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

(New Series)

(I)

THE GOLDEN HARVEST

THE poet-saint Ramprasad says:

"O my man, you do not know how to till!
If you knew! Oh, you have such a piece of land

This human life of yours!
You could have reaped gold from it."

Indeed this human body is the precious land from which one could reap a harvest of gold. For this body has the proud privilege of receiving the golden touch of the Divine materially and hold it and maintain it. This materialisation of the Divine is the supreme

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alchemy of which the body is capable. There are other forms of union with the Divine, all forms of consciousness, of the mind, of the vital — subtle perceptions, thoughts, emotions, even sensations — all delightful but immaterial: even without the body they can be felt and experienced, they are true and real in their own authenticity. But the body brings in a new element, altogether different a phenomenon. It makes a thing living, real materially. The human body has this strange virtue of Touch — the body contact — which makes what is dead (matter) alive — mritam kancana bodhayanti (Rigveda). We know the biblical adage: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof." This capacity of eating is the privilege of the body alone: only the body can supply this proof that makes a thing concretely real. Why did Ramprasad utter these words somewhat rough and uncouth to a civilised hearing — "Oh Mother, I will eat you up, devour you, even as I do a plate of vegetable!" There is delight in devotion, there is joy in surrender, even ecstacy in love, but where is the inexplicable exquisiteness of utter oneness in the physical embrace — as for example, in Radha's experience?

Radha is the personification of the supreme global and integral identification of the Divine with the human, or rather the transfusion of the Divine Person into the substance of the human person. Radha says every drop of blood, every particle of flesh in her body cries out for every drop of blood, every particle of flesh of Krishna's body. Radha has made, as it were, a fossil transmutation of her body replacing it bit by bit by Krishna's body. She feels she is none other than Krishna, even physically himself. It is an utter unity and identity — not merely in the Vedantic way, up there in Atman, but down here also: it is an infusion or immixture in Nature also. It is a kind of coalescence by fusion as of the sub-atomic particles (— the matrix, by the way, of the supreme incalculable energy). Because of this supreme union and identification, even down to the material body, Radha feels that her body is no longer her own but Krishna's and therefore utterly sacred. She cries out as the Vaishnava poet says: "O sister, when this body dies, do not burn it or throw it into the river, but keep it suspended on a branch of the tamal tree. Tamal has a dark hue, my Krishna is also of dark hue. I love Tamal because I love Krishna."

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The earth, the body that has once received the touch of the earth-made body of the Divine never loses the virtue of that contact. That contact remains imbedded in the substance of the mortal human body: it abides there as a secret aroma as the fragrance of a flower hidden in its pollens. So long as the flower lasts, the perfume will last — even after, even when it has withered.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

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THE MOTHER AND HER WORK

A Homage

(2)

ART AND MUSIC

MOTHER gave herself a thorough training in the arts, particularly in painting and music. "I used to do my studies, I did painting, I did music.. . And I was told that my music would amount to nothing, my painting would be worth nothing, and my studies would be altogether incomplete. That is probably quite true," she adds with a touch of humour. "But I have found, after all, that it had some advantages,...of widening, making supple my brain and comprehension. It is true that if I had wanted to be a first rate performer and play in concerts, I should have done as they said. And for the painting, if I had wished to be among the great painters of the time, I ought to have been doing nothing but that. That is well understood. But after all, that is a point of view. I do not see any necessity of being the greatest painter, the greatest musician. That has always seemed to be a vanity. And besides, that is a question of judgment.. ."¹

What, one may ask, — and the question has sometimes been asked by those especially who consider the spiritual life as the highest end of man, — what purpose is served by art and music? Are they not a sheer dilettantism of the spirit? To this question, Mother has already given an answer in the above passage; she refers to their educative value. In a later talk, she dwells on another aspect of painting and music which is worth noting. "When one does music or when one does painting, one sees very well that the consciousness penetrates the cells and these cells become conscious... You see, it is impossible to learn the piano or do painting^unless the consciousness enters the hands, and the hands become conscious, independently of the brain."² That is a thing of capital importance for the transformation of the body consciousness.

But even for those who do not Want to proceed that far, it should be clear that "true art is the expression of beauty in the material world; and in a world that is entirely converted, that is to say, expressing

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totally the divine Reality, art should serve as the revealer and instructor of this divine Beauty in life. That is to say, an artist should be able to receive the inspiration of what should be the form or forms for expressing materially the divine Beauty.... Now, between that and what is being done, there is a big difference; but that is the true raison d'etre of art."³ And as for realising the Divine, "I know that there are artists, who purely through their art, have attained to the divine realisation."⁴

Mother's acquaintence with the art and music of all the ages was profound. She has spoken appreciatively of the arts of ancient Egypt, Greece and India, and of Japan. She knew all the great artists of the last century and the beginning of the present century, "and they truly had the sense of beauty" ; Rodin was particularly intimate with her.⁶ She has expressed a great admiration for the stained glass windows of the medieval cathedrals and churches in Europe: "that was some art!"⁶ She was naturally familiar with all the great musicians of modern Europe; Cesar Franck, Beethoven, Bach and Mozart and Berlioz she has mentioned more than once with great commendation. And she adds, "I have listened to a lot of Indian music, a great deal... I like this music very much, this kind of theme that develops in a play,... With innumerable variations..."⁷ Many connoisseurs have found a certain affinity between the Indian system and the Mother's music we so often hear.

What is the effect of superb music on the listener? "If you have an attentive and concentrated mind, all of a sudden that lifts you up, it lifts up all your energies, it is as if one opens your head, just like that, and it throws you up in the air on to extraordinary heights and magnificent lights. It produces in a few seconds the result one obtains with so much difficulty by years of yoga..."⁸ The only trouble is that one cannot keep to that high level all the time. But if one has prepared oneself by yoga, it can be a thing that is almost "definitive".

The extraordinary degree to which Mother had developed her aesthetic sensibility can be illustrated no better than by a little incident she describes. She was once walking on the streets of Paris. There was a woman walking in front of her, one "who really knew how to walk well. How nice it was! her movements were magnificent. I saw that, and all on a sudden, I saw the whole origin

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of Greek culture, how all these forms descend to earth in order to express beauty — simply because it was a woman who knew how to walk!"⁹

POETRY AND LITERATURE

A word may be said here, in this connection, about her attitude to Literature and Poetry. "I am no poet," she seems to have once remarked to somebody. This must have been in a jocular vein. As far as I know, we do not have any poems written by her. But poetry abounds in her Talks, and her Words have the power of the highest form of poetry, the Mantra.

As an example of her poetic speech at its best, one may read her early writing, La Découverte Suprême, which even in translation does not lose its poignant appeal: "You who weep, you who suffer, you who tremble, not daring to foresee the term of your ills, the issue of your pangs, behold! There is no night without daybreak, when darkness is thickest, dawn is ready; there is no fog that the sun does not dissipate, no cloud that it does not gild, no tear that does not one day dry, no storm after which its bow of triumph does not lift up its rays, no snow that it does not melt, no winter that it does not change into radiant spring..."¹⁰ Or consider this Hosanna to the Lord in her Prieres et Meditations she once selected for being recited before a distinguished group of visitors to the Ashram: "...Thou hast made me taste many an unexpected and un hoped for joy; but no grace of Thine can be equal to this Thou grantest to me when a heart leaps at the touch of Thy divine breath... At those blessed hours, all earth sings a hymn of gladness, the grasses shudder with pleasure, the air is vibrant with light, the trees lift towards heaven their most ardent prayer, the chant of the birds becomes a canticle, the waves of the sea billow with love, the smile of children tells of the infinite, and the soul of men appear in their eyes".¹¹ One has to read the original French in order to catch the music and the magic of this sublime poetry. If the function of poetry is to present things concretely before the mind's eye, then the Mother's Talks fulfil that function in abundance.

One may say a word about the Mother's view of poetry, in the

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context of what she once described (in the Bulletin) as "the sensuality of the spirit". She has made it clear that this was not meant in a pejorative sense at all. It was simply a way of saying things a little paradoxically, "in order to strike the thought."¹² One need not enter here into the details of her explanation. It may suffice to note that her view of poetry is the same as that of Sri Aurobindo. "It expresses the beauty of ideas, the harmony of the thoughts, and gives to all that a form which becomes concrete: images, the play of images, the play of sounds, the play of words. So, instead of being the sensuality of matter, it is the sensuality of the spirit. It is not taken in a pejorative sense at all, nor moral either; it is simply descriptive."¹³

And what is literature? What makes one appreciate literature? "One has to have a taste for forms, the nice way of saying things, a little out of the ordinary, not too banal. But it is precisely a manner, it is a manner of saying things that has charm. Literature consists entirely in the manner of saying. You catch what you can of what lies behind. If you are open to a literary sense, then naturally that evokes things for you. But it cannot be explained. It is a means of evocation which also is like that of music. Naturally, one can analyse literature, but that is as if you change a human being into a skeleton."¹⁴

The Mantra of course stands on a different level. One need not elaborate it here, except perhaps to note one point which may come as a surprise to some. One has heard often that Sri Aurobindo wrote all that he has written in the Arya out of an entirely silent mind; that gives the writings the power of the Mantra. But that, the Mother has explained, "happens once in some thousands of years. It is not a frequent phenomenon......."¹⁵ The Mantra is quite different from "inspired" speech or writing that can come from any level of the mind, without the necessity of an absolute silence. Nor does it have the power of the Mantra.

MARCH OF CIVILISATION

Mother naturally took a deep interest in the progress of man through the ages, the progress that is recorded in history, and also the progress that has not been so recorded. She had read all that the

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history books have to teach, and was not satisfied. "By and large, the "official" history of man is nothing but a long narration, almost uninterrupted, of violent aggressions: wars, revolutions, murders or colonisation. True, some of these aggressions, some of these massacres have been embellished with flattering terms and adjectives; they have been called wars of religion, holy wars, or civilising campaigns. But they remain none the less acts of greed and vengeance. It is rarely that we find in history a description of cultural, artistic or philosophical efflorescence."¹⁶ And even the accounts given of the "facts" varies so much from country to country, from language to language that the whole thing gives an impression nothing short of comic. "It is incredible," she says, the way in which the same thing is presented in different ways by different historians.¹⁷ Many factors come into play: the absence of full data, the element of imagination, the intrusion of vanity and prejudice. The result is something not very satisfactory.

But she found a way to get at the true record of man and his doings. There is, she says, such a thing as an "earth memory", a sort of huge record room where everything that has taken place on the earth is accurately recorded, in neatly arranged pigeon-holes. One has only to open a pigeon-hole and find out exactly what happened. She gives a vivid description of this record room, which, obviously, she knows very well. Then, shall we discard our history books and consult only the "earth memory" for all we want to know about our past? We might,—provided we had the capacity. For, the discipline that this demands is far more severe than the discipline required for studying a book, or even for doing the yoga. Hardly anyone would care to undertake all that trouble.¹⁸ And history studies remain a part of the educational process.

Mother has spoken of another way: the psychic memory. And she has left us a description of the conditions prevailing in the earthly paradise, the legendary Garden of Eden, of which she had some vivid recollections. But that too is obviously beyond the ken of ordinary mortals.

There is no historical proof, she hastens to add, that such a "paradise" ever existed, nor does she recall where exactly it was situated or how long it lasted. "But there has certainly been a time in the history of the earth when there was a sort of earthly paradise,

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in the sense that it was a perectly harmonious and perfectly natural life My recollection is that of a life in which the body was perfectly adapted to its natural environment ... Life was altogether spontaneous and natural, as a more conscious and luminous life would be, but there was absolutely nothing of the complications and deformations that the mind in its development has brought in later.... There was. . . no aggressiveness, no fear, no contradictions or frictions, and no perversion; the mind was pure, simple, luminous, uncomplicated .. ." ¹⁹ It was the complications introduced by the development of the mind that seems to have brought about the "fall".

And yet there has been a progress, an ascending march of Nature. But in order to seize the true nature of this progress, one has to dive below the surface of things, take a global view. "Truly speaking, the movements of Nature are like those of a tide, — it advances, it recoils, it advances and recoils, — which implies in the life of the universe, and even in the life of the earth, a progressive advance, although in appearance it is cut across by recoils. But these recoils are only an appearance, as when one takes off for a jump. You look like stepping back, but that is simply in order to be able to go farther."²⁰

But in fact, it is a queer sort of a march, "because one takes three steps in front and two steps backward, one takes two steps forward and one aside!... There is a wonderful civilisation with all kinds of extraordinary creations, from the scientific point of view, the artistic, even the political point of view, from the point of view of organisation, the social point of view. You have beautiful civilisations, like those that have left a kind of occult memory of a continent that linked India with Africa for example, and there is no trace left of it.... You have civilisations like that; they disappear all of a sudden, then a whole history full of darkness, inconscience, ignorance, of races altogether primitive who seem to be so near to the animals that one wonders if there is really a difference.... And then, all on a sudden, that emerges up on high, once again to a greater height, with greater virtues, a greater realisation,... as if all those hours of night and of work in the night had made Matter ready that it might express something superior. Then again, another obscuration, a forgetting ; the earth becomes barbarian once more, obscure, ignorant, painful. Suddenly, some thousands of years later, a new civilisation arrives ..."²¹

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All this was clear to the Mother's Vision. The big question was whether these ups and downs would ever come to a stop. Would man be enabled to progress without interruption, towards the divine Goal?

Mother has been striving to find a solution out of the impasse all her life. She began very early, even at the age of five, when most children are busy with toys and games. It is the game of Life that had thrown its wager, and she accepted it.

