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

(11)

IT seems I am to tell you something about the Mother — a bit of her life, a bit of her activities.

Well, the first part of her life, as you all know, the Mother passed in France, she was born in France, in Paris. So, naturally it was very often pointed out to her that she was French, she was European. To this however, she was always protesting, saying, "I am not European, I am not French." It would indeed sound somewhat strange to say that her family came in fact from Egypt. Her parents, her father and mother went to France just a year before she was born, a year only. And in Egypt, her family, it seems, belonged to a very ancient Egyptian family — perhaps even to a royal family of Egypt, the Pharaos. So she is not European or French by blood although she was brought up as such. Strictly speaking, she would belong to the middle east, that is to say, the portion joining east of Europe and west of Asia. It

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means the union of Europe and Asia, the two harmonised, and that reflects the character of Mother's life and its destiny.

As I said, she spent the first part of her life in France. But why France? There is a meaning in the choice. We know now the meaning, the fundamental meaning of her life, her mission and her work. She came to bring a new light. She wanted a new world, not the old world with its old nature and old culture, but a new world, a new human race. She brought with her the new light that is to re-create, re-shape man and the world. What was the relation between the new man and France? For the new light to come and manifest, you have first to receive it in your mind, that is to say, you must see and recognise that it is a new light and ask for it. And mind is the first or the topmost receptacle in man. You may remember here the opening line of Dhammapada containing the epitome of Buddha's teaching: "Manopubbamgama dhamma" — mind is the foremost of all human functions. Mind surpasses all, embraces all. Now, the light as it comes down and enters you, the first thing it touches is your head, that is, your mind: you see it, you are conscious of it. France represents today just this mind of humanity at its best, the flowering of its culture and civilisation. She was born there so that the highest mind of the human race may receive that light through her. She passed her life there in the company of the elite, the most cultured people of the time, scientists, artists, poets, all of the highest and most refined status. She was there so that through her contact and association she could bring into them the new light. With this end in view she started a society, rather a group, and the name given to it was "le cosmique". Cosmic means the whole world, in other words, what she was doing, what she was giving, was for the whole world, for all men, for East and West, for everybody. Also it means a cosmic or world-embracing consciousness. She was creating a new type of the mental world, through the highest mental development, to reach a still wider mind — beyond the individual egoistic mind. As I have said, the mind, the head, being the highest part in man it is easy for man to receive the new light through his head first of all. You may remember here, in this connection, Sri Aurobindo's poem "The Golden Light": how it comes from above and first enters into the head, the brain. It illumines your thoughts, develops your understanding,

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widens it, deepens it and sharpens it. But understanding is not sufficient, you must love it, then only you begin to possess it. So the golden light enters your heart. Then it proceeds further down towards a more concrete and active expression, it enters into the vital region as we call it. Lastly the golden light enters your feet, that is, possesses your physical limbs, it becomes concrete materially and present, as though solidified, in your very body, it builds the body beautiful.

The Mother thus brings the golden light into the head of humanity, the top rung of its consciousness, and that work of initiation, Diksha, into the Life Divine she started in France. From France she went to Japan for the next stage of her work. To Japan she came, to the Far East. She spent five years, five long years in that country. Japan is the land of the Zen system of meditation, that is to say, a special way of entering into an inner consciousness, not a rational mental consciousness but a gaze inward into an occult and more sensitive region. The Japanese as a nation represent indeed a very sensitive vitality, an artistic vitality that seeks order and beauty in life, in the mode of living. For the golden light to manifest and have its play in the physical world and possess its body as it were, a vitality of this kind is necessary to acquire it and hold it. The Japanese wrestlers are well-known for their vital strength, self-controlled strength, usually they possess, almost all of them, you must have noticed, in pictures at least, a big tummy, and it is, they believe, the store-house of vital strength. This does not mean that I advise you to develop a big paunch, on the contrary. However, even in physical activities more than the mere physical strength, the vital strength is necessary. Yes, the Japanese have a vital, strong, controlled, ordered, sensitive. You may remember one or two Prayers of the Mother in her Prieres et Meditations. She spoke of the cherry-blossom which is the emblem of the Japanese artistic sense, the feeling for beauty, a purified sense-perception : not a rough and crude and violent (lower) vital, but a fine, a pleasant intimate feeling and orderly happiness, that means the cherry blossom. Mother described also a vision of hers, a beautiful picture it was, a Japanese mother and her child : it was an image of the new child that was born in humanity. A new world is thus ushered in in the land of the cherry-blossom, the new vital world, for all the world.

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The Mother is creative consciousness, wherever she happens to be, wherever she is called upon to be, her very presence moves for creation, creating a new world and a new dimension of being and consciousness, according to the need of time and place. And it is a whole world she creates, and her creation endures, for it is an added achievement in the evolution of the human being.

To this end, a neat strong orderly vital world of which we were speaking, itself acquires a competent body to support it and manifest it. The golden light must come into the feet. And that was the work she was doing here and it is for that that she created the Ashram. You all know the special emphasis she laid on physical education in order to prepare the body and senses to receive the golden light. She always said physical education gives you the basis for the new consciousness, the new light, you must have a strong body, a beautiful body, a body that endures : for the new light is powerful, it is not merely light, it is force, you must be able to bear it and carry out its commands.

Indeed, she came here in order to give a shape, a concrete and physical form, an earthly body to this Divine Light. Now the body beautiful is not by itself an end and fulfilment, in order to secure it you must secure a beautiful vital. Not only so, for a fulfilment in the body and in the vital one must possess a mind beautiful. The physical education that the Mother has arranged for us here is to prepare us for the body beautiful. And the school that she has organised is for the cultivation of the mind. The cultivation of the mind, however, means not only storing it with information on various kinds of subjects, the study of books : it means a purification and clearance of the mind, the mental stuff itself, an elevation of consciousness to seek and recognise the new light. I have said that you are to receive the new light through the head at first, but through the heart also, and dynamically through your vital energy. You must not only see and recognise it, but love it and be devoted to it. And here comes the Mother's central work, her special gift, her grace to us. When you love a thing, you love, as it is said, through the heart, but there is love and love and there is a heart within the heart. True love, the love that is divine is within this inner heart which is your soul, the real being or person in you, and the soul coming out, coming to the

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front as we say, is the Mother's special Grace here, her gift to all of you, to each one of you here. She has given you your soul. I have often said that it is a special privilege here for each one of us, for each one of you to carry this being, this inner being, this intimate person, the Divine Child who is you. It is this that is building your divine personality, it is this that will give you in the end a mind beautiful, a vital beautiful, a body beautiful — all that you need, all that is perfect and flawless in your life here in this world. You may remember, many of you, the famous line of Savitri that you must have heard from the Mother's own lips :

Built is the golden tower, the Flame-child born. She has built this tower of new life and the child is there : the Golden Child. This golden child is in every one of you. You must find it, recognise it, that is the goal of your life, the mission and fulfilment of all what you want to do and be on earth. Some of you surely must have felt in you the presence of this child. Some may have seen it even as the Divine Child in you. These things — visitations as they are called — usually come in dreams. At least I know of some who have seen them, who came and told me of their miraculous experience. It is a possibility for every one and if you happen to see it you must recognise it, hold it, grasp it with all love and affection. The Mother is still living and active among us, and her Presence is still there, even concretely, for each one of you has the Divine Child in you.

I end with a prayer, a prayer that I made to the Mother sometime ago, it is on behalf of the small children of our playgrounds: "Sweet Mother, your playground children are angels. They have not become divine or godly, but they are angels, earthly angels. Keep them constantly under your eye, cradle them in your loving consciousness."

That was the prayer I made on your behalf to the Mother, and I am sure Mother has responded "Yes". So...Aurevoir.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

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SPIRITUAL UNITY AND IDENTITY

SRI Aurobindo's spiritual philosophy has a unique place not only in the Vedantic Philosophy of India but in the whole philosophy of the world because it propounds the theory of spiritual unity and identity within and without the whole Universe. The spiritual is to be identified with the Divine, and so it is the Divine Unity or the Divine Identity which is to be recognised through the higher knowledge of the Universal Consciousness or the Consciousness-Force which is present within all beings and becomings. The knowledge of this Unity and Identity is of practical use to make our lives peaceful and delightful, because the Spirit or the Self whose presence is to be perceived by the spiritual insight in everything is itself Pure Bliss and its realisation brings all peace and delight into the mind of the person who perceives it. The Divine is also working in Nature as its essence and the Force behind its Laws, therefore the Law of the Divine Unity is to be realised in Nature and through that the basic identity is to be attained by the actual realisation of the Spirit which is identified with our own Self. All experiences of the ancient and the modern Sages of India lead us towards the realisation of the state where spiritual Unity and Identity are to be attained as the goal of human knowledge and the basic purpose of human life.

Sri Aurobindo also described the nature of the Divine Experiences in his works and although his whole language is symbolic it refers to some stages of his own realisation, and we can have through it enough inspiration for practical guidance in our own life. The Language of Unity and Identity is found also in the Upanishads and the Vedas which is presented in Sri Aurobindo's approach in a scientific way and has expressed the old spiritualism in modern thoughts.

The whole Universe is full of multiplicity and diversity. Our mind always perceives them directly and they both have become the laws of our perceptions in this world. But all external knowledge requires something behind it which must be capable of clarifying the idea of Divine Unity within the Universe, and that something, according to Sri Aurobindo, is higher knowledge or the supramental knowledge which can realise directly the presence of the Divine in each and every being and becoming of this whole Universe, so he says that in this

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comprehensive knowledge there is no independent centre of existence, no individual separated ego such as we in ourselves, the whole of existence is -to its self-awareness an equal extension, one in oneness, in multiplicity, one in all conditions and everywhere. Here the All and the One are the same existence; the individual being does not and cannot lose the consciousness of its identity with all beings and with the One Being; for that Identity is inherent in the supramental condition, part of supramental self evidence.¹ Whatever is seen or perceived in Time and Space is manifold and we experience plurality everywhere. All spatial and temporal extension is qualified with division and diversity. But in the Chhandogya Upanishad, it is said that all is the Brahman(III.14.I), which shows that there is substantially Oneness behind the universe, and Sri Aurobindo further explains this concept by saying that this extension of the Being in Time and Space and this pervasion and indwelling is in intimate relation with the absolute Unity from which it has proceeded, with that absolute indivisible in which there is no centre or circumference but only the timeless and spaceless One. That high concentration of unity in the un extended Brahman must necessarily translate itself in the extension by this equal pervasive concentration, this indivisible comprehension of all things, this universal undistributed immanence, this Unity which no play of multiplicity can abrogate or diminish. "Brahman is in all things, all things are in Brahman, all things are Brahman"² is the triple formula of the comprehensive Supermind.

There are certain laws which seem to be contrary according to the mental and vital nature of man, and they cannot work simultaneously in them; even logically they seem to be contrary. For example the laws of freedom and the laws of order cannot work in mind and life at the same time. But the supermind-consciousness is so much higher that it can involve both laws simultaneously without any opposition, and this is because our superficial mind is not aware of the Unity or the Identity which is working behind the whole nature, while the supermind is aware of the basic principle or the fundamental law of the Universe and so there is no incompatibility in the presence of the laws or in the working of the laws which seem

¹ The Life Divine, p.

² Tbid.₃ pp.

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to be logically contrary to the ordinary reason. Therefore, Sri Aurobindo holds that the two principles of freedom and order which in mind and life are constantly representing themselves as contraries or incompatibles, are in the supermind consciousness native to each other and even fundamentally one. This is so because both are inseparable aspects of the inner spiritual truth and therefore their determinations are one, they are inherent in each other, for they arise from an identity and therefore in action coincide in a natural identity.¹

In fact, the supramental consciousness is a gnostic consciousness or a truth-consciousness which is directly aware of the One Reality within the whole creation, because the latter is only a manifestation of the former in different forms and that is present everywhere as a universal Identity behind multitudinous aspects of the material or superficial as well as the spiritual or inner nature. All oppositions of the external nature are removed before the higher or the evolved consciousness of the supramental states of our Being, because according to Sri Aurobindo, the evolved gnostic being would have a consciousness of universal identity and a consequent or rather inherent Truth-knowledge, Truth-sight, Truth-feeling, Truth-will, Truth-sense and Truth-dynamis of action implicit in his identity with the One or spontaneously arising from his identity with the All.²

The basic truth behind this identity is the disappearance of the separative ego, because as long as the ego remains in the mind the latter cannot evolve towards the supramental consciousness. The same is the truth behind the spiritual unity, because ultimately there is only One Absolute Spirit which is to be recognised through the disappearance of the personal ego and through the direct realisation of the omnipresent Spirit as the whole truth behind the workings of the nature. When the individual ego disappears in the mind of man, his consciousness realises the unity and identity of the Spirit or the Being. Although it seems impossible to the mental consciousness and human reason, yet after the spiritual evolution of the supermind or the gnostic being it becomes the foremost law of that consciousness because in that state it is the Divine Knowledge which works through the Divine Force and because the will of the Divine and that of the gnostic

¹ Ibid. p. 809.

