self that is forever. He knows and lives in the Atman that is one with Brahman, the Supreme. Now the daylight of the un awakened is dense night to him, he lives in the radiance of the deathless sun that to the un awakened is a vague rumor without foundation that would palliate a cheerless darkness or still the fear of annihilation. His day is their night, their day is his: which is not simply a meaningless reversal, for his day is far the greater - it is Knowledge, and theirs is ignorance. He is eternal and infinite, deathless and birth less, boundless and fathomless and everlasting in Peace and Freedom. He can say, with every awakened man, "Before Abraham was, I am"; his being is beyond time and before

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the foundations of the world. The cosmic processes are only a pageant across his face of serenity; they are to him what the flight of birds is to the sky. He has followed the footprints of the birds, and gone home. There is no "I", no ego any longer, but only the eternal Being, entirely self-contained, full and complete and swallowing all the streams of the world without change, subject neither to increase or decrease, or any possible condition. He needs nothing from anyone any longer, nothing from the world; he is superior to it all, he Is.

This experience the Gita calls that of Brahmanirvana, that is, extinction of ego and separation in the Silent Brahman. Once one is truly awakened the experience becomes stable and permanent, a realization, from which there is "no returning" because it never fades. This does not mean that the only thing left to do is withdraw into this Brahman, and come no more to the world. It is true that for centuries now this realization has been considered the very ultimate; but the Gita does not hold it so, and to Sri Aurobindo it was the beginning of yoga, and not the culmination. There is always more; and this realization itself is made in some region of the higher, supraintellectual mentality, and not in the greater Transcendence still beyond. That is, the Self beyond the manifestation is realized within the manifestation by the evolving being, and is thus to be realized more fully, progressively. If he withdraws it is to a true spiritual, but only a partial Knowledge. Rising in the evolution and seeking ever fuller Knowledge and glory he must repeat the realization on higher and higher levels, opening and manifesting more and more of the true greatness of the Supreme.

The Atman is withdrawn, apart, Beyond, and works in the world not directly but through its delegate, the Soul. The Soul grows in the manifestation, the Self is immutable above, the same forever. Neither aspect is sufficient, and the next great stage recognized by the Gita, and Sri Aurobindo, is that of the Universal Being; the next, that of the even fuller Knowledge of the Brahman, as That and He that is at once both transcendent and immanent, the changing world-process and the changeless supporting Ground of permanence: and more, these being two of his aspects. In the More that he is he reconciles the aspects and removes the obstructions, obscurations and difficulties that separate them. One's Self is not alone separation from

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all the manifestation in union with the Transcendence: it is also identical with the manifestation, with every part and creature and movement of it; it is also identical with That beyond the Immanence and the Transcendence, that Being who integrates and makes the world that is divine. Knowing this, in perfect freedom one can do any kind or amount of work in the world while being beyond it, and can take any number of births here. He is time as well as eternity, and there is no separation or clash between them. He persists within and through all change, and beyond it, and works for the furtherance in the world of Divinity.

Thus to rise it is essential to attempt to the utmost to understand things intellectually; only thus may the intellect be transcended, and even then the attempt to express the process and experience must be made largely in intellectual terms, in the only kind of language that as yet we have. Reading with sufficient subtlety may help one to learn and rise; and the subtlety increases with the exercise, the sincere effort. So — being thus complete and seeing with the evolutionary vision, in spiritual freedom and Knowledge alike individual, universal and transcendent, one sees not with human but divine eyes, and understands the difficult, the intricate and entangled and immensely complex processes of the world. One sees that there is no "problem of evil" except to embattled and ignorant humanity. The darkness exists because the whole process is one of working from the darkness to the light; and it is not for human enjoyment or approval, or the nattering or pampering of the egoistic nature of humanity. To find a "problem of evil" is to expect God to be a "moral" being, who is bound by human thought and feeling and exists to make man supreme and self-satisfied, without suffering or difficulty. But a god like that could not have made this great world at all. What are "good" and "evil" in the human tenebrosity are quite different things in the divine sunlight; and God works in ways, with methods and on a scale that the greatest mind is too small to comprehend: thus fulfilling His purposes, bringing to His courses, that all may grow divine. To come to Knowledge is to come beyond human clinging, and all the anguished and pettish demands for a personal satisfaction even from God. What is to be satisfied is the true Person, as yet unknown. To this Arjuna, and like him the whole of humanity, is called: the

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overcoming of his difficulties, purblind opinions and persistent darkness through the outgrowing of his entire ignorant nature. Here knowledge is perfected in work, and in devotion to Truth and God the aspirant is brought to the culmination of his true nature and Identity.

JESSE ROARKE

Work, but the fruits to God alone belong, Who alone is.

SRI AUROBINDO

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THE MASSIVE LIGHTNINGS

THE islet of the human memory is largely eroded by the flux of time; the few specks remaining over are those fixed by hearsay, vague, blurred and too hazy for recollection; the mists particularly from our infancy seem impossible to be lifted and any attempt to image the past by raising the curtain of oblivion is fore-doomed to failure for lack of authenticity and dependence on reports and not remembrances.

If it is difficult to hark back to our infancy or childhood and capture or project our experiences during that period when we are supposed to be nearest to God, in a language truly reflecting the thrill and the bliss of those times, it may be imagined what a formidable task it should be to trace the origins of cosmos or creation and this is what the sage-master Sri Aurobindo does in the opening fines of the canto; but the supernormal can not be conveyed in the normal manner; therefore he has to grapple with the inadequacies of the language; make up for the deficiencies by sharpening the medium, charging it with a new vigour and enlarging its evocative effects by suffusing it with symbolism.

"Sri Aurobindo is more in the tradition of the Rishis, the Drashta (Seer of the Mantra) than in that of the Smritikar (Writer from memory) or a Bhashyakar (Commentator) or a saint."¹

The opening lines of the canto for that reason are a formidable phalanx repelling any attempt at understanding or to vary the metaphor they are a mountain range impenetrable and insurmountable; it looks as if the secrets of creation he hidden beyond the barriers under the golden lid of a casket; not a dilettante or cantering address, but a strenuous application, pressing into service all the grey cells, a capacity, if possible to rise above the intellect and expose oneself to the mantric melody and drink in the semantic suggestions conveyed by the sound; a readiness to meditate over the symbolism and imagery employed, followed by an earnestness and perseverance; — these

¹ Diwakar, Mahayogi, p . 225.

