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that is perhaps the utmost limit of divinisation that is possible for the human element. Beyond it is the Brahman — advaitam, aksaram, anantam, — sunyam anantam, - śūnyam - the de-humanised divinity. An exquisite instance of this almost divinised human element - this residuum of humanity raised and taken into divinity is given by Sophocles in his Antigone.' The very first words that Antigone utters addressing her sister express wonderfully this feeling I am trying to express here this feeling of union and compassion in an exquisite beauty of expression : it has a tone of human frailty - the frailty with which Shakespeare condemns womanhood but a frailty which a divine being does not disdain to own or accept. It is the wonderful integrator of two, rather twin beats - not the subsumption, fusion or annihilation of either in a super-unity, but a close intermingling of two vibrations weaving a magic harmony.

How far can the human be divinised? The Divine as Avatara does become human, almost totally — in appearance at least. One may recall not only the impulses and passions, all the foibles and lapses, even misdeeds liberally recorded of Sri Krishna. But this does not mean that the human has been divinised in him, the Divine has only assumed the human character and qualities, it is after all a disguise, it is an assumption, the adhyāropa of Maya upon Brahman. The Divine is beyond the Maya. The question remains then how far can human remain human and yet be truly divinised. The feeling, the experience in the heart of the saintly human being which we have variously described as commiseration, 'caritas,' 'karuna,' seems to set the limit of divinisation. There is love of course, but it is a dangerous and ambiguous term. The central truth and reality of love is Ananda - ananda in the category of Sat-chit-ananda. But there I am afraid the human element gets dissolved.

The tear-drop in the eye of the Divine seems to be the supreme status of the human in the Divine. Can one go farther?

We have seen in our Mother the tear-drop, the mark of her Grace, transmuted into her smile — the smile that is supremely divine and supremely human, the utmost elevation of both becoming one.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

¹ O lovely head of Ismene, common to both,

born of the same self.

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THE MOTHER'S VISION OF INDEPENDENT INDIA

THE DECISION

THE Decision had been taken. It was long before the event.

"I do not know exactly when it was: it must have been somewhere in the year 1920 probably — perhaps before, perhaps in 1914-15, but I don't think so — it was somewhere in the year 1920. One day — I used to meditate with Sri Aurobindo every day, he sat on one side of a table and I sat on the other side, on the verandah, and one day, like that, in meditation I entered — how to say — I went very high up, entered very deep, or came out of myself — well, say what you like, all that would not say what happened but are only ways of saying — I reached a place or a state of consciousness, where I said to Sri Aurobindo, very simply, just like that: 'India is free'.

This was in 1920. "Then he asked me a question: 'how?' And I replied, 'without a struggle, without a battle, without a revolution: it is the British who will leave because the state of the world will be such that they will not be able to do anything else but go away'. It was done.''¹

And this was an inevitable consequence of Sri Aurobindo's birth, as she explains elsewhere in a Talk given on his birthday.

"On this day there has come into my hands one of those greeting cards which people send... And on this card was written this (I do not remember the words exactly), but anyhow, it was Greetings 'on the occasion of this memorable day of the birth of our nation.' It had been sent by someone who I think had declared himself to be a disciple of Sri Aurobindo a long long time ago...

"That appeared to me one of those enormities of which only human stupidity is capable. If he had said, 'on this memorable day of Sri Aurobindo's birth, and its natural consequence, the birth of the nation', that would have been very well. But, in fact, the important point had been left out and the other spoken of, one that is quite simply, a consequence, a natural result: it had to be like that, it couldn't

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have been otherwise. But people always think like that, all tospsyturvy..."²

A SYMBOL AND A PROPHECY

Many people must have noticed a map of India modelled in plaster on a wall adjoining what used to be the Mother's room in the Ashram Playground. The map was drawn by her in her own hand, and is a symbol of her vision of future India. "The map was made after the Partition. It is the map of the true India in spite of all passing appearances; and this will always remain the map of the true India', no matter what people may think of it."³

Long before this map was drawn, in 1948 to be exact, she had a dance-drama staged on the Ashram Playground, to represent the story of India's independence and what was to follow. Sri Aurobindo gives the theme of the dance in a letter to a disciple.

"The Mother has given for your perusal an account of the theme of Anu's dance.

"It rims into three scenes.

"In the first, the curtain rises showing India in slavery and bondage. Then she awakes and tries to throw off the yoke; the spirit of fight grows.

"In the second scene, liberation has come and its joy and the action of a free people. But she is faced with all sorts of problems such as financial crises, division, corruption, and moral degradation, etc. She looks to every side for a solution, but finds no way out. The confusion grows worse and worse.

"In the third scene, faced with all these difficulties, she aspires and becomes conscious of the Soul of the all-pervading Mother and feels a growing union with that Soul. She finds out her spiritual mission in the world and by it realises the complete unity of the country. From the moment she becomes conscious of the Soul, chorus begins rising into a great force and enthusiasm."⁴

THE REALITY OF THE PRESENT

One is not sure if in this prophetic presentation of India's march towards the real goal of independence, she is still in the "second scene". Or is she getting set for the third?

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The Mother's answers to a questionnaire published in The Illustrated Weekly of India in 1964 are rather disconcerting. She made it very clear indeed that "India's true destiny is to be the Guru of the world." But, she added, "the present reality is a big falsehood - hiding an eternal Truth." What had been our saddest failure? "Insincerity", came the reply. "Because insincerity leads to ruin." There were three main barriers that stood in the way: "ignorance, fear, falsehood."

"India has become the symbolic representation of all the difficulties of modern humanity. India will be the place for its resurrection, the resurrection to a life more elevated and more vast." This was the Message read out by the Mother — the original was in French — that electrified the gathering at the inauguration of Auroville in February 1968.⁵

The difficulties of India need not be elaborated: the Mother never likes to stress difficulties. But she has mentioned some of the main reasons. These we must know.

"India has, or rather had the knowledge of the spirit, but she neglected matter and suffered for it."⁶ This was a natural consequence of the illusionist attitude to life, "this idea of a complete renunciation of all physical reality, a profound contempt for the material world which one turns into an illusion and a falls hood, leaving, as Sri Aurobindo used to say always, a free field for the sovereign rule of the adverse forces."⁷

Another sign, hardly noticed anywhere in our country, has been the growing indifference to beauty. "The Divine manifests in the psychic as love, in the mind as knowledge, in the vital as power, in the physical as beauty. If you discard beauty, it means that you are depriving the Divine of this manifestation in the material and you hand over that part to the Asura."⁸

But what according to the Mother has caused the greatest harm is a firm belief that spirituality is something up in the air that has nothing to do with life on earth. "You see, what has ruined India is this idea that the higher consciousness deals with the higher things and the things down below do not interest it at all and it does not understand anything about it! It is this that has been the ruin of India. Well, this error must be abolished completely."⁹

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THE TRUTH OF THE FUTURE

Chaos reigns all over the world and a furious battle is raging between the powers of Light and the forces of Darkness for the mastery of earth and the minds of men. "India ought to be the spiritual guide who explains what is happening and helps in hastening the movement. But unfortunately, in her blind ambition to imitate the West, she has become materialist and neglects her soul"¹⁰ She has to find back her soul and then fulfil her appointed role, by living according to the Truth.

Sri Aurobindo, says the Mother, wished India "to be great, noble, pure and worthy of her big mission in the world. He refused to let her sink to the sordid and vulgar level of blind self-interest and ignorant prejudice."¹¹

What, in fuller detail, is this mission, how is India to carry it out? The Mother gave some indications in an interview she granted to a P. T. I, correspondent in 1954, on the eve of the merger of Pondicherry with India. This interview was given full publicity through The Mail, Madras, The Times of India, Bombay, and the Amrita Bazar Patrika of Calcutta, early in November that year. It deserves to be quoted in full.

"If a country can give an example of a life according to Truth, instead of building its life on competition, commercialism, deception and rivalry with one another, then it will be performing a mission.

"If there is one country in the world to assume this role, I expect India to do it. If one nation sets the example of living according to Truth, in all sincerity and straightforwardness, with a feeling of friendship and mutual help to all, it can show to the world that life can become prosperous and pleasant in all respects; and it can also solve all these problems, social and economic, infinitely better than by the competitive way.

"That should be India's role. And as a spiritual guru, India should teach others by her own example."

The word "spiritual" immediately provoked a question. How can spirituality deal with these mundane and material problems? The Mother's answer was direct and simple. "Spirituality means putting oneself entirely under the Law of Truth and bringing down the Law of Truth upon earth. That is bound to bring a solution to all problems."

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The Government of India takes as its motto the saying of the Upanishad: Truth alone wins. But what is Truth? This question, was put to the Mother by a child of 15., "I replied: the Will of the Supreme Lord."¹² "Truth is Supreme Harmony and Supreme Delight: The Lord's Will is the Truth, in everything and everywhere, always."¹³ To put oneself entirely under the Law of Truth, as the Mother and Sri Aurobindo did, is to ensure the Supreme Harmony and the Supreme Felicity for oneself. To have brought down the Law of Truth upon earth, as the Mother has done with the Supra-mental Manifestation, is to ensure the Harmony and the Delight for the entire world.

THE GOLDEN BRIDGE

A golden bridge has been built between the Truth and the reigning Falsehood. And this gives India a splendid chance.

"India ought to be," wrote the Mother on June 8, 1967, that is, soon after the date (June 5, 1967) to which she attached great importance in the progress of the Manifestation. ¹⁴ - for the Manifestation is a progressive affair, - "India ought to be the spiritual leader of the world. Inside, she has the capacity, but outside.... For the moment there is still much to do for her to become actually the spiritual leader of the world. There is such a wonderful opportunity just now! But.. .." ¹⁵

How is India to avail of this opportunity? That is the important question.

An answer was succinctly given in the Mother's Message to the Prime Minister in October 1969: "India must work for the future..."

"Sri Aurobindo is the messenger of the future. He still shows us the way to follow in order to hasten the realisation of a glorious future fashioned by the Divine Will..."¹⁶ To follow the teaching of Sri Aurobindo is then the surest way to the future. The difficulty is that even among his people, even in India, Sri Aurobindo's teaching is hardly yet known in all its bearings. He is known as a great patriot and a great Yogi. "He has become an international figure, but we claim him more", as a prominent public figure once told the Mother. "But you are not claiming him enough," the Mother had to retort.¹⁷

How to help people get out of this difficulty, that is the immediate problem.

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The only solution of the country's problems is what Sri Aurobindo has given in his writings, the Mother is reported to have said in a talk with some disciples in April 1970. Sri Aurobindo has replied to all questions. His answers are to be compiled in a suitable manner. He wrote mostly in English; but as many Indians do not know English, it is necessary to translate him into the languages which they understand. His message has to be spread all over the country. His solutions must reach all who wish to know. "The times are grave. The situation is serious", the Mother added in her own hand. "It is only a strong and enlightened action that can pull the country out of it."

Her appeal is to the rising generation. "You who are young, are the hope of the country. Prepare yourselves to be worthy of this expectation." Thus runs her Message to the youth of India. "To be young is to live in the future; to be young is to be always ready to abandon what one is and become what one ought to be; to be young is to never admit the irreparable."¹⁸

SOME FIELDS OF ENDEAVOUR

This applies to every sphere of the nation's life. Perhaps nowhere else can it be as fruitful and productive of immediate results as in the field of education.

"The effort to increase and enlighten the consciousness", she says, "is the best way to serve the country." And to this end, "the first thing that must be taught to every human being, as soon as he is capable of thinking, is that he must obey the reason... and refuse absolutely to be the slave of his instincts..."¹⁹ There are naturally many more things to follow. But this must be the indispensable base.

Our education must aim at bringing "The legitimate authority of the spirit over a matter fully developed and utilised.... It must insist on the growth of the soul."²⁰ How this aim is to be achieved is a matter of detailed study which we cannot undertake here. But there is a point of capital importance which one must note. It is a question of "classification" of the students, not indeed in any arbitrary manner, but based on a careful observation of their particular tastes, capacities, interests. "In this manner, the children will find their true place in society and will be made ready to fill it when they grow up.'"²¹

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Education correctly pursued would help solve most of the social and economic problems. If everyone finds and fills his true place in the social and economic scheme, according to his or her true capacities, tastes and interests, much of the prevailing disharmony will disappear. The economic organisation the Mother envisages for Auroville may perhaps be taken as typical of the future India, — an organisation based "on capacity, the position, the inner position of each one.... The organisation ought to be such... that the material needs of all are assured, not according to the idea of equality or of rights, but based on the most elementary necessities; and once that is established, each should be free to organise his life according to — not his monetary means but his inner capacities...."²² "Put each thing in its place" is a formula the Mother is never tired of repeating.

Politics is a much more difficult subject. But here too, her first sketch of Auroville might serve as a guide. The ideal government is one that is under the direct control and guidance of One who represents the Supreme Consciousness. "That may come to pass, you know." But if that is not immediately possible, "it could perhaps be replaced by the government of a small number — this would have to be in the nature of an experiment and the number has to be chosen between four and eight, something like that, four, seven or eight — with an "intuitive" intelligence: "intuitive" is more important than "intelligence", an intuition expressed intellectually. This would have some inconveniences from the practical point of view; but it would perhaps be nearer to the Truth..."²³

A LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

We speak here of education, society, economics and politics. But everything concerning the life and thought and aspirations of man must [undergo a sea-change under the guidance of the Truth: history and culture and art and science, religion, yoga and spirituality must assume a new garb and get a new orientation. We cannot enter into any details here, because that would be to reproduce the enormous mass of the Teaching. But there is a possible misunderstanding that we must try to eliminate about this Teaching. The Mother emphasises this.

"Sri Aurobindo has come on earth, not to bring a teaching or a

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creed in competition with previous creeds or teachings, but to show the way to overpass the past..."²⁴ He has shown that "all the contraries are complimentaries which organise themselves and are unified in an integral synthesis."²⁵ To be able to understand and follow his Teaching, we must liberate ourselves from sectarian notions and share something of his Vastness. "He is as vast as the universe, and his Teaching has no limits ..."²⁶

There is another possible source of misunderstanding. The Mother speaks of India and her mission. In this context it might be well to recall what she said long ago, in August 1949: "Stop thinking that you are of the West and others of the East. All human beings are of the same divine origin and meant to manifest upon earth the unity of this origin."²⁷

Each nation has something special to contribute to the total harmony, and there is here no question of superiority or inferiority. The Mother has high hopes that India and America will join together in hastening the coming of the New World. "In the full spiritual knowledge know that for saving the world and building the New World, it is absolutely essential that India and America work together, because these are the two countries that will do it: America with her great material power and India with her spiritual force, both of which are necessary."²⁸

- This was a Message given by the Mother in 1973. It may perhaps be taken as a last Testament and Will she has left to Independent India.

SANAT K. BANERJI

REFERENCES

1. Mother, Entretiens, 29.7.53; also ^see 18.1.56.

2. Ibid., 15.8.56.

3. Mother India, August 1904.

4. Ibid., December 1972.

5. Ibid., March 1968.

6. Ibid., December 1968.

7. Entretiens, 2.1.57.

8. Mother India, October 1976.

9. Mother, A Propos, 10.4.68.

10. Mére Repond, 4me Serie.

11. Mother India, May 1954.

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12. Mere Repond, 3me Serie,

13. White Roses, pp. 50, 138.

14. Champaklal Speaks, p. 150.

15. White Roses, p. 168.

16. Message to All India Radio, 15.8.71.

17. Champaklal's Treasures, p. 69.

18. Mother India, February 1968.

19. Entriens, 8.5.57.

20. Mother India, December 1968.

21. Commentaires sur les Aphorismes, Nos 84-7.

22. A Propos, 30.6.67.

23. Ibid., 10.4.68.

24. Mother India, February 1968.

25. Méhre Répond, 4me Serie.

26. Ibid.

27. Messages of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Second Series (1952 Edition).

28. Mother India, July

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SAVITRI: A STUDY IN DEPTH

BOOK TWO: CANTO FOURTEEN

THE WORLD-SOUL

AS if in response to his earnest seeking, Aswapathy discovers in the glowing background of Mind- Space, a recluse gate opening to joy and mystery; it looks an escape into the Unknown from the dissatisfying surface of things; it pierces through the several layers of the formless self to the profound core of the unknown whence comes the urge, the desire for the unseen; he feels as if he is invited by a hidden finger pointing to a cup of Bliss and conveying a message from the world's deep soul; he feels now the security of a long lost spiritual home, rescuing him from the preoccupations and nightmares of the day and the night; he is led now by a silence which can vibrate to all sounds, itself remaining for ever still; a familiar though unremembered voice leads the heart which has played the truant back to rapture.

