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

EDITORIAL

SWEET MOTHER

(10)

ONE DAY MORE

IN her "Prayers and Meditations" (Prières et Meditations) Mother wrote under the date September 25, 1914:

A new light will break upon the earth,

A new world will be born,

And the things promised will be fulfilled.¹

Subsequently, that is to say, after a lapse of more than forty years, under the date February 29 - March 29, 1956, she introduced a

¹ Une lumière nouvelle poindra sur la terre,

Un monde nouveau naîtra,

Et les choses promises seront accomplis.

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change in the statement, in respect of the tense used. She re-wrote it in this form:

A new light breaks upon the earth,

A new world is born,

The things that were promised are fulfilled.¹

The change was needed because of the change in the situation. There has been a radical change in the actualities of the situation. Mother herself explains in another message communicated after about a month under the date April 24, 1956:

The manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise, but a living fact, a reality.

It is at work here and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it.²

She speaks repeatedly of her vision and declares most emphatically that the new world is born, born, born, — as it were, thrice born (il est ne, ne, ne). It is there behind, it is moving, threading past all the obscurities that hide it but in a manner indomitable and invincible: the outer weight of Ignorance cannot hold it down eternally.

Progress continues, the Mother declares under the date February 3, 1958, that is to say, after the lapse of about two years — a momentous declaration, the arrival of a full-fledged supramental boat at the shore of earth. Its mission was to carry within it human beings who were ready for the supramental life. The description of the whole scene was so beautiful, so graphic, so alluring that on reading it a young girl from outside wrote to the Mother that she would like to be a passenger on the boat and prayed to the Mother for admission.

^I Une lumière nouvelle poinds sur la terre.

Un monde nouveau est nè,

Et les choses promises sont accomplis.

² La manifestation du Supramental sur la terre n'est plus seulemcnt une promesse, mais un fait vivant, une rèalitè.

II est à l'œuvre maintenant, ici-bas, et un jour viendra où le plus aveugle, le plus inconscient, meme le plus volontairement ignorant sera obligè de le reconnaître.

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Mother explains that the substance of which this new world was made was the most material supramental, the supramental substance nearest to the physical world, its first manifestation.

Yet however, this is not the end, the culmination. One step has still to be taken — the material Matter too has to be touched and remoulded — and that means a hiatus, a time-lag in the end. The process of creation always follows this Une, a thing to be created or embodied upon earth is first created in a subtle world. When it is ready, ready-made in that world, then it precipitates itself upon the material world, slowly or gradually or suddenly according to — the cosmic will. An illustration to explain the point, the Mother herself gives it.

Once, asked about the liberation of India, sometime in 1915 when India was completely in bondage, she answered without the least hesitation: "India is free." She did not say "India will be free", she said simply "India is free" as though stating an actual fact. The physical fact however came about in the year 1947, that is to say, 32 years after the thing happened in the subtle world. Mother comments that that is the exact image of the resistance to the manifestation, the physical realisation.

Not merely creation, but destruction also happens in the same way. The destruction first occurs in the subtle world and as a consequence inevitably takes place the physical destruction. Sri Krishna in the Gita tells Arjuna: All these troops ranged against you have already been killed by me, you have only to be just the instrument or the excuse: mayaivaite nihatāh pūrvameva.

Savitri is coming back to earth to her normal life. She has done her final conquest. And the whole world of the new conquest, the embodied Life Divine within her, she enters the earth-life, but with the veil drawn upon herself and her achievement. The 'one day more' is yet to be done, the 'one day' made of material Matter. She is not to disclose herself till that one day is done. The curtain is down now but behind lies the whole edifice she has built up, in its entire un-flawed beauty and fulfilment. At present outwardly we see before

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us the arena of a gray dangerous world, as of old. The curtain will surely roll up and reveal what it hides, slowly or perhaps a shell may burst open all on a sudden and bring forth the new life full and entire .... How will it happen...the Revelation, the Epiphany? The event will show. In the meantime, the New Creation, "a greater dawn" she holds within herself

Deep guarded by her mystic folds of light.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

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FROM UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS

( I )

All being is the Eternal, the Infinite, the Divine; there is nothing beyond the Eternal and Infinite, — neither is there anything else anywhere whether in existence or in non-existence.

All being ranges between the Manifestation and the Non-Manifestation. These are the two poles of the Infinite.

The Non-Manifestation is not a Non-Existence. Non-Existence is a term created by the mind and has no absolute significance; there is no such thing as an absolute Nihil or Zero. It is agreed even by the philosophies of the Nihil, Tao or Zero (Shunyam) that the Non-Existence of which they speak is a Nought in which all is and from which all comes. Tao, Nihil or Zero is not different from the Absolute or the Supreme Brahman of Vedanta; it is only another way of describing or naming it. The Supreme is an Existence beyond what we know of existence and therefore only it can seem to our mind as a Zero, a Nihil, a Non-Existence. There is nothing there of what we know as existence, for though all is in Tao, yet all is there in a way of which our mind can have no conception or experience, therefore to the mind no reality and being, no concept of existence.

The manifestation in the Ignorance, that in which we live, has also been described as Asat, a non-existence, because it is not real, eternal, infinite, divine; it must therefore be an illusion, since only That exists and nothing else. But even Illusionism agrees that the manifested world is not without reality — it is practically real, but not eternal. Moreover manifestation even if illusory in this sense has no end or beginning in itself, but only to the soul that withdraws from it. It goes on existing eternally to other souls, it goes on existing to the Eternal. It is in the eternal consciousness that it exists, though apart from that consciousness it has no existence. Moreover the Self of which it is made is not nothingness or void, but the Eternal itself which manifests it from itself and out of its own substance casts into form and force. It is therefore not a real Nihil, but a Unlisted and constantly renewed, recurrent or mutable existence.

It is therefore permissible to say that all being ranges between

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Manifestation and Non-Manifestation, for both are degrees of existence, the one rising towards the Absolute, the other (in appearance, and in appearance only) determined and relative.

( 2 )

Here in the green of the forest, lost in the stillness of Nature Long like lovers together alone with our hearts we have¹ wandered,

Hands linked, thoughts linked, listening mute to the voices of Silence,

Light of the spaces, sovereign beauty, comrade of rapture.

Golden the tresses that fell on her shoulders, a mantle of sunlight,

Golden the thoughts came cast from her has like jewels of wonder,

Golden the smile in her heart and her radiant ripple of laughter.

First in the silence we knew each other; the eyes were the gateways

Opening soul into soul and spirit was bare to the spirit.

Speech only covers the mind and the heart when it strives to reveal them!

 

Silence, the wizard interpreter, drew us closer to oneness.

First in the silence we felt our heart-throbs beating together.

 

As in the body a man and a woman marry and mingle,

Hearts locked, limbs locked, twisted to one by the serpent of passion,

So our spirits were locked in each other, hushed into oneness

Spiritual and hurled on a rapid and violent ocean of rapture.

 

( 3 )

Surya, the Vedic Sun-God, though one of the least invoked of the gods, is yet the centre of the mystic worship and ritual. It would be too much to say that the Vedic religion was a Sun-cult like the Iranian, but it was certainly a Sun-seeking and Light-seek-

¹ Or, ''had".

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ing. The creation of the Sun and the Dawn by the Word was the original object for which the sacrifice was instituted by the seers, the pristine forefathers. And all the circumstances and objects of the sacrifice continued to be grouped round this original master-thought of the ancient culture.

For the birth of the Sun and the Dawns or their release from the cave of the darkness continued to preoccupy the Vedic mind and associated itself with the idea of the word and the sacrifice. The sacrifice was offered for the conquest of the cows, and these were the shining herds of the Sun, — of the horse, and the horse too was the possession and gift of the Dawn, — of the world of Swar, and Swar is the triple luminous region of the Sun-God, — of the waters and the seven rivers, and these were the shining streams of that Heaven and full of the light of Swar, — of a luminous plenitude, a shining wealth, a golden felicity but this gold too was the golden light of Surya. His were the shining seers and strong heroes who were born as the sons of the sacrifice and chanted and fought against the lord of darkness. To be able to look long upon the sun, not to go into long exiles from the light was the prayer of the Vedic seer to his gods. Dawn and Night surrounded all the march of the Sacrifice, — the periods of its procession were the days, months, years of Surya. The conquest of the Night and the journey of the Sun-God to his supreme seats was the symbol of Aryan victory. The gods are all "Shining ones", brothers of Surya and living in his -light. Indra presides over his heavens, Agni is the heat of his fires. Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman, Bhaga, Savitri, Pushan, Twashtri the fashioner of things are his names and forms. Dawn is his lover. Heaven and Earth desire his glories and are fulfilled in them. Soma the nectarous moon-god is bright with his lustres, Vayu the life-deity is the heat of his blaze; the Ashwins are the mates of his brilliant daughter Surya who purifies their wine of delight and ascends their wonderful chariot. Thus the whole Rig-veda rises out of the ancient Dawn as a thousand-voiced Hymn to the¹ imperishable Light of an immortal Sun.

This Sun is only outwardly the physical godhead adored in the popular worship. To the Vedic mystic Light is the concrete body of Truth; within himself he perceived Truth as a Light psychically

¹ or, "an"

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identical with the physical light of the Sun. He perceived a sky of mental being behind the physical in which the Sun of this material system became a Sun of conscious light flooding the mind with the illuminations of a new hidden Truth. This was the Surya worshipped by the seers. 

This identity of Truth and the Vedic Light is found everywhere in the symbolism. The Sun itself in the cavern of the Panis is described as "that Truth dwelling in the darkness." Its light is called sometimes "light that is gold", hiranyam jyotih, sometimes "light that is truth", rtam jyotih. The rains and the seven rivers, luminous waters of Swar, are described as the streams of Truth, the rivers that know the Truth, the waters that have perfect knowledge, the waters that ascend the mind. Swar itself is the fearless light, the vast Truth, the luminous pasture of the cows and these luminous cows of the Dawn are called the cows that are thoughts. Dawn the mother and leader of the cows is called also the leader of truths and is said herself to be full of truth and to come from its home. The Vedic seers are themselves called the luminous seers and the one ordinary word for the thinkers or powers of knowledge is surayah, connected with Surya in the sense of illumination. The path of the Sun is also called the path of the Truth.

SRI AUROBINDO

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THE VIZIERS OF BASSORA

BY SRI AUROBINDO

AN ATTEMPT AT SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION
AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

BY reading or seeing The Viziers of Bassora with the inner vision, the drama reveals its forceful spiritual message, its exact psycho-analysis of the human being, its humorous and dramatic depiction of yogic sādhanā, what explains that "Sri Aurobindo seems to have had an especial fondness for this youthful creation of his", to cite the publisher's introduction.

The story is written in the symbolic form of fairy tales. As in dreams and visions the characters portray parts of man's complex personality and the places represent planes of existence.

Bassora, an Arabian province, symbolizes the terrestrial manifestation of man, who is shown in a stage of evolution in which the ego sits on the throne in the person of King Alzayni. The first vizier in man's, microcosm is Ibn Sawy, the human mind which has already developed into a higher mind. The second vizier in man's psychological state is Almuene, the asura. Man holds within him a conflict between his higher mind, which tries its best to uphold happiness and order in Bassora by means of morality, and the Asura who is very eager to disturb man's inner balance and aims at the domination of the whole human personality.

Ibn Sawy is married to Ameena, who plays the part of the higher vital. Their pampered son Nureddene is the hero of the play. He personates the spiritually high-evolved man who in the play is predestined to realize his soul. Nureddene is the lover and beloved of the female beauties of Bassora, who represent the joys and pleasures of the ordinary, worldly life. To the latter he directs a lot of effort and time.

Despite his being still merged in māyā, the aspiration for a higher life burns already in Nureddene as the following monologue shows:

Page-13

NUREDDEN

I shall go forth, a daring errant-knight,

To my true country out in faery-land;

Wander among the Moors, see Granada, 

The delicate city made of faery stone, ...

 

And o'er romantic regions quite unknown

Preach Islam, sword in hand; ...

 

Then on through undiscovered islands, seas

And Oceans yet unnamed; ...

Nureddene's true country is faery land, his inner being, the yet unknown regions of his consciousness. The passage continues:

NUREDDENE

Then in some land I have not settled which,—¹

Marry a Soldan's daughter, ...

deserving her

By deeds impossible: conduct her armies

Against her foemen, enter iron-walled

Cities besieged with the loud clang of war, ...

