(The writings of Sri Aurobindo are strewn with innumerable references and echoes from Sanskrit literature, especially the scriptural. A compilation of these references is in progress. Some excerpts are here reproduced illustratively. — M. P. P)

ABANDON

Abandon that you may possess.¹

ABSOLUTE

The Upanishads speak of the Absolute Parabramhan as tat;³

they say sa when they speak of the  Absolute Para-Purusha.⁵

 

ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE

The relation of the phenomena of Nature to the fundamental ether which is contained in them, constitutes them, contains them and yet is so different from them that entering into it they cease to be what they now are, is the illustration given by the Vedanta as most nearly representing this identity in difference between the Absolute and the relative.⁷

¹ The Ideal of the Karmayogin: In Either case.

² Isha Upanishad, I.

³ The Hour of God: Puma Yoga.

⁴ Isha Upanishad, 5.

⁶ The Hour of God: Puma Yoga.

⁶ Isha Upanishad, 8.

⁷ The Life Divine, Vol. I, Chap. 9.

Page-15

ACCESSIBLE

He is accessible even to the Atheist. To the materialist He disguises Himself in matter. For the Nihilist He waits ambushed in the bosom of Annihilation.²

ACTION

The thing to be done.⁴

Fight and overthrow thy opponents.⁶

Action demanded by the Master of your being.⁸

Thick and tangled is the way of works.¹⁰

Action regulated by nature.¹²

स्वमावनियतम् कमॅ |¹³

¹ Chhandogya Upanishad, l9.1.

2 The Hour of God : Certitudes .

³ Bhagavad Gita, 4.11.

⁴ The Synthesis of Yoga: Part 4, Chap . 20.

5 Bhagavad Gita : 3. 19

⁶ The Ideal of the Kartna yogin: Karmayoga.

⁷ Bhagavad Gita: 11.34.

⁸ The Yoga and its Objects.

⁹ Bhagavad Gita: 3

¹⁰ The Yoga and its Objects.

¹¹ Bhagavad Gita: 4.17.

¹² The Yoga and its Objects.

¹³ Bhagavad Gita: 18, 47.

Page-16

Whosoever has his temperament purged from egoism, whosoever suffers not his soul to receive the impress of the deed, though he slay the whole world yet he slays not and is not bound.¹

He who is free inwardly, even doing actions, does nothing at all; for it is Nature that works in him under the control of the Lord of Nature.³

FRUIT OF ACTION

To action thou hast a right but never under any circumstances to its fruit.⁵

Mechanical Action Act by mere play of the organs of sense and motor-action.⁷

ADORATION

It is possible so to turn life into an act of adoration to the Supreme by the spirit in one's works; for, says the Gita, 'He who gives to me with a heart of adoration a leaf, a flower, a fruit or a cup of water, I take and enjoy that offering of his devotion."⁹

¹ The Ideal of the Karmayogin: Karmayoga.

² Bhagavad Gita, 18.17.

³ The Synthesis of Yoga: Part I, Chap. 12.

⁴.Bhagavad Gita, 13.30.

⁵ The Synthesis of Yoga : Part I, Chap. 9.

⁶ The Synthesis of Yoga: Part I, Chap. 9.

⁷ The Synthesis of Yoga: Part 2, Chap. 14.

⁸ Bhagavad Gita, 5.11.

⁹ The Synthesis of Yoga: Part 1, Chapt 6.

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An ultimate inexpressible adoration offered by us to the Transcendent, to the Highest,²

to the Ineffable, is yet no complete worship if it is not offered to him wherever he manifests or wherever he hides his godhead — in man and object and every creature.⁴

ALL

All is the Divine Being.⁶

The Divine in the world, the All, of the Gita.⁸

मत्सयानि सवॅभूतानि |⁹

AMRITAM

This truth and bliss called by the Veda amrtam, Immoptality.¹⁰

AMSHA (PART)

It is verily an eternal part of Me that in the world of individual

¹ Bhagavad Gita, 9.26.

² The Synthesis of Yoga: Part I, Chap. 6.

³ Bhagavad Gita, 9.11.

⁴ The Synthesis of Yoga: Part I, Chap . 6.

5 Bhagavad Gila, 9 .11 .

⁶ The Life Divine: Vol. 2, Chap. 6.

⁷ Bhagavad Gita, 7.19.

⁸ Letters on Yoga.

⁹ Bhagavad Gita, 9.4.

¹⁰ The Hour of God: On Yoga

¹¹ Rig Veda, 1.68.2.

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existence becomes the Jiva or individual.¹

ANANDA

Ether of bliss, the Ananda Akasha of the Upanishads.³

From Ananda all existences are born, by Ananda they remain in being and increase, to Ananda they depart.⁵

As the Upanishad insists, the Ananda is the true creative principle. For all takes birth from this divine Bliss.⁷

The ancient Indian idea is absolutely true that delight, Ananda, is the most expressive and creative nature of the free self because it is the very essence of the original being of the Spirit.⁹

It is a statement of the Upanishad that there is an ether of Ananda in which all breathe and live; if it were not there, none could breathe or live.¹¹

 

¹ The Ideal of the Karmayogin: The Three Purushas.

² Bhagavad Gita, 15.7.

³ The Synthesis of Yoga: Part 4, Chap . 24 .

4 Taittiriya Upanishad, 2 .7 .

⁵ The Life Divine: Vol. I, Chap. 12.

⁶ Taittiriya Upanishad, 3.6.

⁷ The Synthesis of Yoga: Part 2, Chap . 24 .

⁸ Taittiriya Upanishad, 3.6.

9 The Future Poetry: Chap. 25.

¹⁰ Taittiriya Upanishad, 2.5.

¹¹ Letters on Yoga.

¹² Taittiriya Upanishad, 2.7.

Page-19

SAVITRI: A STUDY IN DEPTH

BOOK Two: CANTO IV

THE KINGDOMS OF LITTLE LIFE

A quivering trepidant uncertain world

Born from that dolorous meeting and eclipse

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

Inheritor of poverty and loss

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

It strove with a blindness as of groping hands

Hunting for a joy that earth has failed to keep,

Too near to our gates its unappeased unrest

For peace to live on the inert solid globe.

THE dolorous meeting between life and Matter brings about an eclipse of the puissance and the splendour of the former; it has to veil itself in the obscurity of Matter; but even so its power is not altogether lost; it fills Matter with its vibrations of a most subtle kind giving an impression that Matter is lifeless; there is a mutual striving on either side; life aware of its power before its entanglement in Matter and Matter with the urge of the spirit within, both are restless and strive to come out of the darkness; their unappeased unrest accounts for the lack of peace and the prevalence of discontent on the earth.

A Power beyond earth's scope has touched the earth;

The repose that might have been can be no more;

A formless yearning passion in man's heart,

A cry is in his blood for happier things:

Else could he roam on a free sunlit soil

With the childlike pain-forgetting mind of beasts

Or live happy, unmoved, like flowers and trees.

The Might that came upon earth to bless

Has stayed on earth to suffer and aspire.

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The hunger of life for its pristine glory and the evolutionary stress in Matter are cumulatively responsible for a disturbance in the placidity and contentment that should have been the lot of man also as it has been of beasts, trees and flowers; but he is Passioned by a yearning which is as yet formless, aimless; but it is a distinct hankering after a happier state; he feels driven away from the present state by a spirit of disgust and as a sequel life which abandoning its heights, has come to dwell on earth, realises that it has come to strive to struggle and to aspire. 'The desire soul left to itself would circle in the same grooves for ever.'

Man's natural joy of life is overcast

And sorrow is his nurse of destiny.

The animal's thoughtless joy is left behind

Care and reflection burden his daily walk:

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

He has exhausted now life's surface acts,

His being's hidden realms remain to explore.

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

In his fragile tenement he grows Nature's lord. '

In him Matter wakes from its long obscure trance,

The involved life in Matter wakes up from its long trance and in man reaches a consciousness, the highest registered so far; the thoughtless joy of an animal is not for him; he is burdened with a reflection and seriousness; sorrow and pain are his constant drives; the banquet of life is too meagre for his growing soul; from a fragile, puny, defence less slave of nature, he progresses to a spirit, a lord, a conqueror of nature, having all its resources at his command; but he realises that there are hidden realms to be explored and conquered.

Life cast her seed in the body's indolent mould;

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

Compelling it to sense and seek and feel.

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

A guideless sense was given her for her road;

Page-21

Instinct was hers, the chrysalis of Truth,

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

She brought into Matter's dull tenacity

Her anguished claim to her lost sovereign right,

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

Adorer of a joy without a name,

In her obscure cathedral of delight

To dim dwarf gods she offers secret rites.

But vain unending is the sacrifice,

The priest an ignorant mage who only makes

Futile mutations in the altar's plan

And casts blind hopes into a powerless flame.

