-05_The Advent November 1977

THROUGHOUT the ages whenever there has been a new creation on earth, or manifestation of a new consciousness in earthly atmosphere, it was always preceded by a stage of destruction and dissolution of the old. The dance of Shiva has its two aspects — the bliss of creation and also the joy of destruction — lāsya and tāndava — both have been equally necessary up till now — complementary to each other.

Destruction means destruction of the unnecessary, unfit, all that refuses to accept the new advent, obstructs it, tries to deny it, — all that is out of harmony with the inevitable new future. Earthly evolution is a march of progression — if you fail to keep up with that speed you have to move out of the way, rather you are removed to make room for the next coming stage.

If you are in the older creation or at least are in love with it, attached to it, the destruction becomes painful even fearful and repulsive to you. But if you aspire for the new, are willing to participate in the dawning future, already belong to it, you feel the necessity of this

destruction and welcome it to hasten the work and even rejoice in it. You enjoy the joy of destruction — at least Shiva does, the Divine Force does, it seems.

Something like that, in fact the same thing is happening now. Mahakali has started her work of preparation, of elimination — of destruction and dissolution — to clear the path of Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati, — the infinite love and compassion of Maheshwari sanctions and supports it. The new creation, the new world that Mother built and is still building with so much love and care is ready — ready to manifest, to reveal itself in the material field, waiting for materialising on earth, but earth is not yet ready, rather man is not yet ready, he still refuses it, clings to its old dead world — and clings fast to it — he loves this game of falsehood and crookedness. Perhaps truth is too bright, too compelling for his egoistic nature and obscure make-up — so he denies, obstructs as much as he can the new consciousness, the new reality. Mother out of her infinite love tried to take this denial on her own self, tried to convince and change as many elements as was possible — then, when nothing more could be done, She withdrew leaving the field to her other aspect to do what was unavoidable — the breaking up of the old rigid world. It is a necessity for the ultimate good of earth and even man.

The work has started — call it the dance of Shiva, the tandava or the dance of Kali the fierce Mother — it has started and is proceeding faster and faster on its way. Destruction, dissolution, decomposition — yes that is the first result and we are already witnessing and participating in it, whether we like it or not. It is the Supreme Lord's decree — it is bound to happen. Those who cling to Truth survive, those who make alliance with Falsehood perish — man has no other way than to make a choice, consciously or unconsciously.

It is an inevitable stage, there is nothing to lament or grieve if you are an aspirant of Truth.

The next stage naturally will be the clearance of the debris — a thorough cleaning — elimination of all that was against the truth, the ruin of the dead world, the field will be cleared of all that is filthy and obscure. For then only the new reality will be able to come forward, Mother's mission will be fulfilled.

The new creation is already there — forming itself — whatever is happening now in the Ashram and outside, is happening so that it

may come forward all the sooner. She is breaking the outer scaffolding within which the new reality has been established, or you may call it a dead shell that is being broken so that the new Reality may come out. It is Mother's action with her own Self. She has taken her Chhinnamasta form. All things She is destroying are her own selves — She is getting rid, as it were, of the old un utilisable limbs of her own body. We may remember Sri Aurobindo's lines:

"... the hour is often terrible, a fire and a whirlwind and a tempest, a treading of the winepress of the wrath of God; but he who can stand up in it on the truth of his purpose is he who shall stand; even though he fall, he shall rise again; even though he seem to pass on the wings of the wind, he shall return. Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected." (The Hour of God)

1. O Waters, the Poet-Creator proclaims your supreme greatness in the House of the Sun.

The Waters move out in seven streams in each of three channels. Sindhu surpasses all hastening streams in her stupendous urge.

2. God Varuna dug out the path for your going when, O Sindhu, you rushed to meet the Plenitudes.

You surge over the fields and up along the plateaus when you move in front of these moving streams as their Master and Ruler.

3. To the Heaven the echo perseveres. And on the Earth the Sindhu, by her lustre impels upward the sweep of Infinity.

It is as though from the clouds pour out floods of rain. Indeed as she flows down, the Sindhu comes roaring like a mighty bull.

4. Towards you, O Sindhu, as towards their child the Mothers bellowing rush forth, heavy with milk they are.

Like a warrior king you take lead in the outpouring when you drive forward all these streamings.

5. O Ganga and Yamuna and Saraswati! O Shutudri with thy companion Parushni! Cling to this hymn to you.

O Marutvridha with thy companion Asikni, O Arjikiya with thy companion Vitasta and Sushoma, lend your ears to me.

6. The first on your way you joined with is Trishtama and then with Susartu and Rasa and Shwetya.

O Sindhu, with Kubha you joined Gomati, and Krumu with Mehatnu: with all of them you move forward in one single movement.

7. Driving straight, bright and gleaming in her greatness, she overflows the wide spaces of speeding realms.

Sindhu, inviolate, the greatest worker among workers, she is like a marvellous-hued steed, beautiful like the body of a woman.

8. Sindhu rides the perfect steed, drives a perfect chariot, wonderfully robed, golden-hued, great deeds she does, full of the plenitudes is she.

Youthful she is, rich in fine fleece, rich in fibrous reeds, she glides over honey-bearing growths, she brings perfect delight (enjoyment).

9. Sindhu has yoked horses to her happy-going chariot. With that help she wins the plenitude in this sacrifice.

Great is its greatness that is at work. It is inviolate, shines in its own glory, exuberant in its strength.

A SWAPATHY finds something missing, the lack of which makes the greatest actions dull; he does not know the nature of that Reality; he ascends higher; all finite things fade to nothingness; he feels he has approached Reality; this is something beyond the grasp of the instruments built by or of Nescience; from this height, the whole universe appears like a veil concealing the divine and everything an imposition on the void: the silence here rejects the world and affirms the Reality alone.

The varied experiences of the world contribute little to the satisfaction of the soul-thirst or the spirit-hunger of man; the power and knowledge are only the passing gifts of time which the surface being enjoys during his sojourn in the world; even these gifts are the different forms in which the One manifests himself; he is the essentiality of which we are made; he is the nearest by reason of his being an indweller, but at the same time the remotest since he is hidden by his own works. The glory and the charm of things in the world are derived from the invisible presence of the divine behind them; they are the dim signs of the splendour of the Reality within and deprived of its life-giving presence, the world assumes the appearance of aridity and insipidity and has the faded look of a lady's visage when her Beloved is gone. Human attempts to know seem to be foredoomed to failure; the toils of all the acquisition of knowledge Culminate in a painful reminder that there still remains the unknown and the unknowable; this remaining unconquered, our trivial achievements and pitiful aspiration at world-dominance, seem a pride of will, an egoism; the several forces, their gifts or dower are the rays projected and withdrawn by the Omnipotent; the eternal light is guarded by a cave of darkness. A silence settles on the striving heart of Aswapathy; a Being intimate and un nameable, by its alternate approach and retreat, exercises a spell on him, luring him beyond; its presence or absence makes a vital difference; the smallest actions become divine and the greatest inane according as its light is or is not enshrined in them.

As long as there is the presence of the uplifting deity, the heart's gaping void or want is filled, but its withdrawal, deprives life of all the aim and makes it inane; but he has yet to know what that presence is; sometimes it strikes him as an indistinguishable vast and sometimes the kernel, the centre of the soul; without its supporting presence the order of the different worlds, and the instruments deprived of their god-like self-sufficiency, turn into the inane props of an evanescent scene, a chimera or a cloak; or sometimes it strikes him as the huge shadow of his own personality. Though over-shadowed by these giant doubts, Aswapathy ascends without pause .till he reaches a height where nothing created can live and where he is faced with a fecund zero productive of unlimited change and where he has to choose between the mind's complete surrender to light or extinction like a moth in the naked blaze of Truth.

Aswapathy has reached a point where all his acquisitions in his life-long career and all the aspirations towards which he has directed his course have to be abandoned and he has to submit himself to a transformation or a merger into That which is indefinable; alone and in an unfamiliar region of the intangible and the formless, he faces the adventure of the Inane; he reaches the farthest point beyond which thought can not project itself and where Will itself becomes ineffective; all the faculties made of Nescience crumble down and even the cosmic spirit, sustaining the whole universe faints in a luminous inadequacy in this vast; here all the entities and forms melt or disappear or are reborn into a Truth beyond the mind's comprehension; the glory of form and the sweetness of harmony sink into a blissful Nothingness; the universe is now stripped bare of its veil and the Supreme is seen with his feet firmly planted on the wings of life; attracted by the piercing diamond gaze of the Omnipotent the cycles of time rejoin the fount of eternity again to return from the invisible sea.

All that is born of the divine puissance has come to nought; there is nothing like a trace of what has been conceived and executed by the Cosmic mind; everything even Eternity appears a hue, an imposition on the void, space a flicker of dream before it sinks into the depths of Nothing; the spirit that dies not, seems a myth, a projection from the Unknowable; there is only That in which all have their source and dissolution; but what That is, is indescribable except as a

formless form; the experience of That is comparable to that of a lapsing wave before it loses its identity while sinking back into the sea; the several manifestations are like waves and it looks as if the wave can have a feeling of the ocean whence it has arisen, even when it is on the brink of dissolution; the sublime Nirvanic peace and silence that have descended on Aswapathy make him reject the world and the soul; his passionate quest leads him to a stark companionless Reality absorbed in its fathomless hush; it has no kinship with the universe and hence the questions, greeted by a silence, die on the lips, before they are even articulated; barring the stark Reality, there is none else, no second, no partner or peer; there is neither mind to know, nor heart to love nor a person; everything is annulled and engulfed in a namelessness; there is experienced a pure existence free from thought and mood, a consciousness of eternal bliss unshared by any, a formless being, featureless and mute, the sole Supreme by whom all live.

Aswapathy combats the impression of the Nihil by his musings on the power and the mission of the self. Solution of the riddle is to be found not in negation but a reconciliation of the contradictions. Zero is not the last word but the first step towards the discovery of God; the silence or the void is pregnant with power; he becomes aware of the presence of the divine Mother; a golden passage becomes visible; finds that Mother Might broods over the world; nescience drops down dead and transformation of the earth by her grace appears a possibility; he longs to bring down her presence on the earth and his only strength is a self-surrender.

The peaks on which he stands, the vasts, the stillness prevailing there, suck all the wearisome conquests, accumulations made in knowledge; he is now left bare of senses and mind; he is only conscious of the spiritual silence fining in the entire space; he is left in the sole company of the Inconceivable; there is no longer that self-conscious, ego.

'As our consciousness changes into the height and depth and wideness of the spirit, the ego can no longer survive there: it is too

small and feeble to subsist in that vastness and dissolves into it; for it exists by its limits and perishes by the loss of its limits....This disappearance of the ego does not bring with it the destruction of our true individuahty, our spiritual existence, for that was always universal and one with the transcendent but there is a transformation which replaces the separative ego by the Purusha, a conscious face and figure of the universal being and a self and power of the transcendent Divine in cosmic Nature.'

He has a strange sense of liberation from the cycle of births and deaths and the drudgery of destiny and work; but it is yet too premature for any true rejoicing, for the question remains unanswered about what has become of the self, its power and mission; on what dead bank of the eternal road it has been thrown and escapism or loud assertion of denial is not the way to victory. Man has come down to this planet from the Unknown, charged with a mission; nothing has yet been done; the world remains aching and bruised as ever; half the God's cosmic work alone is done with the induction of man on the world scene; it is therefore not in an everlasting negation but in the fervent affirmation in the passionate accents of a lover, a lord with a deep concern for the evolution of the world from suffering to bliss, that the solution of the problem is to be sought; Truth leans on the ridge of the everlasting Yes and it can be found that in the chamber of its symbol led OM, the warring dualities such as light and darkness, good and evil and so on meet and exchange kisses.