And so extend my lady's empire wide —²

The first stage was exploration of his inner being. And the second one is the coming into contact with the psyche, symbolized by "a Soldan's daughter". This is an image of ancient tales where the princess represents man's soul. Nureddene aspires to deserve his soul by fighting against the hostile forces, his psyche's "foemen". He dreams of bringing home the victory on the inner fields of Kuru-kshetra and therewith to extend "his lady's empire wide"; in other words, to establish the firm psychic reign in him and to expand it over the whole of his nature. What a beautiful parable of the aim of

¹ P. 40, bottom line

² P. 41, top

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sadhand as well as colorful symbolism of the process.

And now to the introduction of the second Vizier's family, Al-muene's son, hunchbacked Fareed, symbolizes naturally the lower and subetonscient vital as well as the sex desire. He terrorizes Bassora and indulges in vices whenever he can, thus doing his best to fulfil his role as the most vile and base part of human nature. His mother Khatoon, the wife of the asura Almuene, personates the intermediary between Nureddene's higher emotions and feelings and the impulsions of the asura. She opposes Almuene's influence on Fareed, but is not strong enough to be successful, because of her attachment to husband and son.

Here are two passages, in which Khatoon addresses Almuene concerning Fareed:

KHATOON

You have indulged the boy till he has lost

The likeness even of manhood. God's great stamp

And heavenly image on his mint's defaced,

Rubbed out, and only the brute metal left

Which never shall find currency again

Among his angels.¹

 

The devil you strive to raise up from that hell

Which lurks within us all, seal, would take

The full flame of the inferno, not the gusts

Of smoke jet out in ordinary men;² —

In the following extracts Almuene expresses his conceptions about the right education of Fareed:

ALMUENE

'Tis thus a boy should be trained up, not checked,

Rebuked and punished till the natural man

Is killed in him and a tame virtuous block

Replace the lusty pattern Nature made.

¹ P. 8, top

² P. 9, bottom: p. 10, top

Page-15

I do not value at a brazen coin

The man who has no vices in his blood, ...

Your moralists 

Teach one thing, Nature quite another; which of these

as likely to be right? Yes, cultivate,

But on the plan that she has mapped.

Give way, Give way to the inspired blood of youth

And you shall have a man, no scrupulous fool,

No ethical malingerer in the fray;¹

Be lusty, son, And breed me grandsons like you for my stock.²

All characters whom I have named till now, except Almuene, are parts of Nureddene's personality: Ibn Sawy, his higher mind, Ameena, his higher vital, Khatoon, his central vital, Fareed, his lowest vital and King Alzayni his ego.

I

We come now to the action of the play: As the human ego yearns for always greater assets and fulfillments, King Alzayni gives to his first vizier, the higher mind, the order to purchase for him the fairest of all slave-girls. At the slave-market, which stands for the process of exchange of forces ruling all action and development on earth, a slave girl, marvel of marvels is being offered to Ibn Sawy. The maiden, Anice-Aljalice, is the heroine of the play. It is to her that Sri Aurobindo assigned the part of Nureddene's soul. Her story is that she was sold in the great famine by her parents in Persia. Persia symbolises the higher hemisphere of consciousness and is part of the supra-terrestrial and divine manifestation.

Anice-Aljalice, the eternal portion of the Divine, was sent by her parents, the Supreme and the Divine Mother, on earth to be the leader

¹ P. 12, bottom

² P. 13, last line

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of man's evolution, to guide the earth and human being out of "the great famine", out of the world of obscurity, falsehood, ignorance and death towards a unity and harmony where even the most insatiate hunger for light, truth, bliss and love can be stilled.

At the slave-market, Ibn Sawy tells the broker that he will come later, when the lass has been fetched. In his absence, Anice-aljalice is brought and Fareed arrives with Almuene. Fareed wants Anice for the satisfaction of his vile desires. Of course Almuene is not willing to pay her full price and tries even to take her by force. But the soul draws back from the grip of the Asura. Just when Almuene wants to beat the broker, Ibn Sawy returns. He informs the second vizier that he purchases the slave-girl for the King. The will of the ego has the precedence before the greed and instincts of the lower vital and the asura leaves Anice to the higher mind, despite Fareed's still wanting to take her by force. This is Ibn Sawy's reaction at the first sight of the psychic being:

IBN-SAWY

What, is your mould indeed a thing of earth?

Peri, have you not come disguised from heaven

To snare us with your lovely smiles, you marvel?¹

ANICE-ALJALICE

I am a slave and mortal.²

IBN-SAWY

Prove me that.

ANICE-ALJALICE

A peri, sir, has wings, but I have none.

IBN-SAWY

I see that difference only.³

The soul, when it descends on earth, has to subdue itself to the terrestrial laws. It becomes a "slave" of karma and duality, of the mental, vital and physical being. The psyche, so to say, loses its wings with which it could fly on the spiritual heights. In a sense it even

¹ p. 26, bottom

²: P. 26, bottom
³ P. 27, top

Page-17

becomes "mortal", as its descent caused a fainting and a submission to mortality.

Ibn Sawy buys her for 10,000 pieces, that is to say that the higher mind brings up the effort necessary for the first contact with the psychic being.

He accepts the counsel of the broker to keep her for ten days before handing her over to the King and to give her rest, baths and food, for "her beauty's worn with journeying". The soul has to recover from the effects of the incarnation into the human body and is not immediately at the first contact in the most conscious state, which had been reached in its previous earthly life. For recuperation it needs rest, that is meditation, baths, that is purification of the nature, and food, that is the spiritual nourishment.

Ibn Sawy acting in the service of the ego trusts Anice to the custody of his wife Ameena, and places a guardian in front of her room to keep her safe from Nureddene, the hunter of women's hearts. The guardian, an Ethiopian eunuch, represents the body-consciousness whose dullness is a hindrance to Nureddene's contact with his psychic being.

Nureddene, when he returns home after three days of absence, appeases his always indulgent parents and his cousin with charm and humour. Then he asks his father to buy Anice-Aljalice for him. He had seen her only once, but had fallen so deeply in love with her that he swears he'll "be at home quite four days out of seven" once she would be his slave-girl. The first gaze at his psyche provoked a reversal of consciousness in him. He is ready to give up more than half of his pleasures and thus his spiritual aspiration becomes predominant over his worldly bondages. His father, to save the situation and the slave-girl for the King, answers that he has to leave for some business and will return in ten days. Then he will see about the slave-girl. Nureddene's first change of consciousness is still accompanied with an ego-serving activity of his mind, which assists the ego's desires.

I must now mention Nureddene's cousin Doonya. She portrays the spiritual intuition. Earlier in the story Almuene had asked Ibn Sawy for the hand of his niece for Fareed. But the intuition refused, preferring suicide to the lower vital. The higher mind consented with

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Doonya and rejected Almuene's proposal. So the attempts of the lower vital to abuse the soul as well as the siddhi of intuition were both prevented.

Anice-Aljalice confesses to Doonya her love for Nurddene as well as her unwillingness to be the ego's slave-girl. She promises Doonya that she would end her cousin's "hawking" once she would be united with him. Doonya in turn assures Anice of her help in bringing the lovers together, because she wants to "reform" Nureddene.

The soul knowing itself destined for the spiritual personality and not the ego in man uses the faculty of intuition to overcome the obstacles of the ego's will and the mind's plots. As we all know, once a constant relation between the psychic being and the outer personality is established, the psychic power is able to "reform" the human nature.

Intuition shows Nureddene the chamber where his psychic being is hidden. Nureddene bribes the guardian, the body consciousness, and therewith removes the last hindrance to his second and very powerful reversal of consciousness, which results in his relation with the psychic being.

Let me cite Sri Aurobindo's symbols of the second reversal of consciousness:

NUREDDENE

I told you 'twas the morning.

ANICE-ALJALICE

Morning so early?

This moment 'twas the evening star; is that

The matin lustre?

NUREDDENE

There is a star at watch beside the moon

Waiting to see you ere it leaves the skies.

Is it your sister Peri?

ANICE-ALJALICE

It is our star

And guards us both.¹

The matin lustre, the dawn is the well-known Vedic image of Usha,

¹ P. 51, top

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the bringer of the light. The vision of the moon symbolizes — as Sri Aurobindo explains — spirituality and the star hieroglyphs a new inner creation. The sense of time is lost here in the eternal presence of the spiritual experience. The passage continues:

NUREDDENE

It is the star of Anice,

The star of Anice-Aljalice who came

From Persia guided by its silver beams

Into these arms of vagrant Nureddene ...

 

Strange, strange that I who nothing have deserved,

Should win what all would covet! We are fools

Who reach at baubles taking them for stars ...

 

What can I say

But once more that I have deserved you not,

Who yet must take you, knowing my un desert,

Whatever come hereafter.¹

His visions as well as the experience of the contact with the psychic being mark the beginning of Nureddene's spirituality in this life. He realizes that "the gadding pleasures" of the mdyd are only "baubles" and "random berries without savour". Wide open are his eyes to the Divine Grace and he is full of humility.

Further in the same passage the true identity of Anice-Aljalice is openly revealed in this dialogue:

NUREDDENE

Nothing will come to us but happy days,

You, my surpassing jewel, on my neck

Closer to me than my own heartbeats.²

ANICE-ALJALICE

Yes,

Closer than kisses, closer than delight,

¹ P. 51 & 52
² P. 53, bottom

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Close only as love whom sorrow and delight

Cannot diminish, nor long absence change

Nor daily prodigality of joy

Expend immortal love.¹

What else than the soul is the "surpassing jewel on (man's) neck" which is "closer than his own heartbeats"? And what is it in man that possesses "immortal love"? Says Nureddene to his psychic being "you have the love".

There is now, of course, a lot of upheaval in the house of the first vizier and Nureddene, in his own words, has to return "to earth from Paradise". His new consciousness has to confront the members of the terrestrial nature. This is easiest with his higher vital, which accepts the new situation without much resistance and immediately assists the stabilization of Nureddene's new inner state. There is the pressure of the new consciousness and the influence of the higher vital forces Ibn Sawy, the higher mind, to take firmly the side of the spiritual being and to support it as best he can. He covers up what has happened before king ego, whose reign, deeply rooted as it is in the human nature, is far from being abolished. Nureddene's change of consciousness begins now to bring about a new organization of his outer personality.

Doonya is being married to Murad, the Turk captain of Bassora's police, who had always been trying his best to curb the lower vital Fareed from rioting. Murad portrays the purified vital force. Intuition and force are complementary. Without the vital force to act, spiritual intuition is powerless and unmanifest. Without the intuition to guide and to illumine, the force is either blind and undirected or ill-governed by some lower principle of intelligence.

The first vizier has to part for about a year on a mission for the famous Persian Caliph Haroun al Rasheed, who will play a role later in the drama. He orders his wife to stay during his absence secretly with Murad and Doonya while pretending openly that she was travelling abroad to visit relatives, which means that she equally would not see Nureddene for a year's span. The higher mind divides his riches into two halves, one for Nureddene and one for Ameena with

¹ P. 53 & 54, bottom-top

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Doonya and Murad, foreseeing the possibility that his son would waste his patrimony and lead an un sober life-style, which lays near as Nureddene's nature is not yet purified. Nureddene has, now left the old rut of living and entered the path of the spiritual life It becomes therefore necessary that his higher mind and higher vital, under the protection and partly guidance of which he lived till now quite safely, become silenced and quieted, giving way for the growth of his new consciousness and the battle with his lower nature. To advance further Nureddene has to "reculer pour mieux sauter" as the Mother once cited. He has to give up his achieved mental and vital level — though still half of their power remains with him — and to surpass the higher mind by intuition and soul-guidance, and the higher vital by the purification and integration of his whole vital being. The vessel has to be emptied for the new creation to be poured in.

Let us now see the reaction of the asura and his son. Naturally, Almuene keeps still his grip on Nureddene's lower nature and his lower vital strongly opposes any surrender. Almuene is very very revengeful for the defeats he has suffered. As soon as he learns the news of Ibn Sawy's departure he devises plots for the destruction of Nureddene and his family. He visits his nephew, Ajebe, who is a friend of Nureddene and offers him on the one hand "place, power, honours, gold" for a service, on the other hand "death, disgrace, beggary" for the refusal of his assistance. This is the answer to Ajebe's question: "What service?"

ALMUENE

Ruin wanton Nureddene.

Gorge him with riot and excess; rob him

Under a friendly guise; force him to spend

Till he's a beggar. Most, delude him on

To prone extremity of drunken shame

Which he shall feel, yet have no power to check.

