in my heart where blooms the deathless rose.

SRI AUROBINDO

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

GREAT TIME (MAHAKAL)

WHO art Thou, in the vast Finite,

Thou flowest, Great Time, from the

Beginning less towards the Endless?¹

I have seized your intent,² mighty Spirit of Time!

Now the sky, irridescent in the cataract of sun-rays

Created the magic city of limpid Eve-tide;

I wandered along river banks seeking to attune my heartstrings

To the murmur and music of life voiced by her rippling waves:

Night infinite descended with silent steps

Casting the shadow of her coronet

Upon the wide sky, flinging the hem of her robe,

Laying down the soft darkness upon earth's expanse.

Her eyes lost in thought,

¹ Or

Who art Thou, O Great Time, carrying in Thy flow the vast Finite From the Beginning less towards the Endless?

² Alternative : 'soul'.

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In this vast Night, plunged in the contemplation of the supreme Void —

The dark Mother of the world in her stark ascetic mood lies in utter trance:

She draws deep into her bosom all creatures stilled in peace,

She plays her role of goddess Sleep,

Comes and silences the Life's noise in an unending quiet.

Now is the honeyed Banquet of stillness,

The crowded stars, like bees glowing, have flown out to feast and gathered in the heavens:¹

The luminous amphora of cool ecstasy,

The moon, floats up in the night bejewelled with stars.

In this moonlit darkness, this gleaming Night²

The immensity of that mood of mine³

I have drowned into this infinite Life

And have heard the music of Silence.

A vibrant sweetness rang in the soul,

The trance of the still world⁴ broke,

Someone awoke at the touch of the luminous robe,

Some footfalls from far echoed into the heart.

Piercing the satiation and the massiveness of the Void

Dawn rises and colours the firmament with her smile:

Even as a bewitching maid, delightfully radiant

Dances about in her joyous heart with frolicsome steps

Free in the mansions of her father.

Sweet and gentle their call

The birds communicate with each other ceaselessly

In their delightful tune,

The innumerable wild branches, robed in green,

The woodland dances in the Feast of Light:

Veiled behind the festive illumination

The hymn of delight I listened in the core of my heart

¹ In the shorter version of this poem the following line is added after this:

'To smear with the rays of light the hearts of creatures.'

² In the shorter version the line reads like this:

'In this darkness illumined by dream-moonlight.'

³ In the shorter version the line reads as follows:

'The little human soul of mine'.

⁴ Alternative: 'Yogini'.

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That vedic Rishis chanted drunk with the heavenly Soma

I realised the deep rapture that has bloomed

Into the Lotus-universe in the flow of the Infinite.

Mid-day was asleep laying his head upon the blue sky

Alone in the world's chamber:

There sounded in my heart the tremendous voice of triple eternity

 

The great Mantra of the world-soul.

 

The soul satisfied, unifying unnumbered moods

Some high Creator, eternally calm, contemplates:

The Eternal Poet is pleased with his epic

The global rhythm of creation. Filled with felicity

He carries the Finite as the wonder form of the Infinite

And the endless universe circles towards the feet of its Lord.

His austerities fulfilled, the strong rays far flung,

In his heroic majesty, the sun is descending

From heaven's height, guided by the Law.

At the setting I have gathered in my heart the fullness of Peace,

I have drunk the honey of Life and emptied the goblet

The great Song of the Supernal has satiated my ears.

Such is the unstinted revel of each day,

A single day capturing the eternity of time,

O Life-Artist, Creator of forms,

Pouring All into a little it is your own figure you draw.

O Seer, in ever new souls you enjoy in various ways.

Under Thy control, in Thy mood the dancing Earth,

Its mind stilled, spreads its ecstay:

What term less timeless dancing,

What unending rapture!

What a world-wide outburst, a tremendous explosion!

Carrying in the life-force days and nights and seasons and years

I have realised your mood, I have seen your body.

But which is Thy Self? What is that Fate

Compelling you to spin, O Mighty One, and to make the whole world spin

 

In a circular dance with the sun at its centre

Wholly intoxicated ever in a mad whirl?

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Even like the milk-maids intoxicated by the touch of Krishna, spinning

In a great ecstasy, their eyes fixed on the lips of the Beloved, They know him, know him as Love, nothing else is there. This art of dance you weave into the composition of your cycle of a year.

Springtime in the voice of the cuckoo with sweet tune lengthened out

 

Pours out all sweetness in its flowery swing

Swaying the body drunk with eternal youthfulness

Sends out its call in delight. The smile of a nymph

Half seen upon earth behind the tree

Under the guise of a red and white flower in a gentle fun as it were

Draws our heart always to go with her

To an unknown kingdom without bourne beyond the mind.

When summer in royal robe, in its gorgeous glamour,

With its regalia gleaming like gold, over the woodland and meadow and fields

 

Spreading out its refulgent army oppresses the earth.

The conquered captive woman as it were prostrate at the feet of her Lord

Breathing hard under the cruel oppression filled with an acute intense joy,

The earth lying low yearns towards the blazing sky.

 

In its hghtning glance seeking for a living prey

With the wrathful heart of a titan the rainy season speeds

 

forward thundering. Hearing the cry of agony the besieged forest

Feels in its veins dancing fierce ecstasy.

The sound of the over-flooding rain delights the ear.

In this play of passion awakes the desire

Of the strong soul to unite as its dancing partner,

To become the storm and gale, one self with the whirlwind,

In this cruel torture to become the torturer,

To move battling towards the Infinite.

Upon the tired earth then slowly advancing

Appears autumn, messenger of peace,

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With lotus eyes, sweet smile, loving steps

Lazily, modestly with soft fair foot-falls.

Winter begins its entry into the tired heart and peace blooms as a flower,

 

Nature stretches herself on its cool breast,

The body relaxed, is appeased fully gratified.

The robe is wet, the body refreshed with the touch of dew

The earth after a bath and wash as it were with her trembling lips

 

Rises and smiles to the bright sun's ray through this cycle of six notes.

 

You complete your idea once again in that circle,

O Great Time, tireless God, you whirl the universe.

Endless ages have gone, endless ages will come,

You in your soul's delight are ever engaged

In building again what you break, in a happy mood.

The long stretch of a cycle of a hundred ages

That measure the period destroying human activities

Forms only of the eternal god a wink of the eye.

Man becomes tired of pain, tired of happiness

But you are never tired. The body breaks down

In a small action, the mind breaks in a little sorrow,

Death comes as the great friend bringing rest,

The burden of great renunciation is the final refuge.

Where is your renunciation? Old moods are always

Renewed in the soul of delight...¹

Who was ever your worthy partner in the play

Of this wide world? Unattached your spirit,

You create in mighty ecstasy and destroy in great joy.

You pity with a smile, like a poet

As though a poem you create in which creatures choose pain and happiness,

 

Enjoy the pleasure from the tragic note.

In killing lies your joy. O fierce Time-Spirit,

You lick up the world with your burning tongue

Devour the universal soul in your unsatisfied hunger.

Man is your toy, goes out dancing for a moment

¹ The manscript shows one incomplete line after this.

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And then disappears suddenly somewhere unknown;¹

His laughter and weeping are drowned in the roar of the Infinite,

His footsteps lie asleep under the dust of the earth.

But you are yourself, O beauty terrible,

Ever in ecstasy you build and break as you please,

In your unfathomed heart you cherish the explosion of intense delight

And take to your game once again like a boy, O God.

                        SRI AUROBINDO

(Translated from the original Bengali by Nolini Kanta Gupta)

 

¹ Alternative:

'somewhere in the unknown world'.