The cry captivates the ear with its ravishing melody; its dulcet flute notes traverse round the soul filling it with tears of joy of stirred memory; it is like the distinct call of a cricket sounding clearly in the stillness of the indrawn being as though to awaken; the long forgotten sweetness steals back on the heart at the sound of anklet bells, bliss and laughter; the sound suggests varied similes: it is like the tinkling harmony produced by a distant caravan following a uniform pace; or a prayer in a temple wafted through a forest becoming enriched through the wild's participation in the hymn; or like the humming of a honey-drunk bee or it is like the chorus of an anthem in which the waves of a pilgrim ocean join together; the heart is filled with a mystic happiness, the air suffused with an incense and the Invisible appears to take the face of the Beloved arresting his feet and revealing the charm in her smile that can transform the world. Aswapathy reaches a formless realm where a small nook can contain all the worlds.

He feels an ardour, a capacity to scale any height; here lives a Being, a Presence, a Power containing all the movement, the dynamism within his immutable silent self; he is the bosom on which the entire drama of nature takes place and he transforms all its sweet and dangerous throbs into a divine harmony; its power is to reveal divinity and therefore it functions in a selfless manner expecting no return

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for its love; it makes evil serve its purpose of advancing the best interests of evolutionary course; it transforms even painful experiences into delight by its alchemic touch; the harsh cruelties of earth are healed by its magic influence; the tears and groans of suffering are stilled by a Presence diffusing joy; falsehood generally resorted to for an escape from suffering does not have a place there; and truth shines in its resplendence, taking falsehood itself in its flame. The Infinite existing within itself as an unchangeable formless, enters simultaneously like a seed, a flame into all the formulations of its dynamism through the intermediary of the Mind; it confers an immortality through the recurring process of death to every birth; the difference here is that unlike on the earth, the veil, the barrier separating the manifested from one another is not felt; they are drawn closer in an intimacy of the self; they are all bound together by common ties of passion for the Bliss and linked together by a throb of adoration for the Supreme; there is a glow of inner happiness, a sense of universal harmony, a feeling of unshaken anchorage in Eternity among them; there prevails, all rolled into one Truth, beauty, goodness and joy; the whole region is a soul-scape where one has knowledge by direct access, by sheer identity without any need for thought media.

They are knit together by a unity of consciousness; there are no divisive walls between them and the myriad forms are alit with a luminous vision; in the place of the tumultuous life-force prevalent on the earth-plane, there is subtle spiritual force bringing closer the souls with no screen or check; without the spirit there can exist neither life nor love; while the spirit is indwelling at the earth level impelling all movements, it comes into the open here uniting them into one flame of intimacy with each other and of devotion to each other; here the soul does not need to put on a form to enter into contact with others; remaining itself in its deathless form, it has still a concrete and blissful relation with others; Aswapathy knows things not by their shapes but by their souls, their essence, even as in dreams we know the truth by symbol figures and not by concrete shape; just as beings long intimate with one another enter into a communion without the need of any speech, so too Aswapathy communes with the beings without bar of speech or material frame; the souls cape is filled with lakes, streams, hills and gardens all of which are the effusions of the soul; the atmosphere is like the breath of the pure Infinite laden

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with scent of the many-hued flowers; the splendour of beauty there does not require a robe and makes a direct appeal to the soul and not to the eye since it is not limited to a particular form; the self and the world are not separate entities but flow into one another; they are symbols eloquently expressive of the soul.

This is the place of repose for the beings who in their mortal embodiments on earth have passed through the varied experiences of heaven and hell and who now enjoy an internatal trance in the embrace of the world soul; this is the period of rest, gestation for the birth of a new future; they have flashes of memory of their past selves; the map of their coming destiny is disclosed; they are called upon to choose one among the different possibilities of personality for the adventure of a new life; it is the same soul that passes through several shapes and births assuming different names and leaving the imprint of its growth on the pages of time without any self-awareness; it passes through the vicissitudes of evolution till it reaches the stage when it can realise its true self concealed within; the journey must once again be resumed, the soul must put on a body and whirl through the roads of circumstances, pass through the experiment of joy and grief, till it reaches the road of self-discovery.

Aswapathy reaches the very centre of creation, the starting-point of silence, the formless absolute where the formulations of the creative force take place; all that is made is cast into the melting pot, withdrawn for a while into the stillness of the Being and by his unerring vision they are recast and re-started with a new nature and purpose; thus the souls pass through constant changes being helped on by a fruitful, reconstituting sleep of death till their work, their mission is fulfilled; here is the chamber for refashioning the souls after the needed interval from birth to birth for charging it with a fresh strength to undertake the adventure of a new journey. Beyond are realms of delight and peace. Aswapathy withdrawing into the stillness, the quiet of his soul that lies beyond the waves and the roar of the world and depending on the soul-vision and not the sense knowledge sees the triune nature of his being as the Spirit's Infinity.

He forges ahead towards the point which is both the beginning and the end, which is the source of all things human and divine, under the watching eye of the tremendous presences and nameless Gods; there he beholds in an inseparable union the Two-in-One, the Being

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and his creative force whose dance creates and sustains the world; behind the duality stands the divine Mother, the Creatrix guarding the portals of approach to the unseen; she also guides the pilgrim treading these unfamiliar paths; she pervades her power all over the worlds, reigns supreme and is the mover and is the inspirer of all activity; she is the omnipotent force veiled behind her work; she wears the cosmos itself as her inscrutable mask; her foot-falls mark the ages; world events are the imprints of her thoughts.

Aswapathy's spirit becomes a channel for her force and in a fervour, a passion of devotion, he stretches out his folded hands in a prayer and she makes a gesture of response partially raising the veil of cosmos over her face as though throwing away a few of the worlds comprising the universe; he feels drawn by the luminous mystic light of her eyes and in a spirit of self-surrender and with a cry of devotion he falls down prostrate at her feet, for he feels he is a molecule, a minutest speck of her infinite self, overwhelmed by the honey and the lightning of her power.

CANTO FIFTEEN

THE KINGDOMS OF THE GREATER KNOWLEDGE

After a moment of immersion in a state of eternity, Aswapathy is wafted back to the surface fields of Time; he is now in a realm of boundless silence with all the impressions of what he has been once, cleanly wiped off from the tablets of his memory, awaiting the potent word that creates the worlds; he is surrounded by a diamond purity of light and a consciousness devoid of form and content desiring to be as a pure existent, a being of infinite peace and bliss. Aswapathy now out-soars the confines of the mind, flies beyond the gravitational pulls of nature and reaches the region of the pure spirit where no determinations or formulations having yet taken place, the whole realm may be taken for zero or void; it is the point where all cease and all begin; it is the station of Omniscience, a peak whence the spirit surveys the universe; it is the silent home of Wisdom, the radiating centre of the power and the bliss of the Supreme; here rings the voice too subtle for mortal ears; here is the thought beyond the human reach; here reigns the knowledge by identity and love by unity, wiping off

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the difference between the subject and the object and welding them into one. All the creative forces of the Almighty stand there in their plenary strength and with a sense of fulfilment even before embarking on their respective enterprises of creation; here is the workshop of the birth of things in spirit, in their subtlety and this again is the destination to be reached by the finite after crawling through successive manifestations and all the paths of ascent leading to the Eternal, converge here.

Aswapathy released from the bonds of the known, knocks at the doors of the Unknown; with an all-embracing, comprehensive outlook acquired by his inward soul-vision; he gazes at the splendour of the spirit's realms and its boundless works, the enormous rapture of its dynamis welling from its states, its immutable calm; he observes the miracle of the One while being the source of all, transcending and containing the all within Himself; Himself remaining still, He supports all activity, all movement by an infinite self-extension; while the absolute bliss is stable and unmoving, the multiple projections of the one radiant self are the moving mansions of His rapture with a vibrating echo to its base; here everything manifests itself in spiritual shapes unlike on earth where spirit veils itself behind matter; here consciousness is a single sea of happiness and creation is a straight act of fife without the necessity for its expression through the material formulations. Aswapathy passes beyond the belt of silence and enters the fields of puissance where the Powers stand above the world; he comes to the region of the Real Idea, the source of cosmic change; beckoned by knowledge to a mystic peak, he finds thought as part of an inner sense and not a product of the mind, feeling an unruffled movement on the bosom of the peaceful sea and vision unconfined to the limitations of Time.

With the consciousness of the first creator seers, Aswapathy moves, accompanied by an all-revealing light, through the regions of transcendental Truth and discovers the One disporting Himself as the innumerable; he finds that distance and the triple divisions of time into the past, present and the future are mere fictions created by the mind and that they are all parts of spirit's self-extension or a stream of consciousness; the beauty, the significance and the harmony of interdependence that are concealed behind the surface of common things on the earth, are here clearly revealed and he feels

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that he has the key to read the wonder book of nature; the law of harmony governing and knitting together the multiple creations, reveals the meaning of the intricate lines of the World-Geometer's technique and his wonderful skill in the construction of the shapes and the figures that support the cosmic web. Aswapathy reaches the peak of silence where] the music of the spheres is heard; standing on the edge dividing sleep and trance, he hears the voice of mystic revelation, finds the source, the birth-place of the inspired word and exposes himself to a jet of intuitions, a downpour of lightnings, as it were.

Freed from the limitation of sleep and death, he rides farther from the vasts of the cosmic mind, races through the ocean of the original sound and is on the last lap of his journey; he has to cautiously pick his way between the verge of the world negation in eternity and the ridge of its affirmation; he reaches the borders of the ineffable Presence; he sees above himself the several hierarchies of Powers and their respective planes of influence; a wisdom waits on Omniscience in utter Jpassivity listening for the voice of his all-seeing thought. Aswapathy has explored all the secrets of creation from its base to its summit: the Abyss of Nescience to the Peak of Super-conscience; he has made everything his province except the ultimate mystery of the Unknowable; but he feels the rim of the Unknowable disclosed and that signals from the hidden universe are inviting him. The several forms seen below are minute atomic fragmentations of the one Super conscience; they are seen to rise from the depths of Inconscience and crowd together and melt in the one energy here. It is one energy that holds in its control and harmonises all life and Aswapathy now feels that he is in the safe hands of that all-knowing Ray.

This is a realm which does not give access to untruth; here the Person while remaining himself becomes impersonal by transcending the ego limitations and rides safe in the impersonals ocean, securely anchored in the universal spirit and participates in the evolutionary endeavour of the World-spirit; here the body is completely made over to the soul; it becomes a symbol, a mansion of the soul, an instrument, a block or frame for the huge cosmic formless surge to work out its purpose of divinising the world-stuff; it is something like a power-station of the cosmic force; an all-inclusive consciousness pervades this realm as a consequence of which the far and the near, the distant

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and the proximate are annulled and every moment holds within itself the whole eternity; here life is a voyage of the spirit, feeling a wave from the universal Bliss and sight an upsurge from identity. As soon as he touches this region, he feels new-born with the wisdom of a timeless child; the limited becomes limitless, a vast with a sun-blaze; an identity with everything thought and felt, descends on him; the unfathomable that he sees within is matched by the limitless Horizon seen without by him; he puts himself in communion with beings of greater consciousness and larger and subtler make; and even gods hold conversation with him behind the veil of life. His stature grows to the vast peaks of nature; the primal energy takes him in its arms and refashions him; he acquires a light and knowledge that have never fallen to mortal lot; thoughts that have never visited a human mind arise in him; an energy, a might foreign to mortal nerves course through his; he is now in a position to explore the secrets of the Over-mind and endure the rapture of the Over soul; he reaches the outskirts of the empire of the supramental Truth; placing himself in unison with the ethereal Rhythm, he is able to link creation with the Eternal's sphere; his finite parts reach their absolute perfection; his actions reflect the movements of the Gods and his will becomes a canalising arid directive agent of the cosmic force.

Y. S. CHANDRAN

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MUSIC, MATHEMATICS, AND METAPHYSICS

MAN is the microcosm created from the macrocosm, out of the laws of the great world. Therefore, in the laws of his works are implanted cosmic laws, and each art must be a realisation of these laws. In no art do they speak more clearly than in that art which is the most inward, the most intimate to the soul of man — the art of music. And this music is very closely related to the science of mathematics.

The entire body of man, lower and upper part, forms figures in the shape of triangles, circles, squares, oblongs, etc. The structure of the human body forms a mathematically shaped instrument which is played by the music of man's spirit. The internal rhythm system — breathing (inspiration and expiration), the blood stream, the pulse, the heartbeat, the lungs, and metabolism, constitute the musical mathematical marvel that is man. The miracle of harmony, rhythm, and melody of this instrument constitutes the secret wisdom by which man functions. This wisdom enables him to transcend the limitations of the instrumentative of his own nature, and to see the purpose behind them.

Humanity is thus an instrument of music upon which the cosmos plays its melodies. The symphony of the Zodiac — the stars, the sun, the moon and the planets — expresses the mathematical forms and metaphysical truths of the cosmos. The earthly music of humanity is but a reflection of this heavenly sphere of harmony. The Universe thus becomes a mathematical equation, a mathematical hymn of God — the equation of all equations, just as the universe is the symphony of the music of the spheres.

The essence of sound through harmony of the spheres was spoken of by the initiates and priests of Zoroastrianism; in Hindu philosophy by the Vedic seers and Upanishadic ris his (seer-prophets); in the Soma, Rtk, and Gandharva Vedas; by the Greeks (Eleusian and Orphic Mysteries); and by the Sufi mystics.

In ancient times the greatest of the prophets were great musicians. For instance, among the Hindu prophets one finds Narada, the prophet, who was also a musician. One finds Shiva, a god-like prophet in his aspect of Nataraj, the cosmic dancer, representing the infinite modes of rhythms and harmonies in the dance of universal

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creation, preservation, and destruction. The destroyer of ignorance and evil in the universe was also the lord of the dance, music, and drama. And the prophet Krishna is always pictured with a flute.

There is a well-known legend of Moses, which says that Moses heard a divine command on Mount Sinai in the words muse Re: Music, then, besides the natural charm it possesses, has always been depicted as having a certain power and magic charm. In ancient times the effect of music upon man was a well-known fact. Figures such as Apollo, Orpheus, Narada, or Krishna were looked upon as beings who could exercise a formative and healing influence through musical forces. Indeed, the principles of music therapy were recognized throughout the ancient world. The concept may be traced to the writings of the Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Hindus, Chinese, and other learned nations of antiquity.

Music therapy was, as it still is, a part of the religious ceremonies of primitive peoples everywhere. The medieval physician frequently called the minstrels to play and sing to convalescing patients. The beneficial effects of soothing melody were carefully observed, and it was noted that fears or anxieties accompanying serious ailments responded to gentle melodies, which alleviated the tendency of the sufferer to brood and dwell upon his condition.