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are the open sesame that may yield to us the significance, the truth-vision of the seer. The enigma of creation is well-matched by the enigmatic beginning; there is too much light for the eyes to endure or see; but if they are understood they lend the key to the rest.

"The excess of beauty natural to God-kind

Could not uphold its claim on time-born eyes"¹

These lines may as well be applied to Sri Aurobindo himself; the effulgence and the luminescence natural to a superconscient or gnostic being like the Maha yogi, is too much for our mortal eyes; we feel dazed by the first attempt and naturally it has to be followed by many more attempts to get acclimatised.

Bernard Shaw wrote prefaces longer than the plays leaving thus no scope for his critics to interpret him as they pleased; but here the difficulty is all the more aggravated by the author's promised introduction to Savitri never making its appearance due to the multifarious preoccupations of the sage; we are therefore left entirely to ourselves except for the meagre help available in the letters of the seer appended to the epic and even these, thanks to Sri K. D. Sethna, are the result of a prod, a provocation of some un favorable comments made just to draw him out.

We have to follow the advice of the Mother, "You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought, you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open, then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly —"²

We have further to bear in mind the cavaire in general administered by Sri Iyengar "On a first approach Savitri is apt to scare away the modern reader who is generally too much in a hurry. Not only its sheer mass and its unconventional structure, but even more its unfamiliar content made up largely of the occult and the incomprehensible, must raise barriers between the poem and its potential readers."³

¹ Savitri, p. 5.

² Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo: A Biography and History, p , 1248 .

³ Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo: A Biography and History, p . 12 0 2 .

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But ambrosia can not be had for the mere asking; one must deserve, sweat and strive; it may be recalled how the ocean had to be churned before the nectar could be grasped. Truth can be intuited but not spelt out by the reason; the supra-rational can not be grasped by the instrumentation intended for the normal; the senses and the intellect can apprehend the normal but the beyond is beyond their capacity; "intuition gives us that idea of something behind and beyond all that we know and seem to be which pursues man always in contradiction of his lower reason and all his normal experience and impels him to formulate that formless perception in the more positive ideas of God, Immortality, Heaven and the rest by which we strive to express it to the mind."¹

"Intuition by the very nature of its action in man, working as it does from behind the veil, is unable to give us the truth in that ordered and articulated form which our nature demands."²

"The sages of the Veda and the Vedanta relied entirely upon intuition and spiritual experience. They recognised in the Sruti, the earlier results of intuition or, as they preferred to call it, of inspired revelation, and authority superior to reason."³

The vision, the experience he had, the Maha yogi pours forth to us in the first twenty eight fines which together constitute the song of creation; what is actually seen and experienced by him by rising to the supramental altitude is projected with a fidelity and authenticity reminiscent of the ancient Rishis; all the lines are lit up with infinite suggestion; are laden with the hush of a mysterious tremendum; the symbols limn the picture of the emergence of the cosmos with a preternatural sublimity; the verses are full of the overhead inspiration; we feel we are hearing the voice of the Infinite; these lines reveal "the energy of the illumined mind which may be compared to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff."⁴ We give below the lines.

¹ The Life Divine, (N.Y.), p. 64.

² Ibid., p. 65.

³ Ibid., p. 66.

⁴ lbid., p , 25 5.

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It was the hour before the Gods awake.

Across the path of the divine Event

The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone

In her unlit temple of eternity,

Lay stretched immobile upon Silence' marge.

Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable,

In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse

The abysm of the un bodied Infinite;

A fathomless zero occupied the world.

A power of fallen boundless self awake

Between the first and the last Nothingness,

Recalling the tenebrous womb from which it came,

Turned from the insoluble mystery of birth

And the tardy process of mortality

And longed to reach its end in vacant Nought

As in a dark beginning of all things,

A mute featureless semblance of the Unknown

Repeating for ever the unconscious act,

Prolonging for ever the unseeing will,

Cradled the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force

Whose moved creative slumber kindles the suns

And carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl.

Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space,

Its formless stupor without mind or life,

A shadow spinning through a souless void,

Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams,

Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs

Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.

Sri Aurobindo has a particular fascination for the transitional hour; most of his poems are vibrant with auroral suggestions; it is ever darkest before the dawn and the hour referred to is "the hour of God, the early hour of 4 a.m. known according to the Hindu mythology as the Brahma Muhurta,"¹ it is just the hour before the deities that preside over the various cosmic functions, have arisen.

¹ Dr. R. Gupta, p. 124.

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Before the cosmos has emerged, there is a Vedic night with a darkness so dense that it appears as if darkness is hidden within darkness. It is a dark infinite zero, "but it is not itself a sheer emptiness; for a vacant Absolute is no Absolute, — our conception of a void or zero is only a conceptual sign of our mental inability to know or grasp it: it bears in itself some ineffable essentiality of all that is and all that can be;"¹ it is therefore not a negative zero or blank void; it is contentful teeming with potentialities; consciousness is sepulchred in it and it bears within its womb the seeds of life; it is only a condition of nescience, a vast ocean of nescience. We find an echo of the above description in the Rig-veda —

"Then existence was not nor non-existence, the mid-world was not nor the nether nor what is beyond. — That one lived without breath by his self-law, there was nothing else nor aught beyond it. In the beginning darkness was hidden by darkness, all this was an ocean of inconscience. When universal being was concealed by fragmentation, then by the greatness of its energy That One was born. That moved at first as desire within, which was the primal seed of mind. The seers of Truth discovered the building of being in non-being by will in the heart and by the thought; their ray was extended horizontally; but what was there below, what was there above; there were casters of the seed, there were greatnesses; there was self-law below; there was will above."²

The darkness is so densely impenetrable that we can not help recalling the Miltonic line. "No light, but made darkness visible —"³; the phrase used by Milton to describe Hell should be understood here as a mask put on by the Infinite; the un bodied Infinite is reflected in the 'profounds of the night', nescience itself serving as its mirror or eye.