The dark veil of the ignorance is lifted revealing the shadow of the Omniscient but there is one other barrier of a dazzling curtain of light and in sooth it has to be asked whether it has been lifted and whether anybody has seen the body of the king; the seal remains unbroken yet and the riddle continues as ever; the cosmic Player, masked within his light guards the secret, laughing at the vain efforts to wrench it out of the eidolon of a name and the glory of a form. A streak of the white effulgence is mistaken for the goal but far behind the blaze and at the point which has been considered the source and the end of all, lies a gate, a step into eternity where the Infinite withdraws back to himself his million rays of formulations; the zero is but a sign, a symbol, a nothingness pregnant with all possibilities,

a fountain source of every manifestation; an extinction, a negation does not explain the mystery of the world, nor is it the last word of God; silence is the cradle of all power, status a nursery of dynamis; the ray contains the sun, the drop the ocean in miniature and it is here on this earth that God desires to stage his fulfillment.

'Earth-life is not a lapse into the mire of something undivine, vain and miserable, offered by some Power to itself as a spectacle or to the embodied soul as a thing to be suffered and then cast away from it: it is the scene of the evolutionary unfolding of the being which moves towards the revelation of a supreme spiritual light and power and joy and oneness, but includes in it also the manifold diversity of the self-achieving spirit.'

In this state of utter destitution, conflict and doubt, to the immense relief of Aswapathy, the yearned for Presence suddenly draws close to him across the vast silence and out of the very core of the Transcendent; as if the enormous self-escaping into the original bliss is compressed into a summary, someone infinite and absolute appears, taking to her breast, nature, world and soul with the fondness of a mother pressing her child to her bosom; the hush and the void are broken; the limitless Unknowable is pierced and like a surprising beam, she enters his heart, touching all sentient beings through him; she brings with her the power that transforms pain into joy, that eudaemonises the sorrow of the world and that catches and dispenses the divine felicity lightening the heavy unrolling of time.

'A vast universal self-delight must be the cause, essence and object of cosmic existence. "If there were not", says the ancient seer, "this all-encompassing ether of Delight of existence in which we dwell, if that delight were not our ether, then none could breathe, none could live."'

'Not to return as speedily as may be to heavens where perfect light and joy are eternal ... in that case the ignorance would be either an inexplicable blunder of the All-Conscient or a painful and purposeless Necessity equally inexplicable, — but to realise the Ananda of the Self in other conditions than the supracosmic, in cosmic being, and to

find its heaven of joy and light even in the oppositions offered by the terms of an embodied material existence, by a struggle therefore towards the joy of self-discovery, would seem to be the true object of the birth of the soul in the human body.'

Affirming that delight is the creator and sustainer and that there is a fount of ecstasy hidden in life, she exhorts the spirit to hold firmly to its course; behind God and brooding upon the world is the Mother Might, a consciousness denying none, but transcending all; she is the abiding Power, the mother of all godheads and their puissance, the link between the earth and the Supreme. The Nescience dogging the human speculation is now slain; the mystery is now solved; the mind can no longer be the screen for the projection of an illusory conflict of the titan opposites, the irreconcilable dualities; wisdom is seen wearing the robe of ignorance to disguise itself; existence is not a meaningless freak any longer, nor escape from the prison house the sole release; at last the hidden clue is found, the word revealing the purpose and the significance of the spirit's birth; even the space that has struck him as a void now throbs with a heart; and suffering finds its grave in her immortal smile.

Only a hunger of infinite bliss was left. A shaft of light, of life from beyond exiles death and error; wrong can no longer find shelter when light and love are wide-spread. The Mother is the base of the formless and the formed; her face is the index, the mirror revealing the infinite content of the universe; the sea of bliss is reflected in her body; she is the ruling star of birth and fate; single-handed she can overnight change the base of the dragon inconscience and nescience; she is the secret, the enigma concealed by Night, the luminous heart of the Unknown, the golden bridge to the Supreme, the wonderful fire, the source of inspiration, the magnet that compels an indefatigable ascent; all nature animate and inanimate send their prayer for healing the aching throb of life by her planting her feet on the earth; they passionately yearn for her making the earth, the home of her sweetness; she is the goal of all knowledge, the aim of our passionate quest; the irreconcilable opposites merge into a harmony, pain converts itself into ecstasy by her clasp, her touch; all this flashes on Aswapathy in a

lightning-like revelation and his whole nature, every cell of his body is aglow with a rapture; he is possessed by a hunger for an infinite bliss and his entire being becomes a flaming spire.

Thus what is sown in a seed-form or what is contained in a word spoken or what is envisaged in a moment by the Eternal, enblossoms or materialises after a toil spread over the ages; Aswapathy longs that his feeble efforts may have a mighty culmination; for this end he has to recast his entire personality so as to lodge within his frail vessel of life, her beauty and greatness; but now he has outgrown his narrow ego-self and personal salvation has no longer any appeal to him; nothing short of an universal liberation of the earth and men of whom he is the representative satisfies him; but human power and love can hardly break the coils of the python Inconscience around the earth; his own attempts to clasp heaven with the imperfect might of a mortal are too puerile, infantile indeed; his only strength lies in a complete surrender so that the Infinite could descend and fill in his vacant parts with the might of the Immortal; this surrender involves the uprooting, the annihilation of all other longings except that for the One; he puts himself in this frame of mind and prays for her descent into the suffering world.

SRI Aurobindo holds out the prospect of a corps glorieux for man, a body illumined by the Light of the eternal Self. Mother shows the way to achieve it.

"The physical body, such as it is, is truly nothing but a very deformed shadow of the life of the eternal Self... One day it shall be capable of erecting a bridge between the physical life as we know it and the supramental life that shall manifest."¹ This is the Mother's promise. It is not an empty promise.

Even as it is, with all its imperfections, the human body is a wonderful instrument given to man; only we do not know how to use it. It is constantly tyrannised over by the two "rogues", as the Mother calls them: the mind and the vital, its present masters. "The mind, with its rigid principles and the vital with its excesses, its dissipations and its passions soon do every thing to ruin the body's balance and create a state of fatigue, exhaustion and illness... It must be freed from this tyranny. And that cannot be done except by a constant union with the psychic centre of the being...

"The body has a remarkable capacity for adaptation and endurance. It is fit to do so many more things than one usually imagines. If, instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that govern it, it is directed by the central truth of the being, one will be surprised to see what it is capable of... You have certainly read or heard about those stories of war, where the body was obliged to suffer and endure terrible things; and it resisted all that, it proved that it had capacities of endurance almost inexhaustible."²

And yet, how strange and unreasonable have been some of the attitudes taken by men who prided themselves on their intellectual and spiritual eminence! Their attitude to the body is as if it were just a nuisance, something not only inferior and deserving of contempt, but also fit for ill-treatment.

"In the old spirituality it was always thought that the body was incapable of being transformed and was simply something inert and useless obstructing the path. The spirit must be made to come out of the body in order that, once liberated, it could have all the experiences possible. And so, they ill-treated the body as much as they could in order to take away from it its vitality and its strength that it might keep very quiet, as if something entirely useless." This is how the Mother describes the attitude so commonly held among spiritual aspirants in the past. "I am speaking," she explains, "as they themselves would speak. I put myself in their place."³

She makes particular mention of the well-known spectacle, the sadhu lying on a bed of nails. "Well, when they do it in public, one always has a suspicion that there is a bit of play-acting about it. But it may be there are some who do it sincerely, in the sense that they do not do it for providing a spectacle. And then, if one were to ask them why they do it, they would say it is in order to prove to themselves that they have detached themselves from their body. And there are others who go still farther. They say that the body must be made to suffer in order to liberate the spirit... Well, I say," the Mother opines, "that behind that there is a pleasure taken by the vital in suffering; it imposes suffering on the body because the vital has a very perverted taste for suffering."⁴

The Mother is aware of the Hathayogic and Tantric disciplines, which attach considerable importance to the body and its potentialities for the spiritual achievement. She speaks appreciatively of the Hathayogic asanas, which give "an almost complete suppleness" to the body of those who practise them.⁵ The Tantric methods in any case are "occult methods for acting on the body,"⁶ efficacious so far as they go. But they do not "transform" the body. Sri Aurobindo spoke to her of a Yogi who had "secured so much control over material nature as to live two hundred years."⁷ And "that", she says, "is perhaps the maximum"⁸ attainable by ordinary yogic processes. Physical immortality remains yet to be achieved. It may be that the various attempts made in early and later medieval India as well as in medieval Europe to find an "elixir of life" that would prolong life in the physical body indefinitely, had

they succeeded, might have solved the problem. But none of these attempts succeeded. The only important thing about them was that they kept the hope alive.

There was a brief period in recent history, the 19th century "fin de Siécle", when it was very much the fashion in Europe to
hold that a weak and sickly body made for a brilliant mind or great artistic capacity. " T here were some who explained that the development of their intelligence came from the fact that they were incapable of deriving any joy from their body. Because they were wholly unable to live fully, all their attention was turned to their mind and that is how their intelligence had developed!"9

All that is gone. "It has gone completely out of fashion now. They are all for a good physical balance, good health, a solid body and all that the physical training of the young can give."¹⁰

The attitudes to the body are changing fast. The growing popularity of āsanas and prānāyāma exercises in the name of "Yoga" is symbolic of the change.

The old spirituality was not entirely wrong when it accused the body of inertia, tamas. The Mother concedes that "it is something that makes you dull, something that does not vibrate..."¹¹

That is because it is full of tamas, the principle of inertia, by its very nature. This is not what may be called idleness or unwillingness, "a refusal to make an effort. The tamas is an inertia: it wants but cannot."¹² What is this due to? Because our body belongs to physical Nature. "But your physical nature contains a consciousness; it is animated by a consciousness, even though it is not entirely conscious. And it is precisely because it is not entirely conscious that it can be inert, tamasic, unconscious."¹³

The saving grace is that it can be made conscious. Mother recounts in this connection an amusing experience of hers. It was a long time ago, perhaps she was still in Paris.

"I remember having been with young people, — it was a long time ago, — and they had noticed that whenever I decided to get up from bed, I got up with a bounce, without any difficulty. And they would ask me, 'How do you manage this? When we want to

get up, we have to make a concentration of will before we can get up.' They were so astonished, I on the other hand was astonished myself. I would ask myself, 'How can this be? When one decides to get up, one just gets up.' No, the body was there, just like that, and a will had to be put into it, push the body to get up and act. It is so, it is tamas."¹⁴

The Mother's own body, left to itself, has always been like that, completely free from inertia. This we can gather from the testimony of those who have seen her in the Ashram, and from her own account. To this we shall revert later.

The other charge levelled against the body is that it is so rigid and fixed in its shape and its habits. This is true to some extent. But this fixity is a first indispensable condition for its very existence and its survival.

Have you ever asked yourself what would happen if you did not have a body that was a fixed entity, different from all the other bodies, something that you could call truly your own? This is a question that can be put squarely to those who are so contemptuous of their bodies. "You would all be merged into one another... It would be a sort of an inextricable mess...it is the form, this precise and apparently rigid form of the body that makes you different from others,"¹⁵ in any case, that is the starting-point from which one has to begin. Without this fixity of the form, there could never be an individuality.

"This form serves as a mould ... This form of the body serves as a mould in which the vital and the mental forces can take a precise form, so that you might become an individuality distinct from others.