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THE GOLDEN BRIDGE

(A study of the Literary genius of the Mother)

(Continued from the issue of February 21, 1980)

AND yet who can deny that she is much more than a writer of intimate, elegant prose? Indeed, she is too good and unmistakable a poet to be missed. Let us just take a look at the inscription which she wrote for the samadhi of Sri Aurobindo: "To Thee who hast been the material envelope of our Master, to Thee our infinite gratitude. Before Thee who hast done so much for us, who hast worked, struggled, suffered, hoped, endured so much, before Thee who hast willed all, attempted all, prepared, achieved all for us, before Thee we bow down and implore that we may never forget even for a moment all we owe to Thee." This is, quite obviously, not mere prose however lucidly, pithily and elegantly is it written. It is all poetry, truly speaking. The very rhythmic movement and cadence of the phrases and clauses are poetic, not to speak of the restrained wealth of emotional adoration and gratitude which it breathes in every word of it. The repetitions of such simple phrases as "to Thee", "before Thee", "so much" and of the single stately, almost overwhelming word "all" are, each, charged with unusual poetic beauty and power. And what is more, like a great artist endowed with the powers of both classical and romantic imagination she gives us in such a short space, with the minimum number and simple arrangement of words, the whole biography of Sri Aurobindo. And the artistry strikes us as all the more finished here when we perceive that quite naturally and spontaneously the inscription begins and ends with one and the same phrase "to Thee", thus completing a whole cyclic movement of not merely emotional but psychic expression round the single figure of Sri Aurobindo.

Then again what is popularly known as Radha's Prayer by the Mother immediately reads like a poem of unusual beauty and power and devotion, though apparently it has the form and structure of prose.

It is, however, the Mother's Prayers and Meditations which is full of her poetic gifts. We have, here, at one end of the scale poetic prose of the following individual-cosmic rhythmic movement:

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"My heart has fallen asleep, down to the very depths of my being.

The whole earth is in a stir and agitation of perpetual change; all life enjoys and suffers, endeavours, struggles, conquers, is destroyed and formed again.

My heart has fallen asleep, down to the very depths of my being.

In all these innumerable and manifold elements, I am the Will that moves, the Thought that acts, the Force that realises, the Matter that is put in motion.

My heart has fallen asleep, down to the very depths of my being.

No more personal limits, no more any individual action, no more any separatist concentration creating conflict; nothing but a single and infinite Oneness.

My heart has fallen asleep, down to the very depths of my being." (April 10, 1917).

Undoubtedly it is all poetry and yet no ordinary lyrical utterance, for it carries the whole sublime weight and power and majesty, reminiscent of the Upanishadic poetry of an integral divine vision of things, of the earth that "enjoys and suffers", the Force that realises, the Matter that is put in motion", and finally, of "a single and infinite Oneness".

At the other end of the scale we have the poetic prose of perturbation combined with an intense pathos, as we find from the prayer dated November 29, 1913:

"Why all this noise, all this movement, this vain and hollow agitation; why this whirlwind sweeping men away like a swarm of flies caught in a storm? How sad is the spectacle of all this energy wasted, all these efforts lost! When will they cease from dancing like puppets at the end of threads held they know not by whom or by what? When will they take the time to sit and draw inwards, to collect themselves and open that inner door which hides from them Thy priceless treasures, Thy infinite boons?..."

And in between the two ends of the rhythmic scale we may enjoy this little gem of pure poetry, mysticism and philosophy sweetly and intimately and chasteningly rolled into one:

"Like a flame that burns in silence, like a perfume that rises straight upward without wavering, my love goes to Thee; and like the child who does not reason and has no care, I trust myself to Thee

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that Thy Will may be done, that Thy Light may manifest, Thy Peace radiate, Thy Love cover the world. When Thou wiliest I shall be in Thee, Thyself, and there shall be no more any distinction; I await that blessed hour without impatience of any kind, letting myself flow irresistibly toward it as a peaceful stream flows toward the boundless ocean." (December 7, 1912)

And if we seek an "epic in a paragraph", there is no better specimen than the following:

"There is a Power which no government can command, a Happiness which no earthly success can give, a Light which no wisdom can possess, a Knowledge which no philosophy, no science can acquire, a Beatitude of which no satisfaction of desire can give the enjoyment, a thirst for Love which no human relation can quench, a Peace which can be found nowhere, not even in death.

It is the Power, the Happiness, the Light, the Knowledge, the Beatitude, the Love and the Peace which come to us from the Divine Grace." (October 28, 1928)

It is rather difficult for a sensitive reader to pick and choose from the Prayers and Meditations. The whole book is charged in every line with poetic beauty and power, and one feels like saying: here is God's plenty, indeed!

It has been said — and Sri Aurobindo himself confirmed it — that "her Prayers are meant to show us — the aspiring psychic — how to pray to the Divine." And one may infer from it, therefore, that the book has been written entirely from a general, impersonal divine level only. But what sensitive reader can help feeling and perceiving that much of the inner, the true spiritual biography of the Mother is, nevertheless, recorded here? And one of the most interesting things which strikes one is the decisive psychological change of consciousness as also the gradual knowledge of her true mission in the present physical incarnation, which came to her as realisation after realisation, vision after vision had become almost habitual with her. True, this knowledge was indelibly, though subconsciously, stamped upon her consciousness even when she was a child of about the age of thirteen, as it is clear from her diary dated the 22nd February 1914. Nevertheless, it took her some time to realise this knowledge fully and it is in the later prayers and meditations of the book that we get a complete and unmistakable idea of it - even with some poignancy and

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intensity of feeling. Following is a typical specimen of the thing:

"Now, O Lord, things have changed. The time of rest and preparation is over. Thou hast willed that from a passive and contemplative, I become an active and realising servant; Thou hast willed that the joyful acceptance be transformed into a joyful combat, that in a constant and heroic effort against all that in the world opposes the accomplishment of Thy law in its purest and highest present expression, I recover the same peaceful and immutable poise which one possesses in a surrender to Thy law as it is working itself out at the moment, that is to say, without entering into a direct struggle with all that is opposed to it, drawing the best out of every circumstance and acting by contagion, example and slow infusion..." (January 17, 1915)

Even then it was not without some moments and experiences of intense spiritual anguish and emptiness, spread over three years or so, that she came to feel utterly and confidently sure of her divinely ordained role in the world, as is evident from the prayers dated March 3, 4, 7 of 1915; June 7, December 5, 7, 8, 12, 20, 21, 25, 26, 30 of 1916; September 14, September 15, and November 25 of 1917. Apart from the spiritual value and significance of these passages, the sheer literary, particularly the poetic beauties and intensities of them are really deeply moving and memorable. And, indeed, we almost heave a sigh of spiritual relief when we find her writing on October 10,1918, "O My beloved Lord, what a sweetness to think that it is for Thee and Thee alone that I act! At Thy service I am; it is thou who decidest, ordainest and put test in motion, directest and accomplishes the action. What peace, what tranquillity, what supreme felicity are given
me when I sense and perceive it ...

My Father has smiled at me and taken me in His powerful arms. What is there that I could fear? I have melted into him and it is He who acts and lives in this body which He had Himself formed for His manifestation."

Indeed, the ordeal of struggles and conflicts still continues. But the struggle, the combat has now become joyful; it has even become "One of Thy precious messengers", "one among the forms of Thy action, one of the best means for bringing back to light some elements of the work which might otherwise have been forgotten", and "it carries with it a sense of amplitude, of complexity of power."

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Prayers and Meditations is, thus, not merely a collection of prayers and meditations nor even a book of general, impersonal spiritual knowledge and realisations. It is a deeply moving human document with this difference that here all moves and flows and grows from the psychic of the writer to the psychic of the reader.

As we have seen above, the Mother's literary genius expresses itself naturally in the forms of talk and familiar, elegant exposition as well as prayer and meditation. We shall now see that it also finds expression through three other prose forms, namely, the essay, the one-act play and literary critic.

