The intellect is not all; a guide within awaits our question.
SRI AUROBINDO
| HOMAGE |
Swaika Group of Industries, Calcutta |
| Vol. XXXI No. 3 |
August 1974 |
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
OUR SWEET MOTHER
LORD, this morning Thou hast given me the assurance that Thou wouldst stay with us until Thy work is achieved, not only as a consciousness which guides and illumines but also as a dynamic Presence in action. In unmistakable terms Thou hast promised that all of Thyself would remain here and not leave the earth-atmosphere until earth is transformed. Grant that we may be worthy of this marvellous Presence and that henceforth everything in us be concentrated on the one will to be more and more perfectly consecrated to the fulfilment of Thy sublime Work.
THE Mother's prayer to Sri Aurobindo — so beautiful, so poignant and so true — we, her children, now turn round and re-address to Her own sweet self.
The new creation that the Mother embodied is not lost, it is not wiped out with the disappearance of the material body. It has
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been a true creation and is indelibly implanted in the earth-atmosphere and will remain there for eternity. And it is not merely a static structure, it is a living and growing entity. It is not in the earth's atmosphere a mere image or a lifeless picture transfixed there as on a canvas strip. It is living and growing — living and growing not only" in itself and for itself, but making its habitat the atmosphere also live and grow in new dimensions, that is to say, transforming it in accordance with its own developing truth and reality. It is growing and characteristically growing downwards, that is to say, extending itself more and more towards an earthly manifestation or incarnation. It is like the aswattha tree spoken of by the Rishis of old that stands upside down, the roots upward and the branches spreading out down-' wards — indeed it is growing downward — drawing its life-sap from above. The physical embodiment, the materialisation of the inner formation will happen in course of time inevitably. It will touch the ground, the very ground of the earth and stand as its marvel-creation — through a process of calamities and catastrophes perhaps — which may indeed be minimised if circumstances permit and the Grace admits; but however the process, the end is decreed, for the decree is that of the Divine and it is the destiny of earth-consciousness.
(2)
This is however the Mother's part of the work and she is doing it perfectly, on her side. But what about ourselves? What is our share of the work? For it is intended that we, her children, should be collaborators in her work, so that we too may be integrated into the Divine realisation. The Mother herself has indicated the line of service we can render to her in the communication I just read out to you:
"... henceforth everything in us be concentrated on the one will to be more and more perfectly consecrated to the fulfilment of Thy sublime Work."
The situation has somewhat changed since then and has become more difficult. On the departure of Sri Aurobindo, sometime after,
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Mother gave us a message, an admonition, pointing to us the difficulty:
"Pour suivre Sri Aurobindo dans la grande aventure de son yoga integral, il fallait toujours être guerrier; mais maintenant qu'il nous a quitté physiquement, il faut être un héro."
24-11-1952
(To follow Sri Aurobindo in the great adventure of his integral yoga, one needed always to be a warrior; but now that he has physically left us, one needs to be a hero.)
24-11-1952
At present when the Mother too is no more there — apparently — we seem to be abandoned children, what are we to do or be? It is no longer sufficient to be a warrior, not sufficient even to be a hero, What should we be? Something greater than the hero. One must be a Yogi. The yogi is one who has the Divine Consciousness or the Mother's consciousness. If you find that it is not so easy for one to be a yogi, even if one tries sincerely, I suggest to you another alternative. It is to leap into another dimension: to be a child, a child of the Mother.
I give you this subject for meditation: on becoming ... a child, an ideal child of the Mother.
NOLINI KANTA GUPTA
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CONSCIOUSNESS is not an unaccountable freak or a chance growth or a temporary accident in a material and inconscient universe.
It may so appear on the surface and physical science, since by its very terms it is limited to the examination of appearances and must start from the surface phenomena, may choose or may have no alternative but to treat it on that basis. But surface appearances are not the reality of things, they may be a part of the truth but they are not the whole reality. One must look beyond the external appearances of things before one can know things in themselves: especially first appearances are apt to be deceptive. It is not by regarding a flash of lightning as a chance ebullition of fiery temper in a cloud that one can know the truth of electricity. We must go far and dig deep before we can get at the truth about the Force that manifested the lightning. Consciousness may similarly appear as a phenomenon, an outbreak of sentience in the obscurity of an originally nescient being; but we must go far beyond that specious appearance if we would know the true nature and origin and discover the entire possibilities of this apparently strange and anomalous force. For anomalous it is, since it occurs in a fundamentally inconscient universe of Matter and strange and curious it is in its reactions, aberrations, workings, destiny.
Physical science — and psychology in its present methods is only an extension of physical science — conducts its search into things from down upwards; it regards Matter as the foundation and the bottom of things and having searched into that foundation, got as it thinks to the very bottom, it believes, or once believed, it has by that very fact understood their depths, their centre, their height and top. But this is a naive error. The truth of things is in their depths or at their centre and even at their top. The truth of consciousness also is to be found at its top and in its depths or at its centre; but when we enter into the depths of consciousness or when we try to reach its centre, we go off into trance and likewise before we get to its top, we go off" into trance.
Our searches into Matter also are vitiated by the fact that in Matter consciousness is in a trance and gives no apparent response to
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our probings. In living Matter, not yet mental, still subconscious, it does give sometimes a reply, but not one that we can understand, and, as for mind in the animal, it is only consciousness half-awakened out of the original trance of inconscient Matter: even in the human being ,it starts from an original nescience, its expressions, its data, all that we can ordinarily observe of it, are the movements of Ignorance fumbling for knowledge. We cannot understand from these alone what consciousness really is nor discover its source or its supreme possibilities or its limits if indeed it has any limits and is not like being itself, infinite and illimitable. Only if we can get away from this imperfection and ignorance to some top of its possibilities or to its latent depths or some hidden centre, can we discover its true nature and through it the very self and reality of our being.
How do we know that there is a top to consciousness or an inner centre, since these are not apparent on the face of things? By its supernormal, not its normal manifestations and phenomena, for the top of things is always supernormal, it is only the bottom and what is near to the bottom that are normal, at any rate to our ordinary consciousness in the material universe. Especially we can know by the supernormal becoming normal to us — by Yoga.
1st September 1947
SRI AUROBINDO
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(A LETTER)
T^HERE is indeed something preparing to descend and the dream was probably a suggestion to you to stay so as to receive its touch after which your sadhana could proceed at home without difficulty, as there would be something else within you doing the sadhana with your constant assent as the one necessity. The only difficulty in the way of health is a certain obscurity in the body consciousness itself which makes it consent readily to habitual touches of the force that makes for illness; otherwise if the body consciousness as well as the mind and vital were open, any illness that came would immediately be dissipated. Keep a quiet and steady will for the opening of the consciousness and the union and do not allow depression or any idea of frustration. Keep also a concentrated call in the heart. With those two things the result is sure.
18-9-1934
SRI AUROBINDO
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Book II, Canto I
The World Stair
A limitless movement filled a limitless peace.
..................................................
Where Space is a vast experiment of the soul,
In a deep oneness of all things that are,
The universe of the Unknown arose.
ASWAPATHY enters the unknown universe; but it is not altogether unknown since though not seen actually it has a resemblance, a kinship to all that has been visualised in dreams or imagination; it is pervaded by an unlimited peace and an illimitable movement; and the vast space seems to be a laboratory for the soul's unending experimentations.
A self-creation without end or pause
..................................................
It poured into the Ever-stable's flux
A bacchic rapture and revel of Ideas,
The Eternal offers himself as the stable base; his force, the creative force in the vortex of its dance and its ecstasy, pours forth the seeds or the subtle truth formulations that sprout up in their gross forms in the universe; the Stable thus becomes the dynamis; the Being the Becoming and in the process of the bacchic rapture and the revelry are flung a myriad energies containing the principles of their self-determination and self-development; it is a self-creation since it is the same Brahman who is present in both the passive and the active aspects, and it is a self-extension.
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The Eternal's stillness saw an unmoved joy
His universal Power at work display
In plots of pain and dramas of delight
The wonder and beauty of her will to be.
..................................................
Here all experience was a single plan,
The thousandfold expression of the One.
The Supreme in his poise of stillness, witnesses in an unruffled, detached fashion the plot, be it a comedy or tragedy, unfolding; its culmination in pain or pleasure convey to him the same delight since he has the capacity of drawing an equal rasa; they are a single movement; the various experiences flow from the One in the many; the positive is concealed in the negative. 'For the positive and the negative exist not only side by side, but in relation to each other and by each other; they complete...and explain one another. Each by itself is not really known; we only begin to know it in its deeper truth when we can read into it the suggestions of its apparent opposite. It is through such a profounder catholic intuition and not by exclusive logical oppositions that our intelligence ought to approach the Absolute.'1
He was one spirit with that immensity.
..................................................
Aspects of being donned world-outline; forms
That open moving doors on things divine,
..................................................
The symbols of the Spirit's reality,
The living bodies of the Bodiless
The One in his vast self-expansion appears an immensitude; the Being dons innumerable forms, but the material form itself is a symbol of the indwelling reality; the bodiless assumes several bodies; the world itself and the myriad formations are a frame-work to contain the uncontainable; they are the peep-holes disclosing the spirit draped in the manifest.
1 The Life Divine, p. 341.
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The heaven-hints that invade our earthly lives,
The dire imaginations dreamed by Hell,
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Were set in their sublime proportions there.
The joys of heaven, the tortures of hell that are pictured or imagined are seen there in their absoluteness; their unmitigated or undiminished reflection on the earth may prove devastating; the instrumentation is too weak to stand the impact.