² Ibid. p. 891.

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being become identical, the actions of that being become the same as that of the Divine, and this is the practical aspect of the spiritual Identity as well as Unity. Sri Aurobindo explains that in consequence of the Identity present everywhere, ruling everything and harmonising all diversities, there would be no play of a separate self-affirmation; the will of the self of the gnostic being would be one with the will of the Ishwara, it would not be a separative or contrary self-will. He further clarifies this fact by saying that the Divine knowledge and Force would act through the gnostic being with its full participation and the freedom of this spiritual being is found on the unity of its will with the will of the Eternal. All the mental standards would disappear because all necessity for them would cease; the higher authentic law of identity with the Divine Self and identity with all beings would have replaced them.¹

The Universe itself is the play of the Divine Being and that One Being has become the Many in this play; even then it remains One in its multifarious manifestations in the form of infinite beings and becomings. That One is the Existence behind all existing things, that One is the Consciousness in all conscious beings and That is also the Inner Force working within the whole universe. If we wish to enjoy the play of the Divine, we must be aware of the divine Unity which can be perceived with the spiritual mind and we must have the knowledge of Identity which is present everywhere in the world. When this knowledge of self-identity reveals itself in the divinised mentality the person realises the Presence of the Spirit in the whole working of the nature and then all activities of the common man seem to be directed by the divine Laws of the Absolute Being which is One Conscious Substance and has created everything out of itself as a play of the Divine Force. Sri Aurobindo clarifies this mystery of the world and the Spirit in Savitri and refers to the Identity behind the Being and the becomings:

"As one forgetting he searches for himself; As if he had lost an inner light he seeks ; His own self's truth he seeks who is the Truth ; He is the player who became the play,

¹ Ibid. pp. 892-893.

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He is the thinker who became the thought;

He is the many who was the silent One."¹

In the Essays on the Gita, he also describes the truth of the Divine Existence which manifested itself as the existence of all beings and therefore is One Spirit identical with all spirits : "All existence is a manifestation of the divine existence and that which is within us is the spirit of the eternal Spirit."²

The Laws of spiritual unity and identity are not only metaphysical, but they are to be perceived and realised also in the practical aspects of life, and so they also give the ideal of spiritual morality. Unity is also to be attained between the individual Self and the Universal Self i.e., between the soul and God ; and the process or the method for attaining that unity may be called the Yoga in the terminology of practical philosophy. Sri Aurobindo has also defined the Yoga in terms of unity or union between the individual consciousness and the universal One and this unity is to be realised throughout the life, because there is a natural relation between life and Yoga and through this unity or Yoga we have to realise the identity not only between our Self and the Absolute Truth behind our existence, but also between the Self and the Universe on the one hand, and on the other between the Transcendent Being and the whole Nature. So, in Sri Aurobindo's words it is said that in the right view both of life and of Yoga all life is either consciously or subconsciously a Yoga. For we mean by this term, according to him, a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the potentialities latent in the being and a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the cosmos.³ Self-identity with the Spirit makes us realise the universal or collective identity, because the process of Yoga can also be realised in the whole Nature which from time to time, manifests its powers in different forms through its natural evolution and thus Sri Aurobindo says that in each of these forms Nature acts both individually and collectively ;

¹ Savitri, Vol.

² De luxe Edition, p.410.

³ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 2.

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for the Eternal affirms Himself equally in the single form and in the group-existence. Man also may seek his own individual good from any or all of these spheres of activity or identify himself in them with the collectivity and live with it, or rising to a true perfection of this complex universe, harmonise the individual realisation with the collective aim.¹

The actual realisation of spiritual unity and identity requires a complete transformation of our present life into a divine life. This divinity is not an Utopian concept but a practical aspect of all the persons who have realised the presence of the Divine in their lives. All the main Upanishads refer to the divine realisations of the various sages who had realised the identity between their own existence and the Existence behind the natural phenomena. 'I am the Brahman', 'That thou art', 'All is the Brahman' etc., these sentences of the Upanishads point out the divine experiences of the ancient sages who, again and again, emphasise the Oneness of the Divine Reality which is called by different names ; even the Rigveda says that the One Reality is described by various names by the sages (1.164.46), and the Gita also describes that the Brahman or Reality is One and is the Undivided in the divided things (XVIII.20). In all his main works, Sri Aurobindo has also emphasised this basic truth of our existence and of the existence of the whole Universe that there is Oneness in the many, Oneness in all diversities and divisions of the world, but our mind or reason cannot perceive that Oneness which is to be realised through the evolved mind or the spiritualised mind moving towards the supermind. This supramental consciousness has no difficulty to realise or perceive the Divine in this life and in this world. He is sure that there is a natural evolution in the whole of nature and the Spiritual Force is the basic Force within the Nature which is working to reveal the Spirit in every mind. Sri Aurobindo thinks and holds that that hour must come when the supramental race will appear on this earth and then spiritual unity will be realised directly. He says that the gnostic being will have the powers to perceive the Oneness of Divinity and he will know every mystery of the universe with the knowledge of self-identity. In his own words it is said that in a gnostic, a life of super-reason and super nature, a

¹ Ibid. pp.16-17.

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self-aware spiritual unity of being and a spiritual conscious community and interchange of nature would be the deep and ample root of understanding; this greater life would have evolved new and superior means and powers of uniting consciousness inwardly with consciousness ; intimacy of consciousness communicating inwardly and directly with consciousness, thought with thought, vision with vision, sense with sense, life with life, body-awareness with body-awareness would be its natural basic instrumentation.¹

Thus we see that the direct knowledge of the spiritual unity and identity which can transform our whole superficial mentality and life into divine and spiritual mentality and life is required as the practical aim of our being in this world ; otherwise we cannot attain the real knowledge of our own Being or Self, and we cannot know what we are. Therefore, we should not only hope for the divine transformation through the knowledge of the spiritual unity and identity, but also make an effort to realise the Divine within this life by conscious evolution of our mentality towards the higher grades of our consciousness.

R. D. N1RAKARI

¹ The Life Divine, pp. 922-923.

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THE VIZIERS OF BASSORA

BY SRI AUROBINDO

AN ATTEMPT AT SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

III

(Contd.)

THE next scene shifts to Bagdad, to the gardens of the Caliph's palace. Bagdad is the seat in the subtle physical of Haroun Al Rasheed, who portrays the highest divine principle of existence, which is manifested in the earth atmosphere — this of course before the supramental manifestation. The gardens are the subtle physical earth, which though being the play-field of various sorts of forces, are still more beautiful than their stronger deformed gross physical counterpart.

Before we follow our hero and heroine further in their "adventure of consciousness" let us consider first that the play has now reached a strong degree of dramatic tension, which Sri Aurobindo counterbalances with the humorous incidents in the Caliph's gardens. In this interpretation, however, only the main-action can be dealt with, hence the Bagdad adventure has to be treated in short. To come back to the drama :

Anice and Nureddene enter the gardens without knowing who its owner is. They meet Sheikh Ibrahim, the gardener, who pretends to be the garden's landlord. He invites them, hypnotised by their beauty, to the Pavillion of Pleasure in the garden, where he entertains them with food and wine. Under the impact of the wine which depicts the maya's narcotization and the lulling into sleep of the consciousness, Sheikh Ibrahim reveals his true being throughout the following scenes to an ever wider extent. He is the very gem of hypocricy and perversity and symbolizes the law of falsehood and delusion which is active in man. Nureddene, however, sees through Sheikh Ibrahim immediately, though he himself is not yet completely free from being attached to the "narcotica" of falsehood and illusion. Already

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the first cup of wine is sufficient for Nureddene to lose, though for a short time only, the conscious relation with his psychic being. In the words of Anice-Aljalice:-

ANlCE-ALJALICE

That is the trick he always serves me. After the first cup he dozes off and leaves me quite sad and lonely.¹

Anice exults in her happiness that Nureddene is out of the reach of the ego and the asura. She lights the eighty candles of the Pavilion's great candelabrum and Nureddene lights the hundred lamps in the windows. The Soul and the spiritual personality kindle the flames of aspiration and the light of spirituality in the core of the maya, therewith attracting the Caliph's attention who then watches with his ministers, Mesrour and Jafaar from a tower.

Mesrour and Jafaar portray forces from the higher planes of the lower hemisphere. The immixture of falsehood with truth of which even the upper grades in the lower hemisphere are not free is increased in them still through their descent into the subtle physical as their conduct in the Bagdad scenes shows.

The beauty of Anice and Nureddene intensely appeals to Haroun, especially as the harmony of the form is further enriched by the ensnaring voice of the psyche who adresses the bhakta Nureddene:

ANICE-ALJALlCE

song

King of my heart, wilt thou adore me,

Call me goddess, call me thine?

I too will bow myself before thee

As in a shrine.

Till we with mutual adoration

And holy earth-defeating passion

Do really grow divine.²

Haroun decides to make the acquaintance of Anice and Nureddene

¹ p. 136, bottom

² p. 147, middle

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in a disguise as Nureddene is not yet ready for the open manifestation of the divine vice-regent. He gets from a fisherman, who is stealing fish from the river in the garden, his garment as well as his own fish. We see that the Divine vice-regent receives exactly at the right moment the help he needs. Haroun's disguise is a test for Nureddene's discrimination, sincerity, trust and surrender. The coat is of a fisherman; the head, however, is discernibly of a diviner origin for those eyes which are able to penetrate the outer appearance.

The stealing fisherman depicts the well-known Vedic image of the vital thieves which steal the spiritual force, progress and riches.

Haroun offers the fish in a loud voice before the Pavilion, and the psyche in standee demands that he be called in. Nureddene wants to buy the fish but Haroun gives them free. He asks Nureddene:

HAROUN AL. RASHEED

Tell me thy story. Walk apart with me.

It may be I can help thee.

NUREDDENE

Leave us, I pray thee.

Thou, a poor fisherman!

HAROUN AL. RASHEED

I vow I'll help thee.

NUREDDENE

Art thou the Caliph?

HAROUN AL. RASHEED

If I were, by chance?¹

 

Nureddene returns addressing Anice:

NUREDDENE

He is writing out a letter.

ANICE-ALJALlCE

Surely, my lord,

This is no ordinary fisherman.

If 'twere the Caliph?²

¹ P. 157. top

² p. 158, middle

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A part of Nureddene, however, is still sceptical and unconvinced. Just then Haroun comes back. He asks Nureddene:

HAROUN AL RASHEED

Givest thou no gift at parting?

NUREDDENE

You're a fisher! (opens his purse)

HAROUN AL RASHEED

Nothing more valuable?

ANICE-ALJALlCE

Wilt take this ring?

HAROUN AL RASHEED

No, give me what I ask.

NUREDDENE

Yes, by the prophet, because thou hast a face!

HAROUN AL RASHEED

Give me thy slavegirl.¹

(There is a silence)

Thunderstruck Anice and Nureddene stare into the eyes of fate. Then Nureddene answers:

NUREDDENE

Another time

I would have slain thee. But now I feel 'tis God

Has snared my feet with dire calamities,

And have no courage.

HAROUN AL RASHEED

Dost thou give her to me?

NUREDDENE

Take her, if Heaven will let thee.²

Utter sacrifice is demanded from Nureddene who is now conscious that behind everything that happens to him is the Divine Will, to which he now surrenders even the most precious gem he possesses, — his psychic consciousness.

¹ P. 159. top

² p. 160, middle

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He is about to leave for Bassora when Haroun gives him a letter for the Sultan Alzayni:

NUREDDENE

Man, what have I to do with thee or letters?

HAROUN .AL RASHEED

Hear me, fair youth. Thy love is sacred to me

And will be safe as in her father's house.

Take thou this letter. Though I seem a fisherman,

I was the Caliph's friend and schoolfellow,

His cousin of Bassora's too, and it may help thee.

NUREDDENE

I know not who thou art, nor if this scrap

Of paper has the power thou babblest of,

And do not greatly care. Life without her

Is not to be thought of. Yet thou giv'st me something

I'ld once have dared call hope. She will be safe?

HAROUN AL RASHEED

As my own child, or as the Caliph's¹

After Nureddene has left the Caliph puts on once again his imperial robe and reveals himself openly to the psyche who still suffers the shock of the separation from her lover and adorer.

The Caliph now reforms Sheik Ibrahim. The transformation of the gardener will materialize in the transmutation of the division and falsehood in Nureddene as we shall see shortly.