It is chiefly in Words of Long Ago that we form some idea of the Mother as an essayist. Some of the articles written for the Bulletin of Physical Education are also like essays. Taking a bird's-eye view of these writings we find that the charm of the personality — the hallmark of a true essayist — is undoubtedly in them, with this specialty that here we certainly do not come across that kind of external, i.e. physic vital and mental personality which the Western, notably the Romantic and modern essayists have so charmingly and readably specialised in. For the Mother, on the contrary, it is almost impossible to divest herself of the universal or the vast impersonal divine consciousness which is naturally inborn and so richly developed in her. Then again we cannot help observing that although the impress and presence of the distinctive personality of the Mother is to be felt in all her essays, yet it is not for the purpose of self-expression but Self-revelation, Truth-revelation that she writes about ones role in life, disinterested work, 'The Path of Later on', the Virtues, Dreams, the Power of words, Mastery over One's Thought, Transformation, integral education, etc. Here we shall discover that it is the matter, the subject of the essays which is most important and draws our attention first and last. And yet such is the Mother's mastery over the art of the essay that nearly all the accepted virtues of a good, great essay — e.g., lucidity, simplicity and economy of expression natural, orderly evolution of thought, interspersed now and then with anecdotes, the polish, urbanity, and graceful spontaneity and fluency of a limpid, pure style, the originality and freshness of attitudes, observations and symbolical images and illustrations wherever used, the wealth of wisdom and depth of understanding embracing the whole gamut of human life and its ultimate destiny — are present quite in

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plenty in the bulk of the essays.

The output of the Mother's one-act plays is so far extremely small. It is but three in number, and even of these three, one, namely, The Great Secret is not a play proper and is written in collaboration with four other writers. Yet in spite of this meagre dramatic output, it is really remarkable to observe that she is a consummate master of the art of the one-act play. Some of the high lights of these play lets may be briefly summarised as the significant selection and distribution of the various characters who are not so many individualities or "characters" in the conventionally dramatic sense, but individualised types and specimens of the conscious and cultured section of humanity, the simple but sublime beauty and power of their dialogues, the quiet but swiftly developing movements of the dramatic action, the calmly reached denouement, the artistic manipulation of the various scenes and situations, the comparative bareness and economy of the scenic settings particularly in Towards the Future and The Great Secret, the utter absence of any spectacular show and theatrical dramatics, and above all, the exquisitely classical artistry of the total integral movement of the play as a whole rather than the overstressing of any one particular scene or character or any other dramatic constituent. These works are, no doubt, all written with a spiritual purpose and a conscious message which is either to hold out to the awakened psychic of humanity the promise of the "transformation, the divinisation of the physical being which will change the world into a blessed land all made of harmony and light and peace and beauty" or to reveal to the crisis-caught, death-facing scientist, artist, statesman, athlete, industrialist, and man of letters of today the miraculous intervention of the Grace, or to flash out with perfect assurance and certitude the "marvellous splendour" and "magic light" of the "New Life" visioned and realised at the highest possible peak of the arduous and perilous ascent to the Truth. But what is wonderful from the literary point of view is to see how the supreme dramatic artist that the Mother is can weave, with such sovereign ease and simplicity, all these occult truths and visions in the rather severe classical mould and movement of such a small light structure as a one-act play.

" Finally, we find that like most creative artists the Mother is also a first-rate critic. Of course, as in her other things, so here, too, her approach to art and literature is fundamentally spiritual, but as her

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very conception of spirituality embraces all life and the whole integrated reality of human- nature and consciousness, down to the very physical, so her attitude to art and literature is uniquely large and comprehensive. According to her, art and beauty are co-existent with all human life, activity and interest. The following piece from her talks embodies her view of art and literature very well:

"... Art should be the expression of the Divine in life and through life. In everything, everywhere, in all relations truth must be brought out in its all-embracing rhythm and every movement of life should be an expression of beauty and harmony. Skill is not art, talent is not art. Art is a living harmony and beauty that must be expressed in all the movements of existence. This manifestation of beauty and harmony is part of the Divine realisation upon earth, perhaps its greatest part.

For from the Supramental point of view beauty and harmony are as important as any other expression of the Divine. But they should not be isolated, set up apart from all other relations, taken out from the ensemble; they should be one with the expression of life as a whole____

True art is a whole and an ensemble; it is one and of one piece with life. You see something of this intimate wholeness in ancient Greece and ancient Egypt____ It is like that in Japan, or at least it was so till the other day before the invasion of a utilitarian and practical modernism. A Japanese house is a wonderful artistic whole; always the right thing is there in the right place, nothing wrongly set, nothing too much, nothing too. little .... In India, too, painting and sculpture and architecture were one integral beauty, one single movement of adoration of the Divine." (Words of the Mother, rst series)

Similarly her definition of Imagination as "the capacity to project oneself out of realised things towards things realisable and pull them in by the very power of projection" and opening "the way to realisation" or of poetry as "sensuality of the spirit" which, however, she does not at all mean in any pejorative or moral sense, or of inspiration as a condition in which one is "in relation with a thing belonging to a domain superior to the normal human consciousness", is all lit up with the pregnant luminosity of Truth itself. It would do much good to the sincere artists and critics of today if they ponder over and follow these profound observations of the Mother. These are no less than beacon lights to the awakened artist and critic of today.

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What has been said here about some of the aspects of the literary genius of the Mother is necessarily just an introduction. It would be, however, quite enough for us for the present to understand that although the Mother's literary creation is essentially that of a practical-minded maker and reorganise of a new spiritual consciousness and life here on earth, yet the creator of all this, life as well as literature, is a great soul, the very embodiment of the Divine Shakti. As such, to study and appreciate her literature is to come into a still closer and more living contact with something of the inexhaustible Divine Truth itself. Hers, like Sri Aurobindo's, is truly a literature of the Divine, by the Divine and for the Divine, secretly but surely and creatively present in all of us.

SHREE KRISHNA PRASAD

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POETRY, VERSE AND ENGLISH VERSE

( I )

THE great English measure is "blank verse;" and though it will

eventually be supplemented by a successful adaptation of the classical hexameter, it will remain one of the great measures, fit for the highest purposes and the noblest and most powerful poets.

To characterize this readily recognizable meter as "iambic pentameter" may have some legitimate usefulness; but if one does not recognize its inaccuracy, or at least inadequacy, in any particular case, he is still a tyro. This line, for example,

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,

is perhaps as regular a specimen as any good line can be; and one with an ear for rhythm will naturally, if he must analyze, divide it into three parts, only the last of which will be iambic, or that is, in two parts and with the stress on the second. And in the well-known and powerful, the "mighty" line,

Is this the face that launched a thousand ships

which may be called relentlessly regular, one with an ear for quantity will surely demur to a strict iambic scansion: as it gathers momentum it broadens out, and swallows the scheme. But when one has the essential thing, the flow, the meter in his blood, one can dispense with scansion altogether, as a tedious irrelevance.

We may say that, in English, a great meter is a theme for the working or the sounding of variations. And whether we say it or not, this is how the few great masters of blank verse have used the measure. They are continually modulating its overriding "iambic" character. This is done by "substitution": replacing one regular "foot" with a foot of a different mould. It is in the first foot that this is done with the greatest frequency,

Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer

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but it can be done anywhere, as by these examples:

2nd: When Pearse summoned Cuchulain to his side

3rd: Those other two equal'd with me in Fate
4th: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south

and thus the possibility for variation becomes generous, monotony is avoided and flexible expressive power concentrated and enhanced.

The above substitutions are "trochaic," that is, they are simple and momentary reversals of the rhythmic flow. But other modulations are possible and not infrequent. The line need not be "pentameter" at all, though it retains ten syllables: that is, in

The quality of mercy is not strained

there are only three stresses, with perhaps a secondary strees on "not" rather than the five the meter would demand, if it were a pedant; whereas in

The years like great black oxen tread the world

there are six stresses at least; and more heavily stressed lines may be found. A simple and sometimes subtle spondaic substitution in fact is one of the best modulations we have.

In these ten syllables, or eleven with what is called the feminine ending, there is an almost unlimited scope for variation, in sufficiently skilled hands: as we may give some further indication of in one more example,

Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!

hoping that it will not be echoed too fervently by some budding poet who fears that his "freedom" may be endangered by the learning of these things.