The mind of the night characterised by darkness, muteness and immobility can be imagined as a swarthy lady stretching herself across the vasts of the universe, barring the passage and obstructing the epiphany, the dawn of the supermind; from insentience to sentience may be the normal cycle of nature but this time the word

¹ The Life Divine (N.Y.), p. 569.

² The Life Divine, p. 221.

³ Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1. Lin e 63.

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foreboding suggests a new high in the grade of ascent i.e. from sentience to super-sentience, leading to the new dawn of the fulfilment of the long cherished hope of humanity. The lines from Life Divine are not inappropriate in this context " — the black dragon of the incon-science sustains with its vast wings and its back of darkness the whole structure of the material universe; its energies unroll the flux of things; its obscure intimations seem to be the starting-point of consciousness itself and the source of all life impulse. The Inconscient is taken now by a certain line of enquiry as the real origin and creator. It has indeed to be accepted that an inconscient force, an inconscient substance are the starting-point of the evolution, but it is a conscious spirit and not an inconscient being that is emerging in the evolution. The Inconscient and its primary works are penetrated by a succession of higher and higher powers of being and are made subject to consciousness so that its obstruction to the evolution, its circles of restriction, are slowly broken, the Python coils of its obscurity shot through by the arrows of the Sun-God; so are the limitations of our material substance diminished until they can be transcended and mind, life and body can be transformed through a possession of them by the greater law of divine consciousness, Energy and Spirit."¹

The expression unlit temple is clearly suggestive of the divine; the universe does not cease to be a temple because it is not yet flooded with Light; the divine is in status and not dynamis, in being and not becoming; "the Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme Super conscience it has the same absoluteness of being and automatic action but in a vast involved trance; it is being lost in itself, plunged in its own abyss of infinity."²

The mind of the night, — a part and portion of the divine consciousness and integrality which by sundering itself, has invoked on itself all the trials and vicissitudes, — recalls as in a nightmare, the history of its misery ever since its delivery into being out of the dark womb of nescience, the process of its evolution from matter to life, life to mind and so on; ponders over the tardy and the painful journey; conceives a revulsion, a disgust for the cycle of births and deaths and desires to find its haven of peace in nought, in dissolution. It

¹ The Life Divine, p. 593.

² Ibid., p. 491.

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seeks to make amends for its original sin: ''Suffice it at present to observe that the absence or abolition of separatist egoism and of effective division in consciousness is the one essential condition of the divine life, and therefore their presence in us is that which constitutes our mortality and our fall from the divine. This is our 'original sin', or rather the deviation from the Truth and the Right of the Spirit, from its oneness, integrality and harmony that was the necessary condition for the great plunge into the ignorance which is the soul's adventure in the world and from which was born our suffering and aspiring humanity."¹

"The mind — is awake between two Nothingnesses — the Void above and the void below."² The superfices of our waking consciousness does not have a knowledge of the past nor of the future; it is only aware of the middle, not the beginning nor the end; and it is only aware of the present which dies as soon as it is born. "We are and the world is a movement that continually progresses and increases by the inclusion of all the successions of the past in a present which represents itself to us as the beginning of ah the successions of the future — a beginning that always eludes us because it is not, for it has perished before it is born."³

It is however quite possible that in dissolution's core there may have been the memory of a one time universe which refuses to be coaxed to stage afresh the play of creation to be alternated by dissolution, knowing as it does what a protracted travail of an evolution it shall be involved in, by having to pass through the ever-recurring rounds of births and deaths.

This is on a line with the ancient Hindu theory of Srishti, Sthiti and Laya, restated in scientific terms by Doctors Allen Sandage, Martin Schimdt and Fred Hoyle of the expansion and contraction of the universe in a period of 82 million years. "The Russian Mathematician Friedman, had deduced two non-static models out of Einstein's equations. In both models the universe starts from an infinite state of hyperdense concentration in which all its material content is compressed within the eye of a needle. Originating from such a

¹ Ibid., p. 147.

² Readings from Savitri,

³ The Life Divine, p. 73.

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state of zero or quasi-zero radius, it begins to expand and can follow one or other of two courses. In one case, it continues to expand for ever. This is an expanding model. In the other the expansion comes to a halt when its radius reaches a maximum, then the direction of motion reverses and the universe begins to contract. The contraction thus initiated then continues until expansion begins again on reaching the initial stage. This is the oscillating model."¹

But Sethna does not agree that in harmony with the well-known Indian cosmogonic theory above-mentioned, Sri Aurobindo shows us a new cosmic emergence after its relapse into inconscience; it is argued that Pralaya envisages not relapse into inconscience but a withdrawal of the universe into the Supraconscience of the Unmani-fest; when Sri Aurobindo says "that from a dark immense Inconscience this material world arises and out of it a soul that by evolution is struggling into consciousness".² Sethna asserts that Sri Aurobindo must have conceived the process to be absolutely unique and not repetitive, holding the possibility of divine emergence and transfiguration of earth consciousness through soul's full awakening to supramental reality. To put the idea better in the words of Sri Sethna "The night symbol may be considered a double one. It is suggestive not only of a temporary relapse into Inconscience but also of a fundamental fall which constitutes the God-oblivious state on a cosmic scale. From this fall, a slow difficult return has to start of a God-memory ultimately leading to a God-realisation in terms of an embodied existence within the very cosmos where the emergence, the evolution, takes place. — The 'symbol dawn' unfolds the panorama of a gradual rousing of consciousness on its way to the archetypal Superconscience."³

It is however not the fallen power, once a part of the boundless self that embarks on the fresh adventure of creation, but it is the un-fallen transcendent power itself that undertakes the task; there is a stir in the infinite immobile energy sprawling across the universe, a movement as in a somnambulism to which, let us suppose, the dark lady is subject; a mysterious unshaped figure, rocks as in a cradle,

¹ Dr. Gupta, p. 127.

² Sethna, Sri Aurobindo The Poet,

3 Sethna, Sri Aurobindo The Poet , p. 183.

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the cosmic energy lying in a state of inertia and the energism in nature works itself out by a sort of automatism, but still governed by its own self-will and self-determination. ,

In the wake of the ripple produced in the ocean of nescience, as a result of the drowsy stir of the dark lady, the stellar universe is kindled into existence; the immobility and the silence are replaced by the earth and the sky; the earth spins helplessly knowing not whence it has come or what its aim or goal is; it becomes oblivious of being a part of the indivisible; is unaware of its heritage of the supreme self or soul; circles miserably in space which is itself in stupor, in a syncope without a pulse of life or intelligence and the earth continues spinning, appearing a shadow in the enormous space showing neither soul, nor concern, nor solicitude for it.