The poet in a flash-back, rapidly sketches the evolution of life; the seed of life is cast into the mould of Matter; the seal of insentience is gradually lifted; the latent force wakes up from its torpor; struggles into a sense, a movement, not guided by an intelligence, but by an automatism of the blind working of an instinct towards truth; life thus slowly overcomes the resistance of Matter; seeks to establish her anguished claim of sovereignty; she enters into the crypt of Matter as a devotee into a cathedral; offers her prayers before the powers in charge of Matter, but all she succeeds in obtaining is a few surface alterations; some mutation in the shrine of the Matter; and even this is done through the mediation of the mage, the priest in charge.

'...in Matter undoubtedly lies the crux; that raises the obstacle; for because of Matter Life is gross and limited and stricken with death and pain, because of Matter Mind is more than half blind, its wings clipped, its feet tied to a narrow perch and held back from the vast-ness and freedom above of which it is conscious.¹'

And hardly under that load can she advance;

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

Matter dissatisfies, she turns to mind

She conquers earth, her field, then claims the heavens.

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

¹ The Life Divine, p. 206.

Page-22

Only a glimmer sometimes splits mind's sky

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

That makes of night a path to unknown dawns

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

For Knowledge gropes, but meets not Wisdom's face.

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

A foundling of the gods she wanders here

Like a child-soul left near the gates of Hell¹.

Fumbling through fog in search of Paradise.

Life finding it difficult to advance with the load of Matter, and feeling dissatisfied with its rigidity and unyielding nature, develops the mind, hoping that it may serve the purpose; mind has occasional glimpses which are too soon enveloped in darkness; it struggles to reach the light of dawn through the night of ignorance; it fumbles and gropes along; it is like the orphan left at the gates of hell seeking its way to Paradise, dimmed by the fog and the mists. Thus the evolutionary stages are marked by nescience slowly leading to ignorance which opens gradually the gates of knowledge that is purely intellectual where the higher promptings of the spirit are felt, making the seeker dissatisfied till the highest consciousness, wisdom is gained.

'If, in other words, it is not merely a mental being who is hidden in the forms of the universe, but the infinite Being, Knowledge, Will which emerges out of Matter first as Life, then as Mind, with the rest of it still unrevealed, then the emergence of consciousness out of the apparently Inconscient must have another and completer term; the appearance of a supramental spiritual being who shall impose on his mental, vital, bodily workings a higher law than that of the dividing Mind is no longer impossible. On the contrary, it is the natural and the inevitable conclusion of the nature of cosmic existence.'²

In this slow ascension he must follow her pace

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

For so only could he know the obscure cause

Of all that holds us back and baffles God

¹ The Life Divine, p. 223.

² Ibid., p. 229.

Page-23

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

He chanced into a grey obscurity

Teeming with instincts from the mindless gulfs

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

Life here was intimate with Death and Night

And ate Death's food that she might breathe awhile; .

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

Parading she flaunted her animal disgrace

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

The graceless squalor of her beast desires,

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

Here first she crawled out from her cabin of mud

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

The upward look was alien to her sight,

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

Renounced was the glory and the felicity,

Aswapathy enters into the coils of life, enters its pace, so that he may experience the difficulties, the obstacles thwarting the upward ascent; he reaches the obscure place of its start where the instinct takes the place of the mind where it enters into a compromise with Nescience so that she may be permitted to breathe awhile; she readily signs the conditions of her acceptance of sub conscience and the reign of Night; becomes the companion of Death, satisfying his hunger by her mutations so that this sojourn may eventually lead to happier stations. Life in her present state appears a contrast to her divine birth; it is deformed, ugly and shorn of its glory; does not evince the slightest sense of beauty nor a response to light; she pitifully revels in her debasement; instead of being ashamed, she parades her squalor and vileness; she fives in a cabin of mud, mute, bare-bodied and inglorious; she has not much freedom of movement due to the heavy weight of her body; renounced have been the glory and felicity that have been hers once; she wallows in the mud and mire and hardly looks upward whence she has descended.

A swaddled visionless and formless mind,

Asked for a body to translate its soul.

Page-24

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

On dim confines where Life and Matter meet

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

There life was born but died before it could live.

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

Mind flickered, a disordered infant-glow,

And random shapeless energies drove towards form

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

Matter smitten by Matter glimmered to sense,

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

Of instinct from a cloaked subliminal bed

Sensations crowded, dumb substitutes for thought

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

Free in a world of settled anarchy.

The need to exist, the instinct to survive

Engrossed the tense precarious moment's will

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

It was a vain unnecessary world

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

Nothing seemed worth the labour to become.

Aswapathy sees a mind, a consciousness groping for a body, a casement, in the dim meeting place of mind and life; everything there is in an amorphous shapeless confusion; life is dead as soon as it is born; there is a struggle for existence but there is no solid ground for life; he notices a whirl of energies anxious to take form; there is an anxiety for inconscience to develop consciousness; there is clash of matter with matter; their" friction gives rise to instinct; sensations take the place of thoughts; the hammer-beats of nature, its violence awaken a perception which still partakes of a mechanical nature; in this world of anarchy, survival is the primary concern engrossing the attention of a precarious existence always exposed to the hostility of nature; food is not sought for because of hunger but accrues by a combat of forces and the violence of nature; in short it seems an unseemly and unnecessary world, not worth its labour.

But judged not so his spirit's wakened eye.

Page-25

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

He saw the purpose in the works of Time.

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

The first writhings of the cosmic serpent Force

Uncoiled from the mystic rings of Matter's trance;

It raised its head in the warm air of life.

It could not cast off yet Night's stiffening sleep

Or wear as yet mind's wonder flecks and streaks,

Put on its jewelled hood the crown of soul

Or stand erect in the blaze of spirit's sun.

Aswapathy is like a lonely star a representative of light on a vast background of the dark horizon; he with his awakened spiritual consciousness, sees a purpose, a concealed design, working itself out in all the apparently aimless and unmeaning movement; to his eye, the cosmic force is like a python, uncoiling itself ring by ring, from its trance or mysterious sleep in Matter; it has just come out into the open to draw in fresh air; it has not yet developed the consciousness of a mind, nor has it advanced to the level where it can feel the urges of the spirit within.

The secret crawl of consciousness to light

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

Beneath the body's crust of thickened self

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

The turbid yeast of Nature's passionate change,

Ferment of the soul's creation out of mire.

A heavenly process donned this grey disguise,

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

To release the glory of God in Nature's mud.

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

A mystic Presence none can probe nor rule,

Creator of this game of ray and shade

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

Asks from the body the soul's intimacies

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

Links its mechanic throbs to light and love.

Page-26

It summons the spirit's sleeping memories

But the consciousness first abandons itself to the carnal pleasures of lust; has a fill of satisfaction from all sensuous enjoyments; but life feels the ferment of the soul beneath the crust of the body; the inconscience is a camouflage, a grey disguise, purposely worn so that in a phased manner, the immersed divine glory may be released; Aswapathy's spiritual insight reveals to him the secrets of the shifting flux; he tracks the source of all the movement; he discovers the mystic Presence responsible for the light and the shade of existence; it breathes a spark of fife into Matter; and makes it the link between the body and the spirit.

Up from subconscient depths beneath Time's foam;

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

They come disguised as feelings and desires,

Like weeds upon the surface float awhile

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

Always a heaven-truth broods in life's deeps;

The pressure of the spirit in some unguarded moment, when the surface consciousness proves a lax sentinel, releases the longings and the impulses concealed in the subconscious; they come out like a rabble in a riotous holiday spirit; they are just like the weeds that float for a time and sink in the stream; these however impure and degraded they may be, are evidences of an indwelling spirit that in a more propitious time may express itself better and take direct charge of the movement. *

A touch of God's rapture in creation's acts

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

Lurks still in the dumb roots of death and birth,

The world's senseless beauty mirrors God's delight.

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

It flows in the wind's breath, in the tree's sap,

Its hued magnificence blooms in leaves and flowers.

When life broke through its half-drowse in the plant

Page-27

That feels and suffers but cannot move or cry.

In beast and in winged bird and thinking man

It made of the heart's rhythm its music's beat:

It forced the unconscious tissues to awake

And ask for happiness and earn the pang

The world has come out of delight; is sustained by it; the world mirrors the rapture of God; it is displayed everywhere; it is manifest in the wind's breath, the tree's sap, in the magnificence of its leaves and flowers; when we reach from the subconscious plant to the conscious animal kingdom, the God's rapture may be heard in the musical, rhythmical heart-beats of the birds, the beasts and the men.

All Nature's longing drive none can resist,

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

To enlarge life's room and scope and pleasure's range,

To battle and overcome and make one's own,

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

A yearning to possess and be possessed,

In the higher order of creation a tissue of consciousness is awakened; there is a craving for happiness, a thrill of pleasure to be acquired with a pang of suffering if necessary; but blind to the fount of joy within, the soul catches at passing things; it seeks for delight elsewhere thinking it lies in possession of external objects and thus there is developed a will to battle, to overcome and make one's own.