IV

Meanwhile, in Bassora, the terrestrial human personality, a struggle between the lower vital and the asura is going on. Almuene is not willing to meet Fareed's full demand for money, that is power, but only half of it and even beats his son. Therefore the lower vital, Fareed, tries to poison the asura. He is however hindered by Ameena, the higher vital, which shows that she is still attached to hostile influences. Such an action between obscure vital forces is nothing

¹ p. 162, top

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extraordinary, as egoism, viciousness and slavery to the lowest instincts is their inner self-law, swadharma, which evidently does not change in the relationships between themselves.

Here is Almuene's reaction to Fareeds attempt to kill him, which speaks for itself:

ALMUENE

What is this horrible surprise,

Beneath whose shock I stagger? Is my term

Exhausted? But I would have done as much,

Had I been struck. It is his gallant spirit,

His lusty blood that will not bear a blow.

I must appease him. If my own blood should end me!

He shall have money, all that he can ask.¹

Exit

As soon as he returns to Bassora, Nureddene gives his letter to the king who orders Almuene to read it out to him. The letter runs: Alzayni shall at once hand over the kingship to the new monarch Nuredene and then come to Bagdad to answer for his offences. This if he hopes to live. Almuene quickly tears away the Caliph's signature and seal and claims that the letter is a forgery. Ajebe who is present, insists on the letter having been whole and accuses his uncle of having torn it. Alzayni gives orders to imprison Ajebe. Murad warns Alzayni of the consequences if the letter is not forged. Therefore Alzayni decides to wait 10 days. If by then all will be well, Nureddene will be beheaded.

Meanwhile he is given to the custody of Almuene. Here are Almuene's plans:

ALMUENE

I have ten days

To torture him, though Caliph's turn his friend.

Murad is gone,

And I hold Doonya in my grip, Ameena too

Who, I have news, lives secret with her niece.

¹ p. 169, end

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But where's the girl? God keeps her for me, I doubt not,

A last sweet morsel. It will please Fareed.

But there's Haroun! Why should he live at all,

When there are swords and poisons?¹

The time has come for the show-down between the spiritual parts of Nureddene's personality and the hostile forces and the ego. A life-and-death struggle begins now between the higher and lower human nature. The symbol of the decapitation makes evident the intention of the adverse powers to eradicate the spiritual personality completely, a doom from which only the descent of a higher spiritual force can save Nureddene, as the power to destroy the evil of the lower principles in man is of a superhuman level. Our hero has to prove whether he is capable of clinging to the Truth even when the psychic being is veiled and he is left alone face to face with the bad will, the hostility and the impurity of his lower nature.

As Sri Aurobindo has explained, the process of purification necessitates the retirement of the psychic consciousness so that all suppressed and detained parts of the nature can be lured out of their secret recesses in the subconscious and brought before the light for transfiguration. Shock and ordeal are breaking the last resistances in Nureddene, who is now ready to bear the intensity of the hero's highway to God. He is well aware that it is the result of his past karma that he is suffering from; his soliloquy shows this:

NUREDDENE

We sin our pleasant sins and then refrain

And think that God's deceived. He waits His time

And when we walk the clean and polished road

He trips us with the mire our shoes yet keep,

The pleasant mud we walked before. All ills

I will bear patiently. Oh, better here

Than in that world! Who comes? Khatoon, my aunt!²

Khatoon, the central vital, visits Nureddene who is imprisoned in the

¹ p. 176, bottom

² p. 177, top

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home of the asuric force itself. We witness the last purification, the cleansing of the subconscious. It is this darkest and lowest region of the human consciousness, the dark cave of the Vedas, which is the chief resistance to a radical and deeply rooted spiritual change in Nureddene. The descent of the consciousness into the subconscious is very aptly symbolised here through the imprisonment in the home of the hostile forces.

Khatoon promises to shield him from Almuene. She orders to mend his treatment, attempting to alleviate the dark impact of the subconscious.

At this moment Almuene with his slaves rushes into the cell of the prisoner. He is in a furious rage and wants to torture Nureddene fiercely because Fareed, the lower vital, was murdered when he tried to rob Doonya. The impurity of the lower vital in its attempt to lay hands on the spiritual intuition was hindered by the vital mind, Mymoona, brought to its fall by the psychic power, Balkis, and then abolished by Murad, the purified vitality. The collaboration of the integrated personalities in Nureddene rids him of the impact of the lower nature therewith causing the last decisive liberation of his central vital from the attachment to the lower impulsions. Khatoon now keeps Almuene away from Nureddene:

KHATOON

What is his fault?

Touch him and I acquaint the King. Vizier,

Thou slew'st Fareed

Exit

Him you have murdered, Vizier,

Both soul and body. I will go and pray

For vengeance on thee for my slaughtered child.

Exit

ALMUENE

She has baulked my fury. No, I'll wait for thee.

Thou shalt hear first what I have done with Doonya

And thy soft mother's body. Murad! Murad!

Thou hast no son! Would God thou hadst a son!¹

¹ p . 179, bottom

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Doonya, however, together with Balkis, Mymoona and Nureddene's mother Ameena, flee taking secret shelter in Bassora, and so are safe from the wrath of the asura. Nureddene's nature has become too pure to fall into the hands of the powers of darkness. Thus, the only remaining strong point of the asuric influence in Nureddene is the ego Alzayni who too, is sitting on a tumbling throne.

Ameena the emotional being is consoled by the intuition who reads to her a secret letter from Murad, who has been imprisoned, for his deed that is restrained by the ego.

He writes that the Caliph is supposed to come and the king will release him for a need of his own and that the returning Ibn Sawy is only two day's journey from Bassora.

We see that the activity of the higher mind which made place for the growth of the spiritual consciousness will still play its role in the culmination of the drama. For the final liberation Nureddene needs the full power of the soul, as well as all the forces of his nature which have become new instruments of the inner consciousness.

Meanwhile we witness in Bagdad the final call of the soul causing the fire-winged descent that alone can rescue Nureddene:

The psyche urges the divine vice-regent to send his forces to save Nureddene whom she feels to be in great danger as seven days have passed without a message from him. She threatens, if Haroun does not answer her demand, to appeal to the One, the Supreme, of whom Al Rasheed is only an inferior formation, and to accuse him before his Divine Origin. The Flame-Word springs forth from the soul and blazes up in the heart of the great Caliph who then at once sends his troops together with Anice in a forced march to Bassora, he himself following in their wake.

Ten days have passed and Nureddene is to be beheaded publicly. The conquest of the fear of death, which the spiritual seeker aware of his eternity knows to be only a passage to other planes of existence — Transit, nonperit — is a necessity, if Nureddene wants to pluck the apples of immortality. As Sri Aurobindo has written: "What is this then thou callest death? Can God die? O thou who fearest death, it is life that has come to thee sporting with a death-head and wearing a mask of teror".

After he has received a last drink of strength from the in between

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released Murad, Alzayni is about to give the sign for execution. Just then arrives Ibn Sawy, the higher mind and so a little delay is won. The Sultan narrates scornfully what is about to happen to his son as well as the fate of his niece and wife whom he has ordered to be punished severly and then to be sold as slaves into the worst milieu. Ibn Sawy is commanded by Alzayni to stay and watch the death of his son.

The night is darkest before dawn and Nureddene's trials are the greatest. By the fire of its ordeals is the spiritual personality prepared for the new birth, which awaits Nureddene when he has abandoned everything, has achieved perfect equality, complete self-surrender and an absolute faith in the Divine. That Nureddene has this trust in the Divine Justice and fully accepts the Will of the Lord is shown in this dialogue between him and Ibn Sawy:

NUREDDENE

Justice of God, thou spar'st me nothing. Father! Father!

IBN SAWY

Bow to the will of God, my son; if thou

Must perish on a false and hateful charge,

A crime in thee impossible, believe

It is His Justice still.

NUREDDENE

I well believe it.¹

Alzayni gives now the fatal order to strike. All of a sudden the sound of trumpets is heard. Despite Almuene's protest, Alzayni demands the executioner to pause. A soldier rides in and announces the arrival of Jaafar, the Caliph's Vizier with strong troops and, behind him of the Caliph himself.

In vain Sultan Alzayni seeks support from Murad, who reveals that Ibn Sawy's wife and Doonya are well off and not as Alzayni was made to believe, punished and sold as slaves. Almuene still presses the Sultan to kill Nureddene, but Jaafar is already there. He hands Alzayni and Almuene to the guards and addresses Nureddene as king of Bassora. Till the last second and even after it the asura still tries desperately to abolish the spiritual being. The hour of God, however,

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has come and the spiritual personality is not only saved from the axe of the ego and the asura but exalted from what seemed a gloomy doom to the monarch ship in the human personality. Jaafar brings not only kingship but also...

JAAFAR

I've brought a slave-girl for you, Nureddene, The Caliph's gift.

NUREDDENE

I'll take her, if I like her.

Life is my own again and all I love.

Great are thy mercies, O Omnipotent!

Even the attachment to the supreme desire for union with the soul has been given up and replaced by consecration to the Divine Will as Nureddene's detached and grateful answer shows.

The last scene takes place in the palace of Bassora where a new King and Queen take over the government of the human being with the spiritualized and integrated parts of the nature being pure instruments and subject to the soul and spiritual consciousness.

In the following lines it is clearly indicated that Nureddene's nature is now integrated around the spiritual consciousness.

IBN SAWY

Let happiness flow out in smiles. Our griefs

Are ended and we cluster round our King.¹

A third, culminating reversal of consciousness has taken place: Nureddene passes beyond the relation with the psychic being to the union and oneness with his soul, and so becomes the immortal king, the effective divine deputy in man's personality. Into the inner kingdom descends now the highest universal principle, the divine vice-regent manifesting himself without disguise and delivering Nureddene from the already immobilised ego and asuric impact. This is the Caliph's sentence:

¹ p. 197, bottom

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HAROUN AI. RASHEED

'Tis well.

Sultan Alzayni, not within my realm

Shall Kings like thee bear rule. Great though thy crimes,

I will not honour thee with imitation,

To slay unheard. Thou shalt have judgment, King,

But for the Vizier here, his crimes are open

And loudly they proclaim themselves.¹

 

HAROUN AL RASHEED

...Young King

Of Bassora, to thee I leave thy enemy. Almuene

ALMUEN

I did according to my blood and nurture,

Do thou as much.

NUREDDENE

He has beguiled me, Caliph.

I cannot now pronounce his doom.

HAROUN AL RASHEED

Then I will.

Death at this moment! And his house and fortune

Are to thy father due. Take him and slay.²

No trace of hate and revengefulness are in Nureddene, who acts according to his dharma of love and compassion as Almuene acted according to his demonic nature. With Haroun's sentence the asuric influence in Nureddene and the ego gives way to the true and eternal individuality.

A final description of the power of the soul is given in these words of the Caliph:

HAROUN AI. RASHEED

All then is well. Anice, you're satisfied?

I never was so scared in all my life

As when you rose against me.

¹ p. 198, middle

² p. 199, top

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ANICE-ALJALICE

Pardon me!

The drama ends and a new adventure of consciousness begins with a last blessing and an admonition of the divine vice-regent before he leaves for another battle for the advancement of the terrestrial evolution.

ALEXANDER BRODT

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SRI AUROBINDO'S CONTRIBUTION TO VEDANTA

IN as much as the Upanishads claim their knowledge to be one after the acquisition of which nothing remains to be known, they should be regarded as the last word on Vedanta, representing the alpha and omega of the Vedanta philosophy. And eventually a certain orthodox circle has been led to the same belief. But today if we visualize the whole phenomenon in its historical perspective, we cannot but assertively say that the Vedanta is incomplete without the writings of Sankara, Bhaskara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Nimbarka, Vallabha and the rest, although it is no less true that these Masters spoke on the Vedanta only by way of commenting either on the Upanishads or on the Brahma-Sutra which latter is only a virtual concordance of the Upanishads. Moreover, they have commented on the original Vedanta in such an independent manner that they have evolved out of the same texts such divergent systems as non-dualism, dualism and the like, and yet each of them is regarded to be as close to the original Vedanta as the rest.

This bears out the fact that the Upanishads contain within themselves not only the central truth about the reality as realized by their seers in a particular age, but also enough potentiality for future developments. And this is in consonance with the nature of the reality which is not only an eternal stasis but also a continuous dynamis. If the Static aspect of the reality can be visualized centrally at any moment in the history of the world, the dynamic can be realized properly only as it really manifests itself through the process of the world. As such, the Vedantic system needs to be formulated and reformulated with the passage of time and the significance of a particular formulation or reformulation would depend on how far its author has incorporated, interpreted, and assimilated new facts into his system and yet has remained sincere to the original.

