Mother India: A Living Legend

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Chapter 1
Bhawani Bharati: Bharat that is India

[The Age of Truth]

Who is Bhawani? . . . In the unending revolutions of the world, as the wheel of the Eternal turns mightily in its courses, the Infinite Energy, which streams forth from the Eternal and sets the wheel to work, looms up in the vision of man in various aspects and infinite forms. Each aspect creates and marks an age. Sometimes She is Love, sometimes She is Knowledge, sometimes She is Renunciation, sometimes She is Pity. This Infinite Energy is Bhawani. She also is Durga, She is Kali, She is Radha the Beloved, She is Lakshmi. She is our Mother and the Creatress of us all. (CWSA 06:79)

A recent debate has arisen about the name of India—to continue with India or to revert to the ancient Bharat. Regardless of the reasons or deeper implications of this debate, one thing is certain: the eyes of the world are once again turning towards India that is Bharat to play an important role in the comity of nations.

There is indeed a rightful place that each nation must occupy in the world play, but it can only be so if the nations discover their nation-soul and do not confuse their identity with the outer vital ego, its material wealth and military power. India that is Bharat is no exception—here too we find the effort of the many to reach out and discover their secret soul by finding the golden thread that runs through the ages. In a way, it is easier because India never got completely disconnected with its soul, and it always shared its spiritual wealth with all. But in another way, it is difficult because of the immense complexity and layers of civilizations that have developed around it.

Meanwhile, we must admit that an Age of Truth has dawned upon mankind, a new sat yuga, so to say and one of its first actions is to uncover truths that have been hidden and buried for long under the dust of time. It is as if to advance further on the roads towards the future we must take a look back into our past, bring out all that is still useful, and restore it to its rightful place in the present. In the process of this digging into the past, there is also a need to clear unresolved issues and set the balance of justice right. How else can our burdened collective past move towards the future until its subconscious memories are cleared and wide and free spaces are created for the new consciousness to pour in and fill it? As a consequence of all this resetting of the balance, we see much tumult due to the shifting of power equations around the world. Evidently this will go on till the new normal is established and the reorientation of the world in the vision of truth has taken place. This shifting of positions is taking place in the lives of individuals, countries, as well as continents. An important aspect of this shift is that individuals as well as nations (and other human groupings) are trying to rediscover themselves and reconnect with their inner being with the hope of finding their soul. It is this effort of the national life that clumsily presents itself as the surge of nationalism that we see in many parts of the world since the last few years. The discovery of the nation-soul is important because, without it, a premature attempt at human unity may be dangerous to the diversity of humanity. We see this in the Age of Mankind that we just left behind us when a few nations, religions, and ideologies tried to dominate over the world and iron out all differences or made the nations they conquered slaves and subjects through a swift or slow destruction of their culture and ways of life, treating it as something inferior. Yet this was needed since it brought different and divergent segments of humanity so far isolated within their geographical comfort zones.

The first encounter was not so much of the soul of a nation with the soul of another but of national egos, and here the law of the jungle prevailed, giving success to the stronger. The invasions also threw challenges at the conqueror as well as the conquered, forcing an effort to understand each other because of the compulsion created by the circumstances. But it also left plenty of scars and wounds, injured self-esteem, and mutual suspicion. Its extreme form manifested in the Nazi cult that hoped to wipe out entire sections of humanity that did not meet their own criteria of civilization, were perceived as a threat to the group, or were simply different. The shadow of national egos had bloated way beyond the legitimate limits of self-defence. It had to collapse, and when it did, many nations and ideologies with ambitious expansionist designs collapsed under the weight of the asura that had captured the minds of the dictators.

