All that we meet is a symbol and gateway.

SRI AUROBINDO

 

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

EDITORIAL

SWEET MOTHER

( 7 )

(A talk to young children : 12.8.74)

WHILE coming to you, I saw your beautiful display of excerpts " and quotations from the writings of Mother and Sri Aurobindo on the walls all around. Yes, it was a beautiful picture — and the sayings and mottoes and lines of poetry were, needless to say, precious treasures dear to us. But — but left at that, to see, admire and pass on, well — they are dead things — words, words, words — lifeless skeletons. They have a meaning and they serve their purpose only when you come in contact with the life and consciousness in them, when you live them with your own life and be the consciousness that is there.

You know the well-known phrase: the letter kills, the spirit saves. Without the spirit, the word is only a dead shell, even a mantra

Page-5

is a dead tiring — a mere jumble of sounds, if it is not enkindled, enlivened with the spirit. Now I say you are to breathe your own spirit into the apparently dead or lifeless forms. For children are nothing but spirit: spirit means new consciousness, living light. It is not a tall claim I make on your behalf. I will explain.

You children who are here, who have been here for sometime, are a privileged class of human beings. You do not know it but you will know one day. You must have seen the Mother, many perhaps had her physical touch, while there are others who continue to breathe in the atmosphere where her body still endures. You have within you the rare thing hardly found elsewhere, the spark of which I was speaking — it is a particle of the Mother's own consciousness, her own life and her own subtle body-consciousness. You have imbibed it in you with your breath and are still imbibing.

It is there, you have to be conscious of it and realise the full benefit out of it. You are to be the living, not merely echoes and imprints but embodiments of the Word of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. You are now only an embryo, a rudimentary particle of the new life — but it is there — you have in you the thing needed essentially — I only remind you to make you conscious of it, — even as you have budding gymnasts or athletes among you, the playground makes you conscious of it, offers you the opportunity to cultivate and develop and bring it to fruition.

Now in a general way children all over the world are a privileged class. They possess what old age, even mature age does not possess or has lost. I mention two essential qualities pre-eminently belonging to the green age or to the "salad days": (i) Happiness — a child is ever happy — in spite of its occasional weeping and wailings — and happiness means a radiant smile. To the old people I have often said, "Always smile. Mother has taught us how to smile in all circumstances." Well, that is the natural gift of the young. A smile makes your life's journey smooth. In no other way can you remove so successfully the obstacles that beset you. And also that is the lever to lift up your consciousness — it has a mysterious power that automatically relieves you of much of the burden of life, lightens you and leads you into a higher sphere. For smile is a divine quality. Next to Happiness, the natural virtue of a child-consciousness is Freedom.

Page-6

It does not find any barrier anywhere, it can do anything.

These two characteristic virtues of childhood themselves spring from another fundamental quality of young nature — simplicity, a spontaneous outflow of energy without any thinking of before or .after — none of mind's complexities and hesitations.

In this sphere too, we have here for the play of these natural youthful qualities, opportunities and advantages that are not easily available elsewhere. The atmosphere of freedom that we enjoy is incomparable — Mother herself told us once.

As you grow, you must carry with you these fundamental qualities and you will remain ever young.

Now, to carry over — that is the trouble. And that problem Mother has solved for us here. This is what I was telling you just now, — the special privilege that we enjoy here, granted to those who are here. Added to the fundamental natural virtues of youthfulness, we have been given a supplementary boon, that of consciousness, Mother's own consciousness. It is this additional element that has given a special turn and temper in the atmosphere here and has brought about a change not only in the degree but in the kind of the ordinary youthful qualities. I am speaking of your soul-consciousness, which is the gift of the Mother's body-consciousness. I say you may not know it or recognise it by your mind and intellect, but it is there. And I say also, you will never lose it, whatever happens to your outer life. That will lead you ultimately to the supreme Realisation, Immortal Life on Earth. It may be clouded for the outer mind, but it is always there behind.

Exactly so I come back to the point from where I started. The mottoes — the writings displayed on the wall — are to be displayed as living entities in your being — in your consciousness, and in your life, even in your body. That is the better part of your work — . indeed, the essential part.

Today a new consciousness is abroad. The earth-atmosphere is filled with the new spirit. But here the Mother has left with us not merely her consciousness but a conscious being — a part of her living personality in us, that is the divine legacy we enjoy. We must not simply be proud of it but try to prove ourselves worthy of it. The Divine Personality will grow everywhere but the path-finders,

Page-7

forerunners are among you.

Naturally there will be formations of the new life in all climes and countries but the patterns, the norms will have been set by you, for the Mother was here in her physical material body.

So the mantras you declare as divine words, you must make them living powers, gods themselves embodied in you. The basis is here: the Mother has laid the foundations here for her creation — the roots from where the shoots and branches are to emerge and spread out abroad and everywhere. In any case, here or elsewhere, as the Mother has announced in her own voice:

Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

Page-8

A NEW PATH FINDER TO THE SPIRITUAL SUMMIT

THE cosmic process is ever on the move. That which exists for-ever can have neither a beginning nor an end. Nor can Existence ever become Non-existent.

Evolution is the mode of the cosmic process and is therefore always on. It can never stop. We human beings habituated to think in terms of seemingly static things have to realise that we are in the midst of evolutionary forces and are their playthings. It is good for us to know and understand, and if possible, participate consciously in the evolutionary process of life, of being-becoming, of this great drama and Divine Sport.

If we want to understand Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, their philosophy, their Sadhana or spiritual discipline, their teaching, their spell on the thinking and feeling mind, we have to realise that man is evolving, the whole being of man is evolving. Normally, by evolution we mean biological evolution, mainly physiological. But in the case of man who is already a psychic being living in the psycho sphere, psychological evolution is predominant; because the most important aspect and element in man is his consciousness. Physical and physiological evolution is far less important for him, as he can and has invented tools and gadgets which he can use and or misuse for fulfilling his immediate needs and achieving certain of his physical and vital aspirations. This tool-making and tool-using capacity however, has made him a totally social being, and a human being is no longer an individual as such.

Another important thing to remember is that along with the evolving man, his philosophy, his outlook, his Sadhana and all that, is bound to evolve. Let us not think therefore that all thinking and feeling and willing in this great and ancient land of India has already been done in the past by great seers and sages and there is nothing much or more to add or interpret further or anew. To use the words of Sri Aurobindo himself, we must dehypnotise ourselves of the subtle superstition that all the achievements in Vedanta, Yoga, and spiritual realisation have already been there, thanks to great Masters. In fact, however, each Master has tried to point the way to higher aims, to ever-expanding aspirations, and to greater goals to be achieved.

Page-9

That in fact is the essential function of Masters from age to age.

I have already said that what is important in man, in fact the most essential element in him is his consciousness, the capacity, the power to know, to store knowledge, to think, to feel, and to will. It is true that he has a body and his life. He has the senses, the means of physical and other knowledge — the Jnanendriyas, and the limbs, the means of action — Karmendriyas. But all these are there as means to serve his consciousness. In fact, man lives in his consciousness and not where his body exists and moves and has its being. Shorn of his consciousness and its focusing and coordinating core and centre, which we call the soul or self, man is so much vegetable and nothing more. A man who has lost the functions of consciousness and still breathes and lives is rightly said to be 'vegetating'. Medical science has recently come to the conclusion that a human being cannot be pronounced to be totally dead unless his centre of consciousness functioning in the brain has ceased to function about six or seven minutes after stopping of the heart-beat!