From both these viewpoints, Sri Aurobindo's contribution to the Vedanta is immense. In the first place, he has not only remained close to the original source of the Vedanta but has also brought unprecedented enlargement to its area. In fact, the word "Vedanta" has been taken to mean not only "the concluding portion of the Veda" but also equally

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"the secret of the Veda". And as a matter of principle all the Ved-antic teachers have accepted this proposition and accordingly have accorded to the Veda as such, and by no means only the Upanishads, the supreme status of verbal testimony not only in regard to Karma but also with respect to fñāna. For, on occasions each one of them has quoted also from the Samhitas. Moreover, even the Upanishads themselves time and again trace the origin of their doctrines to the Samhitas. One of the Upanishads, i.e. the ha is even a part and parcel of the Samhita. But, in spite of all these facts, the Vedantic teachers have practically drawn upon only the Upanishads in formulating their respective doctrines. If they refer to the Samhitas at all, it is only by way of seeking their casual support for their previously formed views. Thus, it was Sri Aurobindo who for the first time in the history of the Vedanta studied the Samhitas thoroughly from the Vedantic viewpoint, and tried to disengage their real import from within a thick cluster of symbols. He brought to bear on his Vedic studies not only his rare linguistic acumen, and profound philosophical, psychological and historical knowledge but also his entire wealth of yogic experience, which all combined led him to find entirely novel ideas in the Vedas and to reformulate them into fresh concepts which are worthy of being- recognized as significant contributions to the Vedantic system.

Thus, for instance, his concept of the Supermind, which he develops on the basis of the Rigvedic Rita-Cit and in the light of his own supramental yogic experiences, is something new to Vedanta and at the same time profoundly conducive to elimination of certain anomalies in the system. In view of the appalling divergence in the nature of Brahman and the world, the appearance of the latter out of the former was sought to be explained previously either through the inexplicable agency of Maya as by Shankara, or through the doctrine of Karma as by Ramanuja, or in terms of certain analogies as by Bhaskara, or in certain devotional terms as by Vallabha and Chaitanya. But these principles of explanation, being either inexplicable in themselves or extremely limited in their range, are productive of certain untoward doctrines in the system. In fact, the principle responsible for the manifestation of the world ought to be as realistic and broad as the world itself. As regards Maya, it implies logical discontinuity

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and hence it is unrealistic. As regards Karma, it signifies mechanical constriction which alone the world is not. Hence the necessity of a comprehensive principle which might be existential as well as ideal, logical as well as supra-logical, creative as well as mechanical. Sri Aurobindo's Supermind is of the same nature. It is existential consciousness and supreme intelligence operating somewhere as mechanical constriction and elsewhere as creative autonomy. Owing to the admittance of such a principle, the world ceases on the one hand to be an inexplicable nonsense and on the other to be an endless repetition from action to result and from result to re-appearance.

The process of involution and evolution is another significant contribution of Sri Aurobindo's. Notwithstanding numerous references to such a process in the Samhitas and also the Upanishads, none of the previous Vedantic teachers has taken up this idea seriously. For instance, in the famous Nasadiya Hymn of the Rigveda, it is said that in the beginning there was One who breathed by Itself without air whatsoever, and who later on concealed Itself in an all-enveloping darkness and under the impulsion of a certain desire made Itself manifest in the form of the cosmic principle and, indeed, the cosmos. Similarly in the Hymn to Purusha, it is maintained that the primordial Purusha while remaining unmanifest by three-fourths of Himself, manifests Himself by one-fourth and gradually diversifies Himself in the form of the variety of worldly principles and beings. Now, while Shankara twists these accounts to suit his Mayavada and Ramanuja likewise reads in them merely alternation of creation and dissolution of the world, Sri Aurobindo develops out of them his doctrine of involution and evolution. Owing to this doctrine, several of the lacunae inherent in the Vedanta of other schools are quite satisfactorily removed. For instance, lacking in any such logically understandable scheme of emergence of the world out of Brahman, Shankara takes recourse to Mayavada which amounts only to confession of one's complete ignorance of the process by which this creative transformation takes place. But under the same circumstances, Bhaskara, although struggling hard to bring home the fact of the oneness of the unity of Brahman and the diversity of the world analogically through the similes of water and ripples, or the sun and its rays, fails to work it out into a philosophically viable principle. Analogy can only

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confirm a principle in its validity but can by no means serve as its substitute. As regards Ramanuja, he no doubt realistically shows how the one Brahman manifests Itself into a multitude of Jivas on the one hand and the Nature on the other, but attributes all this cosmic activity solely to the actions of individual Jivas done during the previous creation. This explanation, to be sure, duly recognises the claims of the individual as a motive force behind the cosmic creation, but at the same time utterly fails to do the same in regard to the Universal. If the universal is no less real than the individual as a constituent of the world, it too must share at least equally in the primordial motivation. As such, the world must have, besides the individual, a definite universal motive and accordingly a unitary process of manifestation. These logical necessities are adequately fulfilled by the doctrine of involution and evolution. These processes are said to be motivated by Sachchidananda desire to have the delight of becoming. Now evolution, of course, has come to be an undeniable fact about the Universe, and involution is a pre-requisite of evolution. This constitutes a firm ground in favour of the validity of Sri Aurobindo's doctrine. Understood in terms of this doctrine, the world, getting rid of its illusory, sheer individualistic and fortuitous character, comes out as realistic, universalistic and a necessary product of the nature of the reality.

Harmonisation of stasis and dynamis in the transcendent, is another important contribution of Sri Aurobindo's. Needless to say that all the schools of Vedanta ascribe the ultimate causality of the world to Brahman while at the same time regard the latter as absolutely above all transformations. Thus they inadvertently land themselves into the well-known paradox of Vandhya-Putra and Shasha-Shringa. They eventually try to get rid of this paradox by different ingenious but flimsy devices. Sankara's doctrine of Maya is one of such devices. Needless to say that in spite of all its ingeniousness, this doctrine is really a self-defeating proposition. Ramanuja, on the other hand, tries to face this paradox with his doctrine of Visheshya-Visheshana-Bhava. Brahman, according to him, creates the world and yet remains absolutely unaffected by this act of It quite in the same way as the substantive, even though qualified by the adjective, remains always the same. It is evident that this solution of Ramanuja's is based

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on absolute separateness of substance and attribute. But howsoever valid this viewpoint might have been at the time of Ramanuja, now after Locke's critique of the relationship between substance and quality, it need not be said that Ramanuja's solution has lost its ground in toto. In this age of Relativity, it would be out and out illogical to talk of absolute separateness of substance and quality or, indeed, of substantive and adjective. Today their mutual relationship is pretty well understandable in terms of potentiality and actuality or stasis and dynamis. If this conclusion has any bearing on the understanding of the relationship between Brahman and the world, the former ought to be regarded as stasis potent of dynamis while the dynamis is as real as latter as dynamis tending towards stasis. From this viewpoint stasis is inherent in the latter. Admittance of this fact, while, on the one hand, saves the world of unreality, it, on the other, redeems one of the necessity of indulging in the dichotomy of substance and quality or substantive and adjective.

Divinization of the world is another significant concept introduced by Sri Aurobindo into Vedanta. This concept is based on the tendency of mind, life and matter towards higher and higher developments. It is an in dubious fact how matter has given rise to life and how life has evolved mind out of it. The mind in its turn is gradually imbibing certain supramental notions, ideas and traits. This goes to suggest that in course of time, mind, life and matter, the three fundamental principles of the world, would gradually get transformed by imbibing more and more of the divine light. This is not to suggest that with the divinization of the world these principles would disappear from here. What is rather meant is only that these would get rid of their present limitations and hostilities and would be harmonised at a higher level to make a better world. The idea of divinization too is not anything extraneous to the original Vedanta. In the Samhitas the seers are much more eager to invoke the divinity into their minds, lives, parts of the body, the Vedi, and to various earthly objects than to go themselves to heaven. In the light of the above tendency of matter, life and mind, Sri Aurobindo has evolved out of these scattered references of the Veda his systematic doctrine of divinization. As against him, Shankara takes the world to be an evil which, instead of being cultivated and developed, is to be left behind as soon as possible. The world, in his view, being the effect of Maya, is inexplicable

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in its purpose. If it is somehow regarded as the play of God, it is so only from the viewpoint of Isvara which is not his ultimate reality. Neither is it so from the viewpoint of the individual and the universal. Thus, at its best, it is only an epiphenomenon holding good only in, a transitional phase of the reality, and by no means an inherent characteristic of it. As regards Ramanuja, he no doubt takes much care of the individuals with respect to the primary motivation behind the creation of the world. According to him, the world is there owing to the Karmas of the individuals and it is also a means of their liberation. But although so much interested in the liberation of the individuals, seldom does he think of the liberation of the world as a whole. In his view, while the Chit-Tattwa is eternal, unchanging and real, the Acit-Tattwa is fleeting and unreal. On account of this contrariety, the Acit, although constituting the body of God, is to be shunned off by the Chit. Devotion to God is suggested as the way to getting rid of the clutches of Acit. Ramanuja, indeed, had taken a bold step in characterising the world, consisting of Chit and Achit, as the body of God. But by bringing in the dichotomy of Chit and Achit he failed to provide for the nourishment of the major part of even God's body. Taking a step ahead of Ramanuja, Vallabha, no doubt, has thought of the divinization of the Acit also in a certain sense. Clusters of trees at the banks of the Yamuna, and the mount Govardhana etc. are regarded by him as more blissful than heaven itself, since they provided the occasion for the blissful sports of Krishna. He takes even the bodies and sense-organs of devotees as liberated from Maya and her influence and thus to be divinized. But apart from these few selected spots, he could not extend his idea of divinization to the rest of the world. Thus, apart from the emotionally charged spiritual state of a few devotees, with respect to certain things associated with Krishna, the rest of the world remained as mundane as ever. But, taking a long stride ahead of these Vedantins, Sri Aurobindo has shown the possibility of complete and real transformation of the world as a whole.

The concept of integral knowledge is another remarkable contribution of Sri Aurobindo. In spite of the fact that the Isha Upanishad showed the necessity of both the higher and the lower knowledge, the later Vedantins admitted only the higher knowledge to the fold of their system and rejected the lower as something spurious. Accordingly they recognized immediate spiritual experience of Brahman alone as real

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knowledge. This attitude of theirs resulted on the one hand in a gradual decline of all other disciplines of knowledge in India and on the other in a stagnation of the Vedantic thought itself. Coming under such circumstances, Sri Aurobindo, on the one hand, through his deep yogic experiences brought greater depth to the immediate spiritual knowledge of Vedanta, and, on the other, by recognizing physical science, psychology, history, sociology etc. as avenues of real knowledge, he enlarged the scope of the Vedantic knowledge. Thus knowledge of each and every sort has a due place in his integral view-point. Philosophy virtually being a concordance of all sorts of knowledge of the reality as reflected in the human consciousness, a particular system of it ought to go on assimilating into it all sorts of knowledge discovered with the march of time. The modern period being most remarkable in extending the frontiers of knowledge, the modern Vedantin has before him the most challenging task of incorporating all this knowledge in his system. And, in fact, Vedanta has been most fortunate in getting such talents as Vivekananda, Ramatirtha, Sivananda among many more, who enriched it profoundly with the knowledge discovered by such sciences as physics, mathematics and physiology and the rest. But in spite of their best effort to bring this entire knowledge to the Vedantic fold, they could make it touch only the outer fringe of the system. They could not put it into the central doctrines of Vedanta. Hence their works are, as it were, scientific commentaries on Vedanta. But by bringing the scientific as also other sorts of knowledge together with the Vedantic knowledge in his deep yogic contemplations, Sri Aurobindo has enabled his Vedantic knowledge to absorb the best of science and reorientate itself in the light of that knowledge. As such, his work may be regarded as a scientific Bhasya on Vedanta.

 SATYA PRAKASH SINGH

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SAVITRI: A STUDY IN DEPTH

THE KINGDOM AND GODHEADS OF THE GREATER LIFE

Book Two: Canto 6

Into an ineffectual world he came

A purposeless region of arrested birth

Where being from non-being fled and dared

To live but had no strength long to Abide.

A SWAPATHY journeys as one in a dark tunnel hoping for light and fresh air and reaches an ineffectual world of arrested birth where the will to come into being suffers a suspended animation; there life is a rudderless boat seeking for direction; it is like a soul that has lost its sense of identity, seeking for itself; personality the cheery prospect of a dubious hope, replacing the former bleak denial, greets him; he sees the possibilities for the birth of that 'which never yet could be' by the grace of the Unknown; he finds an earnestness of the Power to manifest itself on the earth though it finds itself stalled by the inadequacy and the limitation of the earth to hold it; to the Unlisted understanding of man, everything appears the work of chance following a strange arithmetic; forms in multitude come into existence but their exact number cannot be determined; starting from a zero or a nothing where potentially everything is, it becomes more than one for the Infinite who is one multiplies himself infinitely.