They crowded the widened spaces of his mind,
..................................................
These now became new portions of himself,
..................................................
Or the embroidered tissue of his sense:
These took the place of intimate human things
And moved as close companions of his thoughts,
All things that have remained occult, remote and strange to the normal consciousness of the human mind, have now become familiar; they have become so intimate as to form part of the tissue of the over-mind consciousness that has dawned on him; they move as bosom companions sharing his thoughts.
Unnumbered tones struck from one harmony's strings;
..................................................
Brought notes of some perfection yet unseen,
..................................................
Only was missing the sole timeless Word
..................................................
' The integer of the Spirit's perfect sum
That equates the unequal All to the equal One,
The single sign interpreting every sign,
The absolute index to the Absolute.
The multi-formations are the different notes struck to produce a single harmony;
they are the several orchestrations to create a symphony;
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they are the signs and the symbols of a perfection to come and still hidden; each has a part to play in the advancement of the design, a brick to contribute in the construction of the mansion of Perfection; there is something missing: a principle of equation between the one and the many who exceeds the one; "This incoercible unity in all divisions and diversities is the mathematics of the Infinite, indicated in a verse of the Upanishads — 'This is the complete and That is the complete; subtract the complete from the complete, the complete is the remainder,"1 there is not yet found the index to the Absolute, the master-key that can open the mystery of every form, unriddle and interpret.
'Brahman, as he exceeds the passivity and the activity, so too exceeds the unity and multiplicity. He is one in himself, but not with a self-limiting unity exclusive of the power of multiplicity, ... he is not the mathematical integer, one, which is incapable of containing the hundred and is therefore less than the hundred One in himself, he is one in the many and the many are one in him."2
He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
Aswapathy in his heightened consciousness sees a number of subtle worlds walled in the inner self; the graded order of the worlds appears clearly to his mystic vision; they stand one over the other producing the impression of a mountain chariot of the Gods towering into unimaginable heights.
Climbing with foam-maned waves to the Supreme '
..................................................
As climbs a storeyed temple-tower to heaven
Built by the aspiring soul of man to live
Near to his dream of the Invisible.
..................................................
It marries the earth to screened eternities.
1 The Life Divine,
p. 307. ' The Life Divine, p. 516, 517.
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The heights to which these worlds rise are like the waves, each of which is higher than the preceding, invading the sky or they are like the man-built temple towers representing an attempt, an aspiration to reach the Beyond, to unite the earth and the heaven, to establish a communion with the Divine, to emerge from the lower to the higher nature.
Alone it points us to our journey back
..................................................
Planted on earth it holds in it all realms:
It is a brief compendium of the Vast.
This was the single stair to being's goal.
The higher has its foundation on the lower; all the potential is there concealed in the Inconscience; the light is concealed in the darkness; ignorance is the crust of wisdom; the earth is a compendium of the Vast; it is from the basic foundation of the earth that ascent and aspiration are possible since the One has taken a leap and has to re-enact his come-back through the several stages of his descent 'these grades have marked her giant downward plunge'.
It models in us our diviner parts,
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Makes yearn this life of flesh to intangible aims,
..................................................
If earth were all and this were not in her,
Thought could not be nor life-delight's response:
..................................................
This higher scheme of being is our cause
And holds the key to our ascending fate;
In the earth nature is the hidden spark; it is this which creates constant
dissatisfaction; it is the irritant that makes him feel his insufficiency;
cherish higher yearnings that satisfy not the body alone but the spirit also; if
that has not been the aim, this life of flesh cannot have the higher urges to
model itself on the divine; the design of moulding itself on a higher pattern
affords the key for man's aspiration
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and struggle; if it has been the intention to permit him to wallow in the mire of obscurity, of darkness of inconscience, there is no need for the thinking mind, an unquenchable thirst for the Beyond and a hunger for perfection.
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state;
..................................................
An idol of self is our mortality.
..................................................
An atavism of higher births is hers,
..................................................
And her return to immortality;
The Supreme has made the sacrifice by his downward plunge and omnipresence in every form created by his puissance, his Shakti; she gives the shape, the abode for his indwelling; man therefore is not alone and need not grow despondent in his strivings; the Immortal himself is there lodged within and can guide him aright; the earth itself is not an isolated fragment but is a part of a wider fabric of interconnected, subtle and unseen worlds; the urges from above, their pressures on his life are always active on him; the spirit has a memory of its higher births; man therefore can be a conscious partner in the movement for a return to immortality taking advantage of the guidance of the spirit within and the urges from above.
His vast design accepts a puny start.
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Yet some first image of greatness trembles there,
..................................................
This faint and fluid sketch of soul called man
Shall stand out on the background of long Time
A glowing epitome of eternity, A little point reveal the infinitudes.
The inconceivable and vast design of the Almighty starts with a
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| OUR HOMAGE |
P. C. Chandak, Northern Flour Mills, Calcutta |
| OUR HOMAGE |
Shyam Sundar Beriwa |
| OUR HOMAGE |
Shyam' Sunder Kedia |
| OUR HOMAGE |
M/S Naffar Chandra Jute Mills Ltd., Calcutta |
puny beginning of obscurity and inconscience; but even there in Matter, the quivering of the concealed bright image is not undisclosed to the knowing eye of intuition; man, the individual soul is a time bubble sailing on the vast sea of the timeless, sucking in the experience in the several cycles of his mortality; he is an infinite-seeking finite; he is a speck but the whole universe is contained therein; he is a drop but it encloses the whole ocean and this discovery takes an agonic struggle.
A Mystery's process is the universe.
..............................................
Where zero held infinity in its sum
And All and Nothing were a single term,
An eternal negative, a matrix Nought:
The whole process of manifestation presents itself as a mystery too deep to be probed by human reason; there are so many layers of consciousness, the material, the vital and the mental and behind there are a number of subtle worlds acting and reacting on each other; man may be assailed by a doubt when he looks at the variegated phenomena whether there is any meaning in what appears illogical and haphazard; he may be stricken by a wonder whether there is any destination for all this movement; it is only a higher intuition that can find a binding unity in what appears to be so disjointed; it sees the fundamental sameness on which occurs the play of the difference; it is possible to yield to a temptation that everything comes from and sinks into a zero; it may be asserted that the world is Nought and that everything after a fitful glow has its rest there; but nothing comes out of nothing and the apparent zero has all the potentialities that manifest them-selves; from the swoon of Inconscience, each form comes into existence bespeaking or symbolising the glory of the eternal of which they are a part. 'The Absolute is not a mystery of infinite blankness nor a supreme sum of negations; nothing can manifest that is not justified by some self-power....'1
A slow reversal's movement then took place
..............................................
1 The Life Divine, p. 291,
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Upon earth's new-born soil God's tread was heard
...............................................
Across the thick smoke of earth's ignorance
A Mind began to see and look at forms
And groped for knowledge in the nescient Night:
After the plunge into the inconscience, the reverse movement from involution to evolution commences; a gaseous explosion, the star dust and the solar system and the earth and in the all-encompassing smoke of Ignorance, the consciousness looks around trying to come back to its own; but feels helpless and held down by the stone-grip of Matter.
Because eternal eyes turned on earth's gulfs
...............................................
And saw a shadow of the Unknowable
...............................................
Creation's search for self began its stir.
...............................................
A miracle of the Absolute was born,
Infinity put on a finite soul,
All ocean lived within a wandering drop,
...............................................
To live this Mystery out our souls came here.
Matter slowly struggles into life; life into mind; the mental man becomes aware of something within which is greater than life and mind; this leads him on his voyage of strivings; the quest is reused by a dim reflection of the Infiniti's image on the earth's gulf; this self-look of the Lord makes man restless to reach beyond the shadow to the substance; the mental man wakes into the spiritual man; he realises that the goal to be reached, the mystery of existence to be solved, lies in his self-recognition, self-discovery that he is the infinite embodied in the finite, an ocean confined in a drop, the concrete that should grow into the absolute, a little point that has to reveal the infinitudes.
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A Seer within who knows the ordered plan
...............................................
Inspires our ascent to viewless heights
As once the abysmal leap to birth and life.
...............................................
Bearing the burden of the world's desire.
...............................................
Above him was the white immobile Ray,
Around him the eternal Silences.
...............................................
World after world disclosed its guarded powers,
...............................................
But still the invisible Magnet drew his soul.
The same seer wisdom that has a pre-vision of the entire scheme, the purpose and the goal, that has precipitated the fall of the spirit into the abyss, led to birth into life, now impels him on to traverse the spiral of the ascent back to the original station of super conscience pure; he bears the burden of mankind on his shoulders; he represents the aspiration of humanity for liberation from ignorance to knowledge, limitation to boundlessness, mortality to immortality; no period is set for this limitless ascent; he is companioned by none but the gleaming steady white Ray which is his guide; as he climbs, the different worlds, disclose their powers; but still, there are worlds and worlds beckoning him; rest is not for him; the unseen magnet is there pulling him on further and further; and he trudges on supported by the strength that flows to him from the silence and the pro founds of his being.
Canto 2
THE KINGDOM OF SUBTLE MATTER
In the impalpable field of secret self,
This little outer being's vast support
Parted from vision by earth's solid fence,
...............................................
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And found a life that lived not by the flesh,
...............................................
There dwell earth nature's shining origins:
The perfect plans on which she moulds her works,
...............................................