The power of music in antiquity was also demonstrated by the legendary figure Orpheus, who tamed wild animals with music; Apollo, who had the task to aid the harmonious development of the soul; and Narada, who faced sad Yama's silent courts to conquer death and create immortal tones. In addition, Krishna's flute symbolized constantly the call of the Divine for the restless hearts of men, and inspired the human soul with divine love. The flute or

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the vīnā harmonizing with the lyre, through the harmony of human thinking, feeling, and will, created the highest union of devotion, knowledge, and action.

The extraordinary transcending power of music is evident in the Biblical legend of the walls of Jericho. Music, at various times, has been shown to possess power ,to melt rocks, freeze water, 'melt icebergs, make flowers bloom, bring rain, bring light into darkness, or create fire. It has also been portrayed as having the power to conquer death, as in Savitri: A Legend and A Symbol, the modem epic of Sri Aurobindo.

The whole of life in all its aspects is music. The real spiritual attainment of life is to tune one's self to the harmony of this perfect music. Philosophy (metaphysics) is the highest form of attune-ment, expressed in the past partly through music and mathematics. The highest metaphysics, namely of wisdom and Divine Gnosis (a Meta Ta that which is above and beyond physics) sought to discover, realize and express the harmony of the physical laws. It sought to express the inaudible and inexpressible through mathematics and music by giving them concrete shape and form, number and magnitude, weight and measure, line and design. Spiritual attainment, then, consisted in making the spirit alive and conscious. This was achieved through art and science, which were not looked upon as externalities, but which had the power to become .immediate expressions of the spirit.

The universal quality of music is expressed and revered in works created by composers such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Scriabin, and in works performed by artists such as Ravi Shankar, Tansen, or Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew musicians. The one quality that distinguishes their music from ordinary music is the quality of exalted personal expression of union with the Infinite, as in Infinite Love. This is the characteristic that has dominated the genius and soul of all great music.

The universal quality of music, then, has been expressed in ancient legends and philosophy, in the Bible, and by musical composers and performers. Music has been shown to have the power to liberate man from the importunity of tortuous desires and from the trivialities of man's phenomenal or mundane existence. It has uplifted and ennobled man to realize his metaphysical purpose and

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mathematical significance. In the very depth of man's being the harmony of the working of the whole universe is up in a perfect music.

Therefore, the music of the spheres is a music which is the source of creation, the music which is heard while travelling toward the goal of all creation. And it is heard and enjoyed by those who touch the very depth of their own lives by realizing harmony — harmony with the Eternal or Absolute, harmony with the universe, harmony of body and soul, and harmony with others.

VASANT MERCHANT

(Reproduced from New Thought, 1974 September)

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JAMES BRANCH CABELL:

WIZARD OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

The myth... is not a mere tale told but a reality lived. It is not... an invention such as we read in our novels today... (but) the assertion of an original, greater and more important reality through which the present life, fate and work of mankind are governed.

Bronislaw Malinowski's Myth in Primitive
Psychology, London, 1926.

CABELL was born into one of the leading families of Virginia in 1879. As such, he was imbued with an innate idealism, a deep instinctive admiration for heroism and self-sacrifice. But his sharp intelligence made him savor humbug and hypocrisy and this dual inheritance — of feeling, pulling him towards religious awareness, and of intellect, making him sceptical — moulded and deepened all his insights.

As a member of a long heritage spanning America, England, Europe, and world culture, he became one of America's most learned writers, including the New England Transcendentalists. But his Southern temperament added a voluptuous, sensuous element which greatly complicated matters, while giving his art the unique timbre, the warm sunset glow of Pindar, Ovid, Shakespeare, Fitzgerad's Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, and of writers like John Ruskin - all was far removed from the mechanical madhouse by which he was eventually surrounded.

Since the Industrial Revolution, man has been forced to develop his intellect in a prolonged process of rationalization; the great danger in this is that with the constant use of the head the heart can harden.

But the exercise of the Imagination, which renders the invisible visible, needs a fusion of both head and heart if interpretations are not to be narrow or lopsided. In Chapter 13 of his Biographia Lite-raria, Liter aria, Coleridge regarded the imagination as the living Power and prime Agent of all human perception; he considered it to be a repetition

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in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.

The eminent brain surgeon, Sir Russell Brain, in Some Reflections on Genius¹ put this in contemporary scientific terms when he said that the use of the frontal lobe is to integrate the cortical function or knowledge with the diancephalic function or feeling. That is, both our old and new brains must be used if we are to see the hidden harmony, as with Wordsworth in his poem, "Tintern Abbey," seeing "into the life of things" to become "a living soul."

The great and rare achievement of Cabell was that he used' his imagination to create an artistic and spiritual synthesis in an age predominantly of intellectual analysis. He did not just construct and write novels with his head alone; he tapped the roots of his subconscious in upwelling symbols that, in turn, were even more deeply rooted in the dark, mysterious, but sun-splashed forests of the Collective Unconscious. This enabled him to transcend his age and speak to all time.

In other words, Cabell was a mystic and a seer, penetrating to a pattern behind appearances showing that Something is at work. He was a genuine myth-maker. But intellectually, he was very subtle and complex, and delighted in confounding not only his critics — as I found when I visited him in his beautiful home in Richmond after crossing the Atlantic from Ibiza, Spain, in the hope of getting his approval for my study of him.

This delight led him to all sorts of tricks embodying both black and white magic in some very weird and wonderful happenings; indeed, in his writings he cast down the gauntlet of paradox or contradiction, wrapping his meanings in veils of ambiguity. One result was the censorship of his best book, Furgen, in 1919. At the beginning of this, he had said it would give every man back his own image of himself. He was censored for being lewd, lascivious and indecent.. ..

When the book was cleared and published, he became world famous.

But beneath the serious byplay, there was a religious revelation shining clear for those who read more deeply. What exactly was Cabell's philosophy of life, the mainspring of his art?

¹ London, i960, pp. 179-180. — Pitman Medical Pvts. Co. Ltd.

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He thrashed this out in essays published in 1919 called Beyond Life. The title was from the English poet, John Milton, who had said that a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. These essays were amplified and published as Straws and Prayer Books (1924).

With ruthless honesty, with the most precise objectivity, Cabell probed within himself to see what made him and humanity "tick." He could be chillingly astute when it came to seeing the foibles and follies of a materialistic world, as his brooding irony became cosmic in its significance and proportions.

In these essays he emerged as a Romantic, but with a profound streak of questioning scepticism concerning all easy answers; his doubts forced him to the depths in reaching the heights of his ultimately mystic understanding.

The conclusion of Beyond Life defines his vision or creed. In some of the finest prose in English, he noted that all goes forward towards Something, that we are as seething atoms which ferment towards the making of this Something, and that we have the instinctive knowledge that it will be Something better. He notes that this will to have things as they ought to be is called Romance. He concluded that when we see how it sways all life, we perceive that we ate talking about God.

This creed permeates all his writings — the eighteen volumes of the Storisende Edition, published between 1927-1930, and the later writings consisting essentially of two trilogies of fiction (Hamlet had an Uncle, 1940, is one of the best) and the later essays, such as "Virginians are Various," and his last book, his autobiographical reflections, As I remember it, 1955.

Thus, Cabell's philosophy is based firmly on the theory of evolution; his mysticism is backed by empirical science and this makes it durable, and acceptable to the modern imagination.

As his essays show, Cabell believed that God was a Romancer, an author of incalculable skill and imagination, working immanently through his creation, putting Himself into it as an artist into his art, timing the insemination of every Seed and navigating the birds across the ocean.

Let us glance at two of his best books, Furgen (1919), and Figures of Earth (1921), to paint in the picture and to see more

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fully what his mystic insight led him to believe, in an age of much doubt and denial, to make him a literary giant who was recognized by the late critic Vernon L. Parrington, who called him, in The Pacific Review, 1921, the supreme humorist yet granted to Americans.

Writing on the possible starting-point for Bunyan's inspiration for his Pilgrim's Progress (in the English Association Leaflet, No. 19, 19II) Sir Charles Frith quoted Hebrews XI, 13-16:

They were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things, declare plainly that they seek a country... they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for He hath prepared for them a city.

Well, Jurgen — an aging pawnbroker who does not always see eye-to-eye with his wife — also desired and sought a better country. But Jurgen, too, had fed from the poisonous tree of knowledge, and even at the most personal and intimate moments, e.g., with the delectable Queen of Philistia, he still asks awkward questions.

Yet, it should be remembered that however sexually liberated Cabell was he was dealing in symbols. These took him to the heart of the mystery of creation as he used nearly everything created by former ages to make of American life a my theorem of all life.

Cabell's two great concerns, of Chivalry and Gallantry, combine in Jurgen to illustrate what he regarded as essential to a real man in an ungentlemanly world.

The Rabbelasian wit and caustic irony counterbalance any tendency to sentimentality in the "hero," whether he finds himself in the Druid forest being shown "all," or in the heaven of his beloved grandmother. Even at his worst moments, he still refuses to believe in the insignificance of Jurgen, seeing in himself something permanent and rather fine as well as much folly. The book is a comedy of justice and in the end Jurgen is not entirely unsatisfied to regain his lost wife.

A key chapter is Jurgen's visit to heaven where he addresses the Almighty to tell Him that he, Jurgen, both fears and loves him — but that he cannot find faith, and having said this, he weeps in full view of all the angels.

Cabell's artistry must be weighed carefully here, as Jurgen — the

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speculative thinker — seems to speak for modern man, not for Cabell himself, who affirmed his own faith which he said went beyond mere reason "because it was developed in me earlier." This brings us to Cabell's third vital theme for existence — the theme of Vicarship, of taking care of our inheritance in a spirit of benevolence.

Cabell's books, including Furgen and Figures of Earth, span twenty generations of ardent questing to find out what life is all about. The world-wide demiurge of Romance drives us on to fulfil our dream, even if eventually each generation must fall short

In Jurgen, Furgen, Cabell sees that if there is justice on earth it is very rough, as the pawnbroker returns from his cosmic travels to his shop and his wife, with whom he did not always agree, in a fine and moving culmination to a profound and far-reaching work of poetic art.

The eighteen volumes of the Storisende Edition portray the biography of Manuel the Redeemer. He is the founder of Cabell's mythology, the founder, in 1234, of Poictesme, Cabell's dream-world in the sunlit south of France, and his descendants are seen in action in England, Europe and modern America. The whole is the saga of the questing spirit of universal man over seven centuries, in the most ambitious literary work to come from the U.S.A. Cabell's grandiose philosophy and complex yearning for beauty demanded and justified this large canvas.

Figures of Earth tells Manuel's life story, of how from humble begirinings he became a splendid Count, Overlord of Poictesme, a noble land, rich in grain, metals and forests, with pleasant streams, and fine walled cities. But Manuel, the bewildered man of action, betrays his innermost desires and dwindles eventually into valiant but puzzled old age and becomes merely what is expected of him, left only with appearances. At last Grandfather Death, on a white horse, calls for him and he must follow bearing his motto, mundus vult Decipi - The World wishes to be Deceived. As they enter the swirling waters of Lethe, Manuel asks what his destiny will be and here Cabell's chief moral emerges: Grandfather Death tells the Count that if he has been himself there can be no punishment, but if he has been somebody else...

Cabell's great interest and liking for Hindu mysticism is reflected directly here, as Manuel finds himself reincarnated again back to the Pool of Haranton, where he started. We are told in the Bhagavad

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Gita how man must distinguish between his inner spiritual Self and his outer conscious ego, or material self, if he is to reach the Prime Mover and not return to things transient; perhaps the beauty with which this concept rounds out Cabell's art verifies its truth.

That Cabell was on the right path, spiritually and artistically, is confirmed by the latest empirical findings of depth psychology as shown by Erich Neumann's The Origins & History of Consciousness (Princeton U. P. 1954; paperback 1970), with a foreword by Carl Jung. This maintains that the Individual reflects the whole species as it develops through successive psychological stages, revealed by the world's myths from the worship of the Mother, the symbolic slaying of the Parents, the Heroic struggle to overcome the Dragon, the finding of the Princess or Treasure, and the achievement of the golden 'crown of manhood or self-understanding. All these archetypes are in Cabell's art, fulfilling these requirements and revealing the overall march of the Collective Unconscious in the vast universal power house as a whole.

Cabell read my typescript, said that he liked it "entirely and enormously," and promised to write a foreword. But it was not to be — within months, in 1958, he had passed on, aged almost eighty. Such was the status of Romance that it was over thirty rejections later before my book was published by the University of Oklahoma Press, in 1967, entitled James Branch Cabell : The Dream And The Reality.

Now there is a Cabell revival. There have been four critical studies of him since 1958; Figures Of Earth, The Silver Stallion, and Jurgen are available from Tandem Books, London; Domnei and The Cream of the J est are in Ballantine Books, New York, with Jurgen reissued by Avon Books; the magazine Kalki of the University of Cincinnati is devoted entirely to him. The magnificent James Branch Cabell Library at the Virginia Commonwealth University, with its own Cabell room, is now open in Richmond.

As Cabell wrote at the beginning of his career and again at the end, the qualities he aimed at were distinction, clarity, beauty, symmetry, tenderness, truth and urbanity. They are splendid virtues and seem essential to any individual or civilization wishing to endure.

DESMOND TARRANT

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OCCULTISM OF AEONIC SELF - DISCOVERY

(Continued from the issue of April 1977)

III

SRI AUROBINDO'S SUPERMAN

MAN, according to Sri Aurobindo, is not the final word in evolution; there will be a flowering of a unique form of self-exceeding and self-transcending; if the animal is the living laboratory in which man is worked out by Nature, man is a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious cooperation Nature strives to work out the Divine man or the Superman; man is essentially a manomaya purusa, a mental being; but mind is an inferior mode of operation of the self-knowing and self-luminous principle, the Supermind; this veiled and concealed principle, must in the course of evolution be made overt and there must then be a transfiguration of the entire being; man must be divinised down to the cells of his body. The gospel of true superman hood should not be turned into an arrogant claim for a class or a few individuals; it steers clear of the two paths, one of negation in Nirvana or Kaivalya and the other of egoistic self-affirmation; it eschews asceticism on one side and materialism on the other; it advocates a conscious cooperation and participation in the Divine Will and furtherance of the Divine objectives; it raises man to the position of a Divine playmate in His cosmic self-expression; it is an ideal for collective transformation and not one of individual overgrowth; after the overthrow of kings and aristocrats, Bernard Shaw says that a democracy of Supermen is the desideratum for saving mankind from recurring disasters.

Nietzsche is the first to conceive the ideal; 'but he was an apostle who never entirely understood his own message. His prophetic style was like that of the Delphic oracle which spoke constantly the word of Truth but turned it into untruth in the mind of the hearer'; he hymns the Olympian but presents him with the aspect of the Asura; his hostile pre-occupation with the Christ-idea of the crucified God and his war against current moral ideas is responsible for the

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distortion of the word as he has heard it, the Truth as he has seen it; the Superman as conceived by him is the embodiment of power; the persuasive agency of a merciful God, and the glad acceptance of suffering of a devout Christian and all the ethical considerations are set at nought as positive hindrances in the path of national advancement; he says 'whatever the wicked may do, the harm of the good is fullest harm'; unable to create any new values, they crucify those who create new values; this is a revolt induced by the exclusive emphasis of Christianity on the element of love, but mere love divorced from power is ineffective as is clear from the plaint of Madonna of Sorrows in Savitri to whom she says

'But thine is the power to solace, not to save.