Before an individuality is really 'individual', before it can have its own particular qualities, it needs to be contained in a vase; otherwise it would spread over like water and it would no longer have any form at all... Fixity of form is the means by which an individuality can be formed."¹⁶

Another charge held against the body is that it is the cause of so much misery, — pain and illness, hunger and death. Life in the body causes so much moral suffering and unhappy circumstances that men are even led to suicide in order to escape all this misery, or at least

The Mother's answer is categoric. "Death is not the solution, far from it. Death is a clumsy and mechanical return to the round of existence, and what you have not achieved in one life, you have to do in the second, generally in much more difficult circumstances."¹⁷And as for suicide, the Mother is still more emphatic: "Suicide, far from being a solution, is a stupid aggravation of the situation, that for perhaps centuries, will make life intolerable."¹⁸

If the attempt to escape does not provide a solution, and we are saddled with an instrument that is still far from being perfect, the only logical alternative we are left with is to make the body less unconscious, less rigid, less open to pain and illness and make life in the body more harmonious.

And the first thing to do in this direction must obviously be to treat it with respect, and give it due care. It is customary to show respect to the bodies of persons who are dead. We are not always so careful about the bodies of those who are alive. "We must respect all, the living and the dead", says the Mother, and realise that all lives in the Divine Consciousness.... The Divine is everywhere, and I repeat, that for the Divine there is no 'living' and no 'dead' — all lives eternally."¹⁹

As for taking due care of the body, the Mother insists, "One has no right whatsoever to make use of material objects, whatever they be, if one does not take care of them."¹⁹ The body is the "material object" par excellence which we have to use constantly, every moment of our life on earth. One has no right to ill-treat it, on any account, under any pretext.

The Mother takes us a step further. The body, far from being an obstacle on the path, "is made for doing the yoga. We are on this earth. The time that we spend on this earth is the time when we can make a progress. One does not make any progress outside the life on earth. The physical and earthly life is essentially a life of progress, it is here

that one makes any progress. Outside the earthly life, one takes rest, one is unconscious, or one may have periods of assimilation, periods of rest, periods of unconsciousness. But the periods of progress are on the earth and in the body. So, when you take a body, it is in order to make progress, and when you leave the body, the period of progress is over. And sadhana is the real progress, that is to say, the most conscious and rapid progress ... in the yoga one can do in a very short time what takes an interminable time otherwise."²⁰

Yoga implies an ordered procedure for the growth of consciousness. This, in the case of the body, takes two forms, an inner and an outer. One has to make the body progress by giving it all the external help it needs, and at the same time providing for it the right inner psychological conditions that make these outer aids truly effective. The aim in view must always be "the building of a body beautiful in its form, harmonious in its postures, supple and agile in its movements, strong in its action, resistant in its organic functions and health. ... The body functions best within the cadre of a regular routine. But one must learn not to become the slave of one's habits, however good they might be; one must maintain a greatest suppleness [in this matter of habits] and be able to change them every time it becomes necessary. One has to build up nerves of steel in elastic and powerful muscles and be able to endure everything when that is indispensable."²¹

Of the external aids that one must give the body, the choice of the right kind of food properly prepared and measured out and containing all the minerals and vitamins is naturally among the most important. The nature and amount of the food must vary according to the country, the climate and the season, and sometimes also the particular temperament of the person concerned; it must always be adjusted to the real needs of the body and not that of the palate.

Mother has given elaborate hints as to the way in which the body could be maintained in proper health, through exercise and rest, sound sleep, and other rules of personal hygiene, in her Writings and Talks and Messages, and advice to individual aspirants. These cannot obviously be reproduced here. But the principle underlying the

details remains always the same; "one must take great care that only the effort strictly necessary is asked of the body, the expenditure of energy that helps towards progress and growth, forbidding categorically all that produces an exhausting fatigue and finally leads to decay and decomposition of the body."²² This naturally demands a constant vigilance, a considerable knowledge about the body's mechanism and functioning, and if possible, expert advice. There is no scope for fantasy in our dealings with the body.

But in the ultimate analysis, it is the inner being that rules the outer; hence the supreme importance of the right psychological conditions. The physical culturist knows this, at least to a certain extent in the matter of using a conscious will for development. "There are jobs for example, where the men have to carry extremely heavy loads, such as sacks of cement or wheat or charcoal, and they make considerable efforts; they do it to some extent with an acquired ease. But that does not give them a harmony of the body, because they do not do it with the idea of enlarging their muscles, they do it just like that. And one who follows a method ... and makes these same movements with a will to develop this muscle or that and produce an all-round harmony in his body is successful.... There is something in the conscious will that adds considerably to the movement itself."²³

This use of the conscious will, the Mother explains, can be of considerable help to the body, not only in "formal" exercise, but even in the most ordinary movements of the daily life. "But you have only to try and you will understand very well what I mean. For example, all the movements that you make in dressing yourself, taking your bath, tidying up your room, no matter what, make them consciously, with the will that this muscle should work or that muscle. You will see, you will obtain quite an astonishing result."²⁴

And it is not merely that the conscious will can help the body grow in elasticity and strength; it can have a considerable role to play in making the body beautiful in its proportions and its looks. "You do not know," the Mother says, "to what an extent the body is plastic. From another point of view, I would say that it is terribly rigid and it is because of that that the body deteriorates. But that is because we do not know how to use it. We do not know how to will for it a blossoming forth, sumptuous, magnificent, without defects, when

we are still fresh like green leaves. And if, instead of saying to oneself, in a somewhat miserable manner, 'How unfortunate that my arms are too thin or my legs are too long or my back is not straight or my head is not quite agreeable to look at!' one were to say, 'It must become otherwise, my arms must be well-proportioned, my body must be nice to look at, all the lines of my body must be expressive of a higher beauty', and then you will have it. And you will have it if you know how to set about it with the right will, persistent, calm, and without impatience, a will that does not bother about apparent defeats and continues its work quietly, very quietly, continues to will that it must be, looks for the inner reason and finds it out, works with energy... And after a time, you will notice, 'Look, this disharmony that I had in my looks is disappearing; this sign of brutality, this unconsciousness that were in my expression are going away.' And, then, ten years later, you will not recognise yourself!"²⁵

"Calm and quiet, strong and balanced, it will be able at every minute to put forth the effort demanded of it; for it will have learnt to find repose in action and recuperate through a contact with universal forces the energies it consciously and usefully expends.

"In this sound and balanced life, a new harmony will manifest in it, reflecting the harmony of the higher regions, which will give one's body a perfection of proportions and an ideal beauty of line. And this harmony will be progressive.... As soon as the body will have learnt to follow this movement of progressive harmony, it will be open to it, through an uninterrupted transformation, to escape the necessity of decomposition and destruction. The irrevocable law of death will thus have no more reason to exist."²⁶

It will be as if a Golden Bridge thrown across the gulf that separates the luminous Infinities from the dark Inconscient. Instead of remaining for ever a deformed shadow of the eternal Self, the body of man will become capable of reflecting Its glory, and becoming one with It, will itself become immortal.

THE Gita is avowedly a book of Brahma-Vidya, the science and the art of the Brahman; of Yoga Shastra, a systematic knowledge of Yoga, the discipline leading to union with the Highest and the Supreme, the achievement of perfection. At the end of each one of the eighteen chapters it is repeated "Here ends the chapter called such and such of the Bhagavadgita, the science of the Brahman, the scriputure of Yoga etc." Evidently the book must be taken for what it purports to be and then alone can we hope to understand it correctly.

And even as a work of Brahma-Vidya and Yoga Shastra it expounds its subject matter in a characteristic manner. It takes its start from a concrete situation of a particular individual, a situation of a profound crisis of duty and an individual full of aspiration to do the right thing. The teacher helps such an individual in various ways and by progressive stages through a vivid presentation of numerous insights and states of consciousness regarding the true nature of human personality, the existence of the world and the ultimate reality to discover the true principle of action in life.

Of course, the situation of crisis admits of universalisation and the individual too is a representative figure of humanity and the various insights and states of consciousness and the final principle of action all have a general validity. Yet for a right and a true understanding of the Gita it is indispensable to clearly recognise it as a work of the pursuit of the Brahman, practical and normative in character; also to recognize the concrete setting of the exposition of the subject.

It follows from the above that in our attempt to understand and appreciate the teachings of the Gita we must, at least for a first acquaintance, put ourselves into a sympathetic relationship with this situation, that is, get into a mood of self-education and aspire for a true doing of duty in life. We will thus get into the attitude of Arjuna and seek to know from Sri Krishna the mysteries

of life and existence that he unfolds. Later on, having first understood and appreciated what Arjuna sought and what Sri Krishna offered we can take a critical and comparative approach and try to understand it in a wider intellectual way.

But if we approach it in the prevalent academic way, which is the intellectualistic way we will be getting into a wrong relation with the subject-matter and there will be a failure of understanding and appreciation. Intellectualistic approach itself has serious limitations. It is committed to thinking and ideational activity, has partiality for analysis and is constitutionally determined to look outward, observe, correlate and infer. The spiritual growth is essentially a matter of inner change, of man in the deeper qualities of personality, of the depth, width and the height of his consciousness and these to be recognised and appreciated need the capacity to look within, observe the inner consciousness and its movements. To the intellectualistic way ideas and opinions are the important realities. To spiritual growth the development of insights and new experiences are important. Of course insights and experiences can be presented in ideas, but they must first be appreciated as facts in their original character. The intellectualistic approach must, therefore, be replaced by the experiential in a work like this. The intellectual can always have an important role as a supplemental approach.

This intellectual approach can further have a pre-possession of modern metaphysics. Now, consider the mental frame of metaphysics being imposed on normative discipline of self-education and Yoga. What a confusion will result. We will complain of a strange handling of metaphysical issues without clarity and discrimination as to what is metaphysics and what it is not.

If we are prepared to take an experiential, a practical and a normative approach to the Gita, then we would naturally ask, yes, we have lived through crises of duty and they are extremely embarrassing and it would be so wonderful to discover a satisfying true principle of action in life. Then we would be in for the experiences, which the Gita offers and we would progressively see for ourselves the forces and the reality of the view and the way of life that the Gita presents.

Now, what are the insights, experiences or realisations, which the thought of the Gita involves. In the main, it holds out a status

of consciousness in which one feels liberated from involvements in the environment, physical and social, is united with the consciousness of the Supreme and acts in life under that highest guidance. This status is Gita's solution of the problem of conflict of duties or the state of inner division. This is the status of the mukta purusa and the action that belongs to it is muktasya karma, the action of the mukta. Such action enjoys wholeheartedness, spontaneity, an awareness of the totality of life and existence and a complete joy in the doing of it. It is a contribution to the good of the world and has a significance in the cosmic scheme of things. Such action is spontaneously and absolutely good. It is above the ordinary scheme of relative good and evil. It presupposes a personality of complete integration, one of a high unified state of knowledge, will and feeling.

Such action has a quality of its own, a certitude, a clarity, an effectivity all its own. It is far different from the ordinary actions of the human level, which involve hesitation, regret, half-hearted-ness, lack of awareness of the total situation, varying joy and sorrow and so on. It is called by the Gita divine action and one who is capable of it as the divine worker.

Such was the vision and possibility of life and work which the Gita projected at a time when works were considered spiritually distracting and, therefore, the world was looked upon as a fit object of renunciation.