I need not mention here the states of consciousness or the layers in it which psychologists refer to. But we are concerned here with the dimensions in which man's consciousness generally functions.

One of the immediate, direct, and extensive dimension in which man's consciousness is working actively and functioning, is that of cognising and collecting information and knowledge about the material and other things it comes across and has contact with, and disseminating it to others through various channels of communication, including mass media, namely, newspapers, film, radio and television.

The second dimension is the investigation into the laws of nature which make things function in a particular way, and using as well as manipulating that knowledge for satisfying his own desires for comfort and convenience for deriving pleasure from such action.

Man has advanced far enough in these two dimensions. In fact, he has made so much progress in these activities that it is proving almost dangerous for him to proceed further without adequate self-control and safeguards which moral and spiritual considerations alone can provide. The result has been that the unbridled passions, lust, power-hunger, elementary vital urges and so on of man have rendered the world of man into a den of fear, hatred, insecurity, tension, turmoil and an uncertain destiny.

Page-10

If the first two dimensions are being served by science and technology in the hands of unscrupulous, hungry and competitive human beings, it is because man's consciousness is not sufficiently powerful . and active in the matter of control of forces which are called beastly or Asuric, Rajasic and Tamasic. The innermost and yet universal human aspirations point out the direction to the third dimension. Long long ago the seers of India gave utterance to the human-divine aspirations of man in the following words: —

Lead us from Falsehood to Truth.

Lead us from Ignorance to Knowledge and Wisdom.

Lead us from Darkness to Light.

Lead us from Death to Immortality.

Lead us from Sorrow to eternal Bliss.

 

Lead us to Reality. Living in the light of Reality is bliss itself.

Man is in quest of peace, peaceful harmony, happiness which bubbles up from the eternal spring of Existence, Sat-Chit-Ananda. That happiness is of the nature of supernal unending bliss and it is deathless — Amrita. All action of whatever kind physical, vital, mental, moral, aesthetic, spiritual in that state of consciousness is like the sportive joy of children — they dance and sing out of that kind of joy. That is the region of the spirit and the Spiritual Summit belongs to that region. The highest and yet the simplest term in which it can be described is Sat (Eternal Being-Existence), Chit (Pure unbroken homogenous consciousness, 'Samvit Eva' of Raman Maharshi), Ananda (Pare undiluted joy and delight). Sri Aurobindo has also pointed out the personal aspect of Sachchidananda in several ways, as Vasudeva, as Shri Krishna, as Purushottama (Uttamah Purushah). Man has to strive to attain a state of consciousness in which he can hold communion with Purushottama and be in that state so that thereafter his actions are part and parcel of Divine action and or cosmic action.

Redemption, salvation, Mukti, Nirvana are words which connote the negative aspect of the highest state. The positive content of the state is that which Sri Aurobindo emphasises. He speaks of divinising

Page-11

life itself here and now, not merely hereafter. He speaks of the Superman as well. But it is not Nietzsche's or Shaw's superman — which is only man writ large to enormity!! Sri Aurobindo's superman is the Man who has attained Divinity. He is one who is capable of divinising all terrestrial life, who can transform even Matter itself to serve the end of divinity. It is not an escape from materiality but a spiritualisation of Matter in order to be an adequate instrument of divine action and even terrestrial existence, which can be perfect in every detail and which would reflect the glory of Heaven and of divinity on earth.

It is said that God made man in his own image. But as if to reciprocate, man has all along tried to fashion God or gods in his (man's) own image! Man has humanised Divinity throughout history, by giving him anthropomorphic shapes and forms. Here is Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's call to man, to divinise humanity itself here and now on earth. His is a call not for individual or partial salvation of a part of man, or of a group of men, but of the whole of humanity. No single individual can attain salvation unless and until the whole of humanity attains it. The Divine Plan cannot be partial, perfunctory and discriminative.

If such is the Spiritual Summit which man is called upon to attain in order to commune with Purushottama, what is the Sadhana for it ?

At this stage, let us remember the basic difference between philosophers and philosophers. Anyone who presents a logical system of thought which explains the categories of existence (for our purpose, Jeeva, Jagat and Ishwara) is a philosopher, it is a Darshana. But Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are not mere philosophers like Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Whitehead and others but are deeply interested in attaining in their own consciousness the highest state which they have envisaged. Therefore, they have a Sadhana, a Spiritual Disciplines, offer to mankind for attaining the summit.

The overall Sadhana offered by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother can be called the Integral Yoga. Yoga is not new to India. Millennia ago some of the yogas, Raja Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Bhakti Yoga were practised in India as spiritual disciplines and altruistic and mystic ways of attaining the highest state of consciousness, often called Samadhi, a state of divine ecstasy or blissful joy. But here too Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have added something very original and in consonance

Page-12

with the evolving mankind of the 20th century.

Some original features of Integral Yoga may be mentioned here. In the first place, this Yoga is not to take man away from life but it is for life and to enrich life by bringing the Divine into the terrestrial . work, to perfect it in every way. In the second place, its practice cannot be said to be complete till the last man is perfectly divinised. The third thing is that all the faculties of man and the total man is involved in this Yoga, unlike other Yogas in which particular faculties are more involved than others. The fourth aspect is, this Yoga begins with a total surrender (Samarpana) to the Divine. Thus the very first step is determined communion with the Reality which is Being-Becoming simultaneously, and of the nature of Sachchidananda. This raises the simplest action of the Sadhak to the level of the highest worship. This ennobling and sublimation of every act, be it ever the humblest, is a reward worth the effort of will.

Man is an instrument in the hands of Divinity or the cosmic forces. To be consciously an instrument of the Divinity is the way to give content to that truth of life and reap the benefit. Man is not only conscious but is self-conscious. He has developed conscience — a witness unto himself and a discriminating power over himself. Hence, man has come of age. So, it is his duty and responsibility to participate in his own evolution towards higher levels of consciousness. Evolution is on. Sri Aurobindo says, all life is Yoga, because, man is evolving. He wants us to be deeply aware of this fact. What man is called upon to do is to participate consciously and intelligently in that Yoga. After all, Yoga is conscious evolution, a science and art of life by which we are to engineer all our energies to attain higher reaches of Existence, and ultimately the Spiritual Summit.

R. R. DlWAKAR

Page-13

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MAN'S RELIGIOUS SENSE

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will...

Hamlet

IF we equate man's cultural evolution with one hour, over 55 minutes of that hour are occupied by the Stone Ages. This is why we still use flame throwers on each other.

Since man became what in some cases we laughingly call sentient, he has wondered about the point and purpose of this strange and mysterious process of which he finds himself of necessity a part. His wonderings fall into four stages. In accordance with evolution each stage is higher and more complex than the one before it and makes better sense.