One day I will return, a bringer of strength,'

Power is also an essential factor in the manifestation of the Spirit; it is needed for the subjugation of the forces of darkness and evil; an overemphasis on any one aspect of God or an exclusive exaltation of any one at the expense of the other elements is to be avoided for God is a harmonious unity of love, power and knowledge; while correcting this error, Nietzsche swings to the other extreme of exalting power to the rank of supreme reality; the Greek emphasis on knowledge, the Christian stress on love and the Nietzschean apotheosis of power are but complementary aspects of truth; a synthesis of these, a blend, gives us a 'full-orbed vision of Superman hood'; the Superman unites within himself all knowledge, and love for the striving soul and a ruthless power to crush the forces of evil that oppose the march of evolution. Nietzsche's superman is the son of division and the strong flowering of the Ego; he is the demon, the Asura in man deified; 'the Titan would unify by devouring, not by harmonising; he must conquer and trample what is not himself either out of existence or into subservience; his one over-mastering impulse is to dwarf everybody so that he may tower above them like a Colossus; but the Superman of Sri Aurobindo evolves in intuition, in light, in love, in happy self-mastery; he serves by rule and rules by service; he is the self-ruler and the world-ruler; he has a oneness with all and helps others to realise their divine potentialities if necessary by compulsion; his infinity arises from the death of his ego; Haridas Chaudhuri 'The Prophet

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of Life Divine' p. 126 'as a play-mate of the Divine, the Superman would unreservedly offer his body, his life and mind, as plastic instruments in the hands of God so that life on earth may be turned into a sacred poem of divine ecstasy'. Sri Aurobindo's Superman is above good and evil for he perceives that a too strict adherence to ethical values leads to an arrested progress, a status quo, a stagnation; a good law can not be good for all time; the old order must change yielding place to the new; it impedes the flow of the higher values; conventional morality more often hampers the march of evolution; the spirit is richer than any abstract principle; Nietzsche is thus right in a way in speaking of the limited scope of moral values but is wrong in twisting them into a form of expression of the Will to Power; but moral values too in their time have done immense service in inspiring the human development to a high degree of excellence; carried too far they prove a hindrance; there is no morality at the infra-ethical also at the supra-ethical level; at the level of the animal, there prevails the determinism of the instinct and moral considerations are totally absent; it is only at the higher stage of man, with his having an autonomous will that moral distinctions for the first time arise; with greater spiritual progress they tend to disappear; philosophers like Bossanquet and Bradley point out the fundamental discrepancy in morality as arising out of a tension, a conflict between passion and reason or impulse and law and its attempt at removing the conflict which happens to be its very base and without which it does not have an existence. But the removal of this discord marks the stage of self-fulfilment of the moral urge; Sri Aurobindo places his Superman at the higher stage; the dynamism of the Superman derives not from any conformity to an abstract principle but conformity to the divine will, an identification with the Spirit; he is supra-ethical in the sense that actions beneficial to mankind only flow from him with a spontaneity and none for his self-aggrandisement; doing good is as natural for him as breathing fragrance for a flower; he is constitutionally incapable of doing anything immoral and there does not arise the question of his enjoying any impunity or applying any code of ethics to him; conventional morality may be useful for the stability and the order of society, but in the higher supra-ethical order it is the divine purpose operative in mankind that is the determinant of all the actions of the Superman; their actions cannot be logically explained even as

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those of the Avatars; the actions of the infinite cannot be brought under the logic of the finite for which reason the laboured explanations given in justification of the deeds of Rama or Krishna may sound unconvincing. Love of humanity is without question the strongest motivation in him, but it is something sharply distinguished from the type of philanthropy and humanitarianism we are accustomed to; more often than not, the philanthropist and the humanitarian love their enlarged image of the ego reflected in the collectivity of men; these do not know the place and the purpose of man in the cosmic scheme and are unable to guide humanity to its goal in the course of evolution; but the Superman has a Truth-vision which raises him above these intellectual formulas; man made in the image of God has been an imperfect or faint image, but the Superman is 'man turned into a perfect image of the Divine, thoroughly transfigured in every member of his being.'

Bernard Shaw in his Man and Superman pleads for a radical change in human nature, but precisely in what manner should the change take place is not indicated; he only says that the overthrow of the princely aristocracy should pave the way for the emergence of the Superman or his necessity; we are warned against the football-club folly of counting a superior body for a supermind and Sunday-school folly of taking compliance with the conventional morality of regular attendance at the church for the infallible sign of superior mind; neither the athlete nor the good man is a Superman and he cites as examples of the Supermen Napolean, Cromwell, Shakespeare, Goethe and so on; but Sri Aurobindo says that these are all great men or heroes as Carlyle calls them; they are Mahamanavas who overtop the rest by a striking development of some human quality, say military strategy in Napoleon and the dramatic genius in Shakespeare; as contrasted with him, the Atimanava, the Superman is one who reaches the highest state of development, passes beyond the mind and excels the others in having access to the truth-vision, the super-conscience; the flashes that come from the illumined or over mind are enough to make one great, a hero; the Superman passes beyond the border line dividing over mind from the supermind and he is the result of the superb flowering of the supermind; the superman differs from the greatest among men as profoundly as a normal human being differs from the mightiest or the most intelligent animal'. Bernard

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Shaw pleads for the socialisation of selective breeding and the abolition of marriage in the interest of quickening the pace of evolution and facilitating the advent of the superman for he holds that marriage is as obstructive as capitalism for the realisation of the objective of superman; but this is placing an overconfidence in the objective circumstances for producing what is essentially an internal change in human nature; it is a call for cooperation with unconscious nature; eugenics and other objective changes are in the nature of the usual quackeries suggested like the educational, and social reforms; the change must come from within to without; the veiled principle of Truth-consciousness must be made overt and it should flood the entire being; this is possible when the vehicle is made ready by aspiration, and self-surrender to receive the higher light through the divine grace.

According to Prof. Alexander, Alexander, Space-Time is matrix that is impregnated by the evolutionary nisus towards the production of emergent qualities; the unique quality that manifests itself in the course of evolution is named the 'deity'; space-time are ever striving to throw out more and more of these novel deities; the emergence of a superior race of men by the same process is inevitable; but the materialisation of a unique quality, deprives it of the glamour of deity; with him deity must be something unattained and unrealisable; the moment they are realised, they cease to be deities; further he calls these higher unique qualities emergent distinguishing or dissociating them from the previous order; for instance the plant world is different from the world of animals and the animals from the order of men; thus a principle of discontinuity is introduced into the process of evolution; this is because time is taken for an essential factor by Prof. Alexander but for Sri Aurobindo the nisus is to be found in the urge of the Supreme for more and more of self-revelation; Sri Aurobindo also does not see eye to eye with the Professor on the point of discontinuity; it is quite possible for Nature to shut out the infra-human or the pre-human levels from all intimation of its drive or purpose and forge ahead, but at the conscious human level where man has the power of controlling his actions and knowing the drift of evolution, such complete disregard of man is not possible as in the animal or the plant world; he can glimpse the direction and give his conscious cooperation in the drive of evolution; he can himself consciously evolve into the Superman

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or pave the way for his emergence; he can be the means for the full self-revelation of the divine. Sri Aurobindo's position is superior in another respect; he answers the why and the how of evolution; in Prof. Alexander the inner spring of evolution is not clarified; there could not be a nisus towards deity unless it be already there; in Sri Aurobindo the spirit has taken the plunge, has involved itself in matter, it stages a come back through all the stages till the ultimate reality Satchidananda is reached and therefore it is a single continuous movement. Further in Prof. Alexander's emergent evolution and its nisus, the emergence of the higher consciousness does not mean any radical benefit to man; his destiny remains unchanged; there is no actual infinite being in his philosophy, but there is an actual infinite: the whole universe with a nisus to deity and this is the God to be worshipped; he, as a matter of fact foists a spiritual principle upon his theory of evolution which is thoroughly materialistic, even as Herbert Spencer has foisted upon a purely naturalistic evolution a moral principle which is not related it  As contrasted to these, Sri Aurobindo points to a bright destiny for man of receiving a higher consciousness and transforming himself into the divine in its light; what to Prof. Alexander are the emergent qualities are to Sri Aurobindo a discloser, a gradual unfoldment of the higher powers of the Spirit or Satchidananda; the former also seems to be under a vague impression that infinity means an endlessness; but infinity does not mean the endless prolongation of some process; it should mean an approximation to the goal, a fulfilment of the effort and in Sri Aurobindo we have such a goal, the Superman or the Gnostic being.

Having taken a brief view of the Western ideas regarding the goal of human evolution, we may turn our attention to the Eastern ideals about supra-human self-fulfilment; Jivanmukta naturally comes in for some discussion as compared to the Superman; according to the traditional view life in the world is one of bondage, subjection to the fetters of ignorance and liberation can be attained only in terms of snapping them and escaping from the prison-house of the ego, its attachments and its dualities; Jivanmukta is one who achieves realisation in this very life; 'he has knowledge by being or knowledge by identity'; he achieves emancipation from the ego bonds of craving and attachment and develops the universality of consciousness embracing the whole Cosmos; his self becomes the cosmic self; realisation

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means the discovery of the inner self and the purification of the inner nature for without these, it is not possible to realise the divine; thus Jivanmukta accomplishes a double realisation; he is the integrated personality that has self-realisation and God-realisation; he becomes free, unhampered by any taboos or prohibitions, fives a life of illumined and spontaneous living and he departs after the full acquaintance, the wiping out of the past Karma, is obtained. Even after the attainment of emancipation and enlightenment, he continues to do good and altruistic actions since anything else is foreign to his nature; in some systems the idea of collective liberation is stressed; the Bodhisttawa for instance unsparingly works for the removal of the suffering of all the living creatures; still the main current of thought is in favour of world and life negation; but the rejection of life in the material world as an inevitable requisite for the spiritual realisation is not enjoined in the ancient scriptures; the Vedas and the Puranas, the Upanishads and the Gita emphasize on the affirmation of life and the world on the foundation of dharma; they even speak of congregational worship, praying together for bringing down the divine into human life; the seers in the Upanishads speak of immortality, amritam, a condition beyond death and ignorance and the needed effort for obtaining it; the Puranas envisage the establishment of Dharmarajya and the Satyayuga in human society as the goal towards which humanity should march; in this context Sri Aurobindo's Superman is a logical development of this traditional ideal; according to him what is required is not the rejection of the world but the separative narrow self, not the crucifixion of the flesh but that of the ego; true liberation consists of purification of the self in the light of the higher consciousness: in the non-dualistic nature that develops due to the descent of the super conscience, the conflict of the flesh and the spirit vanishes, the ego perishes, the instrumentation of the body becomes transmuted; and thus due to the alchemy of the spirit at work, he stays in the world, becomes a partner, a conscious participator in the collective evolution of the spirit of mankind in establishing the divine life on earth.

Thus the Superman is a fusion of the divine and the human; but how he is to be distinguished from the divine incarnation or the Avatar should be a point of next consideration; both Hinduism and the Mahayana Buddhism speak of divine incarnation; — Christianity

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speaks of Christ as being a unique incarnation; but Hinduism says that there is a multiple incarnation of God whenever there is a crisis in human affairs; though God is one, his incarnations are many to save the world; it is not merely to save but also to re-establish Dharma or righteousness in the world or to give a fresh impetus to the march of evolution, to effectuate the design of God by the removal of the obstacle that there is a special manifestation of the divine. The difference between the Avatar and the superman is that in the Avatar there is the direct descent of God into man; as has already been pointed out it is not for mere restoration of Dharma that God incarnates himself for this he could do by his other ways of omnipotence such as the birth of great men and new movements but he incarnates himself for the purpose of demonstrating to the struggling mankind the rich potential lying hidden in them and how they could ascend or rise to the divine; if the avatar is a descent of God into man, the Superman is an ascent of man into God; if the avatar clears away the obstacle and leads the evolution the Superman is the fine flowering of evolution; Haridas Chaudhuri sees a particular significance in each avatar, an overtly operative sattwic principle of righteousness in Ramachandra, an over mental consciousness in Sri Krishna, the principle of love in Jesus Christ, an essential unity of all religions in Sri Ramakrishna, and the supramental transformation in Sri Aurobindo.

It is worthwhile to clarify the points once again; a great man is one in whom we find an extraordinary development of a single quality; a Jivanmukta is one who achieves a boundless freedom of the spirit by hewing his way to the goal across all the limitations and transcending them; he may be superhuman but not Superman; he is a 'divine man but not a divinised man'; an avatar is an incarnation of God in the human form to give a spurt to evolution but a Superman is the birth of man in God, an ascent of man to God, installed in the Spirit and the divine consciousness to work out the redemption of the entire mankind, nature and the world from that centre or high altitude; the Superman is a Jivanmukta in the sense that he achieves his personal liberation, self-perfection but as the factor for the collective liberation of mankind; in short he becomes the channel for the divine consciousness to work out its manifestation; he is the superb flowering of evolution.

Y. S. R. CHANDRAN

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THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY

An Outline

CHAPTER XVII

NATURE'S LAW IN OUR PROGRESS UNITY

IN DIVERSITY, LAW AND LIBERTY

FOR man alone of terrestrial creatures, to live rightly involves the necessity of knowing rightly the law of Nature, especially his own nature. But Nature is not, as once imagined, something eternal and unchanging, but is itself heightening and widening its possibilities, even though there are certain truths of being which remain the same and upon them as bedrock our progress and perfection must be based.

The subhuman species are spared this necessity of knowledge and the conscious will to live according to the knowledge; they live spontaneously according to Nature and cannot but obey its laws and dictates. Man, on the contrary, has the power to govern Nature and even to vary from the course it prescribes, through the power of his mind and will. Man alone of terrestrial creatures is capable of a mental conflict with himself and is therefore capable of a constant self-transcending, a progression from a higher to higher type.

This evolution takes place at present by a conflict and progress of ideas applied to life. At first, man's ideas of life are simply a mental translation of life's needs, desires and interests. At a later stage, he tries to understand the laws of his mind, life and body and his environment, the laws of our actualities and their potentialities. The latter assume for the arbitrary human intellect the form of a fixed ideal standard towards which man must aspire.

Both our actualities and our potentialities are forces or powers of our nature from which we cannot escape. Our intellect, however, tends to mistake present law and form for the eternal law of our

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nature and existence, or else, to mistake some future law and form for our ideal rule of life and its eternal law. In truth, our ideal can be no more than a progressive expression of what is constant through all changes.

Had our mentality been perfect, it would be one in its knowledge and will with the totality of the secret Knowledge and Will which Nature in us is trying to bring out to the surface, and there would then be no mental conflict within us; for we would then be able to follow intelligently her course. Actually, because our mentality is imperfect, we catch only a glimpse of her tendencies and erect that side of her process as the absolute principle of our life and conduct.

The social evolution of the human race is necessarily a development of the relations between three constant factors: the individual, communities of various sorts, and mankind as a whole. The individual can grow to his fullness only through his relations with other individuals, the various kinds of community religious, social, cultural and political to which he belongs, and to the idea and need of humanity at large. The community likewise can grow only through its individual members and subject to the conditions imposed on it by its relations with other communities and to humanity as a whole. And if humanity arrives in future at an organised common life, it can do it only by the expanding life of the individual and the communities. Therefore, the ultimate aim of Nature, it would seem, must be to develop the individual and all individuals, the community and all communities to their fullest many-sided expression, and to evolve the united life of humanity to its full common capacity and satisfaction. This would be the soundest way to a total perfection of man.

A principle of free and harmonious mutuality as between individuals, communities and the totality of the human race would thus be the ideal way to human progress.

But as a matter of fact, human life is still governed by the opposite principle of struggle and conflict, of various kinds and at all levels of our existence, intellectual, vital, physical. Man's

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intellect, failing to discover or apply the right method of overcoming this principle of conflict, now endeavours to get rid of the resulting disorder by subjecting the life of the individual to the life of the community; and logically it will be led, if it proceeds on this line, to get rid of strife between communities, by a strong subordination of the life of the community to the united and organised life of the human race.