The standard, the base, the theme, we may say, is the ten or eleven syllables, with an iambic or a rising movement — that is, with the stress, or the greater stress, on the second syllable or part of the "foot." Besides the possible variations and ways of variation indicated

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above, however, there are those involving a curtailment or an addition of syllables. When it comes to the nine-syllabled line, some learned scholar whose name I have forgotten has categorically denied its admissibility. It is true that, done badly, or even done frequently, perhaps, it would not be a good thing; and so far the practice of the poets gives little or nothing in favor of its adoption at all, except the fact of its absence; but this is reason enough for one who wants to see the full resources of the language employed, and its prosodical possibilities extended; and from a work of my own I here subjoin two consecutive lines, to show, as I fondly believe, the entire feasibility of the endeavor: to wit,

All the dragons' teeth of long ago

That sprouted in the dark earth brooding,

this coming dramatically in the midst of lines of a more regular character. I am even prepared to champion the possibility of an entire poem in lines of nine syllables, and might dare to provide an example if challenged; in lieu of this eventuality being contended to make the suggestion, for whom it may concern.

When it comes to lines of more than eleven syllables, the present stock is not so scanty. Such a line involves or rather is made by substitution of feet of three syllables. The great master of this trisyllabic substitution is Sri Aurobindo, in his Savitri. Thus,

An authenticity of intuitive Truth

and

In the throbbing heart of all that luminous life

and

Caught in its thousandfold current's ravishing flow

are lines quickly culled from the two pages revealed by an opening of the book at random. And the poem has lines of even more than twelve syllables — all in a context of many "regular" lines with a

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powerful rhythmic sweep, the utmost height and fullness that the meter has yet attained.

But what, one may ask, of the fifth foot? Is it alone to remain unmodified? I think it was Robert Bridges who desiderated what he called the "liberation" of this foot also — but without contributing anything beyond the ad vocation, as indeed he has contributed nothing to blank verse at all, beyond some analysis. Here again it might be easy to overdo matters; but now and again certainly a simple substitution at the end of the line could give a powerful or at least an appropriate effect. But so far for examples there is an embarrassment, if the field is not entirely barren. Milton has this,

Which of us who beholds the bright surface

with two or three more dubious instances — enough to indicate that he gave the possibility some consideration, but rejected it. Then Blake, in The Book of Urizen, comes out with this,

The Eternal Prophet heav'd the dark bellows

a powerful line, but a sport, given no fitting context because of Blake's willful ignorance and in fact downright perversity in prosodical matters. There are a few examples in the work of Sri Aurobindo. This, from Baji Prabhou, is perhaps the best:

With stricken hearts

The swords of Agra back recoiled; fatal

Upon their serried unprotected mass

In hundreds from the verge the bullets rained...

And in Urvasie is this, a carrying of the modulation even further:

One hand propped her fair marble cheek, the other

The mystic lotus hardly held. Seeing her

Pururavas bent to her and adored.

Then, in the very midst and depths of "modernism" we have this much modulated line by E. E. Cummings,

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part of a fine poem whose prosodical example has been lost on our contemporaries, including Cummings himself. Here again, for further examples, I shall quote from a certain poem of my own. Lines like

All day he sailed amidst the full summer

and

An angry wind grew chill, the clouds thickened

are quite acceptable, to my ear, by themselves; and are quite in harmony with the context in which they have their full meaning and life.

Paul Fussell, Jr., one of the most searching of our prosodists, has discovered that Keats is "the great English master of the terminal trochee"— this on the evidence of two more than dubious lines:

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art!

and

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!

We may note, first, that these lines are not given a really strong iambic character at all, to vary from; and second, that they are rhymed, which should be sufficient to give the theorist to ponder: for it is unlikely that Keats had adapted a rhyming peculiarity from the Gaelic (where, in one meter, an unstressed syllable does rhyme or assonate with a stressed one, subtly enough), and quite likely that he intended each terminal syllable to carry enough weight that it could join the rhyme-scheme without awkwardness. Indeed, the ordinary reader with no interest in considering curiously has no trouble here; and taking stress and quantity both into consideration, one may see that we have two terminal spondees, in so far as we have anything that need be named. And what we have, throughout, is an even spread of the voice, that makes the stress less stressful than it might

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be in the pure downright English way. It is, in fact, almost an anticipation of the "wavering rhythms" later brought into English poetry by Irish influence; and Keats's early death, before he had begun to develop any of his capacities and insights fully, was probably one of the greatest losses, not alone in poetry, but in prosody too, that we have sustained.

By the employment of the features herein suggested, along with others not so easily analyzed, the master of blank verse may have an endless field for his cultivation of endless, never duplicated glories. Endless variation and combination of variation is possible; the meter allows almost limitless liberties to be taken with it, while one remembers the fundamentals, and keeps them as the backbone and the shaping power of the oestrus. They are variations of the theme; they are "blank verse", and not some characterless vagary without strength to be "regular", and thus without strength to be. Shakespeare in his last period loosened the meter and made it flexible as much as possible, in some ways; but he never lost or relinquished control; he made his rhythm very subtle, but he did not relax it out of existence. But succeeding dramatists had not his sure touch, his mastery, and they relaxed the meter into a kind of fuddled prose, and thus destroyed it. This is an achievement that has been repeated by Mr. Eliot, with an even more effete tenuity. The verse was dead when Milton revived and raised it to new possibilities, both of regularity and of modulation. After him it declined, though through some fine achievement, until Sri Aurobindo brought it fuller splendors; and now it may well be on the threshold of even greater things. There need be no end to progress and development here, except by an ending of the line of poets. And one need not strain himself to the verge of hernia to modulate and vary; with sufficient grasp, with a genuine individual voice, one can be as regular as even Wordsworth tends to be, and Tennyson, and still write powerful poetry. The field is wide open, and when the poet respects the terms the only restriction will be that of his own capacity.

( 2 )

The prosodical work of Paul Fussell contains much to stimulate and suggest; and in his treatise Theory of Prosody in Eighteenth-Century

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England, insistently and learnedly he advances the proposition that the "Augustan" versification, by theory and practice, was "syllabic," and as such totally distinct from the "accentual" system of Romantic and later times. But he would seem to be subject to some confusion, in maintaining that the ear of the former period was hardly attuned to stress at all, while noting with great emphasis that the theory insisted on the utmost regularity, stress following non-stress five times to the ten-syllable line — that is, it was what, in deference to tradition and for want of a better term, we may consider to be the "drumming decasyllabic" that later came to be known as "iambic pentameter." Thus, Milton, for all his own "syllabic" approach, was found lamentably "irregular" by the couplet-men: though how they could notice the irregularity, without being sensitive to the stresses, remains without explanation.

Although Fussell's study cannot but be of great interest to those seriously concerned with the subject, it is surely most difficult to accept his thesis as presented. Rather it seems obvious that, for all his very earnest and explicit denial, English poetry has been based fundamentally on the same prosody, from Chaucer to the present — that is, a combination of stress and syllable-count — with, of course, variations in approach and emphasis in different periods.¹ Thus, the strictest possible regularity was desiderated by the Augustans (though it is hardly exemplified by Pope, even so); whereas increasing "substitution" was allowed, and then expected, in later periods: all the while a counting of syllables remaining the necessary basis: for there can be no variety if there is not something to vary from. Whether we scan in "feet" or by "numbers", the fact is the same: counting is involved, and stress is active and regular — that is, it keeps a recurrent pattern. In the really, that is the thoroughly accentual or stress meter of the Old English, counting syllables is not relevant, and has no part in the scansion: only the number of stresses counts. On the other hand, in a thoroughly syllabic prosody, the stress would be quite irrelevant, and there could be no question of strictness at all, and no legitimate complaint of irregularity.

¹ And it would seem that Fussell came, reluctantly, to agree with this in his later work, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. This book, by the way, though it is too exiguous for the ground it essays to cover, and though one may easily disagree with almost every general pronouncement and particular criticism that it contains, is worth reading; and has a particularly good section, with many examples, on spondaic substitution in blank verse.

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So, in the ten-syllable line, we have Milton's disyllabic substitutions and still a verse that is recognizable as founded on the same basis as Marlowe's at its most regular; and for all the trisyllabic substitutions of Browning and Sri Aurobindo, and others, we have still fundamentally the same line, and the same principle of versification.

But if the later development were really that of a wholly accentual prosody, this would not be the case. Counting five stresses to the line, and nothing else counting, we would have things like

The vagarious approach of the prosodists may give one to pause

 

Hard-pressed for good strict rules

To pin one's faith on in extremity ...

which may have possibilities, but are subject to the same difficulty that besets Christabel, that is, the varying weight of the stresses in English, and the shifting uncertainty in so many cases.