Unsullied by the attaint of mortal thought
The massive structures built by man draw their strength from the deep-laid foundations that are unseen and buried in the earth; similarly the gross physical being derives all its sustenance from the subtle inner being; Aswapathy transcends the separative wall between the outer and the inner man; enters the region of the secret self; finds a life that lives without the trappings of flesh or body; though the fife there is immaterial and therefore impalpable, he could with the help of a new consciousness see it clearly; that world has a kinship with ours with a difference that it is the origin and source of everything manifest here; the earthly has its perfection and beauty there; they shine in their unsullied and untainted brilliance in that region.
This brilliant roof of our descending plane,
...............................................
It shields our ceiling of terrestrial mind
From deathless suns and the streaming of God's rain,
Yet canalises a strange irised glow,
And bright dews drip from the Immortal's sky.
A passage for the Powers that move our days,
...............................................
Is hidden by a tapestry of dreams;
Heaven's meanings steal through it as through a veil,
...............................................
Some high original beauty forfeiting,
Thence exiled here consents to an earthly tinge.
The dense coating of ignorance acts as a roof protecting us from the lightning glare of the sun and the deluge-rain of the Gods above; it acts as the gates of a barrage regulating the flow of the descent so
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that the human instrumentation can stand and benefit by it; only a glow of the prismatic flashes, the drips of a few dew drops from the Beyond are permitted to reach the earth; dreams are made the routes through which the communications from the heights may reach the man; what takes a shape on earth is an apology for the original; it is an exile putting on a meagre beauty consistent with its earthly habitation; its glory forfeited, it has to live in subdued splendour.
In its antechambers of splendid privacy
Matter and soul in conscious union meet
Like lovers in a lonely secret place:
......................................................
And mingling make the high and the low worlds one.
...............................................
The spirit's leap towards body touches ground.
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Already it wears outlasting death and birth,
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A covering of its immortality
...............................................
Fit to endure the rub of Change and Time.
...............................................
And bears the soul from world to higher world,
The immutable Being and his executive dynamis have their rendezvous in the private antechambers of subtle matter; they enter into a lover's compact by which they become one and united; they together create the high and the low worlds, but there is a oneness connecting them and that base is provided by the Purusha; the spirit " takes a downward plunge; animates and lends a lustre to the dull and inert Matter; it wears a covering of immortality that can stand the wear and tear of its passage through several mutations; it is this inner subtle spirit that is more real and enduring than the outer physical form; and when the sheath of the body is cast off in death, it can ascend to the higher regions freed of the burdensome body.
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Then its return resumes that heavier dress.
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A lucent envelope of self-disguise
Was woven round the secret spirit in things.
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Fair on its peaks, it has dangerous nether planes;
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Invests with grace the demon and the snake.
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A heaven of creative truths above,
A cosmos of harmonious dreams between,
A chaos of dissolving forms below,
It plunges lost in our inconscient base.
Out of its fall our denser Matter came.
The spirit freed of its mortal entanglement flies after death to the peaks from which it has descended; is no longer covered by any vestures; shines in its transparency; but on its return to earth it has to don the heavy dress of Matter; but prior to its assumption of a gross body, the subtle body is always in existence: it is the technique of the atomic void that gives it the lucent envelope;
Therefore we arrive at this truth of Matter that there is a conceptive self-extension of Being which works itself out in the universe as substance or object of consciousness and which cosmic Mind and Life in their creative action represent through atomic division and aggregation as the thing we call Matter'.1
The subtle body survives death; it enters the wonderland where all the meticulous care is bestowed on perfection of form and expression only; but these glittering peaks have their infernal depths where a grace and charm are given even to the snake and the demon; it has therefore to steer clear of these perils:
'The principle and the power of perfection are there in the sub-conscient but wrapped up in the tegument or veil of the lower Maya, a mute premonition emerging as an unrealised ideal; in the superconscient they await, open, eternally realised, but still separated from us by the veil of our self-ignorance. It is above, then, and not either in
1 The Life Divine, p. 220,
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our present poise nor below it that we must seek for the reconciling power and knowledge.... The subconscient has this life of the All and the superconscient has it, but under conditions which necessitate our motion upwards. For not towards the Godhead concealed in the "inconscient ocean where darkness is wrapped within darkness," but towards the Godhead seated in the sea of eternal light, in the highest ether of our being, is the original impetus which has carried upward the evolving soul to the type of our humanity.'1
The creations and the dissolutions that take place on the earth have their roots in the subtle physical; the gross matter acts as a diluting agent so that their impact may be in the right measure on the earth; our iridescent rich imaginings may be traced to that covert front; but due to the imperfect conveyance or medium through which they are transmitted, knowledge is tainted by error and beauty by ugliness; thus the subtle physical looks like a three storied building; at the top is the superconscient having all the creative truth; in the middle is the haze of dreams or visions through which they may reach the earth; and the lowest is the base of the Inconscience where they meet a dissolution.
This fallen world became a nurse of souls
Inhabited by concealed divinity.
...............................................
All here is driven by an insentient will.
...............................................
This mire must harbour the orchid and the rose,
...............................................
As if a slain god left a golden trust
To a blind force and an imprisoned soul.
An immortal godhead's perishable parts
She must reconstitute from fragments lost,
Re-word from a document complete elsewhere
Her doubtful title to her divine Name.
The plunge of the Divine into Inconscience makes the earth, a field of nescience, the theatre for his manifestations; the immortal
1 The Life Divine, p. 199.
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conceals himself in all the perishable forms; the gulf of nescience struggles into life and thought by his impulsions; the creative force of the Eternal has subconscious memories of a happiness that has been hers once; she struggles in all formations to recapture or approach that Bliss; the orchid and the rose take their shape on the mire of the earth on this principle; the inert and the dull earth yields under the pressure of the spirit which feels itself an alien in Matter.
'The Inconscient to our perceptions is the beginning and the end; the self-conscious soul seems hardly more than a temporary accident, a fragile blossom upon this great, dark and monstrous Ashwatha-tree of the universe. Or if we suppose the soul to be eternal, it appears at least as a foreigner, an alien and not over well-treated guest in the reign of this vast Inconscience. If not an accident in the Inconscient Darkness, it is perhaps a mistake, a stumble downwards of the superconscient Light.'1
It looks as if a blind force and an imprisoned soul, have divided between themselves the responsibility of administering a trust, left in their hands by a god that has been slain; the struggle of the Supreme to come back to his own, may be interpreted in two ways: Purusha and Prakriti may be seen struggling to piece together the broken parts so as to reconstitute his complete image, or endeavouring to fill in a document, complete elsewhere with the available material, so as to establish their claim, their title to immortality.
She has accepted as her nature's need And given to man as his stupendous work A labour to the gods impossible.
Nature though endowed with tremendous energies has to work through petty forms and with frail blunt instruments; at last she has been able to hit upon man; she cast upon him the giant burden, a work that is beyond the capacity even of gods; earth is the scene of evolutionary activity; the law of progression is from the lower to the higher and even the highest; man therefore or the earth is the necessary and the unavoidable base to take off to immortality; even the gods cast in the rigid typal moulds have to forfeit the felicities of the
1 The Life Divine, p. 433.
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higher regions and come to the earth to reach the ultimate goal.
A fragment here is caught of heaven's design;
Else could we never hope for greater life...............................................
Even in this prison-house of outer form,
...............................................
The enthusiasm of a divine surprise
Pervades our life, a mystic stir is felt,
The complacency of man, his self-sufficiency with the little he has in life, is disturbed by the divine design sometimes flashing on him; even the outer form of the body which is the prison-house of the spirit is invaded by a divine rapture; the whole being feels a stir; and he catches certain intimations from the invisible.
Then sinks the sacred orgy of delight,
...............................................
Earth's eyes half see, her forces half create;
Her rarest works are copies of heaven's art.
...............................................
Her forms hide what they house and only mime
The unseized miracle of self-born shapes
...............................................
His genius born from an inconscient soil.
To copy on earth's copies is his art.
The ecstasy is short-lived; it recedes as fast as a tide and leaves him flat; little remains but a glow in which he vainly struggles to recapture that fleeting experience; the heavenly impulse gone, the radiance is sought to be confined in a form; but the vesture hides more than displays the brilliance; this is the fate of genius which is an outgrowth from the soil of Inconscience; the forms on-.the earth are a copy of the original, the archetype in heaven; man copies the copy and therefore it is twice removed from the original.
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And hardly with his heart's blood he achieves
His transient house of the divine Idea,
His figure of a Time-inn for the Unborn
...............................................
Beyond our reach the eternal marvels blaze.
The persistent efforts of man to enshrine the divine Idea prove fruitless; the idea considered final for the time-being has to yield ground in the course of advancement of knowledge; further discoveries dislodge the theories once considered infallible; therefore our figurations of truth are like way-side inns on the long road of time to the as yet un-sighted home of truth; the marvel is beyond reach and calls us on by its blaze.
Only when we have climbed above ourselves,
A line of the Transcendent meets our road
...............................................
The figures of eternity arrive.
...............................................
They espouse our mortal brevity awhile,
...............................................
These glimmerings point to the secret of our birth
...............................................
What we are there and here on earth shall be
...............................................
Our nature's glass shows not our real self;
That greatness still abides held back within.
The gleams of the Beyond, the figures of eternity, can be caught even for a brief while in a vision that transcends the earthly hedges and the material fences immuring the soul within the narrow shell of the ego; the mortal life feels a sense of liberation during those fleeting though golden moments; they reveal the roots, the origins of our being and its present possibilities; our nature has not the transparency that can reveal the real self; it is opaque and folds beck and conceals it within,
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A vast Unknown is round us and within;
All things are wrapped in the dynamic One:
A subtle link of union joins all life.