(To be continued)

SANAT K. BANERJI

REFERENCES

1. Mother, Bruretiens, 10.2.54.

2. Mother, A Propos, 22.11.67.

3. Entretiens, 28.10.53·

4. Ibid., 27·5·53·

5. Ibid., 17·3.54·

6. Ibid., 21.10.53.

7. Ibid., 27.5.53.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., 13.5 .53.

10. Mother, Paroles d' Autrefois,

11. Mother, Prieres at Meditations, 31.3.17

12. Entretiens, 24.8.55.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., 21.9 .55 .

15. Ibid., 24.8.55.

16. Commentaires sur les Aphorismes, No. 39.

17. Entretiens, 15.2.51.

18. Ibid.; 19.2.51.

19. Commentaires, No . 58.

20. Entretiens, 8.1.51.

21. Ibid., 2.9.53.

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SAVITRI: A STUDY IN DEPTH

Book Two: Canto Twelve

THE HEAVENS OF THE IDEAL

THE strong discoverer is always impelled forward by an ideal that

beckons him from afar; he is tired with what is achieved and stung into fresh activity by a glimpse of the unseen; and in his onward journey Aswapathy comes upon a luminous world at every step. The known heights are abandoned for the unknown peaks and in an impassioned fervour he longs for the immortal light; at each pace of the journey is unfolded a wonder, a bliss, forming a rung of the Being's mighty stair; the steps are paved with a jewelled fire, the radiance of a Godhead's soul to lend support and keep alive and immortal the hope of the pilgrim; at either end of each stair, are seen the heavens of the ideal mind; on one side, glimmer in the rapture of the heart's insight, the lovely kingdoms of the deathless Rose, above are the super conscious realms of peace, below the Inconscient's deep abyss and in between and behind all life is the bliss, the delight by which everything is born and everything is sustained.

The spirit of bliss embodying within itself the cosmic beauty and joy is unseen and unguessed by the world steeped in its pre-occupations though it is at the core of everything and has a covert existence; this bud may blossom in the human breast at a mere touch and the whole world may be transformed into a temple or sacred place disclosing a divine presence; in an outburst of ecstasy the devotee may make over his all as an offering to the divine and abandon himself to heavenly felicity; then descends the divine grace on him and the earth, purifying the earth and making it long not for the tinsel but for the gold of heavenly happiness that exists not in objects but in communion with the Eternal; with the access of the heavely grace, the hitherto veiled gods reveal themselves to the passionless mind and every cell of the body is aglow with the spirit; then mind is subjected to a jet of revelations that defy translation into language; then has it, a glimpse of the immortal power creating and sustaining the universe; then there is the enflowering of the inner being and even the transient body is overwhelmed with a tide of happiness.

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There is experienced an emancipation from the tragic hold of time, an elevation, a sublimation of the personal to the universal, the finite to the infinite; all that lies folded up like a bud without full expression, finds its highest blosomming, its fulfillment in these high realms; here our mortal life has but shadowy visits of the golden bliss and the sun-laugh echoed by a gurgling eddy in rivers of God's joy; although the mortal abandons himself to the pleasures and the joys that the embodied can not do without, he hears the flutings of the Infinite, the Godly beckonings; the earth is the soil on which the divine yearnings sprout up, early awakenings visit us; the sun-flowers, the divine upsurge born in him gaze at gold eternity where lasting beatitude obtains; it is only the base of one, a single stem that supports the million lotuses of the worlds culminating in the epiphany of the unseen.

If on one side of the stairs there are the kingdoms Of the deathless Rose or eternal Bliss, on the other side are seen by Aswapathy, the kingdoms of the deathless, unquenchable flame for knowledge soaring high up to reach the eternal; though cramping limitations such as sorrow, ignorance and death close in on human aspiration, it carries on a lone, undaunted fight, making the mind its altar or humanity its temple for its self-sacrifice, for its quest and for its acquisition and dissemination of knowledge; once kindled the flame is inextinguishable and soars beyond the horizon where helped by the ruling deities of the day and the night, it enters, cleansed of all its dross, the chamber, the throne of the Invisible; the worlds of this ascending flame are like so many steps leading to the heights of Truth's grandeur; they are like a standing invitation to the soul to take its flight into the ethereal sublime; the summits bear the flame which is restless; but these peaks rising above the limitations of fate and time point to a mysterious Beyond, the revelation of the Infinite through a God-mind sapphire in colour; there rings a thunder calling on us to overleap our petty selves and rise above the dividing ego; these peaks are too lofty for human reach and defy even the toil put forth in spiritual ecstasy; the forbidding and towering heights demand a sacrifice of all that we cherish and only a draft on the strength supreme lying asleep in us can make us dare scale the heights; the sum-total of truth-knowledge is like a candle dimly lighting the altar of the sun-vast Truth; our morality is of a make-shift flexible nature, an ill-fitting

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apparel for the wooden image of the good; our highest efforts are clouded by an imperfection and our achievements fall so short of the aim that they appear but pale reflections of the ideal. Happy are the worlds which are not afflicted with the indigence characteristic of the human mind; there the supreme might of God has an undiminished expression since it does not depend on the thwarting media of effectuation; in such glory, immortal natures only have their share.

Aswapathy partakes of the glories of these wonder fields but passes on farther without the slightest attachment to their beauty or greatness; this is a world of partial light where single ideas gain predominance, massing all knowledge under their control; each seraph-winged idea makes a bid to reign supreme and alone; each idea shows its insignia of victory and faith to the Traveller; each presents his idea as Truth's intimate front, a key to perfection, a passport to paradise; though there are regions where these ideas meet in perfect amity, they still keep up their separate identity and never show a readiness for immersion in the world's soul; he passes on to a diviner sphere where all these powers forgetting their difference comprise a single multitudinous whole; these radiant children, the powers of the Eternal, dwell united in the Immutable, in the heights above the time and space manifestations.

Canto Thirteen

IN THE SELF OF THE MIND

At last Aswapathy reaches a region of utter silence which listens to the cosmic bustle and responds not to the million calls; this is perhaps the blank or the void experienced by the mind in its trance where the needless questions by the soul elicit no answer; this is the last limit reached by the mind in its journey, the last page in thought; everything is stilled in a blank wordless peace; there he stands on the summit of a hierarchy of worlds, alone with the companionship of his mind-self which puts aside in a corner of its vasts all the stir and sensation of life. The Omnipotent creator, the Self of the mind stands apart, observing unmoved, the activities of the world; it is unaffected by defeats or victories and in a dry dispassionate manner, it observes both the good and the evil keeping its equanimity even when destruction

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takes place; remaining still it is yet the source of all thought and action below; it is the Indweller, the Urge, the Seer and is bare witness of all the movements released with his sanction through his agents or forces. Silence is the seed-bed, the fount of all activity; there in the depths of the quiet is born, the word pregnant with thought which becomes clamant and pressing till it is delivered into act by the mind; from the eternal hush, the status of the Being a potent energy is released and lo! there is the creation arising out of the dual power of the self-aware Being and his energy of Becoming through thought and form.

Aswapathy shares the vastness and stillness of the self, lives in it and becomes one with it; the self is in him and he in the self, the vast is in him and he in the vast; he is lost in a state of self-absorption in witnessing the unfoldment and movements of the drama conceived by himself with foreseeing prophet eyes; he is now overtaken by a stillness where there is no longer any room for any inquiry or separative will since he finds that he is both the mover and the movement, the doer and the deed; he has won the silence and the self and can stay on in peace without desire; then he suddenly sees the luminous touch of a finger on all things signifying that nothing can be known till he reaches That from which all knowledge comes. However keen its probe may be, the mind which is smitten by scepticism, uncertainty and doubt and has its roots in Nescience, can never win the Super-conscient towards which it aspires; all its inferences, deductions taken for granted appear as frauds or drafts on human gullibility.

Ignorance is enthroned as knowledge garbed in its misleading word and robe and knowing its inadequacy it carries on an uneasy reign passing off its tinsel for gold; the labourer mind sees with his defective and dazzled sight, the Reality divided and fragmented as in a split glass; all the ideas that crowd in the mind are like a gathering cloud that spends itself in the sound and fury of a thunder without leaving any result; the mental speculations are like the castles erected in the air; this is a web thrown on by the pulse of life on the universe and withdrawn with its suspension; it ensnares as much of insect food: trivial activity and preoccupation as possible to keep itself busy or engaged; even the puny thoughts that appear attractive when they wing freely, become lifeless, when pressed into rigid forms; the small aims that look so large to a finite mind and even the flashes of imagination

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become pale shadows when caught in the cobwebs of dogmatic beliefs; its certitudes enshrining the Reality collapse back to Nescience like make-shift cottages made of glittering dust and moonshine; there is a mixture of facts symbolising the Reality and fictions growing on them; it is only in the fullness of time when the Reality comes into its own, that the mists of fiction and falsehood melt away; the human mind is something like a museum, a repository of all the curios of antiquated ideas carefully preserved from decay and the ravages of time like mummies; secondly it is an office where in its drawers, the obsolete ideas, deprived of all their spontaneity are packed into neat formulae to serve as ready reference; thirdly it is a stage where the comedy of ignorance is enacted disclosing the wasteful misuse of nature's gifts and the great opportunities lost by humanity.

The world presents itself as the scene of dismal failure; there seems to be no place secure or fertile for the growth of Truth; Reason quits the field since the sleights and turns of her thought and her acrobatics serve little to make the soul a prisoner and since it is constantly assailed and exposed by a beam of light; our highest wisdom is a brillant conjecture of reason and the structure of science are but passing fights on the surface level of the Being; science is nothing but a poor, sense drawn scheme substituted for the eternal mystery, a verbal scrawl figure or plan; existence is deprived of all significance and made to float like a lotus-leaf on a nude pool of cosmic nothingness; the mind is a half-seeing delegate, an intermediary between the soul and the supreme truth, an image not the reality of God. Even the witness self is a pale shadow of the Unknowable and its liberation from the turmoil and the fever of life, a recoil, a rebound from time manifestations; there is peace but not the presence of the divine Mother to gather her children to the bosom of Bliss that is the grain of creation.

Aswapathy realises that the questionings of his soul cannot elicit an answer from the self of the mind; they offer no sure clue, point to no sure road; the mental constructions are like those of an artist fraught with the hues of uncertainty and contradictions; he is wedged between two blanks: a firmament of abstractions above and an abyss of darkness below; a part thought and part prayer, a struggle, a groping for the truth, a movement and unceasing activity—these are the surges rolling over the ocean of life along the coast-line of human

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ignorance; several forces and ideas move like waves on its vast bosom, clash with one another for supremacy and they rise or sink according to their varying fortunes; a bottom of Nought, a mystic void supports the irrational stir and excludes the supernal word; a response to our question is withheld; the spirit isolated from its infinity moves in a world of transient beings and events; it floats between two firmaments of light above and inconscience below; it lives in a world alternating between life and death; it has a futile immortality by a renewed mortality without making much of an advance for it goes round the same cycle of thought and truth continues as ever a sealed book and the only escape from the prison-house of existence seems to be self-extinction.

Y. S. R. CHANDRAN

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HEMINGWAY, ARCH-EXPATRIATE, AND SPAIN

HEMINGWAY

Throughout that life for which the bell has tolled

With rare honesty spoke you for your age.

Chaos, violent and turbulent conflict

You sought, for that evanescent truth, for

A peace which fled you in green waters as

The hollow horns scored and gored at last.

 

Not of the spider and the web you wrote

But the twitchings of the fly. Justice you

Did to these but, as the age, in this web

Were caught, with nothing left but to deepen

The dark. Brave Playboy of the Western World,

Forcefully destroyed, in this, your last farewell,

You still do write your age's epitaph —

While you have found a clean and well lit place?

ERNEST Hemingway is certainly one of America's most celebrated expatriates. Always he was searching for that elusive oasis whether in Paris, his moveable feast, in mercurial Spain, the green hills of Africa, Cuba, or in Sun Valley, Idaho.

At last, aged 61, distorted images of a persecution complex to destroy himself with his own silver-inlaid shot gun.

He knew Spain as well as any expatriate could. Many of us come home to Spain with its superbly grandiose, sunlit sophisticated barbarism, and its cruel skylines stabbing the relentless blue and reaching to its scintillating seas. And we must not forget Carmen. But it is difficult if not impossible to know it all.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is Hemingway's bid for epic fame. It is a fine work, but how accurately does it do justice to the Spanish people? It was published in October, 1940, and by April, 1941, had sold nearly half-a-million copies to become his most popular book, his tour de force.

It offers one of the clearest versions of Hemingway's philosophy,

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of his view of life as an extended moment of insomnia. It supplies too one of the clearest illustrations of his moral frame of reference, as Robert Jordan, the young American abroad, is not so much of an anti-hero this time.

Dedicated to Martha Gellhorn, For Whom the Bell Tolls quoted the English poet, John Donne (1537-1631) from the preceding age of doubt and denial:' ... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.. .'

A critic who has probed this novel as a native is Arturo Barea in his article "Not Spain but Hemingway." (Hemingway and his Critics, Hill & Wang, N.Y.1961, p. 202). He describes it as a book of violence,war, blood and thunder on the Spanish soil and adds that it is heroic, sensational, sensual, lyrical, and honestly anti-fascist without being political. But he says that while it gives Hemingway's own vision well enough, as a book about Spaniards it is unreal and not truthful.

Also Maxwell Geismar thought (in Writers in Crisis, Houghton, Boston, 1942, p.8) there was basic confusion in Hemingway's intention here, that his underlying sense of destruction contradicts a positive statement on life.

In this novel we have one of Hemingway's clearest versions of perhaps his subtlest technical aspect — his treatment of the "fifth dimension", i.e., his treatment of existential nausea, nada, or nothingness as representing life's sum total, the inner core of consciousness adding up to Carlyle's 'Everlasting No' and Shakespeare's 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...'

We see this in Chapter 13 where Robert Jordan is making love to the peasant girl Maria in the mountain meadow where life becomes a passage leading forever nowhere, always to nowhere - not up the hill or Calvary of Evolution to the Promised Land as for the bonafide Romantic as Hemingway exalts his realistic Credo.