Drench all his senses in vile profligacy,

Nor mere light gallantries, but gutter filth,

Though you have to share it. Do this and you're made;

But this undone, you are yourself undone.¹

¹ P. 75, bottom

Page-22

Ajebe seeks counsel from Mymoona, the sister of his beloved slave-girl Balkis. Both are aware of the love and close union of Balkis with Anice-Aljalice. Mymoona advises Ajebe:

MYMOONA

Do one thing.

A JEBE

I will do what you shall bid me.

MYMOONA

He has some vile companions, has he not? ...

MYMOONA

Whisper the thing to them; yourself do nothing.

Check him at times. Whatever else you do,

Take not his gifts; they are the price of shame.

If he is ruined, as without their urging

Is likely, Satan's satisfied, if not,

We'll flee from Bassora when there's no help.¹

Sri Aurobindo uses Ajebe as a symbol for all the vital parts and entities in Nureddene which, are already involved in the process of psychicisation. He has opened himself to the psychic influence when he bought Balkis and Mymoona in the slave-market. Balkis personates an emanation of the psychic being, a sort of psychic spark in the vital entity Ajebe. She is the ambassadress of the psyche, her office is to expand her embassy in Ajebe, until he entrusts her the full reign over himself, therewith excluding the asuric impact of his uncle, with whom to make a breach he does not have the courage, besides reasons of ambition and desire, springing forth from the asuric strain in his blood.

Mymoona embodies the vital mind of Nureddene which has not yet surrendered itself to the Divine. She serves as an intermediary between Balkis and Ajebe. The latter is not yet spiritualized enough to be able to communicate and get along with her, and so Balkis needs the vital mind as a support for her progressive psychicisation of Ajebe. How unconscious and crude Ajebe still is, lies open in this passage:

¹ P. 75, 1st half

Page-23

AJEBE

Bring me your lute and sing.

I am sad and troubled. Cross me not, my girl, ,

My temper's wry.

BALKIS

Oh, threats?

AJEBE

Remember still

You are a slave, however by my love

Pampered, and sometimes think upon the scourge.¹

Of course the psychic spark does not obey such base violence but counteracts it, piercing the divine banner deeper and deeper into Ajebe's heart, perpetually refining his nature and preparing his spiritual break-through.

With the all-pervading eye of the seer of the truth, Sri Aurobindo unravels man's psychological structure and reveals the workings of the spiritual alchemy. With how much humour this is done, all who have read or seen The Viziers of Bassora know. Truly, "A God who cannot smile could not have created this humourous (stage-play)".

II

Let us now turn the wheel of time around eight faery months forward and have a look at what happened to Nureddene in the absence of his parents:

We find that the asura's plan to ruin Nureddene has been partially realized. Although he could not be drenched in "gutter-filth", still Nuredden accepted the forces of the lower nature as his friends and feasted with them. The psychic being is not yet fully conscious and awake to the truth and therefore allows Nureddene's indulgence into lower nature. This is a period in which the psychic consciousness grows and impregnates Nureddene more and more, until it becomes ready for the rejection of the impulses of the lower nature.

Under the impetus of the spiritual intuition Doonya and its part

¹ P. 76, 2nd half

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Balkis, the psychic being finally becomes conscious of the situation. The karmic creditors wait already in the entrance hall. The time has come for- Nureddene to face the impurities of his nature and its badly needed integration. Anice asks Nureddene to pay the debts of karma .else she will not smile again.

To our shocked hero remains now only to obey the psychic being: Here is his comment:

NUREDDENE

She frown on me! look cold! for sums, for debts!

For money, the poor paltry stuff we dig

By shovels from base mire. Grows love so beggarly

That it must think of piastres? O my heart!¹

Excited and angry he throws half of his treasury, without account and measure, to the waiting creditors. The psychic being warns Nureddene in a parable about the consequences to which his further indulgence to such impure and obscure forces as his friends and feasting would lead. Obviously the Divine cannot be expected to install Itself in a stable and share it with the animal remainders in man.

To surrender immediately to the psychic impetus is as yet difficult for Nureddene as his answer shows.

NUREDDENE (after a pause)

(after a pause) Tomorrow I will stop this empty life,

Cut down expense and only live for you.

Tonight there is the banquet. It must stand,

My word being given. Azeem!

(Enter Azeem)

What money still

Is in the treasury? What debts outstand?

AZEEM

More now than you can meet. But for today's folly,

all would have been well, — your lordly folly!

But "alea jacta est". The dice of fate is thrown. Nureddene is forced

¹ p. 84, 85

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to realize the full seriousness of this plight and to confront it. In vain he seeks loans from his so-called "friends", whose real nature is revealed to him by Ajebe: .

AJEBE

I am your ruin's author.

If you have still

A sword, use it upon me.

......     .......     ........

Incited by the Vizier, promised

Greatness, I in my turn incited these

To hurry you to ruin. Will you slay me?

NURENDDENE

(After a pause)

Return and tell the Vizier that work's done.

Be great with him.

There is no aggression in Nureddene because of the weakness of his nature. He accepts himself without self-pity and bitterness and gives the blame for his fate to nobody else than himself. We see that as soon as Nureddene asks his so-called "friends" to support him in his Sadhaana, he meets only resistance and evasion.

Nureddene enters now a new episode of his spiritual development. He has paid the karmic debts in as far as this was possible with the past acquired power. It was still relatively easy to reach so far. But now a yogic new-land begins and greater difficulties have to be overcome.

This non-attachment to the already achieved power and its generous handling makes Nureddene fit for transcending his state of being. Because he is not attached to silver, he shall enjoy gold.

We saw before that Ajebe confessed his treachery and repented it. The psychic influence in him was ever-increasing and finally leads to his spiritual breakthrough. The vital entity Ajebe promises his psychic spark Balkis to be more obedient and to renounce his uncle, the asura. Ajebe takes the definite stride into the integrated parts of Nureddene and has predominantly surrendered himself to the psychic command. With this an important progress in Nureddene's vital nature is brought about.

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In between, Nureddene has asked Murad, the purified vitality for loans, which were refused. Murad replies negatively because to help Nureddene would be only in appearance a succour, but in reality hinder his spiritual progress. It is not a compromise of truth and falsehood, but the full reign of the Soul and the Divine in him that have to be achieved.

Not compromise but fight is the solution.

Nureddene, however, possesses still the supreme Power and riches as this dialogue shows:

ANICE-ALJALICE

You still have me.

NUREDDENE

That's much.

ANICE-ALJALICE

No, everything.

NUREDDEN

'Tis true, and I shall feel it soon.¹

Anice offers not only to sell her dresses and gems, but even herself. The psyche is ready for the utter self-sacrifice for the growth of the spiritual consciousness. Of course Nureddene does not accept this offer of Anice. Her counsel to "be friends" again with Ajebe, to rely again on him, is this time readily obeyed by Nureddene.

NUREDDENE

Anice, my own sins are

So heavy, not to forgive his lesser vileness

Would leave me without hope of heavely pardon.

ANICE-ALJALICE

I'll call him then.

(Exit)

NUREDDENE

Let me absolve these debts,

Then straight with Anice to Bagdad the splendid,

There is the home for hearts and brains and hands,

¹ P. 97, top

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Not in this petty centre. Core of Islam,

Bagdad, the flood to which all brooks converge.¹

Bagdad is the subtle physical seat of a consciousness far above the ordinary human one, "It is the core of Islam," "the flood to which all brooks converge". To reach the inner core of the spiritual teaching and the oneness behind the multiplicity of creation is now the deep aspiration of our adept. About Bagdad I shall speak later.

Anice returns with Ajebe, Balkis and Mymoona. Mymoona, who also has been going through a process of purification, informs Nureddene about the plot which she has divised to rescue him: He shall sell Anice in the slave-market, where Ajebe would buy her.

MYMOONA

Fear not the sale which shall be in name alone.

Tis only Balkis borrowing her from you,

Who pawns her value. ...

But if you ask, why then the mart and auction?

We must have public evidence of the sale

To meet an uncle's questions.²

Anice at once accepts this plan, but Nureddene has his considerations and objections. Because he had promised his father to sell Anice when but only when it is her will, he finally consents to the vital mind's suggestion.

The questions which pose themselves here are: Why would Murad's help hinder the spiritual progress and Ajebe's support not? And why is the Psyche eager to accept a plan which is, as we shall see soon, doomed to failure? Is not the vital mind a relatively base source of inspiration and have not its plannings even at their best an element of falsehood and impurity in them? And if a ruse is used why not pretending that Murad is the lender, while Ajebe actually is ? Would not the Asura be angry with his nephew for being the cause of Nureddene's rescue?

Before we answer all this let us first see what happens at the

¹ p. 107-08

² P. 109,

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market.

While Ajebe is bidding for Anice, his uncle appears. Almuene proclaims, that his nephew is bidding for him. Powerless, the vital entity, Ajebe, leaves the market to fetch Nureddene. Meanwhile the psyche, unshaken in its innate grandeur, fearless and royal, faces up to the Asura:

ANICE-ALJALICE

I'll not be sold to you.

ALMUENE

What, dar'st thou speak, young harlot?

Fear the whip.

ANICE-ALJALICE

Vizier, I fear you not; there's law in Islam.

My master will deny the sale.

ALMUENE

Thy master

Shall be a kitchen negro, who shall use thee.

ANICE-ALJALICE

Had I whip, you should not say it twice¹

Ajebe returns now with Nureddene who tries to evade the sale. But this is too much irritation for Almuene. He abuses the couple and draws even his scimitar. The merchants out of friendship to Nureddene's father hinder Almuene's slaves from interfering, and this allows Nureddene to seize the second Vizier.

NUREDDENE

If thou wouldst live, crave pardon of the star

Thou hast spat on. I would make thee lick her feet

But that thy has would foul their purity.

ALMUENE

Pardon, oh, pardon!

NUREDDENE (Throwing him away)

Live then, in thy gutter.

(Exit with Anice)²

¹ p. 113-14

² P. 117, middle

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Finally the veiled conflict of the higher and lower nature in our hero breaks fully open. It was for this that the psyche sought the assistance of Ajebe and willingly agree with Mymoona's proposal, these two being the point of contact with the adverse power. We see that a descent of the consciousness is effected by the psychic being,;— symbolised by the bringing to the slave-market of Anice-Aljalice, — which directs the sādhanā towards the grappling with the asuric impact in his nature, because further spiritual advancement demands a full and sincere rejection of the forces of the darkness. The merchants, which symbolise the effects, the advantageous karma, caused by the benevolent and just action's of Nureddene's higher mind, hold back the powers of Almuene and thus allow Nureddene to seize and reject the weakened asuric impulsion. But this initial victory of Nureddene is not much more than a challenge, a declaration of war with the asura, who, of course, will not rest before the complete destruction of his foe, the spiritual consciousness unless of course he himself is eradicated first.

In the meantime, while all this is going on, King Alzayni, the ego, is planning the assassination of his emperor, the Caliph Haroun Al Rasheed, who is expected to come to Bassora.

Alzayni knows that the divine vice-regent Haroun conceives a dumb displeasure against him and that his throne might easily tumble. With good reason the ego fears the descent of the divine force, as it would certainly end its reign in the human being. Alzayni orders Murad:

ALZAYNI

Murad, the time draws near. The Caliph comes

To Bassora; let him not thence return.

MURAD

My blade is sharp and what I do is sudden.¹

Obviously Murad thinks of using his blade not on the Caliph but for the enemies of the Divine. In this situation Almuene enters battered and daubed with mud and dirt. He informs the King that a year ago Ibn Sawy gave away the slave-girl, whom he had purchased for Alzayni, to his son. Almuene continues :

¹ P. 120, middle

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ALMUENE

This profligate squandering away his wealth

Brought her to market; there I saw her and bid

Her fair full price. Whereat he stormed at me

With words unholy; yet I answered mild,

"My son, not for myself, but the King's service

I need her." He with bold and furious looks,

"Dog, Vizier of a dog, I void on thee

And on thy Sultan." With which blasphemy

He seized me, rolled in the mire, battered with blows,

Kicks, pullings of the beard, then dragged me back

And flung me at his slave-girl's feet, who, proud

Of her bold lover, footed my grey head

Repeatedly and laughed, "This for thy King,

Thy dingy stingy King who with so little

Would buy a slave-girl sole in all the world.".¹

The ego, furious, decrees instantly fierce punishment and the death penalty for Anice and Nureddene. These, however, are warned in time by Sunjar. Sunjar represents the physical mentality which is the manager in the human household for physical dealings. Ajebe is now the helper in need.