This vision of life and works was really made possible by Gita's experience of the Supreme existence as Purushottama, which has a static and a dynamic aspect. It is all peace and unity, but also absolute power supporting and guiding world action. It combines in itself the impersonality of universal existence as also the personality of the Divine Being and yet exceeds them. It is transcendent, it is universal, it is individual. The soul in man is a partial manifestation of the same high Transcendent Purusha and the cosmic universality, the impersonal aspect of it. The dynamic aspect of the Brahman is specifically called in the Gita Para Prakriti, the higher divine nature, which is a conscious creative power working out its cosmic purpose of lokasamgraha, a continued holding together of the world and an integrative evolutional movement in a conscious manner. The Apara Prakriti, this lower nature, on the other hand,

is unconscious and involved in egoistic action, working mechanically in separation from the source, the original Divine Being. But how did the lower nature of our ordinary living arise out of the higher divine nature is no doubt a problem. But they are facts of experience, that is undeniable. One is a fact of ordinary empirical experience and the other is, to the Gita, a fact of spiritual experience and on that authority it affirms it and thereby achieves a marvellous solution of action and spiritual life.

When the human aspirant achieves union with the Purushottama integrally, he not only enjoys the peace and the impersonality of the Supreme, but is also able to act in life under the dynamism of the same. Thus the Purushottama becomes the object of seeking for man integrally, through knowledge, through will, through love and adoration, the static or the impersonal Brahman has no responsiveness to our will and feeling.

This was the great insight into existence, the highest realization which enabled the Gita to achieve its marvellous synthesis of its complex and confused cultural situation, its synthesis among divergent trends of Samkhya, Yoga and Vedanta.

The realization of the status of a free uninvolved person is really a consequence of the realization of the Purushottama.

But how are these realizations of a free action and of the supreme integral reality to come about. That is essentially a matter of Sa-dhana, the Yoga of the Gita. And this involves a number of insights regarding what man is, what the world is, and how man can arise above his ordinary living and achieve the high spiritual status, which solves the paradoxes of his life and world.

Now man in his ordinary poise of life is outward-oriented seeking satisfaction of his numerous impulses in the objects of the external world. He is thus much diversified. As such there are divergent objectives and varying involvements in the objectives and in the manner of pursuit of the objectives. Man seeks results and is attached to them. He suffers from anxiety and much conflict and division. His knowledge is also similarly partial and divided. His emotions also are divided. He lacks a clear unified aim, an integrated knowledge and a wide joy in life. Partiality, narrowness, conflict are the hallmarks of the ordinary life. Here the Gita accepts the insights of the Samkhya that the ordinary human nature as also the

universal nature involve a play of duality, of the conflicting principles of Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas. These are extremely profound perceptions and afford a fine understanding of human nature and the cosmic nature. Man is, in his ordinary form, an ego, a selfhood which regards itself as separate and an independent existence, more or less. He has a physical body, a Prana, the biological impulses and a mind which thinks and discriminates. These are manifest parts. But he has also a soul, a self-existent conscious principle, as the centre of his life and being. The soul, however, is veiled by the ego and becomes manifest only when we stand back from the ego and seek and affirm or own the conscious and blissful soul within us. Practice of anāsakti, samatā, niskāmatā (non-attachment, equality, desirelessness) and offering of all our actions to the Divine and becoming more and more God-minded are the processes of liquidating the ego and discovering our true selfhood, the soul. The body, the life (Prana) and mind are an organisation of the working of Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas and involve internal oppositions or dualities. In the search for the soul these diversities have to be transcended.

The ordinary empirical world has also a similar character, — the three Gunas and their dualities — these too have to be transcended to be able to live in the higher nature of the divine and become capable of divine action.

'A standing back' from this play into a poise of passivity of the Purusha is also a Samkhya experience accepted by the Gita.

From these follow the anāsakti — the non-attachment and the samatā or equal-mindedness, which are first important practical steps in the direction of the growth into the status of divine action. We get or try to get detached or loosened in our fixations in the appearances of the external objects and become large and equal-minded regarding different events with a view ultimately to get united with the Supreme Purushottama consciousness. Anāsakti and samatā are promoted by the perception 'gunāh gunesu var-tante'— life is all an affair of the Gunas and I am separate from them, a witness or Sakshi only. Further by the injunction of the Gita that the action or at least results of the action should be persistently offered to the Divine, the Supreme, or at least doing actions in a nis-kāma way, the desireless way, for their own sake for the good of all.

These are all contributory factors of the earlier stage of Sadhana. When some detachment from the external involvements has been achieved and the egoistic self-assertion reduced, then a total self-offering to the Highest is the most wonderful thing to do. Our seeking for knowledge is self-surrender to the Supreme so that through oneness with the Supreme, we may know the Supreme integrally in his being and his becoming. Our love and adoration is a total self-offering of our emotional nature aiming at a consummate union of love with the Divine. Our offerings of actions aim at identity with His will and the urge to do His will in the world.

Desires are varied and distracting, superficial and concerned with external gratifications. They militate against inner integration and unity. They are to be replaced by the discovery of an integral, all-commanding will of the Supreme, which makes an undivided whole-hearted willing and acting possible.

The perception of the sthita-dhī of steady intelligence and will is easier to appreciate from the standpoint of the ordinary consciousness. Our intelligence and will are divided, conflicting and varying. They lack unity, wholeness, independence. Here our knowledge is un-unified and our actions lack a unified purpose. We must achieve steady-mindedness and learn to do things out of it. For that too the diverse pullings of desires must be given up and a concentration on the highest fact of existence, the Brahman, achieved.

Svabhāva, a man's own being and its relation to Svadharma, his own law of action, is also a most valuable insight of great practical significance. A duty or an action must naturally promote a man's growth and then it must represent or arise out of his nature and character. An action, borrowed from another will be artificial and not contribute to the doer's growth. In this connection the Gita gives an elaborate analysis of human nature as constituted of Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas and their combinations and the conscious soul behind them. All these factors of personality throw a clear light as to what a man's right action will be or should be, while he is yet in the ordinary poise of life, not yet a free person capable of in action of the highest absolute validity.

These are, on the whole, the most important insights and experiences and they are all concerned with the process of actual growth of consciousness. They all admit of a practical personal

verification too and cannot much be a matter of difference of opinion. Particularly those pertaining to the earlier stage of Sadhana are the more important and — if they are found helpful in personal growth, then it would be nice to pursue personal growth for a time at least.

There is an almost self-evident principle of epistemology that 'the knower' must bear some sympathetic equivalence to 'the known.' To know the absolute and the ultimate we must at least achieve some little release from our commitments to the finite and the empirical. If we get some Anasakti and Samata, that can take us quite a long way in the appreciation of the Real and the Ultimate. Lacking a wideness, impartiality and freedom in approach, our understanding of issues, particularly philosophical, where physical checks are inapplicable, becomes much influenced by our prepossessions, conscious and unconscious. Hence Anasakti and Samata are important self-purifications indispensable to the philosophical pursuit.

Indian philosophy has a characteristic trait of its own and we cannot afford to ignore it. Practically each system involves at least one foundational spiritual experience. Nirvana is such a central fact in Buddhism. A real experiential appreciation of this fact, even in an incipient manner, can give most helpful attitudes in the understanding of the teachings of the Buddha and the Buddhist thought. Similarly some imaginative appreciation at least of Brahman is indispensable to the understanding of Advaita Vedanta. Otherwise the egoism of the intellect and the emotional dispersions mislead us grievously.

The Gita is a work of Brahmavidya and Yoga Shastra. We need to approach it as such. We need consciously to undertake a little self-purification and seek to know it as it is and not be in a hurry to pronounce judgments upon it. We will then acquire fine insights into truth and reality.

The correctness of our approach will much facilitate a proper general utilization of the work. Anasakti and Samata alone can be a great help to our contemporary living if taken in the spirit of Sadhana, as principles of life and action normally.

The purpose here is not to discourage academic and intellectual consideration of the Gita, but to emphasise the appropriateness of the approach of Sadhana to a work of Sadhana. A Yoga has been normally a companion discipline to a system of philosophy in India,

sometimes clearly developed sometimes not. This is a matter of profound significance. We need to get into a degree of sympathetic contact with a system of thought through personal growth in order to understand it. That truth is all the more valid where the work in question is one of Yoga Shastra, an avowed work of practical discipline. This approach has a capital epistemological value too. By attempting to eliminate prepossessions of mind, through self-examination and growing positively to get into the best possible sympathetic relation with thought structure, we are able to assess it more accurately and appreciate its precise measure and form of truth better.

An entire Yogic approach to philosophical problems is also a possibility. 'A thinking consideration of things', that philosophy ordinarily is and has been so mainly in the West builds up mental constructions of truth and reality on an inferential basis and the tilt of each intellect creates its own formations and each such formation enjoys the prestige of its own internal coherence. The objective fact of truth and reality remains outside its circle of ideas and is independent of it. A certitude of truths it does not command.

The Yoga as a complete method of philosophy would, on the other hand, demand a practical experiential attempt to disengage oneself from one's normal insistent fixations in the finite appearances of the external world and to enlarge and widen and deepen oneself for an apprehension and a contact with the Real, which is vast and hidden behind the appearances. Some such initial contact with the Real world gives a true foothold for the exploration of the Real and an intellectual representation of it for a wider understanding and appreciation. Our thinking consideration of things is a play of mental constructions, pure and simple. Here we have a vivid sense of the Real and a certitude born of that direct contact as the basis of the. knowledge of truth and Reality which are infinite and would admit of infinite insights. How fruitful and satisfying would such a pursuit of philosophy be!

This is an approach which yet awaits its day, but it is a possibility and would be a most useful contribution of Indian Philosophy to world philosophy.

I DO not think we shall see what evolution is up to if we restrict ourselves entirely to science. We need to look at the associated fields of psychology, philosophy and even art, to comprehend the whole, to reach a convincing synthesis.

But the whole does need to be based on the empirical understanding of matter which science has now achieved. It tells us that matter is simply patterned energy, whirling particles or waves formed into consecutive pictures by the brain as light strikes the retina to trigger off the internal responses.

These pictures (an audio-visual tape?) constitute the individual's experience of life, his consciousness. The brain, this consciousness, is governed or moulded by the blueprint formed by the genes interacting with the environment. As Theodosius Dobzhansky writes,¹

'The genes interact with the environment, and the outcome is the process of development or aging.' In other words, consciousness seems to be the result of a transaction between the internal necessity of the genetic hierarchy and the external necessity of the environment. C. D. Darlington¹ goes so far as to say, 'The materials of heredity contained in the chromosomes are the solid stuff which ultimately determines the course of history.' This could well be the internal mechanism forging Hegel's World Spirit as it creates the inexorable march of global history in a tidal ebb and flow of universal energy as batteries charge, discharge, and recharge.

The principle at work behind it all seems to be artistic. S.E. Luria² writes, 'The ultimate form of a protein is reached through the mutual attraction or repulsion of its chemical groups. It is as if the clay on a sculptor's bench shaped itself spontaneously into a work of art.'

It does seem to me that where something has been made surely there must be a Maker. Where that something, i.e. the universe, is permeated by an unbelievable complexity, then the intelligence responsible for this complexity must necessarily derive from this Maker. And this Maker seems to be, above all, as well as everything else, an Artist. However, these hypotheses are directly contrary to many scientists. For example, G. G. Sampson³ writes, 'Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.' Jaques Monod states,⁴ 'The ancient covenant is in pieces; man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged only by chance.'