Here was its early brief attempt to be,

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

Whose stamp of failure haunts all ignorant life.

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

Ghostlike pursues all that we dream and do.

Although on earth are firm established lives.

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

Yet are its roots of will ever the same;

The determination to live, to somehow exist is there even

Page-28

amongst the discouraging and disheartening factors; but its fear and the failure to live up to its resolve haunts it through life and shadows its waking and even the dream consciousness; though life here follows the rigid laws fixed and unvaried by Nature, of growth followed by decay, there is however a persistence of will to live, to exist; this .determination is persistent everywhere in life.

This was the first cry of the awaking world.

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

In beast and reptile and in thinking man

It lasts and is the fount of all their life.

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

The spirit in a finite ignorant world

Must rescue so its prisoned consciousness

Forced out in little jets at quivering points

From the Inconscient's sealed infinitude.

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

A neighbour is her life to insentient Nought.

This yearning for life is not confined to man only, but permeates even the lower order of existence such as the reptile, and the beast; it is a craving in evidence ever since the dawn of consciousness even in the minutest degree; to exist is the be-all and the end-all of life; it has no loftier aims; but the infinitude of the spirit lying prisoned under the seal of Inconscience struggles for liberation; the urges and the promptings that flash upon it may show the light or furnish the key; but alas they are too soon engulfed by the darkness; further the consciousness is disabled by the condition of its precariousness by nature of its mortality and by its proximity to inconscience which has a more enduring grip than the fitful glimmers that may open out at critical junctures of life.

Non-Being's night could never have been saved

If Being had not plunged into the dark

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

Being became the Void and Conscious-Force

Nescience and walk of a blind Energy

Page-29

And Ecstasy took the figure of World-pain.

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

A Wisdom that prepares its far-off ends

Planned so to start her slow aeonic game.

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

At last the struggling Energy can emerge

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

The Two embrace and strive and each know each

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

In Nature he saw the mighty Spirit concealed,

Watched the weak birth of a tremendous Force,

The Spirit which has plunged into the nether region of Inconscience the opposite of itself should have ever remained un rescued as Non-Being but for the Supreme planning an evolution from this devolution of Himself; the Eternal with the intention of working out the salvation of the world, throws himself into the limitations of time; it is He that undergoes all the sufferings in the shape of life so that by his sacrifice he may bring about the redemption here; for this purpose the Being becomes a Void, an apparent blank; his Bliss gets transformed into pain; and his consciousness wears the mask of ignorance; he thus conceals himself in his contraries; but the indwelling intelligence in everything pushes it along the planned curves to the designed end; the self-discovery should be a slow, aeonic purpose since otherwise the descent is meaningless and the game deprived of all the pleasure sought to be derived from it; the Spirit and Nature, the Purusha and the Prakriti are at hide and seek; the struggle for emergence, the stir of the Spirit becomes manifest to Aswapathy even in the faint beginnings of life; everywhere he finds evidence of the mighty Spirit concealed in Nature and he derives a feeling, an assurance that ultimately the struggling energy will come out in a wider field of consciousness and embrace nature its playmate.

We may quote from The Life Divine, 'Existence plunging into apparent Non-Existence, Consciousness into an apparent Inconscience, Delight of existence into a vast cosmic insensibility are the first result of the fall and, in the return from it by a struggling fragmentary experience, the rendering of Consciousness into the dual

Page-30

terms of truth and falsehood, knowledge and error, of Existence into the dual terms of life and death, of Delight of existence into the dual terms of pain and pleasure are the necessary process of the labour of self-discovery____ Still because the Non-Existence is a concealed Existence, the Inconscience a concealed Consciousness, the insensibility a masked and Dormant Ananda, these secret realities must emerge; the hidden over mind and Supermind too must in the end fulfil themselves in this apparently opposite organisation from a dark infinite.'¹

'If this underlying subliminal consciousness were to come itself to the surface, there would be a direct knowledge; but this is not possible, first, because of the veto of obstruction of the Inconscience and secondly because the evolutionary intention is to develop slowly through an imperfect but growing surface awareness.'²

'As Life and Mind have been released in Matter, so too must in their time these greater powers of the concealed Godhead emerge from the involution and their supreme Light descend into us from above.'³

And there arose from the dim gulf of things

The strange creations of a thinking sense,

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

Beings were born who perished without trace,

Events that were a formless drama's limbs

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

An insect hedonism fluttered and crawled

And basked in a sunlit Nature's surface thrills

And dragon raptures, python agonies

Crawled in the marsh and mire and licked the sun

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

Nature now launched the extreme experience

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

To massive from infinitesimal shapes,

¹ The Life Divine, p. 263.

² Ibid., p. 546.

³ Ibid., p. 264

Page-31

Aswapathy sees a scene of creation where nature has launched an experimentation to massive from infinitesimal shapes; life there is which attempts to be but perishes as soon as it comes into being; they are the inconsequential creations in the whirl of a blind life force; they look like events in a drama of existence which has as yet taken no definite shape or direction; fragmentary and fitful existences bask for a while under the warmth of the sun and perish; next is the stride from the puny to the gigantic creations of life; huge animals like the python and the dragon crawl into view and enjoy the surface thrills of nature; these are mighty of body but dwarfish in brain.

The kingdom of the animal self arose,

Where deed is all and mind is still half-born

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

But to the outward only were they alive,

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

And to the prick of need that drove their lives.

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

Its thoughts were kneaded by the shocks of sense;

It captured not the spirit in the form,

The animal life has an intelligence which is confined to a response to the externals; they are pricked into an activity by the bodily needs of hunger and self-protection; it is not aware of the spirit nor is the mind developed enough to give it a respite from the physical preoccupations; it is the shocks of the environment that determine the texture of its thoughts.

Beings were there who wore a human form;

Absorbed they lived in the passion of the scene,

But knew not who they were or why they lived:

Life had for them no aim save Nature's joy

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

They worked for the body's wants, they craved no more,

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

Identified with the spirit's outward shell.

Page-32

There are beings who though they wear the appearance of man are close to animals in the nature and the way of their lives; they are never worried about the purpose of their existence or its origin or goal; they are immersed in the satisfaction of the biological needs and enjoyment of the feast provided by nature; the shell and not the spirit, claims all their attention.

He saw the drama only and the stage.

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

The burden of reflection was not born:

Mind looked on Nature with unknowing eyes,

Adored her boons and feared her monstrous strokes.

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

It thirsted not for the secret wells of Truth,

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

But made a register of crowding facts

And strung sensations on a vivid thread:

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

But only to feed the surface sense with bliss.

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

To guard their form of self from Nature's harm,

To enjoy and to survive was all their care.

They are interested in the charm of the passing spectacle, the phantasmagoria of life and its unstable and gorgeous base; man simply looks on nature with a blank unthinking eye; his mind is a record transcribing all the impressions; it revels in the boons of nature and fears its frowns; all the sensations are strung on the thread of his memory; he is more involved in the primary concern of self-preservation against nature's cruelties and a free abandon to an enjoyment of its bounty than in the reflections of a higher order or in the discovery of the secret wells of truth within.

To save their small lives from surrounding

Death They made a tiny circle of defence

Against the siege of the huge universe:

They preyed upon the world and were its prey,

Page-33

But never dreamed to conquer and be free.

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

The patterns of thinking of a little group

Fixed a traditional behaviour's law.

With the intention of ensuring their survival, they raise fortifications against the inroads of nature; for purposes of defence they organise themselves into a tiny circle and fix up the modes of behaviour; they live on nature and nature lives on them; it may be recalled that the eater is at last eaten; they have not yet the thought or capacity of making a bid for their freedom by the conquest of nature not through exploitation but by the development of identity or harmony with nature.

They turned in grooves of animal desire.

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

Did by a banded selfishness a small good

Or wrought a dreadful wrong and cruel pain

On sentient lives and thought they did no ill.

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

Mocking or thrilled by their torn victim's pangs;

Admiring themselves as titans and as gods

Proudly they sang their high and glorious deeds

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

Those like himself, by blood or custom kin,

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

His personal nebula's constituent stars,

Satellite companions of his solar I.

A small circle determines the code of behaviour to be followed by the rest; satisfaction of carnal desires is its activating principle, they form themselves into small bands and live by rapine, rape and slaughter; they are proud of a good or evil done if it serves the interests of their group; they glory in the pangs of their victim and fancy themselves titans or gods according to the respective carnage or good done; they sing the paeans of their triumph; those that have like disposition or have ties of consanguinity are admitted into the pack;

Page-34

they are the satellites moving round the ego of a leader, catering to his interests and incidentally deriving small benefits for themselves.

Herding for safety on a dangerous earth

He gathered them round him as if minor Powers .

To make a common front against the world

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

Or else to heal his body's loneliness.

In others than his kind he sensed a foe,

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

Or he live as lives the solitary brute;

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

None thought to look beyond the hour's gains,

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

Or felt some touch divine surprise his heart.