AJEBE

Quick, Nureddene.

I have a ship all ready for Bagdad,

Flee then to Bagdad

And at the mighty Haroun's hand require

Justice upon these tyrants. Oh, delay not.²

The expansion of the spiritual consciousness has become an open threat to the ego and the asuric force, which both mobilise all their

¹ p. 122-123

² P. 125, middle.

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power to abolish the spiritual being. We see that through his sādhanā the conflict of light with darkness in Nureddene has been catalysed in such a degree that only the Caliph, the descent of a high spiritual force can manage to control the lower nature.

A journey in a boat, explains Sri Aurobindo, is an inner movement in the sādhanā. The ballast of Ajebe's attachment to his uncle as well as of other impurities had been thrown overboard and so the vessel is ready for its crusade into the inner worlds.

END OF PART I

ALEXANDER BRODT

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THE SECRET OF THE VEDA

(3)

THE VEDIC G ODS- AND GODDESSES

WHO are the deities whom the Veda worships? They are many and varied. Thirty-three was the number given to them in the Brahmanas; the number was raised to thirty-three crores in later Hindu thought. Modern scholarship is bewildered by their nature and functions, dubs them as superstitions of a primitive people, erects its own theories to explain their multitude, flounders in the end. Ancient Indian thought did not fare much better. The Brah-mana texts composed presumably long after the esoteric sense of the Veda had got dimmed by the demands of the sacrificial ritual, tried to hide their ignorance by weaving myths around the Vedic deities, a faculty exploited to the full in the Puranic portions of the Maha-bharata and in the extant Puranas themselves.

Vedic interpreters of the age immediately following the Brah-mana period — Yaska and the rest — belonged to two distinct schools for the most part.¹ One, the precursor of the modern European school, invented the solar myth. In its view, the sun, the moon, the stars, the sky, the rains have been given the names of gods with the forms of men; or else Indra, Mitra, Aryaman, Bhaga, Varuna, Vishnu are merely the names and forms of the sun; Mitra is the god of the day, Varuna of the night, the Ribhus and the Ashwins are no other than the rays of the sun. The other and perhaps more influential school regarded the Vedic deities both as personifications of the cosmic Powers of Nature, themselves powerful beings endowed with a human form and capable of conferring on their worshippers the boons of heaven after death and of all material benefits on earth including the destruction of man's foes. Apart from these two well-known views, there were two others that are not without interest. One of these regarded the gods, or at least some of them, as having been originally kings and mortal men deified after death. The other view assigned a spiritual meaning to the gods and the boons demanded by the Rishis: Surya for example was not the physical sun but the

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Sun of Knowledge, Indra was the Jivatman or the Life-force (prāna). Sayana the medieval commentator makes a reference to this view at places in his commentary.

Sayana of course was intent on the ritualistic interpretation of the Veda and his conception of the Vedic gods is closely akin to that of the second important view to which we refer above. He has to wrestle with the text in many places to fit the gods into his scheme; sometimes he has to do that by ignoring grammar and etymology, sometimes by paying lip homage to the truth of their real, psychological and spiritual sense. Modern scholarship, starting at first with Sayana and the older commentators like Yaska could not naturally ignore the historical and the "astronomical", the mythical and the ritualistic views held in ancient and medieval India; to these the}' added their own notions based on their studies of comparative philology, — the Aryan-Dravidian theory was a direct product of this masterpiece of pseudo-historical scholarship — comparative religion and the social anthropology of surviving primitive races. The result has been a hotchpotch, a groping in the dark for meanings where none exists, a failure to find a coherent sense in many a description of the gods, an ascription to these "primitive barbarians" a state of mind near enough to insanity. As Sri Aurobindo puts it, "we are left as much in the dark as before."

The broad conclusion to which modern scholarship has arrived, — if we leave aside its frantic attempts to fit the conclusions to facts in difficult and doubtful cases, and such cases are not infrequent, — is that the Vedic deities are universal powers of physical Nature personified. Agni, in this view, is nothing more than "the personification of the sacrificial Fire or of the physical principle of Light and Heat in things, or Indra anything more than the god of the sky and the rain or of physical Light,"² and so on. It must at once be conceded that in many passages it is quite possible to endorse this view; there are of course many others where that is impossible. "In the lesser gods the naturalistic interpretation has less ground for confidence; for it is obvious that Varuna is not merely a Vedic Uranus or Neptune, but

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a god with great and important moral functions; Mitra and Bhaga have the same psychological aspect; the Ribhus who form things by the mind. and build up immortality by works can with difficulty be crushed into the Procrustean measure of a naturalistic mythology ... Saraswati will submit to no such treatment. She is plainly and clearly, the goddess of the Word, the goddess of a divine Inspiration."³

There is no doubt that the average man of the Vedic age, the vast majority who formed the multitude, looked upon the sun, moon and the sky, the fire and air and the storm, earth and the waters, dawn and nightfall as visible embodiments of Powers far mightier than men and not mere material realities, Powers who were conscious of man's needs and demands and capable of meeting them in response to prayer and sacrifice offered with faith. They were not mistaken in this; for such conscious Powers exist; "hence the force of prayer, worship, sacrifice for material ends; hence the use of them for worldly life and in so-called magic rites which comes out prominently in the Atharva Veda This is the real secret of the external sense of Veda."⁴

But to the elite, to the man of wisdom and aspirant to a higher life than that known to the ordinary man, the gods and goddesses to whom prayers were offered had a different meaning altogether, served a different purpose. It is this that we have to consider. In what follows the references to the Vedic deities must be understood in that sense.

Behind and above all things there is a Timeless Ineffable ungrasped by thought to which the Rishi gave the name of That, or One Existent, tat, ekam sat, an Absolute which "reveals itself out of the secrecy of things as the God or Deva."⁵ This Supreme Existent is the Deity of whom all the gods are different Names and Powers. "'The Existent is one,' says the Rishi Dirghatamas, 'but the sages express It variously; they say Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Agni; they call It Agni, Yama, Matariswan'."⁶ They pervade the universe, all the worlds visible and invisible, shape them and govern their activities by their inherent powers which are ultimately those of the Supreme Lord, the Deva. The Vedic view of divinity is both monotheistic and polytheistic at the same time, throughout the Veda, and not merely

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in some later hymns of the tenth Mandala as the moderns imagine. It is monotheistic because God is one; it has to be polytheistic because the Supreme assumes many forms and powers, through them He manifests.

"The Father of all things is the Lord and Male; he is hidden in the secret source of things, in the super-conscient."⁵ Deva is the Immortality.⁷ He the Prurusha is "in this early pastoral imagery the Bull, vrsabha."⁸ He is "the divine Purusha, Sachchidananda, the three highest states and Truth are his four horns."⁹ He is also the Cosmic Godhead who maintains and guides the activity of all the universe; the presiding deities of this activity in its multitudinous forms are the gods and goddesses who derive their powers from Him, are Himself in diverse forms. He is at the same time the Godhead Immanent in man and in every other creature, whom He leads according to their nature towards the heights of consciousness, power and bliss. He receives their worship and answers to their prayers.

Deva, the Supreme Purusha, the Bull of the pastoral imagery, has His counterpart in Aditi, the Supreme Prakriti of later thought, the Cow of this imagery. "Aditi is the supreme or infinite Consciousness, mother of the gods ... Aditi is existence in its infinity."¹⁰ She is the "Mother of all things,...the white-shining Mother...in whose lap the soul sees...with the all-embracing vision of the supramental infinite consciousness."¹¹ She has been described as the Great One or Queen, mahisi, because She is the vast Mother.¹² The Mother is the "Dhenu or fostering Cow with the seven rivers for her sevenfold streaming as well as Gau, the Cow of Light with the Dawns for her children."¹³ The seven rivers are here obviously not the rivers of the Punjab; they are "the waters of being, the Mothers from whom all forms of existence are born"¹⁴ Nor are the Dawns the physical dawns of an Indian horizon. "Dawn the daughter of Heaven, the face or power of Aditi, is the constant opening out of the divine light upon the human being, she is the coming of the spiritual riches, a light, a power, a new birth...."¹⁵ Aditi is not only in the effulgent realms of the superconscient; She is also "the infinite consciousness hidden in the subconscient."¹⁶ It is this that enables the slow emergence of consciousness out of the inconscience of

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Matter which we call evolution, and which is the cosmic function of the gods to make possible.

The gods too have their "own home" in the superconscient Vast, the supreme Truth-Consciousness (rta-cit) of the Vedic hymns. "The gods act, it is continually stated, by the power of the Truth."¹⁷ They are born of the Felicity, mayobhūh, and they work for felicity. They have a double action, "divine and pre-existent in themselves, they are human in their working upon the mortal plane when they grow in man to the great ascension."¹⁸ Their cosmic function appears most clearly in the hymns to the great Gods, Brahmanaspati or Brihaspati, Rudra and Vishnu, the prototyped of the later Trinity. These hymns are few in number; but that is not because these great Gods are of lesser importance in their cosmic function than, say Agni or Indra, to whom are addressed the major part of the Vedic hymns because these others are more directly concerned with the main purpose of the hymns which is to express and confirm the Rishis' aspirations. That is a point which it is important to stress. The emergence of the Trinity as the principal aspects of the Godhead in later religious thought was no mere accident.

All the three are in the Veda creators and preservers; and Vishnu shares with Rudra the function of destruction — "he (that is, Vishnu) is like a terrible lion that ranges in the difficult places," says a hymn.¹⁹ Brahmanaspati creates cosmos out of the original chaos and thus enables consciousness to evolve out of the inconscient. Rudra provides the necessary force for the upward lift and for the breaking of all obstacles. Vishnu supplies the static element, gives a firm footing as it were through the stable gradation of the worlds, from the lowest Earth to the highest Heavens. Each again, it might be worthwhile repeating, carries in him the whole power of the Deva, the Supreme Lord; each is in his utter reality the Deva Himself, in his manifestation a face or aspect of the Lord. This is true as much of these great Gods as of the lesser deities and they are worshipped as such. That explains the high-sounding "henotheism"

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of the Veda, which strikes the modern scholar as one of its peculiar traits.

In the beginning was the vast Inconscient Ocean, apraketam salilath, an indeterminate Infinite out of which the finite worlds were to rise and make room for consciousness to grow towards the other Infinity of the Superconscient, the "upper ocean" of, the Veda. Brahmanaspati, "becoming manifest first of the gods out of the vast-ness of that Light of Truth-consciousness",²⁰ may thus be regarded as the first of the formateurs. He descends with full consciousness from the heights of the superconscient, and plunging into the inconscience brings out of it the formations of consciousness which in the Vedic view represent the worlds visible and invisible. He "creates the worlds by the Word out of the...inconscient ocean that was this all."²¹ He is the Father of all things."²² He is like all the other gods the friend and helper of aspiring man. Brihaspati, another name of this god, is the conscious Soul-Power in man, the creative Soul who in his other form of Brahma "seeks to manifest and increase himself in the royalty of the human nature and he who attains to that royalty of light and power...finds himself always cherished, fostered, increased by the divine cosmic powers."²³

The cosmic function of Rudra is to supply the force for the upward movement of Brahmanaspati's formations. This Mighty One "presides over the struggle of life to affirm itself; he is the armed, wrathful and beneficent Power of God who lifts forcibly the creation upward, smites all that opposes, scourges all that errs and resists, heals all that is wounded and suffers and complains and submits."²⁴ For he too has like all the gods a cosmic and a psychological aspect. "The force that battles is his gift, but also the final peace and joy.'²⁵ He, as Sri Aurobindo has chosen to emphasise, is "the most terrible of the gods, the one of whom alone the Vedic Rishis have any real fear."²⁶ Nor is the conception of Siva borrowed from the "Dravidians"; for all the violent and benign aspects of Rudra-Siva of the Puranic Triad are already there in the Veda.²⁷ 

Vishnu the all-pervading measures out in his three strides and

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arranges in their fixed ascending hierarchy all the worlds or planes of consciousness that constitute the cosmos. He thus "supplies the necessary static elements — Space, the ordered movements of the worlds, the ascending levels, the highest goal.........In these worlds he the all-pervading dwells and gives less or greater room to the action and movements of the gods."²⁸ These worlds are mainly three, namely, the earth of our physical consciousness, the heaven of mind with the mid-world of life acting as the link between the two, and the triple world of rich substance (vasu), abounding force (urj) and delight (mayas), the high and vast world of Truth (satyam, rtam, brhat) serving as the link between this highest world of Sachchidananda and the lower triplicity of mind, life and matter in which we five.²⁹ Vishnu preserves all these five worlds of being imperishably by infusing them with delight of which he is the source. "All of them this Vishnu fills with his divine joy of being."³⁰ He is the constant friend of man, he is the Deva helping and evoking the powers of the ascent. His highest seat, the world of supreme delight, is the goal of this human journey.³¹

Not merely Vishnu and Rudra and Brahmanaspati, but all the other Vedic gods whatever their appellation or special function, are the helpers and friends of man in his high endeavour. "Without exception they are described as increasing man, bringing him light, pouring on him the fullness of the waters, the abundance of the heavens, increasing the truth in him, building up the divine worlds, leading him against all attacks to the great goal, the integral felicity, the perfect bliss."³² The Rishi was aware that he could not by his unaided effort free himself out of the triple cord of mind and life and body, get rid of all his imperfections. He needed the assistance of divine Powers. "The Rishis pray always to the gods to make their path to the highest bliss easy of going and thorn less."³³ They knew that it is only by reaching the highest seat of Vishnu that they could be fully free.