But freedom and diversity are as necessary to life as order and unity. Unity we must create, but not necessarily uniformity. If man could realise a perfect spiritual unity, or even a secure, clear, firmly-held unity in the principle, a rich, even an unlimited diversity in its application might be possible without any fear of disorder. Because he can do neither, his reason favours uniformity, for that gives him a strong illusion of unity. Uniformity lightens the task of law, and it seems to him the one secure and easy way to unification, because it enables him to economies his energies. But in the end, uniformity and regimentation stunt man's total intellectual and cultural growth and make him suffer by the loss of his continued source of vitality.

A certain amount of uniformity has to be sought after, because of the imperfections of our present state. But the real aim of Nature is a true unity supporting a rich diversity. This is clear enough from the fact that she insists always on an infinite variation in detail even though she moulds on a general plan. As with the individual so with the community, the variation and fundamental following of their own separate law is necessary to their life but it is equally necessary to the healthy life of mankind. A real psychological and spiritual unity can dispense with all but a minimum of uniformity. Until that is achieved, the method of uniformity must be applied, but we must not over-apply it, on peril of discouraging life in its sane natural self-unfolding.

The quarrel between law and liberty has to be settled on the same principle. Nature does not impose a pattern or rule from outside; it impels life to grow freely from within. All liberty, individual, national, religious, social, ethical is based on this fundamental principle. Liberty means the freedom to obey the law of our being

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and to find out freely our harmony with our environment. The wrong use of liberty and the resulting confusion arise from a defect or absence of the sense of unity. If a real psychological and spiritual unity could be established, liberty would have no perils.

Law and regimentation, bringing a compulsion from outside, remain a necessity because of our imperfect development. They have their obvious utility. But such perfection as they succeed in bringing tends to be mechanical and breaks down if the yoke is loosened; carried too far, an imposed order may even slay the capacity for real growth. Better anarchy than the long continuance of a law which our real nature cannot assimilate. The true law must develop from within and be not a check on liberty but its visible expression. Human society progresses in proportion as law becomes the child of freedom.

It will reach its perfection when man becomes spiritually one with his fellow-men and the law of his society exists only as the outward mould of his self-governed inner liberty.

(To be continued)

SANAT K. BANERJI

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REVIEWS

Sri Garib Das: Haryana's Saint of Humanity by K. C. Gupta. Impex India, 2/18 Ansari Road. New Delhi 110002. P.216, RS.4o.00

'THIS is perhaps the first book in English on the famous minstrel of God, Garib Das of Punjab, who lived in the 18th century A. D. He was among the last of the series of poet-saints of India who gave a fillip to Bhakti movement in the land, democratised spiritual values and contributed to the growth of the popular languages which they used for their expression.

Garib Das was most influenced by the legacy of Kabir and the authentic tradition embodied in the Adi Grantha Sahib. The author has researched into a number of manuscripts and documents in the course of his study of the life and works of this saint. He describes the social and political conditions of the time, sifts facts from legends and devotes a whole chapter to the Philosophy and Religion of Garib Das. He cites several verses from the original texts and translates them in chaste English, underlining the practical mysticism of the poet-saint. Garib Das has no use for external rituals and ceremonies, pilgrimages to holy places, or fasts and other self-mortifications. The true journey is to go within oneself and stand before the Light which is the form of God. Bhakti, devotion, is a powerful agent in this Way of Love.

The writer discusses the reasons why the poetry of this great mystic has not been sufficiently appreciated despite its distinctive character; he rightly points to the narrow approach of his sectarian followers as one of the main factors for restricting the appeal of what is truly a universal message.

A scholarly treatise which does justice to the personality, thought and poetry of a humanitarian spiritualist.

M. P. PANDIT

Bhavanopanishad by S. Mir a. Ganesh and Co, Madras-17. p. 75, Price Rs. 6/-

Bhavana-Upanishad holds a pre-eminent position in the tantric worship of the Divine Mother. The famous Sri Chakra is taken to correspond

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to the human body and a prolonged meditation on this identity is converted into an inner worship of the Supreme Deity who indwells this "master plan of manifestation, a transcript of the Transcendent, a symbol image of the supernal verities, the abode of the Supreme Shakti with her myriad forces" (S. Shankaranarayanan in the Preface).

The text is cryptic and carries a commentary by Bhaskararaya, the celebrated expounder of the Shakta Doctrine. Even this commentary is loaded with difficult concepts and technical terms which are happily explained in simple, direct terms by the author S. Mira.

She gives an accurate rendering of the original commentary and the text. Her notes are brilliant and anticipate the need of the modern mind. She draws upon Sri Aurobindo's writings with profit.

Speaking of the order of Gurus, she explains: "Knowledge is handed over from master to disciple and from him to his disciple and so on in continuous succession. To this perpetual hierarchy, continuous guidance, the Tantra gives the name, augha, which means a flood or stream. The masters guide the aspirant in three streams: divyaugha, the heavenly guides who watch over the destiny of the human race, Sidd augha, the accomplished or perfected ones, who by the dint of their effort have become competent to guide others and mana augha, the human mentors ready to give a helping hand to their struggling brethren."

In another note, the author points out: "This cosmography found in the Puranas is symbolic. Mount Meru is the basis. The seven islands represent the seven states of being and the seven oceans symbolise the seven planes of consciousness. The supernal space is the symbol of Bliss."

S. Mira is meticulous as a translator, conscientious as an expositor. We look forward to more texts annotated by her.

M. P. PANDIT

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An Introduction to Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy, by Dr. Joan Price Ockham. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 1977. 185 pages

When I first read, or attempted to read, The Life Divine, I thought its author a genius and the book supported not by just a pageant of paltry words but real, experience. I didn't understand a thing, though the first chapters were difficult and those following, a chore. But the words carried forceful echoes and I tried again. Once more my mind protested. Yet years later I am trying, still, and with each attempt I grasp a little more.

And it is this problem — properly understanding Sri Aurobindo — that Westerners, and perhaps even those in the East, regard as real. A fine accessory for this undertaking is the book, An Introduction to Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy, by Dr. Joan Price Ockham, a Professor at Mesa Community College in Arizona. Although The Life Divine is considered his major work Sri Aurobindo has written much else of his experience and philosophy of Integral Yoga (though, his other works don't equal the task of comprehension of The Life Divin e), and Dr. Ockham chooses from them also to support the purpose of her book. Perhaps she knew of the many minds which, like mine, chewed (and richweed) the toughness of Sri Aurobindo's writing
until, like hardened pulp, it was no longer literature. Her book is a clear vehicle for the prepared apprentice earnest about reading and knowing Sri Aurobindo and his philosophy. As Dr. Ockham so aptly explains: "It is the purpose of this small volume to introduce the reader to Sri Aurobindo's life and thought with a short biographical sketch of some of his reported inner experiences and the essential Clements of the magnificent philosophy that resulted from these experiences." And throughout the book these experiences are given appropriately for the enterprising Western mind to approach and understand. By way of illustration the author quotes frequently the words of Sri Aurobindo - and it is tempting to over quote him bringing forward relevant subjects such as: his life and work, the Supermind, involution and evolution, ignorance, rebirth and Karma, transformation, the Divine life on Earth. And like the good interpreter, she follows or precedes with trimmed exposition. How, for instance, can the unaccustomed mind of the West relate to pain, suffering

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and evil as expressions of Delight, not its negations? The author mediates: "The ordinary notions of good and love which we judge as Delight and Bliss come from our dualistic misconception of things. From this dualistic base of reference we build a standard of ethics about what is good and what is bad, but is the world we live in an ethical world?" She gives, then, a clarifying passage from The Life Divine.

As an informed teacher exposes latent knowledge, this volume helps to reveal the heightened truths afforded us by Sri Aurobindo, making his formidable work adequately accessible to the conventional mind. 

BARBI DAILEY

KANNADA

Pavadegalu by A. Z.. Koli. Basaveshwar Arts College, Bagalkot, Karnataka. P. 62, Price. Rs. 4.00

In this vigorous discussion on miracles, whether they really exist and if they do, are they divine and how far they are permissible, the writer comes to grips with a number of fundamental questions and deals with them with a commendable objectivity. Obviously he has in mind the controversy raging in some quarters on the performance of miracles in public and the demand for a scientific scrutiny of those phenomena.

He analyses the evolution of Religion and Science as two complementary movements in the search for Truth and points to the recent narrowing of the gulf between them. He has little difficulty in dismissing the charge that all 'miracles' are legerdemain. He admits the existence of supernormal powers but makes a useful distinction between the exercise of those powers by Avatars like Christ and by yogins and other men of God. He also underlines the fact that these powers are not divine but psychic. On the question whether it is legitimate for men of science to call upon spiritualists to submit themselves for examination of their 'miracles', he sees nothing wrong in it but pleads for an extension of the methods of science to meet the beyond-senses phenomena on their own level.

An informative and lucid study. The author's comments on the subject of avatārhood show that a deeper study is called for. It is not true to say that Avatars have been agents for division. It is the sects which have sprung up among their fol1owers that have caused harm.

M. P. PANDIT

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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 onwards.-Ed.]

I

THE DIVINE MOTHER

THE conception of God as the Mother is a distinctive feature of Hinduism. In Christianity we have the notion of God as the Father, and Islam lays emphasis upon the nature of God as the Master, the Obeyed One (Allah), though Islam is also aware of the unique and indescribable character of the proper relation subsisting between man and God. The mystics, the world over, realise God as the Companion, as the supreme Beloved, and finally, as the inmost Self or the Soul of soul. Hinduism is alive to the many-sided nature of the relationship under consideration. In His transcendental aspect or poise of being, God is above all relations and distinctions, above all names and forms and qualities; He is self-sufficient and eternally self-realised. But in His relationship to the world and man, God is at once Master or Sovereign, Father, Mother, Companion, Beloved and Bridegroom. Man enters into these different relations with the Divine at the different stages of his spiritual unfoldment. The deepest realisation is however attained when the individual self knows itself to be essentially identical with or inseparable from the supreme Godhead.

The Spirit has at every poise of being two inseparable aspects, the aspect of immutable being and the aspect of mutable becoming, the static and the dynamic aspects. In the static aspect, God is self-absorbed or wrapped up in His eternal perfection, without any want to remove or any desire to fulfil. In the dynamic aspect, God moves out of his immutable being into ceaseless becoming and takes delight in the variable manifestation of the inexhaustible riches of His nature. It is this dynamic Divine who is represented as the Divine Mother and who is responsible for the functions of creation and destruction. While the Supreme in its aspect of immutable being is called Siva, in its aspect of mutable becoming we call it Sakti or the Mother. The ecstatic dance of the Mother Kali on the bosom of the quiescent Siva is the symbolic representation of the rhythmic movement of the cosmic drama against the background or on the basis of the eternally perfect Absolute.

In every system of philosophy, there is a feminine principle in some form or other. This feminine principle is no other than the

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principle of objectivity (Idam) which brings forth the cosmic manifold for the delight of the Spirit; it is the principle of creativity (Sakti) which is inexhaustible in its production of diverse forms and qualities. In the Sankhya system we have this feminine principle in Prakriti which is an objective and creative principle but which is existentially separate from the Spirit. In Advaitam, Maya stands for the feminine principle, but Maya is logically indeterminate and incapable of being characterised as either existent or non-existent. In Western philosophy, we have the feminine principle in external Nature which is characterised by endless fecundity and dynamic objectivity. Reduced to philosophic terms, external Nature is, at bottom, Non-Being or Formless Matter; it is "passage of events" or "creative advance of Nature"; it is the space-time continuum which functions as the matrix of all empirical existence and the nurse of all becoming. But none of these principles can be exalted to the rank of Mother, because neither Prakriti, nor Maya, nor Matter nor Space-Time-Continuum is conceived as a spiritual or conscious principle. Sri Aurobindo holds, in consonance with the teaching of the original Upanishads and the Gita, and in consonance with Saivism, Shaktism and Vaishnavism that the objective and creative factor is neither unconscious nor ontologically separate from the supreme Spirit; it is rather the dynamic aspect or the superconscient creative power of Sachchidananda himself. Apparently unconscious external Nature (Apara Prakriti) is only a lower form of expression of the higher nature (Para Prakriti) of the Supreme. The higher nature of the Supreme is the self-realising power of infinite consciousness and infinite delight and is therefore most appropriately called the Divine Mother.

The dynamic factor or the creative principle is called Mother because she consciously brings forth the cosmic manifold in implicit obedience to the Will-to-self-manifestation on the part of the supreme Godhead. She mediates between the Above and the Below, between the Supreme and the world of manifestation; but she mediates between them not only in respect of descent but also in respect of ascent. It is through her creative and executive power that the world is brought forth into actualisation. And it is through her infinite grace that man can be re-born into the vastness of the Truth-consciousness and that the whole of Nature can steadily move towards an integral liberation.

Almost in every system of spiritual discipline, the Grace of God

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is accounted indispensable for man to attain liberation, because liberation means passing over into an indescribable order of experience and a unique dimension of being. It is only natural that the unaided efforts of man should be considered inadequate for the purposes of lifting the veil of ignorance which has enveloped his whole life. But in Sri Aurobindo's sadhana, the Grace of the Divine Mother has a still deeper significance. The ideal which Sri Aurobindo sets before us is not simply the ideal of self-realisation, but the ideal of self-manifestation; it is not merely the ideal of individual emancipation but the lofty ideal of collective transformation, i.e., the flowering of the Divine in collective humanity. What the Integral Yoga aims at is not just a collective escape from the lower world of triplicity (Matter, Life and Mind) but a divine transformation of the lower world for a fuller divine manifestation within it; it aims at the evolution of Man into Superman. Now, three things are essentially necessary for this consummation to be achieved. First, the spiritual aspirant must transcend even the highest centre of his embodied existence (the centre which is called the sahasrara in yogic parlance) and effect what Sri Aurobindo has called an "overhead ascension". He must perform the miracle of rising above himself so that he may obtain an integral realisation of the Supreme on the supramental level. Neither the integral realisation of Sachchidananda nor the radical transformation of a man's entire being is possible without this rising above oneself or this overhead ascension. But this miracle can be performed only through the Grace of the Divine Mother and not by any amount of Herculean efforts on the part of the sadhaka. A heroic sadhaka may rely upon his own tapasyā realising Sachchidananda on the plane of the intellect or the spiritualised mind; but integral or supramental realisation is simply impossible ,without Grace from above.

The second essential requirement of integral yoga is that the yogin should not only rise up to the supramental Gnosis but should also come down to the physical consciousness and establish the supramental Truth-consciousness as a permanent ingredient therein. The supermind should not only be realised but also made overtly operative in our terrestrial life. This presupposes dynamic self-identification with the Divine will, with the manifestation of which the Divine Mother is particularly concerned. For those who prefer static realisation of the Spirit, the Mother is only a means on the way.

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But the integral Yogin aims at offering himself as a plastic instrument in the hands of the Mother. The integral Yogin does not place liberation, moksa or nirvāna above everything else; having attained liberation or self-perfection, he puts it unhesitatingly at the disposal of the Mother so that Her purpose may be fulfilled in Life, or, in other words, in order that human living may blossom forth into Superman hood. His sadhana is, in truth, from start to finish, the Mother's sadhana within him. If he wants self-liberation and self-perfection, that is only because the Mother requires his perfected nature as an instrument to work with.

The third essential requirement of integral yoga is that the downward gravitational pull of the lower nature should be completely neutralised and a thorough supramental transformation effected of every part of embodied existence. Not only the mental and the vital, but also the gross physical should be converted into channels of divine activity on earth, into vehicles of divine manifestation and into perfect images of divine purity and splendour. For this, the sadhaka's self-opening and self-surrender should be unconditional, unreserved and integral. The Divine Mother should be allowed to work without let or hindrance in every part of the being and flood the entire vehicle with the sovereign light and power of the supermind.