Thus emerges the existential core of Hemingway's notion of life as a prolonged moment of insomnia with existence nothingness on a journey to nowhere. It is this philosophy of doubt that made him the expatriate forever seeking in an age seemingly burdened with the curse of the killer.

The book tells of how Robert Jordan, a young liberal American, fighting with a group of Castilian peasants against the fascists, has

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to blow up a bridge on which hinges the outcome of an important battle. He falls in love with Maria and blows up the bridge but circumstances — loose tongues behind the lines — render the action abortive; finally he is maimed by his horse and, having facilitated the escape of his compatriots, in the end, alone, he awaits certain death. This climax is perhaps Hemingway's finest for meaning and suspense, i.e. for high drama.

The book deals with the essence of life's problems for an expatriate for whom the blessings of commercialised industry are not enough. Robert Jordan is not just looking for kicks; he wants an ultimate Reality which provides lasting self-fulfilment. But, like the Flying Dutchman, he is doomed to wander because born into Auden's Age of Anxiety. In this Slough of Despond he cannot see Aristotle's Prime Mover and so the inner spiritual vacuum remains amidst aimless chaos. Robert Jordan, the young liberal abroad, is caught and killed like a rat in a trap.

Very skilfully Hemingway tackles his artistic problem here, which is fraught with difficulties today. He refers to la gloria in Chapter 37, that which is in the CANTE HONDO and in the SAETES, in GRECO and in SAN JUAN de la CRUZ. Hemingway notes that while being no mystic the feeling is nevertheless undeniable. This is his limitation - as a Realist he calls off the hunt before entering the garden or wonderland of mystic insight. This was his downfall, and he was the barometer of his age. But with the equipment of a realistic reporter he lifted his art to the highest possible levels

We see his view of Nature in Chapter 14. There emerges his philosophy of sensationalism as he sees Nature with the keen eyes of a hunter coming close to animals who, caught in a snowstorm, are unafraid. The writing is fine now, taut and self-disciplined complete with repeated words giving the famous Bach-like counterpoint. The belief in the essential loneliness of man is dominant, loneliness is unmotivated chaos. This view of nature evolved in The Old Man and the Sea to the point where Hemingway was communing with Nature and at last feeling if not rationalising its effects.

The trouble is that while this arch-expatriate sees things as they are, he does not see the even deeper harmony, the deeper truth which would bring him religious awareness and a stronger

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moral sense, thus giving him direction and curing the insomnia.

Within this limitation For Whom the Bell Tolls is a magnificent novel. Robert Jordan's values are traditional; he doesn't like to kill, men or animals, and he shows a sense of self-sacrifice rare in current literature. The great thing here is that the existential nihihsm doesn't this time render the art null and void. Robert Jordan's death is not just perpetrated by a malevolent idiot; it is self-sacrifice amidst overtones of Shakespearian waste and this is indeed life. The hero has realised his better Self in the process of dying and so Hemingway comes into accord with the best traditions of all we regard as classical.

So perhaps Maxwell Geismar's accusation of a muddled intention is not well-founded. Hemingway wanted to show something true about life and he has grown since depicting the innane world of riff-raff in The Sun Also Rises or Fiesta (1926); now he feels the disillusioned sense of community of the human predicament even if the escape route was closed as he continued his wanderings

So in this technically advanced novel Hemingway was still growing spiritually. The realisation of social consciousness harnessed to the philosophy of sensationalism deriving from the traditions of such as Walter Pater, which were to get the most out of life in concentrated moments of intensified awareness, is the furthermost reach of this novel.

But Hemingway was an Extranjero — could he be expected to see the whole picture? The novel seems to be authentic, to be the real thing. But the native Spaniard, Arturo Barea says that while some of the conversations are perfect, some are totally un-Spanish; that while Hemingway has understood the emotions of the bull-ring he has failed to tap the real roots, falsifying character for the sake of plot.

There emerges the possibility of a hard streak in Hemingway which may have hindered the achievement of full imaginative vision. As Arturo Barea notes, you can't just look on — you must live and feel what you live. The expatriate experience was being rendered abortive through lack of poetic empathy as well as the endemic death-wish.

Thus we must not look for native understanding nor the deeper insights of spiritual realism. In this the book seems symptomatic

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of the age which conditioned it. Yet, in certain other vital aspects, it does speak for all time — in the loneliness and desire for friendship, in the screeching jungle depths of the alien night, in the longing for the right woman.

In courageously capturing these qualities and in doing justice to them, this arch-expatriate surely found a glimpse again of his lost horizon.

DESMOND TARRANT

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OCCULTISM OF AEONIC SELF-DISCOVERY

(Continued from November 1976)

Avatars. As mentioned in the Gita, Avatars are a descent of the divine into the human form for the upholding of Dharma; but Sri Aurobindo holds that Avatar hood for the mere preservation of Dharma only would. be an otiose phenomenon since he can look to that by his divine omnipotence through ordinary means available such as great men and their movements; the significance of Avatars lies in their showing up to men their potentialities of how they too can become divine; if avatar is the descent, birth of the divine in human form, it should be possible for man to make an ascent : the birth of man into the Godhead, for his rising to divine nature and consciousness.

The process of evolution is a triple one, consisting of a widening of the field followed by an ascent from grade to grade and finally of a transformation of the lower as soon as the higher grade is reached; integration thus involves a lifting up of the lower grades; it is not a straight ascent but an ascent assimilating the descent and forging ahead; in the result it is an ascent-descent; for instance the descent of the higher principle of mind, makes life and matter totally different from what they have been before; the customary view of evolution, an ascent from the lower to the higher grade is compared by Sri Aurobindo to the march of the advanced troops of an army into the enemy territory without maintaining lines of communication; such isolated lifting of a part of nature, leaving the others as they were is from the evolutionary point of view of little significance according to Sri Aurobindo; the individual salvation attained by the sages of yore by detaching themselves from the world is an instance which shows how their individual liberation or higher status of being did not lead to a general uplift of the whole world. Evolution starts from inconscience, and reaches the final goal of knowledge passing through the middle state of ignorance; first it evolves into matter, from matter life and mind evolve, subjecting themselves to the limitations imposed on them by matter even While its substance undergoes considerable modification; when life evolves from matter it is subject to death and when mind

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evolves it is subject to matter and life too; it is clear from this that life and mind are not the creative energy and that they too like matter are intermediaries; there must be some deeper principle that has not revealed itself and that must be sought. It must be a power higher than any of these principles, a consciousness higher than the mind or life, an energy higher than the material energy; it should be the power of the spirit; and its complete emergence should lead to the conversion of the whole being, the planting of the gnostic consciousness and a change from the mental to the supramental being.

Besides this upward evolution consisting of the ascent and the downward involved in the integration, there is an inward evolution; the evolution so far spoken of is cosmic; but it is as much individual as it is cosmic and this consists of the development of the soul which is no bigger than the man's thumb; the individual has within himself a persistent reality, a witness soul, a Purusha, a portion of the eternal spirit, upholding the personality through all the changes. To work out his cosmic, relations with the Supreme Spirit, the individual Purusha has to assume a body; the assumption of the body is what is called birth; birth is an essential condition in the progressive development of Purusha towards unity with God and birth can not be treated as an isolated phenomenon without a past and future; the past is the seed of the future; the progressive evolution of the spirit in the cosmos has its counterpart in the individual soul through different births; rebirth is the sole machinery for such an evolution and without it birth would be an initial step without a sequel, the starting of a journey without further steps and arrival.

The soul or the psyche is the inner or the hidden part of our being which remains imperishable though other parts of our being change and perish; this psychic entity is the pure flame which remains untarnished by the impurities of our being; it is the permanent being that employs the instruments of the being, mind, life and the body remaining unaffected by their operations; the first ' step needed in the psychicisation is the removal of the veil separating the inner being and flooding the whole being with its light; occasionally we have glimpses of that inner being in the form of finer feelings of the true and the beautiful and we are in the habit of referring to a man having such finer susceptibilities as the man

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having a soul; this psychic entity evolves in us by the strength it develops to assert itself in our surface consciousness; this has a more rapid development when a man brings it to the fore to take control over his life, body and mind.

But a mere ascent into the higher reaches of consciousness does not bring about a permanent transformation of our being; it may give us a vision of the infinity, of the boundless light, but it fades away all too soon; even if it were to be recalled at will, it can only be a partial return. The flowering of our psychic being will not lead to a total transformation of our terrestrial existence; it is only with the descent of the higher consciousness that there can be a raising of the level of our being; it is only then that there can be an abiding spiritual sense and an awareness of the infinite and the eternal, then in all sights and forms one sees the Eternal.

'Earth's crammed with heaven ;

And every common bush afire with God'

 

'The world is charged with the grandeur of God'

 

'... see a world in a grain of sand,

And a Heaven in a wild flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,

And Eternity in an hour.'

This spiritual change will not take us to the highest stage unless there supervenes a final transformation, the supramental change unless there is the descent of the Supermind; the long process of evolution may take us to a stage of over mentalisation; it may lead us to the outskirts of the Supermind; it may make possible the emergence of a superior race of beings who act by an intuitive understanding; but all this is an imperfect superior mentalisation and Sri Aurobindo says that 'for a real transformation there must be a direct and unveiled intervention from above; there would be necessary too a total submission and surrender of the lower consciousness...' If the field is not ready to receive the higher light it may withdraw and the gradual psychicisation of our being and the gradual spiritualisation of our nature in the light of the higher reaches to the Over mind are in the

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way of preparation of the field for the descent of the Supermind: such a descent leads to the real participation of the individual in the workings of the universal consciousness-force; then the universal energy not only would work through him but the individual also would work through it; what is vital for such transformation is that it is not enough for the Purusha to consent to the supramental change but there should be a concurrent assent on the part of nature; the evolution from matter to life has taken several aeons; from life it has been quick and that from mind has been much more rapid and when it takes place from spiritual change, there may be a more quickened pace; the descent of the Supermind brings about a transformation of nature and a birth of the Gnostic beings.

Gnostic Being. Even after the emergence of the Supermind, Evolution does not stop, for there are still higher principles such as Bliss, Consciousness-Force and the pure Existent; but when the Supermind is reached, there will be a radical change in the character of evolution; the transformation will be henceforth effected through knowledge and not through ignorance; the gnostic being would be guided by the light of knowledge. It is difficult to convey an adequate description of the supramental being by the usual phraseology of the mental categories; even Bradley speaks of the difficulty of presenting the Absolute in precise terms of the intellect; it is only at best a vague outline that can be attempted. At the stage of inconscience and ignorance there is the push from below and the pull from above; a surface self is formed by the drive coming from below and the influence from above; but this veil between the surface and the subliminal has to disappear before the advent of the Supermind; after the emergence of the supermind the sway of inconscience will be replaced by that of super conscience. In the gnostic consciousness there will be a greater play of intuition, but there will be an infinite diversity in the manifestation of the gnostic consciousness; the gnostic individual would be in the world and of the world; though individual he will be universal, quite free from the separative ego; there will be an awareness and harmony of his self with the total self and his action will be in unison with the total action and his will with the total will. He will have the cosmic consciousness and feel himself in the Self and the Self in himself; everything felt, heard and seen are apprehended as if they are taking place within his infinite self; he has no other aim

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than the delight of being; he has no wants or desires to struggle for achievement; there is no discovery of the Unknown for him and there is only an attempt to manifest or bring out of the known; his body becomes the instrument for the effectuations of the Spirit. The dawn of this higher consciousness does not lead to the rejection of the material nature since in the first place due to its communion with the Spirit, matter itself undergoes a transformation and in the next, he sees matter also to be the Brahman. About the existence of pain and suffering, Sri Aurobindo says that even in the higher spiritual nature a spirit of equanimity is developed towards them and that at the higher over mental stage, a power intervenes that converts the vibration of pain into those of Ananda and that in the gnostic stage everything ugly and miserable will be seen as expressions of Ananda.

The Divine Life. There is the apparent man and the real man, the outer life and the inner and it is the latter that gives the true significance to life; all the instrumentation of life is built up by the spirit within; they are the means that are to be used for a purpose; it is not the world that creates us but it is we that create the world; it is the inner life that is of utmost importance since everything else is but its outward expression; if we reflect it becomes clear that there is something within, an occult idea of perfection, that is ever pushing us, making us restless, to express itself through our instrumentation in some visible external form or image; it is on the perfection of this inner life that man should first concentrate for unless that is perfected, a perfect human world cannot be created; therefore the first charge of man should be to become his inner self and not the surface being; the indwelling divinity must be brought out; otherwise there can be no divine life in the outer expression. He should live not in a partial but the whole consciousness of his being, with its integral and intrinsic force; he should have the full delight of being; and he should live universally and not in the separative, surface, ego personality; an inner life thus lived brings him into an intimate knowledge of other selves. Though there is a lot of diversity in the different gnostic communities, there will be a perfect harmony because of a single consciousness-force actuating and uniting them; the tolerance and the unity that prevail in the gnostic community is different from the the uniformity brought about by the mechanisation and the standardisation of the totalitarian communities; the unity that comes in

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human life by the exchange of ideas through language, is achieved in gnostic life through a self-aware spirituality: since the gnostic being is the instrument of the divine will and egoless, there need not be a ban on the new powers that they may develop in the course of their gnostic consciousness or mystic experience since they will not be abused but used for the benefit of the gnostic community. There is a clash between individualism and collectivism and humanity is divided into hostile camps with powerful champions on either side and the war carried on between them is inconclusive; one side holds that the individual is the core of the entire system and that society is but the field of his activity and the other says that the individual is but a cell of the greater organism and that without it he has no existence and therefore he should exist for the collective; it is through this evolutionary crisis that the human race is passing and Sri Aurobindo says that a system of civilisation too big for the limited mental capacity of man is built up, that he has now a too dangerous a servant in science, for his blundering ego, and that the many potencies that science has placed at his disposal may be disastrously used by the individual or the collective ego for he has nothing universal in the light of his knowledge.