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In what ways do the gods help the aspirant in his upward march? They supply him the necessary knowledge, which goes on increasing as he mounts higher and higher in the scale. They provide him the necessary force to act in accordance with the knowledge. They give him the-joy of the effort. They fight man's battles against his enemies inner and outer and help him to conquer or overpass the obstacles to his growth. They assist the mortal to increase in obedience to the Truth; for through the Truth lies the path to Bliss. They in fact represent to him his higher psychological states and functions, and to these he gives the appropriate names etymologically allied to the respective state or function: Agni, Indra, Soma, Marut, Vayu, Usha, Surya Savitri, Pushan, Mitra, Varuna and all the rest. Sometimes he addresses them as Vishvadevas, all the gods, "the universal collectivity of the divine powers."³⁴ The gods "become, take shape, as it were, in him."³⁵ It is this vaiśvadaivya, man becoming in his status and function, in all the parts of his being, in all his thoughts and action even as the gods are, that in Sri Aurobindo's view was the esoteric meaning of the Vedic worship, the secret of the Vedic yoga.³⁶

We shall now have to give a passing glance at these other gods who fill the Vedic hymnal.

(To be continued)

SANAT K. BANERJI

REFERENCES

1. Sri Aurobindo,

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., 548 and footnote.

4. Ibid., pp. 423-4.

5. Ibid., p. 66.

6. Ibid., 139.

7. Ibid., 231.

8. Ibid., p. 113

9. Ibid., p. 323, note 4.

10. Ibid., pp. 151, 236.

11. Ibid., p. 503, and notes r, 2; p. 504.

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12. Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, pp. 30 4-5 (1952 edition).

13. Sri Aurobindo, On the Veda, p - 234 (1950 edition)

14. Ibid., p. 141.

15. Ibid. p. 529.

16. Ibid., p. 120.

17. Ibid., p. 117.

18. Ibid., p. 198.

19. Ibid., p. 391.

20. Ibid., p. 366.

21. Ibid., p. 362.

22. Ibid., p. 367.

23. Ibid., p. 369.

24. Ibid., p. 438.

25. 76irf., p. 395.

26. Ibid., pp. 394 -95 .

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid., p. 395.

29. Ibid., pp. 397-299.

30. Ibid., p. 398.

31. Ibid., p. 399.

32. Ibid., p. 54.

33. /6/cf., p. 259.Footnote.

34. Ibid., p. 99.

35. Ibid., p. 320.

36. Sri Aurobindo Centenary Volume, Number 4, pp . 44 -45 .

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SRI AUROBINDO: THE POET*

The Word, a mighty and inspiring Voice,

Enters Truth's inmost cabin of privacy

And tears away the veil from God and life. .

 

The Ineffable puts on a robe of speech

Where all its words are woven like magic threads

Moving with beauty, inspiring with their gleam,

And every thought takes up its destined place

Recorded in the memory of the world.

Savitri, Book X. 4.

THESE lines from 'Savitri', Sri Aurobindo's great epic, almost give a full account of what Sri Aurobindo, the Poet has done, say, has achieved through his poetry, ranging from simple quartets to a great epic poem of nearly 24,000 lines, and passing midbetween through almost all the varied forms of poetic expression. Here, in Sri Aurobindo, we meet the Word, which really is a mighty and inspiring voice, something like the great ॐ (Om) is a mighty and realising Mantra, which has entered Truth's inmost cabin of privacy, the inner occult apartments of life and much that is beyond, and has torn away the veil from God, which has taken us into the Presence of God and has revealed all the secrets of life. We can say there is not a single aspect of life which has not been dealt with in Sri Aurobindo's poetry and the revelation of things transcendent, reaching up to the threshold of the Unmanifest that we find here is there perhaps for the first time in our earthly life. Here indeed we see the Ineffable putting on a glorious robe of speech, where all its words are woven like magic threads moving with beauty, inspiring with their gleam, which often blazes up into a bright sunlight.

To speak of Sri Aurobindo as the Poet is as good as speaking about the Himalayas. It is as simple as taking up a book of Geography

* Paper read at the National Seminar on Sri Aurobindo's Vision of India, New Delhi, on 18-8 1972.

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with all its maps and charts and pictures and having a delightful experience of knowing something about one of the seven wonders of the world. But to scale this giant of a mountain is a different thing, to reach its highest peak human capacity has only recently reached the required height. Similarly we can talk about the Poet and his poetry to our heart's content, yet we can hardly rest at that, there is indeed the temptation, and the need also, to go near this mountain, this Nagadhiraj (नागाघिराज) of a Poet and partake of its beauty and mystery and delight. The foothills of Sri Aurobindo's poetry are indeed charming, as are the far-flung foothills of the Himalayas with their numberless Tirtha the sacred places and sacred rivers, but as we go up, as we move further and further up the height, a graded acclimatization becomes necessary, requiring also to carry a set of oxygen along with us. When we try to be with the highest expression of Sri Aurobindo's poetic genius, it becomes a breath-taking experience. Here we have to equip our mind and our nerves with a new capacity
of exp erience, with a new sensitiveness, with as good a thing as some occult growth, a willing surrender, a helpful suspension of the outer mind and outer self and to allow ourselves to be led like a child, clinging to the beatific hand of the Musa Spiritus that is there to lead us up the difficult ascent.

By now, in these glorious days of Sri Aurobindo's Birth Centenary, we are sufficiently familiar with the unique personality of one of our greatest Persons, who is the living Vibhuti of our age. We now know the various aspects through which his inner self has expressed itself, each one of them a stupendous achievement by itself. We know the politician, the thinker, the philosopher, the great mystic — the Maha Yogi that Sri Aurobindo is, but the poet Sri Aurobindo is a manifestation unique by itself. As a politician, we see his personality spreading out through the length and breadth of our vast country like a rejuvenating wind and awakening us to our national consciousness for the first time like a blazing fire. As a thinker, as a philosopher we feel him bringing to our mind all the illumination that is possible to the present limit of human consciousness. As a Maha Yogi, the mystic, the Supreme Guru, we find him leading us in a great enchanting silence into the inner and higher worlds. In this action, there is an occult working, and it is hard to be figured out in a single physical

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mould. It is like a hand manipulating from behind and flowering out in all the expressions of life on all its levels. With the Yogi we aspire, we open ourselves, we receive, we grow into the new divine growth, which has been his real mission on earth and feel fulfilled in our silent adoration of him.

The poet Sri Aurobindo is somewhat like a luminous link between the outer and inner working of Sri Aurobindo. Here the poet on one hand refines and sublimates all the outer stuff of life and mind and on the other gives a form, a word to all that belongs to the formless and wordless. What he could not or rather would not say to the outer mind and surface intellect he states it outright in poetry and what remains a difficult or occult realisation, a partial and gradual unfolding of the inner self in the working of sadhana, he puts it in an explicit manner; the whole range of inner realisation, the inner worlds and their working, the visions of Godhead, the thrill of the mystic contacts, the throbs of supreme delight and the charm of the greatest beauty and beatitude are there all too vividly spread out as on an unending canvas. His poetry is indeed, in his own words, 'The Word that enters Truth's inmost cabin of privacy and tears away the veil from God and life.' Here we are made to see and feel in a most palpable manner God, who has remained, for most of us, an intangible substance — अग्राहाम् अनिवैचनीयम् agrāhyam, anirvacaniyam. Here we are given to realise life, that has been to us a d ark and dolorous substance, as a glorious manifestation of the Divine.

We know fairly enough the poetical career of Sri Aurobindo. He started writing poetry at a very early age, while studying in England. His was a clever and deft hand, apart from writing in English, which was, as we know, his natural language from the very first, he composed in Greek and Latin also which were taught to him with a warm heart by his able tutor. The poetic faculty continued to work, but after coming over to India, as he entered new phases of life, and started practising Pranayama, a preliminary movement to his real Sadhana, things started to come to him, poetry as well as prose, in a great gust. And after coming over to Pondicherry and during the course of his intense Yoga, as he reached unknown levels of consciousness beyond the mind, all that he wrote was done from a silent mind. There he received inspiration from its pure region, the movement of Intuition

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in its native sky. And the working out of the great epic 'Savitri' was an epic process itself. It became for him 'a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own Yogic Consciousness and how that could be made creative.'

And we know now what the Yogic consciousness is and can be. It is a field of new powers, new realisations, new self-creation, a plunge into the vast unknown that comes within our range of experience. Here at a certain stage the writing of 'Savitri' does not remain a mere poetical creation but becomes actual happening, so many divine events in human history. As the Mother reveals to us this stupendous inner reality we feel an awful exhilaration on knowing what actually happened when 'Savitri' was being written. Here is what She says: 'All this is his (Sri Aurobindo's) own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my experience also....And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences he read out to me in the morning were those I had the previous night. Word for word, yes all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all I had heard put by him into poetry, into miraculous poetry....It is the picture of our joint adventure into the Unknown, or rather into Supermind....' And as she adds, 'Savitri' is the whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga now comes for the first time in the earth consciousness...' we touch the Truth for which Sri Aurobindo lived and worked and wrote all that he did in verse and outside the verse.

Apart from poetry Sri Aurobindo has written a number of plays also, each embodying a separate climate of a separate nation in separate ages. The plays are also in verse, and have their own charm of expression and interest of their subject. A still greater contribution by Sri Aurobindo to poetry is his translations into verse, and a part in prose also, of poetry from Sanskrit, Bengali and even from Tamil and Greek and Latin, the major bulk of it from Sanskrit and Bengali, select passages from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Gita, from Kalidasa, Bhartrihari, from Vidyapati, Chandidas and other Bengali poets. His translations of the Upanishads and the Vedas, a great working out of a difficult subject, though in prose, have a deep touch of poetical expression, a turn of .phrase which brings out much more fully the significance of the original bare word.

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All this amounts to a stupendous mass, standing before which, we simply feel an overpowering awe and a great fullness of being in the presence of a rich creative genius.

The evaluation of what Sri Aurobindo has written as poetry has been a delicate and challenging job. There have been a varied type of reactions to his poetry, some of them even going to the length of denying any poetical value to it. Every reaction can have its justification from the critic's own make-up. But we know that Sri Aurobindo himself has been a great scholar and student of poetry, a brilliant expositor of this Muse in its divine ascension, and he has worked upon his own writings again and again, reaching out for a greater and fuller, for a more and more perfect perfection. He has been a great experimenter also, he has tried new metres and worked a great deal on the possibility of quantitative metre in English, illustrating his point by a huge piece of epic 'Illion', and other poems also, 'Ahana' being one of them a brilliant piece.

Though there are people, who refuse to grant any virtue to Sri Aurobindo's poetry, there are a large number of people who have with real labour and understanding approached Sri Aurobindo's poetry and found in it something of a supreme creative nature. Acknowledged scholars in the West also have been able to appreciate Sri Aurobindo's work in its real truth. Thus says Sir Herbert Read, a leading modern poet and critic in England, about 'Illion': "It is a remarkable achievement by any standard, and I am full of amazement that some one not of English origin should have such a wonderful command, not only over language as such, but of its skilful elaboration into poetic diction of such high quality." Another profound scholar, Professor Vivian de Sola Pinto (University of Nottingham) has spoken of 'Savitri' as a "remarkable epic... surely among the greatest poetic achievements of the present century." And this is what an American critic has said about 'Savitri': it is "probably the greatest epic in the English language... a perfect Cosmic poem".