The first stage is still anthropologically available for study among the world's very primitive peoples; it shows man interspersing his daily behaviour with ritual highlights. These embody rhythm, pattern and symbols — masks of the gods or totem poles of forces personified in animals. These primitive rituals often involved fire and drums and were sacrificial and orgiastic as rhythm and sexual libido were violently stimulated to tap the deepest roots of the life force animating all. But a chief point is that these rituals purged fear and brought freedom from fear — they gave a rough rudimentary discrimination, rudimentary understanding and pulled people together whom life had been pulling apart — they integrated and calmed.

Primitive man did not work his magic haphazardly. It was made out of the living tissues of his experience, but chiefly he felt his way, drawing on his emotion rooted deep in the old brain. Only later with the emergence of the newer cortical brain did he rationalise. It was those who were most sympathetic to nature who produced the most satisfactory rituals; these became the embryo priesthoods, the link between the mass and the gods.

As pleasure was most intense during the ritual, the artistic process itself became important as well as the catharsis it produced. As the whole affair facilitated survival and involved distinguishing between the hostile and the helpful, a sense of obligation on behalf of collective

Page-14

security was also nurtured. So here we have not only the behaviour but its causes, Artistic and Moral clarifying experience, the beginnings of Art and Ethics.

The second stage is that of the rise of the polytheistic religions, pre-eminently the Greek. With Greek civilisation and its greater and more refined complexity the personifications were not only of forces at work in Nature but in Man himself. This was a great advance as emphasis now shifted to conduct — those aspects which destroyed or helped man.

It is psychology which shows the inner force responsible for the rituals, the inner force of fear rooted in insecurity and leading to frustration intensifying to violence, and the antidote of understanding l&ding to action removing the various sources of frustration — leading to freedom from fear and to security.

We know now that the personifications in the rituals and religions illustrate — whether consciously realised or not — sexual, carnal, reproductive energy sublimated to produce social and domestic effects in the evolution of higher levels of life. The aim is greater mastery of the environment through greater mastery of the self, in the interest of survival. The activity is chemical, biological, and sentient and constitutes a transaction between the internal gene complex and the external environment. What room is left for Free-Will? When we get what we want we feel free, but this feeling is entirely subjective and really the result of this transaction.

Some well-known symbols from the third or Monotheistic stage may illustrate this. The apples of Eve — the cockney's apples and pears up the stairs — signify "forbidden" fruit, however seductively ample, in other words an invitation to expend carnal energy; the serpent in Adam's context is masculine and suffice it to say it came between them. Excessive expenditure of energy carnally left insufficient energy for other things, hence the Fall instead of the Rise to a higher level of existence. The consequence was not freedom, but guilt, not harmony but discord, not peace but war, not integration but disintegration.

With monotheism a single Godhead replaced the-many divine sources of force or power. This did make more sense but left a major unresolved paradox. In fact where the Devil is given equal credence

Page-15

with God we do not really have monotheism at all. However it was maintained that God was the source of life and the Devil His opponent destroying where He created. Man was exhorted to invest in God rather than sup with the Devil as a matter of immediate self-interest. Prometheus merged into Jesus who, whether as man deified or God incarnate, gave the gift of eternal life and personified the behaviour necessary for this gift. The simplification of monotheism resulted in a further identification of man's behaviour as "good" or "bad" with a commensurate increase in the need for personal responsibility even as behaviour was still seen as subject to external intervention by an arbitrary God or Devil.

But this situation left an unresolved contradiction — of an omnipotent and good God who yet permitted evil and its consequent suffering. This paradox was further complicated by Hamlet's realisation that nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Gradually, with the abandon of Falstaff or the denials of Faustus, the way was cleared for the next or fourth stage of development. This came along with the advent of the scientific method, Darwin's Theory of Evolution, and the theory that the life force ebbs and flows to give alternating periods of integration and disintegration as adumbrated by the leading thinkers of the 19th Century and by such as Arnold Toynbee. Instead of guessing the patient's temperature, now we read the thermometer.

These two forces, of concentration and integration, and diffusion or disintegration are still God and the Devil, but now they work symbiotically together. When we ask questions we go to pieces in fear and violence; but in struggling we evolve the greater complexity needed to achieve greater understanding which eventually enables us to answer the questions and we emerge to a higher level of awareness.

The fourth stage now involves a Devil working with God as one and the same force, disintegration leading at last to re-integration and so on ad infinitum. When concentration predominates the result is peace, romantic art, philosophical synthesis, liberal and humane legislation and religious confidence: when diffusion predominates war, realism analysis, doubt, denial, uncertainty, violence and promiscuity are the effects. Both forces are simultaneous but each predominates alternately. Concentration is God, the Preserver; Diffusion

Page-16

or the Destroyer, is hate, or the Devil, but God is the senior partner. Thus the paradox is resolved in a single force producing through periodic destruction, periodic growth — while the water supply is not cut off.

The other concept that must be taken in conjunction with this in this the latest stage in the evolution of man's religious awareness, his understanding of what life is all about, is the concept of universal immanence.

This maintains that the creative force is not arbitrary and operating intrusively from outside but is operating from within everything created. The Creator puts Himself into his material as a novelist into his novel or an Artist into his Art.

* Nothing is left to chance. All is predetermined as man emerges as a kind of televised substance, the sun a kind of filament, the iron-cored magnetic Earth with its ionosphere, Heaviside and Appleton layers, a kind of a node in a vast and infinitely complex tube. We are being projected in a kind of color television show.

In Fields Within Fields, number 12, page 56, in an article entitled "How Fields Affect Us", James B. Beal writes: ...as a product of the Cosmos we are all 'tuned in' and our biorhythms react accordingly to EM and ES fields, low radiation, ions, and other as yet unknown factors.

In the same issue, page 58, in another article entitled "Light and the Human Environment", Henry L. Logan notes: Human beings are electromagnetic organisms operating in a mesh of interrelated and interacting electrical field patterns, principally generated (directly or indirectly) by the Sun.

The aim seems to be to bring man into union with the Creator who is the immanent Self towards which every individual struggles in eliminating self-deception. As Emerson said, the purpose of life seems , to be to acquaint Man with himself.

As a species we still have a very long way to go.

DESMAND TARRANT

Page-17

SAVITRI: A STUDY IN DEPTH

Book II: Canto 3

I

THE GLORY AND FALL OF LIFE

And entered wide obscure disputed fields

Where all was doubt and change and nothing sure,

A world of search and toil without repose.

As one who meets the face of the Unknown,

A questioner with none to give reply,

Attracted to a problem never solved,

.........................................................

He travelled through a land peopled by doubts

........................................................

A far retreating horizon of mirage.

A SWAPATHY reaches the land of the subtle vital; it is a half-lit field of controversy; everything has an existence under a cloud of doubt; nothing is final; everything is subject to debate; there is an un-ending toil, an indefatigable search for the verities and the values of life; there is a fluidity and nothing fixed; it is like the experience of facing the unknown from whom no reply can be elicited for a shower of questions; the country is heavily populated by doubts; it is dense with a wild of problems of an attractive nature; the solution seems to be nigh; within reach appears the goal, but it proves a deceptive mirage, a receding horizon. ,

A vagrancy was there that brooked no home,

........................................................

She accepts disaster as a common risk;

........................................................