[The Winds of Change]

Let us raise our eyes and cast them upon the world around us. Wherever we turn our gaze, huge masses of strength rise before our vision, tremendous, swift and inexorable forces, gigantic figures of energy, terrible sweeping columns of force. All is growing large and strong. The Shakti of war, the Shakti of wealth, the Shakti of Science are tenfold more mighty and colossal, a hundredfold more fierce, rapid and busy in their activity, a thousandfold more prolific in resources, weapons and instruments than ever before in recorded history. Everywhere the Mother is at work; from Her mighty and shaping hands enormous forms of Rakshasas, Asuras, Devas are leaping forth into the arena of the world. We have seen the slow but mighty rise of great empires in the West, we have seen the swift, irresistible and impetuous bounding into life of Japan. Some are Mleccha Shaktis clouded in their strength, black or blood-crimson with tamas or rajas, others are Arya Shaktis, bathed in a pure flame of renunciation and utter self-sacrifice: but all are the Mother in Her new phase, remoulding, creating. She is pouring Her spirit into the old; She is whirling into life the new. (CWSA 06:79–80)

The world was longing for a change. The old world order had collapsed, and the new was not yet tangible to human sight. All that was visible was an angst or the oestrus, not yet the labour pains. But post-2000, the labour pains have begun, though the rumblings and the restlessness began in the 1960s itself. The year 2014 saw waves of nationalism whose main purpose was to turn the nation’s inwards to discover its soul. The definitive process could be felt with the year 2020 marking the Mother’s final arrival to Puducherry, India.

However, the old world and its empires, though collapsed and dying, have not given up. Instead of looking inwards to discover the nation-soul, some of them are still preoccupied with ideological and religious imperialism. Racism is dying, but its place has been usurped by economic superiority, as if the worth of human beings is measured by the money in their pocket, the machines at their command, or the military gear and bombs they can manufacture. Now all these things have their place and importance, and, in the present state of the world hanging in a precarious and uncertain balance of powers and rapidly shifting equations between the nations, no country can afford to disarm itself and risk being run over by titanic forces waiting round the corner as hungry wolves. Equally, it is important to be strong economically and work towards parity in the social and economic frameworks needed to support our collective existence and outer life.

The question is if this is all that is needed. Or there is something more, something crucial, something not only fundamental but indispensable that is missing in our present self-view and world view. We believe it is needed, and urgently so. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother cautioned about it and clearly said that in this crucial element, the missing piece of the cosmic puzzle, it is ‘India that is Bharat’ that alone can help the world and find novel and true solutions to the problems that vex mankind and mar its efforts to improve our individual and collective existence with failure and eventual collapse, or to use a significant term from Bharat, pralaya, so to say.

[The Rise of Bharat Shakti]

India, the ancient mother, is indeed striving to be reborn, striving with agony and tears, but she strives in vain. What ails her, she, who is after all so vast and might be so strong? There is surely some enormous defect, something vital is wanting in us; nor is it difficult to lay our finger on the spot. We have all things else, but we are empty of strength, void of energy. We have abandoned Shakti and are therefore abandoned by Shakti. The Mother is not in our hearts, in our brains, in our arms . . .

The deeper we look, the more we shall be convinced that the one thing wanting, which we must strive to acquire before all others, is strength—strength physical, strength mental, strength moral, but above all strength spiritual which is the one inexhaustible and imperishable source of all the others. If we have strength, everything else will be added to us easily and naturally. In the absence of strength we are like men in a dream who have hands but cannot seize or strike, who have feet but cannot run . . . If India is to survive, she must be made young again. Rushing and billowing streams of energy must be poured into her; her soul must become, as it was in the old times, like the surges, vast, puissant, calm or turbulent at will, an ocean of action or of force. (CWSA 06:80–83)

But for India to truly play its role, it is necessary that it first discovers itself, its lost wisdom, and its hidden powers. This task has already begun, and one can mark the steps and stages that have been taken and others that are yet needed.