However, both these scientists seem to me to deny the implications of their own evidence. For example, G. G. Sampson writes (p. 107) of the rates of evolution in animal life, 'There are always periods of higher and lower activity ... in the brachiopods the first high covers four long periods, some 185,000,000 years and the second occurs within a single period, not ovsr 45,000,000 years' Thus, we seem to catch a glimpse of the puppeteer manipulating the strings. Jaques Monod writes (p. 31), 'Objectivity nevertheless obliges us to recognise the teleonomic character of living organisms, to admit that in their structure and performance they decide on and pursue apurpose.' G. G. Sampson

Sir Alister Hardy, head of the Religious Experience Research Unit at Oxford sees further; he writes,¹ ^e...I believe the Divine spirit — the spirit of life — the en theos — the élan vital, call it what you will — brought about organic evolution through the action of Darwinian selection.' This view is augmented by Albert Szent-Gyoergyi, twice awarded the Nobel Prize, when he wrote² about an innate drive in living matter to perfect itself. Similarly, the element of chance or randomness seems quite inadequate when compared with the incredible complexity and inherent wisdom of matter or energy. He writes (p. 16),'...most biological reactions are chain reactions ... these precisely built molecules must fit together most precisely, as the cog-wheels of a Swiss watch do ... if any one of the very specific cog-wheels in these chains is changed, then the whole system must simply become inoperative. Saying that it can be improved by random mutation of one link sounds to me like saying that you could improve a Swiss watch by dropping it

David Stenhouse wrote,³ 'Why should there be a sudden change from an instinct to an intelligence system ?' This is rather like asking how proteins become animated. He adds, 'The supposition that it could be due to random genetic changes would appear really to be little more than an assumption of "miraculous intervention", since the number and extent of the changes necessary would appear to have an improbability of a vast order of magnitude.' Exactly the same can be said of the odds against Chance arranging the proper chemicals into proteins — the odds are so high (100 multiplied by itself 160, times to 1 against) the Earth isn't old enough to permit it. Surely Einstein was more sensible to think a Supreme Intelligence is at work?

In answer to his question, David Stenhouse writes (p. 309): 'Learning is in itself basically an instinctive activity ...at the mercy of instinctual motivation. It is only intelligence which, by the operation of P-f actor inhibition of instinctive mechanisms, can cut across the "tide and flow" of motivation.' Thus he postulates a gap creating mechanism in the genetic code. So here, perhaps, we glimpse again, through the fog of surface circumstance, the elusive, evanescent, grinning Creator,

dressed now as a schoolmarm, complete with cane, forcing us to pause and think (cf. Hamlet) before acting.

The only hypothesis that resolves all the difficulties is that of universal immanence, the indwelling of the Creator within all created. Alfred North Whitehead, generally regarded as one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century with spies in all camps, wrote,¹'The only intelligible doctrine of causation is founded on the doctrine of immanence.'' If this Creator is, above all, an Artist then, in addition to play (some of it very, very cruel), it is aiming at catharsis, the purging of the emotions to regain tranquillity, the nectar of the gods, embodying growth.

If this Creator dwells within all, it must inhabit and direct the sinner as well as the saint; as such it must be a symbiotic union of both God and the Devil as in the Hindu Creator, Destroyer and Preserver. It would achieve its effects by programming every brain from the cradle to the grave, by experiencing every thought and feeling from rape and genocide to the mother's lullaby.

If the object for the Creator (possibly hermaphroditic) is growth based on a great surge of sexual ecstasy, constituting the sublime, what is the object for humanity? For this we must turn to the latest findings of depth psychology. The generation following Carl Jung, including Erich Neumann, the late President of the Israel Association of Analytical Psychologists, have established by studying the world's myths, that we are all undertaking a journey to our real, deep, inner selves. The early part of life requires the egoistic consciousness to fight for its place in society; in later life, the process of Centro version (the tendency of the whole to create unity within its parts and to synthesize their differences) leads us to a fuller understanding of our real selves. Some come to it quite quickly; others very slowly. According to immanence, this real inner self is the Creator with whom we are thus brought into union, this union being the object of life.

If we look at the machinery around the earth — the ionosphere, the cosmic rays, the stream of particles from the sun, the Northern Lights (also at the South Pole) — this whole vast machinery, like a giant television valve with the sun as filament, seems to be the means by which this Something, which needs billions of us to express itself, actually projects the film or television show of life on earth. We are

If this is right, then it resolves the old battle between free-will and predetermination. All is predetermined. But we feel free in proportion as we approach our real selves. And we do this, individually and collectively, in proportion as we obey the constructive laws of Nature.

The chief law is to substitute cooperation for competition using, ideally, the scientific method which exercises the new factor on this planet, the factor of intelligence instead of mere instinct leading to specious self-aggrandisement.

This is the grinning challenge that now faces us; it is a matter of life and death.

EVEN though we may be clear in our minds as to the principles that should govern the unification of the world, in actual practice, the task is likely to be undertaken in the most un ideal manner — through a confused clash of ideas and forces, perhaps even by the forceful imposition of one or more dominating Powers over the rest of mankind.

Still, it is good to know what the ideal solution might be. It should be through a free grouping of the peoples according to their past associations and natural affinities. Such a grouping would be very different from the existing divisions of the world which have been brought about by violence and were based on the political and economic interests of powerful nations without much regard for the wishes of the peoples concerned.

Such considerations can have no place in an ideal system. In an ideal system, the groupings must not contain any element of coercion or mutual dislike. If such things are allowed to continue, the union is bound to be dissolved by disruptive forces from within.

It was for this reason that the post-war settlement of 1919 was foredoomed to failure. For it tended to eternise the status quo, by assuring the domination of Europe over most of Asia and all Africa. A League of Nations brought into existence under such conditions could be nothing more than an oligarchy of Great Powers who would hold in check the ambitions and aspirations of the subject peoples; it was doomed to fail as it did in fact.

saw their way to convert their empires into true psychological unities. But a psychological unity implies free consent; it also implies the right to cessation. Imperial unities of this kind could possibly be envisaged as a next step, but that is not inevitable. Such a form of human aggregation could serve only as a half-way house to a world union. It could have no reason to continue once the greater unity was accomplished.

All this points to a system of free and natural grouping as the ideal solution. On no other basis could the unification of mankind be secure or sound; both reason and convenience would compel the change.

And in such a grouping, the free and natural nation-unit and perhaps the nation-group would be the true unit. Other considerations, such as race and culture might play a more or less predominant part, but may not at all be decisive. The examples of Switzerland, Alsace-Lorraine, Canada and Australia have shown how powerfully the sentiment of nationality overrides other considerations; the Slavonic and Latin elements in the old Austro-Hungarian empire on the other hand tended towards separation or fusion with their kin elsewhere for want of a true national sentiment drawing them together.

The decisive factor in such groupings must be a dominant psychological element that makes for union. It is for this reason that the groupings could not be planned on the basis of some abstract or practical rule or principle. On such a basis there could be a European, an American and an Asian grouping, with sub-groups within each, leaving Central and Southern Africa to develop under present conditions but with a progressive principle. But there are antagonisms within these possible sub-groups, like that between Mongolian Japan and Mongolian China for example, — and there are many such instances,— which would render the groupings impossible. Any such arrangements would be quite impracticable unless and until the actual sentiments of the peoples corresponded with these systems of rational convenience.

A move in the right direction seemed to be taking shape in the minds of Allied leaders during the first World War when they announced the doctrine of self-determination for subject peoples as a war aim. Its application was no doubt to be limited to the peoples and nations then under the domination of the enemy Powers and severely restricted in its application to themselves. Even so, this indicates a clear possibility for the future, and a reorganisation of the world on the basis of free national groupings can no longer be dismissed as an impossible dream.

The obstacles in the way are considerable. National and imperial egoisms are a great bar. No nation or empire is likely to forsake the gains of domination over subject peoples unless compelled by circumstances or by the lure of fresh gains. Europe too had not yet [in 1919] renounced the desire to "civilize" the peoples of Asia and Africa and hold them in subjection for the purpose.

We must therefore wait upon the coming to a head both in Asia and Europe of new spiritual, intellectual and material revolutions. These revolutions have now happened and the obstacles are losing their force.

WHEN we speak of One World, we are necessarily thinking in terms of a huge aggregate, comprising all the peoples of the world joined together in a more or less stringent form of political, administrative, economic and cultural unity. It must however be stated at the outset that however desirable such a unity may appear to us at the moment, — and we cannot underrate its imperative need, — a large aggregate is not necessarily a boon; indeed it is something otiose if it does not serve an ulterior purpose. It can be justified only if it provides better opportunities for man to grow towards perfection, only if it serves as a background and framework for a richer more fruitful life.

There is ample evidence to show that "the interesting periods of human life, the scenes in which it has been most richly lived and has left behind it the most precious fruits were precisely those ages and countries in which humanity was able to organise itself in little independent centres acting intimately upon each other but not fused into a single unity."¹ The intensely religious life of ancient Israel, the vivid many-sided cultural and political activity of the ancient Greek city-states and the small cities of medieval Italy have given to modern Europe "two-thirds of its civilisation."² Nor was any age in Asia so well worth living "as that heroic period of India when she was divided into small kingdoms, many of them no larger than a modern district."³

If such was the case, and if we assume that Nature intends man to proceed to his fulfilment on earth by the best possible means, where then was the necessity of merging these small tribes and city-states and petty kingdoms into the huge early empires, the Assyrian, the Macedonian and the Roman, and the large kingdoms of ancient India and post-renaissance Italy? The answer is worthy of note; for it justifies the modern trend towards larger aggregates.

The principal defect in the old microscopic units was their total failure to evolve a viable system of decent relationship inter se; war remained the normal relationship. Things however did not change very much for the better even when the larger kingdoms, the early empires and the modern nations replaced the older units. The facts are disconcerting. "Until recently the organised nation in its relations with other nations was only a large beast of prey with appetites

which sometimes slept when gorged or discouraged by excess, but were always its chief reason for existence At the present time there is no essential improvement; there is only a greater difficulty in devouring."⁴

The need to prevent a recurrence of global war will necessarily be an-important factor in creating among the peoples and their rulers a desire to form some kind of world union.

Even before the outbreak of the first World War, "the necessity of avoiding or minimising a collision between one or two [Great Powers] that might prove fatal to all was keenly felt and various well-intentioned but feeble and blundering devices were tentatively introduced which had that end in view."⁵ A precarious Balance of Power system sought to maintain an equilibrium between contending Powers, so that none would feel strong enough to attack the others. This has in fact been the main idea underlying international politics in the modern period; it came to a particular prominence after the great Napoleonic upheaval that disturbed the peace of Europe and shattered its political structure for more than a decade. It rested on the assumption that the Powers would naturally group themselves in line with their particular interests, and form two armed camps, naturally antagonistic to each other, but somehow continue to maintain normal "peaceful" relations indefinitely. The assumption proved to be false in practice. The groupings went on changing from time to time; ex-enemies became "friends" as their interests suited them; the chances of gaining an advantage proved to be tempting. The results were a series of wars big and small that marred the course of European history for a hundred years after Napoleon: the war of Greek independence, the Crimean War, the wars of German and-Italian unification, the Balkan wars of the middle seventies and those that immediately preceded the explosion of 1914.

Other make-shift devices included the so-called Concert of Powers, the arbitration treaties, and the attempts at halting the arms race between England and Germany that followed the accession of Kaiser William II. None of them proved to be of much avail, except perhaps to keep the less powerful nations in check. That indeed was

the main object of the Concert of Powers, with its "blundering discords"; the Concert soon broke up as soon as it disclosed the sharp cleavage of interests and ideologies that existed among its members. The arbitration treaties did do some useful work in settling minor disputes, particularly among the weaker nations of Europe and Latin America; but they were seldom invoked by the Great powers where their vital interests were at issue. The arms race could not be halted in spite of the two Hague Conferences. All the Great Powers were expecting an outbreak of War even while they talked of peace at the Hague. In their minds, War was an eventual certainty; the only thing they were not sure of was the exact date.