She wrestles with danger and discovery

........................................................

Moves on unsatisfied, unsure of its end.

Page-18

........................................................

Now master of herself, now toy and slave.

........................................................

In a gallop of thunder-hooved vicissitudes

She swept through the race-fields of Circumstance ...

Life here is ever on the move; it does not have a fixed home like the nomad; it risks danger and disaster by abandoning the settled forms in search of the untried and the unknown; she without repose continues her experiments; deriving satisfaction from none, she moves oh to another, ever unsure of its end or aim; in all the varying phases of its tempestuous career, its ups and downs, sometimes it gives the impression of a top-hand and sometimes of an underling; once she appears a master and at another time she looks a slave of circumstances ; the Life-force seeks to be but in what manner and in what shape is not known to her and she is impelled by the Indweller who discards each formation in preference to a higher and a more developed one.

She writhed, a worm mid worms in Nature's mud,

Then, Titan-statured, took all earth for food,

Ambitioned the seas for robe, for crown the stars

........................................................

Then wantonly enamoured of Sorrow's face,

She plunged into the anguish of the depths

And, wallowing, clung to her own misery.

Propelled by a desire, the life-force has embodied itself in several formations from a worm to a Titan; she has the characteristic impulsions of the embodiments; she navigates the seas and is on the wing for the conquest of the worlds; in a mood of perversity, she takes a , plunge into the Inconscience to wallow in its misery.

A scene was planned for all her numberless moods

........................................................

But none could offer a pure felicity;

........................................................

Something remained dissatisfied ever the same

Page-19

........................................................

She needs the spur of pleasure and of pain

........................................................

A perverse savour haunts her thirsting lips:

For the grief she weeps which came from her own choice.

For the pleasure yearns that racked with wounds her breast;

Aspiring to heaven she turns her steps towards hell.

........................................................

Yet pure and bright from the Timeless was her birth,

A lost world-rapture lingers in her eyes ...

But none of these variations in manifestation and the scenes of its activities convey to her the felicity planned for; the sense of dissatisfaction remains ever the same; she cannot do without pleasure or pain; she requires the spurs of both; her taste is so whimsical that she out of her own choice creates a situation that fills her with grief; she wantonly pines away for a pleasure that can be acquired at a terrific cost of pain; ambitious for heaven, she wends her steps to hell; she is so restless, perverse and dissatisfied because she is part of the Eternal and the transient repels her; there is that nostalgic rapture for the lost world in her eyes.

Even in changing worlds bereft of peace,

........................................................

He saw the image of a happier state.

........................................................

As far as heaven, as near as thought and hope,

Glimmered the kingdom of a griefless life.

Above him in a new celestial vault

........................................................

An archipelago of laughter and fire,

Swam stars apart in a rippled sea of sky.

........................................................

And gleaming spheres of strange felicity

Floated through distance like a symbol world.

While treading this soil, bereft of peace and unsafe with a flux of

Page-20

movement, Aswapathy catches a glimpse, the image of a happier world, a kingdom of griefless life; it is very far, as far as heaven, but very near, as near as thought and hope; this world wears the appearance of an archipelago, reflected in the sea of the sky; each island is as bright as a star; they swim producing ripples of laughter in the sky; they are spheres of a strange felicity, floating in a distance almost inaccessible, but near enough for human aspiration to reach.

Unmoved, untouched, looked down great visioned planes

........................................................

They shone like images thrown from a far scene

Too high and glad for mortal lids to seize.

But near and real to the longing heart

........................................................

Are the hidden kingdoms of beatitude.

........................................................

Immune from the harsh clutch of Death and Time,

........................................................

For ever wallowing in bliss they lie.

These higher planes, self-absorbed in their own felicity, look down on all the activities of the lower plane, in an untouched and unmoved manner; they are like the reflections of images cast from a distance; they grip the heart with a yearning for what obtains there; those kingdoms of beatitude are free from the dualities of birth and death, joy and sorrow; they wallow in bliss and though they are beyond the present human capacity, they are within, open for discovery and enjoyment by a sincere aspirant.

In dream and trance and muse before our eyes,

........................................................

The figures of the perfect kingdom pass

........................................................

Unreal-seeming yet more real than life,

........................................................

If dreams these were or captured images,

Dream's truth made false earth's vain realities.

Page-21

We experience a glimpse of these higher realms in a trance or a dream or a vision; the inhabitants of that kingdom pass before us; they leave a blazing trail on the memory; they may be discounted by the materialist as unreal; but they are more real than what we are accustomed to consider as real and the verities of the dream expose the shallowness and the vanity of the earth life.

Or imagination's comet trail of dream,

Took now a close shape of reality.

........................................................

The wonder-worlds of life were dreams no more;

........................................................

Whose boundaries jutted into a sky of Self

And dipped towards a strange ethereal base.

........................................................

Out of that formless stuff Time mints his shapes;

The Eternal's quiet holds the cosmic act:

........................................................

He props her dance upon a rigid base ...

What has always been a dream, a glittering prospect that is unrealisable, has now taken the shape of a reality; its extreme boundaries have their projections in the vaults and the vasts of the inner Self; behind this periphery and on the immutable base of the Self takes place the cosmic and the manifold creation; the creatrix draws upon the infinite potential of the seemingly indifferent but observant and witnessing, quiet and passive Self.

Out of the Void's unseeing energies 

Inventing the scene of a concrete universe,

........................................................

She sees by flashes of his all-knowing Light.

At her will the inscrutable Supermind leans down

To guide her force that feels but cannot know,

........................................................

And life obeys the governing Idea.

Page-22

The cosmic force mobilises the energies diffused in the universe; she starts minting the multiple shapes; though she gives the impression of a mechanical movement in all her activities, she is governed by the indwelling real Idea; she is helped by the flashes of a divine light and her kinesis is supported and guided by the Omniscient, and the static being.

That Nescience may become omniscient:

Transmuted instincts shape to divine thoughts,

........................................................

The Master of the worlds self-made her slave

Is the executor of her fantasies:

She has canalised the seas of omnipotence;

She has limited by her laws the Illimitable.

The aim behind all her activities is to replace Ignorance with knowledge, to transform the instinct into divine thought; for this purpose the Master of the worlds has voluntarily made himself her slave obeying her whims; she determines and lays down the lines of development; she, in advancement of her aim, carves out channels, regulating the flow of omnipotence for the irrigation of the earth into the divinity and in pursuance of this end, she makes the unbounded, the bounded, the infinite a finite.

The worlds, the forms her goddess fancy makes

Have lost their origin on unseen heights:

........................................................

These too can to the peaks revert or here

Cut out the sentence of the spirit's fall,

Recover their forfeited divinity.

The difference between the governing idea and its effectuation becomes quite obvious here; the gulf between its pristine beauty and its malformation or deformation in the process of reaching and manifesting itself on the soil of inconscience is clear; but even these perversions from the original, even these failures are utilised by the creative force, for there is no waste in the cosmic scheme; these misformations

Page-23

are once again pressed into service to advance the evolutionary purpose and those that have served the purpose or are useless are discarded or withdrawn into their source.

Above was a monarchy of unfallen self,

Beneath was the gloomy trance of the abyss.