In the second half of the previous century, soon after Independence, India was simply trying to find its footing. But with the shift of global equations, India began to look within to discover its soul. It is this subtle inner shift missed by the surface analysts, a shift precipitated due to a number of reasons, most prominent of them being an overt and covert global effort to tarnish the age-old culture and its profound values that India stood for before it was discovered by the invaders. This global effort to debunk India and her civilizational values or else to give it a suitable colour of pacifist, non-violent country that had nothing much to offer and which could be easily taken over by the same forces that enslaved it once ended up only waking up the wounded lion. The cycle of time was turning fast, and the centenary of events that took place in the late 18th and early 19th centuries brought in a different energy from the past to inject the present with new hope for the future. Sri Aurobindo had penned down the Durga Stotra in 1909 to awaken the soul of India. But his voice and the word, after an initial awakening, had gone largely unheeded or buried under the din and noise of the politics of that time. But as often happens when a voice comes from the far avenues of the beyond or a thought floats down from the higher worlds, it is ill-heard during the hour when it touches the mind of earth. Its landing on our globe goes unseen, but its action begins, and sometimes later, a century later or even more, the idea bursts forth from the heart of the earth, and the soul of humanity hears and responds. Such is the force of Durga Stotra, in which Sri Aurobindo addressed the soul of India and her children. A hundred years later, her children have heard and are waking up.

The first result of this awakening has been that there is a resurgence of interest in India’s past. But this interest in the past is not so much about history as it is about a cultural and religious resurgence. This tendency to return to the roots of a country can be seen in other nations as well, and though outwardly it takes the form of a religious revival, at its core it is a reaching out to the soul of the nation. Religion and culture are like the two arms through which a nation reaches out to the world, but its heart is the soul and its secret aspiration. What begins as a religious and cultural revival must therefore fulfil itself in the spiritual. How does this discovery proceed, and what is the significance of the form and name of a nation?

[The Mystery of Form and Name]

For what is a nation? What is our mother-country? It is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up the nation, just as Bhawani Mahisha-Mardini sprang into being from the Shaktis of all the millions of gods assembled in one mass of force and welded into unity. The Shakti we call India, Bhawani Bharati, is the living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred millions of people; but she is inactive, imprisoned in the magic circle of tamas, the self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her sons. (CWSA 06:83)

Here comes the mystery of the name and the form. To the ancient Indian mind, the name and form had their own significance in the sense that they must represent the truth of the soul. The naming of a child is still an important event. It must be in harmony with the inner truth or the inner being of the child. When seekers went for initiation to a spiritual master, very often his name would be changed to be representative of what the aspirant’s true being represented. It was regarded as a second birth. Some masters, including Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Aurobindo, would look at the form or the photograph of a person to enter into his soul, the true being that is hidden behind its physical appearance. What applies to an individual applies to a nation as well. What we crudely call today the boundaries of a nation is in reality its outer form as foreseen in the ideal world. To keep this form intact is, from the spiritual point of view, as important as not transgressing or dismembering the form of other nation units. The shaping and reshaping of the outer form takes centuries and millennia sometimes. But once it is moulded, then it is important to safeguard it.

The rightful self-defence of a nation is not only of practical but also deeply spiritual value. That is why we see the ancient scriptures of India describing the geography of the country in a way as if it is a living being, a goddess inhabiting this seed plot that we call a country. When we look at India from the larger cosmic vision with reference to the world, it will look somewhat like a heart that once joined two continents. But if we look at it in itself, we can see the goddess there with Himalaya peaks as her head while the clouds above and around her like flowing hair. The Ganga and the Yamuna are like garlands flowing around her neck, and the Vindhyas are like the girdle around her waist. The ocean is washing her feet. The lion opens its mouth on the western frontiers while her right hand holds the trident. Her left hand is dipping into the ocean waters, stirring them with her light. All around her is the radiance born of sacrifice in the form of the different parts of the body of Sati, the consort of Mahadeva. Her death is not a death but a sacrifice, only to emerge stronger and even more radiant as the daughter of the mountains. The seven rivers that run across her body are like ornaments, the forests are her raiment, and the cities are the jewels that she adorns. Each of these cities has a history in antiquity, linking it to the gods. The great scriptures, the Vedas and Upanishads, the Gita, and the Puranas are her voice. All creatures who take shelter in her being are like so many cells of her body. Some love her and help her function smoothly and fulfil the mission for which she has arisen out of the folds of night as the dawn in the eastern skies. Others are indifferent to her, ready to exploit all that she can give materially and spiritually but return nothing. Still others with darkened and distorted minds and crooked hearts long to harm, mutilate, and dismember her and commit the greatest offence one can ever imagine, of harming one’s own mother. Yet the gracious mother shelters them all, giving them all that they need generously and equally, without special favours, without those outer considerations of religion, ideologies, and self-interests that human beings bring into their relationships.