This much about Sri Aurobindo, the Poet should suffice for our present purpose. Standing as we are in the presence of this great Himalaya, that Sri Aurobindo himself is, and his poetry only one of the great mountains in its long range, glittering with its white brilliant snows, we feel some of the lofty air from its peaks moving

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around us and we breathe a heavenlier air uplifting us from our earthly basis, and we can now rest content with this much of musing about Sri Aurobindo's muse — the Musa Spiritus.

It will be indeed a great delight if we can have a fairly representative glimpse of Sri Aurobindo's poetry. But even that will be a big affair and I will content myself by just picking up a few lines from here and there and just feel a murmur of the grandiose Word that he has uttered.

Sri Aurobindo has written much in a simple manner and these lines are perhaps unparalleled in their simple charm, they are one of his metrical experiments:

In some faint dawn,

In some dim eve,

Like a gesture of Light,

Like a dream of delight

Thou comest nearer and nearer to me.

(More Poems)

And these are perhaps the simplest lines about a subject — God,

which is quite complex and yet simple at the same time.

Thou who pervadest all the worlds below,

Yet sitst above,

Master of all who work and rule and know,

Servant of Love!

 

Thou who disdainest not the worm to be

Nor even the clod,

Therefore we know by that humility

That thou art God.

 

(Collected Poems)

But we know that Sri Aurobindo's poetry is like a multi-keyed and multi-toned organ and we should love to hear the instrument in its fullest amplitude. Though he has concerned himself mostly with the deepest and loftiest aspect of things, yet he has not missed to

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touch things of the commonest nature also. These lines about a cat, even with their simplicity, pass on to subtle and deep things also:

Mute stands she, lonely on the topmost stair,

An image of magnificent despair;

The grandeur of a sorrowful surmise

Wakes in the largeness of her glorious eyes ...

 

Her tail is up like an unconquered flag,

Its dignity knows not the right to wag.

 

An animal creature wonderfully human,

A charm and miracle of fur-footed Brahman,

Whether she is spirit, woman or cat,

Is now the problem I am wondering at.

('Despair on the Staircase')

As an epic poet Sri Aurobindo has encompassed every aspect of human experience of life and things but among them the heroic, the beautiful and the mystic are the foremost. Before he launched into his great epic 'Savitri', he wrote about these things on a smaller scale also in some of his long narrative poems which have an epic throb in them. These lines from a short poem form as if a first sounding of the war-trumpet before the fierce battles begin.

With wind and the weather beating round me

Up to the hill and the moorland I go.

Who will come with me? who will climb with me?

Wade through the brook and tramp through the snow?

 

I am the lord of tempest and mountain,

I am the Spirit of freedom and pride.

Stark must he be and a kinsman to danger

Who shares my kingdom and walks at my side.

                               ('Invitation¹)

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This daring is an essential quality of life and is the basis of all victory and enjoyment that come to us as a result of our struggles. Thus, as in life, so in literature, the heroic and the beautiful are woven together, the tragic and blissful are there side by side or superseding one another as things happen in their destined way. Concerned as Sri Aurobindo is with the grimmest problems of life he deals with the heroic side of things at a greater length, yet the love and beauty of things also are there, though not in outward abundance, yet equally balanced in their subtle reality. We shall see some of his most charming expressions as found in his earlier narratives. Here is the meeting of Pururavus and Urvasie:

... Then through all his limbs there flashed

Youth and the beauty and the warmth of earth

And joy of her left lonely to his will.

He moved, he came towards her. ...

With a great cry and glad Pururavus

Seized her and caught her to his bosom thrilled,

Clinging and shuddering. All her wonderful hair

Loosened and the wind seized and bore it streaming

Over the shoulder of Pururavus

And on his cheek a softness. She, o'erborne,

Panting, with inarticulate murmurs lay, ...

Her naked arms clasping his neck,...

Amid her wind-blown hair their faces met.

With her sweet limbs all his, feeling her breasts

Tumultuous up against his beating heart,

He kissed the glorious mouth of heaven's desire.

So clung they as two shipwrecked in a surge.

                      ('Urvasie')

Still more charming is the love of Ruru with Priyumvada in 'Love and Death'. We will have just a glimpse of it:

......He remembered

The chompuc bushes where she turned away

Half-angered, ...

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And the swift leap of all her body to him,

And eyes of large repentance, and the weight

Of her wild bosom and lips unsatisfied ;...

('Love and Death')

- And now to the heroic in Sri Aurobindo's poetry. Here is one of the most vivid pictures of a war: it is from 'Baji Prabhou'.

... They reached the perilous crest; there for a while

A slaughter grim went on and all the the verge

Was heaped and walled and thickly fortified

With splendid bodies ....

 

Small was the space for fight,

And meeting strength with skill and force with soul

The strong and agile keepers of the hills

Prevailed against the city-dwelling hosts, ...

So fought they for a while; then suddenly

Upon the Prabhou all the Goddess came.

Loud like a lion hungry on the hills

He shouted, and his stature seemed to increase

Striding upon the foe. Rapid his sword

Like lightning playing with a cloud made void

The crest before him, ...

('Baji Prabhou')

We see here the best epic tradition carried forward by Sri Aurobindo, and in 'Illion', a long narrative of nearly 5000 lines in the best Homeric tradition, written in his evolved qualitative metre, we have a still more thrilling experience of the poet's muse.

Silent, aloof from the people he sat, a heart full of ruins.

Low was the rumour that swelled like the hum of the bees in a meadow

When with the thirst of the honey they swarm on the thyme and the linden,

Hundreds humming and flitting till all that place is a murmur.

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Then from his seat like a tower arising Praim the monarch

Slowly erect in his vast tranquillity silenced the people:

Lonely, august he stood like one whom death has forgotten,

Reared like a column of might and of silence over the assem

bly, So Olympus rises alone with his snows into heaven.

                                          ('Illion')

And now we can turn to 'Savitri' where the poet's muse has reached its most mature expression. Here everything has grown into a subtlety, a depth, wideness, a height, an inmost reality that are there on the highest plane of spiritual experience. Here the love and the struggle, the pursuit and achievement, the battle and victory and the culmination of the whole existence have not remained on our human plains. Though taking account of everything in life, and plunging down even into the nether pits of all the underworlds, the poem is a great transcendence, a superhuman embodiment of the utmost Reality.

But we cannot venture here far into this immense world of 'Savitri'. We shall just touch the fringe of this Virat Sristi. Let us meet outright the lovers here, in the greatest love-poetry of our times, where the love has attained a rare subtlety and depth.

A sacrament of joy in treasuring palms

She brought, flower-symbol of her offered life,

Then with raised hands that trembled a little now

At the very closeness that her soul desired,

This bond of sweetness, their bright union's sign,

She laid on the bosom coveted by her love.

As if inclined before some gracious god...

She bowed and touched his feet with worshipping hands;

She made her life his world for him to tread

And made her body the room of his delight,...

He bent to her...

He gathered all Savitri in his clasp.

Around her his embrace became the sign

Of a locked closeness through slow intimate years,...

In a wide moment of two souls that meet

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She felt her being flow into him as in waves

A river pours into a mighty sea.

As when a soul is merging into God

To live in Him for ever and know His joy,

Her consciousness was a wave of him alone

And all her separate self was lost in his.

As a starry heaven encircles happy earth,

He shut her into himself in a circle of bliss

And shut the world into himself and her.

A boundless isolation made them one;

He was aware of her enveloping him

And let her penetrate his very soul,

As is a world by the world's spirit filled,

As the mortal wakes into Eternity,

As the finite opens to the Infinite.

Thus were they in each other lost awhile,

Then drawing back from their long ecstasy's trance

Came into a new self and a new world...

In a new act of the drama of the world

The united Two began a greater age.

(Book V. 3.)

But soon the shadow of Death descends upon their love, of the short life of their love only Savitri is aware, and it is she who bears the equally intense pain of this.

Love and Doom, The ancient disputants, encircled her

Like giant figures wrestling in the night:

(Book I. 1.)

And at the appointed hour Death comes to Satyavan:

.. .Now the great Woodsman

Hewed at him and his labour ceased: lifting

His arm he flung away the poignant axe

Far from him like an instrument of pain....

He cried out in a clinging last despair,

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"Savitri, Savitri, O Savitri,

Lean down my soul, and kiss me while I die."

And even as her pallid lips pressed his,

His failed, losing last sweetness of response; .

His cheek pressed down her golden arm.

Satyavan dies and the living Death appears:

Something had come there conscious, vast and dire.

(Book VIII. 3)

But we shall not face this God here and now. After a long and arduous preparation, after a new birth in a young Divinity, equipped with her original Force Savitri ultimately conquers Death. To realise the joy of this ever first victory of man over Death we have to be with the poem for long long hours.

Rather than meeting the miserably dying Death I would like to meet God, as Ashwapathy found him at the end of his long pursuit of the Unknowable, in his unthinkable transcendent form:

The universe removed its coloured veil,

And at the unimaginable end

Of the huge riddle of created things

Appeared the far-seen Godhead of the whole,

His feet firm-based on Life's stupendous wings,

Omnipotent or lonely seer of Time,

Inward, inscrutable, with diamond gaze.

Attracted by the unfathomable regard

The unsolved slow cycles to their fount returned

To rise again from that invisible sea.

(Book III. I)

We can see here what distance the poet has covered from the God that turns himself into a clod to the Godhead that is gazing from the farthest end of the universe with his diamond gaze and attracting with his unfathomable regard all the slow cycles of the universe to himself — to the fount of all and giving them a new

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birth again and again, a new birth in his own divine form.

We will stop here now, but I should like to close with a little nearer vision, not that mysterious formidable inscrutability of the supreme Godhead, but a very palpable divinity with which we are familiar, but which here appears in a very charming luminous form with a very deep function. It is the heavenly sage Narad leaving the earth after revealing to Savitri and her parents the decree of Fate.

He spoke and ceased and left the earthly scene,

Away from the strife and suffering on our globe.

He turned towards his far-off blissful home.

A brilliant arrow pointing straight to heaven,

The luminous body of the eternal seer

Assailed the purple glory of the noon

And disappeared like a receding star

Vanishing into the light of the Unseen;

But still a cry was heard in the infinite,

And still to the listening soul on mortal earth

A high and far imperishable voice

Chanted the anthem of eternal love.

(Book VI. 2)

Such indeed is the imperishable Voice, that Sri Aurobindo, the Poet is, chanting the anthem of all eternal and infinite things.

SUNDARAM

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MAHACHAMASYA AND THE FOURTH VYAHRITI

MAHACHAMASYA, the name of the Rishi mentioned in the fifth chapter of the Taittiriya Upanishad's first part (Shikshavalli) is supposed to be a patronymic: son of Mahachamasya. But if, as Sri Aurobindo insists, the names of the Rishis have always a symbolic value, we may suppose that Mahachamasya is the Seer of the Great Bowl (mahā-camasa), the sacrificial bowl which is in the Veda a figure for the physical body of man. This bowl in which the delight of existence is offered to the gods is made singly by Twashtri, the framer of things, but is new-made by the Ribhus, the three human-divine "powers of luminous knowledge" who build up upon it "from the material of the four planes three other bodies, vital, mental and the causal or ideal body." (Uta tyam camasam navam, tvastur devasya niskrtam; akarta catvarah punah. RV 1.20.6).¹ It is this fourfold bowl which enables man "to five in the plane of the Truth-Consciousness"², the plane of the Ideal or rather of the Real-Idea.

In the Veda the four planes, the planes from which the Ribhus take their material, are Prithivi, or Earth; the Antariksha, an intermediary region symbolic of the vital domains; Dyau, or heaven; and Swar, that wide other world, uru u loka, the world of Truth. By the time of the Upanishads the distinction between Dyau and Swar had been lost, and "therefore a fourth name had to be found for the world of Truth."³ This discovery is the work of Mahachamasya. To the three lower Vyahritis ("utterances" or "Words"), that is, Bhur, Bhuvar and Suvar (= Swar in the Yajur Veda, from the Taittiriya Aranyaka of which the Upanishad is taken), is added the fourth great name, Mahas. This, the "great world" is "the supramental or Truth-Consciousness",⁴ and is, as the Upanishad states "the Brahman, the Self, and the other sods are its members":⁵

The gods are potencies of the Over mental creation, but above the shining lid of the Over mind is the plane of Truth, the divine self-expression of the Absolute, whether seen objectively (Brahman) or subjectively (Atman). In this supramental plane the different godheads

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are "held together as a harmonious play of the existence"⁶ like the many limbs of a single and integral body.