It may seem to be a paradox to add that the failure of these clumsy devices was salutary in the end. "Had any of these makeshifts been tolerably effective, the world might long have remained content with the present very un ideal conditions and the pressing need of a closer international organisation would not have enforced itself on the general mind of the race."⁶ It slowly began to dawn on the thinkers and statesmen that something more effective must be substituted.

The League of Nations, itself a rather clumsy device and imposed on a hesitating set of politicians rather than accepted whole-heartedly by the nations victorious in the War, was the first move in the right direction. It failed in the end, as all first attempts are likely to fall far short of the ideal. Why do we call it a move in the right direction? And why did it fail in the end? These are questions to which an answer has to be given, in however brief an outline. This may help towards a better understanding of our problem.

The Quest of the Real by Kurian T. Kadankavil, Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications, 1975. 292 pages, Rs. 15.

The Absolute of the Upanishads: Personal or Impersonal? by Augustine G. Aranjanivil. Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications, 1975. 131 pages, Rs. 10.

AS when ripples broaden after the first pebble is thrown, so in-numerable scholars and commentators have widened the vast philosophical content of the .knowledge of the Upanishads. Its ancient authors with their fine perception presented only a fragment of the knowledge of profound truths they lived. One cannot overlook the tendency to project our modern ideas into these ancient scriptures, nor can just the thinking mind arrive solely at an understanding — a deeper, more integral study is needed.

The two works considered are commentaries on the Upanishads submitted as dissertations. They are serious and objective, and each author recognises his limits and the danger of regarding his study as final by itself. The Quest of the Real chooses to focus in a positive way on the Mundakopanishad, because of its versatility, "against the background of general vedic thinking and the positions of other Upanishads". It approaches the problem of the knowledge of Brahman through a philosophical and methodological study. Augustine G. Aranjanivil, in his commentary, is concerned with the theistic thought supporting the existence of a personal God in the major Upanishads — in particular, the Katha, Isha, Mundaka and Svetasvatara Upanishads. In both books, each section is followed with comprehensive concluding remarks drawing together the various strains of thought.

It is indeed difficult to express appropriately the knowledge of the Upanishads, full of their symbolic and picturesque language, and their profound thought; otherwise, as Sri Aurobindo states, "we achieve only a distant speculation, a figure of knowledge and not veritable knowledge".¹ Often, in commentaries, one does feel the im-

position of the misleading intellect, like the vedantic illustration of the rope as snake which sees only an appearance of the truth. For instance, the opposition between a personal and an impersonal God is based on the either/or appearances of the material world; yet it is real to us, or rather to our minds, to conceive of God in these terms — but he is not confined to them. As Ramanuja asks, "Why should a man searching for a horse not be satisfied with finding a buffalo?" But like blue clearings in a clouded sky, hints of understanding and particularly recognition come through from each author in his own simple language, free of quotes and rational arguments. Ultimately, these mental abstractions must be supported by concrete experience, otherwise the language and the capacity to communicate will be only a partial and incomplete truth.

The Bhagavad Gita with the commentary of Sri Sankaracharya. Pub. V. Sadanand, Personal Bookshop, in Mount Rd., Madras 6. P. 522, Price Rs. 35.

The first issue of the SAMATA BOOKS, The Bhagavad Gita with the commentary of Adi Shankara, is a classic that has gone through several editions since it was first published in 1897. The entire Sanskrit text and commentary have been translated into English by Alladi Mahadeva Sastry, a scholar of repute. The translator has added notes wherever needed. For instance, while on the subject of gunas he points out: "The Gunas are the primary constituents of the Prakriti and are the bases of all substances; they cannot therefore be said to be qualities inhering in these substances."

The translation of the text of the Gita (which is reproduced in the original) is accurate.

We look forward to further releases of the Samata Books under the series. The quality and get-up of the book are superb.

Gita Sadhana by Svarupanand. Nava Jagaran Kendra, 18 Kashi Dutt St., Calcutta 6. P. 170, Price Rs. 8.

An interpretation and presentation of the Bhagavad Gita from the viewpoint of sadhana. Verses have been selected and explained in terms of practical improvement of day-to-day life. It is explained how the Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and Jnana Yoga are not three separate disciplines to be pursued independently of each other but three lines on which the consciousness develops. The symbology of the several legends of Krishna-lila, the necessity of the Mahabharata background for a proper appreciation of the message of the Gita are discussed with insight. The questions and answers at the end of some of the chapters are pointed in their appeal.

[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.]

SUFFERING, Distress and Death today hold the earth in thrall. And yet can there be any other issue in temporal life? That seems to be the eneluctable fate for mankind. Ages ago it was declared, the wages of sin is death.

Doubters ask, however, if sinners alone suffered, one would not perhaps mind; but along with sinners why should innocents, nay even the virtuous, pass under the axe? What sins indeed babes commit? Are the sins of the fathers truly visited upon coming generations? A queer arrangement, to say the least, if there is a wise and just and benevolent God! Yes, how many honest people, people who strive to live piously, honestly and honourably, according to the law of righteousness, fail to escape! All equally undergo the same heavy punishment. Is it not then nearer the truth to say that a most mechanical Nature, a mere gamble of chance — a statistical equation, as mathematicians say, moves the destiny of creatures and things in the universe, that there is nowhere a heart or consciousness in the whole business?

Some believers in God or in the Spirit admit that it is so. The world is the creation of another being, a not-God, a not-Spirit — whether Maya or Arhiman or the Great Evil. One has simply to forget the world, abandon earthly existence altogether as a nightmare. Peace, felicity one can possess and enjoy — but not here in this vale of tears, anityam asukham lokam imam, but elsewhere beyond.

Is that the whole truth? We, for ourselves, do not subscribe to this view. Truth is a very complex entity, the universe a mingled

strain. It is not a matter of merely sinners and innocents that we have to deal with. The problem is deeper and more fundamental. The whole question is, — where, in which world, on which level of consciousness do we stand, and, what is more crucial, how much of that consciousness is dynamic and effective in normal life. If we are in the ordinary consciousness and live wholly with that consciousness, it is inevitable that, being in the midst of Nature's current, we should be buffeted along, the good and the evil, as we conceive them to be, befalling us indiscriminately. Or, again, if we happen to live in part or even mainly in an inner or higher consciousness, more or less in a mood of withdrawal from the current of life, allowing the life movements to happen as they list, then too we remain, in fact, creatures and playthings of Nature and we must not wonder if, externally, suffering becomes the badge of our tribe.

And yet the solution need not be a total rejection and transcendence of Nature. For what is ignored in this view is Nature's dual reality. In one form, the inferior (aparā), Nature means the Law of Ignorance — of pain and misery and death; but in another form, the superior (para), Nature's is the Law of Knowledge, that is to say, of happiness, immunity and immortality, not elsewhere in another world and in a transcendent consciousness, but here below on the physical earth in a physical body.

The whole question then is this — how far has this Higher Nature been a reality with us, to what extent do we live and move and have our being in it. It is when the normal life, our body, our life and our mentality have all adopted and absorbed the substance of the Higher Prakriti and become it, when all the modes of Inferior Prakriti have been discarded and annihilated, or rather, have been purified and made to grow into the modes of the Higher Prakriti, that our terrestrial life can become a thing of absolute beauty and perfect perfection.

If, on the contrary, any part of us belongs to the Inferior Nature, even if the larger part dwells in some higher status of Nature, even then we are not immune to the attacks that come from the Inferior Nature. Those whom we usually call pious or virtuous or honest have still a good part of them imbedded in the lower Nature, in various degrees they are yet her vassals; they owe allegiance to the three gunas, be it even to sattwa — sattwa is also a movement

in Inferior Nature; they are not above, they are not free. Has not Sri Krishna said:

The only thing we must remember is that freedom from the gunas does not necessarily mean an absolute cessation of the play of Prakriti. Being in the gunas we must know how to purify and change them, transmute them into their higher and divine potentials.

This is a counsel of perfection, one would say. But there is no other way out. If humanity is to be saved, if it is at all to progress, it can be only in this direction. Buddha's was no less a counsel of perfection. He saw the misery of man, the three great maladies inherent in life and his supreme compassion led him to the discovery of a remedy, a radical remedy, — indeed it could remove the malady altogether, for it removed the patient also. What we propose is, in this sense, something less drastic. Ours is not a path of escape, although that too needs heroism, but of battle and conquest and lordship.

It is not to say that other remedies — less radical but more normal to human nature — cannot be undertaken in the meanwhile. The higher truths do not rule out the lower. These too have then-place and utility in Nature's integral economy. An organisation based on science and ethicism can be of help as a palliative and measure of relief; it may be even immediately necessary under the circumstances, but however imperative at the moment it does not go to the root of the matter.

The last great war, out of its bloody welter, threw up a mantra for the human consciousness to contemplate and seize and realise: it was self-determination. The present world-war has likewise cast up a mantra that is complementary. The problem of the unification of the whole human race has engaged the attention of seers and sages, idealists and men of action, since time immemorial; but only recently its demand has become categorically imperative for a solution in the field of practical politics. Viewed from another angle, one can say that it is also a problem Nature has set before herself, has been

The original unit of the human aggregate is the family; it is like the original cell which lies at the back of the entire system that is called the human body or, for that matter, any organic body. A living and stable nucleus is needed round which a crystallisation and growth can occur. The family furnished such a nucleus in the early epochs of humanity. But with the growth of human life there came a time when, for a better and more efficient organisation in collective life, larger units were needed. The original unit had to be enlarged in order to meet the demands of a wider and more complex growth. Also it is to be noted that the living body is not merely a conglomeration of cells, all more or less equal and autonomous — something like a democratic or an anarchic organisation; but it consists of a grouping of such cells in spheres or regions or systems according to differing functions. And as we rise in the scale of evolution the grouping becomes more and more complex, well-defined and hierarchical. Human collectivity also shows a similar development in organisation. The original, the primitive unit — the family — was first taken up into a larger unit, the clan; the clan, in its turn, gave place to the tribe and finally the tribe merged into the nation. A similar widening of the unit can also be noticed in man's habitat, in his geographical environment. The primitive man was confined to the village; the village gradually grew into the township and the city state. Then came the regional unit and last of all we arrived at the country.

Until the last great war it seemed that the nation (and country) was the largest living unit that human collectivity could admit without the risk of a break-up. Now it was at this momentous epoch that the first concept or shape of a larger federation — typified in the League of Nations — stirred into life and began to demand its lebensraum. It could not however come to fruition and stability, because the age of isolated nationhood had not yet passed and the principle of self-determination yet needed its absolute justification.

The present war puts the problem in the most acute way. Shall it be still a nation or shall it be a "commonwealth" that must henceforth be the dynamic unit? Today it is evident, it is a fact established by the sheer force of circumstances that isolated, self-sufficient nations are a thing of the past, even like the tribes of the Hebrews

or the clans of the Hittites. A super-nation, that is to say, a commonwealth of nations is the larger unit that Nature is in travail to bring forth and establish. That is the inner meaning of the mighty convulsions shaking and tearing humanity today. The empire of the past — an empire of the Roman type and pattern — was indeed in its own way an attempt in the direction of a closely unified larger humanity; but it was a crude and abortive attempt, as Nature's first attempts mostly are. For the term that was omitted in that greater synthesis was self-determination. Centralisation is certainly the secret of a large organic unity, but not over-centralisation; for this means the submission and sacrifice of all other parts of an organism to the undue demands and interest of only one organ which is considered as the centre, the metropolis. Such a system dries up in the end the vitality of the organism: the centre sucking in all nourishment from the outlying members suffers from ædema and the whole eventually decays and disintegrates. That is the lesson the Roman Empire teaches us.