Thus all creation is a single chain:
We are not left alone in a closed scheme
But there is an ambience of the Omnipresent, an immanence of the Invisible; everything that has the appearance of an individual unit, of a difference on the surface, has a basic sameness; the envelope may vary but the energising principle is common; man is fundamentally the same but races may differ; the chain of oneness, therefore binds the entire creation; man is not left to shift for himself or thrown to the mercy of the inconscient Force; he need not feel a sense of isolation from the Eternal; he is not destitute as he imagines; he is in a graded world and is bound to receive a pull upwards.
Our being looks beyond its walls of mind
And it communicates with greater worlds;
...............................................
There is the unfallen height of all we are
...............................................
Dreams to transcribe and make a part of life
In its own native style and living tongue
...............................................
Worlds are there nearer to those absolute realms,
...............................................
And spirit is not hampered by its frame
Travelling beyond the outpost of mind, man places himself in contact with greater worlds; there he discovers the true nature and grandeur of his being, un dwarfed by the contaminating and the restrictive influences of Nescience; what he sees is the dream he ardently desires to translate into the reality and make it a part of his life; in the higher world the spirit is un-encumbered with a body, impeding its suppleness and activity; accomplishment never lags behind the response to truth and perception and performance are simultaneous,
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The rapid net of an intuitive clasp
Captures the fugitive happiness we desire.
...............................................
Adopts the seeing of immortal eyes
...............................................
Pursues the spirit of beauty to its home.
...............................................
Following his rapture in things as sign and guide;
...............................................
A genius of creative Immanence,
Makes all creation deeply intimate:
A fourth dimension of aesthetic sense
Where all is in ourselves, ourselves in all,
The ineffable bliss that is fitfully experienced by man, cannot be caught in the meshes of reason; it is only when man rises above the mind into the domain of intuition that he can make an effort with partial success perhaps of capturing the fleeting happiness; but the experience, the taste of that delight, puts him always in pursuit of the Supreme; the route to the Lord is unknown; however he picks up the route guided by the sign-boards of the rapture and beauty provided in the Almighty's creation; the common inhabitant of the indwelling intelligence, establishes an intimacy, a closeness between all; a new dimension opens up with the dawn of the spirit of identity; the separative walls between the seer and the seen crumbles down and he becomes both the subject and the object.
In us too the intuitive Fire can burn;
...............................................
But rarely burns the flame nor burns for long,
...............................................
A veil is kept, something is still held back,
Lest, captives of the beauty and the joy,
Our souls forget to the Highest to aspire.
The inadequate instrumentation that has come to the human lot, can be sub
talised; he can adopt the seeing of the immortal eyes; he can
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strive to retain the fire of intuition; but unfortunately intuition visits not all in the first instance; it visits only the chosen few; even in them, it stays for a short spell and flits away; it does not disclose the entire vision, lest its fascination and joy should enthrall us and make us oblivious of the Eternal, the highest goal of our aspiration.
In that fair subtle realm behind our own
The form is all and physical gods are kings.
...............................................
All is a miracle of symmetric charm,
A fantasy of perfect line and rule.
...............................................
An intricate rapture riots in a small space:
...............................................
Content to be, it has need of nothing more.
...............................................
It had no room for fault, no power to fail.
In this subtle physical which is behind our surface self in the subliminal, the perfection aimed at is one of form only; everything has a wonderful symmetry, a miraculous charm; there is a dreamlike grace, a fantasy of beauty touching even the smallest; in whatever shape or size they are found, they all reveal a workmanship, an artistry that makes us enraptured; there is no scope for any blemish or any fault to creep in.
He moved in a divine, yet kindred world
Admiring marvellous forms so near to ours
...............................................
A captive of its own beauty and ecstasy,
...............................................
The spirit stood back effaced behind its frame.
...............................................
Life in its boundaries lingered satisfied
...............................................
And thought not of a greater work undone.
...............................................
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The beautiful body of a soul at ease,
Like one who laughs in sweet and sunlit groves,
Childlike she swung in her gold cradle of joy.
Aswapathy lingers for a brief while in this world of physical perfection; it has lines of similarity to our own world, the only difference being that the form at this end has an excellence that is earth's despair; but this world also has its limitations; the spirit here is framed almost to a self-effacement by the beauties and the charms of nature; the Purusha seems to be in a stupor of self-satisfaction; both nature and the spirit seem to run away from the larger work, the higher task; both seem to revel in the beauty and the delight of the splendour of a shell; in an easy-going fashion, they repose in sunlit groves and swing in the gold cradle of joy; they avoid the adventure of straying from the set grooves or abandoning the familiar and the trodden paths.
Our spirit tires of being's surfaces,
Transcended is the splendour of the form;
...............................................
He left that fine material Paradise.
His destiny lay beyond in larger Space.
The spirit cannot be lulled into sleep for long by the external surface splendour; it gets tired and cloyed; Aswapathy stays for a time admiring its material perfection and moves beyond into the larger space for his aim is the Reality and not the misleading, deceptive, though enchanting surface sheath.
Y. S. R. CHANDRAN
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IT was in winter 1944 that I first came across "The Life Divine", the magnum opus of Sri Aurobindo. I don't remember how I came across the book. I only remember that I very much wanted to read him and even felt his greatness in the air urging me to know more about him and thus get closer to him by studying his works. At that time I had gone to O T S Kakul to finish my training as an officer in the army. I was much younger then, full of zest for life, and having a sort of career before me. The training was, as usual, very tough and tiring and left little time for study. Yet I remember reading Sri Aurobindo in the evening sitting on the G. I. Steel trunk facing the fire-place, lit with glowing embers, while outside all lay covered with snow.
And what an experience it was! I went into ecstasies as I read "The Life Divine," with great avidity page after page and wondered how a mortal could write like that.
It reminds me of a similar experience, when, as a student in Govt. College, Lahore, I first saw Uday Shankar dance in the Plaza in the late thirties. On that particular evening Sir Henry Craik, the then Governor of Punjab, presided over the function. And I remember, for a few seconds, I could not breathe for joy when I saw the first few steps of the great dancer, and exclaimed to myself "how sublime is Indian culture."
However, I found Sri Aurobindo's expression not only lucid, thought-laden and eloquent; the sweep of his spiritual comprehension was simply super-human.. I was filled with the joy of discovery as he brought forth gems of spiritual thoughts, rare and serene: and the psyche within me rejoiced identifying itself at once with our sublime and ancient heritage. And it appeared to me as if I had got the very thing I was looking for all these years, the very thing that "would give my fife a sense of fulfilment. It was a soul calling unto soul.
I was also filled with great national pride (for then we were being ruled by foreigners and the nation was straining at the leash for complete Independence) that here was a noble son of India who could express himself in English so wonderfully and thus open before us
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the vast and limitless treasures of ancient Indian spirituality that could lead the country and humanity from darkness to light.
Sri Aurobindo came into my life when Independence of the country was in the offing. There was the national upsurge in the country. And we were young and full of enthusiasm. Being officers in the Army we used to come into contact with the rulers, could exchange ideas with them and could often plead with impunity, Englishmen as they were, the justness and the fairness of the cause. "Bliss was it in that Dawn to be alive". To give a concrete example: first time in 1947 at a dinner in Poona attended by a senior British General leaving for England we drank a toast: "Gentlemen, the President" instead of "Gentlemen, the King" and first time the band in attendance struck ''Jana Gana Mana" instead of "God save the King!" And I remember small-sized as I am, I felt a few inches taller that evening, elated and with head held high.
In 1950 I met in Darjeeling, where I was then posted, a theosophist lady from England who was on her way back from Tibet where she had gone looking for some 'Mahatmas'. Being interested in such subjects I invited her to tea and heard her experiences. She was deeply interested in the Mahatmas and the Yogis. She was returning to England. Arid I told her that the biggest thing about India was Sri Aurobindo, and she took me at my word and went to Pondicherry from where she wrote to me her wonderful experiences saying:
"I have seen the Master, and he is as I had seen him spiritually all-wise, all-powerful and infinitely serene. He has white hair and blue eyes... reflecting the Infinite. I was fortunate indeed to have come here though I could but get a glimpse of him for a moment.... I shall be in Pondicherry all the month of August. Probably shall dissolve in Bliss near Sri Aurobindo." This is just to show how some sensitive souls reacted to the gracious Presence of the Master.
I had planned to go South in 1950 (in December) to set my eyes on this god-like man, but to my great dismay, the Master passed away before I could make it.
THE MESSAGE OF BEAUTY AND DELIGHT
In his booklet, "The National Value of Art," Sri Aurobindo gives
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us a significant definition of progress in life in terms of Beauty and Delight. He says, "the object of existence is not the practice of virtue for its own sake but Ananda, delight; and progress consists not in rejecting beauty and delight, but in rising from the lower to the higher, the less complete to the more complete beauty and delight."
We are told that an average man is interested in the lower sensual pleasures for the satisfaction of his sense organs and vital desires. Gradually he goes up the Jacob's ladder by cultivating his feelings and emotions through "social culture, and restraint in action and expression."1
Later on, his aesthetic sense is developed through liberal education, and the arts like music, painting and sculpture. Thus developed, he "enjoys the poetry of life, the wonder, the pathos, beauty, terror and horror of life, of man, of Nature, of the phenomenal manifestation of God."2 But Sri Aurobindo hastens to add that this is not the highest development. Complete metamorphosis takes place only by "bringing body, heart and mind into touch with the spirit — the Spirit in which all the rest of the human being reposes."3 The most wonderful thing that happens at this stage of spiritualisation is that this fully integrated person starts seeing beauty in everything. It is here that man stands on the threshold of godhood and obtains to perpetual joy.