There is no philosopher who comes near Sri Aurobindo in comprehensiveness of outlook; Plato and Hegel in the west and Shankara in the east bear some comparison with him but he outpaces them in the completeness and the architectonic of his philosophy; he is the first to visualise the lower trinity with a plus of the spirit working together like a harmonious team in the world and to assert that not by annulment of negation of the lower but by a transformation in the light of the Higher that here and now on this earth, could the Spirit achieve a liberation; Hegel contemplates the Absolute Idea marching unconsciously through Nature and consciously through History but is not able to envisage the possibility of the Absolute descending to the nether regions, and of man continuing his life in Nature and relations with fellowmen and receiving the blessing of the Supreme; but it is Sri Aurobindo who says that it is not only possible but certain for man to become a Divine man: for Shankara, salvation could only be possible for individuals by cutting off all ties with body, life and mind and the world; he could not think of the possibility of the transformation of the whole nature of man, much less of the uplift of the world;

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but Sri Aurobindo not only thinks of the Divine man but the birth of a race of gnostic beings; though he differs radically from the well-organised body of the philosophical thought of his country, he is at complete accord with the spirit of the ancient scriptures such as the Veda and the Upanishads which express profound faith in the destiny of man and the significance of the terrestrial life, sometimes saying that even gods have to be born on earth to achieve complete redemption and that the birth on the earth is a gift, an opportunity. Sri Aurobindo differs from the traditional view of the west on evolution, that it is merely an upward ascent; if it is merely an ascent it would lead to a lop-sided development leaving the other members to languish or stagnate; it should be an ascent preceded by a consolidation in the sense of assimilation or integration, since otherwise the one sided development leads to a disintegration of the being in the part flooded in light separating itself from the rest; evolution is not only upward and downward for integration but also inward for psychicisation or spiritualisation; there is within each of us a divine spark, the soul; in the course of evolution there should be the growth of the psychic entity in the sense of removing the veil and allowing its light to progressively illumine the inner life and through it the outer being.

'In Sri Aurobindo's philosophy the traditional Indian view of cyclical change has given place to the western theory of evolution, but this has been linked up with the idea of spiritual involution' says Iyengar.¹

Resemblances of a distant nature are found in the gnostic system associated with Gurdjieff and Ouspensky; but Enneagram seems more an intellectual tour de force than one based upon a genuine spiritual experience; while Sri Aurobindo's Supermind sees the universe and its contents as itself in a single indivisible act of knowledge the insight of Ouspensky and Gurdjeiff reverses the entire process of knowledge, makes the analytical intellect replace the spiritual intuition, begins from material existence and climbs upward. But Teilhard and Sri Aurobindo see the earth history and the human history in terms of evolution culminating in the divinisation of man; Teilhard also like Sri Aurobindo takes the problem of evil and the human suffering to be inseparable and un-

¹ K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo,

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avoidable from the process of evolution; if Sri Aurobindo draws from the Gita and the Upanishads Teilhard leans for support on St. Paul's utterances and the Sermon on the Mount; Teilhard speaks of the goal of evolution as the Cosmic Christ which is the same as Sachchidananda of Sri Aurobindo; the difference however is there is no place for sin in Sri Aurobindo's system; further according to Sri Aurobindo, Christ may be an avatar but is not the only incarnation; according to Professor R. C. Zachner¹ 'Vedanta-Marxism-Christianity. In this at least Teilhard and Sri Aurobindo agree : these, they think, are the only possible alternatives before mankind, — the three 'religions' of modern man.'

Charles A. Moore says about Life Divine 'This then is the true wisdom of the Indian mind. It is truly comprehensive. It includes the insights of the East and the insights of the West. It combines their respective unique emphases.' Dorothy Richardson the English Novelist after reading the Life Divine says, 'Has there ever existed a more synthetic consciousness than that of Sri Aurobindo? Unifying he is to the limit of the term.'

Y. S. R. CHANDRAN

¹ Ibid., p. 792.

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THE IDEAL OF AN OUTLINE

An Outline

Chapter 16

THE PROBLEM OF UNIFORMITY AND LIBERTY

THE unification of mankind through political and administrative means and by political and economic motives is not only possible but seems to be inevitable. It is the logical consequence of our past history; and the present tendencies of thought as well as current events point in this direction. But the process is not likely to be either rapid or painless, nor can one predict its sure or eventual success. The unification is not likely to be attempted in an ideal manner that might make for its enduring success, until perhaps much later in our collective advance, that is to say, on the basis of a federation of free and equal nations, or on lines which might ensure a perfect harmony between the contending claims of nationalism and internationalism.

The collective national egoisms that stand in the way may conceivably be overborne by the increasing flood of the unifying tendency that was visible during and after the first World War. The question we have to consider is : what will be the effects of a rigorous form of political and administrative unification on the progress of the race and the springs of human action.

In the evolution of the nation-unit, there has always been a period of constriction and the suppression of the principle of liberty. Such is likely to be the case here, whether the means adopted were the domination of the world by one "fit" empire, nation or race, by two or three great imperial nations, or else by a closely organised united Europe holding under its tutelage for an indefinite period the darker coloured races, in the interests of "civilisation".

The idea of a dominant West claiming such manner of tutelage is now practically out of existence. But whatever agency takes in

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hand the work of unification, its method would -rest on force and would diminish or even abolish, first by violence and then by law, any velocities of freedom within the subject peoples. This would lead to a destruction of the principle of liberty within the dominant nation, by a sort of recoil of Karma.

This would be a step backward in the progress of the race.

Even if the unification were effected by a combination of free nations and of empires and those empires were to become psychological realities and therefore free organisms, or if the union rested on free national or cultural groupings, the danger of retrogression though minimised would still remain. For, the principle of uniformity and order is the natural tendency in a period of unification, and every tendency seeks to over assert itself in the hour of its growth, and tramples upon other principles that are opposed to it.

The struggle of order and uniformity against liberty has been the dominant fact of all great human formations, religious, social, political. There is no reason to suppose that man remaining the irrational creature that he still is in most respects, things will be very different in the future. The old struggle will be renewed in the attempt at human unity. Both individual and national liberties are likely to disappear in the process, under the burden of laws and restrictions.

This might not happen if the spirit of individual liberty within the nations themselves were to continue in its old vigour. But the present tendency is for the State idea to triumph and condemn to a temporary eclipse the idea of individual liberty. And so, the unifying process is likely to coincide with a simultaneous process of constriction and mechanisation within the nations themselves. The only hope of a healthy progress would lie in a new and powerful intellectual or spiritual movement that could reconcile the liberty of the individual and the group-unit with the collective ideal of a communal life and more united life for the human race.

Meanwhile, we can try to throw some light on the darkness

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of the future, in the light of past experience and the general principles of life and nature and sociology, on some of the problems that arise. The future is full of incalculable possibilities. We can foresee nothing and can only speculate and lay down principles.

We can see that there are always two extreme possibilities, with a number of possible compromises.

What will happen to the nation-idea in such conditions? Will the nation-unit survive?

It is at present the firm group-unit to which all other units, even the imperial, tend to subordinate themselves; the empires serve merely to aggrandise the vanity, ambition and power of the imperial nations. Group-units there must always be in any form of human unification, for that is the very principle of human nature, fife and of every kind of aggregation. But the nation, as it is, need not be that group-unit. The nation may in fact disappear altogether with a renewed growth of the sans patrie idea in future. Or, it may persist and reassert its vigorous particularise within the larger unity. Or it may decline in vitality and persist only as a convenient unit of administration, but still preserving a sufficient vitality to be able to dissolve in the long run any form of human unity which is found to be more mechanical than real.

What happens to the ideal of uniformity?

The uniformity of mankind is not an impossible dream, even though at present unrealisable. There has been an immense drive towards a uniformity of life-habits, uniformity of knowledge, uniformity political, social, economical, educational, and this if continued would lead to a uniformity of culture. The difference of language might act as a barrier. But the general uniformity of culture and an intimate association would give strength to the need already being felt of a universal language. And this might wipe out the regional tongues, as Latin once did in Europe.

On the other hand, owing to a growth of subjectivism, there is a revival nowadays of the principle of free variation and refusal of uniformity. If this tendency triumphs, the free culture, thought and life of the constituent units will have to be respected in any

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scheme of human unification. A third possibility is that a dominant uniformity may permit or even encourage variations. These may be vital within their limits, forceful, particularist; or they may be quite minor yet sufficient to start the dissolution of uniformity into a new cycle of various progress.

Through what form of external organisation is the unification of the race likely to develop?

It may be a rigid regimentadon under a central authority, as is envisaged by certain lines of socialistic thought. This would mean the suppression of all individual and regional liberty, in every department of human activity. The growth of Science with its capacity for an easy manipulation and control of huge masses and over enormous distances, and the rapid march of Socialism might make this less impossible than it seems. On the other hand it is quite possible that the socialist phase of human development may prove to be of short duration, like the monarchist regime in modern Europe.

There may be a violent struggle between the principle of regimentation and the principle of liberty; and this might be followed by a regime inspired by the gospel of philosophic Anarchism, basing unity on the completest freedom for the individual and the freedom of natural unforced grouping. A compromise is also possible : a dominant regimentation with a subordinate freedom more or less vital, which may yet become the starting point for the dissolution of the autocratic regime. This may begin a fresh cycle of search and experiment.

The problem is vast and obscure. To throw out certain ideas which may guide us in our approach may help diminish its difficulty. But it is impossible to consider here the larger questions with any thoroughness.

(To be continued)

SANAT K. BANERJI

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REVIEW

Guidance From Sri Aurobindo : Letters to a young disciple, Volume II, by Nagin Doshi, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry 1976.

1935 and Nagin Doshi was about I8 years old in his third year at Sri Aurobindo's Ashram. These are the questions and statements bearing on Sadhana which he put to Sri Aurobindo, and Sri Aurobindo's comments and answers. Many of the exchanges have been published from time to time in the Ashram journal Mother India, but in this series they are conveniently gathered together for the first time.

This is the second volume and has fewer questions and answers of a general nature than the first (containing the letters of 1933 and I934). There is less philosophy and theory; Nagin is given less to speculation and mental inquisitiveness, and indeed, we learn that this was a tendency which Sri Aurobindo was discouraging in him. Instead, here are questions .of a very practical kind-about Nagin's own Sadhana, his problems and difficulties, his feelings and experiences, his realisations and Sri Aurobindo, the guide, brief and very much to the point :- Nagin: "Even a simple aspiration is not easy - could you kindly point out some active means to overcome the present difficulty?" Sri Aurobindo: "What do you mean by active means? The power to refuse, to reject is always there in the being and to go on rejecting till the rejection is effective." And a question of another kind: "Is not the Mother far above what we feel as experience?" The answer: "The Mother is not an "experience", she is the Being and the Consciousness and the Power that contain the experience." Much of the beauty of the book lies in this simplicity and directness of expression.

The letters are grouped according to their content under broad, descriptive, subject headings. Many of these in turn are broken down into smaller ones. Thus the section "The True Yogic Consciousness" is sub-divided "Detachment and Liberation", "The Inmost Silence" and "Two Fires". One can readily find the letters bearing on a particular topic and this arrangement determines the immediate appeal and importance of the book — as a reference work, a very valuable guide and source of information on aspects of the Yoga.

But it is much more. For not only Sri Aurobindo's letters, but Nagin's also are published in full, and through the expression of his

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difficulties and triumphs, his joy and sorrow, his growth in the Yoga, through his love for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother (and theirs for him), he is brought very near to us. There is in this book a personal element which is keen and alluring, and particularly so because Nagin is yet amongst us. And our interest is stimulated by some admirable editing on his part much helped by Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet and K. D. Sethna. An introduction which sets the scene — he first visited the Ashram "for the sake of making a nice long journey...", then returned home, but only for two days. "...I hurried back here (the Ashram) with the full realisation that I could not live, either happily or unhappily, without the Mother and Sri Aurobindo." Then there are a number of interesting prefaces to certain sections, and an occasional footnote to the text. Written in retrospect, in the larger perspective that time allows, all this is illuminating — after the exchanges about his sciatica, he notes that the illness was not cured for 3 years by which time he had despaired of all medicines and stopped attending to it. And then: "I realised that to turn the consciousness away from all concern about disease and living just in the faith that the Mother could take care of everything, was more effectual than even offering it to the Mother by a remembrance of the disease."

Many of Nagin's letters are not questions, but statements and we learn that his was in fact the higher knowledge that he was receiving from the Mother, although not at first consciously, and that the letters were the means of transcribing what was received and of having it verified by Sri Aurobindo. In this way direct intuitive knowledge came to Nagin, and some of the most beautiful, heart-melting passages are the truths he formulated from this consciousness about the Mother and her working.

Unfortunately we cannot follow the close chronology of the spiritual journey because the letters are now arranged first by subject rather than by date. Indeed, none of the letters are dated and one does sometimes wonder how much time elapsed between exchanges, or which topics were concurrendy to the fore. Also, the subject arrangement is such, that, reading the book through (rather than simply consulting it), we encounter the 'darker' side of sadhana first and in some density. It is only later that we open onto the light and beauty of "The Psychic Being", "Love", "Higher Planes of Consciousness" and much more. To form an impression of the book

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from this early (or any single) portion is incautious; we must read the whole before we can approach a true appreciation.

A reference guide, a personal journey and then also something of historical importance. For this was 1935 when the general sadhana of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga descended into the physical, and it was to go still lower. The book records the effect this descent had on one sadhak in particular and how it was dealt with. But there are also glimpses of other sadhaks and the Ashram at large, particularly in the section "General Sadhana." Nagin writes "A sadhak brings me the news that some sadhaks like Pavitra and Anilbaran live constantly on the intuitive plane." The reply: "I am not aware that they or anybody lives constantly on the intuitive plane. All are at grips with the difficulties of the physical consciousness at present though of course to one like Anilbaran the suggestion of revolt cannot come - at least it has never done so up to now."