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

Inflicting mutual grief and happiness

In ignorance of the Self for ever one

They form into aggregates to protect themselves against the hostility of nature or other hordes or to escape from a sense of desolation in a not altogether friendly world; sometimes he may choose to remain isolated and in that case he is all nerves, ever in the dread of an attack and is in a state of preparedness to meet the same; thus they are absorbed in the activities of the hour; they never look beyond or experience a touch of the divine; they have no ideals to make the world better; they inflict grief on each other by mutual rivalries forgetting that there is a unifying self which remains common to all.

A half-awakened Nescience struggled there

To know by sight and touch the outside of things.

Instinct was formed; in memory's crowded sleep

The past lived on as in a bottomless sea:

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

Clutched to her the little she could reach and seize

And put aside in her subconscient cave.

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

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And learn by failure and progress by fall

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

By suffering discover his deep soul

Consciousness is in throes of birth; it begins as ignorance trying to know; it is just like a half-awakened person feeling still drowsy; it is by sight and sensation that it becomes vaguely aware and instinct does duty for mind; the experiences gained, the impressions left are shelved in the lockers of the sub-conscious; it draws from the subliminal vaults only just what is necessary for meeting the present needs; the rebuffs in life, the discomfitures and failures are the schools of its discipline and development; they enlarge its consciousness and enable it to discover the soul hidden within.

Half-way she stopped and found her faith no more.

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

Only the life could think and not the mind,

Only the sense could feel and not the soul,

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

Some joy to be, some rapturous leaps of sense.

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

Behind all moved seeking for vessels to hold

A first raw vintage of the grapes of God

On earth's mud a spilth of the supernal Bliss,

Intoxicating the stupefied soul and mind

A heady wine of rapture dark and crude,

Dim, un cast yet into spiritual form

Obscure inhabitant of the world's blind core

An unborn godhead's will, a mute desire.

Life stops half-way since her faith does not carry her along the full course and falters in the middle by distraction and distrust; it is only with the surface layers of consciousness that man thinks; he does not bring into play the psychic person; 'this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous

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inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine"¹

He is soon caught in the web of raptures that the senses weave around him; and as a consequence the soul-search is abandoned; but behind all the surface impermanent pleasures is the everlasting vintage of delight and ecstasy of God; it is seeking for a proper medium to touch the earth and because of the dearth of an appropriate receptacle, only a few drops are scattered on the earth and even with these life become intoxicated enough to grow forgetful of the soul; but what becomes obvious is that the obscure inhabitant within is anxious and resolved to disclose himself.

A mould of body's early mind was made.

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

A difficult evolution from below

Called a masked intervention from above;

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

The Intelligence that devised the cosmic scheme.

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

Moving concealed by Matter and dumb life.

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

There was no thinking self, aim there was none:

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

Only to the unstable surface rose

Sensations, stabs and edges of desire

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

And jets of subconscious will or hunger's pulls.

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

Then came the pressure of a seeing Power

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

Centre of reference in a conscious field,

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

¹ The Life Divine, p. 207.

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Even an illusion gave of fixity

As if a sea could serve as a firm soil.

Aswapathy observes a third movement where there are inchoate beginnings of mind; this is a development due to an urge below, supported by a prompting from above, otherwise the concealed intelligence would for ever have remained hidden; it begins as a thin current dispersing itself over the wide unconscious world, gathering experiences on the way; the first formations of a thinking self, if it could be called one, are in the shape of sensations and desires; but gradually all the forces of diffusion are brought into a single focus, a centre of reference, the mind, which gives an illusion of a stability to the different movements of existence; a firm base for existence is as inconceivable as a firm soil on a wavy sea.

It forced on flux a limit and a shape

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

Drew lines to snare the spirit's formlessness.

It fashioned the life-mind of bird and beast,

The answer of the reptile and the fish,

The primitive pattern of the thoughts of man.

A finite movement of the Infinite

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

Its right to be immortal it reserved,

But built a wall against the siege of death

And threw a hook to clutch eternity.

A finite movement of the Infinite starts by fashioning for its dwelling forms of the bird, the fish, the reptile and the beast; while retaining its privilege of importantly, it builds up the protective defence of a body against the assaults of Death; the body is the bait thrown to Death but the Spirit remains eternal and death is only a process to immortality.

A thinking entity appeared in Space.

A little ordered world broke into view

Where being had prison-room for act and sight,

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

An instrument personality was born,

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

A little joy and knowledge satisfied

This little being tied into a knot

And hung on a bulge of its environment,

A little curve cut off in measureless Space,

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

It knew itself a creature of the mud;

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

It asked no larger law, no loftier air;

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

A backward scholar on logic's rickety bench

Indoctrinated by the erring sense,

It took appearance for the face of God,

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

For heaven a starry strip of doubtful blue;

Aspects of being feigned to be the whole.

As a culmination of all the experimentation of the Life-Force, there appears on the stage of existence, a thinking entity, the man; he infuses into the chaotic world an order and a system; though the spirit is still a prisoner, it has abundant room to think and act; it restricts the flights to the narrow limits of the prison-house; it moves in the small orbit of the seen and the known and imposes a self-inhibition to adventure into the unknown; reason in him is the glass reflecting the habitual movements of nature, its reflex actions; he acquiesces to move in the pre-fixed periphery; and bows to the conditions of brevity and the aimlessness of existence.

The little human is like a minute fragment cut off from the rest of the environment on which he appears a protuberance, a bulge; he is like a curve, a segment of a whole; he has a mind that can plan, a will that can strive but they are always directed towards the satisfaction of small desires and accomplishment of petty ends; there is a mountain of labour for possession of a trifle; a creature of the mud, the mind has a low perch and is incapable of higher flights or aspirations; it is always extrovert, never introvert, always drawn out and

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never withdraws into itself; a logician depending exclusively on the senses, the mind takes appearances for facts, and fragments for whole.

And tiny egos took the world as means

To sate awhile dwarf lusts and brief desires,

In a death-closed passage saw the life's start and end »

As though a blind alley were creation's sign,

As if for this the soul had coveted birth

In the wonderland of a self-creating world

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

This fire growing by its fuel's death,

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

Only it hoped for greatness in its den

And conquest of life-room for self and kin,

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

It had no greater deeper cause to live.

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

In limits only it was powerful;

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

Its knowledge was the body's instrument;

Absorbed in the little works of its prison-house

It turned around the same unchanging points

In the same circle of interest and desire,

But thought itself the master of its jail.

The ego, though tiny, exercises its omnipotence over the man; it eggs him on to the satisfaction of his lust and unending desires; he imagines that his career is routed through a passage opening with life and culminating in death; he further thinks that he has to make the most of its brevity by its exploitation making it yield hedonistic pleasures; but there should have been a higher purpose to be served, by the opportunity of life and the divine with his infinite wisdom could not have created a blind alley as imagined in our ignorance; but the ego tied to its tether of puny thoughts, never looks beyond its self-aggrandisement; even the knowledge gained is used as another limb of the body for procuring more satisfaction to its animal

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needs; but its desire grows by what it feeds on and the satisfaction of one desire is the fertile bed for another to blossom; confined to its den it luxuriates in its un-varying repetitious routine of pampering the body and starving the soul; gratified with the little elbow room achieved, it forgets its condition of being a prisoner and has the fancy that k is the master of the jail.

Thought was its apex or its gutter's rim:

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

Attached to a confined familiar world,

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

Life was a play monotonously the same.

There were no vast perspectives of the spirit,

No swift invasions of unknown delight,

No golden distances of wide release.

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

A moment's movement doomed to last through Time.

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

A little light in a great darkness born,

Life knew not where it went nor whence it came.

Around all floated still the nescient haze.

The only redeeming feature is the achievement of thought which is the highest development since the beginning of life from its puny start; while that is the top, it is also the surface of the gutter of nescience; it is a product of the inconscience which still courses in its veins; complacent with the customary, it never embarks on the unfamiliar; it riots in the pleasures of the moment; is not cloyed with the monotony of the movement initiated at one moment or point of time and continued ever the same throughout the rest of life; he does not have the taste for the unknown or the perennial; his consciousness is a little candle throwing its ineffective light on a massive darkness; surrounded by nescience, it little knows whence and for what it has come or whither it goes.

Y. S. R. CHANDRAN

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THE SECRET OF THE VEDA

(2)

(Continued from the February 1974 issue)

THE RISHI'S TASK AND METHOD

THE Indian tradition ascribes a dual function to the Rishi. He was both the "seer" of the hymns and at the same time an officiate at the public sacrifice round which the life of the Vedic peoples turned. This gave him an advantage as well as was a source of considerable difficulty. The advantage was that the priest could direct the prayers to the ordinary ends in view, — the securing of cattle, horses, hero-sons, and all other forms of wealth that would interest his patrons, and thereby secure their approval. The difficulty sprang from the fact that the author of the hymns had quite another aim in view, namely, to make his inner aspiration for the spiritual riches clear to his own mind and to those whom he cared to impart his knowledge. How did he manage these apparently contradictory tasks? The answer to this question gives us a clue to the mystery of the Veda.