"Matter is Satchidananda represented to his own mental experience as a formal basis of objective knowledge, action and delight of existence."¹

"Earth life is not a lapse into the mire of something undivine, vain and miserable, offered by some Power to itself as a spectacle or to the embodied soul as a thing to be suffered and then cast away from it: it is the scene of evolutionary unfolding of the being which moves towards the revelation of a supreme spiritual light and power and joy and oneness, but includes in it also the manifold diversity of the self-achieving spirit."²

Y. S. R. CHANDRAN

¹ The Life Divine, p. 220.

² Ibid., p. 60S.

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DIALOGUES AND PERSPECTIVES:

THE WAY

A SI was hurrying to catch up with the day's mail, he sailed into our office with an American breeziness. He introduced himself as a doctor who has been working in the States for the last twenty-two years. In what field? Nuclear medicine.

He told me how he had come to the Ashram some twenty-five years ago and purchased a few books of which the Synthesis was one. That has been his constant reading over the years. The fir st book of Sri Aurobindo that he took up was The Life Divine, but he could not understand it at all, excepting in portions relating to modem science. Now after so many years, he has begun to understand it; but he turns again and again to the Synthesis of Yoga. He had been looking round during the last couple of days and was interested in our spiritual effort. Tell me (he said) how can I follow this way up there where we are completely lost in the rush of things.

The very fact that you are able to see (I told him) that you are lost in the hectic movement of that life shows that there is something in you which is not lost in it, but is able to perceive what is going on. You are enlightened enough, evolved enough to stand apart — in some part — and note the movement and the involvement. Well, deepen that awareness. Try to be more and more conscious of that part in you which is not involved in the outer movement but stays aloof. Deepen your awareness of that centre.

Next extend the area of this witness part, let us call it your soul. Try to enlarge the segment of this soul-awareness. In a word, deepen and extend your self-awareness. That is yoga. It is more or less a psychological process and can be done simultaneously with outer activity. You do not need to retire into solitude for this purpose. A part of you is to be kept detached all the while and this part must be cultivated, built up, made a living centre of reference. The retreat is to be within yourself. You are a scientist and you can appreciate how it is possible for man to live in two levels at the same time, viz:

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on the physical, carrying on the activity of the moment and on that of consciousness, self-gathered, alert, watchful. Learn to live more in your inner consciousness, wherever you are, whatever be the field of your action. The more you are able to do it, the more your action will be enlightened, more effective. The skill lies in maintaining the link between the outer and the inner. Life turns into yoga.

How can you silence the mind?

You cannot silence the mind by force. The mind has to be gathered and opened to the Silence above it. When this is done, the Silence slowly gets into the mind and gradually claims it. However, this silence of the mind is the end of a process, not the beginning.

By this time, our small room got overcrowded with other friends waiting for us to attend to them and we adjourned to meet the next day.

29.12.72

And he came the next day.

How do I set about doing meditation? What exactly do you do? He asked.

Well, I told him, it is not the meditation itself that is so much important as the attitude of meditation. You may meditate for a fixed period or periods, feel the calm or the peace or the joy and the like. But it is necessary to continue the poise of the meditation, to prolong it as far as possible during the rest of the day. That way, the spirit and effect of meditation comes to govern the activity the whole day. This is more important in a yoga like ours which aims at a total change of nature. Times of meditation are special periods of concentration.

What is the difference between meditation and concentration?

Concentration is when you gather up all the faculties of the mind and fix them over an object, e.g. an idea, a thought, a form, a movement. You do not let the mind stray from it. You hold it firmly focussed on the object.

In meditation, you let the mind flow on the chosen theme — there is a stream of thoughts, you work upon a subject step by step; if you take the Divine, for instance, as your objective, you dwell upon

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its attributes, its form or absence of form, its manifestation and so on. There is movement of the mind in a chosen channel. This is more natural and can be done for a longer time than concentration without strain.

I have thought a good deal about the question of free-will and fate. What do you say about it?

Both free-will and determinism are facts. Determinism rules on the material plane; it becomes less rigid as the level of existence becomes less physical. The law that obtains on the subtler levels has a greater element of free-will. So it depends upon the person. If he lives more on the grosser levels, the law of Karma, determinism, fate, rules hard; if he shifts his centre of life to a subtler level, there is a greater play of free-will. Thus if he lives nearer the soul-level, he is less and less subject to determinism. That is why they say that astrology does not apply to the yogins who live in a spiritual consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo has discussed this subject in depth in his essays on Karma (included in the Problem of Rebirth). He has opened new directions of thinking on the truth of Karma and its varied application.

30. 12. 72

M. P. PANDIT

Man can accept his fate, he can refuse.

SRI AUROBINDO

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A ZEN BUDDHIST POEM

TN legend, the Zen or Meditation school of Buddhism is traced with more or less continuity back to India and the Buddha himself, his transmission of the Truth — the "Dharma" — to one man, Mahakashyapa — by holding up a flower. After something like a millennium of development or of life the teaching and practice were taken to China by Bodhidharma, "the brown bearded barbarian" and there firmly established — again at first in one man, the only one that Bodhidharma could not drive away. This "wild man from the west" is said to have sat for nine years facing a blank wall, "until his legs dropped off" — a graphic way of emphasizing that Zen is a meditation school. (Dolls for children are made in Japan, of "Daruma", scowling, without legs: however one knocks him about, he returns to his uncompromising sitting, his meditation posture.) "Zen" is the Japanese for the Chinese "Ch'an", which is a transliteration
of the Sanskrit "Dhyana". The school as we know it today is a Chinese creation, with some additions made by the Japanese, who firmly adopted it some seven-hundred years ago.