The format of the book is pleasing — pocket-sized with an Ashram-grey, stiff-paper cover. And quite substantial — nearly 300 pages of small, neat print. There are no illustrations; may be this is why the price is low, at Rupees fifteen.

I feel there is much of value here — new insights into well-documented aspects of the Yoga, and direct light on unfamiliar ones. One closes the book with a sense of wonder...wonder at the intensity of the Yoga at the time, at the devotion and resolution of Nagin, at what the Mother and Sri Aurobindo achieved in him; one wonders at their Love and Solicitude, at their particular Guidance. And the time factor — it happened more than forty years ago, historical value, yes, but here are living truths which glow through the pages from some eternal source. And then the question: if Nagin was there then, with those experiences and realisations, where might he be now? If all that happened in one year, what's happened in the forty since, to where have the Mother and Sri Aurobindo brought him (and others of similar 'vintage')? One wonders, and perhaps will never know or understand mentally. One can only aspire that the Yoga may bring one to an appreciation through actual experience, and for this, the book is a source of huge encouragement. A third volume in the series is promised; may it be a similar fount of light and inspiration.

ROBERT ORTON

16-1-77

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The ADVENT

Vol. I No. 1                                          February 1944

A Quarterly

devoted to the exposition of

Sri Aurobindo's Vision of the Future

Editor:

R. VAIDYANATHASWAMY, D.sc.

Publisher:

SRI AUROBINDO LIBRARY, MADRAS

[In response to the requests of readers for a reprint of the old numbers of the Advent, we have been serialising the old issues by reproducing them part by part from February 1977

THE CREATIVE VISION OF SRI AUROBINDO

SRI Aurobindo has seen in his unique Yogic vision that humanity is proceeding towards a divine realisation on the earth through a progressive evolution. That realisation will come by the power of the divine Truth, and that Truth will itself determine the nature of its own manifestation. It is not possible to give an exact account of that realisation beforehand. Still whatever general ideas the human intelligence can form about it have been expressed by Sri Aurobindo in his books, especially in his magnum opus, The Life Divine. And he is not content with giving a highly illuminating and inspiring philosophical account of the thing; he has ascertained by Yogic means what man will actually have to do in order to attain the goal and has been preparing the conditions under which the Truth can manifest. That is the real work in which Sri Aurobindo is at present engaged; it cannot be expected that until the ideal he has foreseen takes a concrete shape, people in general will be able to understand its significance or proceed eagerly to accept or welcome it. Still there are people all over the world today who are awakening to this ideal of future realisation and are feeling the inner call to undertake the requisite discipline and sadhana. This journal is started with the object of giving them some help in understanding the ideal and the path of Sri Aurobindo.

The ideal which the modern mind has understood very well is the rationalisation of life, "an ideal material organisation of civilisation and comfort, the use of reason and science and education for the generalisation of a utilitarian rationality which will make the individual a perfected social being in a perfected economic society". This rationalistic ideal, however, is not so modern as it is supposed to be. Rousseau and other rationalists of the eighteenth century in Europe brought about the French Revolution following this very ideal; but whatever might have been its other results, it certainly did not lead to the formation of an ideal order of society. The later attempt of the Marxists on the same lines has led no doubt to a new order of social organisation in Russia, but there has not been any fundamental change or improvement in the condition of men ; in some important respects, as in the matter of individual freedom, there has been a definite deterioration ; and Soviet Russia is already being compelled to give up one by one the fundamental tenets of Marxism, even its opposition to

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religion and spirituality. In ancient times, essentially the same rationalistic ideal was followed by the Greeks — the ideal of perfecting human life and human society with the help of the intellect. But ancient India could not accept this ideal as the highest for mankind. The ideal of India was very well expressed in the famous words of Maitreyi, "What shall I do with anything that will not lead me to Immortality?" Human nature is many-sided and very complex; man has a body, a vital, a mind and each of these has its own claims and needs. Only the barbarian can remain satisfied with the well-being of the body and satisfaction of vital desires; man is chiefly a mental being and his mind erects the ideals of the True, the Good, the Beautiful — man's humanity really consists in the pursuit of these ideals for their own sake. But it is found that these mental ideals do not accord with the claims and demands of the body and the life of man; again the conflict between his body and his life also is considerable. That is really why human life is full of so many conflicts and contradictions; through the ages, all attempts of man to erect an ideal order of society have broken down again and again on account of these inherent conflicts in human nature. The desire for possession, domination, exploitation is inherent in the vital nature of man, and even the most satisfactory economic condition that any social scheme can bring about will not appease these hungers in man; even the very peace and security prevailing in the world will be found monotonous and boring and the vital nature will seek for new adventures leading to social conflicts and international wars. The intellectual reason of man has not the power to establish a harmony among these discordant elements and lead them to their true fulfilment; that can be done only by a spiritual consciousness which is greater and higher than the mind, yo buddheh paratastu sah:

"Mind and life themselves cannot grow into their fullness except by the opening up of the larger and greater consciousness to which mind only approaches. Such a larger and greater consciousness is the spiritual, for the spiritual consciousness is not only higher than the rest but more embracing. Universal as well as transcendent, it can take up mind and life into its light and give them the true and utmost realisation of all for which they are seeking; for it has a greater instrumentality of knowledge, a fountain of deeper power and will, an unlimited reach and intensity

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of love and joy and beauty. These are the things for which our mind, life and body are seeking, knowledge, power and joy, and to reject that by which all these arrive at their utmost plenitude is to shut them out from their own highest consummation." (The Life Divine, Vol. II, p. 586.)

Intellectual knowledge and mental will are not all the instruments of our consciousness and energy; we have other powers which it is the aim of Nature in us to discover and actualise.

"All man's age-long effort, his action, society, art, ethics, science, religion, all the manifold activities by which he expresses and increases his mental, vital, physical, spiritual existence, are episodes in the vast drama of this endeavour of nature and have behind their limited apparent aims no other true sense or foundation. For the individual to arrive at the divine universality and supreme infinity, live in it, possess it, to be, know, feel and express that alone in all his being, consciousness, energy, delight of being is what the ancient seers of the Veda meant by the knowledge; that was the immortality which they set before man as his divine culmination." (L. D. Vol. II, p. 597.)

The rationalists of modern Europe wanted to eliminate religion from life as being an obstacle to the progress of humanity. They erected a rationalistic religion of humanity, the service of man as man, the observance of moral and social rules conducive to the welfare of human life on the earth; they made it a substitute for traditional religion, and it must be admitted that this has done much good to mankind. But this very rationalistic attitude brought about a subjective chaos, and specially after the last devastating European war,

"all received values were overthrown and all firm ground seemed to disappear from its social organisation, its conduct and its culture."

That arch high-brow of Modernism, Aldous Huxley, brought forward a thesis in his writings that whatever a man does, good or bad, virtuous or sinful, can be defended by reason, and a philosophical system can be erected in its support. A practical illustration is found in Hitler's Mein Kamf which is a direct negation of all the ideals of humanism erected into a philosophical system. A society which rejects spiritual values cannot bring forth a better and higher order of human life simply by giving encouragement to Science and Art in the name of

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culture; in such a society Science will be used as a means of fulfilling the so-called natural and evolutionary laws such as "the survival of the fittest" and "the rule of the Herrenvolk", and Art will be made to pamper to the lowest passions in man thus giving a new force and ascendance to his lower nature and that will really be an evolutionary retrogression.

"This conscious stress on the material and economic life was in fact a civilised reversion to the first state of man, his early barbaric state and its preoccupation with life and matter, a spiritual retrogression with the resources of the mind of a developed humanity and a fully evolved Science at his disposal. As an element in the total complexity of human life this stress on a perfected economic and material existence has its place in the whole: as a sole or predominant stress it is for humanity itself, for the evolution itself full of danger." (L. D. Vol. II p. 1158.) Today the world has arrived at a great crisis. It has to be decided whether man with all his scientific knowledge and power would go back to the barbaric condition or would find and follow the true path of progress and development. If at this crucial hour humanity makes a wrong choice, the whole race may even be wiped out from the face of the earth as being an evolutionary failure, and Nature may start her experiment on some other planet in some other solar system of which recent scientific research is already giving us glimpses. Man has not yet attained the qualities of the head and heart which alone can give him the fitness and the capacity to make a proper use of the great power which has been put into his hands by Science for preparing the material conditions of a truly spiritual and divine life on the earth. Men are getting inspiration from within to accomplish something great and on a grand scale; but on account of spiritual ignorance, they are unable to ascertain what that great thing is, and blindly impelled by egoism they are rushing into world struggles to conquer and rule over the whole earth. Science has turned the human race into one unit. One country, one nation, one culture - that is really the goal towards which all the endeavour of Nature is tending; within that world union, there will be unimpeded freedom for the individual as well as the group to develop in their own way thus manifesting variety within a grand world symphony. But the present mind, life and body of man are so weak, ignorant, small, narrow, unregenerate

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that with these assets he cannot grasp or accept this great ideal of unity in diversity and proceed to realise it in actual life. For this it is necessary to discover the soul, the self, the one divine Reality lying concealed in all human beings behind their outward body, life and mind, to regard these as instruments of the self-expression of that inner Reality and to shape and transform these instruments with its spiritual light and power. Then will man find in this mortal body a divine life, the immortal will be founded in the mortal as the Vedas say; in that truly higher order of life all the conflicts will be ultimately solved and all the desires and aspirations of man will find their utmost fulfilment.

"A search for a perfected economic society and the democratic cults of the average man are all that the modern mind presents us in this crisis as a light for its solution. Whatever the truth supporting these ideas, this is clearly not enough to meet the need of a humanity which is missioned to evolve beyond itself or, at any rate, if it is to live, must evolve far beyond anything that it at present is. A life-instinct in the race and in the average man himself has felt the inadequacy and has been driving towards a reversal of values and a transfer of life to a new foundation" (L. D. 1164)

Education and propaganda, it is supposed, would induce men to give up violence and learn to love each other. But experience shows that education can only give a knowledge of things, it cannot bring about any radical change in nature. Unity, equality, co-operation — all these things are needed for the well-being of society; so attempts are being made to suppress all competition and clash of egos by a rigorous social organisation. But under such a regime society will turn into a machine, and the individual will not find the needed freedom and scope for its own development, and that is not the way for the solution of the problems of life.

"The individual is indeed the key of the evolutionary movement ; for it is the individual who finds himself, who becomes conscious of the Reality. The movement of the collectivity is a largely subconscious mass movement; it has to formulate and express itself through the individuals to become conscious: its general mass consciousness is always less evolved than the consciousness of its most developed individuals, and it progresses in so far as it accepts their impress or develops what they develop.

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The individual does not owe his ultimate allegiance either to the State which is a machine or to the community which is a part of life and not the whole of life; his allegiance must be to the Truth, the Self, the Spirit, the Divine which is in him and in all; not to subordinate or lose himself in the mass, but to find and express that truth of being in himself and help the community and humanity in its seeking for its own truth and fullness of being must be his real object of existence." (L. D. p. 1154).

A religious movement alone, it is suggested, can save man from the mechanical oppression of a regimented society, at the same time strengthening the social and communal feelings which would ensure an equitable social order. If the religious sense is awakened in man, if man follows the right path following the dictates of religion, each one keeping to his own right course, Svadharma, there can be no conflict between men and men, nations and nations. But experience has amply shown that religion also is defeated by the ignorance and egoism inherent in human nature. The tendency to aggrandise oneself at the expense of others, which is still very strong in man, has exploited religion for its own purpose. Thus though religion may have helped. some individuals here and there to grow spiritually, it has not been able to raise society to a higher level. The problem that confronts humanity today cannot be really solved by the usual type of religious, political, social or educational movement - all these human activities have to be taken up into a new integral vision and totally transformed. What is needed is an integral transformation by which divine light, peace, power, love, and joy and beauty may be established in human life. In the words of Sri Aurobindo,

"A total spiritual direction given to the whole of life and the whole nature can alone lift humanity beyond itself." But what hope is there in the world that we are witnessing today that such an integral spiritual uplift or transformation of human fife would be possible in the near future? Even if that be not possible now, there is no other way; for it is idle to hope that human nature will continue essentially to be what it is now and yet a New Order can be ushered in simply by effecting some external changes and reorganisation in the outward modes of life. But the change of human nature that is needed is nothing so impossible or remote, for that which is to be developed is already there within our being — it has not to

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be acquired or brought from outside or from a distance. The difference between the sleeping state of man and his waking state is very great, but it does not take much time to go from one to the other. What is needed is to awaken to the soul that is within us and to remould our external life and nature with the light and power of that inner Divinity. Nature through her long evolutionary course has been preparing man for this consummation; all the crises that occurred in human history have advanced mankind some distance towards that goal. But the crisis that has now come upon us has no parallel in history, and the realisation that it promises to man also has no parallel. In order to actualise and make it true in life what is required is that a certain number of men and women should have a vision of this change, a realisation of its urgent need, an indomitable faith in its possibility and a firm resolution to fulfil all the conditions necessary for its effectuation. It is not that this tendency has not already appeared in the human race; there is a growing realisation all over the world that there is no deliverance for mankind without spirituality. And once this aspiration becomes fixed and strong in man, Nature's evolutionary effort will be easier and there will inevitably be a response from the Divine Bower above.

The attempt to attain spiritual life by organising Ashram and monasteries have been made in the past; but that attempt has been for the individual salvation of world-shunning saints and sannyasis, the aim of that has been other-worldly, and not the bringing down of a new spiritual power on the earth by which this earthly life can be transformed and divinised. Attempt for social uplift has been made by organised religion and various kinds of idealisms; but the lower egoistic nature of man has again and again frustrated all such attempts at building up of a New Order of human life. No mental idealism or partial spiritual endeavour can overcome altogether the obstacles inherent in human nature. What is needed is the transcendence of this nature altogether, and finding a new mould of life in a super nature. There are no doubt many difficulties in the realisation of such an ideal, but if Nature has become ready for such an evolutionary ascent and the Divine Power descends on the earth for effecting such an uplift, all difficulties and obstacles will be overcome. The unique sadhana of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother has created this sublime possibility.