Two things came to his help, first, an occult phenomenon of deep import to which he seems to have had access, and second, the peculiar character of the language which he had to use.

"The forces and processes of the physical world", says Sri Aurobindo, "repeat, as in a symbol, the truths of the supraphysical action which produced it. And since it is by the same forces and the same processes, one in the physical worlds and the supraphysical, that our inner life and its development are governed, the Rishis adopted the phenomena of physical Nature as just symbols for those functionings of the inner life which it was their difficult task to indicate in the concrete language of a sacred poetry that must at the same time serve for the external worship of the Gods as powers of the visible universe."¹

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How the authors of the hymns made use of this correspondence between the physical and the supraphysical and what phenomena of physical Nature and other facts of the normal physical life of the times the Rishis took into account in this connection we shall discuss in fuller detail. Here it may suffice to say that this "symbolic" view of things-pervades the entire Veda, and adds not a little to the difficulty of getting at its true import. For we of a later age have not only lost the meaning of the symbols, the key words that hold the clue to the Vedic thought, but have also progressed too far in abstract intellectual thinking to understand and appreciate the very different mentality of that early age which preferred the concrete to the abstract like a child does.

The Vedic language too was in many respects, and particularly in its use of the vocables, very different from any of the modern languages. It belonged to a stage in human history when language itself was young. One of its traits, namely, the use of a single word to express more than one idea or action, has no doubt persisted to our times, and is particularly noticeable in the classical Sanskrit which encouraged in its poets a rather disconcerting habit of double entendre. But what really distinguishes the old Vedic tongue from its modern descendants is 'the use of the same vocable as noun, adjective, adverb and sometimes even as verb, and most remarkable of all, - the source in fact of all this multiplicity, - the close association that was still vivid in the mind of the speaker or hearer between the vocable and the root from which it came.

"The word for the Vedic Rishi is still a living thing, a thing of power, creative, formative. -It is not yet a conventional symbol for an idea but itself the parent and former of ideas. It carries within it the memory of its roots, is still conscious of its own history.... For the Vedic Rishi vrka meant the tearer and therefore, among other applications of the sense, a wolf; dhenu meant the fosterer, nourisher, and therefore a COW."²

These characteristics of the language enabled the authors of the hymns to use their words with great pliability. To take a single instance, "cartas meant food but also it meant 'enjoyment, pleasure',

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therefore it could be used by the Rishi to suggest to the profane mind only the food given at the sacrifice to the gods, but for the initiated it meant the Ananda, the joy of the divine bliss entering into the physical consciousness and at the same time suggested the image of the Soma wine, at once the food of the gods and the Vedic symbol of the Ananda".³ The instances may be multiplied, as will be shown presently.

THE SYMBOLIC SACRIFICE

The sacrifice, that is, the ceremonial offering of gifts to the gods, mainly in the form of food articles, accompanied by hymns of prayer and praise and invoking their participation in the gifts, in return for which they were expected to bestow on the giver the boons demanded, this formed the kernel of the Vedic worship. It is round the sacrifice therefore that the Vedic symbolism has been built. The sacrifice itself carries in the Veda a deep symbolic sense. All its attending circumstances, the offerings, the boons demanded, the gods who confer these boons, the powers that are ever on the alert to spoil the sacrifice and from whom the gods have to win the riches for man, — even the names of the Rishis who officiate as priests and the "kings" who fight the battles with "robber" chiefs, — these are all used as expressive symbols for the inner discipline in which alone lay the main interest of the Rishis in fashioning these hymns.

Wherever we come across symbolic poetry of a high order, as among the Sufis of the Middle Ages or the Vaishnava poets of Bengal for example, we find the poets drawing freely on the life that surrounded them — the wine and the cup-bearer, the drunkard and his intoxication, the passion and sensuousness of human love; for these were figures that would be easily recognised by the profane as well as the initiate, in their apparent and the esoteric sense. The Vedic symbolism is likewise based on the life of the common man of the times.

"That life", as is well-known to the modern student of the Veda, "was largely an existence of herdsmen and tillers of the soil for the mass of the people varied by the wars and migrations of the clans under their kings, and in all this activity the worship of the gods by sacrifice had become the most solemn and magnificent element, the

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knot of all the rest. For by the sacrifice were won the rain which fertilised the soil, the herds of cattle and heroes necessary for their existence in peace and war, the wealth of gold, land (ksetra), retainers, fighting-men which constituted greatness and leadership, the victory in the battle, safety in the journey by land and water which was so difficuk and dangerous in those times of poor means of communication and loosely organised inter-tribal existence.

"All the principal features of that outward life which they saw around them the mystic poets took and turned into significant images of the inner life."⁴

In this inner life, the idea of "sacrifice", in the literal sense of "making holy", dominated the rest, as the sacrificial ritual did in the external life of the senses. What exactly did the Rishis mean by this inner sacrifice becomes then a matter of crucial importance in the understanding of the Veda.

The object of the Vedic discipline was to find a way out of the "much falsehood" of our normal vital physical and mental life to the truth and felicity of a diviner existence. This in the view of the Vedic Rishi could be done only by an enlargement of the consciousness. The Sacrifice, in the Vedic sense, is "the offering of the mortal being's activities to the divine by awakening his consciousness so that it assumes right states of emotion and right movements of thought in accordance with the Truth ... and by impelling in it the rise of those truths which, according to the Vedic Rishis, liberate the life and being from falsehood, weakness and limitation and open to it the doors of the supreme felicity."⁵

The Sacrifice is "a symbol of cosmic and individual activity become self-conscious, enlightened and aware of its goal. The whole process of the universe is in its very nature a sacrifice, voluntary or involuntary. Self-fulfilment by self-immolation, to grow by giving is the universal law .... All the powers and potentialities of the human life are offered up, in the symbol of a sacrifice, to the divine Life in the Cosmos,"⁶ The essence of the Sacrifice is a labour of constant discipline, an effort of submission and surrender to the Divine Will, once one becomes aware of it, in all one's acts and thoughts and feelings.

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The condition of the effective Sacrifice is "the continual resort day by day, in the night and in the light, of the thought in the human being with submission, adoration, self-surrender, to the divine Will and Wisdom, represented by Agni,"⁷ as has been made clear in the very first hymn of the Rigveda.

This is no easy task, indeed is the most difficult work that can be undertaken by man. The Sacrifice (yajña) therefore has among its many synonyms, the words karma, apas, kāra, kiri, all meaning work, the work, and carsani and krti, both implying effort, laborious action. Sri Aurobindo therefore calls " the Vedic work, the sacrifice, the toil of aspiring humanity, the arati of the Aryan.''⁸ It is a labour of constant self-introspection and self-correction which few would willingly undertake. It is a constant progression, a march, a journey towards the Light.

It may be observed in passing that it was perhaps due to this supreme importance attached to Sacrifice as the most important work, karma, prescribed for man, one that leads to the highest felicity, that in the age that followed the composition and compilation of the hymns, in the age of the Brahmana texts which seek to find a justification for the details of the sacrificial ritual, that so much stress was laid on the correct performance of the rites. And karma came to be used in later orthodox thought, so carefully systemati sed in the Sauté Sutras and Grihya Sutras, and finally in the philosophy of Purva Mimansa, as practically synonymous with the due performance of the Vedic ritual. This it is that really accounts for the view that the Vedic hymnal constitutes the karma-kānda of the Vedic literature, ignoring the fact that the right will to works could come only from a true knowledge and perception of the divine Will. The -Sacrifice implied both jñāna and karma.

THE BOONS DEMANDED

The Sacrifice has for its object the winning of desirable boons. These boons are described by the general term, rayi, rādhas, wealth or prosperity. The chief elements of this wealth are cows (go), horses (asva), gold (hira1Jya), men or heroes (vira), chariots (ratha), offspring (praj a or apatya). These boons are the gifts of the gods to men who

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do the sacrifice well. Who the gods are in the esoteric view we shall discuss later. Here it may suffice to say that they are friends and helpers of men, "the luminous divine powers, born of the infinite consciousness, Aditi, whose formation and activity in our human and mortal being are necessary for our growth into the godhead."⁹

"The chief conditions of the prosperity so ardently desired are the rising of the Dawn and the Sun and the downpour of the rain of heaven and of the seven rivers .... But even this prosperity, the fullness of cows, horses, gold, men, chariots, offspring, is not a final end in itself; all this is a means towards the opening up of the other worlds, the winning of Swar, the ascent to the solar heavens, the attainment by the path of the Truth to the Light and to the heavenly Bliss where the mortal arrives at Immortality."¹⁰ Here we are introduced to the heart of the Mystery. In order to seize its meaning, we must in the first instance know what the boons demanded represent in their real, psychological and spiritual sense.