Whether or not "zen" may be precisely what Patanjali meant by the word "Dhyana", the meditation, which is the very core and foundation of it, is formless: that is, it is not a concentration on any particular form, symbol, image or idea, nor is it prayer or the repetition of a Mantra. By a rhythmic, deepening breath-control it rises to mind or mind-energy itself, that is, not thinking mind, or mind-stuff — whatever the mind gets stuffed with: it lets thoughts, feelings, images pass like birds that cannot ruffle the sky, or it becomes solid, impervious to all entry, except that of pure light from above. One's consciousness spreads out like an immaculate ocean, and gradually the waves are still.

This is the necessary preliminary to the goal of awakening, bursting out, as if split by an axe, into pure freedom. When one has sufficient meditative power he is now commonly given a question on which to meditate, a problem — something which cannot be solved or answered by the logical mind, and helps to break the barriers of that

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mind and bring in a spiritual light and vision: a "paradox" that collects and prompts one to look higher, and rise into a larger consciousness where there are no paradoxes, and everything is clear and plain. These conumdrums (or koäns) unfortunately are very attractive to the clever "intellectuals" they were not designed for, who dearly enjoy playing with them and presumably feeling deep and mysterious: making Zen into something little more than a parlor game, a way of being complacent about one's unregeneracy, perhaps a way of thumbing one's nose at "Jehovah" The system is a good means of pedagogy, powerful for the training and development of those mature and capable: for disciples truly meditating under the guidance of a true Master. But still it is not an original part of Zen, and is not essential to it; though it may help to bring more to the end of the teaching than could come without it. For it mitigates the blank wall, as it were, and it gives some holds on the sheer precipice

What Zen aims for primarily is a Nirvana, a radiant, pure, all-embracing consciousness that is one's true nature that is Buddha-nature, "one's original face before one was born", that is, before one entered Samsara at all; a nature, a being, a consciousness without sense of ego, thus without psychological barriers. It is nature as well as being, for the nirvana is not entirely a transcendence: it is also, to some obscure and partial degree, a possession of the world remade. (This Buddhism indeed over the centuries has become much mixed with Taoism - in which, in its earliest recorded form, Sri Aurobindo has seen some apprehension of the true nature, Paraprakriti. Probably to most Zen men Lao Tse is as great a Master as any Buddhist). The practice of meditation is combined with a vigorously active life, and during the meditative sessions the Master (or the monitor - an advanced "monk" or "cloud-and-water man" a free-flower) walks back and forth, keenly observant, bearing a stick: which he may use in various ways on those who are not meditating correctly. (Also he may use it - a flattened stick it is - upon request, to relieve the tensions in the back that may come from long sitting: in which usage its blows are not unpleasant.) The dangers are well recognized of the false meditation of dullness, inertia, mind-wandering; and this meditation is done with the eyes half opened.

There are now two major schools of Zen, the Soto and the

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Rinzai. Briefly speaking, the Soto school puts more emphasis on meditation exclusively; the Rinzai being more "dynamic", and emphasizing more a "sudden enlightenment" (that may come at any time, and not necessarily in the actual meditation); also making a more systematic use of the koän. This Rinzai school goes back to the Chinese Master Lin Chi (Rinzai) of the T'ang Dynasty. In Japan perhaps it s greatest - at least its most influential figure, is Hakuin, a Master of the eighteenth century. It is from him that the present koän system comes.

His was a very forceful personality, and as a young man, having had an initial experience he went around trying to find a Master who would agree that it was the whole and genuine thing. He could not find one, but he did eventually find one who was powerful enough to knock the conceit out of him: even literally, for he suffered a broken leg in one encounter. After this he did achieve the real thing, and then turned all his vigor to teaching, in which was included painting, and writing voluminously. The best known of his writings is a poem, Zazen Wasan - that is, a hymn or psalm of Zazen, or sitting in meditation that is customarily chanted at the close of every session.

The meter is the Japanese "7-5": it is syllabic, seven syllables (or quantitative equivalent), a strong caesura, and then five; the rhythm is variable within limits, but as chanted is triumphant, exalted in swing and flow. The following translation does not preserve these features, and is hardly a chanting version; also it is not entirely literal (or indeed even a direct translation, except to a limited extent): it gives in some cases only the general sense, without certain technicalities. Of course all mystical or spiritual schools have their particular ways of dividing, expressing, teaching; divisions, expressions, stages, distinctions that are not always rewarding to one who is not an adherent of the school — and even, alas, may be limiting and narrowing to one who is. But Zen is not based on doctrines or formulations.

Here is the poem, the song.

The utter nature of all things is Buddha;

He is all things that are, as ice with water:

For there is never ice but there is water,

And only by the things that are is Buddha.

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So near and close he is they do not know him,

How vainly men will seek him in far places! —

Like those who blindly stand inmidst of water,

And desperately for want of drinking perish.

They are like children of a house of plenty,

Who hunger gone astray in some poor village.

This endless course of wandering through illusion

Is made by their own ignorance and darkness.

Still passing from one dark way to another,

How can they ever come to leave samsara?

 

O splendor of the Mahayana View!

Exalted high above all power of praise!

All usages, commandments, giving alms,

Praying, repentance and collected acts,

Good deeds unnumbered and of every kind,

All are embraced within its boundlessness.

Who sits but one time, truly and completely,

Dissolves the measureless weight of transgression.

Where can he find the ways of bondage, now

The Pure Land surely is not far away?

When with its power of grace this truth shall come

And deign to touch upon his ear but once,

Who offers adoration then and praise

Will gain a wealth of blessings without measure.

 

Then how much more by turning, entering in,

To realize your own true being here!

Directly known your nature is no-nature,

So far removed from words and wanton chatter.

Cause-and-effect is one, the Gate is open:

The straight road lies ahead, not two, not three.

Being your form the form now of the formless,

To go and come is ever being not elsewhere;

Being your thought the thought now of the no-thought,

You voice the Law with singing and with dancing.

The empty Sky how vast, how unobstructed!

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The full moon of the perfect Wisdom shines.

What more is there to seek now at this moment,

Nirvana itself opened out before you?

This very place indeed is Lotus-land,

This body is no other than the Buddha.