The autocratic empire is dead and gone: we need not fear its shadow or ghosdy regeneration. But the ideal which inspired it in secret and justified its advent and reign is a truth that has still its day. The drive of Nature, of the inner consciousness of humanity was always to find a greater and larger unit for the collective life of mankind. That unit today has to be a federation of free peoples and nations. In the place of nations, several such commonwealths must now form the broad systems of the body politic of human collectivity. That must give the pattern of its texture, the outline of its configuration — the shape of things to come. Such a unit is no longer a hypothetical proposition, a nebula, a matter of dream and imagination. It has become a practical necessity; first of all, because of the virtual impossibility of any single nation, big or small, standing all by itself alone — military and political and economic exigencies demand inescapable collaboration with others, and secondly, because, of the still stricter geographical compulsion — the speed and ease of communication has made the globe so small and all its parts so interdependent that none can possibly afford to be exclusive and self-centred.

The organisation of this greater and larger unit is the order of the day. It does not seem possible at this stage to go straight to the

whole of humanity at large and make of it one single indivisible entity, obliterating all barriers of race and nation. An intermediate step is still necessary even if that remains the final end, Nationhood has been a helper in that direction; it is now a bar. And yet an discriminate internationalism cannot meet the situation today, it overshoots the mark. The march of events and circumstances prescribe that nations should combine to form groups of, as they say in French, societies of nations. The combination, however, must be freely determined, as voluntary partnership in a common labour and organisation for common profit and achievement. This problem has to be solved first, then only can the question of nationalism or other allied knots be unravelled. Nature the Sphinx has set the problem before us and we have to answer it here and now, if humanity is to be saved and welded together into a harmonious whole for a divine purpose.

Germany is considered now, and naturally with great reason, as the arch criminal among nations. Such megalomania, such lust for wanton cruelty, such wild sadism, such abnormal velocities no people, it is said, have ever evinced anywhere on the face of the earth: the manner and the extent of it all are appalling. Hitler is not the malady; removal of the Fuehrer will not cure Germany. The man is only a sign and a symbol. The whole nation is corrupt to the core: it has been inoculated with a virus that cannot be eradicated. The peculiar German character that confronts and bewilders us now, is not a thing of today or even of yesterday; it has been there since Tacit us remarked it. Even Germans themselves know it very well; the best among them have always repudiated their mother country. Certainly there were peoples and nations that acted at times most barbarously and inhumanly. The classical example of the Spanish Terror in America is there. But all pales into insignificance when compared to the German achievement and ideal in this respect. For here is a people violent and cruel, not simply because it is their character to be so and they delight in being so, but because it forms the bedrock of their philosophy of life, their Weltanschauung.

This is the very core of the matter. Germany stands for a philosophy of life, for a definite mode of human values. That philosophy was slowly developed, elaborated by the German mind, in various degrees and in various ways through various thinkers and theorists and moralists and statesman, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. The conception of the State as propounded even by her great philosophers as something self-existent, sacrosanct and almost divine — august and grim, one has to add — is profoundly significant of the type of the subconscient dynamic in the nation: it strangely reminds one of the state organised by the bee, the ant or the termite. Hitler has only precipitated the idea, given it a concrete, physical and dynamic form. That philosophy in its outlook has been culturally anti-Latin, religiously anti-Christian. Germany cherishes always in her heart the memory of the day when her hero Arminius routed the Roman legions of Varus. Germany stands for a mode of human consciousness that is not in line with the major current of its evolutionary growth; she harks back to something primeval, infra-rational, infra-human.

Such is the position taken up by Sir Vansittart who has given his name to the new ideology of anti-Germanism. Vansittartism (at least in its extreme variety) has very little hope for the mending of Germany, it practically asks for its ending.

A son of the soil, an eminent erstwhile collaborator of Hider, who has paid for his apostacy, offered a compromise solution. He says, Germany, as a matter of fact, is not one but two; there is the Eastern Germany (the Northern and the Eastern portion) and there is the Western Germany (the South and the West) and the two are distinct and different — even antagonistic — in temperament and character and outlook. The Western Germany is the true Germany, the Germany of fight and culture, the Germany that produced the great musicians, poets and idealists, Goethe and Heine and Wagner and Beethoven. The other Germany represents the dark shadow. It is Prussia and Prussianised Germany. This Germany originally belonged to the bleak wild savage barbarous East Europe and was never thoroughly reclaimed and its union with the Western half was more political than psychological. So this ex-lieutenant of Hitler proposed to divide and separate the two altogether and form two countries or nations and thus eliminate the evil

The more democratic and liberal elements among the Allies do not also consider that Germany as a whole is smitten with an original sin and is beyond redemption. They say Germany too has men and groups of men who are totally against Hitler and Hitlerism; they may have fallen on evil days, but they can be made the nucleus of a new and regenerated Germany. Furthermore they say if Germany has come to be what she is, considerable portion of the responsibility must be shared by the unprogressive and old-world elements among the Allies themselves who helped or pitied or feared the dark Germany.

Hence it is suggested that for the post-war reconstruction of Germany what is required is the re-education of its people. For, only a psychological change can bring about a durable and radical change. But certain proposals towards this end raise considerable misgivings, since they mean iron regimentation under foreign control. Even if such a thing were possible and feasible, it is doubtful if the purpose could be best served in this way. Measures have to be taken, no doubt, to uproot Prussianism and Junkerism and prevent their revival, no false mercy or sympathy should be extended to the enemies of God and man. But this is only a negative step, and cannot be sufficient by itself. A more positive and more important work lies ahead. The re-education of Germany must come from within, if it is to be permanent and effective. What others can do is to help her in this new orientation. As we have said, there are the progressive elements in Germany too, although submerged for the moment. The task of reconstruction will precisely consist in calling up and organising, marshalling these forces that are for the Light. The Allied organisation, it may be noted, itself has grown up in this way. When one remembers how Britain stood alone at one time against the all-sweeping victorious march of the Titan, how slowly and gradually America was persuaded to join hands, at first in a lukewarm way, finally with all its heart and soul and might and main, how a new France is being built up out of a mass of ruins, we can hope that the same process will be adopted in the work that lies ahead even after victory, with regard to Italy and with regard to Germany. In the second case the task is difficult but it has got to be done.

TO find the Divine is indeed the first reason for seeking the spiritual Truth and the spiritual life; it is the one thing indispensable and all the rest is nothing without it. The Divine once found, to 'manifest Him, — that is, first of all to transform one's own limited consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, to live in the infinite Peace, Light, Love, Strength, Bliss, to become that in one's essential nature and, as a consequence, to be its vessel, channel, instrument in one's active nature. To bring into activity the principle of oneness on the material plane or to work for humanity is a mental mistranslation of the Truth — these things cannot be the first or true object of spiritual seeking. We must find the Self, the Divine, then only can we know what is the work the Self or the Divine demands from us. Until then our life and action can only be a help or means towards finding the Divine and it ought not to have any other purpose. As we grow in the inner consciousness, or as the spiritual Truth of the Divine grows in us, our life and action must indeed more and more flow from that, be one with that. But to decide beforehand by our limited mental conceptions what they must be is to hamper the growth of the spiritual Truth within. As that grows we shall feel the Divine Light and Truth, the Divine Power and Force, the Divine Purity and Peace working within us, dealing with our actions as well as our consciousness, making use of them to reshape us into the Divine Image, removing the dross, substituting the pure gold of the Spirit. Only when the Divine Presence is there in us always and the consciousness transformed, can we have the right to say that we are ready to manifest the Divine on the material plane. To hold up a mental ideal or principle and impose that on the inner working brings the danger of limiting ourselves to a mental realisation or of impeding or even falsifying by a half-way formation the true growth into the full communion and union with the Divine and the free and intimate out flowing of His will in our life. This is a mistake of orientation to which the mind of to-day is especially prone. It is far better to approach the Divine for the Peace or Light or Bliss that the realisation of Him gives than to bring in these minor things which can divert us from the one thing needful. The divinisation of the material life also as well as the inner life is part of what we see as the Divine Plan, but it can only be

fulfilled by an out flowing of the inner realisation, something that grows from within outwards, not by the working out of a mental principle.

You have asked what is the discipline to be followed in order to convert the mental seeking into a living spiritual experience. The first necessity is the practice of concentration of your consciousness within yourself. The ordinary human mind has an activity on the surface which veils the real self. But there is another, a hidden consciousness within behind the surface one in which we can become aware of the real self and of a larger deeper truth of nature, can realise the self and liberate and trans from the nature. To quiet the surface mind and begin to five within is the object of this concentration. Of this true consciousness other than the superficial there are two main centres, one in the heart (not the physical heart, but the cardiac centre in the middle of the chest), one in the head. The concentration in the heart opens within and by following this inward opening and going deep one becomes aware of the soul or psychic being, the divine element in the individual. This being unveiled begins to come forward, to govern the nature, to turn it and all its movements towards the Truth, towards the Divine, and to call down into it all that is above. It brings the consciousness of the Presence, the dedication of the being to the Highest and invites the descent into our nature of a greater Force and Consciousness which is waiting above us. To concentrate in the heart centre with the offering of oneself to the Divine and the aspiration for this inward opening and for the Presence in the heart is the first way and, if it can be done, the natural beginning; for its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other way.

That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one must open the silent mental consciousness upward to all that is above mind. After a time one feels the consciousness rising upward and in the end it rises beyond the lid which has so long kept it tied in the body and finds a centre above the head where it is

liberated into the Infinite. There it begins to come into contact with the universal Self, the Divine Peace, Light, Power, Knowledge, Bliss, to enter into that and become that, to feel the descent of these things into the nature. To concentrate in the head with the aspiration for quietude in the mind and the realisation of the Self and Divine above is the second way of concentration. It is important, however, to remember that the concentration of the consciousness in the head is only a preparation for its rising to the centre above; otherwise one may get shut up in one's own mind and its experiences or at best attain only to a reflection of the Truth above instead of rising into the spiritual transcendence to live there. For some the mental concentration is easier, for some the concentration in the heart centre; some are capable of doing both alternately but to begin with the heart centre, if one can do it, is the more desirable.

The other side of discipline is with regard to the activities of the nature, of the mind, of the life-self or vital, of the physical being. Here the principle is to accord the nature with the inner realisation so that one may not be divided into two discordant parts. There are here several disciplines or processes possible. One is to offer all the activities to the Divine and call for the inner guidance and the taking up of one's nature by a Higher Power. If there is the inward soul-opening, if the psychic being comes forward, then there is no great difficulty — there comes with it a psychic discrimination, a constant intimation,, finally a governance which discloses and quietly and patiently removes all imperfections, brings the right mental and vital movements and reshapes the physical consciousness also. Another method is to stand back detached from the movements of the mind, life, physical being, to regard their activities as only a habitual formation of general Nature in the individual imposed on us by past workings, not as any part of our real being; in proportion as one succeeds in this, becomes detached, sees mind and its activities as not oneself, life and its activities as not oneself, the body and its activities as not oneself, one becomes aware of an inner Being within us — inner mental, inner vital, inner physical — silent, calm, unbound, unattached which reflects the true Self above and can be its direct representative; from this inner silent Being proceeds a rejection of all that is to be rejected, an acceptance only of what can be kept and transformed, an inmost will to perfection or a call to the Divine Power to do at each step what is necessary for

the change of the Nature. It can also open mind, life and body to the inmost psychic entity and its guiding influence and guidance. In most cases these two methods emerge and work together and finally fuse into one. But one can begin with either, the one that one feels most natural and easy to follow.