The safest way would be to follow the indications given by Sri Aurobindo. Anyone interested to know the grounds on which these indications have been based will do well to look up the detailed exposition he has given in his studies on the Veda. It is needless to add that all these boons, so material and earthy in appearance, are in reality symbolic, like the Sacrifice itself.

The Rishis are aspirants to the same Truth, but they differ in the manner in which they use the symbols. Sometimes they lift the veil sufficiently to enable us to guess readily enough what they are driving at; sometimes the veil is thick. But whatever the manner of presentation, they invariably use a fixed system of notation.

Light and Power, the illumination of knowledge and the driving force of energy, are the first requisites in their spiritual progress. Hence the predominance of the Cow and the Horse among the boons demanded. The Cow (go) is symbolic of Light, of consciousness at all levels of being. At its highest stands the mystic Cow, Aditi, the infinite Consciousness, Mother of the worlds.¹¹ The Bull (vrsabha), it may be noted in passing, stands for the Supreme, Deva or Purusha, though the symbol is applied constantly to the god Indra as well, as the Lord or Puissant. ¹² On whatever plane of being, the cows are always the radiances or illuminations of a divine Sun, illuminations

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of the dawning divine consciousness, thoughts which realise the Truth, thoughts which seek the Bull.¹³ The Horse (aśva), symbolises force or energy; the horses are energies of the Divine Force which carry the Sacrifice forward and enable the aspirant to achieve.':' Light and Power are latent in man; the Cow and the Horse therefore always represent a concealed and imprisoned wealth which ha s to he uncovered and released by a divine puissance. ¹⁵

Gold (hiranya), says Sri Aurobindo, "is probably the symbol of the substance of the Truth, for its radiance is the light which is the golden wealth found in Surya, . .. therefore we have the epithet, hiranyam jyotih."¹⁶ Chariots (ratha) evidently signify movement, the progress of man towards godhead. ¹⁷ The Hero (vīra) is the battling power within us that performs the journey, the power of the Divine Will that. is at work in us and impels us forward. ¹⁸ The son (apatya or prajā) for whom the Rishi constantly prays is the divine birth, "the godhead created within the humanity",¹⁹ the divine Child who in the lap of the Mother wholly sees .

"The three great conquests to which the human being aspires, which the Gods are in constant battle with the Vritras and Panis to give to man are the herds, the waters and the Sun or the solar world, gāh, āpah, svah. The question is whether these references are to the rains of heaven, the rivers of Northern India . .. ? Is the winning of Swar simply the recovery of the sun from its shadowing by the storm-cloud ... ? Or does the conquest of Swar mean simply the winning of heaven by sacrifice? ... Is it not rather a system of symbolic meanings ... ?" ²⁰

The answer given by Sri Aurobindo is an emphatic yes. He has devoted considerable space to a full discussion of the question. We shall confine ourselves to a bare presentation of his findings, and refer the curious to his book, On the Veda. It is particularly in the sense given to the seven rivers that the scholars have completely gone astray and erected on that mistaken basis their current theories about the Veda. We cannot therefore avoid the temptation of referring to some of the absurdities of the current interpretation, in however cursory fashion, by taking up a single hymn in the Rigveda (IV.58) in the

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light of Sri Aurobindo, and mainly in his inimitable words.

In this hymn the Rishi Vamadeva says "that a honeyed wave climbs up from the ocean and by means of this mounting wave which is the Soma (amśu) one attains entirely to immortality .... In the fifth verse he openly describes it (the ocean) as the ocean of the heart (hrdyāt samudrāt), out of which rise the waters of the clarity, ghrtasya dhdrdh, the flow, he says, becoming progressively purified by the mind and the inner heart .... 'These move,' says Vamadeva, 'from the heart-ocean, penned by the enemy in a hundred enclosures they cannot be seen ... .' Certainly, Vamadeva does not mean," comments Sri Aurobindo, "that a wave or flood of wine came mounting up out of the salt water of the Indian Ocean or of the Bay of Bengal or even from the fresh water of the river Indus or the Ganges and that this wine is a secret name for clarified butter .... Certainly, this does not mean that rivers of ghee or of water, either - rising from the heart-ocean or any ocean were caught on their way by the wicked and unconscionable Dravidians and shut up in a hundred pens .... For even if the rivers of the Punjab all flow out of one heart-pleasing lake, yet their streams of water cannot even so have been triply placed in a cow and the cow hidden in a cave by the cleverest and most inventive Dravidians. . .. Let us observe the remarkable language in which Vamadeva speaks of these rivers of the clarity. He says first that the gods sought and found the clarity, the ghrtam, triply placed and hidden by the Panis in the cow, gavi...."²¹

What the ocean represents, and what the clarified butter and the Soma, we shall consider later. Here it may suffice to conclude with Sri Aurobindo that the "waters" are the planes of consciousness which divide the physical nature of man from their godhead and are full of obstacles to communication between earth and heaven. The gods pour the fullness of these waters, the fullness of conscient being in its movements, especially the upper waters, the waters of heaven, the streams of the Truth, rtasya dhārāh, across the obstacles into the human consciousness" All the gods are givers of the rain, the abundance (for vrsti, rain, has both senses) of heaven, sometimes described as solar waters, soaroatth, apah, The "seven rivers" are not the rivers of the Punjab, whose free and unobstructed flow the Aryan worshipper prayed for in order to ensure the unimpeded working of

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his irrigation channels or allow unhindered the navigation of the streams. "The seven rivers are", in the words of Sri Aurobindo, "conscious currents corresponding to the sevenfold substance of the ocean of being which appears to us formulated in the seven worlds enumerated by the Puranas. It is their full flow in the human consciousness which constitutes the entire activity of the being, his full treasure of substance, his full play of energy ..."²³

(To be continued)

SANAT K . BANERJI

REFERENCES

¹ Sri Aurobindo, On the Veda (First University Edition, 1956, Pondicherry), pp. 328-29.

2. Ibid. pp. 63-64.

3. Ibid. p. 65.

4. Ibid. p. 208.

5. Ibid. pp. I15-16.

6. Ibid. p. 316.

7. Ibid. p. 78.

8. Ibid. p. 100.

9. Ibid. p. 231.

10. Ibid. pp. 158-59.

11. Ibid. p. 323n.

12. Ibid. PP- 233, 303n.

13. Ibid. PP- 159 189, 263, 2 18 .

14. Ibid. pp. 159, 215.

15. Ibid. p. 167.

16. Ibid. p. 258.

17. Ibid. p. 159.

18. Ibid. pp. 215, 182.

19. Ibid. p. 599n.

20. Ibid. p. 125.

21. Ibid. pp. 117, 121.

22. Ibid. pp. 99, 101.

23. Ibid. p. 113.

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ON EDUCATION

DEVELOPMENT URGE

THE parents have to understand the spontaneous motivating processes constituted by the inner urge towards development, progressive attainment of perfection and self-mastery. This inner urge is expressed from the very moment of birth in the spontaneous activities of the helpless neonate and its manifestation becomes evident in the infant who struggles unfatiguingly to gain progressive control over his uncoordinated muscular movements, to translate his random visual sensations into meaningful perception, to observe various sounds and to acquire speaking ability and to overcome all his limitations. The infant is incessantly engaged in various types of muscular activities in sequence moving arms and legs, trying to raise its head, to balance the body with help of arms while lying on stomach, to crawl, to grasp and to throw objects, attempting to sit, stand with help of support and then without support, learning to walk and practising for progressive perfection in the basic and specialized coordination's. During his learning period he may fall sick but that does not stop his activities, he may not succeed in the beginning to sit or stand or walk and may fall down again and again but his whole-hearted engrossment in a newly attempted activity is not disturbed, rather he takes each failure as a challenge and each smallest success apparently insignificant to the adult is a source of immense joy to him. The developmental urge in the child is expressed in the remarkable learning capacity of the child in different directions simultaneously. While trying to reach and grasp a ball, the child not only learns certain motor coordination's but he closely observes the colour and the shape, listens to the adult who pronounces the word ball, tries to imitate the word and may also want the adult to join in his play, all these activities being the spontaneous manifestation of the developmental urge.

This inner urge is unfortunately eclipsed in due course due to the faulty upbringing and unwise use of external motivation in form of reward and punishment, encouragement of ruthless competition, emphasis on ambition, status and material allurements. This results from the ignorance regarding the needs of the child and lack of understanding

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of the process of education on the part of the parents which has to be a process of progressive stimulation of developmental urge instead of being an imposition from outside for some specific learning. Through right upbringing it is possible to nurture the developmental urge which is overtly expressed in the form of curiosity, urge for exploration, aspiration for achievement and pursuit of progressive perfection and excellence. The suppression of this inner urge due to faulty upbringing leads to perversion of curiosity into purposeless prying, exploration into frivolous activities, aspiration for achievement into ruthless competition which encourages foul means, and pursuit of perfection and excellence into devastating ambition for status and power.