And yet we must not make the mistake that her generosity is blind to the mischiefs of her children. She carries the ages of wisdom in her heart, and if needed, she can assume the form of Durga or even more fiercely wear the mask of Kali, the goddess—terrible, fierce, magnificent, powerful, and divine. For Bharat Mata is Shakti, a goddess, a portion of the universal mother, a power of the divine mother, and behind her stands the army of the gods that no Titan and its forces—cruel and demonic, and the undivine hordes that surge from the bowels of the dark netherworld and fill God’s fair world with carnage, massacre, plunder, and ruin—can eventually resist. It is because of this that Bharat is the singular example of a nation attacked so many times and for so long by powerful Titanic forces, and yet none could completely occupy her fields or destroy her culture and the light of the ages she has borne. Temporarily it was dimmed but never extinguished; temporarily certain portions of her body were overpowered, but her mind and heart always resisted until out of her vast and mighty souls, hero warriors and sages emerged and, armed with the fiat of her word and the sword of her knowledge and power, threw back the powers of darkness and restored her body. And whatever is not yet restored is bound to be restored soon, for her light is needed not only for herself. Nor is her rise only for her own good. Bharat that is India rises for the good of the world. Bharat Mata has the wisdom, the key to solving the problems of the world and humanity in ways that can endure the rub and change of time. After the frustrated efforts of religions, ideologies, science, and industry to find a lasting solution to the problems of man and the failed efforts of imperialism, democracy, socialism, communism, and technology to unite the world, the eyes of the world are bound to turn towards Bharat, for the key is here. Having gone through all possible ups and downs, every possible invasion, and assimilating every possible diversity and divergences, after experimenting with the ultimate aspects of materialism and spirituality without losing her soul, Bharat is singularly qualified to lead the world and find not just sustainable but lasting solutions. That is the reason why destiny is making Bharat that is India rise again, or shall we say Bhavani Bharati. It is here that we come to the mystery of the name.

[Bharat Shakti]

India cannot perish, our race cannot become extinct, because among all the divisions of mankind it is to India that is reserved the highest and the most splendid destiny, the most essential to the future of the human race. It is she who must send forth from herself the future religion of the entire world, the Eternal religion which is to harmonise all religion, science and philosophies and make mankind one soul. In the sphere of morality, likewise, it is her mission to purge barbarism (mlecchahood) out of humanity and to aryanise the world. In order to do this, she must first re-aryanise herself . . .

Strength then and again strength and yet more strength is the need of our race. But if it is strength we desire, how shall we gain it if we do not adore the Mother of strength? She demands worship not for Her own sake, but in order that She may help us and give Herself to us. This is no fantastic idea, no superstition but the ordinary law of the universe. The gods cannot, if they would, give themselves unasked. Even the Eternal comes not unaware upon man. Every devotee knows by experience that we must turn to Him and desire and adore Him before the Divine Spirit pours in its ineffable beauty and ecstasy upon the soul. What is true of the Eternal, is true also of Her who goes forth from Him. (CWSA 06:84–85)