Life labours in a strange mythic atmosphere full of charm, in worlds of its own imagination that are sought to be translated but cannot be, into reality; the charm of conception may suffer extinction in the execution; therefore life glimmers on the verge of creation, in a hesitant fashion without taking any positive step; it is filled with a high-souled passion, a surge of movement towards ambitious possibilities, but there is nothing definite achieved beyond the effort to represent the divine splendour in dim tokens. But the fineries and the delicacies of the divine splendour by their fugitive nature defy the attempt at capture except by a dream-brush, in a vague mystic manner on a canvas of an equally uncertain background; but there

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is however the morning twilight promising the day of fulfilment of all expectation; the several facets, the attributes of the divine feel a strange fascination for their opposites; they feel an inducement of a sense of sport to disguise themselves in their contraries; these children of God come eager and hungry for the joy of finite life; knowledge disfigures itself as ignorance and perfection as imperfection; these ethereal creatures keep flapping their wings in the void dreading to share the fate of perishable things; there is a desire of the higher truths to embody themselves, but the tenacity, the persistence of will is lacking there; on the other hand there is the susceptibility of subjection to the lower pulls of nature and the fading out of the higher urges; consequently they have to obey laws of the inconscience and fife is ever in search of an object to embody itself in perfection.

Meanwhile man deceives himself by the substitution of images in the place of live acts, symbols that more conceal than reveal and dreams and visions that have yet to become are already taken for realities; therefore the souls that seek for birth here cannot accomplish their purpose and the spirits already entrapped have to wander through all time in an attempt to find that which sustains them or the source whence they come; this is a realm where nothing has a solid base; 'all was unsafe, miraculous and half-true, all ran like hopes'

Aswapathy at last comes upon a realm where there is a throb of wider life; here around the point centre of the ego-self, life organises the world; the spirit lodged within in the crypt, though alive and athirst for the wider self, is stifled and made to feel content with the fragments that are taken for the whole.

The struggle of the spirit, to come out of the clamp of matter, leads to the emergence of life; the response of both matter and life to the call of the spirit is sheer delight expressed in all its exuberance and magnificent variety; though the joy may be a momentary affair, it for the nonce wears the air of immortality; the highest truth also visits the vaults of the inner self in a moment of the withdrawal of the senses from their outer play; in that tense moment of gathering in all the dispersed faculties and directing them to a focus on the inner being, in this tranced meditation, the whole truth may be grasped and intoned

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from the depths of the soul in a terse formula, a Mantra; not only that, he comes to share also a part of the divinity; a few of His attributes-descend on him such as the all-embracing universal love, and intuitive knowledge.

The Will an aspect of the divine is a hierophant at the shrine of the bodiless secrecy; senses by its impulsion are pushed beyond their scope and made to feel an indefinable light and joy; this makes the passion more intense for the Bliss of which they have a faint taste in the peace experienced by a vague consciousness of the Reality and it is in that stage that it becomes possible to have a true knowledge of the world as the symbol of the Unseen, a figure of the Transcendent by the heart fertilising the mind with a luminous vision. The noble impulses, the higher urges, flow to mankind from these kingdoms of greater life; they fix the pattern, the mould of our lives and give a direction to our fate; some of the great upsurges, the stir and the awakening at certain periods in human history, have their origin there; they are the waves flowing on from the profounds of the higher realms, touching us or lifting us above ourselves; everything we are striving for and even that which is not known to us, but unfolds itself some day, are mapped out there; the Infinite takes form as finite, the Timeless incarnates himself in time and this concealment of the higher in the lower, must lead to the other possibility; the descent must be followed by ascent; and this is obvious from the unceasing effort on the part of the life-energy in spite of the transience of the human life to move from the known to the unknown, to mount up the steps of the ladder to an unseen end. This is an unrolling, a step by step manifestation, an unending procession leading to ampler from lower forms of life, a caravan of countless forms of thought and force.

The Life-force that is part of, but now separated from the Eternal, in a nostalgic manner enshrines in several forms, the many joys once enjoyed but now lost on account of her severance from the Supreme; she makes of her creative activity of compelling substance into shape, a pre-occupation to heal the wound of separation; she makes a bid to launch into the Eternal's wide sublimities by discarding the prison of littleness created by her in favour of her more evolved and improved products; she achieves the impossible task

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of capturing eternity in the meshes of time, of filling the small packet of flesh and feeling that man is with a sense of the Infinite; she is the creatrix, the Shakti, the mobile force of and supported by, the immobile static being; she feels his clasp, his embrace in all her creative activity and perceives him a formless indweller in all the forms of her creation. She is driven on by an indefinable Will to labour unceasingly without any aim; the impossible task self-assigned is to cast the spirit into the physical form, to lend a speech and thought to the Ineffable and to reveal what has ever remained unmanifested; she seems to be nearing the accomplishment of the impossible task, by developing in course of time skill in spite of her following an irrational plan for she has an inventive magic of devising new bodies for imaging the un-imaginable; but she herself does not know what she has been doing because everything is wrought behind a baffling mask which gives the impression of an illusion because of transience, to which everything is subject; yet behind the mask the truth of creation lies hidden.

The Life-force is hedged in by the limitations of having to carry on the work of an infinite nature with inadequate instruments in a wide field where consciousness is in a shapeless condition of a thin spray; but even so, by her strokes which are little and which effectuate finite mind and sense, she reveals truths eternal in the field of time; there is a wide gulf between her aspiration and achievement; not minding it, she labours on with a passion and a pain, a rapture and a pang which are her glory and her curse; her attempted achievements, though they are failures judged by her ideals, endure as long as the world lasts; they are a challenge to our reason; they remain indescribable beauties; they display the will to live, a daring, a delirium of delight; she throws out the many-imaged forms of the Self; they are all fictions because the underlying Reality is the One which is indivisible and of which they are the aspects; therefore what is created by her is a dream-world, a fantasy, touched by the fleeing hem of the truth; the facts in the spiritual field are not so well-defined and rigid as they are in physical sciences; in this field there is a call for the dream mind and the soul; without realising them, life imagines certain truths not experienced and hence they are like the painted and not the real birds of paradise put in a cage for display.

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'These formulae of science may be pragmatically correct and infallible, they may govern the practical how of nature's processes, but they do not disclose the intrinsic how or why; rather they have the air of the formulae of a cosmic magician, precise, irresistible, automatically successful in its field, but their rationale is fundamentally unintelligible.'¹

'The attempt to deny or stifle a truth because it is yet obscure in its outward workings and too often represented by obscurantist superstition, or a crude faith, is itself a kind of superstition.'²

The greater life is enamoured of the unseen and always seeks what is beyond her reach; she enters a zone of silence where she feels a sense of deliverance, meets with divine grace and pursues the ideals of beauty, good and truth; but the subliminal region is a precarious region leading either to the good or the evil.

'The subconscious has this life of all and the super conscience has it, but under conditions which necessitate our motion upwards.... For not towards the Godhead concealed in the Inconscient ocean where darkness is wrapped in darkness but towards the Godhead seated in the sea of eternal light, in the highest ether of our being, is the original impetus which has carried upwards the evolving soul to the type of our humanity.'³

Here she hungers for perfection in word, shape and thought; though a child of heaven, the greater life has not realised its real nature; it may sometimes experience a touch of its higher nature but cannot hold it long; her constant struggle is to seek and retain; she struggles on every plane to create this greatness, be it hell or heaven; everywhere she has a mighty part in the determination of every fate; fife thus marches on breaking down all obstacles in her path; the creative urge brings being where there has been non-being before; though apparently dumb, she is highly vocal, though inert, dynamic; though in her fallen state she is a slave of death and ignorance, she is actuated by memories of her original state and aspires to immortality and knowledge of the Unknowable; that explains why there are the unseen covert vibrations of life even in the nescience of an atom or a piece of clod. Inconscience is a gigantic pause, a cosmic swoon; she

¹ The Life Divine, p. 292.

² Ibid., p. 296.

³ Ibid., p. 199.

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hides her true nature of immortality by accepting vestures of transience; she toils on in an indefatigable manner under most disheartening conditions; she is denied the guidance of the supreme Light that has sent her forth; she works in the darkness of ignorance and has for her handmaids hardship and calamity; strangely enough these very obstacles of pain and disaster, nourish her growth and stature and she creates by passing through the throes of birth; with the distinct memory of her origin, she draws on the skill bestowed on her by the Wonder-Worker, the creative spirit at the time of her birth; this enables her to create life out of a cosmic swoon, a world out of a void.

She agrees to sleep in matter and receives the punishment of subjection to the laws of Inconscience for her rebel waking; still, even in those conditions she displays superb skill, the enginery of her magic craft by fashioning god-like marvels out of mud; she plants the life urge in the smallest cell of the body, enables even the tissues to think and enriches the fleshy body with a miraculous love, a soul and a voice; she is like a sorcerer with the wand and summons into existence beings and shapes and scenes innumerable; she works these marvels in the vast fields of Time and Space; the suns and the planets light up her road; she gratifies the haunting memory of her immortality by her creations which lend a sense of realisation as long as they last but prove unreal as a dream when they share the fate of transience. Life is motivated in all her activity to incarnate her divine lover in every form she creates; she uses his moods as her moulds to cast His form; each of her acts is a line of her communion with her immanent and unseen guest; she reflects in the beauty of her creation the radiance of the divine smile; ashamed of her rich cosmic poverty, she tries to win the fidelity of her Lord with her small gifts; she woos him to abide in the forms created by her milhonimpulsed force for she is filled with a dread that he may escape from her arms into the formless being and the ineffable peace; because of the ignorance of the eternal tie of togetherness between nature and spirit, Purusha and Prakriti, a contrary picture of severance, a division, is presented by life; she therefore shuts up God as a prisoner in her works of creation; in the initial stages, the spirit is left slumbering as a forgotten guest in a crypt but life in the evolved and higher stage develops an awareness of the purpose of the movement and through the mind catches a glimpse of the deity; the greater

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life builds a rainbow bridge between the void of nescience below and the luminous silence above. Thus life continues the tireless search till the veil is lifted and the darkness of the night of ignorance is displaced by the light of knowledge. Life owes her dynamism to a knowledge -and omnipotence behind the veil and therefore she actualises what strikes us as impossible or wonders while keeping up an impression that she is mute and ignorant; the human mind feels perplexed for any explanation makes her work the more inexplicable; the mystery is not confined to the life world only but extends even to the trivial formation of the physical universe, the difference however being that in life proper, the mystery is no longer disguised but more obvious; though truth is not veiled here, life 'flees from her own sight' since she is unable to grasp it; the seed of the idea develops the form and determines its growth; in contrast to ours, in this world, thought and feeling produce results without having to follow the tardy process of speech and action; but here too the truth is missed, the infinite eludes grasp, it is a copy of and not the truth itself; what Aswapathy finds is an awareness of truth in the light of which is made its faint representation in the form of an image, called God; in spite of this disability, they are tenants of larger air and freer space since they live within, not by the body or the outward things; their external life is a feeble representation, a minor script of the larger life lived within; here life is the sovereign lord and all other forces such as body and mind are her obedient retinue in sharp contrast to the material world where mind and body dominate the life. The sweep of the cosmic force in this plane is such that the distinction between the individual and the universal is lost and all serve as the instruments of her might; those who come under the influence of the higher vital have glimpses of the sunlight and aspire to reach the crown; their creative urge is like a seed working itself out; their self-expansion is the flood embracing the whole environment; but they are content with the self-enlargement achieved and make of the small greatness won a cabin; they play the role of a king sharing the joys and the griefs of their milieu; the denizens of the higher vital are the kinsmen of the earthly race since their borders are close to the earth and are also a spring-board to the higher planes; they represent the complete type of what we strive for and it is from this wider world that greater movements are initiated

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on the earth; beings of this region are not subject to the lower pulls like us but obey the laws of their inner nature and follow the unseen leader in the heart; they are not inert or indifferent spectators but choose and swear loyalty to a side when battle is joined between the true and the false; aspiration is the prevailing order of the region, even ignorance is not made an exception and it too is filled with a thirst for knowledge. They are swayed by high ideals; aspire to a monarchy of the sun of perfection; are worshippers of truth which they desire to embody in their daily acts; their thoughts are inspired and lives shaped by truth; in this plane they can subscribe to the truth of darkness with the same ardour; a fighter by nature, the vital being may turn out a warrior for the shining cause of good or may be in the pay of sin; good and evil hold equal tenure on this plane and fight on equal terms; the duality of good and evil, knowledge and ignorance is a common phenomenon; each has its own temple, cult and followers. Sin assumes the world's throne or dons the papal robe propagating her gospel; she perverts the mind and makes power corrupt and slay the soul. Virtue may become statuesque and rigid; not moving with times it may become rigid and outdated, retaining the shell with the spirit gone; sacerdotal may take the place of the soul at wisdom's altar; or there may be a titan passion goading to a proud unrest leading to a revolutionary or radical reformation. People of the higher vital may catch the All-Beautiful ray and may project it in their life or creations of art; they see common figures robed in the marvel of beauty and unlock the charm, greatness and joy sleeping in things; they are the architects of their own fate and by their actions can win a throne in heaven or a pit in hell; thus the dual energy can either pull them to good or drag to evil.