At the present crisis of human civilisation, all those who will unconditionally surrender to the Divine Mother will consciously and effectively assist in opening a unique chapter in the history of cosmic evolution. Sri Aurobindo looks upon the present war as the travail of a new creation, the creation of the conditions for the Superman to be born out of man. The hostile and anti-divine forces are seeking to obstruct the new light and the higher force of consciousness, but their defeat is an absolute certainty. Let all those who aspire after a higher life disabuse themselves of all personal bias and prepossession, turn to the new light that is seeking manifestation into the world, and offer themselves without reserve into the hands of the Divine Mother.

HARIDAS CHAUDHURI

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

"Questions and Answers" is a form as old perhaps as human awakening to knowledge and even today it has not outgrown its utility.

[It is immaterial to ask who is the questioner, for even though the immediate person might be a certain individual, ultimately it is the unenlightened, eternal seeker in man, the ignorant human mind, that questions. And it is the illumined Teacher that answers. Questions are conditioned by the questioner, his mentality and his need, and the answers are relative to him and his condition, i.e. they cannot be absolute and final]

A. B. PURAN

Q. Some maintain that strength (bala) is necessary for attaining to spiritual realisation. Others hold that Divine Grace alone can save man. Perhaps the Vaishnava cult is responsible for popularising the idea of Divine Grace.

A. It is not true. Even as early as the Upanishad we find:—

नायमात्मा वलहीनेन लस्यः

"This Self is not to be attained by the weak" and in we have,

यमैवैष वृणुतै तैन लम्तस्तैष आत्मा विवृणुतै तनुं स्वाम् ||

"This understanding is not to be gained by reasoning, nor by Tapasya, nor by much learning. He whom this Self chooses, to him it reveals its own body." So, here you have the affirmation of both: strength and grace. Besides all religions more or less accept the idea of Divine Grace.

Q. But does it not seem contradictory to affirm the need of Spiritual Strength and of Divine Grace?

A. In spiritual life such contradictions are bound to rise because the laws which govern that life are not subject to rigid human standards. It means that strength is one side of Adhikar or spiritual qualification; strength has a value for realisation. But it is not all.

Q. From the point of view of spiritual strength does not grace seem to be an admission of weakness?

Besides it looks so unjust, too. It is a very comfortable dootrine

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for the idle. You have to sit quiet, — no Tapasya, no labour, no need for self-control — just to wait for the Divine Grace to come down and do the miracle!

A. It is not so. It has to be emphasised that spiritual life and experiences have a knack of reconciling what seems to the mind irreconcilable. Grace is not an admission of weakness because it does not contradict strength and weakness does not invite it necessarily. There is no injustice or partiality involved in grace which is only a fact of spiritual experience.

Q. Can one then say that Divine Grace works unconditionally?

A. Divine Grace is unconditional, but from the point of view of man there are conditions to be fulfilled in order that the Grace may be effective. If some one is all the time pouring something unconditionally into a cup and if the man is continually spilling it out how can the cup be filled?

Q. So, if the man is not receptive the Grace cannot act?

A. It can act to make him receptive.

Q. Would it then be correct to say that Tapasya and Grace are complimentary to each other?

A. That may do as a rule of the golden mean.

Q. It is said that the Grace of the Divine or of the Guru mean the same thing to the disciple.

A. Yes, because the Guru represents the Divine so it is said

Q. I have heard that the life of Girish Chandra Ghosh, the famous Bengali dramatist, underwent a great transformation by the grace of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa.

A. Such a change in the life of a man can take place even by the mere contact, or the spiritual influence of the Guru. In a sense, it can be said that even the acceptance of the disciple by the Guru is an act of grace. But I believe after Sri Ramakrishna's death Girish Chandra used to lament that he had not been benefited spiritually to the fullest extent by Sri Ramakrishna's contact, guidance and grace.

Q. How can that be?

A. Girish Babu in his sober moments used to feel very keenly his own shortcomings that stood in the way of his spiritual advance. It is true Sri Ramakrishna used to shower his grace on him and tell

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him "Leave all your burden to me." But after Sri Ramakrishna left the body Girish Babu used to say "He told me to leave all my burden to him but I was unable to leave it!"

Q. That raises the question whether a man may do no Tapsaya and yet attain to spiritual realisation if he has a living faith in the saving Grace of his Guru.

A. Such faith is rare and difficult. But if it is there it can work.

Q. What is the place of Tapasya then?

A. What do you mean by Tapasya? The popular idea is that it is mortification of the flesh, fasting, sitting on nails, standing on the head etc. Tapasya seems to require one to do things which generally one does not like to do.

Q. That seems to be the ordinary idea.

A. But it is not correct. Tapasya is not merely physical and it can include doing things which one likes or wants. Tapasya means gathering of force of consciousness on a particular point or for a particular purpose.

Q. Can all efforts to achieve something — even to satisfy desires — be called Tapasya?

A. The end to be achieved should be higher than mere gratification of desires because in that case though the Tapasya is there it is turned downwards or you can say it is negative. Such Tapasya tends to affirm one in the ignorance and so does not deserve the name of Tapasya. The Asuras used to perform such Tapasya to gratify their inordinate ambition or their ego.

But apart from spiritual aim even in ordinary achievements some kind of Tapasya seems necessary. In art, in scientific investigation if one wants to do outstanding work one is required to do some Tapasya, i.e., to gather up all the energies of his consciousness for the purpose.

Q. In certain cases very little spiritual effort gives remarkable results and in others there seems no effort at all. So if the results are not proportional to the efforts, can it be said to be due to Grace?

A. It is not a question of quantitative^ correspondence between the effort and the result. In the action of Grace there are no calculations. Or if you will, only qualitative aspect has some value. Some central part of the aspirant wants the result sincerely and we may say that the Grace finds it possible to act at the moment.

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From the point of view of the aspirant the important thing is that something in him should sincerely want the result.

Q. So, personal effort is a contributory factor in the operation of Grace?

A. It depends upon where you are looking from. From the point of view of the aspirant he should continue his efforts ceaselessly with a firm faith that the Grace will not fail to come at the proper time.

But the Grace does not work or is not compelled to work because there is personal effort. Otherwise it would not be Grace.

Q. Does not all personal effort produce a feeling of strain and even of unpleasantness?

A. It may do so if the effort is vehement and egoistic. But all effort need not produce those reactions. If a man likes cricket or music he finds it not only easy but even pleasant to concentrate upon it.

Q. That is because one is interested.

A. Yes, hence, that in which one is interested does not generally produce a feeling of strain — unless of course one overworks. It may even give joy. You have the classical example of the Gopis — the milkmaids who had not to make an effort to remember Sri Krishna because they loved him. It is said in the Upanishads that God created the world by Tapas. It was not that He found it difficult or tiring to create the world but that the world was created out of His energies gathered up for the purpose.

Q. But I want to understand a little more clearly the working of the Divine Grace. Can it be affirmed that the man who is ordinarily regarded unworthy of spiritual realisation can or may come to it by an act of Divine Grace?

A. Certainly, he may. That is to say a man who according to human standards of wisdom, strength, morality is unfit (who is without learning, without apparent strength of will or character) can suddenly attain to a spiritual realisation.

Q. How can one attain to a great spiritual realisation without some fitness? It is difficult to understand!

A. There may be no outward merit or fitness, but there may be inward merit or fitness which is visible to the Lord, but not to men. In spite of the outer coverings something in the depth of the being may be ready — or may be getting ready — who knows?

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Q. I was thinking of the Gopis. It is said that they heard the flute of Sri Krishna and were enchanted and the Divine Grace saved them. At least they had the merit of hearing the flute; — that may be the qualification.

A. Or you may say some part in their being was ready to hear the flute even before the flute began!

Q. Then nobody can depend upon the Grace as it seems very uncertain in its working.

A. On the contrary, nobody need despair, however fruitless his efforts, as the Grace can intervene at any time and crown his efforts with success.

Q. Can one depend upon or count upon the Divine Grace?

A. One can count upon it in the sense of an assured expectancy full of faith in the Divine. But one cannot demand Grace as a matter of right or privilege. Then it would not be Grace.

If Grace brings undeserved or apparently undeserved fruits it should confirm one in the faith in its coming at its own proper time. In the meantime one should continue one's efforts patiently with the faith in the coining of the Grace.

Q. I have heard that when Grace comes all the difficulties of sadhana disappear in a minute as if by a miracle. Such was the case of Swami Vivekananda whose difficulties disappeared by Sri Ramakrishna's Grace.

A. If you mean that the Grace can remove some central obstacle or knot of difficulty and that the sadhana afterwards may become more sure and secure, it may be true. But one cannot say that all difficulties would disappear, as a rule, by the action" of the Grace. In Swami Vivekananda's case, for instance, the central difficulty of doubt was removed but a long sadhana was necessary and I believe the process continued to the very end.

Q. Even the removal of the central difficulty seems inexplicable?

A. If something in the being of the aspirant — some part of his being, makes a quick and decisive surrender to the Divine then the fundamental difficulty can be removed — there is nothing inexplicable in that.

Q. Perhaps Grace comes easily to those who are like the baby-cat, entirely dependent upon the Divine, because they seem to be constitutionally

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capable of such quick and decisive surrender. To those who are self-reliant perhaps the Grace does not come.

A. No. It comes also to the baby-monkey type, those who are more self-reliant. Such men also get the Grace — but it counts on their efforts. Only, in their case the decisive touch of Grace may take a long time to come.

Q. Then, can it be affirmed that the Grace works for all?

A. Yes, all can have the Divine Grace except those who willfully turn it away, who cut themselves away from the path, or those who revolt against or betray the Divine. In all these cases man separates himself from his own inmost soul, — his psychic being.

Q. If Grace is so general can we not say that it is the universal divine compassion acting impartially, and that there is nothing special about it. In other words the Grace of the Divine is universal and the human being has only got to receive it.

A. No, Grace that is spoken of here is not the universal divine compassion which is quite another thing. This Grace is a special phenomenon which acts directly or through the instrumentality of the Guru or holy men.

When it is said all can have the Grace it means everybody has his chance, the potentiality of getting the Grace.

This Divine Grace does not work, is not compelled to work according to human ideas. It acts at times in disregard of normal standards and morals, as in the case of Jagai and Madhai, two highwaymen or in that of Bilwamangala, the rake and St. Augustine, the profligate who were all changed by the touch of Grace. It may equally come to the virtuous. There is no mental rule or universal law about the action of Grace. And yet one can say that it does not seem to work without discrimination. Only that discrimination is not mental or human.

Q. From the way the Grace is explained I think it is the only path to the highest Truth.

A. That again is not true. There are a thousand paths to the Truth and Grace is one of them. We call it Grace because it seems to be the Spirit or the Infinite being that determines the action from above independently of mental causes i.e., it decides its own movement.

Q. Can we say, for instance, that the Divine Grace is equivalent

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to the self choosing the hour and the manner to manifest itself; or that, it is the sudden flowering of the inner being — the soul — into self-realisation and the self-knowledge?

A. All the three, — the Divine Grace, the self making the choice of the time and the manner and the soul out-flowering — mean about the same thing I believe.

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INDIA IS ONE

(Regional and Racial)

IT is the creative individual more than the collectivity that produces what is called culture. The artist, the poet, the philosopher or even the scientist has each of them his own world where, away from everything around him, he lives absorbed in the pursuit of what to him is true, good or beautiful. It is true that the growth of social consciousness in man out of his primitive herd-instinct was essential to his progress as a civilised and communal being, but it is also true that there would have been no culture if man the individual had not developed that power of mind in him by which he becomes the creator of all those splendid things that make the fabric of his civilisation. The community was always there, evolving from clans and tribes into the race, then into nation, as determined by social and geographical conditions, but for its growth in culture and refinement the community, whatever its external form, has always and very largely to depend on, and draw its sustenance from, the mental activity of its creative personalities. History testifies that even collective fife, when smaller in form, is easily able to develop an individual character and thereby prove more fruitful than bigger ones. The city states of old Hellas and the small kingdoms of ancient India may be appropriate instances. What is indispensable to the enrichment of culture is complete freedom for the individual so that he may give full play to his inner faculties and create what turns out to be the expression of the soul of the nation to which he belongs.

Modern civilisation with all its defects has certainly many values that will count in the future evolution of humanity. It is the product of an age of individualism, as all civilisations in their origins more or less are. But its vastness and the increasing potencies of Nature released by it which are proving beyond the power of man to properly manipulate are responsible for many of the problems with which he is faced today. Unity is one such problem which has its roots deep in the complexity that characterises every aspect of modern life which is dominated by the scaffolding erected by organised bodies for the maintenance of order and discipline in them. And man finds himself forced into that artificial machinery which is called the State. But his

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problems, much less the problem of unity, cannot be solved by any power that the state can exercise. A mechanical unity enforced from without can be no permanent solution. Unity is a thing of the heart, and to be real and lasting it must come from within. Besides, there are many things that must be done before a satisfactory solution of the problem will be possible. The distress that envelopes the world today caused largely by mutual distrust does no doubt make unity the most insistent need of the hour. And forces against it notwithstanding, there are favourable ones too that are helping to clear the way for man to come closer to others and to avail himself of the opportunities of mutual understanding that are increasing every day. Science has widened the horizon of human knowledge. It has annihilated distance, multiplied facilities of social and cultural intercourse, and brought about uniform changes in the common life of humanity, with the result that an outlook of international fellowship envisaging the ultimate ideal of human unity is slowly emerging in the mind of man, and an effort on his part is also visible to give a practical shape to it. The prospects however are not very bright for this great ideal, particularly for its ultimate end, to become a reality in the near future, but when once Nature has held it before humanity, some day-or other but sooner than later, it will be fulfilled in the life of the race.

An English writer feels inclined to believe that everything in the life of modern man is tending to the supreme truth that mankind is one. Spiritually it is so true, although at the present moment it may seem a little too optimistic. Nevertheless, indications are there that 'the mind of man is opening to an unprecedented largeness of vision of the essential oneness of life, of the wonder and mystery of the spirit in him and the universe.' It is this inward and intuitive understanding of the deeper meaning of things through which man will awaken into the truth of a higher consciousness in which alone can a real and permanent unity be founded. The evils that divide humanity everywhere, that stifle all possibilities of human mutuality will be starved to extinction only when man would realise his intrinsic unity in the realm of the spirit, the kingdom of God. A new harmony is therefore to be discovered on which to build the new order of the future.

It is not that unity is a recent ideal or that it never existed in any form. As a matter of fact Nature provides one of the most potent

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forces that bring it about. The lure of fertile land was the cause of the earliest corporate life of man. The first human unification was effected by Place from which has developed the idea of a common homeland and there through, with the march of time, a common nationality. It is the bounties of nature that attracted groups of humanity to settle in river valleys and organise collective existence by taking to agriculture, and gradually to other arts of life that laid the foundation of human civilisation. The idea was mooted in England a few years ago that land projection might be adopted as an effective method of inculcating love of country and of rousing the interest of young people in their own homeland. Indeed, an intimate acquaintance, which visual knowledge so impressively gives, with the topography including every detail of the flora and fauna of the land where we are born does surely inspire us to ardent feelings of affinity with it. There is joy in seeing before us projected on the screen the beauties of our land of birth, its mountains and plains, rivers and seas, forests and cities, its temples and monuments, its peoples, its animals and its vast variety of Nature's lavishness's and all these against the background of its geographical unity. There is no doubt that "among all the circumstances that go to create that heritage which is to be the opportunity of a people, there is none so determining, so welding, so shaping in .its influence, as the factor of the land to which our children shall be native.