For each epoch of this most ancient persisting civilization that we call India, there was a name that represented its aspiration and the way of life, in a way its soul. In the beginning, it was called Jambudweep or sometimes Sudarshandweep, meaning thereby an island that is the inmost layer of concentric circles, the juice or sap that nourishes the soul. It indicates the core mission of Bharat is to connect the world with its soul. Next it was called Bharat, that which is engaged in wisdom, carrier of wisdom and fire in its core. With the development of an ideal human type whose goal was self-perfection, the name given to the land after its people striving to be the noblest was Aryavarta. Next came the wave of invasions that recognized this land by its geographical location on the other side of the Sindhu or Indus river, India. What then should be the name of Bharat or India as it rises to shine on the eastern horizon and sheds its light to the world? The name should link her past to the future and resonate with the deepest truth of her soul and the role she has to assume in the future. We believe it should be Bhavani Bharati or simply Bharati, respectfully Maa Bharati. To change the name to Bharati will also be symbolic of the coming age, where the balance between the masculine and feminine elements is being reset with the feminine energies coming to the forefront.

Bhawani is another name for the divine Shakti of whom Durga, the guardian deity of Bharat, is one of the main manifestations. Bharati is a Vedic goddess, also known as Saraswati, who is the power that works out the details of a divine perfection upon earth that has been the underlying aspiration we see embodied in the Sanatana Dharma. Saraswati is the river along whose banks the great civilization now known as the Indus Valley civilization developed. The river disappeared, leading to much speculation until recently, through modern studies including satellite images, she has been discovered running underground from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea between the Sindhu (Indus) and the Ganga. Confined to a region, she is Saraswati, but when impelled by Ganga, she flows all over Bharat and becomes Bharati, the Shakti of Bharat. It is she whom Sri Aurobindo invoked to rejuvenate the land of India. Though he later mentioned her as Durga, it is the same Bhawani whom he asked us to worship during the days of freedom struggle. And it is the same goddess who will lead us to victory in the last battle of the future, destroying the Titan forces that still hold the earth because men are in love with them. The battle this time is not just for the freedom of Bharat but for the freedom of the world, for the freedom from ignorance and bondage and slavery to darkness and unconsciousness and falsehood and evil for good. India is the first and last battleground for the higher and diviner way of life to be established. It is destined to show the way and lead from the front. But first we must recover our lost strength, and the lost strength does not come by changing the name alone. It comes by changing the character, and the change of character itself comes not by any outer means but by engaging in a national yoga. But of this national yoga, we shall speak later. Let us close with an invocation of Bhawani Bharati in the words of Sri Aurobindo:

When, therefore, you ask who is Bhawani the mother, She herself answers you, ‘I am the Infinite Energy which streams forth from the Eternal in the world and Eternal in yourselves. I am the Mother of the Universe, the Mother of the Worlds, and for you who are children of the Sacred land, aryabhumi, made of her clay and reared by her sun and winds, I am Bhawani Bharati, Mother of India.’

. . .

Come then, hearken to the call of the Mother. She is already in our hearts waiting to manifest Herself, waiting to be worshipped,—inactive because the God in us is concealed by tamas, troubled by Her inactivity, sorrowful because Her children will not call on Her to help them. You who feel Her stirring within you, fling off the black veil of self, break down the imprisoning walls of indolence, help Her each as you feel impelled, with your bodies or with your intellect or with your speech or with your wealth or with your prayers and worship, each man according to his capacity. Draw not back, for against those who were called and heard Her not, She may well be wroth in the day of Her coming; but to those who help Her advent even a little, how radiant with beauty and kindness will be the face of their Mother! (CWSA 06:89)

The Idea of India

[A New India Is Rising]