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The objection will be raised that the world has always been what it is now, that the laws of Nature are un surmountable and that what man has become by Nature cannot be transcended, and he can never be a superman or god; Krishna, Buddha, Christ, Muhammad came, they brought the divine message to humanity, but man continues essentially to be the same as ever. The History of mankind no doubt gives some support to such a view; but if we take a deeper and a wider view, we shall find that though some broad principles of Nature remain unchanged and are fundamental, the forms that evolve on the basis of these principles have constantly changed giving rise to ever new forms. Our earth has not always been what it is now; even this vast universe with all its stars and galaxies have not always been there. According to modern Science, that which was at the beginning of creation could not be called a universe or a world — that had no definite form; there were no luminous bodies like the suns and the stars, so there was no light; in that inconceivable, unimaginable darkness, minute particles of electricity were moving about apparently at random. The universe we now see with our earth stirring in a corner, teeming with living beings of which man is the highest, has been the result of a very long process of evolution and change in the course of which many apparently unexpected and abnormal things have happened — things quite out of the usual way of Nature. Giving an outline of evolution leading to the advent of man on the earth, Sir A. S. Eddington writes:

"Looking back through the long past we picture the beginning of the world — a primeval chaos which time has fashioned into the universe that we know. Its vastness appals the mind; space boundless though not infinite, according to the strange doctrines of science. The world was without form and almost void. But at the earliest stage we can contemplate the void is sparsely broken by tiny electric particles, the germs of the things that are to be; positive and negative they wander aimlessly in solitude, rarely coming near enough to seek or shun one another. They range everywhere so that all space is filled and yet so empty that in comparison the most highly exhausted vacuum on earth is a joshing throng. In the beginning was vastness, solitude and the deepest night. Darkness was

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upon the face of the deep, for as yet there was no light."

(Science and the Unseen World.)

It is interesting to compare these words of a foremost scientist of the present day with the words uttered by the Vedic Rishis many thousands of years ago in the famous Hymns of Creation in the Rigveda (X.129) :

"In the beginning Darkness was hidden by darkness, all this was an ocean of inconscience when universal being was concealed by fragmentation." (L. D. i—XXV), Dr. Eddington proceeds,

"The years rolled by, million after million." This is not a strictly correct statement, as there were no years at that time measured by the revolutions of the earth round the Sun. The Vedic language is more accurate,

"Death was not nor immortality nor the knowledge of day and night."

"Slight aggregations," continues Dr. Eddington, "occurring casually in one place and another drew to themselves more and more particles."

Mark the word "casually"; that indicates that here something took place out of the normal way. Thus gravitation slowly parted the primeval chaos and "island universes" were formed. Then these island universes began to rotate, and Science cannot explain how they acquired this rotation. There are so many gaps and missing links in the scientific account of the evolution of the universe. The island universes were subdivided by gravitation and gave birth to star clusters and then to stars.

"And with the stars came light, born of the fiercer turmoil

which ensued when the electrical particles were drawn from

their solitude into dense throngs."

This appearance of a universe of luminous stars out of the primeval darkness is according to modern science the first step in the universal evolution. Here, so far as Science can say, the work of creation and evolution might have ceased. "For many billions of years the stars may continue to shed their light and heat through the world, feeding on their own matter which disappears bit by bit into aetherial waves." But at one point of time something unusual, exceptional, we may say miraculous happened and our solar system

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was produced.

"For what might be called the second day of creation we turn from the general rule to the exceptions. Amid so many myriads there will be a few which by some rare accident have a fate unlike the rest. In the vast expanse of the heavens the traffic is so thin that a star may reasonably count on travelling for the whole of its long life without serious risk of collision. The risk is negligible for any individual star; but ten thousand million stars in our system and more in the systems beyond afford a wide playground for chance. This rare accident must have happened to our Sun — an accident to the Sun, but to us the cause of our being here. A star journeying through space casually overtook the Sun, not indeed colliding with it, but approaching so close as to raise a great tidal wave. By this disturbance jets of matter spurted out of the Sun; being carried round by their angular momentum they did not fall back again but condensed into small globes — the planets." {Science and the Unseen World.)

Science thus regards the creation of the solar system as a matter of rare chance, but that is not an explanation, rather a statement of fact that it has so happened. If there were an intelligent creator who wanted to produce a place suitable for the habitation of living and intelligent beings like men in a material world he would have by a slight interference without disturbing the fundamental laws of matter made the occurrence of such chances and rare incidents possible, and that is what has actually happened not only once but at every critical stage in the wonderful history of the universal manifestation. By the "accident" mentioned above something occurred outside the regular plan of Nature, namely the appearance of lumps of matter small enough and dense enough to be cool. So long as matter remains heaped in immense masses, as we find in the stars, the temperature cannot be less than ten million degrees. By permitting matter to be cool, Nature created a field for the production of strange effects. To the eye of a Scientist Nature appears as a great experimenter who has infinite material and infinite time before her; but that implies an intelligent consciousness behind her which takes delight in infinite variety of creation. There are 92 different kinds of matter in the universe, 92 chemical elements;

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but how out of uniform tiny electric particles such diversity arose Science cannot say. This finds a rational explanation only in the supposition that the whole universal movement is essentially and ultimately a play of consciousness, and our own limited mental consciousness shows how it delights in imagining and creating diversity in unity. This diversity of matter cannot manifest itself at high temperature and little consequence follows from it; but in the cool planets it asserts itself and produces the wonders studied in chemistry and physics. The second impulse of evolution creating cool planetary globes could have exhausted itself in the formation of inorganic rocks and ores and other materials, as it actually may have happened in other planets. But there again something abnormal and exceptional happened which made possible the appearance of the phenomenon of life. Each of the 92 elements embodies in its structural pattern one of the first 92 integers. Thus "the chemical characteristics of element NO. II (sodium) arise from the fact that it has the power at low temperatures of gathering round it eleven negative particles; those of NO.12 (magnesium) from its power of gathering 12 particles; and so on." These 92 elements by themselves would have produced a material world of considerable but limited diversity. But the element carbon, embodying the number 6, because of the peculiarity of the number 6, opened up unlimited possibilities.

"The carbon atoms love to string themselves in long chains such as those which give toughness to a soap film. Whilst other atoms organise themselves in twos and threes or it may be in tens carbon atoms organise themselves in hundreds and thousands. From this potentiality of carbon to form more and more elaborate structure a third impulse of evolution arises, the creation of life and living beings."

If Nature in her arithmetic had overlooked the number 6, the conditions for the appearance of life would never have been produced and this can hardly be called an accident.

The account of evolution given by physical science cannot go further; but it is sufficient to confirm the view that the world has a plan behind it and its course is being directed by a conscious being and that course, so far as our world is concerned, is evolutionary; that is, through a long and gradual process new principies

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and forms are emerging, keeping intact the basic structure and the fundamental laws. Matter has been the basis on which Life and Mind have appeared; but Life represents a new principle different from Matter, and Mind represents a new principle different from both Matter and Life. Science cannot explain the appearance of these new principles, and the very fact that they are new principles explains why Science sees so many missing links in the evolutionary process of which it sees only the outer aspect. If Matter had been allowed to go on in its own way, life could never have appeared on the face of the earth. Even now we see nowhere living things arising from non-living matter. But the cosmic evolution could not stop there; matter was to be the basis of the manifestation of the infinite in the finite, of the Spirit in embodied beings, of divine life on the earth. That is why through an evolutionary process which is essentially spiritual life, and consciousness first appearing in plants and animals have found their hitherto highest formulation in man. But the mind of man is not yet the spiritual consciousness, though it approaches it and gives the promise of its own transcendence. So there is nothing irrational or impossible in the view that this transcendence will be made in the further course of the same evolution, this time assisted by the conscious effort of man himself. And there is also nothing in Science or reason which can justify us in saying that that great crisis has not come now. On the other hand, spiritual vision shows that now has come the time for man to take the next higher step in his evolution. Neither Science nor Philosophy has been able to give a thoroughly satisfactory account of all the processes of Nature taken in their integrality. That can be revealed only to an integral spiritual vision and it is such a vision we find embodied in Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine which has not only created a new era in Philosophical thought but in the actualisation of the hidden possibilities of human life.

"Brahman, the ultimate Reality is infinite and eternal and he is to our spiritual perception a Divine Existence, Consciousness and Delight of being which is a supracosmic Reality, self-existent, but also the secret truth underlying the whole manifestation; for the fundamental truth of Being must necessarily be ' the fundamental truth of Becoming. All is a manifestation of That; for it dwells even in all that seem to be its opposites and its

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hidden compulsion on them to disclose it is the cause of evolution, on Inconscience to develop from itself its secret consciousness, on the apparent Non-Being to reveal in itself the occult spiritual existence, on the insensible neutrality of matter to develop a various delight of being which must grow, setting itself free from its minor terms, its contrary dualities of pain and pleasure, into the essential delight of existence, the spiritual Ananda." (L. D. 558)

Brahman is infinitely enjoying his own delight manifesting the infinite miracles hidden in his own being. One in being he has become many in becoming in order to taste through the many the delight of love, of embrace, of interchange. As the Upanishad says :

"He desired, 'May I be many', He concentrated in Tapas, by Tapas he created the world; creating, He entered into it; entering He became the existent and the beyond-existence, He became the expressed arid the unexpressed."

(Taittiriya Upanishad 11.6— L. D. II - XXII).

Of the infinite variety of his self-manifestations, one is the gradual evolution of consciousness out of the inconscient. All-conscious, he has hidden himself from himself and descending into self-oblivion has taken the form of inconscient matter, in order to create a basis for the manifestation of his infinite divine consciousness in and through many finite material bodies. The organisation of matter step by step so that life and consciousness may appear in it is the meaning of the terrestrial evolution. At every critical stage of this evolution there has been some intervention from above of which Science, confined as it is only to the evidence of the physical senses, cannot give any account. When Life appeared in matter finding a suitable organisation there for its manifestation, an altogether new principle was created — that is why it appears to Science that some links are missing. In the same manner when mind evolved in living beings, it was also a new phenomenon, a new principle altogether. As a matter of fact, all these principles — and there are others higher and greater — are so many different formulations of the one consciousness. Mind, Life, Matter are phenomenally different from each other, but they are essentially one as they are all manifestations of a force which transcends all and is not limited by any of them. There are different planes in

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existence, each plane being dominated by one of the principles of creation. Above this material world of ours there is the vital plane and above the vital there is the mental plane, each with its characteristic creations; beyond these is the supramental plane. In this way there has been a graded creation of planes and worlds originating from Sachchidananda Brahman, and a constant action and interaction going on between these different planes. Our material world is at the bottom and all the higher planes tend to manifest their characteristic powers and riches here under material conditions. Thus Life appeared in matter on the earth through a pressure on it from the Vital plane; afterwards, when the conditions were ready, mind appeared in earthly life through the influence of the Mental plane from above. Now there is coming on earthly life an insistent pressure from the supramental plane, and that will 'turn man into superman, somewhat in the same way as when animal turned into man. This culmination of man is an evolutionary necessity, a thing destined in the divine plan of creation, and it seems that the moment of that great transcendence has arrived and the tremendous crisis through which the world is passing today is really a part of this great evolutionary crisis. The divine power by which this transformation will be effected will conquer all obstacles and hostile forces and establish the Life Divine on the earth.

When the action of the supramental power begins on the earth, human life even within its own limits of ignorance will find a new harmony. With its full manifestation humanity will be raised to a new status of perfection and fulfilment.

"Much that is normal to human life would disappear. In the light of gnosis the many mental ideals, constructed principles and systems, conflicting ideals which man has created in all domains of his mind and life, could command no acceptance or reverence; only the truth, if any, which these specious images conceal, could have a chance of entry as elements of a harmony founded on a much wider basis. It is evident that in a life governed by the gnostic consciousness war with its spirit of antagonism and enmity, its brutality, destruction and ignorant violence, political strife with its perpetual conflict, frequent oppression, dishonesties, turpitudes, selfish interests, its ignorance, ineptitude and muddle could

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have no ground for existence. The arts and the crafts- would exist, not for any inferior mental or vital amusement, entertainment of leisure and relieving excitement or pleasure, but as expressions and means of the truth of the spirit and the beauty and delight of existence. Life and body would be no longer tyrannous masters demanding nine-tenths of existence for their satisfaction, but means and powers for the expression of the spirit. At the same time, since the matter and the body are accepted, the control and the right use of physical things would be a part of the realised life of the spirit in the manifestation in earth-nature." (L. D. pp. 1179-80).

"To the normal life-being an existence without the reactions of success and frustration, vital joy and grief, peril and passion, pleasure and pain, the vicissitudes and uncertainties of fate and struggle and battle and endeavour, a joy of novelty and surprise and creation projecting itself into the unknown, might seem to be void of variety and therefore void of vital savour. Any life surpassing these things tends to appear to it as something featureless and empty or cast in the figure of an immutable sameness; the human mind's picture of heaven is the incessant repetition of an eternal monotone. But this is a misconception; for an entry into the gnostic consciousness would be an entry into the infinite. It would be a self-creation bringing out the Infinite infinitely into form of being, and the interest of the Infinite is much greater and multitudinous as well as more imperishably delightful than the interest of the finite. The evolution in the Knowledge would be a more beautiful and glorious manifestation with more vistas ever unfolding themselves and more intensive in all ways than any evolution could be in the Ignorance. The delight of the Spirit is ever new, the forms of beauty it takes innumerable, its godhead ever young and the taste of delight, rasa, of the Infinite eternal and inexhaustible. The gnostic manifestation of life would be more full and fruitful and its interest more vivid than the creative interest of the Ignorance; it would be a greater and happier constant miracle."