On the other hand, a really syllabic line of ten syllables in English would be a quite different thing from the repeated two-part regularity of the Augustans, and also it would not fall into the even undulant cadences of a language like French, not strongly stressed; it would be much more varied, only stopping short of prissiness, being recognizably verse. For example:

Never was there a man fit to study

Versification in the English way

But his ear was acute to a degree;

Sounding the variants with true measure,

All at sea in his proper ambience

He would navigate by the Muse's stars.

And to be sure that it is verse, let us print it as prose:

Never was there a man fit to study versification in the English way but his ear was acute to a degree; sounding the variants with true measure, all at sea in his proper ambience he would navigate by the Muse's stars.

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Whether the case is proved in this instance I am willing to leave an open question. Surely there are possibilities here, which we may expect the future to see realized. That the idea has not yet "caught on", even after Bridges' work with the alexandrine in The Testament of Beauty, we may confidently lay to the fact that nothing serious can catch on among the fumblers, meddlers and obscurantists of the "modern" persuasion.

( 3 )

In this universally semi-literate society, we commonly hear many words with little substance; and, indeed, the apt and precise use of words has become such an awkward trial, that it is a sore offense, or at the least a useless labor, to require anyone to clarify the terms of his discourse, and actually mean something definite by the words and phrases he utters at random and by the obscure pressures of the environment, with so little measure and discrimination. Of course poetry, or any high and powerful use of language, cannot flourish, if it can live at all, in such conditions; and prosody becomes as great a mystery to the groping and floundering mass-consciousness as that of the Holy Grail. Not only is its usefulness not seen, but what it may be at all is just too recondite and baffling; and, words having become radically meaningless, no exposition or defense of it will be heard.

Hoping that sufficient exceptions may be found, one studies, considers and writes nevertheless, and achieves such clarity of understanding and expression as one can; prepared to be told, on all occasions, that "That is a matter of opinion!" or "That is only your opinion!" if one is attended to at all.

Of course, by this favorite dodge of incapacity or lazy ignorance an end is put to all possible discourse and discussion; for, if one opinion is as good, or as idle, as another, in all concerns, no opinions matter, and the serious search and concern for truth must await the advent of the serious mind: meanwhile, speech and dialogue at the really human, the intellectual, level, with communication, mature commitment and give-and-take, is not possible.

Short of certain knowledge of absolute truth (which indeed no one believes in nowadays), we must all deal in opinions; and the intelligent and cultured person with a developed mind will respectfully

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welcome those of others, if they are at all based on knowledge of the subject at hand and thought about it; being likewise treated in turn. There is no room for absoluteness here, least of all the unconscious or muddled and concealed absoluteness of one who presumes his own opinions (most probably parroted from somewhere or other) to be something more than "opinion," a heinous thing confined to other people who keep saying strange and unusual things that are unsettling, and that surely cannot be worth the effort that understanding, or attempted understanding, requires.

This melancholy preamble is intended to raise certain pointers toward the adequate if brief consideration of another thesis advanced by Fussell: that a prosody is not a scheme in a vacuum, but a social and moral force, and a reliable mirror of its time. Here evidently he says too much, and is more suggestive than persuasive — at least, his evidence, such as if is, pertains entirely to the Augustan period, which was tidy and narrow enough, in theory at least, to lend itself to such treatment. In the tight couplet versification we may see the requirements and desideration of a people who have been through a period of disorder — with a harrowing civil war — and will have no more of such doings if they can help it. Still we may wonder why this particular kind of order and regularity was thought or felt necessary, to the exclusion of all other possibilities; why Milton's large and strenuous example, or even Spencer's, might not have been as efficacious (as indeed through the whole period the influence of Milton, and Spenser to a lesser degree, remained in evidence); and one may suspect that to speak vaguely, albeit insistently, of social conditions and requirements is not to tell the whole story. In any case, why the versification of Romantic and later of Victorian times remains one continuous development, and why the development was broken in the twentieth century, remains still a puzzle, if approached wholly from the social side; and indeed to find one prosody in either period, distinct enough to satisfy Fussell's requirements, might not be easy.

If prosody has not notably been considered, or functioned as, a matter of large cultural and social importance, a thing widely understood to be of genuine human value and not just the technical pursuit of a few negligible specialists, it has at least engaged the passions of these specialists in a marked degree, and more opinionated men

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withal it would be hard to find. There is a strong temptation, unfortunately, among human beings, to assume a greater knowledge than one has, and to adopt a posture and don a mantle of infallible authority, without quite sufficient warrant; which, we may admit, is sufficient reason to make opinion suspect, even among those of generous mental capacity: that is, not the most "expert" opinion is legitimately to be accepted without question, merely because of its provenance or its respectability however acquired. Here the common instinct is just: though, unfortunately again, those who insist upon it are usually most given to it themselves, full of assumptions unquestioned and unexamined, and militantly advanced as absolute truth.

We thus have people writing learnedly and at great length on Greek and Latin metric, without uncomfortably acknowledging the fact that we do not know how the languages were pronounced: which indeed has led, among those Classically educated, to that aberration noted by Fussell, a completely artificial "scansion" having no reference to the actual sounds, rhythms and usages of the spoken language. (This, more than anything else, vitiated Elizabethan attempts on the hexameter and other Classical meters — they had no idea that a scheme of scansion should have anything to do with actual usage, because, not knowing the Latin pronunciation, they did not really understand the system at all, and could only proceed by "rules" in the dark: indeed, there was an almost impenetrable complexity of confusion on all points.)¹ And then, in another field, we have Aristotle-though he has long lost all his unimpeachable authority among scientists and philosophers retaining it with a vengeance among literary scholars, who hug his awkward fragments to their bosoms like deprived children at last given a crust of bread. If we had some writing of his on prosody, now — but I am not sure that I care to speculate on the probable consequences: which perhaps might almost be like "probable impossibilities."

Yet the instinct is right, that gives such an intensity to the feelings of prosodical students: for the study is important, it is concerned with the best ordering, that is, the highest and most powerful ordering, of our most important human instrument, our language. As such it should have a large cultural and social value, clearly recognized; and its true professors should be men (or women, if one must

¹ Here the book to read is Well-Weighed Syllables, by Derek Attridge (CUP, 1974).

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add this nowadays) of dignity and status freely accorded. Whether this improved state of affairs would tend to make the professors less cock-sure and more maturely responsible may be doubted; but at least they would suffer more for their failings, perhaps, in the strong light of genuine interest, and thus be chastened as the study advanced.

I have read nonsense by scholars, and exaggeratedly valued semi-sense, on all aspects of the subject; but I have also observed that a genuine feeling for rhythm — the indispensable and fundamental thing — is still operative in humanity, when it has not been "educated" out of its natural responses. Thus there are many people who can read verse with due sweep and proper emphasis, if somehow their timidity can be overcome at entering this now forbidding (and almost forbidden) field.

Whatever the future may give us, it would seem to be high time to hope that it will begin to give us something soon. Fussell speaks of a modern or twentieth-century prosody, "whatever it may turn out to be." In the quarter century or more since his writing, alas, it still has not turned out to be: like the "verse" or the "poetry" itself, which if it were genuine would surely have found some true explanation and rationale, accepted and workable, by now, this projected new prosody is a false possibility in chaos, or a failure in limbo. The language being fundamentally what it is and has been from Elizabethan times, we have the prosody that suits it; what we really need is real poets, who can employ and advance the capabilities by having the inspiration required. Then new forms may be found and old forms reanimated, all in the large, indeed inexhaustible, field that stress combined with count of syllables provides: and the prosody and its social importance will be increasingly well understood, as a deepening and enlarging comes, with a new integration fired from the heights, in all cultural concerns.

JESSE ROARKE

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AUROBINDEAN LEVER

CIVILIZATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

FOR Sri Aurobindo, at once radical and tradition-based, altered states of awareness are a fact and a value, perhaps the supreme fact and value. As he points out, in The Synthesis of Yoga, if these energy fields did not exist, the liberation of the embodied being would have been impossible.