An opposite pole or dim antipodes.

........................................................

Her head lay on the breast of amorous Death,

........................................................

To taste the savour of bare opposites.

........................................................

Have woven his being's mutable design,

........................................................

His soul a moving picture's changeful film,

His cosmos-chaos of personality.

Creation is a movement between two poles of inconscience and super conscience; above is the splendour of the divine and below in the nether region is the gloom of the abyss; it is the savour for toil and strife, a perverse desire to have the experience of dwelling in his opposites, that makes the being take a leap, a plunge from perfection to imperfection, from immortality and bliss to mortality and suffering; he conceals himself in the mixed web of the dualities; he dwells in man who is a fickle-minded and changeful personality subject to pulls in opposite directions towards the divine and the undivine; the upward and the downward urges make him the picture of cosmic-chaos.

But here were worlds lifted half-way to heaven.

The veil was there but not the Shadowy Wall;

........................................................

Some passion of the inviolate purity

Broke through, a ray of the original Bliss.

Heaven's joys might have been earth's if earth were pure.

........................................................

But she has stabled her dreams in Matter's courts

Page-24

And still her doors are barred to things supreme.

These worlds could feel God's breath visiting their tops;

Some glimmer of the Transcendent's hem was there.

........................................................

To force on them the happiness they refuse.

Aswapathy observes higher planes of existence half-way to heaven; there are veils no doubt but they are not the dense walls preventive of their illumination reaching the lower planes; in driblets the purity and the bliss pour down; earth's lot could have been better and it too could have shared those felicities, had it not been for its vitiating impurities; everything has to pass through Matter and suffer in the process, a taint and blemish; unless it learns to rise above the physical limitations, it is barred from the supreme; but here the glimpses of the hem transcendental are caught and he sees how Love enforces an identity, taking in its forgiving fold the rebel and waif alike, allowing none to escape its grasp.

The cry of the Birds of Wonder called from the skies.

To the deathless people of the shores of Light.

........................................................

Marvel and rapture wandered in the ways.

Only to be was a supreme delight,

........................................................

A vision of grandeurs, a dream of magnitudes

In sun-bright kingdoms moved with regal gait:

........................................................

All objects there were great and beautiful,

All beings wore a royal stamp of power, ...

Spirit has a fuller play since it is not clogged by Matter as it is on earth; beauty in its unsullied purity shines there; delight has its undiluted expression; the dualities which so much bedevil us with their contradictions, live like companions having no hostility; falsehood which is the cover or the armour of the weak has no place there; in those realms of Truth, the strong have no need to resort to the prevarications and the subterfuges characteristic of the weak; similarly

Page-25

ignorance too vanishes and light in its full intensity is released unlike on earth where it has to be shaded and diminished by intervention of ignorance; in short it is a world peopled by dignitaries of power, glory and wisdom; and existence itself is bliss supreme in that realm.

There met the ardent mutual intimacies

Of mastery's joy and the joy of servitude

........................................................

The ruler there is one with all he rules;

........................................................

There were realms where Knowledge joined creative Power

........................................................

An immortal moth in happy and endless fire,

She burned in his sweet intolerable blaze.

There is a bond of love linking the master and the subordinate which removes the distinction between them, yielding an identity of joy in either position; the pleasure of service is matched by the privilege of. obtaining it; similarly the gulf between the ruler and the ruled is bridged by a strong identity knitting them together; the weak draw on a strength that feels well-utilised; obedience is not the badge of inferiority but a coronet and privilege, a field of self-discipline and training ground for the princes and the rulers; knowledge and power are not the dividing provinces they are on the earth; but they are the coordinates; power consecrates itself to the task of effectuating whatever is given to it by knowledge; she is an immortal moth in happy and endless fire of Knowledge; there is an equal cooperation between mind and the life-force; one is ineffective without the other and it is only when the instrumentation of both is adequate that there can be -the proper effectuations.

There work was play and play the only work,

The tasks of heaven a game of godlike might:

A celestial bacchanal for ever pure,

Unstayed by faintness as in mortal frames

Life was an eternity of rapture's moods:

Age never came, care never lined the face.

Page-26

The body here becomes more supple and plastic; it casts off its sloth and inertia; it is no more a dead weight for the nights of the mind, on the other hand it keeps pace with the mind and becomes a heavenly instrument; the mind itself becomes care-free, lays aside its obscurity and material hankerings; they wear a halo around them, indicative of their liberation; they are fit for divine gambols of love, beauty and bliss without a sense of fatigue; they now take to work in such a spirit that they know not how to tire; work becomes a sport to them; this new movement of beauty, bliss and puissance is the banner they carry into space.

There reigned a breath of high immune content,

........................................................

A flood of universal love and peace.

A sovereignty of tireless sweetness lived

Like a song of pleasure on the lips of Time.

........................................................

There freedom was sole rule and highest law.

........................................................

Life played at ease with her immense desires.

A thousand Edens she could build nor pause;

........................................................

In her nature housing the Immortal's power,

In her bosom bearing the eternal Will,

No guide she needed but her luminous heart:

........................................................

Each act was a perfection and a joy.

There is a direct access of knowledge without any need for it to labour its way through the instrumentation of speech and mind; being the early child inheritors of God's instincts, the inhabitants there still retain the bliss and consciousness which are not yet dimmed by the onset of Nescience; they feel a strong urge to release their streams of happiness without any hindrance; they are not, however, unaware of the love and peace that reign above; the discipline and the order found there are not the creations of any external force but a spontaneous self-upsurge. Life-force enjoys an untrammelled freedom; plays

Page-27

at ease with her immense desires and creates according to fancy without having to bother about the limitations of the material; without pause she can build a thousand Edens; she is unimpeded by Nescience; the Immortal and his Will housed in her nature are ever at her service; hers is a dance of fertility and she brings out of the Infinite, a myriad truths and gives them shapes.

This world of bliss he saw and felt its call,

But found no way to enter into its joy;

........................................................

All this seemed only a bright desirable dream

........................................................

Although he once had felt the Eternals clasp,

Too near to suffering worlds his nature lived,

........................................................

A dire duality is our way to be.

Smitten with a desire to enter this world of bliss, Aswapathy feels balked since he finds no way; though he has been favoured with a fleeting clasp of the Eternal, his earth nature has not been completely displaced; the needed transformation has not yet come in; he is still too near the earth to lodge the heavenly flame to eradicate the habitual pulls and responses and therefore in a wistful manner, he has to content himself with a feeling that what has been seen is an alluring prospect, a bright and desirable dream.

In the crude beginnings of this mortal world

Life was not nor mind's play nor heart's desire.

........................................................

And nothing was save a material scene,

Identified with sea and sky and stone

Her young gods yearned for the release of souls

Asleep in objects, vague, inanimate.

In that desolate grandeur, in that beauty bare,

........................................................

Heavy was the un communicated load

Of Godhead in a world that has no needs;

Page-28

For none was there to feel or to receive.

In the beginning the world is a scene of Matter; there is neither a pulse of life, nor a throb of desire, nor the glow of mind; the Godhead feels oppressed by the heavy load of un communicated and undistributed divinity; there is none as yet sentient to feel the need or have the capacity to receive his intimations and in the material forms are the powers, feeling imprisoned and clamant for release.