Now this perception of beauty everywhere is very significant. In the final stage of evolution the artist has become mystic or a sage. Now he remains in a state of perpetual Ananda. He roams the earth "with inward glory crowned." He becomes the 'Lord and owner of his face,' a fully emancipated being. Now he has no use for art, for all the time he is perceiving the inexhaustible and varied beauty of creation. As is stated in the Kouran Sharif "where soever ye turn, there is the face of Allah." So in the final attainment, this experience of Vismad becomes accessible to man!
EFFICACY OF THE VISION OR THE VISION IN ACTION
This total involvement with Great Beauty, this process of being taken up by something greater and vaster than ourselves is very
1 2 3 The National Value of Art.
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meaningful indeed. This involvement with Great Beauty invariably leads to enlightened action. This is the moment when some one's glance can make a poet of us. It was the visionary glimpse of Beatrice that set Dante on his fateful journey leading up to Paradise. It was during such moments that Bhai Nand Lai perceived the glory that was Guru Gobind Singh. These are occasions when a 'moment becomes eternity'. Other examples of vision in action are Christ delivering the Sermon on the Mount, Prince Siddhartha walking away from his palace, and Guru Gobind Singh riding his blue steed into the battlefield.
INTEGRAL OR PURNA YOGA
This new emphasis on the concept of Integral Yoga is one of the major contributions of Sri Aurobindo to Indian thought. It is as modern and bold as it is expressive and true.
Now Yoga, — the art of attaining to the Divine — is something peculiarly and distinctly Indian and our country's unique contribution to the world culture. The Yoga is the fulfilment of the infinite longings in man to transcend the limitations of mortality. Here the seemingly mortal man leaps forward to immortality. It is the birth of godhood in man, a transition from men to gods as mentioned in the Gurubani.
Mostly the method employed for this attainment is meditation, that is, concentration on a particular spiritual symbol accompanied by 'Japa', audible or inaudible, of a holy 'Mantram' or WORD.
In India, this ancient and sacred knowledge, in due course of time, 'blossomed into a hundred flowers' such as Jnana, Karma, Bhakti or Hatha Yoga or Tantricism, and various Buddhist schools of meditation.
In these olden schools of Yoga, emphasis is laid on the development of some particular aspect of human personality. For example, in Hatha Yoga 'body is almost deified'; in Jnana Yoga emphasis is on developing the mind, making it calm and serene; in Tantra it is the Kundalini that is awakened.
Sri Aurobindo, the master of the Integral Yoga, brings out the one-sidedness and inadequacy of the old systems which often led to
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lop-sided development. Sri Aurobindo maintains that the ultimate aim of life is the complete self-integration in which action, love and wisdom the salient features of Karma, Bhakti and Jnana Yoga are equally emphasized. Thus the Integral Yoga as expounded by Sri Aurobindo "represents the crowning fulfilment of the traditional yoga systems of India, I" for it incorporates their inherent truths in a higher synthesis.
Throughout Sri Aurobindo emphasizes this trinity of action, love and wisdom in his Integral Yoga. This brings love and wisdom in human relations and the ability for efficient action or what the Gita says the 'skill in works'. .So while discussing yoga we should not lose sight of the wood for the trees. The object of yoga does not stop at mere realization of the Divine. This must lead to enlightened action informed by wisdom and love for humanity and "for all sentient creatures."
Those who abjure action and rest content with personal salvation have a negative approach to society which is waiting to be reformed by them. Hence the necessity for Integral or Puma Yoga—balanced union of action and meditation. Simultaneous growth of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual facets of human personality, "the full flowering of the total individual" alone will lead to the performance of the dynamic and enlightened action. An enlightened action, selfless and fruitful is the most important manifestation of the evolved and integrated personality.
It is very essential to apply in the sphere of daily living and social action the light and power of meditation.
"Man is essentially an historical being. He cannot completely fulfil himself without actively relating himself to the march of history*"2 Transformation of society and creation of a new set of values in a decadent order, "fighting with such forces of evil as despotism . and tyranny and social injustice are the demands of the divine will operative in history." Here Sri Guru Gobind Singh's bani becomes understandable to us: "The Lord sent me to this world to uphold Dharma." Here the divine will becomes operative in history. Hence the creation of the Punj-Piaras, (New Men or, the twice-born) and the Khalsa for the job allotted by the Divine.
1 H. R. Chaudhuri— "Integral Yoga",
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Get hold of the tyrants and the evil-doers and destroy them. Thus a fully integrated personality at one with the Eternal becomes an effective instrument of the Divine for upholding Dharma; for complete regeneration of society by up-rooting the old corrupt order, "to destroy the Corrupt order root and branch."
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF AN INTEGRATED PERSONALITY
It is interesting to behold the wonderful metamorphosis that takes place in one who aspires to the Divine through harmonious development of the various faculties:
(a) In him the soul and the body, "the flesh and the spirit are reconciled." Process of meditation becomes effortless and spontaneous.
(b) He obtains to "waking union with the Divine," — perpetual contact with the Source (Sat-Chit-Anand) — is maintained; "ceaselessly worship the flame of spiritual fire kindled in the heart."
(c) "Has Cosmic consciousness and deep urge for Cosmic welfare", what we call goodwill for all and welfare of all.
(d) Inward spiritual growth leads on to varied and richer experiences opening new vistas of beauty and delight. My Lord is ever fresh—new and ever Beautiful, concept is revealed.
This is what Sri Aurobindo unfolds before us in his exposition of integral yoga—a balanced union of meditation and action.
SAVITRI-THE CONQUEST OF FATE
'Savitri' — a legend and a symbol is the last work of the Master and my latest love. This eight-hundred-page poem has been described as "the Word of Sri Aurobindo". The late Sir Younghusband regarded it as the greatest poem of the century.
While going through the sublime work in ecstatic delight, I would jot down my reactions as and when they would come on the
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back of the cover or on the fly-leaf. I was still in the Army. One day the brain-wave came; I got these jottings typed out and sent them to the Secretary, Pondicherry Ashram, Shri Nolini Kanta Gupta (considered an authority on "Savitri" and one of the leading intellectuals in the country) just to make sure that I was on the right track and understood the inner significance of the great poem. That was in October, 1968. Prompt came the reply that read like this:
Pondicherry-2
11-10-1968
Dear Sir,
Your v. interesting note.
I am
particularly glad to learn that you like "Savitri" and have taken to it as your guide. I am an adorer of "Savitri"...Your Comments
are absolutely correct and I am sure you are on the right track. You have simply to follow on.With cordial greetings and Good Wishes,
Nolini Kanta Gupta
I must say that on receipt of this note my vanity was tickled to an extent and I became more confident of myself.
Anyway, here are, please, some of the observations on "Savitri" that were sent to Pondicherry by me:—
1. SAVITRI 'The Book of Heavens'.
2. In "Savitri", sorrow and suffering is transcended. Fate is defeated.
3. This book tells you about the working of Nature in life and later on, reveals to us the Reality, the God behind
this show. Thus it brings out in such great poetry the nature of the World, the Universe, the Cosmos, and the gods that control them.
4. Above all, it brings out the relationship between the human and the divine soul and convinces us that man is, in reality a Superman, and can transcend Nature and cosmos and be one with God. Thus the poet opens out splendid possibilities for the spiritual Venture of man,
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5. Innumerable thought-laden spiritual phrases, original and expressive, constitute the great beauty of the poem. The poetic diction of this great poem can be of immense help for translating 'Gurubani' into English correctly.
6. The message of the poem is that man is stronger than Death and greater than Fate.
7. The poem has a peculiar resemblance to 'Divine Comedy' describing the progress of soul, and its pilgrimage to Paradise through Hell and Purgatory.
8. The book is a treasury of Para-vidya — Sacred knowledge.
THE GURUBANI AND THE STUDY OF SRI AUROBINDO
I have perceived that a number of major concepts of Gurubani have been dealt with, on his own, and in his own way, by Sri Aurobindo in his works steeped in deep spirituality. Consequently, the study of Sri Aurobindo has meant for me better understanding of the Sikh Scriptures. To give one concrete example, in his 'Essays on the Gita', Sri Aurobindo in two consecutive Chapters (ten & eleven) discusses the Vision of the World Spirit (Time the Destroyer) and The Vision of the World Spirit (The Double Aspect of the Divine). These two Chapters very adequately express the correct connotation of the famous lines of Guru Gobind Singh. The Chapters beautifully bring out the significance of the word "Maha Kal and Kalika" Moreover, they throw light on the nature of the Guru's sadhana at Hemkunt wherein he attained to complete oneness with the Absolute.
As one goes through these two Chapters one feels as if they were a commentary on the significance of meditating on "Mahakal" who is Time, who is Death, who is Rudra the Dancer of the calm and awful dance, who is Kali with her garland of skulls trampling naked in the battle.1
Sri Aurobindo tells us that "The weakness of the human heart wants only fair and comforting truths; it will not have truth in its entirety, because then there is much that is not clear and pleasant and comfortable, but hard to understand and harder to bear"; for example, "Thousands die of hunger and misery, that too is Thy blessing,
1 Sri Aurobindo: "Essays on the Gita''
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O giver of gifts." is a truth difficult to understand and still more difficult to bear. Sri Aurobindo tells us "We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benign preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer."1
Mahakal is the manifestation of the Godhead as Time. The God-head says, "I destroy the old structure to build up a new mighty and splendid kingdom."