To comment briefly. To begin with, we may see that something like a "paradoxical" reversal has been made: the Buddha depends on living things. But so he does, when he is seen as enlightened consciousness: for without living things, struggling toward the light, there is nothing to enlighten, and so "enlightenment", that is "Buddha" itself is meaningless. The water itself however is the pure being that consolidates, as it were, to knowledge: that is imbibed liberally, in meditation. Samsara — "birth-and-death", the life of fragmentation, deprivation, corruption, illusion — may be seen as a series or complex of crooked streams, muddy, shallow, ever seeking the pure expanse of utter depth that by insistence on their own windings they can never come to. And they recede from the thirsty seeker who would drink from them; or they poison him slowly. To sit truly is to come to the true state of meditation, from which all heavy difficulties, feelings of guilt and failure and unworthiness, all besmirching of the clarity, pass off like a dream, or shed like water from the lotos pad. Here he does not "transgress", that is, go against his true nature and advance. Feeling, aspiring, meditating dynamically, he makes rapid progress. He rises above all the difficulties of subject-object and the problematical passage from one thing to another, and the bars between: all the temporal process. For him there is no opposition, contradiction, division between knowledge, will and action, and karma is simply the passing pageantry: he is no longer the slave of time and is lifted above all the problems and clashes of the shadow-play: the pairs of opposites do not hold and bind him: he does not initiate or withhold action or suffer reaction: all process is a oneness and all is as it is, and he needs nothing, he is the same forever. Without moving he may dance the Law that is no longer bondage, but Dharma, Truth.

The Lotos Land, the Pure Land of Buddhism is emphatically not the land of the "lotus-eaters": it is a land of men who are wide awake, and can be fully and truly active because they are beyond it all.

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Or this is the full meaning. There is a Pure Land school that takes it as a kind of heaven: one prays to go there after death, and then return to an earthly life in better circumstances and perhaps with more strength — acknowledging that now, in this life, one is not strong enough to go through to the end, to become a Buddha. But Zen admits no such weakness: all its strenuous efforts are directed toward achieving here and now. In this chant the earth itself is the Pure Land: for it is seen in its true, immaculate nature.

Here unfortunately the teaching stops. The way is only a mental one; it gives a spiritual enlightenment in the suprarational mind, and except by reflex, no more. Its devotional elements are minimal, and it knows nothing of the Psychic Being (which indeed makes its philosophical attempts to explain rebirth rather difficult, and hardly satisfactory). It knows nothing of the Supermind, and has no idea of real Transformation: bringing the Purity to full culmination, and remaking the world actually, in all detail. The awakening is not complete, it lacks both sufficient height and sufficient depth, and the real creative spiritual power is not found. The world remains largely a dream after all.

But still Buddhism is not a closed system, it has no official "theology" and no orthodoxy except by the inertia that, alas, no human system and organization is free from; and it can grow. At least, intrinsically there is no evident reason for it to be without that power — if sufficient individual Buddhists want to expand it. The Bodhisattva ideal of the Mahayana is to enlighten the entire world; and this ideal may be extended and enlarged indefinitely: it may take on greater and greater meaning, win greater and greater power, as one advances in the Spirit. And to a true Zen man at least there is always something beyond, something more to attain; and though he may be "very comfortable", he does not relax into somnolence, and cease striving. He at least deepens his mental realization. And by tradition there is a Buddha to come - Maitreya. Perhaps few Buddhists really expect him, and probably fewer still are actively looking for him; but still he is not forgotten: and there is a saying not wholly without serious intent: "If you want to know the full being, meaning and import of Buddhism, wait for Maitreya and ask him." After the triumphant Zazen Wasan, the Four Vows are chanted: to enlighten all the num

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berless living beings; to uproot all the endless worldly attachments; to enter all the gates of Dharma, which are manifold - no number specified; and to attain the goal of Wisdom, which is ever beyond. Surely there is nothing static and complacent here - if it is not allowed to stagnate and become merely formalism. And in the iconography, Maitreya is arising from hi s "lotos position", and gazing fully upon the world. Whether a possible further development of Buddhism shall be meaningful and called for in the new age, of course still is a moot point, so far as we know. But it seems reasonable at least to expect that many new avenues will open, under the great new in fluent ces that Sri Aurobindo has brought to the world. If not vitiated by drugs and other degenerate destructiveness, the increasing Buddhist activity in the Western world - not the least of it led by refugees from Tibet - may lead eventually to awakenings not consciously sought, and to a conscious seeking of even more: and raise one of the world's great spiritual movements to a worthy partner in the evolutionary development of man to a truly gnostic being, who can remake himself entirely by Wisdom's power (or bring himself to the capacity for being remade), and give light indeed - wielding directly the rays of the Sun that hi s former enlightenment has only reflected.

JESSE ROARKE

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INDIA AND THE WORLD: HER MEANING FOR THE FUTURE

IT should be obvious that India, like the rest of Asia is destined to play an important role in the future of human civilisation. India too, like the rest of the awakened East remained for a long time forgetful of her mission. She was charmed by the spectacle of a victorious materialism which England represented to us in the nineteenth century as the best achievement of man. The first impulse of our patriots was therefore to admire and copy everything European — the English language and literature, English habits and manners, the English social system, and above all, the democratic tradition as it had been developed by the genius of the English people. Along with it there went a strong undercurrent of disparagement of everything Indian — our dress, our speech, our social customs, even our philosophy and religion. These were good enough for the benighted masses, but had no use for the enlightened. Sri Aurobindo puts the matter thus:

The movements of the nineteenth century in India were European movements, they were coloured with the hues of the West. Instead of seeking for strength in the spirit, they adopted the machinery and motives of Europe, the appeal to the rights of humanity or the equality of social status and an impossible dead level which Nature has always refused to allow. Mingled with these false gospels was a strain of bitterness, which showed itself in the condemnation of Brahminical priestcraft, the hostility to Hinduism and the ignorant breaking away from the hallowed traditions of the past. What was true and eternal in that past was likened to what was false or transitory, and the nation was in danger of losing its soul by an insensate surrender to the aberrations of European materialism. Not in this spirit was India intended to receive the mighty opportunity which the impact of Europe gave to her.¹

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This early phase however soon passed away, and there appeared on the scene men steeped in the Indian tradition, men of great intellectual or spiritual capacity who were able to stem the tide of westernisation and prepare the nation for its future. Such were Dayananda Saraswati of Gujarat, and a galaxy of brilliant men of whom Bengal was the birthplace but whose influence soon spread all over the land. Of these latter, the first place has to be given to Sri Ramakrishna who in a brief span of life completely untouched by the foreign influence realised the supreme truths of all the great religions and thought that spirituality was their essence. Among the others may be named Bankimchandra and Vivekananda and Rabindranath, who, through their writings and speeches and poetry gave a new meaning to the future of India and helped her grow out of the bondage of the past. Their work prepared the way for the great national upsurge which in the days of the Swadeshi movement in the first decade of this century revolutionised the spirit of India and set it on its path of self-discovery.