The Spirit lost its statuesque repose.

........................................................

Passioned for the movements of a conscious heart,

Famishing for speech and thought and joy and love,

........................................................

The poised inconscience shaken with a touch,

........................................................

They cried to Life to invade the senseless mould

And in brute forms awake divinity.

The spirit cannot be confined for long in the folds of inert matter; its passion for movement, hunger for speech and consciousness cannot brook any further restraint; therefore the statuesque immobility gives way; the inconscience is shaken; an appeal, a cry goes forth to life to descend and energies matter.

Something pent up in dead insentient depths,

........................................................

Turned as if one asleep since dateless time.

........................................................

It yearned to know, to aspire, to enjoy, to live.

Life heard the call and left her native light.

........................................................

As comes a goddess to a mortal's breast

And fills his days with her celestial clasp,

She stooped to make her home in transient shapes;

In matter's womb she cast the Immortal's fire ...

Page-29

A dormant potentiality long since asleep in the abyss of inconscience, makes a somnambulist movement; it has memories of the self from which it has fallen; is now seized with a yearning, an aspiration to reach back; life hearing its appeal makes a generous gesture; even as a goddess out of love clasps a mortal's hand, she leaving her native home and brilliance, seeks a home in the ephemeral matter.

Alive and clad with trees and herbs and flowers

Earth's great brown body smiled towards the skies,

Azure replied to azure in the sea's laugh;

New sentient creatures filled the unseen depths,

Life's glory and swiftness ran in the beauty of beasts,

Man dared and thought and met with his soul the world.

Due to the touch of life the desolate grandeur of the earth, puts on a picturesque and multi-coloured raiment of herbs, flowers and trees; earth's face wears a smile towards the sky; the azure of the heavens meets with a matching response in the sea of nescience, now filled with living creatures; life manifests its glory in the beauty of swift running beasts; man with a more developed consciousness, dares the challenge of the world with his soul.

Before her gifts could reach our prisoned hearts,

A dark ambiguous Presence questioned all.

The secret Will that robes itself with Night

And offers to spirit the ordeal of the flesh,

Imposed a mystic mask of death and pain.

........................................................

And all her glory into littleness turned

........................................................

To feed death with her works is here life's doom.

........................................................

A myth of being that must for ever cease.

Such was the evil mystery of her change.

But unfortunately for the human race, before life has reached the earth and unloosened her precious gifts, there intervenes the first

Page-30

settler, a dark Presence of Nescience who is in possession of the earth; he questions her right and title; life therefore is forced to accept a compromise; impose on herself the mask of death and pain; obey the laws of Inconscience; diminish her glory; she finds her desire brutally , maimed and mangled for she is doomed to feed death with her toil of creations; her existence itself seems a myth since it is of a transient nature; but behind, there is the all-governing supreme Will that can mould out of the contraries a higher consciousness and work out a transformation to transcendence even out of these apparently disheartening hurdles.

Y. S. R. CHANDRAN

Page-31

"MAN AND SUPERMAN

SRI Aurobindo's philosophical reflections are based on his mystical experiences. He has perceived the Truth behind the Universe like the ancient Indian Seers and Sages and so the method of his philosophy is not only rational, but it is also idealistic as well as practical, because it is derived from personal realisations.

Man is one of the fundamental philosophical problems of this age, and some of the greatest philosophers of this century have taken the man as the central point of their speculations. Sri Aurobindo is the greatest philosopher and mystic of India in the modern age of Science, because his reflections on Man and Superman are based both on scientific laws of the present age and on the experiences of the Vedic sages and Upanishadic mystics.

Darwin and some other scientists have proved the evolution in nature and think that man has come into being through a natural process of evolution in Matter. Sri Aurobindo also justifies this process of evolution in the nature, but he differs from the Western scientist and propounds the theory of spiritual evolution which opposes the theory of material evolution of the West, and he derives this spiritual evolution from the Indian sources and particularly from the mystic experiences of the ancient Indian sages.

Man is a mental being and Superman is a still higher being. Man has evolved from the lower animals, because mind has evolved in life. Superman has to evolve in human consciousness, when the Super-mind will be evolved in the Mind. Shri S. K. Maitra holds that the Supermind is the culmination and consummation of Mind. ('An Introduction to the Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo', Pb. Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1965, p. 19).

Man is not the last being who has evolved in this world, there is a great possibility that in future the Superman will evolve because there is a continuous process of evolution and man has the capacity to evolve himself consciously for the attainment of the higher consciousness which may be called the Supramental Consciousness which is the most powerful and the culmination of spiritual evolution in man.

For the present, man is not aware of that higher consciousness, because human knowledge is a limited knowledge and all our knowledge

Page-32

is mixed with ignorance, that is why we may have a doubt about the future evolution, but still logically we may say that if evolution is continued in nature there must evolve some higher consciousness than that we have at present. Sri Aurobindo also describes that we .are so fixed in the experience of our ignorance we even insist that the one can be known only by its vestiges and the other cannot be known, because the future is not yet and the past is no longer in existence; yet are they both here in us, the past involved and active, the future ready to evolve in the continuity of the secret spirit. (The Life Divine, pp. 502-503)

There are various grades of consciousness or various planes of consciousness. We as human beings, are not directly aware of them, But sometimes we realise that there are different forces in our being which work at different times in different ways. Sometimes, we behave as an extrovert or completely materialistic person, and sometimes we behave as an introvert or completely spiritualistic person. Many times we forget everything, and many times we remember everything. It shows that there are different Powers in man which are working within us. So according to Sri Aurobindo, man is in his self a unique person but he is also in his manifestation of self a multiperson, he will never succeed in being master of himself until the Person imposes itself on his multipersonality and governs it: but this can only be imperfectly done by the surface mental will and reason; it can be perfectly done only if he goes within and finds whatever central being is by its predominant influence at the head of all his expression and action. (Ibid., pp. 798-99)

There is no doubt that human-consciousness is also a fragment of the Universal Consciousness as it is seen in the Gita (XV.7), or it i» like a spark of the Eternal Fire as it is found in the Mundaka Upanishad (II.1.1), but the divinity of man is hidden behind the . surface mind which is the main source of all our external relations. We can evolve our inner being and can touch the Divine within our own consciousness, if we are ascending towards the Divine in all aspects of our existence. The Divine is not away from us, He is existing within our soul and we have to perceive Him within. The more we make effort to evolve our consciousness, the more we can realise the Divine ascent and this is a way for man towards the

Page-33

super-manhood. Sri Aurobindo holds that the descent of the Super-mind will bring to one who receives it and is fulfilled in the truth-consciousness all the possibilities of the divine life. (The Supramental Manifestation, p. 86)

Man is confined to his emotions, passions, etc., because his personality is predominated by the mind which itself is overpowered by the lower faculties in our organism. Sri Aurobindo also justifies this truth by saying that man is a mental being and the mind is a leader who is much led by his followers and has sometimes no other will than what they impose on him. (The Life Divine, p. 800) In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, the truth of human existence is also revealed. It is said there that this Purusa is Manomaya (V.6.1). It means that man follows the dictates of mind.