"Destruction is the first condition of progress. Inwardly the man who does not destroy his lower self cannot rise to a greater existence."
Now these lines of the sage in the same Chapters throw a flash of light on the significance of the creation of 'the Punj Piaras' (The five Beloved ones — The Twice-born) by Guru Gobind Singh which was nothing but the destruction of lower self by "Bhagwati" in the form of the flaming sword of the Guru Gobind Singh, the giver of new life.
The weaker section of the Sangat or Congregation then had left the assembly in panic when the Guru demanded the human sacrifice with a drawn Sword thinking that the Guru wanted to kill and destroy his disciples unnecessarily. The people (the weaker section) were afraid when they saw the terrible aspect of the creative action that invariably involves destruction. But the intention was to replace the old by creating the new — a race of pure of heart invincible saint-warriors.
In the Gita, the terrible aspect of the Godhead is described in very impressive and poetic language; "It has mouths that gape to devour, terrible with many tusks of destruction and it has faces like the faces of Death and Time. The kings and the captains and the heroes on both sides of the world battle are hastening into its tusked and terrible jaws and some are seen with crushed and bleeding heads caught between its teeth of power. The nations are rushing to destruction with helpless speed into its mouths of flame like many rivers hurrying in their course towards the ocean ..."2
Here again Sri Aurobindo gives us a quotation from the Gita
1 Sri Aurobindo: "Essays on the Gita".
2 Sri Aurobindo: "Essays on the Gita".
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that throws lot of light on the personality of Guru Gobind Singh (and his meditations at Hemkunt).
"This greater form, this double aspect of Reality that is the terrible and the beautiful aspect (the Godhead repeats) is to be revealed only to the rare highest soul.
Now this is the form (the Terrible and the Beautiful), this vision of the World Spirit in its double aspect, that was meditated upon by the Guru (the rare and the highest soul) at Hemkunt.
After the study of the Chapters another very important aspect of the Guru's life, the historical aspect becomes so very clear to us. So as he meditated upon the destructive and constructive aspects of the Supreme Godhead — which only the rare highest soul can do — he witnessed the working of these forces in the drama of his own life.
If we review the life-history of the Guru, it becomes obvious that both these constructive and destructive forces displayed their wares in the course of his life-span, the aspects of the same Godhead that he had meditated upon before he came to this earth to take up his mission of life (to uphold Dharma and start a 'new path,') as desired by the Divine Will. The Guru lost his father, mother, children and closer disciples and the family fortunes. But this destructive aspect of Godhead made the Guru face these tribulations and set-backs not only with equanimity and cheerful acceptance but made him sing a soulful song of love of the Lord without whom life was an intolerable burden to him.
(Convey to the Beloved the message of Love from us humble bondsmen).
During this dismal darkness when evil forces' sway seemed supreme we see the glorious constructive achievement of the Guru —* the creation of the Khalsa (The five Beloved ones, the saint-warriors).
And lo and behold, within two years of the Guru's disappearance -behind the veil, the tide of tyranny was stemmed and the march of events reversed with the sack of Sirhind.1 This is the fulfilment of which the Godhead says in the Gita "I as Time have to destroy the old structure to build up a new mighty and splendid kingdom."
1 The Sikhs sacked Sir hind in 1710 under Banda Singh Bahadur and 'shook the Mughal rule to its foundation,'
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THE SUPREME SECRET
Now I invite your attention to an extremely important portion of the Gita which Sri Aurobindo discusses towards the end of his "Essays on the Gita" in the Chapter, "The Supreme Secret." In this chapter Sri Aurobindo explains to us what he calls "The Secret of Secrets" something which is entitled to our whole attention.
After giving out all the laws, the Dharmas, the Gita suddenly declares that there is yet a supreme word. This secret of secrets, the Teacher will tell Arjuna as his highest good because he is the chosen and beloved soul.
It is the last, the closing supreme word of the Gita expressing the highest mystery ... "It was this for which the soul of the disciple was being prepared all the time."1
Thus runs this secret of secrets, the highest, most direct, message of the Ishwara to man:
"Become My-minded, my lover and adorer, a sacrificer to Me, bow Thyself to Me, thou shalt come to Me, this is My pledge and promise to thee for dear art thou to Me. Abandon all Dharmas and take refuge in Me alone. I will deliver thee from sin and evil, do not grieve."
Now if we scan a little deeper the significance of the "Secret of Secrets" of the Gita and study the Guru's life of ceaseless struggle against the darkness of tyranny and social injustice in the light of his 'Shabd' we find that the Will of Godhead becomes the prayer of Guru Gobind Singh. Thus there is complete identification of the Son with the Father.
So, in my humble opinion the message of the Gita finds complete fulfilment in the life of Guru Gobind Singh.
Any way this is a subject for a separate and elaborate study by . the same scholar — that the message of the Gita finds complete fulfilment in the life of Guru Gobind Singh. Here the point is that the study of Sri Aurobindo enables us to understand much better the significance of the Guru's life and his Gurubani—our great spiritual heritage — "a veritable national asset", as Sri Aurobindo calls it in his book "The Renaissance of India."
1 Sri Aurobindo: "The Essays on the Gita".
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Obviously, in this respect my debt to Sri Aurobindo is immeasurable.
CONCLUSION
I will be failing in my duty and almost committing a sin of omission if I won't mention Sri Aurobindo's observation on the nature of spiritual Truth. In 'The Life Divine' while dwelling upon the 'Evolution of the Spiritual Man' he says:
"Spiritual Truth is a truth of the spirit, not
a truth of intellect, not a mathematical theorem
or a logical formula. It is a truth of Infinite ...
and it can assume an infinite variety of aspects ....
The truth of the spirit is a truth of being
and consciousness and not a truth of thought....
Without growing and being there can be no true
spiritual knowledge."
Therefore, unless we grow spiritual through contact of the consciousness with the soul or through intuitive experience we cannot make any headway in spiritual knowledge.
For a student of literature, Wordsworth's famous and much-written-upon poem 'The Intimations of Immortality' expounds to an extent the significance of Sri Aurobindo's observation regarding the urgency of this inward spiritual growth of evolving man aspiring for contact with Reality.
And you will agree with me that without this inner spiritual growth all this talk and discussion about matters spiritual becomes only vanity and weariness of the spirit.
If some one were to ask me to put in one sentence the essence of Sri Aurobindo's message, (and if that is possible to do), I will quote this famous line of the Mother:
"Look life in the face from the soul's inner strength and become master of circumstances."
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To conclude, I would say that the sage not only tells us how to become the master of circumstances and thus solve the multifarious and puzzling problems of life, but also unfolds before us the joys that await us if we become the Participants of the Great Feast. As Gurubani says:
"Come along my dear self, let me show you the path to ineffable Bliss: come and partake of the rare delicacies of the Royal Banquet."
. Thus to grow spiritually, and ultimately to become the Participant of the Feast, says Sri Aurobindo, is our birthright.
LT. COL. DULEEP SINGH
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SCIENTIFIC ADVANCEMENT AND THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL NEEDS
EDUCATIONAL efforts have been merely wasted as today the ' education aims merely to provide knowledge and skills for acquiring job proficiency and status. The need for the understanding of life is completely ignored and thus the individual becomes an automaton governed by his unregenerate blind impulses. The outcomes of scientific development instead of being utilized by the higher nature for expansion of the consciousness are being put to the service of the lower vital for catering to the insatiable desires, ambitions, wild abominable sensuous orgies which pull down the consciousness, increase the inertia of body and mind, deaden awareness and sensitiveness, bringing about the sleep of reason. This leads to bedimming of the surface consciousness and a tremendous upsurge from the unconscious which is the dark store-house of ignorant forces, primitive blind urges and all that is gross, un evolved, and ugly.
In the absence of intelligent understanding life becomes a playfield of the dark forces and the individual with all his material possessions remains a mere puppet in the hands of the animal urges. The reason becomes a handmaid to whatever is low and debased in human nature. Individual's possessions no more remain his own but are in the firm grip of the wild forces within him. The conscious mind is continuously filled up by the up rushing forces from the dark recesses and is thus increasingly dominated by the wild gyrations and tyrannous mandates of the remnants of the animal in him which keep it in a state of constant tension and turbulence. Thus the tremendous creative energy of the individual is continuously smothered which leads to a sense of inner emptiness, frustration and lack of purpose resulting 'in progressive disintegration of personality and inability to face the realities of existence. The frustration resulting from the suppression of creative urge finds overt expression in the form of violence.
What is more alarming is that the individual communicates this contagion to others. The widespread tension, conflict and violence today is the overt expression of the interaction among the robots operated by the dark forces of ignorance. The collective upsurge and strengthening of unconscious forces is bound to result in a severe
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catastrophe unless drastic measures are taken to revolutionize the present set up of education.