When the danger was greatest, a number of great spirits were sent to stem the tide flowing in from the West and recall her to her mission, for if she had gone astray, the world would have gone astray with her.²

What the leaders of the Swadeshi movement tried to emphasise, — and they were inspired one and all by the influence and example of Sri Aurobindo — was that the political and economic aspects of the movement were simply the expressions of a wider aim, which was no less than the spiritualisation of the race. But India had to be politically free and economically self-dependent before she could hope to realise the larger purpose. Spirituality does not thrive in an atmosphere of bondage, one who is free in spirit cannot be bound in fetters. And a nation of slaves could not aspire to free the world.

What Christianity failed to do, what Mahommedanism strove to accomplish for a brief period and among a limited

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number of men, Hinduism ... has to attempt for all the world. This is the reason of India's resurgence, this is why God has breathed life into her once more, why great souls are at work to bring about her salvation, why a sudden change is coming over the hearts of her sons. The movement of which the first outbreak was political will end in a spiritual consummation.³

The work which we have to do for humanity is a work which no other nation can accomplish, the spiritualisation of the race........⁴

Both her geographical position and the long periods of spiritual training she has undergone in the past make India eminently suited for the task she must perform in the future.

The Mongolian world, preserving the old strong and reposeful civilisation of early Asia, flanks her on the right and has already arisen. The Mahomedan world, preserving the aggressive and militant civilisation of Islam, flanks her on the left, and in Egypt, in Arabia, in Persia, is struggling to arise. In India the two civilisations meet, she is the link between them and must find the note of harmony which will reconcile them and recreate a common Asiatic civilisation.⁵

We believe that this nation is one which has developed itself in the past on spiritual lines under the inspiration of a destiny which is now coming to fulfilment. The peculiar seclusion in which it was able to develop its individual temperament, knowledge and ideas — the manner in which the streams of the world poured in upon and were absorbed by the calm ocean of Indian spiritual life, recalling the great image in the Gita, even as the waters flow into the great tranquil and immeasurable ocean, and the ocean is not perturbed — the persistence with which peculiar and original forms of society, religion and philosophical thought were protected from disintegration up till the destined

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moment — the deferring of that disintegration until the whole world outside had arrived at the point when the great Indian ideal which these forms enshrined could embrace all that it yet needs for its perfect self-expression, and be itself embraced by an age starved by materialism and yearning for a higher knowledge— the sudden return of India upon itself at a time when all that was peculiarly Indian seemed to wear upon it the irrevocable death-sentence passed on all things that in the human evolution are no longer needed — the miraculous uprising and transformation of weakness into strength brought about by that return — all this seems to us to be not fortuitous and accidental but inevitable and preordained in the decrees of an over-ruling Providence.⁶

The quarrel between Science and Religion, Science basing itself on "fact" and Religion looking to "faith" and refusing to consider the truths revealed by Science, has been the bane of modern civilisation. Science in its victorious march practically supplanted Religion and proclaimed the reign of Matter as the supreme reality. Religion stands helpless in the face of this dogma, spirituality hides its head in shame. India has been spared this fate thanks to the work done by her sages who were at once mystics and men of science. It will inevitably fall to the lot of India to reconcile faith with fact and restore the true meaning of spirituahty.

It was the working out, after centuries of patient endeavour and single-minded concentration, of a synthesis in which knowledge and religion blended in an organic unity. It was the final laying to rest of that schism between faith and fact which has moved like an avenging angel through the civilisations of the world lying beyond the ripplemark of Hinduism, condemning them to unreason and darkness, or to restlessness of spirit, abandonment of God, self-intoxication. ... From this wasting tragedy of the inner life India has been spared for ages by the priceless discovery of her philosopher-priests. And it was no mere faith, no mere theory, this conforming of science to religion, nor a mere

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inference of reason, but a demonstrable reality made attainable through a definite process of culture, built up step by step with infinite patience and labour by those aristocrats of humanity — incomparably the greatest that ever lived. The Indian peasant who worships the gods and goddesses and can talk philosophy, and the Indian sage who talks philosophy and can worship the gods and goddesses, both embody the highest meaning of Indian History, symbols of a race-consciousness, keepers of an ancestral faith, dimmed in the memory by the mist of time. The finding of the light that will disperse the mist, the recovery of the wealth that it hides, — and the greatest work of the Asiatic Renascence is done.

It is this larger purpose, this message India has for humanity that must ever be the inspiration of all our endeavour.⁷

"The ground gained by the Vedantic propaganda in the West", wrote Sri Aurobindo early in the century, "may be measured by the growing insight in the occasional utterances of well-informed and intellectual Europeans on the subject. A certain Mrs. Leighton Cleather.. .has indicated the mission of India with great justness and insight .... India's message to the world she considered to be the realisation of the fife beyond material forms. The East has taken for granted the reality of the invisible and has no fear. The recognition of the soul in themselves and others leans to the recognition of the universal soul and the great word of the Upanishads: 'This soul which is the self of all that is, this is the real, this the self, that thou art!' Modern civilisation had lost sight of the fundamental law of self-sacrifice as conditioning man's evolution."⁸

We have here, very briefly put, the triple message of India, psychical, spiritual and moral. India believes in and has the key to a psychical world within man and without him which is the source and basis of the material. This it is which Europe is beginning dimly to discover. She has caught glimpses of the world beyond the gates, her hands are fumbling for the key, but she has not yet found it.

Immortality proved and admitted, it becomes easier to believe

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in God. The spiritual message is that the universal self is one and that our souls are not only brothers, not only of one substance and nature, but live in and move towards an essential oneness. It follows that Love is the highest law and that to which evolution must move. Ananda, joy and delight, are the object of the Lila and the fulfilment of love is the height of joy and delight.