Spiritually man is the son of God, but materially he is a nursling of Earth. Not without reason do we call ourselves "children of the soil." A geographical unit becomes thus in course of time the centre of a nation unit. It is to a large extent true that a race too, especially in its origin, is the creation of a place which is nurtured by Nature into a geographical distinctness. In the chemistry of human intermingling which began with the migrations of the races, the original types were lost and new ethnic forms evolved out of the process of admixture which unceasingly is going on in the common life of humanity in more and more subtle ways through the dynamics of social intercourse. It is therefore the land more than the race origins which binds man to it and becomes his common object of adoration. The land where we are born is one of the supreme organic powers in the moulding of our destiny, the destiny of the nation. "Those who having a common region of birth, connect the work, the institution,

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the ideals, and the purposes of their lives with the region and with their fellows, and those who, doing this, undergo a common economic experience, form a nation, with the duties, the responsibilities, and faculties of a nation."

The land is thus the basis on which the growth of a collectivity and also of its culture and institutions depends so much. If the many races that may happen to people it fail for any reason to realise their unity and solidarity, if even their religions and languages are unable to foster it among them — though religion in India, called the Sana-tana Dharma, the universal religion, has throughout the ages been a synthetic factor in the community life of the people - the geographical projection of. the country might help its diverse human elements to grow into a sense of their unity, founded in the most vivid fact of their being born in and mothered by a common homeland. The Land of India is endowed by Providence with such distinctive features that a plan like this might prove itself effective and produce the desired result. This ancient land has its own meaning and character, its own glory and grandeur, its own rights and liberties, its own interest and importance. Its unity is determined by its definite frontiers, the Himalayas in the north, the Hindukush in the north-west, the seas on the east and the west. And this unity has developed into an integrity that has stamped itself indelibly on the mind and heart of the people, whose love of the land of their birth, when projected in the right perspective, cannot fail to cement bonds of fellowship among them in spite of their external differences. It is a kind of love which is a sacrament, a worship, which no language can properly explain. It grows from within not merely as a patriotic impulse but as a religious predilection. And its sanctity is given its objective expression in the feelings of wonder and admiration that the people spontaneously cherish for the snow tops of the Himalayas, the rugged hills of the frontiers, the valley of Kashmir, the great rivers of India, the Downs of the Deccan, the limpid blue of the seas. In the beautiful words of Sri Aurobindo, "The feeling of almost physical delight in the touch of the mother-soil, of the winds that blow from Indian seas, of the rivers that stream from Indian hills, in the hearing of Indian speech, music, poetry, in the familiar sights, sounds, habits, dress, manners of our Indian life, this is the physical root of that love."

It is through this appreciation of the romance India outwardly is

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that we begin to feel within us a kind of inner relationship not only with her material embodiment but also with her soul; and as this feeling deepens the mere external fact vanishes, and there emerges before our mind's eye, no less vividly, an idea, a dynamic concept of which the land becomes a symbol, an image, an object, as it were, of our love and veneration. Nothing indeed can more unfailingly develop in us an abiding sense of our fellowship with others, with all, belonging to a common land of birth than when we are blessed with this exalting experience. And does not this sense invariably prove real enough as a wholesome and strengthening lever in our collective life? In fact, it is the very bedrock of it. The physical loses itself in the ideal, and the ideal fulfils itself in the real, reconciling the apparent contradictions into a harmony, a oneness that is built out of the many-ness of our country's human and physical appearance. It is a force, an energy inherent in its soil and pervading its space, that works this transforming miracle. India is that Force, that Spirit which makes its mystic appeal to the inmost being of her children. Sri Aurobindo once said that India has never been to him what is merely suggested by her outer vestures, attractive and gorgeous though they are. She is to him the Mother, the eternal and infinite Mother, the compassionate Mother of man. The truth of India is revealed to those who respond to this appeal and thereby know the secret, the supreme secret of her motherhood. To this vision of the Mother does the land of India call her children, whatever their caste, creed or race.

It is interesting to trace the evidences so far available as to how this ideology of the oneness of land, all the more defined by its incomparable greatness and magnificence, became a cohesive force in the evolution of India's culture, whose unity — the land playing its role in it also — is so unmistakably articulate in her art, literature, religion and in all her splendid institutions that came into being as a result of her millenniums of creative striving. The land-mass that is called India has always been regarded as one with the human mass that inhabits it, this fusion being effected in the consciousness of the people through its inherent spiritual outlook to which everything is a manifestation of the Spirit. If the Indian sees God in him, he sees him also in others and even in the phenomenal universe around him. No wonder therefore that the land in which he is born should acquire in his conception, an inward character, a profound significance, compelling

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his highest love and admiration. But the land-mass of India is not an isolated formation. It is a part, however sharply separated, of a vaster region with which, inspired by the self-same ideal, it has always in the past kept up intimate friendly relations. Besides being bound with her sister countries in Asia by a common love of mysticism and spiritual pursuits, India has had from very early times deep and extensive cultural intercourse with nearly all of them. The influence of the pre-Buddhist India on various parts of Asia and Europe apart, the Buddhist communities in pre-Christian Asia Minor and the Indian missionaries in China and Japan in the early days of their history represent two extremities of that vast tract of land which together with most of south-west Asia and the island of the Indian Archipelago does even today bear witness to the immensity of their indebtedness to India for much of what forms the texture of their religious and cultural life. Nevertheless, if India is a living embodiment of the spirit, Asia is no less so; and India from that standpoint is an organic part of it. Though a soul by herself, she in her heart is one with Asia, her physical setting. And it is not for nothing that she is called the heart of the Orient. In the words of Okakura Kakuzo, "Asia is one. The Himalayas divide, only to accentuate, two mighty civilisations, the Chinese with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian with its individualism of the Vedas. But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment the broad expanse of love for the Infinite and Universal, which is the common thought-inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world, and distinguishing them from the maritime peoples of the Mediterranean and the Baltic, who love to dwell on the particular, and to search out the means, not the end of fife."

India, this great country of ours, stands with the parent continent as her grand background. Provided with natural protection she has lived through the ages to fulfil the mission assigned to her by the Dispenser of her destiny. Vanished are the splendours that went by the names of Egypt, Babylon and Greece! The empires that flourished in Europe exist today only in the records of history. But from time immemorial India carries on not in isolation, as the charge is unjustly made against her, but in love and friendship with her neighbours, and with everyone who comes to her, be he a foreigner or even an enemy. Yet she has a personality all her own, an individuality, that marks her

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out as something that has no equal in the annals of the earth. The geological movement leading to the creation of land in which early human civilisation began in India was the retreat westward of the extensive Euro-Asiatic Ocean called the Tethys giving rise to the plains of northern India through a process of formation which must have taken ages. The fertility of this region is due to many factors among which may be mentioned the life-giving waters of a river system that was formed by the linear depressions which remained after the large-scale geological movement was over. The deposit washed down from the northern highlands added no less to the richness of the soil. On these plains, along the banks of the Indus right down eastward along the banks of the Ganges streams of humanity flowed in unison with the waters, as it were, and spread out into the interiors till the scene was complete with the drama of the early human migration in India. The geographical unity of India is indisputable, in spite of the bewildering variety of her physical features; and equally so is the integral entity of the one body of her vast humanity. The uniqueness of her culture is ascribed by some writers to this unity as well as to her natural separation from the re st of the world. It is the conviction of the Hindus that there is an inner meaning behind her physical formation as also a spiritual purpose of her existence as a conscious manifestation of the supreme Shakti. The vision, not once but many times in her history, has come to the fathers of the race that India is verily the Mother who has stood through the ages entrusted with the task of 'preserving the Knowledge that preserves the world till Krishna. comes back to repossess the Kingdom that is his.' To the Hindus the mother and motherland are greater than heaven itself. Whatever it is, it is clear enough that this vast country, almost a continent, is one in the fundamental principle of its peculiar singularity, built up by the movements racial, social and cultural that have been taking place in India from times prehistoric.
.

It is not even two decades when the view was held that the story of human culture in India began with the Indo-Aryans. But the excavation in Mohenjodaro and Harappa have not only pushed back the date by more than a millennium but revealed evidences of a civilisation superior to many then existing in the world. It is of course the valley of the Indus which was the scene of this great event proving the

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remarkable antiquity of Indian culture and the glorious role India played in the history of human civilisation. The inhabitants who peopled those prosperous cities represent four different ethnic types. It seems racial interminghng began in India even in those days when peoples of various stocks, whether original settlers or emigrants from outside, shared a common land as their home and built a civilisation that was then and is even now a marvel of human creation. The gates of India from west to east were always open; the routes by the sea were so easy; and the inland rivers were navigable. All these offered inroads for human emigration into India from days unknown to history. The physical types that constitute the present population of India are evolved from the three principal ethnic types through the continuous process of racial mtermingling. The foreign elements absorbed by her are broadly distinguished Greek, Iranian, Mongolian, Scythian, Hun, Semitic and some even of what constitute the modern European. All these elements India has assimilated to her being and along with her own children given them the stamp of a common nationality. Was it not the force of land that effected this miracle of human unification? And are not always associated with India the beauty that she is, her inexhaustible resources, and a culture that in the past was her greatest contribution to the happiness and progress of mankind? "This admixture of races", says C. E. M. Joad, "has had important effects on India's past history and present outlook. The first of these is a sense of fundamental unity far more vivid and persistent than can be accounted for by the circumstance of propinquity in the same geographical area. Europeans live together in a geographical area whose size is not very different from that of India. But as the wars which have disgraced European history in the past and the quarrels and rivalries that enfeeble the League of Nations in the present only too clearly show, the inhabitants of Europe are very far from being imbued with the sense of unity which distinguishes the inhabitants of India. We cannot, in short, speak of a "European" with the same appropriateness as we can speak of "an Indian", who, in spite of differences of colour, caste and creed, looks upon all other Indians as his fellow-countrymen and upon India as his home."

SISIRKUMAR MITRA

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THE INTEGRAL YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

I. THE INTEGRAL YOGIN

DYNAMIC message rose from the battle-field of Kurukshetra, fifty centuries ago: "Be a Yogi; live in Yoga with the Divine; act in the Divine Consciousness." That was the message of Sri Krishna to the progressive humanity, through the medium of the heroic Arjuna. Through the thick maze of headlong Time, the word YOGA was struggling for a perfect expression. Its voice was almost drowned by the hell-cries of the battling vital movements. Here and there some ascetics added attributes to it according to individual predilections, and sought through Yoga to still or kill the mind in featureless trance. Books were written on Yogas; but Yoga was still a mystery or monopoly or a thing dreaded by family men. Humanity was still groping through the blind alleys of ignorance without knowing the saving virtue of Yoga.

A soothing harmony of hope and bliss sweeps through the groans of the war-torn world;

"Live in Yoga with the Divine, a Life Divine!"

This is the message of Sri Aurobindo, the modern Superman, the Yogin of an integral vision of existence. If the word Yoga is popular today, the credit is due to Sri Aurobindo; for it was he who saved the word for humanity as a mantra of the living harmony of LIFE. It was he who explain ed to us the integral sense of Yoga as a means of gaining God in the Spirit without losing the reality of actual life in the world. The word and its full virtue was actually re-discovered by him. It was he who came like an Oedipus to solve the riddle of Existence.

He was the prophet of Indian Nationalism. Singular among all the prophets of nationalism, Sri Aurobindo sought victory through God-Force which is the bed-rock of Indian civilisation. Even amidst the political tornado of those days, his inspired genius distinctly spoke out:

"The new movement is essentially a spiritual movement. Its key-note is the essential unity of God and Man. The divinity of man is its highest gospel. To evolve God out of man is its highest

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aim. It seeks to bring the Kingdom of Heaven on earth."

God's Voice, His Help, His Power, His Will in humanity and His Manifestation through the human instrumentality — this is what he sought even during the Bande Mataram days. He felt that Yoga alone can give that God-Force, the Divine Energy indispensable for the collective existence of man in the freedom of the inner Spirit. He was a born Yogi, and his early life was a progressive evolution of the Siddha in him. Long before his name came to the limelight of public recognition, Sri Aurobindo began to practise Yoga. Initially he got some hints from the Gita, the Upanishads and one or two reliable Yogins. All the hints he got, he made his own and followed the Inner Guru who kindled the latent Fire ablaze and steeped him in serene meditation. Day by day he felt the Divine touch and lived in His Consciousness. He made an utter surrender of His ego-personality to the Cosmic Lord of existence and followed His voice and lead. He put his whole conscious being into contact with the Divine through peaceful inner communion. His devotion was not of the emotional sing-and-dance type of the previous Bhaktas. It was the Shanta Bhava the sublime peace-attitude of the Vedic Seers:

"Even as I am appointed by Thee, O Lord seated in my heart, so I act." This was the key to his inner sadhana. Such was his faith and surrender. Perfidy equal to all, in all happenings, never yearning for any individual gift, always calling fervently for the Divine Will to be done in him, Sri Aurobindo made his life a rhythm of dynamic activity in yoga with the Divine. Whatever he thought, wrote, spoke or did was a natural out flowering of his God-Consciousness. He was not governed by the judgments of men but always obeyed the unseen Power which moved him from within. He lived from within out. The purity of his life and the divinity of his voice drew the highest respect and adoration from the heart of his countrymen. When the entire man was submitted to the immaculate sovereignty of the Divine Will, when the inner instrument was clean and pure as a ready channel of Grace, when the heart was soaked in Divine love and the head steeped in meditation, when the nature was in constant communion with the Supreme, then He revealed His omnipresence and possessed the chosen instrument. The great aspiration of Sri Aurobindo to see the Divine within and

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without was fulfilled one day, during his one year's meditation in the Alipore jail:

"His strength entered into me, and I was able to do the sadhana of the Gita, to do work for Him without the demand for fruit. He made me realise the central truth of the Hindu Religion. His strength entered into me. It was Vasudeva that surrounded me. I felt the arm of Sri Krishna around me." (Uttarpara Speech).

"Rare is that great soul who has realised the omnipresence of the Divine" says the Gita and Sri Aurobindo came out of Alipore with such a realization. He poured out his inspired message through the columns of the Dharma and the Karmayogin showing the country how to live and act in the Gita-spirit. After two months of concentrated tapasya at Chandernagore, the Divine Will safely brought him to Pondicherry, the chosen centre of his spiritual work. After four years of silence, we heard his voice again. The Arya revealed to us the Superman in Sri Aurobindo. It is the Gospel of Integral Yoga replete with the Spirit's highest promises and eloquent with divine optimism. The Essays on The Gita, The Synthesis of Yoga and The Life Divine are the three works of deep spiritual vision that can be called the Gospel of Sri Aurobindo, the Integral Yogin. The Arya stopped in 1921.

Sri Aurobindo retired into inner silence and solitude, to explore still further into the higher planes of Truth-Consciousness-Bliss and to bring down even like Bhagiratha, the Supramental Force that alone can transform and divinise human life. Life is divinised and integralised through the Yoga of living in conscious surrender to the Divine.

"The Integral Yoga is that which having found the Transcendent, can turn upon the universe and possess it."

Let us make a study of the Integral Yoga and its varied effects on all the aspects of human life.

SHUDDHANANDA BHARATI

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REVIEWS

Rabindra-Kavye-trayi-parikalpana (Bengali). By Sj. Sarasilal Sarkar. To be had of Vishwabharati Granthalaya, 2, College Square, Calcutta. Re. I.