The lopsided emphasis on mere scientific advancement ignoring the imperative need of a complete change in education is bound to this catastrophe nearer with a tremendous increase in its intensity, bring The superstructure of technology is already threatening the very existence of man with its outcomes in the form of guided atomic missiles, hydrogen bombs and other destructive weapons on one hand and the environmental pollution, of alarming disturbance of the equilibrium of nature due to large scale destruction of natural fauna and flora, use of artificial fertilizers which is alarmingly impoverishing the fertile lands and providing food deficient in important minerals which is bound to prove to be a still more serious menace to health due to the poisonous insecticides. On the other hand the lower nature of man is being progressively strengthened due to the progressive increase in the material outcomes. This collective strengthening of the animal is bound to bring about colossal destruction unless education comes to help by bringing about a radical change in man. The discovery of the hydrogen bomb is the symbolic warning of Nature to man to face destruction if he refuses to transform himself and the discovery of the peaceful uses of atomic energy is a hint towards future possibility if man transcends his present limitations.
Thus having reached the zenith of achievement so far as the scientific analysis of the externalities of the nature is concerned man has to transcend his limited mind and transform himself completely into a new species. This may appear to be a mere chimera — a phantasmagoria. However the seemingly unconquerable summits can be reached by making small beginnings through climbing immediate steeps. The first step towards the summit is the step to the ultimate victory.
The journey of man towards transformation has to begin with the change in the traditional outlook regarding education as mere development of innate capacities which has completely overlooked the necessity and possibility of bringing about a change in the nature of man. Education has to be understood as a conscious and deliberate process to bring about progressive transformation in the nature of man. The first step towards transformation would be to provide education
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for the understanding of the significance of life. Such education cannot be imparted through instruction — it is beyond the books, which can be useful aids only when the child gets a truly refined human surrounding constituted by teachers and parents who are deeply aware of the educational needs of the growing child and are deeply conscious of the imperative need of educating themselves continuously towards a progressive understanding of life. Books, learning material and other educational aids can be meaningful only when the child is in communion and communication with a parent or teacher who is intensely aware of the need of educating himself continuously as a pre-requisite for the education of the young ones. Only such enlightened teachers and parents can provide a truly enriched environment.
Books and other learning aids would be ineffective if the parents and teachers involved in self-seeking pursuits do not express the higher values in their own lives, which would be possible only when they are awakened to the need of their continuous self-education leading to progressive self-understanding thus liberating their mind from the limited vision bedimmed by prejudice, bias, tradition, dogmas and ego-assertion. All attempts to educate the child, on the part of parents and teachers, while they are themselves steeped in deep ignorance, are bound to prove futile. It is only when the parents and teachers have the flame within them that the same can be kindled within the child.
Thus the process of understanding the life is primarily important for the parent and the teacher, who have themselves to be educated throughout their lives for fulfilling their role as educators.
Rousseau rightly located the debasing social environment as the cause of bad education and thus pleaded for isolating the child from the corrupt society which is an impossible proposition. There is however the possibility that at first individual and later groups of parents may awaken to the imperative need of a deep change in their attitude towards life as the fundamental pre-requisite for the education of their children. A family with enlightened parents would be the fundamental school with a refined, enriched and ennobling environment catering to the developmental needs of the children. A community built up by such families would help in further expansion of the boundaries of the "family school" by reinforcing and widening
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the educational experiences. Education has thus to be understood primarily as an individual effort to overcome the limitations with progressive understanding of life, leading to collective effort of the community to accelerate the process of social transformation through inner change in the individual consciousness. With the overcoming of a single limitation by the individual other shortcomings become weaker in him. There is continuous perceptible as well as imperceptible interaction between the individual and the community. Naturally the change within the consciousness of the individual is bound to bring about its reciprocal effect on other community members. Herein lies the significance of collective effort towards transcendence of limitations.
Such effort is bound to result in progressive refinement and enrichment of the environment the need of which is imperative for bringing about an improvement in the quality of education.
Efforts for improvement of the quality of education have failed till now as the educationists have tried merely to improve the teaching methods, instructional material, teaching aids, and teacher training courses etc. but completely overlooked the imperative need of bringing about a change in the home, community and social environment from which the growing child draws his nourishment for its physical, motor, mental, social emotional, moral and spiritual development as a plant absorbs its food from the soil where it grows. Such change in the immediate environment which envelops the child is possible not by mere addition of books, play materials etc. but through a progressive inner change in individuals resulting from the awareness of the educational needs of children on part of parents whose sole interest in life is the welfare of their offspring.
. It cannot however be expected that such a change would be possible all over the world at once. Still some groups of enlightened individuals may form communities and such communities which may be small and few in number may later on expand and increase in number. Such awakened communities in addition to their pre-occupation with education are expected to diffuse the light of understanding outside.
These communities will not unite the elements of the past and present culture, but will utilize it for the enrichment of life by
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progressively evolving new dimensions through creative expression. The varied and rich culture of East and West both past and present will form the basis of discovering new harmonies for uplifting the life — it will be a platform for taking a leap into the luminous dimensions hitherto unexplored.
R. K. Joshi
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REVIEWS
Sri Aurobindo: A Garland of Tributes. Ed. Arabinda Basu Sri Aurobindo Research Academy, Pondicherry; August, 1973, pp. viii, 252. Price. Rs. 17-50
THE volume, compiled in honour of the Birth Centenary of Sri Aurobindo, is a collection of essays, studies and communications from twenty-four contributors, nearly half of whom are members of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, the others being chiefly scholars connected with universities in India, England, America and Japan. Most of the articles are on Sri Aurobindo or some aspect of his work; all are concerned with spiritual philosophy. The volume contains two photographs of Sri Aurobindo, and is launched with this special message from the Mother:
"Sri Aurobindo is an emanation of the Supreme who came on earth to announce the manifestation of a new race and a new world: the Supramental.
Let us prepare for it in all sincerity and eagerness."
The editor's introduction, clear and concise and with generous quotations from the source, presents Sri Aurobindo as Rishi-Kavi, Yogi and Avatar: Seer-Poet, spiritual Mystic and Divine Descent. It is instilled with a fine, restrained enthusiasm. All too brief is the contribution of Nolini Kanta Gupta, pointing with a quiet authority to the sunlit path: not in intellectual fumbling, groping and doubting, the vagaries of the lower mind, but in quietness and the dawning of the higher, the supra intellectual mind, and the opening, the awakening of the pure heart, through which one can progress in a clear, illumined faith and assured serenity. From Sisir Kumar Mitra the well-known historian we have a serviceable short sketch of Sri Aurobindo's external life, with a salutary warning against the mind's too great eagerness to speculate on the significance of the passing of such an unparalleled figure, unique in the world's history. Nirodbaran, with remarks on the guru, who, more than just a teacher, is a direct channel of divinity, rather the Truth itself, and the inner
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Guide, gives us something of his own relation with Sri Aurobindo in more external matters, in an attempt to adumbrate something of the "unification of the spiritual with the mundane." From Nagin Doshi we have letters from Sri Aurobindo on Avatar hood, thought-formation, and the mind and its levels. A sketch of Sri Aurobindo's writings is provided by M. P. Pandit, with mention also of some of the Mother's writings, and those of disciples on Sri Aurobindo or some aspect of him. From Jagannath Vedaranyam we have a clear presentation of some of the inner meaning of the Veda, in the light of Sri Aurobindo. The psychology of India is given a glance by Indra Sen, as a comprehensiveness that would understand thoroughly man's nature, his possibilities and the means of effecting them; which, he seems confident, has been brought to its fullness in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, with the Psychic Being as integrator. A. B. Patel has contributed a succinct presentation of the great promise for the realization of the ideal of human unity, and the great difficulties in the way: emphasizing the acute necessity for a change of consciousness. The agile pen of K. D. Sethna has given us an interesting letter on narrative and epic poetry, with reference to Savitri, Sri Aurobindo's master poem; and with remarks, illumined by quotations from Sri Aurobindo on the English language, as a vehicle for mystical and spiritual poetry. A close-knit, solid and richly profound paper by M. V. Seetaraman glow s with a contained fervour for beauty, which he affirms as a divine thing, coming most purely and fully through the awakened nature of the sadhak, beyond the clutch of the egoistic false consciousness. T he world is raised and harmonized from truth to greater truth by the divine artistry, it is all the growing expression of the spiri tual effulgent power, in Beauty, Love and Ananda. The reviewer considers this the best article in the book.
These are the members of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram who have contributed. Going further afield, to the Indian universities, from
Sashikumar Ghose we have an engaging and forceful paper concerning a "civilisation of consciousness": the truly spiritual
development that we need so badly, if our society is to progress and even to
live . Full spirituality is not world-denying, but world-enveloping and
world-redeeming. It must be emphasized that it is not religion that
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we need, but spirituality itself. In the opinion of Kali Das Bhattacharya, Sri Aurobindo is the most profound and comprehensive of modern Indian philosophers. But his treatment of Sri Aurobindo's "philosophy" is too much intellectualized, and is compromised by his overlooking of the fact that Sri Aurobindo is not a philosopher, as academically understood, but a Seer. The article has been translated by the editor from the original Bengali. Giving us "a small feeble pointer to a great problem and its sublime solution", Swami Pratyagatmananda Saraswati (who has now left the body after a long and rich life of yoga) affirms that thorough investigation of Matter, Life' and Mind may bring us to their ultimate source, which is transcendent. He refers the reader to The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo's major prose work, for the "most complete and consummate Answer" to our most pressing problems.
From England there are two contributions. Edith Schnapper has written on the "challenge of the opposites" in the Integral Yoga: going beyond the dualistic ego-nature into larger planes, until there is no "paradox" and the One can be the many without obstruction of limited consciousness; so that eventually one can come to the cosmic synthesis envisioned by Sri Aurobindo as by none before him. John Hick makes a stumbling attempt to see how some form of the "doctrine of reincarnation" might be accepted by Christianity. Aside from his evidently limited understanding of the "doctrine", one may question the importance of the possibility, now that, as the Mother tells us, the time of the religions is past.