Finally, in all difficulties where personal effort is hampered the help of the Teacher can intervene and bring about what is needed for the realisation or for the immediate step that is necessary.

At a certain stage in the Yoga when the mind is sufficiently quieted and no longer supports itself at every step on the sufficiency of its mental certitudes, when the vital has been steadied and subdued and is no longer constantly insistent on its own rash will, demand and desire, when the physical has been sufficiently altered not to bury altogether the inner flame under the mass of its out ward ness, obscurity or inertia, an inmost being hidden within and felt only in its rare influences is able to come forward and illumine the rest and take up the lead of the sadhana. Its character is one-pointed orientation towards the Divine or the Highest, one-pointed and yet plastic in action and movement; it does not create a rigidity of direction like the one-pointed intellect or a bigotry of the regnant idea or impulse like the one-pointed vital force; it is at every moment and with a supple sureness that it points the way to the Truth, automatically distinguishes the right step from the false, extricates the Divine or God ward movement from the clinging mixture of the undivine.

I WAS searching for my fortune's rising star,

But in the heavens could not find its trace:

And how to find it? On a level par It

was smiling sweetly on the Mother's face.

A lotus creeper wonderful Thou art,

Mother Divine, born in life's lucky pool:

Thy face, eyes, hands, feet are all like Thy heart,

Enchanting lotus-blooms all-beautiful.

III

What was love like we knew not, Mother, till

We found it in Thy person facing us:

Oh, how it's all tenderness and blissful smile

And all about it is miraculous!

Heaven desired earth's long-lost comradeship, .

It called her from above but earth too slow

Responded not; so it came down to keep

Its promise and settled on the Mother's brow.

Too far, too high, Sweet Mother,

Thy abode Of Bliss eternal for weak man's desire.

We need pine no longer now, O Grace of God, '

Since Thou Thyself art here, O Bliss entire!

Dost Thou precede the call or follow it?—

Sweet Mother, it confounds my thinking part;

For ere Thy name addressing lips doth quit,

The movement of Thy Presence stirs my heart.

VII

The more I take Thy name the more in me

Awakes the dormant spark of love divine,

And out from choking smoke adoringly

Lifts up its flame of worship to Thy shrine.

VIII

Each time, Sweet Mother, that Thy holy name

Emerges from my heart and leaves for Thee,

A nameless something comes in bright as flame

And settles in my soul delightingly.

I was a dead thing moving like a ghost

In a dark world where reigned Death's tyranny

Till Love was born as Thou, Beloved most,

Whose Name brought me resurrection's ecstasy.

There is no music sweeter than the one

Which echoes in my being when I repeat

The rune-word of Thy Name in a love-steeped tone,

And in unison with which heart starts to beat.

PUNJALA

THIS is the New Year Prayer the Mother has formulated for our sake. This is the turn She would have us give to our sadhana for the year. What is the special import of this new orientation? It is, one may say, to direct our efforts towards an objective expression, towards an application to life on the material plane.

One starts on the path of sadhana with an almost entire unconsciousness — it is so in all evolutionary process. A goal is there, vague and indistinct, far off. Within him also the sadhaka feels an equally indefinite and indefinable urge, he seems to move without any fixed aim or purpose, with an urge simply to move and move on. This is what he feels as a yearning, as an aspiration — caraivetī, as the Upanishad says. Then step by step as he progresses, his consciousness grows luminous, the aim also begins to take a clear and definite shape. The mind is able slowly to understand and grasp what it wants, the heart's yearning and attraction also begin to be transparent, quiet but deep. But this cannot be called a change of nature, let alone transformation. Then only will our nature consent really to change when we become, when even our sense-organs become subject to our inner consciousness, when our actions and activities are inspired, guided and formed by the power and influence of this inner light.

In the beginning, the sadhak finds himself a divided personality — in his heart there is the awakening of aspiration, the divine touch, but with all its outward impulses, the physical consciousness remains subject to the control of old fixed habits, under the sway of the lower nature. Ordinarily, man is an unconscious sinner, that is to say, he has no sense of what sins he commits. But he becomes a conscious sinner when he reaches the level of which we are speaking. The conflicts, fears, agonies, compunctions in this stage have perhaps been nowhere more evident than in the life of the Christian seeker. In this state we know what to do but cannot do it — the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. We want to do

the right thing, we try to do it again and again, yet we fail every time. It is not that we fail only in respect of the movements of our heart and mind, in practice also we commit the same stupidities time and again. These stupidities — and their name is legion — are lust, anger, greed, ignorance, vanity, envy, distrust, disobedience, revolt; repentance, constant repentance and earnest supplication for the divine grace — that is the remedy, says the devout Christian.

But we, for ourselves, do not give any such supreme place to repentance. For, after all, it is a lower impulse, a vital impulse as we call it; it does not allow the memory of the sin to be forgotten; rather by dwelling upon it constantly it keeps it alive, makes the impression of the sin all the more lurid. And not un often does it lead to luxuriating in sinfulness. Behind the sense of repentance is this consciousness, this idea that man is, by nature, corrupt, his sin is original. That is why the Christian seeker has accepted sorrow and suffering, abasement and mortification as the indispensable conditions of his sadhana. This calls to our mind a witty remark of Anatole France, that prince of humorists, that one could not be a lover of Christ unless one sinned — the more one sinned, the more could one grow in righteousness; the more the sin, the more the repentance, in other words the more the divine grace.

We have said that this is not our path. The divine grace is a fact — without that nothing is possible. From one point of view, the divine grace is unconditioned. But it does not follow that the precedent of Jagai-Madhai is the invariable law of spiritual life. The law is rather this that the field must be ready, the being and the consciousness must get into a certain mould, attain certain order and disposition so that the descent of the Divine Grace, its manifestation and play may be possible. For, just as the divine grace is true, so is it equally true that the individual is essentially one with the Divine, sin and ignorance are his external sloughs, identity with the Divine is his natural right. We, therefore, lay equal stress on this hidden aspect of man, on the freedom of his will, on his personal effort which is the determining factor of his destiny. For in the field of ignorance or half-knowledge, in the nether hemisphere of his consciousness, it is this power that directly builds up that ordered state of the being with whose support the divine grace can fulfil itself and give a material shape to the integral fulfilment.

Hence the Mother gives the direction that though external lapses may be natural to our external nature, now that our inner consciousness has awakened, the vision and earnestness to see and recognise our mistakes have developed — assuming that this much of development has taken place in us — we must awake to the situation and be on the alert, we must bring such control to bear upon our vital impulses, upon our nervous centres as will prevent, for good and all, errors and stupidities from up surging again and invading our physical self and our field of action. When we have reached this stage, we have acquired the capacity to ascend to another level of consciousness. It is then that we can lay the foundations of a new order in the world — it is then that along with the purification, the achievement too will begin to take on a material form.

The scope of the New Year Prayer does not limit itself only to our individual sadhana — it embraces also the collective consciousness which is specially the field of its application. It is the muffled voice of entire humanity in its secret aspiration that is given expression here. It is by the power of this mantra, protected by this invulnerable armour,— if we choose to accept it as such,— that the collective life of man will attain its fulfilment. We have repeatedly stated that the outstanding feature of the modern world is that it has become a Kurukshetra of Gods and Titans. It is no doubt an eternal truth of creation, this conflict between the divine and the anti-divine, and it has been going on in the heart of humanity since its advent upon earth. In the inner life of the world this is a fact of the utmost importance, its most significant principle and mystery. Still it must be said that never in the annals of the physical world has this truth taken such momentous proportions as in the grim present. It is pregnant with all good and evil that may make or mar human destiny in the near future. Whether man will transcend his half-animal state and rise to the full height of his manhood, nay even to the godhead in him, or descend back to the level of his gross brute nature — this is the problem of problems which is being dealt with and solved in the course of the mighty holocaust of the present world war.

In her last year's message the Mother gave a clear warning that we must have no more hesitation, that we must renounce one side, free ourselves from all its influence and embrace the other side without hesitation, without reservation. At the decisive moment in the life of the world and of mankind, one must definitely, irrevocably choose one's loyalty. It will not do to say, like the otherwise and the over liberal, that both sides are equal — equally right or equally wrong — and that we can afford to be outside or above the prejudices or interests of either. There is no room today for a neutral. He who pretends to be a neutral is an enemy to the cause of truth. Whoever is not with us is against us.

We who have taken the side that is for Light and Evolution and the great Future, must be thoroughly alive to the heavy responsibility that lies on us. The choice of the path is not by itself sufficient. Next to that, we have to see at every step and make sure that we are really walking straight along the true path, that we do not fall and slip down, that we do not stray unawares into a wrong track or a blind alley.

So far as the World War is concerned, all nations and peoples and groups on our side, who have felt and proclaimed that they stand for equality, fraternity and freedom, the priests and prophets of a new future, of a happier humanity, all such warriors are also facing a solemn ordeal. For them also the time has come to be on their guard and be watchful. They must see that they give exact expression in their actions to what they have thought, felt and proclaimed. They have to prove by every means, by thought, word and deed, that their whole being is really one, whole and indivisible, in ideal and in intention.

Today at the beginning of the new year we have to bear in mind what aim, what purpose inspired us to enter into this tremendous "terrible work", what force, what strength has been leading us to victory. They who consider themselves as collaborators in the progressive evolution of nature must constantly realise the truth that if victory has come within the range of possibility, it has done so in just proportion to their sincerity, by the magic grace of the Mahashakti, the grace which the aspiration of their inner consciousness has called down. And what is now but possible will grow into the actual if we keep moving along the path we have so far followed.

Otherwise, if we falter, fail and break faith, if we relapse into the old accustomed track, if under pressure of past habits, under the temptation of immediate, selfish gain, under the sway of narrow, parochial egoism, we suppress or maim the wider consciousness of our inner being or deny it in one way or another, then surely we shall wheel back and fall into the clutches of those very hostile powers which it has been our determined effort to overthrow. Even if we gain an outward victory it will be a disastrous moral and spiritual defeat. That will mean a tragic reversal — to be compelled to begin again from the very beginning. Nature will not be baulked of her aim. Another travail she will have to undergo and that will be far more agonising and terrible.

But we do not expect such a catastrophe. We have hope and confidence that the secret urge of nature, the force of the Mahashakti will save man, individually and collectively, from ignorance and foolishness, vouchsafe to him genuine good sense and the true inspiration.

All forms of life that cannot bear the change must disappear, all that can bear it will survive and enter into the Kingdom of Spirit. A Divine Force is at work and will choose at each moment what has to be done or has not to be done, what has to be momentarily or permanently taken up, momentarily or permanency abandoned. For provided we do not substitute for it our desire or our ego, and to that end the soul must be always awake, always on guard, alive to the divine guidance, resistant to the undivine misleading from within or without us, that force is sufficient and alone competent and she will lead us to the fulfilment along ways and by means too large, too inward, too complex for the mind to follow, much less to dictate. It is an arduous and difficult and dangerous way, but there is none other.

Two rules there are that will diminish the difficulty and obviate the danger. One must reject all that comes from the ego, from vital desire, from the mere mind and its presumptuous reasoning, incompetence, all that ministers to these agents of the Ignorance. One must learn to hear and follow the voice of the inmost soul, the direction of the Guru, the command of the Master, the working of the Divine Mother. Whoever clings to the desires and weaknesses of the flesh, the cravings and passions of the vital in its turbulent ignorance, the dictates of his personal mind un silenced and unillumined by a greater knowledge, cannot find the true inner law and is heaping obstacles in the way of the divine fulfilment. Whoever is able to detect and renounce those obscuring agencies and to discern and follow the true Guide within and without, will discover the spiritual law and reach the goal of the Yoga.