'Man's being, nature, circumstances of life are the result of his inner and outer activities, not something fortuitous and in-explicable; he is what he has made himself; the past man was the father of the man that now is, the present man is the father of the man that will be. Each being reaps what he sows; from what he does he profits, for what he does he suffers. This is the law and chain of Karma of Action, of the work of Nature-Energy.¹

The balance of importance obtaining in the higher vital is far different

¹ The Life Divine, p. 71 8.

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from that of our world; there the inner, the subtle is of greater value than the outer, the gross; the soul determines the matter and is not determined, as it appears to us in the material world, by matter; even as a word reveals thought, or an act the passion of a soul behind, so the design of this world points to the presence of an interior might; the mind enjoys a freedom from the limitations that characterise it in our world; it can directly receive the impacts of the world without their being channeled through the senses and can enjoy the same thrills; the subliminal forces that he in ambush and mount a surprise attack on us in the world, carry on their activity here in an undisguised fashion. The concealed on earth, is here revealed, the overt on the earth retains here a covert part indicative of the presence of the Unknown; the Unseen in this realm is actually felt by its jostling the visible shapes; they share each others thoughts and emotions directly without the need of any intermediaries of instrumentation; there is a perfect communion of hearts and minds, a melting of each in each as the flames of two houses on fire; the invisible subtle ground of mind becomes a field of strife or union respectively for the counterparts of hatred and love; the sensations evoked by different emotions sweep over the subtle body like a wave making it quiver with agitation; there is such an accord between them that distance is of no consequence and they can share the joys and sorrows of each other, speak to each other though seas yawn between them; the higher vital has such a throb of loving interchange that consciousness replies to consciousness even when afar.

'But in the subliminal inner consciousness it is possible to become directly aware of the thoughts and feelings around us, to feel their impact, to see their movements; to read a mind and heart becomes less difficult, a less uncertain venture. There is a constant mental, vital, subtle-physical interchange going on between all who meet or live together, of which they are themselves unaware except in so far as its impacts or interpenetrations touch them as sensible results of speech and action and outer contact: for the most part it is subtly and invisibly that this interchange takes place. But when we grow conscious in these subliminal parts, that brings consciousness also of all this interaction'.¹ In spite of all this interchange, there is still a separateness

¹ The Life Divine, p. 481.

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of soul from soul and an invisible wall of silence is built excluding identity and protecting the individuality of the souls; there is a lot yet to be known; the mystery of Inconscience is disclosed to them but that of Super-conscience, the origin, the source of all, has yet to be unriddle; the Noma Rupa have come out of the Anirvachaniya, the unchanging, the immutable and the indivisible; they are not the Reality, though they are the self-determinations of the Supreme;

'When we get into our subliminal consciousness, we find it extending itself to be commensurate with its world; when we get into our superconscient Self, we find that the world is only its manifestation and that all in it is the One, all in it is our self. We see that there is one indivisible Matter of which our body is a knot, one indivisible Life of which our life is an eddy, one indivisible Mind of which our mind is a receiving and recording, forming or translating or transmitting station, one indivisible Spirit of which our soul and individual being are a portion or a manifestation. It is the ego-sense which clinches the division and in which the ignorance we superficially are finds its power to maintain the strong though always permeable walls it has created to be its own prison. Ego is the most formidable of the knots which keep us tied to the ignorance.'¹

The beginning and the end are enshrouded in a mystery and it is only the middle that is disclosed to us and all the manifestations may be taken for a vocabulary aiming at expression of an inexpressible truth or they are the several digits making up an unfinished total, a sum that cannot be arrived at; the human mind is a driblet, a sprinkle, a little formation of the Supermind; its knowledge naturally is confined and limited to the capacity or the measure of the mind and Truth certainly is beyond its range; below them is a darkness and above a luminous void and placed in between, their explanations mystify more than clarify, complicate more than solve the riddle. Aswapathy while moving in this plane of ambiguity, strangely enough feels that he has become a riddle to himself; everything including himself has become symbolic of something which is to be explored and therefore in quest of the spirit, he follows the trail of concealed delight left by the creative energy in every form. He notes that life as it draws away from the earthly fines, more and more towards the Unknown and

¹ The Life Divine, p. 503.

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that mind gains a self-deliverance from petty cares and anxieties and is wafted to a greater scene of wider perspectives of marvel and that it is filled with a passion for discovery.

Though the higher vital is conscious of the purpose of reaching the fast off Light, it is bogged in the preoccupations of the immediate and the pressing and in the sequel its movement is stripped of all the meaning that the infinite is working through her; however armed with a magical potency, she rushes forward to the target without clear-cut ideas, fancying that what is aimed at is remote while it is at hand. Aswapathy in the sands of the vast desert of Time, tracks the beginnings of her Titan words, studies the clues to understand the difficult theorems of Nature, scans the tangled weird design of her workings; he is like one striving to know from a key-book the writings of a magician Text; he engages on a charade a game of speculation to arrive at Nature's intentions by catching at some hints thrown by her; sometimes he sees in her outlines denials only, and negations; he struggles to catch the drift of sequence in her dance-fantasia through the trail left by her fugitive feet; but he is lost in the labyrinth, the intricate maze and the complex corners of her designs and dreams; he chases each guess thinking that it may lead to a solution, but is thrown back weary and baffled like a man armed with key-words without knowledge of the key to unravel the meaning. The crystal of salt that tries to measure the depth of the sea melts and the human eye that seeks to see the reality is stricken blind with its sun-dazzle; the mind suffers the same disability and it has to proceed on the background of the darkness of a trance aided by the glimmer of stars. Supported by the lightning flashes of intuition, Aswapathy reads the chapters of the metaphysical romance of Nature; he observes that the soul makes earnest efforts to retrace back to its home of Reality and if in the attempt she creates transitory forms to capture the Lord, the forms cannot be dismissed as fictions since they are formed and sustained by the truth of the spirit.

Aswapathy sees through the magnificent wrappings of nature's disguise and probes into the significance of these misleading deceptive appearances; it is the form, its rich brocades and broideries that are transparent to the eye but not the thought ensouling the form; the subde splendour of these draperies and masquerades are symbols

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mutely expressive of the truth that sustains their recondite magnificence.

' Truth is relative to us because our knowledge is surrounded by ignorance.... Our conclusions are partial, speculative or constructed, our statement of them has the nature of representations or figures, word-images of thought perceptions that are themselves images, not embodiments of Truth itself, not directly real or authentic. These figures or representations are imperfect and opaque and carry with them their shadow of nescience or error;... it is not Truth bodied pure and nude, but a draped figure, — often it is only the drapery that is visible. But this character does not apply to truth perceived by a direct action of consciousness or to the truth of knowledge by identity.¹

Ideas that have hitherto suffered dismissal as unmeaning are now revealed as truths in sudden scintillations; the unmanifest, the undisclosed seeks to express itself in mystical words or wizard occult lines; he sees the flights of aspiration braving all dangers and enjoying the thrill of adventure; he discovers in the bylines of the higher vital those who are after the sparkling golden apples of bliss and flowers of dream and muse; from the same stock of the tree of life is seen a crimson flower symbolic of the supreme sacrifice born out of love for the benefit of man and his spiritual advancement; the sacrifice of the Supreme in staging a fall, grows and repeats itself in man. There is a perpetual repetition in the operations of the creative force; human thoughts are like the dragon flies that fly on the mysterious stream of life; they are content to be on the surface and hear the murmur of the flowing stream without venturing to trace its stream; but it curiously enough stages a flight when its desires are about to bear fruit out of a feeling that accomplishment may mean an end to its existence.

What remain with us merely as feelings and thoughts, assume in the realm of the higher vital an immaterial shape; they are self-framed and are not shaped as on earth with material borrowed from the universe; they are symbols vibrant with occult power. Aswapathy develops a spirit of identity with his new environment; stands on meditating peaks of silence and from those heights, fife and being are seen as religious offerings to Reality; they appear merging into infinity;

¹ The Life Divine, p. 533.

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their thoughts are like messengers of eagles of significance winging their way to the infinite. He develops a complete identity with nature so that he can learn the secret of her soul; he is lost in admiration of her pomp, the marvels of her delicate craft; he endures the sorceries of her might; experiences the touch of her hands that knead fate in their violent grasp; he also sees the debit side, its despair and disappointment in her vain seekings for the eternal from which she is separated and her clutching at every fleeting truth as Reality and the agony of her heart in not capturing the one Beloved; in short he sees in her a goddess exiled from her native home and building imitations of that heaven; she is the Sphinx with an upward look to the hidden sun. The immanent and the passive presence of the spirit not only offers the key of fife but also the strength to the form; though it does not leave any external mark of its presence, it makes itself felt in the pathos of un reached aspiration. Life stares at him offering an incomplete story in her fragmentary creations with the design of her meaning withheld; it is therefore not in the half-finished designs that we can read the truth, for life is an expression of what is concealed within or lies beyond and it is in the higher vital that a revealing hint is available making the activities on earth meaningful. Aswapathy moves through a mist of subtle tints and finds a divinity chained by limitations and laws of mortality and moving in a half-asleep and involuntary fashion, he is drawn by the melodies and the flutings of the Unknown towards the profounds of the Infinite and the Beyond; he pushes along in the forest crowded by her symbols; by arrow leaps of intuition or flashes of inspiration, he follows the tangled paths of Time marked by the road-lights of the broad salient ideas in the movement of life and decorated by the pageantries of creation which speak a language of hieroglyphs revelatory of the spirit. It looks to Aswapathy a game of touch and go where life though drawn close, escapes from spirit's embrace and spirit attracted by the witchcraft of her moods is lost in her touches of grief and pain, failing to win her; the spirit enjoys the evanescent paradise of her smiles dreaming that he can eventually establish his mastery over life; the Spirit reads the script of life whose manifestations are translations of God's pure original text, but the pregnant word that brought into being the world is hidden in the script itself; the chant of life has lost its divine note

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in the wefts of creation it has ushered in and the spirit becomes a captive in the house of sound, a prisoner in the world listening to the myriad-toned play of life or wallows in the ravishments of mind and sense. But life in spite of all set-backs sustained and sufferings endured, persists in her heavenward climbing with a yearning towards peaks for ever un reached; she draws a guidance for herself, reads a lesson for herself from the diamond sparkles of her experience and the gem-like tears shed in the past; she is impelled along by a deathless longing, a lost remembrance of her original bliss which makes her dissatisfied with the brief snatches of felicity here; this memory is carefully preserved even when she is astray and vagrant in the caverns of desire, hunting for pleasure from perishable things. The surface cadences of creations are governed and guided by the fateful hand touching the cosmic chords and the key of the inner music is hidden in the intrusion and the tremolo of the surface troubled strain. A joy to love and labour though all fails is due to a passionate memory that haunts with ecstasy's fire, recalling with poignancy her former immortal state; that's why, even in defeat we feel a survival of strength; even in despair we see gleams of victory and in death a passage of new worlds. Life gives us the images of both: the heavenly raptures and earth's transient yearnings, but the only thing that life is not able to articulate is the God-given hymn, the truth of which she is divested in the course of her separation from her spiritual home; she raises an evanescent music in the place of the eternal word, the blissful voice and the tremolo of the voices produced by the Life-Force makes her oblivious of the purpose and the theme intended by the enclosed spirit; however occasionally the splendour and beauty, the strength and the sweetness of the Eternal is captured in passing fragments of beauty and delight.

The gap between the aim and the accomplishment, the aspiration and the achievement, renders life a pauper and makes her magical skill thin and bare; though she has grown oblivious of the mission she is charged with and works with a partial vision and in limited horizon, there is in her depths a memory, but the individual soul is lost in the maze of attractions of life and loses sight of God; life has started with the laudable intention of suffusing the whole cosmos, of charging it with the glory of God and the divine consciousness.

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It has been her motive to establish a harmony, a marriage between the being and the' becoming, the status and the dynamis of the creative bliss, to reveal the Eternal in Time, to make the joys of the spirit no less vivid than those of the flesh and to bring about a parity between life and the Supreme, the earth and heaven by bridging the abyss between nescience and super conscience; in answer to her summons the several aspects and powers of the Supreme master gather to her aid, but in the general tumult the single voice of the Reality is lost. Looking beyond she sees the gods in heaven and below sees a demi-god emerging from the ape, in man; in the higher vital, the peaks of perfection so far touched are men who may be half-gods or half-titans, spreading light or darkness, good or evil; though she has left behind the petty state of man, the greater life still wavers between earth and heaven and does not line up definitely on the side of godhead; the paradox characterising greater life is that joy escapes her grasp or embrace in spite of the best efforts put forth to clasp it; she is not able to track joy to its source; it exists not in things but within; she carries within and immanent the real idea of the divine supermind and its self-determinations but because of her unawareness she runs astray, idles away her time, thinks her purpose small, and allows her faculties and powers to suffer the drag of nescience: and therefore in spite of the impressive grandeur of her activities she lacks the wisdom to set free the spirit and she suffers a haunting sense of limit to her masteries.