Still, not a world-renouncing ascetic, Sri Aurobindo's philosophy of civilization is dynamic rather than other-worldly. Emphatically and consistently revolutionary (as well as evolutionary), the revolution is of course from above and within. A new power or powers of consciousness, we are told, would be an inevitable consequence of the human evolution passing beyond mind to "a superior and dynamic principle". To such a perfectionist what we know as civilization — the means as well as the method — can be nothing but some "half-achievement". In his own words, "If we define civilization as a harmony of spirit, mind and body, where has that harmony been entirely or altogether realized?" The idealist is also a sceptic. Perhaps the saint alone has the right to doubt — to disvalue.

Sociologists and historians have tried to identify culture — in terms of artifacts, attitudes and institutions. Sri Aurobindo takes a more inward stance: like consciousness, like culture. In the ultimate analysis, consciousness stands out as the one invariable, inner component. The imperative of man's awakened consciousness tends towards what Sri Aurobindo believes to be "the living aim of culture, the realization on earth of the Kingdom of Heaven". Change of consciousness, the Aurobindean lever, lifts the race to new heights: but how many companions the lonely seer has is anybody's guess.

His millennial hope is based, clearly, on an ontological over-view. Consciousness a la Advaita is seen to be the very stuff of reality: "The world is real precisely because it exists only in consciousness". "The Energy which creates the world can be nothing else than a Will, and Will is only Consciousness employing itself to a work and a result."

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THE BEING

"It is a conscious Energy one with Being that creates it". Again: "The Being is integral and unifies many states of consciousness at a time; we also, manifesting the nature of the Brahman, should become integral and all-embracing." The Vedantic hypothesis granted, the conclusion, may be not so traditional, follows. What is involved must evolve. A novum organum, could this be the wave of the future?

What makes the Aurobindean meta-psychology so challenging and optimistic is its social stress. The application of a novel formula of self-determination, which he considers to be the secret of old India, enables him to recast our worldly prospects, prophetically, "here, in life, on earth and in the body". Brahmateja, soul-force, about which he had written to his wife, acquires, in later years, in calm of mind, all passion spent, a cosmic annotation and we hear him say: "All power is in the end one, really soul force". No one can fail to see how his tools have become more sensitive and, to that extent, perhaps elitist.

Inwardness is not inactivity. Really a strategic move, part of a higher ethics, and self-discovery, it shifts the level. The basic assumption, known to the mystics, is that man is a meeting-ground of levels of reality. His body a "mystery shop", the powers of all the worlds have their entrance here. Faced with the double crisis, of evolution and civilization, Sri Aurobindo proposes the perilous "passage" a Vedic idea repeated in the Mysteries everywhere - from plane to plane. His stakes higher, Sri Aurobindo is light-years ahead' of the surface idealism of maimed utopians. Of course the problem and its solution are not on the same plane.

But what is a plane? Simply, a plane is the poise or working out of a general relation which an Existence or Consciousness has created between itself and its powers of becoming. And since self-exceeding is inherent in nature or evolution, the traffic between the planes has to be opened once more. We have to find — or, if you like, found — our freedom in the context of the All-Consciousness, a totally self-aware and all-aware Intelligence, which Sri Aurobindo elsewhere calls the Supermind. A supreme discovery, only so — by alchemy's key — can a reversal of consciousness take place in the fourth dimension where all is in ourselves, ourselves in all.

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A Gay Science, consciousness is not incapable of world-play. The bliss-freedom of that one consciousness-force alone knows how to reconcile conflicting values, notions and relations, outer no less than inner. This alone can create a culture in which the "perfected internal figures in a perfected external living".

The moral of such perfectionism is not hard to guess. "It is a spiritual, an inner freedom that alone can create a perfect human order." Unchanged, imperfect men cannot create a perfect society. The ideal of brotherhood, for instance, of which we hear every now and then, exists only in the soul. And this is the only reality-therapy for what Heidegger called essence-blindness.

The Aurobindean approach is frankly subjective and may seem to ignore history. But this would be a wrong view of his many-levelled thought that can illuminate the historical in terms of the eternal. Sri Aurobindo's aperfus and arguments, in The Human Cycle and The Ideal of Human Unity, about the Myth of the State, Germany's false subjectivism, the failure of organized religions, the incompleteness of the ebullient French slogans, are the searching insights of a visionary who was not innocent of the ways of the world. His understanding of world events and the history of ideas, hopelessly neglected, was striking. The yogi was a thinkers' thinker, even when he went beyond thought.

As he saw it, man is not just a rational or a religious animal. Both ideas suffer from almost identical limitations and lead — through different routes — to a static, authoritarian system: only in one case it is mundane, in the other trans-mundane. Unlike the rational-religious Juggernauts, spiritual culture will not make the mistake of forcing men to be free. That explains why it is so late in coming. Spiritual culture will insist on two conditions, not easy to fulfil, pari passu. First, there must be awakened individuals who have remade themselves in the image of the truth and are able to pass on its idea-force to the many. Secondly, there has to be a mass or group able and willing to fulfil the inexorable conditions of transcendence or the higher living. The awakened individual, one-with-all, will not live for either the collective or the individual ego, neither for the State nor for society. Humanity and community are but transient r61es in

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the self's theatre. In the inner dialectics a mass movement is not a must. In any case, the individual is more of a free moral agent than the group.

The modern emphasis on a planned society has its place in the totality of human aspiration. But as an end in itself, and entirely dominated by material demands and manipulation, it is, as we know it too well, not without danger. So many gods have failed or are failing: so many hopes that soon fade into drab realities and passions that crumble to ashes even while they blaze. No social machinery or revolutionary programme, however well-intentioned, can cut life and mind into perfection. It is time to bury the myth.

Provided the human resources of goodwill, intelligence and imagination have not run out, it is not unlikely that in the One World the likeminded will come together in a common pursuit of the highest. East or West, such workshops of the future are not wanting. At least there is an air of expectation. Whitehead had spoken of a civilization of consciousness. Sri Aurobindo has given that idea a characteristic turn, hinted at a radical, epiphany sociology in terms of the most ancient psychology: "A greater consciousness means a greater life". The more conscious the more cultured — such is the thrust of his live, dangerous thought. It is easier to take his name than his challenge.

"The heroic for the earth too hard", the Earthly Paradise will not be an easy or a painless process. But it is the difficult thing that needs to be done. Solvitur ambulando. Else the cure will be worse than the crisis. The coming civilization will not set out to create a new type of imperfect, superior mental being — least of all heartless technocrats or the pettifogging politicians — but beings of another order, wise and self-fulfilled. Wisdom is more important than knowledge. The outward, ordinary mind cannot foresee, much less organize, the supramental shape of things to come. The mind is a passage and an instrument, not the artist of the epiphany. In the new life much that is normal to our ways of seeing and doing will doubtless disappear: war, injustice, commercialism, uglification, meaninglessness. Such is the metaphysic of hope.

THE FIRST

Poised on the freedom of the heights of the being, the play of

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evolved culture and consciousess will be a constant miracle, a complete manifestation, the last of things for which the first was made. As Eusebius Pamphilius had said, the first in Intention, the last in Execution is the Paradise of mature, Spiritual Intelligence. An evolution in the Knowledge will be more vivid, beautiful and glorious than any evolution in the Ignorance can hope to be. Here is the Aurobindean culture revolution in terms of a change of consciousness. Part of the collective yoga of mankind, it is this that will one day turn the child soul into "an adult in the divine culture".

To the unity of being and unity of culture Sri Aurobindo has given a vigour and a value that may well inspire a new style of civilization. Who can deny its appeal? But who will be its evangelists? In his song of promise he has given the orthodox idea of salvation and our ascending fate a surprising new look, post-modern: "Hid in ourselves the key of perfect change." Never was Sri Aurobindo more relevant than when he appeared to be remote.