But this is the position of the common man. The man of reason is not predominated by the mental faculties, he follows the dictates of reason and feels a little more freedom than the common man who is a slave of his emotions and passions. The rational being may be superior to the irrational or ignorant person, and may be a man of morality and wisdom, yet he is not a superman in any respect. After all our reason or understanding is also limited and may guide us on the basis of the moral principles which are not useful for the realisation of Spiritual Truth, but they only have to bring peace and order in our society. All these moral and religious principles belong to the lower grades of our being; their main purpose is to make man free from the emotional element. They are not fit for the attainment of the higher consciousness, because they make man only a rational being and have no power to touch the supranational faculty which is only attainable by the superman who is a being of the Divine world where everything is coloured with divinity and the presence of the Divine is realised directly, and this is the aim of our fife which is not known to the moral or religious man, and so he is also ignorant like the other persons who are slaves to their emotions. Therefore, Sri Aurobindo says in Savitri:-

"He is ignorant of the meaning of his life,

He is ignorant of his high and splendid fate."

(Vol. I, p. 53)

Page-34

All human knowledge is confined to particular time and space, because whatever we think ourselves to be is the result of our surface consciousness, so we can have a knowledge of one thing at one time, our experience is also limited in the same way. But a person who . realises the Divine Presence in his mind, surpasses the ordinary subjective and objective limitations, because the Divine Consciousness, according to Sri Aurobindo, is not so particularised, nor so limited it can be many things at a time and take more than one enduring poise even for all time. (The Life Divine, p. 135) The principle of Super-mind is much superior to human mind or surface mind. It has three such general poises of its world-founding consciousness. The first founds the inalienable unity of things, the second modifies that unity so as to support the manifestation of the Many in One and One in Many; the third further modifies it so as to support the evolution of a diversified individuality which by the action of ignorance, becomes in us at a lower level the illusion of a separate ego (Ibid.). So, human consciousness or knowledge is a phenomenal consciousness which is the form of empirical ideas or rational reflections and beyond that it has no approach, while the supramental consciousness is a Divine Consciousness and has the capacity to know everything through the knowledge of identity with the Divine Being which has manifested the whole universe out of itself and is realised directly by the Superman who is a Divine Man.

Although man is a part of the Divine Nature, yet he is a mixture of good and evil, virtue and vice, divine and undivine. But we can make an effort to come out of this double nature by aspiring for the Divine and by ascending towards the supramental consciousness which is beyond the approach of the surface mentality. If we do not troth the higher planes of consciousness, and are satisfied with the present mentality, then there is no hope for the descent of the Divine . in the form of super-human consciousness. So Sri Aurobindo says: 'It would follow that there can be no final solution until we have turned our inconscience into that greater consciousness, made the truth of self and spirit our life-basis and transformed our ignorance into a higher knowledge'. (Ibid., p. 558)

Even then man is superior to all other living beings, because he is aware of his limitations, he can know his ignorance and has the

Page-35

capacity to remove it through the attainment of the pure knowledge of his own being. Human imperfection is not inherent in his nature, it is relative to certain conditions of our being and sources of knowledge. The more we realise the Divinity in us, the more we become perfect. A time may come when the man will become a divine man and in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, that time must come when the Divine will manifest Himself in man. But that Man would be different from our present race and would be free from human limitations. That Man is called the Superman in Sri Aurobindo's terminology and his consciousness is called supramental or gnostic consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo has made a prophecy that as there has been established on earth a mental consciousness and Power which shapes a race of mental beings and takes up into itself all of earthly nature that is ready for a change, so now there will be established on earth gnostic consciousness and Power which will shape a race of gnostic spiritual beings and take up into itself all of earth-nature that is ready for this new transformation. (Ibid., p. 859)

Supermind is superior to mind, life and body in the workings of the Spirit in nature, because it lives in unity within all diversities, and mind has no power to perceive unity within the whole play of nature. The supermind or the Superman lives in the spiritual consciousness, the man or the mind lives in superficial consciousness. The fundamental nature of this supermind, according to Sri Aurobindo, is that all its knowledge is originally a knowledge by identity and oneness and even when it makes numberless apparent divisions and discriminating modifications in itself, still all the knowledge that operates in its workings, even in these divisions, is founded upon and sustained and lit and guided by this perfect knowledge by identity and oneness. (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 732) But the mind cannot have this identity with the Absolute Spirit, because all its perceptions are based on division and separation. There is always doubt and uncertainty in mental knowledge, while the supermind is the truth-consciousness and is inherent with the divine Consciousness and its knowledge is always true knowledge and cannot be touched by any kind of uncertainty.

Just as human mind is confined to certain limitations, similarly human reason is also confined to ordinary logic and it cannot go

Page-36

Beyond the knowledge of diversity. Human intuition is also physical, vital or emotional. But the supramental reason, in Sri Aurobindo's view, is of the nature of spiritual, direct, self-luminous, self-acting, will and intelligence, not mental, manasa buddhi, but supramental, . vijndna buddhi. (Ibid., p. 763) Same is the situation of supramental intuition which is direct and self-illumined.

The supramental sense is also superior to mental sense in various respects. The former is pure, spiritual and infinite, while the latter is emotional, finite and limited. Regarding the nature of the supramental sense, Sri Aurobindo says that this sense even at its lowest power is luminous with a revealing light that carries in it the secret of the thing it experiences and can therefore be a starting-point and the basis of all the rest of the supramental knowledge — the supramental thought, spiritual intelligence and so on. (Ibid., p. 807)

Thus, we see that Man and Superman have much distinction in their nature, the former is limited, finite, victim of the worldly circumstances, and has uncertain knowledge of the reality of his own being, while the latter is the truth-consciousness and divine consciousness which can perceive everything directly and is not the victim of any superficial knowledge, because its knowledge is perfect, its being is perfect, its bliss is perfect, it is self-illuminated and there are no limitations of any kind, it also perceives God directly and even perceives the Oneness of the Absolute Spirit through the knowledge of self-identity. Man has evolved in the workings of nature, but the superman has to evolve still in its full consciousness in the same nature. Sri Aurobindo propounds the theory of the Supermind and Superman on the basis of the scientific truth and on the basis of the experiences of the ancient Indian sages, that is why that, on the one hand, he uses scientific language and gives scientific arguments for the manifestation and evolution of the new race on this earth and, on the other hand, he gives many quotations from the Vedas, the Upanishads, etc. to clarify and justify his own realisations. So he says:

We are sons of God and must be even as her

His human portions, we must grow divine.

(Savitri, Vol. I, p. 60)

Page-37

Again, he says:

Man must overcome or miss his higher fate.

This is the inner war without escape.

(Ibid., Vol. II, p. 93)

A mightier race shall inhabit the mortal's world.

(Ibid., Vol. II, p. 329)

There are many other lines which are completely optimistic in their essence and give a hope for the divine manifestation in man who will become a superman in the future. Then all men will live a divine life, there would be, then, no death, no ignorance, no pain and no worldly troubles. There would be light and bliss and divinity everywhere.