'AH nature is simply, then, the Seer-Will, the knowledge force of the conscious being at work to evolve in force and form all the inevitable truth of the Idea into which it has originally thrown itself.¹

'As the power of burning light is not different from the substance of the fire, so the power of the idea is not different from the substance of the Being which works itself out in the idea and its development.² The face of the higher vital has no longer any charm for Aswapathy who seeks for a deeper joy and he looks for an escape from her daedal lines, but finds none; life is eternally on the move; there is no repose even in death since it is a passage to other lives; the acts done here form the texture of other lives and our souls are dragged on as with a

¹ The Life Divine, p.120

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hidden leash from birth to birth and world to world; it is thus pushed on by a hidden impulsion, by a secret Will and can know no rest till it reaches its liberation in the Infinite; life, a time manifestation is the magic stream that reaches no sea; it is for ever bound by its works and the liberation from the prison or the fetters of its activities lies in reaching the Infinite; there is a greater unquiet in the higher vital because of an unceasing stir of activity; there is a constant effort to escape from the monotone of life and its wearisome repetitiveness and for this purpose a curious decoration is attempted on the surface to cheat the eye into a belief that there is something novel, but a closer look reveals that it is the old familiar ancient theme refurbished. Life is the movement in a circle creating the illusory impression of progress or forward march, but always coming back to the starting point; every scheme begins with a bang and ends in a whimper; it proclaims itself as a final scheme, a panacea for all Time's ills, but all its inadequacies are revealed in the actual working out and they have to be made good by ancillary and sequel plans; each proclaims his idea as the evangel and is assured of the immortality of its rule; and it is ushered in as Truth's last epitome, Time's golden best, but always it is the same house given a new look, with nothing significant achieved. Half-attempts are piled on lost-attempts and every time fragments are taken for the eternal whole; in this background, the fret and the fever of existence, its hectic activity seems a play without a denouement or idea or purpose, a labour, a toil without purpose; her eyes are fixed on the crown of Reality beyond the reach of her present fallen state. Life is actuated by memories of her one-time greatness and glory; she is haunted by that sense of a larger happier air and her struggle is to regain that glowing paradise; therefore she is awake to a vague mystery's appeal and Reality though not seen, is felt to be truer than the world's face of present truth; we are moved by a spirit we must still become. The imperfect creature man, hopes to recover the lost kingdom of his soul; he yearns for the bliss as the obscure moth for the blazing light and toils hard for the realisation of the aim. Man lifts his worshipping eyes towards heaven for the golden hand of divine grace to effect his deliverance; he rekindles his faith and administers confidence to himself by singing a refrain that the epiphany is at hand, perfection shall be ushered in

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by a divine descent, bliss shall replace the present aches of the world and light the darkness; but meanwhile there is no escape from the cycle of births and deaths for one aim fulfilled leads to a greater aim and self-discovery has to be sought by passing through the process of death followed by a fresh birth. It may be asked if there can be rest even after arriving at Truth and in answer it has to be said that when that supreme state is reached, action and repose become convertible synonymous terms; each wave is a movement of peace and bliss; rest is a status, a condition, brimful of all potentialities; action is not more than a minor ripple in the vasts of the infinite calm; and birth itself is a gesture of the Timeless made in time. A sun of transfiguration shall shine on all that is baffling and self-contradictory hitherto; darkness shall reveal the light hidden in its depths; the self canceling and the self-afflicting paradox shall reveal itself as a purposeful formulation for furthering the divine plan; and the imbroglio may resolve itself to be a miracle of Ananda; and life itself shall attain a divine transfiguration, cast off its present limitations and attain its true identity. Meanwhile life has to endure a term less labour of mechanical repetitive acts; each page in the volume of its activities bears in its margin the question-mark whether the effort put in is worth the labour; the fabric of life is made up of the warp and the woof of affirmation and negation; the ever-circling wheel of birth and death moves on without cessation; what we see is a vast futility without issue or release from activity; life is ever caught up in a vortex of activity from which there is no escape since death is a passage to another life; it has thus an unenviable and nugatory immortality leading no-whither; world creation itself appears an egregious blunder of the gods or else the Eternal seems an unfeeling, an indifferent spectator of the struggles and the woes of humanity and as butterflies are to children, we may be to the Supreme.

Y. S. R. CHANDRAN

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THE SECRET OF THE VEDA

(4)

AGNI: THE SEER-WILL

It was no accident that Sri Aurobindo chose to translate all the Agni hymns in the Rigveda. For Agni was to the Vedic worshipper, both the layman and the priest and Rishi, "the one God who envelops with himself the grandeurs of all the Gods."¹ In the external ritual he it is who carries the oblations to the other gods or brings them down to share in the gifts of man; without him there is no worship. In the esoteric view, "the gods have established Agni as the immortal in mortals, the divine power in man, the energy of fulfilment through which they do their work in him."² He is the one god who is always awake in man; in his day and his night, in the darkened state of his physical consciousness or in his states of illumination Agni burns bright and works always to destroy his impurities. "Alone of the brilliant Gods, he burns bright and has full vision in the darkness of Night no less than in the splendours of day. The other gods are usarbudhah, wakers with the Dawn."³

What precisely are his nature and special functions? There is a Divine Will at work in the universe, in every atom of being, in the stone and clod as in man and the gods. This Will is the Power instinct with Knowledge that guides, overtly or incognito, the upward march of Evolution. Agni represents that Will to the Vedic seer and mystic. "This Will that is knowledge is the initiator of the upward effort of the mortal towards Immortahty."⁴ He the Godhead immanent in all things and beings, "seated within them, a secret deity, initiates movement and action.... All puissance of action, strength in the being, beauty of form, splendour of light and knowledge, glory and greatness are the manifestation of Agni."⁵ Sri Aurobindo describes Agni as the "greatest, most powerful, most brilliant and most impersonal of all the cosmic Deities."⁶ and he does the most work for ascending humanity.

The Vedic sacrifice is in its essence man's "labour and aspiration God wards."⁷ Agni has been described as the priest of the sacrifice.

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purohita, rtvik, who guards it and leads it to success. This is the work that Agni does for the aspirant who invokes him. He is the Divine Will in man who pushes him to right action and knowledge, guards him constantly against the inner enemies and the outer who seek to divert him into devious paths, leads him out of his physical consciousness and vital and mind in their ordinary functionings towards the Truth and the Felicity which are the goals of the Rishi's endeavour. It is only when the power of Agni works in all our nature, burns away all its "sins", that out of its many crooked nesses the aspirant gets on to the straight path along which the other gods can help man to ascend.

Agni the Divine Will is always at work unknown to us, in our material body and all its functionings, in our desires and vital impulsions, in the activities of our mind ; through all of them Agni ensures the maintenance of the Law that upholds the universe, gives to each action its appropriate fruit. It is man's real business in life to accord his action with the Divine Will if he is to live rightly and take full advantage of Agni's constant presence. Agni is the Strength in man and the Knowledge. He "puts out his strength against all assailing powers, who forbids inertia, who repels every failing of heart and of force, who spurns out all lack of manhood. Agni actualises what might otherwise remain as an ineffectual thought or aspiration. He is the doer of the Yoga...; he hammers out our perfection."⁸

INDRA LORD OF SWAR

Next to Agni, Indra the Puissant and Shining One is invoked alone or in conjunction with other deities more frequently than any other Power. Around him has grown a cluster of parable and myth which are clearly indicative of his function in the Vedic esoterism. Briefly put, Indra is the godhead who more than any other is engaged in the battle of the Gods and Titans for the possession of earth and men, the release of the cows of Light from the darkened cave of the subconscient, the pouring of the rain of Heaven from the dark clouds of the vital worlds. It is Indra who thus in great measure makes possible the illumination of man by the light of the higher consciousness.

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Indra is the "Divine Mind in man...through whom comes the illumination of the supramental Truth; by the advancing chariots of this giver of Light he conquers our divine possessions."⁹ Indra is preeminently the fighter ; he fights man's spiritual battles against the personifications of Darkness that the true Light may grow in him and remain unobstructed. "This growth continues by the winning and growth of the Light, till Indra reveals himself fully as the ... divine mind master of all the illuminations of knowledge."¹⁰ Indra is the Power in the mind which enables one to know the truth from the falsehood, the straight from the crooked.¹¹ He is the "Lord of Swar, the realm of pure intelligence, through which the ascending soul passes into the divine Truth..., The principle which Indra represents is Mind-Power released from the limits and obscurations of the nervous consciousness"¹² in which we normally live.

He is commonly described as performing his warring feats in the intoxication of the mystic wine, Soma. Soma as we shall see stands for pure Delight. It is when the pure mind is filled with pure delight that the Darkness is repelled. Lightening is "the weapon, the heavenly stone, svarya aśmā, by which he destroys the powers of darkness and wins the cows, the solar illuminations." Iśa

THE SUN OF TRUTH

The highest light is that of the Sun, the Vedic Surya. Surya is the light of the Truth who when he rises in our highest heaven of mind dispels "the darkness and falsehoods and limited vision of the separative mentality.... This Truth is the light, the body of Surya."¹³ In his cosmic function, he mainly under the appellation of Surya Savitri is the Light that creates or rather manifests the worlds. He is also the supreme Light concealed in the Darkness of the Inconscient, where he had been cast, as the Dark Sun or Martanda "to preside over mortal birth and death."¹⁴ In his psychological aspect, once his Light is liberated by the other gods and made to rise in us in its full splendour in the wake of the Dawn, "he is described as the pure and visioned force of the Truth which shines out in his rising like the gold of Heaven."¹⁵ He gives man the seer hood which brings with it not only the right vision but also the right hearing of the Word of Truth.

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That is the sense of the Gayatri mantra which is intended to give us the luminous impulsion of Surya Savitri to all our thoughts. Surya in us then becomes the Creator who new-creates for us all the worlds, gives us "this new-seeing of all things, this new-moulding of thought, act, feeling, will, consciousness in the terms of the Truth, the Bliss, the Right, the Infinity..."¹⁶

It is this active aspect of the Godhead that is figured by Savitri the luminous Creator. "All that we have done in our ignorance, in our divided and oppressed discernment of things, in our mere mortal becoming and humanity, against gods or men, he shall un create and make us free from the sin. For he is the creator of the Right, he is the creator who creates the Truth."¹⁷

But we cannot live in the Truth, be constantly in the presence of the self-luminous One whom the seers worshipped in the image of the Sun, Surya or Savitri, unless there is firmly established in us a vast purity, a luminous power of love and comprehension, a clear discerning aspiration and endeavour, a spontaneous delight in all things. These are the gifts of Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman and Bhaga, the four great kings, the Sun-gods. They are the Sachchidananda of later thought.¹⁸ They are the four-fold Savitri as Creator.¹⁸

Varuna is the lord of all the three oceans of infinite existence, the tenebrous Inconscient, the luminous Super conscience and between the two a third sea of ever-developing conscious being, "the perilous ocean which we have to navigate.... Varuna must teach with his Vast Right and Truth our limited will and judgment,"¹⁹ and lead us to the Highest. He is the great destroyer of sin, the God who in the parable of the triple cord of the Rishi Sunahshepha frees the aspirant from the bondage of united mind, inefficient life, obscure physical animality. Varuna is samrdt, "King of all kingdoms and of all divine and mortal beings; earth and heaven and every world are only his provinces."²⁰

The one Deity constantly associated with Varuna is Mitra, friend and-harmoniser of all discordances, since Mitra cannot fulfil his Harmoniser of all discordances, since Mitra cannot fulfil his harmony except in the purity of Varuna. "Mitra was essentially

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the Lord of Love."²¹ He brings with him the inner felicity, mayas, independent of things, as well as prayas, its out flowing as the delight and pleasure of the soul in objects and things. "Mitra is. the most beloved of the gods because he brings within our reach this divine enjoyment and leads us to this perfect happiness."²²

Aryaman the third of the Great Quarternary, and least prominent in the hymns is yet among the most forceful for achievement. Standing at the head of the pitrs, the departed ancestors in the later tradition, Aryaman in the Veda is the Godhead who as leader of the ancient Fathers created for posterity the Path to the Truth. It is as the God of the Path that he is hymned in the few rks where he is invoked separately and not as is usually the case in conjunction with Varuna, Mitra or other deities. Aryaman is the dry a par excellence, the untiring aspirant to the Truth. "Aryaman is the godhead in whose divine power this Arya hood is rooted; he is this Force of sacrifice, aspiration, battle, journey towards perfection and light and celestial bliss by which the path is created, travelled, pursued beyond all resistance and obscuration to its luminous and happy goal."²³