SlSIRKUMAR GHOSE

(Courtsey - The Statesman)

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SRI AUROBINDO'S YOGA - I*

THE PSYCHIC BEING

'HE concept of the Psychic Being is of prime importance in the

philosophy and yoga of Sri Aurobindo. There has not been a comparable context in other systems of Indian philosophy except in a vague way in the Vaishnava thought where they speak of chaitya purusha. Before coming to the chaitya purusha I would like to remind you that there is a passage in the Taittiriya Upanishad, an ancient text, which speaks of the annamaya purusha, the self of food as it is translated in English, the self that presides over the physical, the material body. For the body does not live and function by itself. There is a consciousness individualised in the form of a purusha who presides over the development and the functioning of the physical body. Behind the food-self, says the Upanishad, there is the self of prana, pranamaya purusha, self of life-force. Activating the physical body is the dynamism of life-energy. With the life-self as its sheath there is the manomaya purusha, the mental-self. Using the mental sheath as its coat, there is still a deeper self, the vijnanamaya purusha, the knowledge-self. Mark the distinction: the mental-self and the knowledge-self, the manomaya purusha and the vijnanamaya purusha. Even this is not the ultimate. Within the vijnanamaya purusha is the ananda-maya purusha, the self of delight. There is a controversy amongst interpreters whether this delight-self, anandamaya purusha, is the core or whether this delight-self also is a sheath. We need not go into this question at this moment. Suffice it to say that all these series of Purushas, series of selves, are truly not independent entities at all but reflections or rather projections of the ultimate self on the various levels of the being. Man, as organised at present, is a complex of the body, life and mind. He has the physical self, the life-self, and the mental self. Holding all from behind is the chaitya purusha, the core of consciousness individualised as a being, and this is what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother call the psychic being.

How does it come to be? If the physical self pertains to the physical body, the mental self to the mental body, the mind, of what is the psychic being constituted? How is it formed? The psychic

* A Talk at Sri Aurobindo Niwas, Baroda, on 26.9.1976.

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is formed out of a divine essence. The psychic is first a spark of the divine fire. The Mundaka Upanishad speaks of a central fire from which emanate in their thousands brilliant sparks. Each spark constitutes the psychic essence, the divine essence, in each form. Not that it is a monopoly of human beings. This divine essence is there generally in all forms of the earth and only on earth. We will come to that later on. Even in plants, in animals, there is this dot of divine consciousness. It is not formed, but it is there as a concentration. When man comes into being he carries this divine essence in himself. As he grows in evolution this essence gathers shape, gathers stuff, grows, and develops into an entity; the psychic essence becomes the psychic entity. After a series of births during which one gathers the cream of experiences, the psychic entity develops into the psychic being and it is when this divine essence in man takes a definite shape, becomes a being, that man begins to think of God. Till then he does not think of God because there is no real need for that search. When the psychic essence develops into a being, the being wants to join its parent Godhead; it is after all derived from the Divine direct and this urge of the psychic being propels man into awakening, starting on the quest for the Divine.

Is this psychic being that is at the core of ourselves, presiding over the development of our different personalities, holding them as it were, the same as what is called the soul, the indwelling purusha, or the atman spoken of in the Upanishads ? There is understandable misunderstanding on the subject. Let us clarify.

In the whole manifestation there is the divine essence supporting everything from behind, and this reality without form, supporting all the million forms, is called the Self, atman, in the Upanishads, Self in English. This Self upholds everything, both universally and individually. That is why they say that the Self of each and the Self of all are the same. Now this Self upholds and supports; it does not enter into the movement of evolution. It supports from behind what evolves, what develops in the form, but on that account the Self is not unrelated. It is not involved but is related and its relation comes in this way. In each form the Self projects a portion of it, as it were. Human language is inadequate to render these truths. The Self projects something of itself into the movement of evolution and this something is the psychic being. So the psychic being is supported

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from behind by the Self. It is related in essence to the parent Divine above. Is it right to call the psychic being a soul? My answer is Yes and No, because what we call soul has a part that is involved in evolution; there is a part that is witness, sakshi. In that poise it does not evolve, it only watches. Thus that part of the soul which is involved in evolution and develops is the psychic being, what we call the antaratman. Not the jivatman that is uninvolved, but the antaratman that is involved in the movement, is the psychic being.

Now that we have a general conception, we may proceed further. This psychic being is situated in the heart centre. The heart centre is not to be confused with the physiological heart; the spiritual heart, the yogic heart centre is a little to the right of the physiological heart. We may say that this centre is behind the centre of the chest, a little to the right of what we call the cardiac centre. But it is not in line with other centres in our body. There is an emotional centre in our chest, behind it is the centre — the location — of the psychic being. From there it influences, it sends out impulsions, and it is the impulsions from this psychic centre that are responsible for our upward strivings, our joyous movements, all our movements of purity. Each part of us has its characteristic dealings and movements, the psychic also has its characteristic movement and they are: purity, devotion, love, delight. Where delight is not caused by outside factors, where there is a causeless, silent ebullition of joy, evoked by the contemplation of something deep, something harmonious, some noble act, the posture of a dancer evoking something deep, where the personal element is not involved, that movement has its origin in the region of the psychic. Through various movements, the psychic being goes on exerting pressure on us to aspire to get over the deforming coat of ego, to expand ourselves, to elevate ourselves; in other words, it is at the root of all God ward movements.

There are so many veils; veils of Ignorance, veils of our mental restlessness, thoughts and ideas, preferences, emotional turbidities, vital ambitions, desires, physical inertia and obscurity, one can go on multiplying the veils. It is a discipline of culture, of study, of self-control, swadhyaya, education, to dissipate these veils, to allow man to come into his own and become samskrita, purified, refined. The first and the initial movement of the psychic is to send an influence. You never know from where it comes but the influence is

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there. In those movements, you spontaneously tend to be noble, to do selfless acts; you feel love going out from you and so on. And by such repeated and periodical operations the psychic influence clears the ground. When the ray of the psychic comes and strikes the surface, there is a kind of illumination, sense of purity. Afterwards the psychic dares to come forward at some moments. It is in those moments that man rises to great heights of self-sacrifice, of devotion, of utter surrender; and as this coming and receding of the psychic gets normalise, conditions are created for the psychic to remain in front longer and longer. When any other movement veils, the psychic retires. It exerts itself to make the conditions ready once more. When the psychic is able to stay for a considerable period guiding our life and we become conscious of the psychic direction in us, then is it the time to start the first capital movement in this yoga of self-perfection i.e. to start organising all our life-movements around the psychic. This is called psychicisation.

We start organising our life around the psychic. It means we eliminate all movements and impulsions that are foreign to the nature of the psychic; we encourage and develop and cultivate those movements which are conducive to the growth of the psychic. Qualities which are inimical to the psychic presence — jealousy, anger, depression, cynicism, hatred, vindictiveness, ingratitude,— all these which are legacies of our animal past and which claim us and hold us in the grip of ignorance are to be left behind. Purity, nobility, self-sacrifice, self-abnegation, self-surrender, love, devotion — these are the qualities which are to be naturalised. When we speak of centering our fife around the psychic what is meant is this: all our nature is to be cast in the mould of the psychic. When we go counter to its purity, it always warns. When one is about to think, to feel, to commit something which is opposed to the true movement of the psychic, the psychic gives a warning. It does not impose itself; it is gentle in its protest. There is a feeling of sadness somewhere in the centre of the chest, a gentle pull; but if one smothers it up by self-justification or simply ignores it, the psychic retires. To firmly establish this psychic being in sovereign control of our life-movements is the first capital step in this yoga — the realisation of the Individual Divine, the Divine as individually manifest in us.

M. P. PANDIT

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THE CHILD AS A SPIRITUAL FACT

THE very young child, the new-born and the infant is predominantly a biological fact of Psycho-physical facets, but which is yet simple and true in its natural expressions, not sophisticated by social encrustation good, bad or indifferent. In that presophistication state the soul has a chance of expression, which constitutes the moments of rare beauty at that stage of life. In some cases, childhood and early boyhood or girlhood displays this beauty as a steady phenomenon for a length of time and disappears as the social consciousness becomes dominant and external pre-occupations become engrossing.

The expressions of the soul are to be recognised by the presence of a superb sweetness and delight, an exceptional charm and attractiveness, which stand out uniquely among other states. And when this expression occurs as a relatively steady phenomenon, the child stands marked off from other children by its striking and over-powering beauty, attractiveness, sweetness and joy.