Dr. R. D. NIRAKARI

Page-38

EDUCATION AND SCIENTIFIC OUTLOOK

DEVELOPMENT of the scientific method of investigation has been a major experiment by nature for the furtherance of . evolution. This method has now permeated most of the disciplines outside the formal science subjects. The results of the application of scientific method have yielded fruits in the form of progressively effective utilization of the material energy which has appreciably helped in bringing about the nations closer externally through the various means of transport and communication. However mere external proximity in absence of the dissolution of inner barriers due to the lack of change within man has till now resulted in conflicts, strife and exploitation of weak nations by the strong. The basic outlook of the scientist towards his problems which helped in acquiring tremendous knowledge regarding the external nature and appreciable control over it, has to be understood and directed towards the problems of life so as to help the individual in developing right attitude towards the issues of life which implies the ability of the individual to look at these issues impartially without favour or opposition with an open mind.

The basic outlook of the scientist towards his problems includes the following characteristics:

1. Non acceptance of facts on the mere basis of authority.

2. Keenness to explore without anchorage to rigid notions, fixed beliefs and opinions.

3. Readiness to revise mental notions and to accept new truths on the basis of evidence of their validity.

4. Absence of self-involvement in viewing issues.

5. Freedom from personal preferences — bias and prejudice towards issues.

6. Absolute sincerity in attempting to understand issues.

7. Honesty in dealing with problems.

8. Objectivity in arriving at conclusions.

Such outlook obviously excludes personal involvement and is perfectly detached and would prevent the accumulation of prejudice, bias, dogmas, fixed beliefs, rigid notions, and limited opinions and the constant

Page-39

conditioning influences from the environment which prevent the understanding of life and lead to tremendous dissipation of the mental energy. Scientific outlook towards the life would thus help in liberating the mind from the bondage of preconceived structure, rigid attitudes, limited constructions projected thoughtlessly by each of the preceding generations to the next one for thousands of years. This liberation of mind would help in conservation of the mental energy and would thus provide impetus to thoughtful action in life.

This freedom of mind is a state of enquiry and disinterested pursuit of truth which opens the limited mental vision to higher and wider realms of consciousness and the inspirations and revelations from these summits are spontaneously deciphered by the mind as creative expression. This communion is the source of the highest joy and purest bliss and opens the gates to luminous paths leading to hitherto unknown vistas of existence.

The attainment of freedom of mind is not an event in the space time — it is a long drawn process of clearing off the continuously accumulating smog of experience in the field of ignorance — which is the reaction of the ego to the environmental stimuli resulting in renewed storms and clouding of mind by latent ambition and the accompanying rain results in dense fog and extinguishes the fire of enquiry filling up the mental space with smoke. The inner fire has to be lighted up again with the help of aspiration. The ultimate victory over the ignorance would however need a persistent and untiring arduous effort towards which this freedom which helps in understanding life, constitutes the earliest step.

The truths of science lead to unexplored paths of spiritualism if one is open instead of being confined to the four walls of science. In fact the anchorage to the present limited scientific knowledge and the resultant scepticism of the materialist is diametrically opposed to the wide scientific outlook which encourages detached enquiry instead of denying the truth which is beyond.

R. K. JOSHI

Page-40

REVIEWS

Meditations by M. P. Pandit. Dipti Publications, 1974. Rs. 8.00

MEDITATIONS offers a service like the moon that by reflection " recalls and radiates the Sun's light. The original Urination and the themes for the introspections are from Words of the Mother (First Series). Published in 1938 and included in later collections, this series of seventy-five aphorisms has long been out of print. Here ordered by subject in single page settings, her words are given as the source and object of insights of complementally clarity. These are meditations not mentations; they carry not the obtuse glance of thoughts but a light, a force of consciousness. They do so with an unaffected ease. Like the missioned rays caught and sent by the moon, they witness and summon the Sun by their shining.

Day and night constantly the Presence is there.

It is enough to turn silently inward and we detect it.

— The Mother

The Divine is not something that is to be pursued and attained in some Beyond. The Divine is present everywhere and always. Only our attention is normally fixed elsewhere and we are occupied with a host of other things. If we can withdraw our gaze from its outward direction for a while and turn it inward, quietly and without excitement, gradually we become aware of a Presence that is not anything physical and yet is palpable, vibrant and distinctive. All that is required is a one-pointed taming inward of our consciousness, without distraction, without noise — outer or inner. The Divine Presence reveals itself.

Does the Sun need a moon? Surely it is not dependent on a satellite for its presence, yet its creative intention is to express and reveal itself multiply, uniquely formed. The source-light illumes instrumentally as well as directly, through specula which return and loose forth faithfully its brilliance. The utility of such a mirror depends not only on its reflective fidelity but on its capacity to prismatic ally yet whitely

Page-41

present the spectrum of that light. Meditations is both clear and iridescent, it holds and pours a living awareness of the Sun-Presence, of the Mother and her vision.

 TATSAT

"Whitehead's Four Principles" Author — Anil Kumar Sarkar, M.A. Ph.D. D. Lit. Publishers — Bharati Bhawan, Patna-800004 India

Alfred North Whitehead can be classified with the greatest scientists and philosophers of all times. Although he is an abstract thinker, yet his philosophical assertions are based upon his own concrete experiences. The author of this book has clarified the four main principles of Whitehead: Spatio Temporal Process, Eternal Objects, God and Creativity.

Each of these principles is a pervasive experimental centre or contrast in a ground-consequent form.

Spatio-Temporal Process may be looked upon as a continuously perishing character, but it is abiding also.

The Eternal Objects are abiding in contrast to the perishing Spatio-Temporal Process, but they are perishing process in contrast to the process of God.

God may appear as abiding in contrast to both Spatio-Temporal Process and Eternal Objects. God's consequent and superject characters are perishing processes in contrast to the abiding function of creativity.

The abiding function of Creativity lies in its process from the forms to the formless. 

Whitehead's God may be regarded as one of the possibilities beyond the region of the eternal objects. He is a complex cosmic-psychic Possibility. He belongs to an evolving universe. God is an operative principle, leading to the operation of Creativity. God is not an entity but a process and a possibility. Whitehead's Creativity has to be taken asa ground cosmic-psychic process. According to Whitehead our universe is both many and one, and Nature is not a static fact; God and world cannot be torn apart; each temporal occasion

Page-42

embodies God, and is embodied in God; God is one and many, the world is many and one; the love of the world passes into the love of God and floods back again into the world; God is the great companion, the fellow-sufferer who understands. Whitehead's God is a . process and a possibility in multi-dimensional spheres.

Whitehead's evolutionist mode in the consequent and superject aspects of God to creativity is close to Sri Aurobindo's process of descent and ascent of the Supermind. The final project of Whitehead is peace.

This book is a symposium of all philosophic thought. Along with Whitehead's views the author has quoted almost all greatest thinkers throughout the ages. But it is a very concise book in which all philosophical terms and phrases used are not explained. Thus, for a common reader this book may appear to be incomprehensible, whereas, for the student of Metaphysics it is invaluable. We hope that in ensuing editions our erudite Author will amplify more lucidly the philosophical abstruse terms understood only by philosophers. Then he will really help the gradual growth of comparative philosophy to a global philosophic perspective.

SAILEN ROY

Page-43