(The Life Divine, pp. 1184-85)

Anilbaran Roy

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SRI AUROBINDO'S "THOUGHT THE PARACLETE"

I. INTRODUCTION

A SHORT poem of but twenty-two lines, Thought the Paraclete is nevertheless among the most characteristic of Sri Aurobindo's poetic utterances. Along with five other equally typical pieces, it appeared about two years ago; but the poems were apparently composed many years earlier. They are now reprinted in the second volume of Sri Aurobindo's Collected Poems and Plays and appear in the section entitled "Transformation and Other Poems."

Thought the Paraclete is a sudden, swift jet of piercing, unconventional melody. One reads and re-reads it, astonished and awed into a rapture; one is puzzled by its currents of thought and play of imagery; one is dazzled and thrilled by its radiation of light and riot of colour; one is chastened at last into an ineffable quietude by its sheer art, its suggestion of both lightning motion and unearthly peace. There is no doubt at all that the poem embodies a vast and potent revelation!

And yet Thought the Paraclete puzzles and intrigues the reader, for, while catching its general drift at once, he is none the less all but floored by its imagery and its colour symbolism. The poem is clearly the expression of an experienced ascent of Thought — Thought that, like a shooting star, spans a vast zone in a blinding fraction of time. But although we can intellectually strive to reproduce the experience in our own minds, it will be but a lifeless facade, a grandiose proxy bloated with mere mental stuff. The experience as such is unfortunately denied to most of us, and hence we pathetically blink in our bewilderment when the poet describes the thrills he has braved, the splendours he has glimpsed, the beatitudes he has been.

It is not suggested here — far from it! — that spiritual experiences should not constitute the subject-matter of poetry. A poet can coin his unique spiritual adventures into imperishable poetry even as he can deftly turn his emotional responses into an elegy or a song or an ode. But spiritual experiences being per se ineffable are for that very reason incommunicable through the medium of our everyday vocabulary. And yet spiritual experiences are dear to the heart of man, and he would gladly clutch at the intangible, and capture and

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retain it (if he could!) as part of himself. That is why we cherish in our heart's tabernacle revelations like Francis Thompson's The Hound of Heaven and Sri Aurobindo's Trance of Waiting and Thought the Paraclete. We love them, we cherish them, we tap them from time to time to draw forth momentary solace, but — do we understand them in every particular, do we gauge the plenty in every crevice or sense the significance of every turn of thought and every shade of colour? Let us frankly admit that we do not and that, perhaps, we cannot; at any rate, it is very consoling to be told by Coleridge that poetry should only be generally, and not too perfectly, understood. Even so, let us take courage in both hands and draw closer to Thought the Paraclete; and let us venture to scrutinize it with reverent care.

II. FORM AND METRE

Thought the Paraclete is one of several fruitful attempts on Sri Aurobindo's part to give classical quantitative metres agreeable to English habitations and forms. In his long, scholarly and illuminating essay on Quantitative Metre, Sri Aurobindo has generally indicated the broad lines along which the oft-attempted and oft-frustrated endeavour may indeed be carried to a successful conclusion; and most of his recent poems — quite apart from their thought content or spiritual impulsion — are offered as luminous exhibits that amply illustrate and to a very considerable extent justify his prosodical theories.

In Thought the Paraclete Sri Aurobindo attempts an interesting variation of the Latin phaleuciakes or hendecasyllabic of Catullus. The metrical scheme of the hendecasyllabic line is given by this notation:

in other words, a spondee starts the line and is followed first by a dactyl and then by three trochees. Sidney, Coleridge, Tennyson and Swinburne are among the famous English poets who have attempted either half-heartedly or in a mood of frivolity, to write English hendecasyllabic. Sidney follows the orthodox scheme in lines like:

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But Sidney is obviously ill at ease, — for instance, "reason" is a spondee at the beginning, but a trochee at the end!

Coleridge's Catullan Hendecasyllabics, on the other hand, refuse ' to scan in the orthodox (or, indeed, in any) fashion. He generally manages to retain the three trochees at the end, but the earlier half of the line is made up usually of two trisyllabic feet, though, once in a way, he does not scruple to begin with a foot even of four syllables:

and this is only too common in Swinburne — a more or less "ineffugable" monotony.

Sri Aurobindo's hendecasyllabics are, however, hendecasyllabics with a difference. He saw clearly that "classical metres cannot always with success be taken over just as they are into the English rhythm; often some modifications are needed to make them more malleable."¹ He accordingly begins as a rule with a trochee; the spondee and the dactyl follow, and are themselves followed by two trochees; and — this is most significant — "the last syllable of the closing trochee is most often dropped altogether."² The first two lines of Thought the Paraclete, scanned according to this scheme, will read as follow:

The modifications no doubt result in reducing the hendecasyllabic to a decasyllabic line, — but there are also counterbalancing advantages.

The pushing of the dactyl towards the centre gives the line an arching, almost a parabolic movement, immediately suggesting the

¹ Collected Poems and Plays, II, p, 305.

2 Ibid. II, p. 305

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"ascent" implied in the poem. The weight and volume of sound in the first three feet naturally resolve themselves into a crescendo, a graded ascending scale in tone and pitch. But "ascent" ever involves "descent' as well, and hence the latter half of the line is so contrived by Sri Aurobindo that it shapes itself into a diminuendo and thereby insinuates into our ear this crucial principle underlying his metaphysics.

The elimination of the last syllable of the closing trochee is also important from another point of view. Thought the Paraclete is both a structure of thought and a stream of sound; the former consists of spans of thought (or sentences), while the latter is made up of a large number of feet of sound. The shortest of the spans of thought is concreted into the last line of the poem; so too the shortest of the feet of sound is compressed into the clear and hard mould of the monosyllabic fifth foot. And yet the last foot signifies no weakness, no poverty of sound; it is a single, but long, syllable; even exceptions like "being" and "seeing" are but apparently so; the final close of each line thus repeatedly strikes a note of self-sufficiency and strength; it is, as it were, "throned in the luminous vast of illumitable self-vision."¹

We have now only to write down the notation,

read it from right to left and anon from left to right, and we can at once perceive that the metre is truly symbolic of the thought-content of the poem, that is, visibly indicates the principle of evolution-involution or ascent-descent that is at the core of Sri Aurobindo's metaphysics of the Life Divine. It is said that a single anustubh vivifies in itself the karuna rasa that Valmiki Ramayana so wonderfully evokes in its mighty sweeps and memorable incantations. We may similarly hazard the statement that each of Sri Aurobindo's hendecasyllabics is also a phonetic galvanization of the idea of the ascent of consciousness towards the Supermind and of the descent of the Spirit that at last brings about this great transformation:

Self was left, lone, limitless, nude, immune.

A word may be added about the rhyme-scheme of Thought the Paraclete. The twenty-two lines are divided into eleven pairs of rhymes, and the arrangement is as follow:

aa; bcdcdebe; fgfg; hiijjh: kk;

¹ The Life Divine, 1, p. 183 . (References are to the First Edition.)

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It is as though a rising movement intersects again and again a falling movement, as if the two movements are involved in a prolonged and purposeful embrace. The curious may group the rhymes into four couplets and two quatrains, the remaining rhymes floating in between somewhat elusively; as a matter of fact, excepting for the initial and concluding couplets, the rest of the rhymes agreeable play a sort of hide and seek, and the whole poem thus produces in the responsive ear the impression rather of a "winding bout of linked sweetness long drawn out."

We have tried to show here that the form and metre of Thought the Paraclete merit and repay a careful study and analysis. As one slowly reads the poem, — as one familiarizes oneself with its half-exotic, but highly seductive and chastening, rhythms, — as one gazes enraptured at its rounded completeness, one realizes at length that Sri Aurobindo has somehow nobly succeeded in giving the hendecasyllabic an English soul and setting. He has succeeded, it would seem, where a Sidney, a Coleridge and a Swinburne had failed; and he has succeeded only because he has all along known, not only the possibilities, but also the peculiar limitations of an attempt to reproduce classical metres in English.

III. THE TITLE OF THE POEM

So much about the form and the metre: we shall now turn to the title of the poem — "Thought the Paraclete"! We know — do we really, or do we only think we know? — what "thought" is; we fondly believe sometimes that a certain thought is illuminating, that it germinated in the obscure depths of our consciousness on a particular occasion, even that it is "developing", sprouting forth in many directions. But why does Sri Aurobindo call Thought the Paraclete? What exactly is a Paraclete? And why is Thought the Paraclete?

The word "Paraclete" occurs in the New Testament¹, where Christ refers to the Holy Ghost as the Paraclete. Mr. C. H. Irwin explains the term thus:

"It includes the idea of Comforter and... Advocate. Each of these words must be taken in its fullest sense, so as to include instruction, guidance, strength, and holy elevation of desire and

¹ John, xiv, 16, 26; XV, 26; XVI, 7.

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purpose. The word clearly implies the personality of the Holy Spirit."¹

The Jesuit mystic and poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, attempts in one of his sermons a more vivid explanation of the term:

"A Paraclete is one who comforts, who cheers, who encourages, who persuades, who exhorts, who stirs up, who urges forward, who calls on, what the spur and word of command is to a horse, what clapping of hands is to a speaker, what a trumpet is to the soldier, that a Paraclete is to the soul; one who calls us on, that is what it means, a Paraclete is one who calls us on to do good. One sight is before my mind, it is homely but it comes home: you have seen at cricket how, when one of the batsmen at the wicket has made a hit and wants to score a run, the other doubts, hangs back, or is ready to run in again, how eagerly the first will cry — Come on, come on! — a Paraclete is just that, something that cheers the spirit of man, with signals and with cries, all zealous that he should do something and full of assurance that if he will he can, calling him on, springing to meet him half way, crying to his ears or to his heart. This way, to do God's will, this way to save your soul, come on, come on."² And Hopkins has also tried to show that, although Christ is certainly a Paraclete, only the Holy Ghost is the Paraclete.

However, the term "Paraclete" seems to have occasionally been used in other illuminating contexts also. Thus the Oxford English Dictionary gives two extracts, one of which refers to the "victorious hero" as the "true Paraclete", while the other credits Plato with using "in one place the term Paraclete, Intercessor, in speaking of the Reason." If Reason can be called the Paraclete, why, so too can Thought be, — Thought that ever strives to reach up to the meanings of things, ever bravely scales the spiral of Consciousness, ever attempts to achieve a total and intimate compenetration with ultimate Reality!

Thought, then, is a Paraclete, even the Paraclete. As Sri Aurobindo points out 'Thought "is not the giver of knowledge but the 'mediator' between the Inconscient and Superconscient. It compels the world born from the Inconscient to reach for knowledge other than the instinctively vital or merely empirical; it calls for that superconscient

¹ The Universal Bible Commentary, p.

² The Note-Books and Papers of Gerard Manley Hopkins, p.

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knowledge and prepares the consciousness here to receive it. It raises itself into the higher realms, and even in disappearing into the supramental and Ananda levels is transformed into something that will bring down their powers into the silent Self which its cessation leaves behind it."¹ It is this conception of Thought that is embodied in the term "the Paraclete" and the poem itself may be aptly described as a radiant evocation of the successive stages by which the Paraclete, the celestial automobile, registers its progress and brings the clinging occupant to the long-sought sanctuary of Bliss.

Thought, then, is our mediator, our intercessor; we summon it to our aid whenever we tread upon the multitudinous thorns of life; we repose no mean trust in Thought, for we know it can "gently lead us on"; it willingly takes out half-articulate messages to the world of the Super conscience and it also brings to us "airs from heaven" to comfort us or to sting us to further spurts of ascent — onward and onward — to the very gate of the enthroned seat of the Supermind, and even beyond to the ineffable Bliss of Brahman. Dare man gaze at the Sun and his supernal splendours and remain un blinded yet? Dare man leap across the shore less chasm that divides the worlds of Inconscience and Super conscience, the mental world of division and pain and multiplicity and the other-world of harmony and Ananda and integral unity?

But — astonishing as it may appear — Man dares all and often stakes all because Thought the Paraclete is his guide and his intercessor. Thought is the angel the breath of whose nostrils softens even the heat of the journey, the strength of whose wings — "great glimmering wings of wind" — bridges the distance between the here and the there, indeed even brings the here and the there together and transforms them into an infinite here and an eternal now.

However, the stages on the "journey" are to be visualized, not on a space-time basis in terms of a left-to-right or a bottom-to-top progression from one junction or aerodrome of achievement to another and a further and a better, but rather psychologically as movements in consciousness, as successive attempts at a dynamic comprehension of the One in the Many and the Many in the One, as progressive attempts to reduce more and more, and finally to eliminate altogether, the "immense hiatus as seems to exist between Supramental Truth Consciousness

¹ In the course of a letter to a disciple.

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and the Mind in the Ignorance."¹ Man may be in appearance a thing of nought, a mulling and a puling creature that is the jest of Nature, subject alas! to the giant evils of death, desire and incapacity; but man refuses to grovel in the groove of his limitations, refuses to gloat over these badges of his misery, but is resolved rather to exceed himself, to possess the Infinite and also to be possessed by the Infinite. He alone holds in the clasp of his hands the clue to the future, his own and the world's!