Parents and teachers have to understand the fact that the child, with the tremendous motivating potential within, is his own teacher. The nurture of child means this actualization of the inner motivating potential through the careful nurture of the developmental urge. Ignorant parents and teachers, instead of helping the child to educate himself relegate the teacher within the child to background and thus mutilate his growth and development by trying to impose their ignorance and folly on the child.

For proper upbringing of the child the parents have to be conscious of the necessity for

i) Balanced nutrition with sufficient amount of first class proteins, vitamins and minerals in addition to other food constituents.

ii) Suitable hygienic conditions with sufficient sunlight, fresh air and clean surroundings.

iii) Opportunity for free play and exercise.

iv) Sufficient rest and sleep.

v) Freedom from external imposition for spontaneous manifestation of developmental urge and development of self-control.

vi) Affection and care for providing sense of security conducive to development of poise and self-confidence.

vii) Stimulation of the curiosity by providing suitable answers to his questions for encouraging the child for further exploration of knowledge.

viii) Spontaneous communication with the child at his level of development for helping him in progressive understanding of life.

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ix) Providing guidance to the child for the exploration of his abilities, aptitudes, and interests.

x) Providing suitable environment to awaken aesthetic appreciation.

xi) Opportunity for healthy recreation and guidance for proper use of leisure.

xii) Opportunity for constructive group activities for training in cooperation and sharing of responsibility.

Parents who are aware of the educational needs of the child can help in the nurture of the developmental urge if they are alert to observe emerging spontaneous activities of the child which are the overt manifestations of this urge. They have to understand the need of encouragement of these activities for the promotion of growth and development, by providing suitable learning situations.

During the first year the child listens to the various sounds with rapt attention. This listening constitutes the beginning of auditory sense discrimination. It is from the earliest period when the child is three months old (even before) that there is need for providing a rich variety of sounds of different musical instruments, bells, birds, rustling of leaves in addition to providing songs and talking to him whenever the child likes to listen. The sounds have to be soft and rhythmic which are pleasing to the child. The training of auditory sense discrimination has to be continued during the period of nursery education.

The child also observes the various objects with fixed gaze right from the earliest period after birth. He has to be provided with sufficient opportunity for observing toys and other objects of different colours, shapes and size in addition to flowers, trees, birds, sky, moon, stars etc. for helping in development of visual sense discrimination the training in which has to continue during the period of nursery education as in case of analitary sense perception.

The parents have also to be aware of the need of providing different types of smells — fragrance of flowers, ripe fruits, aroma of foods etc., and also sufficient training for gustatory and tactile senses though the manifestation of these needs are not evident.

The sense training has however to be integrated with the most important needs during infancy and early childhood — the motor

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development and the language development up to the age of six or seven years these two aspects should constitute the basis of education: motor development opportunity for manipulation of toys, and objects, free play activities, rhythmic exercises and dance with instrumental music and songs, paper folding and clay modeling etc. and language development through narrating fairy tales, short stories facts about plants, animals, birds, and other material appealing to the natural interest of the children. For integration of sense training with motor and language development the children may be provided with toys of different colours and shades, multi-coloured play material, bells with different sounds, rhythmic sound of musical instruments of different types used for children's dance exercises and coloured pictorial illustrations with narratives.

The entire process of education has to be directed towards the nurture of the developmental urge, and all learning has to be the spontaneous outcome of the progressive stimulation of the developing capacities of the child with the help of suitable learning material. Unfortunately children are merely forced to learn reading, writing and arithmetic in an artificial way, which instead of creating love for knowledge merely leads to unconscious distaste and the child learns merely to avoid punishment or to get reward.

From the earliest period the child tries to reach for objects and in due course he learns to grasp these with help of palm and later on he develops the capacity to pick things with help of fingers. At this stage the child spontaneously tries to scribble with help of pencil. In addition to scribbling there is emergence of various other types of motor activities e.g. manipulating the containers and packets to open and close the lid, eating with spoon, tearing papers, throwing objects etc. Mostly the parents snub the child who tries to scribble, open a container, tear off a paper or throw an object. The rebuke of adults under such circumstances causes intense shock to the child and if the child is persistently rebuked for these developmental needs he may develop a sense of insecurity, lack of self confidence and severe mental conflict in addition to imperfect motor coordination's which may hamper his success in different activities in life.

Parents have to understand that the various motor activities of the child help in the establishment and subsequent progressive refinement

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and perfection of the muscular coordination's which are of immense importance in the later life. If the child is deprived of the opportunity for spontaneous practice during the early years, he cannot make up for the loss later on. The parents should carefully observe the activities as these emerge and should encourage the child by providing suitable learning material and situations. When the child starts scribbling spontaneously he has to be provided with pencil and paper or slate to practice freely as the early scribbling helps in the establishment and progressive improvement of the coordination of finger muscles, which is required for learning to write. However the child should never be forced to scribble which may suppress his natural urge. Similarly when the child tries to tear off a paper, it would be proper to supply him with waste paper instead of snubbing him. He would thus be helped in fulfillment of his developmental need to acquire specific manual dexterity. Even throwing off an object provides opportunity to the child to acquire specific motor capacity and is thus a source of tremendous thrill to the child. The child may be provided with a ball during the stage when their urge manifests so that he may be able to satisfy his learning need.

From the earliest period the child tries to do things for himself. He tries to feed himself with help of the spoon though he may spill the food. Parents who deprive the child of this opportunity due to the fear of his spilling the food merely hamper the development. In due course the child may like to comb his hair though he may not be able to do so in the beginning, and later on like to dress himself. The parents have to understand that in feeding the child, bathing him, combing his hair, brushing his teeth, putting on his clothes and shoes and other activities their attitude should be to help the child to do these for himself and for providing this assistance they have to be alert to the emergence of the urge in the child to help himself and should allow the child to have some spontaneous practice. It is significant that the child is satisfied with little practice he may just grasp the comb and put it on his head and after that he may allow the parent to comb his hair. In all the activities the child has to be led to feel that the parents are merely assisting him while he is doing things for himself.

As the child grows up he likes to play with other children. At

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this stage the motor development gets associated with the social development. With the emergence of the social need of mixing with other children it is unwise on the part of the parents to always keep the child with them depriving him of the opportunity to mix with other children as this hampers the social as well as the motor development of the child and causes emotional conflict and maladjustment.

The spontaneous urge of the child to observe and manipulate things should constitute the natural beginning of the study of Science and Mathematics. The child has to be provided with wheeled toys toy boats, balloons, pebbles, sea shells, seeds etc. and opportunity for observation of flowers, birds, insects, animals etc. and has to be encouraged to put questions as well as to find answers for himself whenever possible. Similar procedure has to be adopted for helping the child to learn mathematics in the natural way by providing pebbles for counting games, coins, circular cardboards disc, divided in halves and quarters, paper cut into circles, squares, rectangles, three dimensional objects viz. cubes, cones, pyramids, prisms, frustums, spheres etc.

As the child grows up his urge to listen to narratives has to be used for reinforcing his moral development in addition to the use of these for language development and as means for introducing the child to History through the stories about past and to Geography through the stories about different lands. The qualities of character viz. courage, sincerity, prudence, honesty, humility, self-reliance, perseverance etc. within the framework of narratives inspire the child and kindle the highest and noblest emotions in him.

Through right upbringing the child can be helped in becoming deeply aware of the developmental urge and thus he can be assisted in the progressive actualization of the inner truth of being — swa-dharma, as the inner urge of the child helps him in sensing his cognitive, affective and co native needs from moment to moment. The spirit of enquiry and aspiration for progressive excellence which is kindled as a smokeless luminous flame within helps in discrimination between the right activity conducive to progression towards inner harmony, understanding of life, self-mastery and creative self-expression, and the activities which are frivolous, energy-dissipating, and degrading. Thus the child is helped to sift between that which

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is intrinsically good and that which is one apparently pleasant. Thus the right selection of life activities helps the growing child to feel the inner joy associated with exploration of knowledge, appreciation of art, music and poetry, communion with nature and creative self-expression. This joy is the reinforcing factor in the selection of activities.

Parents and teachers have thus to help the growing child in keeping the developmental urge ablaze, to bring out whatever is best in him, in strengthening of all that is noble in him and in intensifying the aspiration towards the exploration of the truth of existence.

R. K. JOSHI

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REVIEWS

Essentials of Vedanta by Dr. G. Srinivasan. Bangalore Printing and Publishing Co., Mysore Rd. Bangalore 18. P. 68, Price Rs. 6.00

A CONCISE account of the three major schools of Vedanta e.g. Advaita of Shankara, Visistadvaita of Ramanuja and Dvaita of Madhava, followed up by a brief statement of the Purna Advaita of Sri Aurobindo in so far as it admits of comparison with and distinction from the three. The author points out that Sri Aurobindo does not see any contradiction between the Brahman and the Universe for the latter is only a becoming of the Reality. Again avidyā is not something that somehow imposes itself on the Brahman; it ari ses in. the movement of the cosmic evolutionary process of Brahman. He explains how in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy the soul is not devoid of relation with Nature when it is free: the character of the relation undergoes a change. " Sri Aurobindo has developed a philosophy of supreme affirmation and robust optimism." (P.68)

One point of interest is the five statuses of God according to the Vishishtadvaita : " God in his transcendent (para) status is not limited by the world and has an eternal and unchanging essence in himself; God in his immanent or cosmic (vyuha) status is the pervasive consciousness in the whole universe so as to sustain it in existence and activity; God as the indweller (antaryāmī) in the individual souls feels the uniqueness of individual's experiences; God as the iconic (area) assumes finite material proportion s so as to suit the limitations of the devotee in his unlimited grace for him; God as incarnation (avatāra) descends into a worldly form for the sake of the devotees." (P. 27)

A'useful handbook for students of philosophy.