That the three Vyahritis, with the fourth beyond them,-represent what in the adhiloka we see as the worlds is made clear in the next section of the chapter. Bhur (as we have already noted) corresponds to "this world", Prithivi, the earth-principle; Bhuvar to the Antariksha (in his early translation of the Taittiriya Sri Aurobindo has rendered, "sky"); and Suvar to that "other world", not the other world, u loka, which is the Vedic greater heaven, brhad dyau, but the world of free mentality which the Veda calls Dyau. Beyond these is Mahas, the sun, "the symbol of the supermind."⁷

Similarly the Upanishad states that Bhur is Fire; Bhuvar, Air; Suvar, the Sun; and that beyond the Sun is the Moon, which is Mahas. As to why the same word (Aditya= Sun) is used here for what is above taken for the highest world, I am not prepared to say. The Upanishads are not the expression of the rigid philosophical mind, and no attempt to cram inconvenient texts into preconceived mental frames will alter their essential character which, being based on intuition and not thought, is one of wonderful plasticity. We may simply note that in the Brihadaranyaka (hi.6.) we have a similar placement of the world of the Moon above that of the Sun, perhaps because the world of Delight (Mayas, Ananda) is in the old systems ranked higher even than the supramental world. We may also recall that in the third part of the Kena, Agni (Fire) and Vayu (Air) are followed by Indra, the Lord of the Divine Mind, but that the Brahman is finally approached by none of these, but by Uma, the Supreme Nature, the Mother.*

The symbolism of the rest of the passage is even more difficult to penetrate, and we need not attempt more than some enlargement of Sri Aurobindo's translation. Bhur is the hymns of the Rig-veda; Bhuvar, those of the Sama-veda; and Suvar, those of the Yajur-veda; that is, the Rik or "word of illumination",⁸ the Saman or "word of the divine ananda"⁹ and the Yajus or "word of power for the right ordering of the action".¹⁰ Beyond all these is the brahman, not here so

* See also in the next chapter of the Upanishad

In Bhur He is established in Agni, as Bhuvar in Vayu, as Suvar in the Sun, as Mahas in the Eternal.

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much "the Eternal", as "the word or Mantra in its profoundest aspect".¹¹

Again, Bhur is the main breath, prāna; Bhuvar is the lower breath, apāna; Suvar is the pervasor of all the breaths, vyāna; but of all these the substance is Food, annam, which is Mahas. We have here a brief anticipation of the great importance given to Food in later parts of the Upanishad, for example in the first chapter of the Brahmanandavalli and especially in the tenth and concluding chapter of the Brighuvalli. By Food all the breaths increase and prosper.

The entire chapter, we may say, is a perfect square: a figure of four sides made up of four four-sided figures. "These are the four and they are fourfold; — four Words of his naming and each is four again." Always beyond the three lower manifestations is "a certain fourth", the world beyond the body, life and mind, the divine Super-mind.

This is the discovery of Mahachamasya, a finding made not only once sometime in the past, but an ever-renewable discovery of an eternal truth. For as the names of the Rishis are symbolic, they themselves represent "certain spiritual experiences and victories".¹² In this age too it was found that "we need a name"¹³ for that other world beyond, and the great discovery was made again: "Supermind is the fourth name — fourth to that in its descent, fourth to us in our ascension".¹⁴ And in this, our fortunate era, not only had the fourth name been discovered, but through the efforts of the Rishis of the age the world named has been made manifest here in the lower triplicity.

PETER HEEHS

NOTES

AH references are to the' Centenary Library Edition of Sri Aurobindo's works:

1. The Secret of the Veda, p. 3 29.

2. Ibid. 3. Ibid., p. 171. 4. Ibid ., p . 61.

5. The Upanishads, p. 321. All other citations from the Upanishad under study arc from this translation of Sri Aurobindo, which, it should be remembered , was done by him we ll before he began his yogi c sadhana.

6. The Life Divine, p. 280.

7. Letters on Yoga, p. 102.

8. Essays on the Gita, p. 314.

9. Ibid.                      10. Ibid.

11. The Secret of the Veda, p. 306.                     12. Ibid. p . 154.

13. The Life Divine, p. 123 . 14. Ibid., p . 267.

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SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DISINTEGRATION OF THIS AGE :

REASONS FOR AND THEIR REMEDIES*

("The true law of our development and the entire object of our Social Existence can only become clear when we have discovered not only like modern Science what man has been in his past physical and vital evolution, but his future mental and spiritual destiny and his place in the cycles of Nature."¹)

'THOU too Brutus?" —is a Shakespearean illustration of exclamation. But it has not become obsolete as yet. It is in the usage till today. In the latter half of this century — in the late sixties — we had heard a respectable Principal of a college exclaiming in the same way — though in different circumstances — "Thou too Ramesh?".

Ramesh — once a brilliant student of his College, his pride and pride of the locality as well — had become a wagon breaker. We have seen a very good-natured young boy with poetical feelings in his student life, uttering slangs towards his subordinates, taking bribes from the smugglers — because he is now a Police Officer, and a well-disciplined group leader under N. C. C. — becoming a political hooligan. A few years ago we had the misfortune to witness that the teen-agers — both boys and girls of different Universities belonging to respectable families — becoming the victims of clashes between different disintegrated political ideas. They were found not at all hesitating to kill their colleagues or be killed by them.

But why? — who is responsible for this breakdown of social standards and disintegration of social and political values? The individual ? The Society ? or the State? — why man has become so poor in his feelings and emotions? —so demoralising in his conduct and character? Who is responsible for this pitiable plight of man?

"Man's present predicament" — says Sri Aurobindo, "is due to his neglect of his inner development which has left him a slave of his passion". In this single sentence of the Master we get the answer. Man himself is responsible and none else.

* Paper for the Seminar held in the Ashram during 18 th to 20th February, 1975 .
1 Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle

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Throughout the history of human civilisation man has been trying to develop his outer life, prosper his material existence. Excepting a few. instances of recent and remote in the life and sadhana of quite negligible number of Yogins and Sannyasins here and there, nowhere man has been seen busy in developing his inner nature and as a consequence he has become a slave of his passion. And hence this crisis — the crisis of character.

It is from the gregarious instinct of human being, as we know, that normal human society emerges. But at the very beginning of its formation — to avoid clashes of egos and antagonistic ideas the Society had to patch an accommodation of converging interests and treaty of peace between discords by estabhshing what is today known as social laws. By these social laws which helped in establishing interests of association as against interests of clashes — individual development was fettered to a great extent. Nevertheless, the growth of modern civilisation was ensured. For its progress, this civilisation — with the help of social laws, has established mass of social Institutions and customs which in the long run have been proved to be a hindrance to the normal growth and development of individual, though at the outset the establishment of such Institutions and customs received psychological sanction and support of the individuals because of their inherent quality of stimulating mutual existence and understanding.

"A normal human Society", as envisaged by Sri Aurobindo, "treats man essentially a physical, vital and mental being and therefore it develops a system of mental growth and efficiency — an intellectual, aesthetic and moral culture, it evolves the vital side of the human life and creates an ever growing system of economic efficiency and vital enjoyments and this system becomes more rich, cumbrous and complex as civilisation develops."¹

Obviously it becomes clear that there is radical defect somewhere in the process of civilisation. If we are to find out where lies the defect then we have to study first what actually 'man' is. It is not at all paradoxical in this age of Reason that man's existence could not be fully explained, because the 'Reason' has got no such capability of going deep into it. The mind, the life and the body are three terms of

¹ The Human Cycle.

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man's existence with which the 'Reason' has some competence to deal. Thinkers, Social-reformers and Religious leaders of the past and physical-Scientists, Politicians and Economists of the present age — none of them has been able to get hold of the truth of Nature's working in humanity. So they either lose the individual in man or think of him chiefly as a cell, an atom.

A study of Nature's working in humanity reveals that, — of all the earthly creatures man is a most dissatisfied being and yet he is the brightest product of this universe. Sri Aurobindo says, "Man is an abnormal who has not found his own normality, ... therefore, though man is infinitely greater than the plant or the animal, he is not perfect in his own nature like the plant and the animal." This imperfection as we see later, is not at all a deplorable thing but rather a privilege and a promise, because it maintains in man a constant flow of ever increasing dynamism which in its turn opens out to him an immense vista of self-development and self-exceeding. This imperfection, therefore, provides man with the vast scope of his becoming the brightest product of this universe. This is the spiritual element in man, — and his earliest preoccupation.

It is true that man started his life with animal instinct and impulse but his ultimate goal is to attain divinity. At his highest he is a half-god and that is not the end of his journey. He still marches forward and upward (towards his final possibility) till he becomes a whole-god. But the pity is that he is not fully aware of this inner urge nor of his destiny. He remains ignorant of it and therefore, has done nothing for its development and consequently the Society also remains incompetent to get hold of this truth. He does not know that he is a transitional being, that his greatness is not in what he is but in what he makes possible and that he is a mental being whose mentahty works here involved, obscured and degraded in physical brain. He believes that mind is the highest force in man, but he does not know that mind in man is ignorant, clouded and struggling power. He feels that it is not possible for him to remain satisfied with what he gains, achieves and possesses; but knows not what is that thing which if obtained brings for him an everlasting contentment.

He does not know what is that knowledge which when acquired

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leaves nothing to be known further ज्ञातठ्यै नावशिष्यते Yet he is after that. Therefore, it is absolutely his business to definitely know what he aspires for. And this he cannot do so long as he remains ignorant of his inner nature and unless his effort is exerted towards its development. How he will proceed may be summed up

Human mind, as we know, has threefold of working viz., thinking, feeling and willing. If man feels it to be absolutely necessary for him to rise above and move forward and not to remain in stagnancy — that is to say, in a vicious cycle of birth, growth, decay and death — then he must think deeply to find out means which leads him to that goal. Thereafter he applies his third force — his will — his firm determination which enables him to hew out the path himself. Only then his transcendence is possible; only then he realizes that there is within himself something which he has not yet been able to manifest but which he should and that is his real work. He is not here to remain bound up with physical and vital and mental nature but can free himself from that bondage and move beyond, — not of course to an unknown heaven, but a society which regards man as a soul incarnated for a divine fulfilment upon earth, that is to say a perfect Society.

A Society which tends to be perfect should never regard its unit — a man — as a physical, vital and mental being, because it realizes that these three terms of existence do not make the sum total of a complete manhood and that "they are means to an ulterior end and cannot be made for ever an end in themselves".¹

A Society is a collective soul and therefore, is not subject to be controlled by any institution and/or dogmatic creeds which are always mechanical in their character. A Society, like an individual, cannot live, grow and progress under such mechanism. When man tries to tie-up this dynamism of society or raise walls on its way to progress by introducing rigid laws and customs, he digs not only the grave of the society but also brings about his own death, because a society cannot live by machine and in a lifeless society man also cannot live. Therefore "the society exists by the individual for its mind and life

¹ The Human Cycle.

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and body is constituted by the mind and life and body of its composing individuals."¹

But from this fact it will not be wise to conclude that individual is a mere cell of the collective existence for he will not cease to exist if separated or expelled from the collectivity, for the collectivity, the community is not even the whole of humanity and it is not the world: the individual can exist and find himself elsewhere in humanity or by himself in the world. Therefore, individual is the key of the evolutionary progress, because it is the individual who possesses the competence of becoming conscious of the Reality — the truth of his existence. We are to determine, therefore, what is the true relation between an individual and a Society. Who is required to be perfected first?—the individual? or the Society?

The process of perfecting individual by individual effort and Society by the effort of a group of individuals — is a perpetual one and should be put to work simultaneously. In the words of Sri Aurobindo, — "The perfect Society will be that which most entirely favours the perfection of the individual, the perfection of the individual will be incomplete if it does not help towards the perfect state of the social aggregate to which he belongs".²

The present age in which we live is called Rational Age — where Reason is the governor of life. In this age, as we have already mentioned — thinkers, historians and sociologists — none of them has been able to conceive that a new order of life is ahead, for that conception lies beyond the four walls of Reason. So, guided by this limited power of reason mankind has formed a rationalized society and believes that the rational intelligence has the competence to solve all sorts of problems that engross it. On the basis of this idea man has "created a system of conversation, which has become too big for his limited mental capacity and understanding and his still more limited spiritual and moral capacities to utilise and manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and its appetites"³ This civilisation, it is found, "has also created many more problems than it can solve, has multiplied excessive needs and desires, the satisfaction of which it

¹ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine.