For the past few years in India one can see as if a new race is being created in the midst of the old that was dominated by the gross influences …. These new children of Mother India, instead of getting the qualities of their parents, have grown bold, full of power, high-souled, self-sacrificing, inspired by the high ideals of helping others and doing good to the country. That is why, instead of being obedient to their parents, the young men go their own way, there is a difference between the old and the young, and in deciding a course of activity there is a conflict between the two. The old are trying to keep these youth, born of divine emanations, the pioneers of a golden age, confined to the old, selfish and narrow ways, without understanding they are trying to perpetuate the Age of Iron. The youth are sparks born of the Great Energy, Mahāśakti, eager to build the new by destroying the old, they are unable to be obedient or submit to the laws of respect for the parent. God alone can remedy this evil. But the will of the Great Energy cannot be in vain, the new generation will not leave without fulfilling the purpose for which they have come. In the midst of the new the influence of the old lingers on. Because of the fault of inferior heredity and an Àsuric education many black sheep have also taken birth; and those who have been ordained to inaugurate the new age are unable to manifest their inherent force and strength. Among the youth is a marvelous sign of manifesting the age of gold, a religious bent of mind, and in the hearts of many, a longing for yoga and half-expressed yogic powers. (CWSA 9: 343–44)

The Nation Unit in a Global Age

As we move into the 21st century, we see a greater and greater blurring of boundaries between nations and civilisations. Science and technology have wired the world in a different way than what political establishments and governments may wish to. There is, on the one hand, an increasing push towards internationalism, which is invariably leading to clashes of cultures or, shall we say, a deeper mutual understanding of them. On the other hand, man is discovering new and spontaneous groupings to fulfil his urge for a social and collective life. These groupings are not necessarily based on the nation unit but on certain psychological tendencies and religious predilections. Sometimes there is not much difficulty in integrating these two elements of group-life. Keeping the nation unit as the primary base, these other groups flourish and prosper within the national context. But on the other hand, some groups, especially those with an expansionist ideology, come into conflict with the nation unit and often work to its detriment. It is here that one needs to reflect and discover the right way to navigate through this dubious terrain, which is becoming a major course of conflict in the world.

The problem is that unlike a nation unit that has fixed physical boundaries, the ideas belong to the mental domain and hence are not limited by physical limits. When driven by a great vital force, for example, Islam or communist ideology, they begin to expand beyond the nation of their birth with violence and vehemence that thwarts the growth and development of other idea-forces that operate and are needed for the total perfection of life here. Now, there is certainly no problem if the idea-force spreads in the mental world of man, occupies his thoughts, and converts them through natural appeal. Such a thing has happened earlier with Buddhism, for instance. But when the idea-force tries to vehemently convert ‘others’ by a physical imposition such as occupying a nation, threat and coercion, or lure of physical benefits or even a reward hereafter, it becomes a menace to the world. Here we may note that the narrower the idea, the more vehemently it tries to spread like a viral infection. It is as if only by spreading to more and more numbers can it compensate for its narrowness. The followers of such narrow ideas, or better yet, belief systems, feel their strength in numbers, which can have a cascading effect. The spread of Islam and certain narrow cults derives its strength from numbers and therefore tries to aggressively convert others and maintain the converted through various threats, fears, and punishments, as well as earthly and heavenly lures and rewards. On the other hand, an idea-force such as the Sanatana dharma (known ignorantly as Hinduism) is so broad-based and wide that it finds itself everywhere without the need to convert even a single person. No wonder it has remained geographically confined largely to the Indian Peninsula, which also happens to be its place of origin in all likelihood.