M. P. PANDIT

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Night and Dawn, poems by Peter Heehs. Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry, 1974. 87 pages, Rs. 12.

Night and Dawn is a poem of aspiration. It finds expression through the more than seventy lyrics presented and through the offerings of Peter Heehs:

I will not take,

Though life and colour dance around me,

But will make

My fife a sacrament of giving.¹

The poems chronicle something of a seeker's early experience and give hope of something more to come. Clearly they have been for him and for us may be a vehicle of introspection and growth.

The lines are genuine and at their best clean and direct.

Not night nor day,

Not dark nor light.

A sullen, grey,

And painless blight. And was there ever something called the Dawn,

Something that made my love more than desire,

Made truth a thing a child could seize upon,

And life a flame that reached for something higher?²

There are poems that fluently blend experience and image with form, and there are those that contain a discordant or too facile metaphor or compromise to meet the demands of rhyme or metre. But even in the entries which cannot be considered entirely successful as poems, there is often something that shines — mutely,

Dusk, triumphant and slow, comes with its sombre train.

No red stain in the clouds marks the defeat of day;

¹ "Sacrament of Giving", p. 18.

2 "Twilight", p. 5.

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No spectacular show, only a pomp of grey.¹

or openly,

I cannot ever tell my love for you,

My friends, beautiful comrades on the way. «

Though silence turn to pain, I cannot say

Things which, if uttered, might cease to be true.²

If his poetic voice matures to pace with a growing intensity of aspiration, there is the future in Peter Heehs of sincere and felicitous verse of inner life.

TATSAT

The Literary Criticism of Sri Aurobindo by Dr. S. K. Prasad. Pp. 487 . Published by Bharati Bhawan, Govind Mitra Road, Patna 800004 (India). Price: Rs. 65.00 $ 19.50; £ 8.15

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. Thus far we behold God the supreme creator. But then "And God saw the light, that it was that is to say that God the reflector and the critic follows close on the heels of the creator and appraises and assesses his-work and sees to it that it measures up to his norms and standards. Sri Aurobindo the Avatar, too, not only created a new age of poetry but prolifically gave to the discerning audience many new dimensions to literary criticism. Thus to open Dr. S. K. Prasad's monumental work of research is to strike out into the orbit of an unfathomable personality. It is often said that poetry gives us a distillation of experience which goes far beyond in suggestive power the ordinary meanings of the words. But it does not in any way enlighten us about the mystery of the process of distillation - who distils the experience and what is the nature of the distilled product, what gives it the direct appeal of a self-validating truth? These are

¹ Dirge at Sunset", p. 60.

2 "I Cannot Tell", p. 48.

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questions either shirked or boggled or answered without any deep probing into the nature of the aesthetic experience as bodied forth in poetry. Dr. Prasad has gone into the heart of the mystery in his Preface observing, "The all-important point which I seek to establish through my study of Sri Aurobindo's literary criticism is what is contained in what I consider to be a very significant critical pronouncement of our so-called soulless age by Sri Aurobindo: "the true creator, the true hearer is the soul." The great Victorian critic, Matthew Arnold, had similarly declared that, "genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul".

The author's characterizing the modern age as soulless sounds a little too abrasive and scarifying but it has been echoed and re-echoed by other voices too. As early as the seventeenth century John Donne felt that the new philosophy had completely put out the element of fire by calling everything into doubt. Edith Sit well in our own time wrote:

Once my love seemed the Burning Bush

The Pentecost Rushing of Flames;

Now the Speech has fallen to the chatter of alleys

Where fallen man and the rising ape

And the howling Dark play games.

And then cried out wistfully:

But yet if only one soul would whine

Rat-like from the lowest mud, I should know

That somewhere in -God's vast love it would shine;

But even the rat-whine has guttered low

Well, as Kenneth Clark puts it, "This is the true cry of our time, the cry of all those whose imaginations are still awake and whose hearts are unclaimed." (Horizon July 1949 no. 90)

Sri Aurobindo has rehabilitated poetry and literary criticism to their high role of renovating human life by enshrining in fullest amplitude and power his spiritual vision. And yet it has neither evoked a proper response nor made a dent in the mugwumpery

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of established reputations in the literary field. It is this need of the hour that makes Dr. Prasad's book that started life as a doctoral thesis., stimulating and it holds out some promise of breaking the acedias of the reading public corrupted by Freudian muck-raking, gnawed by anxiety and post war disillusion addicted to murder trials and hourly more unable to concentrate on the deeper realities of existence.

The book under review seeks to amplify and illustrate some of the major themes expounded in Sri Aurobindo's Future Poetry and his Letters on Literature. But all this cannot be understood and appreciated without a full grasp of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual vision which traces the evolution of humanity and demonstrates how it is heading towards a new spiritual consciousness in all directions, political, cultural, social and aesthetic. This new consciousness he calls the Supermind and it is the culmination of all human dreams of individual perfection and collective perfectibility. This dream for its actualisation calls for "the full emergence of the soul, the full descent of the native light and power of the Spirit and the consequent replacement or transformation and uplifting of our insufficient mental and vital nature by a spiritual and supramental super nature that can effect this evolutionary miracle." (The Life Divine p . 1259.) Dr. S. K. Prasad provides the reader with relevant laying out of this framework; for, without that background the reader is most likely to be obfuscated by the terminology employed by Sri Aurobindo - the different planes of consciousness from which poetic inspiration streams down, the nature of the psychic being and the pousability of the mantra in poetry. The author pushes the arguments always forward at a pace which enacts and deserves the closest, the slowest and most considered reading and brings in the best critical opinion on the subject in India and Europe. Here one feels that the learned author could have shortened his study by cutting or condensing those parts where he puts down previous and contemporary critics who are not really worth the trouble of elaborate refutation - but perhaps the numinous aspect always tends either to paralyse the critical will or to provoke intemperate polemic.

The future of poetry has been floating in a mist of uncertainty since the time of Plato who banished poets from his Republic. In the wake of Sri Aurobindo the author visualises luminous prospects

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awaiting the Muse; for, poetry which has hitherto expressed spiritual experiences through recondite symbols will celebrate them in their full splendour and by its mantric power play a reformative and renovative role in the life of humanity.

Mantra so far has been accessible only to the initiates of the Mysteries and hieratically if not hermetically sealed from common humanity. But in the New Age of poetry it will toss off all garbs and disguises and manifest itself in its full effulgence. But what is Mantra? and what illuminative trail it is going to blaze or has it not already done so in Sri Aurobindo's own spiritual lyrics, sonnets and the epic Savitri? Here one long passage from the book will elucidate and bring home the whole drift of Sri Aurobindo's vision of the future poetry. The author observes, "To realise and evoke the power of 'mantric' poetry in human life is to lead it always from progress to progress, from one evolutionary step to another. It is to achieve a very living and uplifting linkage between ourselves and the Supreme Reality above and around, to effectuate a more happy marriage between matter and spirit, the word and the Word! No wonder, then, if Sri Aurobindo tries to impress upon us as gently and persuasively as only a yogic poet and critic can do, that the future of man is closely linked with the' future of poetry. . . . "For", as Sri Aurobindo says, "the great poet interprets to man his present or reinterprets for him his past, but can also point him to his future." Nay, in all the three aspects of time - the present, the past and the future - the great poet can also "reveal to him the face of the Eternal." The poetry of the 'intuitive reason, the intuitive senses, the intuitive delight-soul in us', which is bound to be written in the new intuitive age dawning upon us, and finally rising "towards a still greater power of revelation nearer to the direct visions and work of the Over mind from which all creative inspiration comes, would really mean 'putting the poetic spirit once more in the shining front of the powers and guides of the ever-progressing soul of humanity'. It is poetry which will once again 'lead in the journey like the Vedic Agni, - the fiery giver of the Word, ... the Youth, the Seer, the beloved and Immortal Guest with his honed tongue of ecstasy, the Truth-conscious, the Truth finder, born as a flame from earth and yet the heavenly messenger of the Immortal". The author has produced a massive work of research

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and has provided the student of literature with pertinent extracts from all the known critics of literature, thus fulfilling the Arnoldian ideal of criticism, to make known "the best that was thought and said in the world."

RAVINDRA KHANNA

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