² Sri Aurobindo, The Ideal of Human Unity.

³ The Life Divine.

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has not sufficient vital force to sustain, has developed a jungle of claims and artificial instincts in the midst of which life loses its way and has no longer any sight of its aim."¹

This is because, — this civilisation — though at first sight has a very powerful attraction is founded upon the same wrong basis of treating life as machine. The mechanical order of the physical universe, with which reason has the competency to deal, does not hold good in the field of life, far less in that of mind. Life, is a mobile, progressive and evolving force, a force that is the increasing expression of an infinite soul in creatures. The conflict and struggle between antagonistic ideas that stand on the way to its progress can only be done away with satisfactorily if man realizes the truth of his existence. But here reason has no capability to help him. "The integral truth of things is truth not of the reason but of the spirit. Therefore the solution lies not in the reason but in the soul of man". It is a spiritual — an inner freedom that can alone create a perfect human order. It is a spiritual greater than the rational enlightenment that can alone illumine the vital nature of man and impose harmony on its self seekings, antagonisms and discords".²

Now it has become convincingly clear that the mind and the intellect are not the key power of our existence, because they have, up-till this date, been able to trace out only a round of half truth and uncertainties and they lead mankind to revolve in that unsatisfying circle. It is imperative, therefore, for man as an individual to declare boldly that all he has yet developed, including the intellect of which he is so rightly and yet so vainly proud, are now no longer sufficient for him and that to uncase, discover, set free the greater light within shall be henceforward his pervading preoccupation. Because he has now come to understand that without an inner change it is not possible for man to cope with the gigantic development of his outer life and that a radical transformation of his inner nature is quite indispensable if he intends to survive.

Indeed, if humanity is to take the next step of evolution that is to say to enter into the subjective age of society leaving behind the age of reason, it needs such individuals. A change from mental and vital to the spiritual order of life must necessarily be brought

^{1     2} The Human Cycle.

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about ill the individuals and a great number of individuals before it can lay any effective hold in the community.

"It is only through the individual mind that the community can arrive at a clear conception. All great changes find their first clear and effective power and their direct shaping force in the mind and spirit of an individual, or of a limited number of individuals. Therefore, there must be the individual and the individuals who are able to see, to develop, to recreate themselves and at the same time there must be a mass, a society, a communal mind to whom their idea may be communicated."¹

Of course objections to this solution may be raised. It may be questioned whether such a mass progress or conversion by individuals is at all possible, because in this solution machinery invented by Reason has got no role to play to perfect either the individual or the society; an inner change is needed in human nature, a change too difficult to be ever effected except by the few. Hence it puts off the consummation of a better human society to a far off date in the future evolution of the race.

Sri Aurobindo says, "This is not certain; but in any case, if this is not the solution, then there is no solution; if this is not the way then there is no way for the humankind."²

It is, therefore, necessary that the common mind should remain prepared so that it can get hold of the light and truth as and when the same is communicated to it by the individuals. It is for the un-preparedness and unfitness of the society that the progress is delayed. If the common mind, that is to say, the society begins to admit the ideas proper to the higher order and the heart of man begins to be stirred by aspirations emerged from these ideas, "then" in the words of Sri Aurobindo, — "there is certainly a hope of some advance in the not distant future³

It is expected that in the philosophy, arts, poetry, painting, sculpture, music, in the ideas of ethics, in the application of subjective principles by thinkers to social questions — the trend of the refulgent ideas will first make its appearance and if at that time the communal

¹ The Human Cycle

² Ibid.

³ Ibid.

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mind is ready to take hold of such a turn of human thought then it will surely lead humanity to a profound revolution.

With this hope in our mind we are here to prepare ourselves as individuals to become pioneers to bring about that profound revolution. We are here to lead mankind to the next that is to say, to the last sector of social cycle. We are to move towards subjective age of society. The role which we will have to play thereafter for the spiritualisation of society is our future task. At present we are to establish the higher truth of life in our mundane existence because we firmly believe that without that truth the problems that have engrossed humanity, a partial indication of which has been laid down in the context, can never be radically solved. The change which will prepare the transition of human life from its present four dimensional limits into those larger and purer horizons, — is then our task to bring about.

SAMAR BASU

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A THOUGHT FOR ACTION

A YOGI or Sadhak does external work as a part of* Sadhana. A Yogi meant for work externally for bringing spirituality in human society by uplifting an organisation or group of' people, an area or state or country, will become aware of the forces working both for good and bad i.e. progressive evolutionary forces and stagnating influences. By his involvement one way or the other, by the service undertaken, he will come to know about the problems and psychology of people, circumstances prevailing, and forces working. He will also inwardly or externally become one with the heart of people and will whenever occasion arises arouse a responsive feeling.

The consciousness of such a being all the while prepares a plan of work for an effective solution of the problems of people and a plan of action. To such a person opportunity comes unexpectedly or when the circumstances are right. He has love and sympathy for (and from) one and all. For the people hardened by the circumstances or experiences, he knows that if a fitting solution is presented they will respond. The solution is never a tailor — made one for all groups or areas. It is different for different units and for different occasions.

Let us take an example. A big or medium size Industry by the inter dependence of rank and file of personnel and their families develops a Consciousness of its own. The unit reflects the attitudes of top-man say the chairman. This happens because he has the power. The position he takes is to be accepted by all, at times though grudgingly. Gradually the psychology of the rank and file adjusts to the wave-length of the top-man or sometimes to the few top-men. Various employees of such groups are of different religious, social and culture back-ground, but in the external life they adopt the attitude adopted by the policies and psychology of the higher echelon. The Yogi or Sadhak who is the member of such a society i.e. working among the group will after getting familiar with the Aura or the formed Being of the Group will influence the group by his inner force and also in external action by his own example, and constructive

* Paper submitted at the Seminar on National Reconstruction.

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and effective suggestions and changes. There are always more enlightened or aspiring individuals everywhere and through their co-operation and collaboration he can slowly put the group in a progressively evolving path both materially and spiritually to bring harmony, Light and Presence.

How should such persons carry themselves out? The whole literature of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is there to take guidance from. In each area there is a Deity working supporting the evolution for perfection of the Area — the deity — a portion of all-mighty Mother India and The Mother. She works patiently, working out the big outlines of progress and/or smaller details SHE will act through such individual or individuals. To a person dedicated to the service of people She may reveal herself as a Conscious Being and Presence. In history we have such examples.

We in India had plenty of religious preaching and spiritual teachings throughout generations. At the present times where the base of life and getting the necessities of life is uncertain the people are not likely to respond to higher light by preaching only. It is necessary, now, simultaneously with such activities to present before the people a much more wider programme of social, cultural and material arid educational development in which the people initially at least are prepared to put their faith and collaborate for a trial. This you will say is what the Government is doing. However, the Government attempts it by paid men and according to its own fancies and ideas. We have experienced that this has not given sufficient result, and the people have not reciprocated. However, our work envisages the use of all the Government facilities and schemes; but the central guidance remains with devoted Sadhaks and people. The Groups may be for practical working purposes organised in a sort of co-operatives or cultural groups. Indian population is concentrated in villages and mostly such Groups must be for a collection of villages.

The part to be played by an aspiring Sadhak is in short to work from his or her station of life for an integral development around, consciously.

I. N. PATEL

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REVIEWS

Rigveda Vol. I By Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati. Translated by Acharya Dharmadeva Vidya Martanda. Pub: Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, Dayanand Bhavan, Ramalila Grounds; New Delhi i. p. 1016. Price: Rs. 2.

IT is appropriate that the first commemorative volume of the Centenary of the foundation of the Arya Samaj should be on the Rig-veda with the commentary of Rishi Dayananda Saraswati who was the first seer in modern times to have discovered the right clue to the mystic wisdom embedded in the enigmatic verses of the Veda. The founder of Arya Samaj took his stand on the truth of the multi-significance of roots as enunciated by Rishi Yaska in his Nirukta and cut across the laboured, artificial and often grotesque interpretations woven by ritualists, naturalists, grammarians and intellectuals from the West. He not only translated the Vedas into Hindi but wrote his own commentary on the hymns justifying his interpretation, controverting others. Pandit Dharmadevji has commenced translating this commentary into English and we have before us the first volume which covers 61 Suktas of the first Mandala of the Rig Veda. The text and the prose order are given in Sanskrit, translations follow with notes. The commentary is rendered meticulously in English.

In his elaborate introduction, Panditji covers many topics of interest to the Vedic scholar. He throws interesting sidelights on the work of other scholars in the field. He cites evidence from the letters and notes of Max Müler and others of his school, to expose their real motive in undertaking studies in the Vedic literature: to prove (to their own satisfaction!) the primitive nature and insufficiency of the Vedic religion and thus open the doors to the invasion by Christianity as the saviour.

The translator has done full justice to the spirit of the approach of Dayananda Saraswati by adding his own explanatory notes and comments which are copious. He has underlined where Swamiji differs from Sayana (and his Western followers). He has noted the meanings worked out by modern commentators, notably Sri Kapali Sastriar in his commentary Siddhanjana, following the esoteric interpretation of

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Sri Aurobindo. The whole work is encyclopaedic in nature and promises to form a comprehensive reference library by itself when completed.

To enhance the value of this work for the modern student, we would suggest that portions dealing with the interpretations by other scholars which are not acceptable to this approach, may be printed in smaller types as foot-notes. Thereby the flow of thought along the interpretation advocated is not interrupted.

The task undertaken by the saintly author is staggering. The thoroughness with which he proceeds in his labour of love is a model and an inspiration to all conscientious scholarship.

Upanishad in the Eyes of Rabindranath Tagore By Anil Kumar Mukherji, Pub: Author, 81/1B Jagadish Bose Rd. Calcutta 14. pp. 163. Price Rs. 12.50.

Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, father of Poet Tagore, had a deep feeling for the Upanishads and he took care to communicate something of it to his son, with the result that Rabindranath always breathed the spirit of the ancient seers when he read or explained passages from these ancient texts. The author of the present work has made a painstaking collection of all the passages from the Upanishads cited by the Poet in the course of his extensive writings and speeches and presented them in these pages along with the interpretative explanations given in his writings. In order to help the reader form an idea of the development of the mind of the Poet in this regard, he has arranged the explanations chronologically — as they appeared in his writings. They are over a hundred, from all the major Upanishads.

Touching the passage on Love in the Brihadaranyaka (2.4.5.) the Poet says: "It is said in one of the Upanishads: It is not that thou lovest thy son because thou desirest him, but thou lovest thy son because thou desirest thine own soul. The meaning of this is that whomsoever we love, in him we find our own soul in the highest sense. The final truth of our existence lies in this. Paramatma, the supreme soul, is in me, as well as in my son, and my joy in my son is the realisation of this truth."

In an autobiographical reference to the communication of the

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gayatri to him when he was initiated at eleven, he writes: "This produced a sense of serene exaltation in me, the daily meditation upon the infinite being which unites in one stream of creation my mind and the outer world. Though today I find no difficulty in realizing this being as an infinite personality in whom the subject and object are perfectly reconciled, at that time the idea to me was vague. Therefore the current of feeling that it aroused in my mind was indefinite, like the circulation of air — an atmosphere which needed a definite world to complete itself and satisfy me." A valuable addition to Tagoriana.

ABC of Satya Dharma and its Philosophy By Surendra Nath Sen Gupta. Pub: N. G. Sen Gupta, 18/2 Selimpur Lane, Calcutta 3I. Pp. 450, Price Rs.13/-

The main theme of this prolix writing is the Religion of Truth. God is Truth and His Truth is many-sided. It manifests itself in multiple truths answering to the myriad forms in the universe. This Supreme Truth has its own Law, its Dharma, into which humanity has to grow. The meaning of life is the development of consciousness from the animal stage, through the human stage, to the divine stage. Human will is part of the cosmic Will and it is truly free to the extent to which it attunes itself to the larger Will. Though the God of this religion has no form and shall not be worshipped in form, He has gunas, Qualities which we have to acquire. And to do so is Guna Sadhana. And there are many more such ideas that the author formulates in these pages. He quotes from modern scientists to support his arguments regarding the creation of the material world, the beginnings of life, the inevitability of rebirth etc.

M. P. PANDIT

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