It is here that the problem of human groupings begins to get complex. Destiny has provided a certain geographical place for each idea-force where it is born and flourishes. This idea-force need not be a religion but a completely non-religious ideology such as communism, socialism, Marxism as well as democracy, capitalism, dictatorship, etc. Of course, none of the ideas that have a limited belief can survive forever. As mankind grows and expands, the smaller thought has to give way to the larger, the narrower mind has to concede to the wider, and the lowly aspirations have to change into something nobler, higher, and purer. This is the inevitable march of mankind. Certain idea-forces have died, and the geographical space they occupied has been given over to other allied or higher forms of the same idea. Other ideas are undergoing change and transformation by contact with different ideas. But there are some that not only resist but also threaten the world march by forcing their limited and narrow thoughts on others, often spreading beyond boundaries that have now become much easier to cross. If this spread encounters no barriers and faces no resistance to the contamination of world energies, the boon of globalization could soon become a curse. Certain cultural practices and ways of life may become antiquated over time, while others return after a period of quiescence. Additionally, some are still forming through the complex experiments of nature. Until that happens, it is important for each idea-force to remain confined to its respective spaces, allowing evolution to take care of them—lifting some for free acceptance by mankind while rejecting others through a voluntary refusal. Such a space can best be the nation unit. If we go into the history of each nation, we can see how it has first been formed with a body that comes into existence. Then it is seeded with humanity that will serve as carriers of the idea-force. Next, we see the progressive emergence and crystallization of the idea, branching out in many directions that concern our life and its activities. Thus, we see the birth of a culture formed by an instinctive need in people to give a more precise and detailed body to the idea. But since this body also demands appropriate clothing, we see various activities that begin to form around the nucleus, such as rituals and ceremonies, festivals, and festivities. But also, since everything has a tendency to turn into fixed habitual groves, we often find that over a period of time, the idea recedes far within, and what is left is a hollow and empty shell filled with worthless rituals that have lost their meanings, utility, and purpose. Later, with the passage of time, humanity tends to regard these externalities as the main thing while the idea itself is lost or forgotten. This is the fate suffered by all religions and ideologies unless they accept and admit progress and change with the waves of time. Of course, this change should not be arbitrary or driven simply by the vital’s tilt towards everything new and fashionable. This would be disastrous, as it would dilute the idea-force and potentially lead to its complete disappearance, leaving nothing to remind us of the idea that once existed. This is why groups resist outer change, as it may lead to a loss of their identity. At the same time, change is the very law of life, and if we do not change and adapt to the evolutionary urge, the idea may be broken and cast aside by the world forces that shape human destiny.

The change must come, but it should emerge from within, by pouring fresh, invigorating streams by those who live and embody the idea and not merely subscribe to a formal ritual practice. This has been the great strength of Indian thought, as it allows and even has mechanisms for internal change that leads to outer modifications. This happens partly due to the insistence on the inner as primary and the outer as secondary, but even more so because it allows fresh insights and the expansion of the original idea by persons who embody it, such as the living masters. But this is not possible when the idea is confined to a book or a single interpretation, the authorized version, so to speak. This is how formal and organized religions come into being and are often counterproductive to the original truth, if any, that the founder saw or realized. Here again, we discover the unique strength of Hinduism compared to other ideas and ideologies, both religious and secular, as well as to religions and movements that were born out of its luminous womb to embody some partial truth-ray of its vast body of light.

The unique position and role of India

Thus, each nation can be seen as a physical container for holding, embodying, and nourishing a particular idea, which is like its soul force meant to manifest some aspect of the universal divine. India may well be in a unique position to represent the heart and soul of the universal, given its universal outlook and the universal idea that has moved it originally as the Sanatana Dharma.

Leaving aside for a moment other nation units and idea-forces and bringing our focus on India, we may well say that India is the natural heir and guardian of Sanatana Dharma. Or, to put it another way, more mystically perhaps, India has come into existence to bring hold and develop the Sanatana Dharma. It is one among many experiments in human evolution undertaken by nature, yet it holds tremendous significance; without it, all others may remain incomplete. At the same time, even if all the rest were to vanish from this earth and only traces and fragments of Sanatana Dharma remained in the collective memory of its people, even a verse or two, perhaps even half of some verses of the Isha Upanishad or the Gita, for instance, India can rebuild itself and rebuild the world by unleashing new idea-forces and pouring rejuvenating streams from fresh and new realizations upon the world. We may go on to say that any idea-force will benefit from its contact with Sanatana Dharma, and, on the contrary, if it tries to finish Sanatana Dharma, if such a thing were ever at all possible, it is likely to be finished itself in the process since it would mean striking the very roots and foundations of its own existence. After all, even historically, the oldest civilization that continues to live, prosper, grow, and evolve is the one that goes now with the name of Hinduism, though its founders never gave it this name but simply called it the Sanatana Dharma, or the Eternal Law that governs not only our own but the entire range of existences.