But the possession of the Infinite is no easy business, "not a happy canter to the goal"²; indeed, "the possession of the Infinite cannot come except by an ascent to those supramental planes, nor the knowledge of it except by an inert submission of Mind to the descending messages of the Truth-Conscious Reality."³ Thought the Paraclete — Thought our winged intercessor, our comrade, our friend, and the resourceful mediator in our dire distress, — Thought the Paraclete can alone facilitate our ascent "to those supramental planes", it alone can prepare us to receive those "descending messages"; Thought the Paraclete is thus verily a Power and a Personality, and we have but to allow ourselves to be carried by him — in the marjara fashion — in utter self-surrender and faith, — and all will be well.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND

Sri Aurobindo wrote several years ago to one of his disciples that Thought the Paraclete "does not express any philosophical thought ... it is simply a perception of a certain movement, that's all." A poem like Thought the Paraclete is no doubt no mere foot-note to a philosophical treatise of the dimensions of The Life Divine; a poem exists, splendorous and triumphantly, in its own sovereign right, — or it is nothing. And Thought the Paraclete is truly poetry first and poetry all the time, poetry that just storms the toppling crags of Reality by direct frontal assault, or, to borrow Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch metaphor, leaps "from a centre within us to a point of the circumference, and seizes it by direct vision." The reader,

¹ The Life Divine, I. p. 416.

² Letter to Dilip.

³ The Life Divine, 1, p. ^248.

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too, has boldly to leap likewise from a centre within him and seize the meaning of Thought the Paraclete; for such poetry has to be apprehended, not with the aid of an elaborate critical exegesis, but by direct vision alone.

While thus the true hearer, like the true creator, of poetry is the soul, the soul only, the soul alone, we cannot as yet abolish or wholly ignore the operations of middle terms and muddling instruments like the intellect, the senses and the imagination. The ear it cannot choose but hear the procession of beautiful sounds, the intellect it cannot choose but depieces the integral framework of the poem, and the imagination it cannot choose but visualize similar experiences in accordance with the laws of its own unique svabhava and svadharma. These two have their own place — though a strictly subordinate place — in the phenomenon of poetic creation and appreciation. We need not therefore offer a lengthy apology for occasionally yielding, as we do here, to the temptation of talking about and about a poem, instead of leaving it to sink of its own accord deep into one's veiled, stainless, limitless Self. Thought the Paraclete is certainly quintessential poetry: but the intellect would see in it the base, nay the justification, of a whole system of philosophy. Even so the poem but expresses with a radiant finality the inapprehensible truth that even disconcertingly evades the mere logician's grasp. The poem gives us, not the philosophical justification for the soul's ascent to the Godhead on the wings of thought, but rather brings out in one dazzling wave of rhythmic sound the beauty and the glory and the ecstasy of the fact of ascent and triumph and splendid transformation. However, even the votaries of pure poetry will not scorn an intimacy with the philosophical background of the poem, for not only is it illuminating in itself but it also makes easier the necessary final self-surrender to the poem.

The' philosophical spiral of reasoning that underlies Thought the Paraclete may be summarised in a few sentences. We may start with the axiom that the evolutionary transition from Mind in the Ignorance to Mind in the Knowledge (or, conversely, the involutionary transition from Mind in the Knowledge to Mind in the Ignorance) is itself marked by various steps or resting places or "slow gradations" on the way. After all, it is a fairly "indeterminate" or "intermediate" zone that we are here considering; the

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dynamics of the sheer physical universe cannot and do not obtain here; only a few reassuring lamp-posts or light-houses glisten in the dim expanse beyond, and we are left to trace out the graph of our fascinating journey with the sole help of these luminous milestones on the way.

Sri Aurobindo mentions four of these discernible "slow gradations" — Higher mind, Illumined mind, Intuition (or Intuitive mind), and Over mind. Mind starts this particular evolutionary race, Supermind consummates it; and it is Thought the Paraclete that makes the consummation easy, natural, and even inevitable.

Further, according to Sri Aurobindo, ultimate Reality includes the two extreme ends of the evolutionary sweep, Matter and Spirit, — not only includes them, and all that lies between them but at the same time also transcends them, being always Itself, the One without a Second, the Absolute beyond all terminii, the Truth beyond all truths; "we start, then, with the conception of an omnipresent Reality of which neither the Non-Being at one end nor the Universe at the other are negations that annul; they are rather different states of Reality, obverse and reverse affirmations."¹ The movement of Involution, starting as a deliberate descent of Consciousness from Sachchidananda, has reached its bottom, its very bottom, in Matter; the counter-movement of evolution, starting in its turn as an upsurge of Consciousness from Matter, where it is heavily and darkly veiled, has reached the sloping and slippery stage of Mind. One more forward leap is necessary and inevitable, — the leap from Mind to Supermind, touching the four signposts of Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, and Over mind on the way, — and then only would Man be able to fulfil the evolutionary purpose, to exceed himself by outgrowing the limitations of death, desire and incapacity, and partake once and for all in an earthly immortality.

V. THE FOUR MOVEMENTS

At long last we can now tackle the poem itself. The central idea of the poem which is the transformation in the Self brought about as a result of the ascent of Consciousness to the supramental

¹ The Life Divine, I. p. 49.

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level, is suggested by the imagery and the music, rather than closely argued out in terms of logical reason. We are expected to proceed from light to light, from one luminous revelation to another, and anon to the next, and so on till we arrive at and are lost in the rich and illimitable calm of the wonderful finale. To facilitate an analysis of the poem, however, let us divide (alas, we ever "murder to dissect") it into four separate movements or discernible sweeps of thought.

FIRST MOVEMENT

The opening five lines constituting the first movement at once achieve an arresting exordium, and at the same time also suggest through a bold and apt simile the perceived ascent of Thought. "As some bright archangel in vision flies..." : the words cannot but suggest to the reader the Holy Ghost, the paraclete according to Christ; as the Holy Ghost, or archangel Gabriel or some other bright archangel, plunges headlong Snto "dream-caught spirit immensities" to meet and redeem the pilgrim aging soul, so "flew my thought." Man, the mental and vital being, has been stung to activity by the "pure touch of the spiritual force"¹; he has now outgrown sheer instinctive reaction to circumstances and he is no more dazzled by the brilliant systems and delectable castles constructed by empirical knowledge and the mere intelligence; he is now a wanderer in the realms of the invisible, he is indeed, for the time being, groping about himself being "self-lost in the vasts of God." The reference to "green" and "orange" need not puzzle us, the contrast implied being quite natural, both materially and metaphorically, Andrew Marvell too juxtaposes the two colours to suggest a telling contrast:

.. ."orange bright
Like golden lamps in a green night.''

..."orange bright Like golden lamps in a green night."² The transition from purely vital consciousness to a mental one is as noticeable as the shift from "green" to "orange"; but Thought rises higher still in the scale, seeking other colours in the spectrum of its steep ascent.

SECOND MOVEMENT

The next ten lines constitute the second movement :

¹ The Life Divine. II, p. 976.

2.Bermudas

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Sleepless wide great glimmering wings of wind

Bore the gold-red seeking of feet that trod

Space and Time's mute vanishing ends. The face

Lustred, pale-blue-lined of the hippogriff,

Eremite, sole, daring the bourne less ways,

Over world-bare summits of timeless being

Gleamed; the deep twilights of the world-abyss

Failed below, Sun-realms of supernal seeing,

Crimson-white mooned oceans pauseless bliss

Drew its vague heart-yearning with voices sweet.

Thought has managed to grope its way to the stair of ascension and has reached the rung of the Higher Mind, "a mind no longer of mingled light and obscurity or half-light, but a large clarity of the spirit... a luminous thought-mind, a mind of spirit-born conceptual knowledge."¹ Seeing the One behind the Many, the Higher Mind strives, at any rate conceptually, to get beyond the categories of space and time; and now its prime thirst is to achieve "a mass ideation, a system or totality of truth-seeing at a single view."² The term "wings of wind" suggests the living instrument of spiritual Consciousness; "gold-red" is, according to Sri Aurobindo, "the colour of the supramental in the physical", or, as he sings in Flame-Wind:

Gold in the mind and the life-flames red

Make of the heavens a splendour, the earth a blaze...³

But conceptual knowledge, however comprehensive, is not enough; it lacks warmth and motion and even spiritual sustenance. Thought therefore cannot rest for ever on the rung of the Higher Mind but must forge further ahead; as it reaches the level of the Illumined Mind, unity is seen, not alone as a concept, but even as a living reality; but it is only an intermittent vision that Thought glimpses at this stage. Even then the experience gives a lustre to the face of the mystic seer, so that in him "the soul lives in vision and in a direct sense and experience."⁴ By now Thought the Paraclete has brought the thinker and the seer to the threshold of the

¹ The Life Divine, 11, PP.985-6.

² The Life Divine, 11, p. 987-

³ Collected Poems & Plays, 11, p. ^364.

⁴ The Life Divine, 11, p. 996.

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Intuitive Mind; Thought is the winged hippogriff¹, "pale-blue-lined"²; he is the all-seeing, all-daring hermit, truly the Pilgrim of Eternity; he is veritably the sole monarch of his visioned realms. As it touches the intuitive level, Thought acquires the four-fold potencies of truth-seeing, truth-hearing, truth-seizing and truth-correlation³ and "it brings its own greater radiant movement into the will, into the feelings and emotions, the life-impulses, the action of sense and sensation, the very workings of the body consciousness ....A certain integration can thus take place."⁴ Meanwhile there is an obscuration or ignoration of the seeming dichotomies and disharmonies of the world:

the deep twilights of the world-abyss Failed below.

The harmony from above would seem to have calmed the troubled waters below, so that it is clear that the descent of the higher consciousness has taken place concurrently with the ascent of the lower one.

The next movement in the ascent reaches up to the Over mind, and now "Thought for, the most part, no longer seems to originate individually in the body or the person but manifest from above or comes in upon the cosmic mind-waves: all inner individual sight or intelligence of things is now a revelation or illumination of what is seen or comprehended, but the source of the revelation is not in one's separate self but in the universal knowledge; the feelings, emotions, sensations are similarly felt as waves from the same cosmic immensity breaking upon the subtle and the gross body responded to in kind by the individual centre of the universality; for the body is only a small support or even less, a point of relation, for the action of a vast cosmic instrumentation."⁵ Thought has reached "sun-realms of supernal seeing"⁶; it is now a powerful organizer who conceives and executes

¹ The hippogriff is a "fabulous griffin-like creature with body of horse." (The Concise Oxford Dictionary). Milton refers to the "wing" of the hippogriff; and hence Thought may be compared to the hippogriff, since both are " winged",

² According to Sri Aurobindo," 'pale-blue' is the colour of the higher ranges of mind up to Intuition". (Letter to disciple).

³ The Life Divine, II,

⁴ The Life Divine, II,

⁵ The Life Divine, II,

⁶ cf. "Wisdom supernal looks down on me, Knowledge mind cannot measure; Light that no vision can render garments the silence with splendour."

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many "crimson-white¹ mooned oceans of pauseless bliss" and it is a "magician craft man empowered to weave the multicoloured warp and woof of manifestation of a single entity in a complex universe."² And yet Thought at the over mental level is mightily restless and knows not the peace of utter fulfilment and self-knowledge; its "vague" — "vague" because it is still not in possession of the finality and self-luminosity of supramental knowledge — its "vague heart-yearning" no doubt sings songs of a multitudinous variety and also translates them into reality, but even such Thought is only "a power of the lower hemisphere; although its basis is a cosmic unity, its action is an action of division and interaction, an action taking its stand on the play of the multiplicity.³" Over mind cannot obviously be the final resting place of the questing soul of Man.

THIRD MOVEMENT

The third movement describes the final leap, the triumphant landing on the summit of the Supermind. Although the over mental consciousness "is the highest possible status-dynamis of the spirit in the spiritual-mind plane.⁴" thought refuses to rest on its oars, but

Hungering, large-souled to surprise the un conned

Secrets white-fire-veiled of the last Beyond,

Crossing power-swept silences rapture-stunned,

Climbing high far ethers eternal-sunned,

Thought the great-winged wanderer paraclete

Disappeared slow-singing a flame-word rune.

Or, as Sri Aurobindo writes elsewhere: "The soul world...cross its original line of departure from the supreme knowledge; it would enter into the integrality of the supramental gnosis.⁵" A description of this final "canter to the goal" is truly beyond the resources of logical reasoning or verbal portraiture. Thought the Paraclete would seem to have learned the last secret of all, the "flame-word rune"⁶, and "slow-singing" this mantra of total emancipation and transfiguration, it disappears into the "last Beyond". The concluding lines of The

¹ "Crimson-white" is the reflection of the Supramental Light.

² The Life Divine, I, p. 431.

³ The Life Divine, II, p. 1006

4^{.The Life Divine, II, p. 1006
5 The Life Divine, II, P .1009.}

⁶ According to Sri Aurobindo, the "Flame-word rune" is "the Word of the Higher Inspiration, Intuition, Revelation, which is the highest attainment of Thought." (Letter to a disciple.)

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Bird of Fire offer a striking parallel to the third movement in Thought the Paraclete:

One strange leap of thy mystic stress breaking

the barriers of mind and life, arrives at its

luminous term thy flight;

Invading the secret clasp of the Silence and

crimson Fire thou frontest eyes in a

timeless Face.1

FOURTH MOVEMENT

The last line, in and by itself, is the fourth and concluding movement of thought and spray of revelation:

Self was left, lone, limitless, nude, immune. The ascent has summoned the corresponding descent; the ego is dead, the self is bare of all the sheaths of the ignorance, it is for ever immune from death, desire, and incapacity, it is the ONE in very truth, it is the heir to Infinity, Eternity and Immortality.

VI. CONCLUSION

The four movements in Thought the Paraclete are but integral parts of a logical and poetical whole. The choice of words and images, the patterning of metre and rhyme, the associations of colour and sound, the careful organization of the four movements, the adequacy and beauty of the structural design, all make Thought the Paraclete a profound revelation and a perfect poem. After a minute study of Thought the Paraclete, one is inclined to exclaim with Appayya Dikshita:

K. R. SRINIVASA IYENGAR

¹ Collected Poems and Plays, II, p.

² Commentary of Sri Venkatanatha's Yadavabhyudaya, Canto I, Verse 9.

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