America has given five offerings. Haridas Chaudhuri writes of how mysticism and existentialism can be harmonized in a higher synthesis, in the supramental consciousness, and how this is the one hope for a radical solving of the fundamental problems of mankind. From Robert M. Kleinman we have a learned and perceptive if
somewhat stiff treatment of philosophical views of Nature, East and West,
culminating in the Integral Advaita of Sri Aurobindo. With liberal reference to
Sri Aurobindo's writing, H. P. Sullivan expounds the Supermind as
the indispensable link between the higher and lower hemispheres of the
manifestation. His treatmeI1t is highly intellectualized, however; and the
intellect is not high enough for such a purpose. So Supermind is begrudged its
real status as some
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that is, beyond the mind, and is even spoken of as Divine Mind. Here it may be noted, apropos of Professor Sullivan's use of the word "nournenal", that this word, however hallowed its usage may be in Western philosophy, is inadequate as a designation for Being, or Reality: because "noumenal" means "of the mind," Perhaps the difficulty here can be laid to the door of the prevalent notion that consciousness can be only mental. According to Sri Aurobindo, Supermind is not even the very ultimate essence of Mind, but is something of a different and higher order: something of which mind is an inadequate translation in the lower hemisphere. Professor Sullivan apparently knows this, but he does not always write as if he does. Also he seems to confuse the universal and the transcendent. We are away from Sri Aurobindo entirely in Gerald James Larson's study of a technical point of the Sankhya philosophy; though he hints at "auditory mystical traditions" and emphasizes the creative power of sound, a genuine knowledge of which (an experienced, a working knowledge, and not merely something theoretical) is certainly a part of Sri Aurobindo's yoga. With a succinct survey of the intellectual or theoretical suppositions of modern physical science, J. W. Smith forcefully presents a "holistic" view, in which oneness reigns in harmony for the actualization of being. This view he finds in the Vedanta, and in Sri Aurobindo. The paper is rich, in its way, and of dense texture, and is especially difficult to characterize in a few words.
The contributions of Professors Smith and Sullivan raise a question which it may not be out of place to consider here. Professor Sullivan compares Sri Aurobindo to some extent with Plotinus and John Scotus Erigena, while Professor Smith has led the editor in a note to distinguish carefully between Sri Aurobindo and Whitehead. Such comparisons may easily begin proliferating in the academic world. Sri Aurobindo and St. Thomas Aquinas, Sri Aurobindo and Ashvaghosha, Sri Aurobindo and
Xenophobes, Sri Aurobindo and John Fiske, Sri Aurobindo and the Emperor Julian — the possibilities are endless. But what value such activities may have for a serious mind is another question. Such a mind, having become acquainted with Sri Aurobindo, can hardly treat him as just another philosopher; and the practice would seem to have little to recommend
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it, of making comparisons with a figure who is incommensurable.
The sole contributor from Japan is Hajime Nakamura, who has made some comparison of Buddhism and Christianity as means of "therapy"; which is salvation and emancipation. The paper has been . edited by Professor Robert H. L. Slater.
There is also a letter from Isobel Cripps, the widow of Sir Stafford Cripps, concerning Sri Aurobindo's public adhesion to the proposals of the Parliamentary Mission in 1942. The correspondence between Sri Aurobindo and Sir Stafford is included. The shortest contribution to the volume is a tribute from O. C. Gangoly, the noted art critic, with his regrets that he is in no position to make a larger contribution. Those to whom his work is known may add their regrets for his recent passing.
The book is well designed and serviceably bound, and for the most part well printed, though the inking is sometimes faint, and the horizontal alignment is not always perfect. The proof reading has been good, except in the passages from Savitri: here on pp. 3 and 152 there are serious misquotations, and the reader should correct them from the text. Also, on p. 140 the French Revolution has been moved from the close of the eighteenth century to the close of the nineteenth: that is, if the reviewer has understood the text aright. And a purist might object, on p. 33, to having Bergson called "Henry". Again, on two occasions (pp. 95 and 135), Savitri is referred to as the longest poem in English. This is an idea that has somehow gotten currency, but is at variance with the facts. At least three poems are longer: Spenser's Faerie Queen, the Psyche of Joseph Beaumont, and the Festus of Philip James Bailey. Lastly, the index might have been longer and more comprehensive
It remains to recommend the book, which the reviewer can conscientiously do. The editor has done his work well, and has added notes on four of the contributions, forestalling certain criticisms that might have been made. Though the articles are mostly philosophical, and there is very little about the yoga of Sri Aurobindo and what it means to practise it or attempt it, for most of its contents at least the volume should be a worth-while addition to ·the library of any cultured person who is concerned with human potentialities and the future of mankind.
JESSE ROARKE
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Pen Portraits By C. P. Ramaswamy Aiyar. Rs. 2.00 Transactions of the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, 1970, Rs. 3.00
Sir CP. is always a literary artist whatever the theme of his writing or speaking. The present collection of 25 pen-portraits of eminent men in history — ancient and modern — is a treat. Shakespeare, Whitman, Kalidasa, Tiruvalluvar, Churchill, Sardar, C.R., and many others come in for deft character-sketching.
The Transactions are largely lectures delivered under the auspices of the Foundation by competent authorities on subjects of special importance like Taxation in Growing Society, Ramanujam and Mathematics, Rights of Citizens etc. They also contain popular talks like the one by Sir C. P. on Law and Letters in which he speaks of "an illustrious lawyer who afterwards became a Judge and who, having seen a copy of Morley's Compromise on the table of a friend of his, wanted information as to whether the latest cases were reported therein!"
Kalyan (Sri Ganesh Anka). Gorakhpur (U .P .) Price Rs, 12.00
Keeping up the high standards attained by this Journal in bringing out special Numbers of lasting importance, the present issue on Ganesha is all that could be desired. In over 500 pages almost all the aspects of the subject are covered. The origins of the Ganesha concept, the development of Ganesha traditions down the centuries through the Vedas, Upanishads, Tantras, Puranas and even secular literature, are traced by competent authorities.
It is happy to note that a number of writers emphasise that Ganesha is essentially a Vedic Deity who has undergone a number of modifications in several ages, in several parts of the country. Ganapati in the Veda is Brahmanaspati, Master of the Word. He is the embodiment of OMKAR, the primordial Word. In the Tantras he is seated in the Muladhara presiding over both the Earth and the Ether principles.
In the course of a learned article, Pandit B. Ramakrishna-charyulu notes the changes of vehicles, vāhana,
of Ganesha in the
succeeding ages: In the Krita Yuga, it is Lion; in Treta, it is Peacock'
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in Dwapara, it is Mouse; in Kali Ganesha is two-armed, smoky in hue — evidently with no vehicle.
A comprehensive reference book, a compendium of ritual and worship and meditation on Ganesha, this volume preserves an important tradition of our land.
M. P. PANDIT
Gems from the Gita by M. P. Pandit; Publisher, Ganesh & Company, Madras; pages 128, cloth bound, price Rs. 6.00
Students of the Gita are aware of the fact that there is perhaps no other scripture in the world which is so widely, so estimably and so severally commented upon as the Gita, and from a great variety of viewpoints both by the genius of the hoary past as much as by the genius of the modern age. This fact itself shows how rich its contents must be, and how universally appealing. In the words of Sri Aurobindo the Gita is an inexhaustible treasure of gems, an ocean whose depths are infinitely rich with them, so rich indeed that even a whole life endeavour to dive into the depths of it is not enough to approximate its bottom, even a hundred years' search into the limitless treasure of its gems is not enough to obtain even a thousandth part of it. The Gita as such invites and ever encourages us to draw from its bounty as abundantly as we are capable of and thereby make our existence rich and high and noble.
Sri M. P. Pandit is already well-known to his readers for his collection of 'gems', and for making them available to all 'gem' seekers. His 'Gems from Sri Aurobindo' in four sets, 'Gems from the Tantras' in two sets and 'Gems from the Veda' delivered so far in different instalment have already won for him a reputation as a 'gem collector'. The present set of 'Gems from the Gita', nicely studded one on each page of a neatly bound attractive book, is inviting to all lovers of the Gita, 'gem' lovers in particular.
This book contains a collection of hundred and twenty eight 'gems', their names being alphabetically arranged from 'Action' to 'Yogin', each name serving as an important topic under which Sri Pandit brings a significant quotation from the Gita, either a phrase or a line or a whole verse. The original quotation from the Gita being in
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devanāgarī script, there follows its English rendering and then an explanatory note, concise, straight, pertinent, suggestive, each note speaking of the author's comments on the 'gem', each note being characteristic of the author's simple style. All the topics selected for the present set of the 'Gems' are valuable in their own way.
The present book of 'Gems' is obviously a book of 'gems', not only because each 'gem' has been drawn from the Gita, but also because the explanatory notes contain, and naturally so, some hues on them from the light of Sri Aurobindo. The author makes no preface to this collection with the result that one simply feels a directness with the 'Gems'.
To any reader this book is likely to serve as window-openings into the vast fields of the Gita's richness. To the scholarly seekers it may even serve as an invitation to dive into the Gita's depths for making their own collection of 'gems' from it. The Gita being the Gita, one might look forward for further sets of 'Gems' resulting from a series of such attempts.
It would add to the value of this collection if an index of Sanskrit terms pertaining to all the topics could be provided at the end of the book; along with their English meaning the same index could also serve as a useful glossary.
H. MAHESHWARI
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