Self-sacrifice is therefore the fundamental law. Sacrifice, says the Gita, is the law by which the Father of all in the beginning conditioned the world, and all ethics, all conduct, all life is a sacrifice willed or unconscious. The beginning of ethical knowledge is to realise this and make the conscious sacrifice of one's own individual desires. It is an inferior and semi-savage morality which gives up only to gain and makes selfishness the basis of ethics.

To give up one's small individual self and find the larger self in others, in the nation, in humanity, in God, that is the law of Vedanta. That is India's message. Only she must not be content with sending it, she must rise up and five it before all the world, so that it may be proved a possible law of conduct both for men and nations."⁹

India is at present not quite aware of her strength. Long centuries of weakness and subjection to foreign rule have made her lose self-confidence. She has been apt to look for help from outside, whereas all the time possessing within herself the secret of all strength — the power of faith.

India has in herself a faith of superhuman virtue to accomplish miracles, to deliver out of irrefragable bondage, to bring God down upon earth. She has a secret of will power which no other nation possesses. All she needs to rouse in her that faith, that will, is an ideal which will induce her to make the effort.... The ideal is that of humanity in God, of God in humanity, the ancient ideal of the sānatoria dharma but applied, as it has never been applied before, to the problem of politics and the work of national revival. To realise that ideal, to impart it to the world is the mission of India.¹⁰

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Her mission is to point back humanity to the true source of human liberty, human equality, human brotherhood.¹¹

India, perhaps alone of all the great nations, has never sought to expand beyond her frontiers and establish her political supremacy. This has not been due to any want of strength; for in earlier times, before she fell a prey to the wiles of the foreigner, she had strength enough to repel or absorb the invader — the Persian, the Greek, the Scythian and the Hun. The reason for this apathy was that she considered all outsiders as barbarians, mleccha, unworthy of consideration. She did send out religious and cultural missions to West Asia and China, and civilised the peoples of South East Asia.

But why should not India then be the first power in the world? Who else has the undisputed right to extend spiritual sway over the world? This was Swami Vivekananda's plan of campaign. India can once more be made conscious of her greatness by an overmastering sense of the greatness of her spirituality.¹²

India must have an empire of its own. It must extend its spiritual conquest all over the world through its political freedom. It may not cast a greedy glance at the opulence of others. Its cupidity may not be excited by the wealth of foreign lands, but claims the right to harmonise the civilisation of the world by being once more politically predominant. It cannot afford to be the sepulcher of an ancient greatness.¹³

A widest and highest spiritualising of life of earth is the last vision of all that vast and unexampled seeking and experiment in a thousand ways of the soul's outermost and innermost experience which is the unique character of her past; this in the end is the mission for which she was born and the meaning of her future.¹⁴

India has yet to awaken to the meaning of her future and carry her message to the ends of the earth.

SANAT K. BANERJI

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REFERENCES

1. Sri Aurobindo, "Asiatic Democracy", Bandemataram, 16.3.08.

2. Ibid.

3. Sri Aurobindo, "Spirituality and Nationalism", Bandemataram, 28.3.08.

4. Ibid.

5. Sri Aurobindo, "The Question of the Hour", Bandemataram, 1.6·07·

6. Sri Aurobindo, "A Task Unaccomplished", Karmayogin, 3.7.09.

7. Sri Aurobindo, "Swadeshism", Bandemataram, 11.9.07.

8. Sri Aurobindo, "The Message of India", Karmayogin, 26.6.09.

9. Ibid.

10. Sri Aurobindo, "The New Ideal", Bandemataram, 7.4.08.

11. Sri Aurobindo, "Asiatic Democracy", Bandemataram, 16.3.08.

12. Sri Aurobindo, "The Main Feeder of Patriotism", Bandemataram, 19.6 .°7.

13. Sri Aurobindo, "The Philosophy of Patriotism", Bandemataram, 13.12.07

14. Sri Aurobindo, The Foundations of Indian Culture, (New York,1953), p. 175·

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REVIEWS

Uttar Yogi By Dr. Shivaprasad Singh. Pub. Lokabharati, Ilahabad. Pp.474, Rs. 20/-

DR. Shivaprasad Singh is preeminently known for his perceptive writings in Hindi, especially on modern concepts and ways of thinking. When it was learnt that he was engaged in writing a biography of Sri Aurobindo for the Centenary Year, it aroused great expectations and we are happy to record that they are more than fulfilled.

Explaining the term uttar as applied to Sri Aurobindo, he states that Sri Aurobindo's childhood was spent in north (uttar) India; his famous speech was delivered in uttar-para; hi s yogic experiences started in the North (uttar); in Yoga he has attained the highest, the topmost (uttar); he provides the answer (uttar) to the cosmic problem .

He writes on each of these aspects in a highly interesting way and with a proper sense of proportion. Sri Aurobindo as a revolutionary, as a statesman, thinker, philosopher, poet, yogi and the creator of a New Age — are the main subjects. Sri Aurobindo as a man, as someone who could contain the universe in himself and laugh, receives full attention. There is a good deal of information that the author has collected by independent research, meeting persons who had contact with Sri Aurobindo etc. The pages on the role of the Mother in Sri Aurobindo's mission are scintillating with insights and prophetic anticipations.

His study of Savitri is noteworthy for hi s vibrating renderings of passages from the epic of Sri Aurobindo. We look forward for a fuller study of the Poem by Dr. Singh.

M. P. PANDIT

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Hymns to the Goddess By Sir John Woodroffe. Pub. Ganesh & Co. Madras 17. Price Rs. 15/-

The Publishers are to be congratulated on bringing out the reprint of this much valued work of the great savant and Tantric scholar Sir John Woodroffe. The Hymns fittingly start with a Hymn to Kalabhairava stressing the inseparability of the Shakti and the Shakta. Here are hymns, prayers, lauds taken from the Tantra, the Purana, the Mahabharata and the vivifying writings ascribed to Shankara. The Mother Goddess is praised in both her personal and impersonal aspects and in her various manifestations which are ever present to shower their compassion on the distressed humanity. In these lauds, the devotee feels solace and comfort and gets the needed response from his chosen Deity.

The renderings in English are uniformly happy and the Notes are very informative. They draw attention to significances that are apt to be missed and add to the value of the work.

S. SHANKARANARAYANAN

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