ALREADY a crop of literature has grown up in Bengali on Rabindranath and more are coming. Bengal, in all departments of her life, owes a deep debt of gratitude to Rabindranath and most of this literature is more in way of homage than serious criticism. There is a remarkable tendency to regard Rabindranath as a seer, a prophet, as Gurudev. He never made such a claim, himself; again and again he has said, "I am not a Sadhaka, I am a poet", and we can take him at his word. Rabindranath as a poet has great visions, even spiritual visions, but to be a prophet, a spiritual guide of humanity, one must give a clear message, a conception about the goal of existence and of human life and a practical path of realisation. So far as his poetry is concerned, we find no such conception, or clear guidance. As a man he might have had a philosophy; in his later age he tried to systemise it and the result was his lectures on the Religion of Man. But all this is a construction of his mind; his poetry, on the other hand, came from a deeper part of his being and spoke altogether in another voice. The book under review has tried to sound the depths from which the poems of Rabindranath have arisen, and so far it is on the right track as poetical criticism; but the method that it follows, that of psycho-analysis, cannot, in our opinion, lead to anything really deep and penetrating. It is something like an attempt to read the mysteries of the heavenly bodies with the help of a toy telescope. The science of psycho-analysis, if it be a science at all, is still in a very crude stage; Indian Yogic Psychology went far beyond it. "The new psychology/' says Sri Aurobindo, "looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and mysterious underground super-ego together and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t cat, t-r-e-e tree) is the very heart of the real knowledge." (Bases of Yoga, p. 227)

Mr. Sarkar, following his psycho-analytical method, observes

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that the great peculiarity of Rabindranath's poems is the expression of the infinite through the finite and that for this purpose he has used a symbolism which has its origin deep in his sub conscience. But such symbolism is the characteristic of all poetry, and indeed of all art, and there is nothing in it peculiar to Rabindranath. Reviewing a book, 'The Heritage of Symbolism' by C. M. Bowra, Mr. Edward Sackville West observes: "In one sense all art must be symbolic, for if it does not suggest the universal through the particular it simply bears witness to so much undigested experience." The peculiarity in Rabindranath's poems which Mr. Sarkar observes and on which he has based his whole thesis is that in many of them there is a regular sequence of rhythm (tāl), music (gān) and movement (gati). To illustrate this he has cited numerous passages from the poems of Rabindranath.

Light dances, O friend,

light dances near my soul.

Light sings, O friend,

light sings in the lyre of my heart.

The sky is awakening,

the wind rushes.

Here in the first line dancing implies rhythm, in the second line there is reference to music, in the third to motion. Another instance,

Behind him rain is dropping,

And there is the rumbling sound of thunder,

Through the openings in the clouds

the rays of the rising sun fall on his face.

But the true aim of poetry, as of all true art is the "interpretation of hidden truths with the help of images." It is through the delights of the senses that the poet expresses himself, and in all poetry we shall have abundant reference to music as also to other sensuous perceptions; and if we search in other poets, we shall certainly find many passages in which there is this sequence of rhythm, music and movement which Mr. Sarkar regards as peculiar to Rabindranath. Here we can cite some instances taken at random:

Like winds or waters were her

ways:

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They heed not immemorial cries:

They move to their high destinies.

A. E.

There is rhythm in every line of poetry, and if we find a line which refers to some sort of sound followed by another indicating some movement Mr. Sarkar's requirements are fulfilled. Here is another instance:

O grey wild sea,

Thou hast a message, thunderer, for me.

Their huge wide backs

Thy monstrous billows raise.

SRI AUROBINDO

So that most of Tagore's poems may come within his scheme, Mr. Sarkar has indefinitely widened the significance of his terms. Thus blooming of flowers is music to him, and also the falling of leaves. So a bunch of flowers may represent rhythm, tears may represent movement. Even with all this freedom of interpretation, if anywhere in Tagore's poems the sequence cannot be discovered, the explanation is to be found in psycho-analysis which says that in the sub conscience things change from one form into another. Our only comment is that, with this formula, all the poetry in the world can be brought under Mr. Sarkar's triple conception.

Even if it be a fact that the sequence of tāl, gān and gati, as conceived by Mr. Sarkar, is more frequent in Rabindranath than in other poets, it would be only an idiosyncrasy without any deep significance. But psycho-analysis has revealed to Mr. Sarkar such a significance. He refers to the super-ego of Rabindranath which acts in his subconscious and composes his poetry; as a matter of fact every poet feels that there is something other than and higher than his ordinary self which creates his poetry; but that something is higher and not lower than our ordinary consciousness, and the sub conscience of the psychoanalysis is a nether region in us which has not even so much light as our 'ordinary consciousness has; that can never be the true creator of any genuine poetry or art. According to psycho-analysis, the superego is nothing but our reverence for our parents in our childhood formed into a higher self in us in our sub-conscience. And here Mr. Sarkar has unearthed all the mystery of Rabindranath's poetry. In

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his childhood, he heard from his venerable father the Upanishadic mantra, santam, sivam, advaitam. This sank deep into hi s na ture and has manifested in all his poetry in the triple conception, tal, gān an d gati. Mr. Sarkar has taken some pains to explain how santam represents tal, sivam represents gān and advaitam represents gati. San tam is the immutable who by its immobility regulates all the movements in the universe, so it is keeping the rhythm, the tal; the songs of the poet bring assurance to the timid hearts of men, so they are sivam; and all motion leads ultimately to infinity, to A advaitam.

The book is instructive as an illustration of how psychoanalysis can help us in unraveling the mysteries of poetic creation. The style of Mr. Sarkar is delightful and the get up of the book is excellent.

A. B.

Sex and Spirituality by Prof. P. Narasimham, M.A. M. E. S. (Retd.) (published by B. Kutumba Rao, Bapatla) 1943, Aug.

It was D. H. Lawrence's studies in psycho-analysis of the Freudian type that made him write a series of novels on what should be the true type of relation between the two sexes. 'The call of the blood', which is but another way of stating 'the call of the unconscious libido', is according to him a call for fulfilment, and no true marriage can be which does not take into account this primitive call. This is the general thesis in his 'Sons and lovers' and "Lady Chatterley's Lover". Aldous Huxley develops this sam e idea rather cynically in his 'Point Counter Point'. But this flesh or sex business, whatever vogue it had, died down and the glamour of the Freudian psychology passed away . The metaphysical theory of the Call of the Partner has not been sketched by anyone so far despite the vast array of tantric literature, and it is to the credit of Prof. P. Narasimham to have written a brief essay on the metaphysical ba sis of the male-female relationship. He points out that whatever might have been the nature of the Absolute as a dark Possibility or a Grand Neuter, the moment creation or evolution started, it bifurcated into Father-Mother duality whose inseparableness has been accepted in the figures of Ardhanariswara, Sri-Nivas (Vishnu), Brahma with Saraswati . Indeed this really reveals

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that the male female combination cannot be a taboo; to taboo it, as the sannyasins do, is false and wrong, and the true manner would be to sublimate the concept of relationship between the male and female and not seek abolition of it by reducing men and women to the level of neuters. This acosmic view is a mistake that we may have to rectify. As the macrocosm so the microcosm. The individual soul is a disunity, a two-in-one even like god. It is male and female not in its own nature; but according to the learned professor, it too splits into two, and one of them is the male-part and the other female-part. Their union will result in the fulfilment of the līlā creation. Our realization of Brahman will entail as a first step the discovery of our 'other'; and united together the Divine may be realized. Man must discover his iakti, the female half of himself which he has somehow lost. It is not the kundalini-sakti of the Yoga, but the actual dampati, who is his companion and strength on his spiritual journey. "The fully evolved muktha is male-female or rather the (male) purusha principle who has united within himself his own prakriti-śakthi and thus has become a whole" (p. 13). This he considers to be 'the fulfilled spiritual manhood, the original abstract dual nature now become established as a single fact' (ibid). He quotes the views of Plato", the Myth of Adam and Eve, and the actual practice of the Tantra-sadhana in one of its variants which makes the actual prathishta of the sakti in a kumari etc., as ways and means of achieving the unity that is now unfulfilled. The saving feature however is Prof. Narasimham finds the extra-marital adventure for the partner is not the truth of the path he propounds.

Now this view is clearly an attempt to resolve the deadlock in spiritual life and an attempt so far as it goes to remove the obliquity to which the sexual differentiations have fallen. Admittedly the first phase of our attractions to our fellows is via sex; these become companionable and the attraction of sex is but the superficial but nonetheless fundamental surface-manifestation of the unity-influence; this does give us some sense of completeness not merely for the creative activity of the race nor merely even as an instrument of the creator. It is indeed an important question whether the Tantra Sadhanas which inculcate the sakti and siva union, in the organism of the individual, really do not show that the individual is a microcosmic

¹ Plato's view on the Divinity of the soul is that there is a rational part and an irrational part: the view that the male is half a person is not clear.

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field of the Divine di-unity, rather than that the individual jiva itself is split up into two, one half of the jiva as male seeking out its female other, like D. H. Lawrence's lovers seeking out under the Italian skies their females or vice versa. On the other hand the sexual creativity is a creativity under the conditions of darkness or ignorance; and the male and female congregate or unity as such ha s not the importance that is given to them. Granting that the female-male unity is on a par with the unity typified by the supreme Siva as ardhanari, as the unity of male-female, it may be asked whether the creation of progeny is the fundamental activity and to become the parent is the supreme destiny (vide p . II "One who is not consciously able to be the parent, both as father and mother cannot be a Mukta in the true sense of the term"). On the contrary the mukta is a conduct, a channel, an in strumpet, a sakti of the Sachchidananda, and cannot be considered to be a parent both as father and mother. Nor is it clear again that it is imperative for the individual soul to be considered to be a half of some other jiva, and their union is the beginning of the parenthood. The Jivas become capable of true creativity and splendid ecstasies in their union with Brahman or Divine and not in their transactions however intimate with other souls, male or female. Some thinkers hold that so far as the female is concerned, it is her business to link herself up with her mated male, and the sddhana of union is achieved through the male with the Divine. This explanation may be quite a happy solution of the problem of social pātivratya, but not of the ' spiritual sadhana of divine knowledge. The father and mother typify the - archetypal nature of Knowledge and Power ;together and alone they are daya; their creativity is of freedom and they do not limit each other. This is the exquisite meaning of dāmpatya as distinguished from mere pati-patnī-bhāua. The relationship between the individual souls and God is stated to be the realization, rather than the attainment of similar form of the Brahman as in His eternal diunity. If this were the case, then, the individual soul will be actually so, on the principle 'as in the macrocosm so in the microcosm'. Further the entire argument of Prof. Narasimham rests on an a priori deduction from the myth or symbolic forms of the Gods of Hinduism in their later revival. This theory further if stressed may lead to hermaphrodism in the soul itself. This latter is more plausible as a theory, for the individual soul is an amsa of the Divine, dependent on the Divine, and lives and grows

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and exists for the Divine, so to speak as an emanation of His, and in so far as it creates in its infinite freedom under the sovereign freedom of the Divine it might well be considered to be a mother. But even the best of theologies could not make the individuals create or emanate other souls, or make other souls, emanate of themselves. The whole theory rests on the slender thread of mythology which might rest on the principle of diunity of Siva-Sakti, which is true in its own domain, whose pale reflections, if at all, may be repeated in the individual relationships between the male and female, in Grihasthadharma. It is true that without this theory of individual or microcosmic pairing towards unity as the first step in the spiritual ascent there can yet subsist the relationship of male-female without the libido thrown in. The sublimation of sex happens not when the pairing takes place in order to create progeny, or to fulfil or rather complete their fragmentariness, but when the individual personality, male or female, meets its partner in the terrestrial scheme from the point of the Supermind which is universal, creative, bliss, truth, power, and it is this supermind in its dark functioning in the Ignorance or lower Nature pairs off or separates the purushaic and the prakritaic factors inherent in its own supreme sentience and works out the evolution of its own supreme multiplicity in terms of diverse centres or personalities. The rebirth theory does not say that the female will be female in all her journey till she meets her partner, or that the male has been male from the beginning of the split of its integral individuality. On the contrary, each individual in his evolution is being prepared to complete the understanding of the very nature of the processes of creativity and passive percipience and understanding by a thorough contact with these planes established by the Divine Supermind itself, till in its most luminous moment it offers itself or surrenders its entire being to the Supermind in all its Motherhood and Fatherhood, Creativity and Power, Intelligence and luminous lights so that the individual verily becomes a vehicle of the Divine force and power, and as a field of the Divine, a woman rather than a male. This is the view normally taken up by the mystics whether of the Bhagavata Alvar type or the Christian school of St. Thomas
Aquinas, not to speak of the woman mystics. The primal male is God and all the souls are only females. Further according to Sri Aurobindo, sex and sleep are the two fundamental instincts which are difficult to overcome, but which must be overcome in the Spiritual

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ascent; the reason is not far to seek, the one is a negation of the consciousness eternally aware, and the other is a negation of the total surrender that has to be made for the ascent of the soul and the descent of the Divine; and further the energy of sex is transmutable into the spiritual energy of light (ojas śakti).' I shall briefly refer to certain other objections against this first-look theory. The individual soul is indivisible. To think of part-whole relationship is contrary to the integral unity of the individual soul. The male-female are not the portions of the soul in Vedanta whatever be the validity of such a relation in Judaism. Nor can it be held that the irrational is the female and the rational the male, for there is a super rational which is the truth of being. The existence of several personalities in each individual embodied being such as the material or physical, vital, mental etc., is capable of being accepted without this type of split into male-female. Each of these is capable of autonomy within limits so far as they go without entailing actual dissociation in the individual as such. This thesis was put forward on psycho-analytical lines by Aldous Huxley in his very informative Essay on Pascal. It is also accepted by Sri Aurobindo, though these are ultimately. integrated in the Supermind alone for no true integration of these several personalities which have come into being in Ignorance can be synthetised by the Unconscious or the conscious but only by the Supermind. Thus it follows that no ontological unity or spiritual unity can be affirmed and no real happiness can issue through a mating of these complexes called personalities, supposing we find them disintegrating or 'emanating' from the unity. The relation between the Supreme Divine and the Shakti is not something that leaves the other halved or made into a half-personality. Sakti is the manifest intelligence, the dynamic supermind of the Divine Transcendent; unmanifest she yet is of Him in Him. The emanational theory is applicable only to the Divine whose personalities are all divine, full and integral gods or divinities, who are all puma, infinites, not needing any other to complete their fullness or wholeness. Nor is the thesis that man is of the image of the Divine his maker tenable or on all fours. Firstly the supreme Being is the One, the Unity of the many and the many are not each one of them the One in the many and so on ad infinitum. The split-theory or the parallel with the structure of the Neutron will not avail. On this analogy it may well be that all neutrons do not have only one electron

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but many excepting the hydrogen atom, the monogamist amongst the neutrons. Thus the story of Prof. P. Narasimham will mean that there is not only one sakti or sexually polar opposite but many such.

This being so, the theory put forth by Prof. P. Narasimham appears to have more than the normal amount of objections, though to be sure he has presented the thesis very attractively. It is a dangerous theory too, notwithstanding certain amount of support he might have from the writings of Marie Corelli, and the novels 'Master of the 3rd Degree' and 'Dweller in Two planets'. The thesis reveals that his analogies, the logic, the mystic experience and even the image theory reveal serious lacunae in the presentation of the solution for the problem of Sex and Spirituality.

K. C. V.

THE PHOENIX

Our illustration on the cover represents the mythological bird Phoenix. This is what the New Standard Dictionary says about it:-

A sacred bird like an eagle, with red and golden plumage, which came out of Arabia every 500 years to Heliopolis, where it burned itself on the altar and rose again from its ashes young and beautiful; hence an emblem of immortality and of the resurrection.

The myth has several forms of which the above is a popular one. The Phoenix period, or the time of reappearance of the Phoenix, is variously given from 250 to 7000 years. The prototype of the Phoenix is probably the bennu, or symbol of the rising sun, of which the hieroglyph is a heron.

THE BIRD OF FIRE

O marvel bird with the burning wings of light and the unbarred lids that look beyond all space,

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.

SRI AUROBINDO

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