Both the cosmic and psychological functions of Bhaga are more clearly discernible in the hymns. Bhaga is "the Lord of Enjoyment.... What the Rishi seeks is the enjoyment in all created things of the immortal and immortalising Ananda.... This Ananda is the highest, the best enjoyment. It disposes all aright... all the distortions, all the evil of the world. It carries man through to the goal."²⁴ The Vedic aspirant always seeks to make his path to the goal "a happy going", a path of felicity, suvitam; he shuns all that is evil, belongs to the "evil dream" that has to be turned away. "Bhaga sends to us instead all that is good, bhadram, good in the sense of felicity, the auspicious things of the divine enjoying, the happiness of the right activity, the right creation."²⁵

Surya Savitri the great Illuminer manifests himself in another form, Pushan, the fosterer, the increaser in us of the Light; for the illumination is not a sudden but a gradual phenomenon and it needs to be constantly cherished and kept safe from obscuration. "The increase which Pushan gives depends on the recovery of these disappearing illuminations of the Truth."²⁶ The growth which he gives is a journey towards the fullness of the Truth. He is therefore the lord

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of the Path and guards it.²⁷

SOMA: LORD OF DELIGHT AND THE PURIFIERS

Delight or Immortality is the goal. "Of that beatitude Soma is the representative deity,"²⁸ figured in the image of the wine offered to the gods and drunk by the sacrificer. "A secret Delight is the base of existence, its sustaining atmosphere and almost its substance.... Sensation is an attempt to translate the secret delight of existence into the terms of physical consciousness. But in that consciousness... divine light and divine delight are both of them concealed and confined, and have to be released or extracted. Ananda is retained as rasa, the sap, the essence, in sense-objects and sense-experiences, in the plants and growths of the earth-nature, and among these growths the mystic Soma-plant symbolises that element behind all sense-activities and their enjoyments which yields the divine essence."²⁹ Therefore it has to be pressed out and distilled before it can be used as a potion of delight. Even so, it is a strong potion which not every system can bear. He who is raw and his body not heated does not taste or enjoy that; he may even break under the violent ecstasy.³⁰

The purification of the body and the nervous system and life-parts and the thoughts is therefore a necessary preliminary. Vayu, the Lord of Life, the Aswins, divine healers, Maruts the thought-forces and Ribhus the aides of Indra and artisans of immortality come into play prominently in this connection. Vayu the Wind-God is the "inspirer of that Breath or dynamic energy, called the Prana, which is represented in man by the vital and nervous activities."³¹ Vayu brings into conscious activity the energies hidden in the subconscient and turns them god wards: devoted to the "Aryan work".³² Vayu the nervous activity is only a first condition of the emergent Mind. It is the support given by Life to the evolution of Mind which is the important aspect of Vayu.^32a

The twin Aswins are the "riders on the horse, the Ashwa, symbolic of force and especially of life-energy and nervous force, the Prana. They are gods of enjoyment, seekers of honey; they are physicians, they bring back youth to the old, health to the sick, wholeness to the maimed."³³ Their special function is to perfect the nervous

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or vital being in man in the sense of action and enjoyment.

Maruts, the impetuous godheads of rain and storm in the popular view, are in the esoteric Veda 'the Life-Powers that support by their nervous or vital energies the action of the thought in the attempt of the mortal consciousness to grow or expand itself into the immortality of the Truth and Bliss."³⁴ They are closely associated therefore with Vayu and Indra. The Maruts "take our animal consciousness made up of the impulses of the nervous mentality, possess these impulses with their illuminations and drive them up the hill of being towards the world of Swar and the truths of Indra.... The Maruts are the powers of Thought which by the strong and apparently destructive motion of their progress break down that which is established and help to the attainment of new formations."

The Ribhus, three in number, human beings become divine and artisans of immortality, are "the sublimated human energies of formation and upward progress who assist the gods in the divinising of man. ... Another great work of the Ribus is... to restore youth to the aged parents of the world, Heaven and Earth. Heaven is the mental consciousness; Earth the physical."³⁵ They are closely associated with Indra and Agni: they are "offspring of Indra, grandson of luminous Force"(Rv.IV.37-4). They help man bear the ecstasies of Soma, and prepare his ascent to the Light.

It is easy to see how the action of these gods helps each other, sometimes overlaps.

THE DIVINE DAWN

The Light comes through a succession of Dawns. Usha the beautiful Goddess of Dawn is "image and godhead of the opening out of the supreme illumination on the night of our human ignorance."³⁶ In our progress towards the highest Light, there is a long alternation between states of illumination and states of darkness. It is the function of Dawn to dispel that darkness as it comes until we are able to pass beyond it altogether. Dawn has been called the face or power of Aditi; she brings to man a light, a power, a new birth, the golden treasure of heaven into his earthly existence.³⁷ With her coming "awaken" all the gods, become effective in our mortal being. The light of

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Surya follows in her wake.

THE OTHER GODDESSES

Surya as we have seen is the Lord of the vast Light, the Truth-Consciousness to which the Rishi aspires. Some of the powers of this Consciousness are symbolised by the goddesses Mahi or Bharati, Dakshina, Sarama, Ila and Saraswati, who are often associated with the Dawn, the Sun, Indra and Agni, the main helpers in the Rishi's upward march. Mahi is "the luminous vastness of the Truth... Ila representing truth-vision or revelation, Saraswati truth-audition, inspiration, the divine word, Sarama intuition, Dakshina the separative intuitional discrimination."³⁸ As Dawn prepares man for the progressive illumination of his consciousness, three of these other goddesses "are said to bring to birth for man the Bliss, may as.... It is by the dawning of the true or infinite consciousness in man that he arrives out of this evil dream of pain and suffering, this divided creation into the Bliss.... Truth is the foundation, Bliss the supreme result."³⁹

Each god too has his female energy.

All these gods and goddesses it may be pertinent to observe are the prototypes of the immense pantheon of the later Epic, Purano-Tantric, Mahayana and Vajrayana systems, each replete with their "divine families," and their esoteric significances.

(To be continued)

SANAT K. BANERJI

REFERENCES

1. Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire (1952 edition), p.23

2. Sri Aurobindo, On the Veda (1956 edition), p. 76

3. Ibid., p. 319

4. Ibid., p. 326

5. Ibid., p. 440

6. Ibid., p. 446

7. Ibid., p. 465, fn. I

8. Ibid., p.321

9. Ibid., pp. 300; 464, fn. 3

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10. Ibid., p. 193

11. Ibid., p. 221

12. Ibid., pp. 289: 297-8

123. Ibid., p . 187

13. Ibid., p. 526

14. Ibid., p. 531

15. Ibid., p. 533

16. Ibid., p. 534

17. Ibid., p. 544

18. Ibid., p. 553

183. Ibid., p, 577

19. Ibid., p. 559

20. Ibid., p. 566

21. Ibid., p. 568

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., p . 573

24. Ibid., p. 344

25. Ibid., p. 346

26. Ibid., p. 540

27. Ibid., p. 542

28. Ibid., p. 435

29. Ibid., p.296-7

30. Ibid., p. 407

31. Ibid., p. 305

32. Ibid., p. 353

32a. Ibid., p. 352

33. Ibid., p.94

34. Ibid., p.194

35. Ibid., p. 388

36. Ibid., p. 534

37. Ibid., 529

38. Ibid., pp.110; 84

39. Ibid., pp. 110-11

40. Ibid., p. 437

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THE PERFECT WIFE

"I must say you fit the description of a budding rishi better than that of a perfect wife." She smiled. Now that they were years away from the quarrels over the fact that she did not fit his idea of the "perfect wife" and could not even understand what he wanted, let alone be what he wanted, they could joke about it and it was always nice to be reminded that he was really happy with her as she was.

She understood now what he had wanted then and again she smiled, thinking how fortunate it was that she had not understood in the beginning. She would have gone crazy in the struggle between wanting to please him and not going against her own nature, or else leaving him. But as she thought, the question arose "What, anyway, is the 'perfect wife' ? He wouldn't really have been happy if I'd outguessed every little desire of his as he wanted me to. He's happier that I'm true to myself. But what does that mean?"

Women's lib had touched them both and neither of them had been interested in a traditional husband-wife relationship even before they had begun doing yoga. But some of the traditional habits had crept into their way of life just out of convenience, and periodically she found herself rebelling against them. Sometimes she consoled herself by saying that for him to care for her bicycle and her to wash his clothes was a good exchange. After all she was not interested in learning bicycle mechanics, and such things were his particular skill and interest. "But he's certainly capable of washing his own clothes!" She would immediately think. Was there some other exchange? She could do his typing for him. She was skilled in that and he wasn't. But he didn't have anything to type. And besides all that, and probably more important than all that, something did not feel right in bargaining over the services rendered to one another.

This was only one minor conflict among many other minor conflicts that grated like sandpaper, showing the rough edges of a basically agreeable relationship. But it was also an indication that there was much more work to do.

Even more important were the wrangling of the surface mind when her ego was out in front. For the goal of her life was not to be the perfect wife or the perfect anti-wife, but to be a perfect

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servant of the Divine Will and Love. And it was towards this that she turned as often as possible, trying to stretch her capacities at every opportunity. More and more a prayer welled up in her: "May I learn to serve You truly in everyone and everything."

Here was the secret, she felt, to their relationship. It was insignificant that they had had a formal marriage ceremony and signed the papers which made their relationship acceptable to the world. It didn't matter that they had subsequently given up most of the physical trappings which are usually associated with marriage. What mattered to them now was that they were two seekers dedicating their life to the Divine, sharing whatever light they could and the common task of raising a child in the best way they could.

The sandpaper was rubbing, rubbing. It was rubbing through the tarnish which was caked all over their surface relationship preventing the inner beauty from shining through. It was sanding away the crust of ego on her which prevented her from truly serving the Divine in everyone and everything. And it would continue to rub and grate and polish until there was nothing left but smooth, pure crystal, letting the light within shine out constantly.

And when sometimes the crust was thin, it didn't matter whose clothes she was washing because she was washing for the Divine. Nor did she feel that she needed to fix her own bicycle, for the Divine had provided someone who could care for it better than she.

"When I have learned to be a perfect servant of the Divine, when I have accepted to be a perfect, trusting child of the Divine, then, and only then, can I hope to be a perfect wife for the Divine."

MARY ALEXANDER

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REVIEWS

The Philosophy of Sri Ramanuja By V. R. Srisaila Chakravarti. Pub. V. S. R. Chakravarti, 24, Kasturi Ranga Iyengar Rd. Madras 18. P. 356, Price Rs. 40.

TREATISES on Vishishtadwaita (Qualified Monism) are gene-rally full of metaphysical subtleties couched in a special terminology familiar only to students of Vedanta. The present treatment, however, runs smooth with an abundance of illustrations from the Epics and Scriptures, in a language that is fluent and understandable by the general reader. This is a posthumous collection of discourses systematically covering the main topics of this Philosophy e.g. Chit or Individual Soul, Achit or Matter, Ishwara or God. The author compares the positions of the other schools of Vedanta on these concepts, especially of the Advaita of Shankara and points out how far they do or do not correspond to genuine and authenticated spiritual experience.

Prof. K. Seshadri observes in his terse Introduction that true Vishishtadwaita is wedded to integration and harmonisation of the 'Vedanta of the heart' and the 'Vedanta of the head. "The supreme is the Self, the Soul of thy soul, to whom all that thou art — body, mind and life — belong as body to the soul. Awaken into the awareness of this wisdom by conscious dedication in complete self-surrender." This sums up the Vedanta of the Acharya.

The discussion on the Five kinds of Divine Forms — para, vyuha vibhava, antaryamin and area is highly enlightening.

Tales and Tellers of Goa By V. S. Sukthankar. Asia Trading Corp. 150 Brigade Rd. Bangalore 25. P.121, Price Rs.12.50.

A charming little book on a charming theme. Cut off from the mainland of India for generations, Goa has had a life of its own — simple, unsophisticated and joyous. The writer has taken considerable pains to gather materials on its folklore, the strands of the composite culture (Portugese and Indian) that has grown among these seafaring people, and the lilting music that comes natural to them. And

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with a penmanship of a superb order he narrates some of the stories that have given rise to oft-quoted proverbs, some of their songs (partly in the original Konkani and fully rendered into felicitous English) and ten pieces with their staff-notations. Dr. Gokak speaks for all the readers when he remarks: "We see at work a master-hand which brings to life by a few magical touches, the life that pulsates in Goan homes and in Goan community gatherings."

M. P. PANDIT

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