If we are able to recognise these expressions of child nature, then our conception of the child will need a clear appreciation that it is really an evolving soul with a body and a mind for its manifestation and expression. And that will give us a fine new approach to it, enabling us incidentally to discover ourselves as evolving souls at a different stage.

The soul is a conscious active agent intent on self-manifestation and self-expression. It is unitary in its constitution and spontaneously devoted to Truth, Beauty and Goodness. It possesses a superb refinement, tenderness and effectivity of action too. It is an essentially delightful and self-complete existent fact. The ordinary nature of man is externally oriented, environmentally involved, superficial and fragmentary. Its impulses are extremely varied, of opposite tendencies and self-assertive. It is, therefore, much wild and impetuous in action, partial, ignorant and conceited in perceptions and emotionally, in likes and dislikes, limited, divided and insistent. In the child this nature of men can be seen in its naked form. Later it becomes much camouflaged by social prohibitions and inhibitions and outwardly adjusted in life, but inwardly it remains full of conflicts and contradictions. Ordinarily, education adopts external

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methods and looks upon the child as a sort of raw stuff of body and mind to be moulded into a socially acceptable form. But inwardly man remains raw and fragmented. The rise of psychology has much modified the external approach and the inner dynamics of personality are now availed of more and more. Yet an integrated personality is only a conception, an ultimate necessity. Even its conception is a loose summative idea and the methodology is not yet a serious proposition. »

The best psychological idea in this connection so far made available is that of the "Centre" of personality as affirmed and characterised by the eminent Western psychologist C. G. Jung. The Centre is something beside the ego and its polarities and it exercises a unifying and harmonising influence on the disparate material of personality. Jung's 'The Integration of Personality' gives an elaborate exposition of what the 'Centre' is, how and on what evidence of dream analysis and religious history he affirms it and what its significance is for personality.

It is extremely interesting that Jung on purely empirical grounds comes to affirm beside the ego a 'Centre' and ascribes to it the functions which make it parallel and equal to the "Psychic Being" or the evolving spiritual principle of personality as affirmed by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in their expositions of Integral Yoga, Integral Psychology and Integral Education.

There is, however, one difference of capital importance, which must be observed here. Jung affirms the Centre as a fact, but does not inquire whether it is possible to activism it and make it utilisable for purposes of mental health and of education. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, on the other hand, make of the 'Psychic Being' the pivot, the primary means for all modifications, refinements, harmonisation and transformation of personality. They have elaborated methods and techniques for the activisation of this spiritual fact and making it an overt dominant fact in personality.

The Psychic Being as a unitary conscious agent is by its nature the most potent force for harmonising and refining personality and the right and effective, means to make integration of personality a practical proposition.

It is evident that the Psychic Being and its activisation open up a new prospect for education. We feel, we have here a marvellous educative

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agency and are now keen to explore the ways and means of being able to avail of it.

Let us first fully appreciate the inner psychological situation. We are by our ordinary constitution of life practically all the time attending to and concentrating on external things and social conditions, responding to them and adjusting ourselves to them. The external things and social conditions thus become primary and fife an adjustment to them. This creates a strong conventional encrustation, which becomes a powerful suppressive factor for the deeper spiritual fact of life. As we get more and more entrenched in our conventions, we get farther removed from our inner fact.

Now, if our inner creativity has to be tapped and developed, then the child should grow up with increasing awareness of the inner fact and also with the aspiration that that inner fact is the central and the essential fact of its life. He would then attend to the external things in a subordinate way. What now happens is that an almost exclusive and all-important emphasis is placed on things external so that he loses whatever appreciation it had for his inner being. Thus education really causes a loss of contact with the soul even where it existed in a degree. It is so sad to contemplate it, but this happens.

We must, therefore, heartily appreciate and recognise the fact of a crust in personality and the process of encrustation. And then appreciate and recognise the need and the value of the ever deeper initiative and an increasing exercise of it. Thus could really the external control be minimised and self-creativity stimulated.

The crust is not only a matter of individual's experience and formation, but is also a racial fact. And the spiritual fact being basic, is beyond all formations of character.

All education will then have to become an evocative process rather than be a method of external instruction. It will, at the first instance, be a matter of attitude and faith in the teacher and the parents, which admits the fact of an evolving soul in the child and intends it in their dealings with the child. This will create the basic atmosphere of life, which will be a constant influence for right education.

This attitude, this faith and this atmosphere will involve an appreciation, an adoration of the spiritual values of unity, harmony, peace, joy and love above the strife and struggle, the narrowness and pettiness, of the ordinary egoistic impulses of life. Such adoration of

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the Higher and the enjoyment of the more beautiful is by itself a powerful educative factor, which also much facilitates the emergence and activisation of the psychic centre of life.

All physical, vital and mental education under this setting of attitude, faith and atmosphere will acquire a new orientation. Our body, our impulses and desires, our ideational activity are all full of restlessness, waywardness, violence, rigidity, fragmentation, division, narrowness, superficiality and everywhere self-assertion and egoism. The spirit in us is calm, unitary, joyous and peaceful. In order that the body, the vital and the mind become useful instruments of the spirit they have to be widened, deepened and heightened. Thus are they made large, calm and raised to a higher level. All training of the body and formation of habits, control and regulation of the impulses and desires and training of thinking has to be done with this end in view that they respond suitably to the calm, illumined, joyous, integral spirit in us. This orientation of the education of the ordinary parts of our personality is very different from the one usually pursued.

Such spirit-oriented education will pave the way, for the emergence of new faculties, the faculties of the soul, too. These faculties are those of intuition, inspiration, seeing things in their whole, peace, unity and joy.

Our present-day world is a conflict-torn world, a creation of a divided personality, collaboration, unity, peace, integration have become our acute needs. But how is a split personality to achieve a unified world? Psychic centre oriented education shows the possibility of achieving an integrated personality and an integrated personality will easily achieve integration and create a world appropriate to its quality.

Is it not obvious that integration in personality can be created only by a fact like that of Jung's 'Centre' or Sri Aurobindo's 'Psychic Being', which possess integrality in their nature and constitution. Reason can only check and control impulses in a limited degree. It easily becomes their accomplice. It also acts aggressively and creates suppressions and repressions. It cannot transform nature and transformation is really the problem of education and of civilisation. This 'Centre' and the 'Psychic Being' hold out the great prospect of transformation of life. One must begin with the child and attempt a new approach and give a chance to the blissful soul within us to work out a

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blissful change in nature and character and that in the best possible blissful manner.

Sri Aurobindo says, "Formerly, education was merely a mechanical forcing of the child's nature into arbitrary grooves of training and knowledge in which his individual subjectivity was the last thing considered, and his family upbringing was a constant repression and compulsory shaping of his habits, his thoughts, his character into the mould fixed for them by the conventional ideas or individual interests and ideals of the teachers and parents. The discovery that education must be a bringing out of the child's own intellectual and moral capacities to their highest possible value and must be based on the psychology of the child-nature was a step forward towards a more healthy because a more subjective system; but it still fell short because it still regarded him as an object to be handled and moulded by the teacher, to be educated. But at least there was a glimmering of the realisation that each human being is a self-developing soul and that the business of both parents and teachers is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material. It is not yet realised what this soul is or that the true secret, whether with child or man, is to help him to find his deeper self, the real psychic entity within. That, if we ever give it a chance to come forward, and still more if we call it into the foreground as "the leader of the march set in our front", will itself take up most of the business of education out of our hands and develop the capacity of the psychological being towards a realisation of its potentialities of which our present mechanical view of life and man and external routine methods of dealing with them prevent us from having any experience or forming any conception. These new educational methods are on the straight way to this truer dealing. The closer touch attempted with the psychical entity behind the vital and physical mentality and an increasing reliance on its possibilities must lead to the ultimate discovery that man is inwardly a soul and a conscious power of the Divine and that the evocation of this real man within is the. right object of education and indeed of all human life if it would find and five according to the hidden Truth and deepest law of its own being."

INDRA SEN

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