It is necessary to emphasise this synthetic character and embracing unity of the Indian religious mind, because otherwise we miss the whole meaning of Indian life and the whole sense of Indian culture. It is only by recognising this broad and plastic character that we can understand its total effect on the life of the community and the life of the individual. And if we are asked, ‘But after all what is Hinduism, what does it teach, what does it practise, what are its common factors?’ we can answer that Indian religion is founded upon three basic ideas or rather three fundamentals of a highest and widest spiritual experience. First comes the idea of the One Existence of the Veda to whom sages give different names, the One without a second of the Upanishads who is all that is and beyond all that is, the Permanent of the Buddhists, the Absolute of the Illusionists, the supreme God or Purusha of the Theists who holds in his power the soul and Nature,—in a word the Eternal, the Infinite.

This is the first common foundation; but it can be and is expressed in an endless variety of formulas by the human intelligence. To discover and closely approach and enter into whatever kind or degree of unity with this Permanent, this Infinite, this Eternal, is the highest height and last effort of its spiritual experience. That is the first universal credo of the religious mind of India. Admit in whatever formula this foundation, follow this great spiritual aim by one of the thousand paths recognized in India or even any new path which branches off from them and you are at the core of the religion. For its second basic idea is the manifold way of man’s approach to the Eternal and Infinite. The Infinite is full of many infinities and each of these infinities is itself the very Eternal. And here in the limitations of the cosmos God manifests himself and fulfils himself in the world in many ways, but each is the way of the Eternal. For in each finite we can discover and through all things as his forms and symbols we can approach the Infinite; all cosmic powers are manifestations, all forces are forces of the One. The gods behind the workings of Nature are to be seen and adored as powers, names and personalities of the one Godhead . . . The One Godhead manifests himself in the form of his qualities in various names and godheads. The God of divine love of the Vaishnava, the God of divine power of the Shakta appear as two different godheads; but in truth they are the one infinite Deity in different figures. One may approach the Supreme through any of these names and forms, with knowledge or in ignorance; for through them and beyond them we can proceed at last to the supreme experience.

The third idea of strongest consequence at the base of Indian religion is the most dynamic for the inner spiritual life. It is that while the Supreme or the Divine can be approached through a universal consciousness and by piercing through all inner and outer Nature, That or He can be met by each individual soul in itself, in its own spiritual part, because there is something in it that is intimately one or at least intimately related with the one divine Existence. The essence of Indian religion is to aim at so growing and so living that we can grow out of the Ignorance which veils this self-knowledge from our mind and life and become aware of the Divinity within us. These three things put together are the whole of Hindu religion, its essential sense and, if any credo is needed, its credo. (CWSA 20: 193–95)

India and the Santana Dharma

It is with this background that we need to understand the idea of India and what can be done to adapt its outer body to new and changing conditions. In fact, Sri Aurobindo, who loved India deeply and whose life is a living example of the Santana Dharma, reveals that India is Sanatana Dharma:

When therefore it is said that India shall rise, it is the Sanatana Dharma that shall rise. When it is said that India shall be great, it is the Sanatana Dharma that shall be great. When it is said that India shall expand and extend herself, it is the Sanatana Dharma that shall expand and extend itself over the world. It is for the dharma and by the dharma that India exists. (CWSA 20: 193–95)

But what is this Santana Dharma, really? Not a cult, sect, or even a religion in the conventional sense, but a many-sided approach to the fundamental reality or truth behind all things. To discover, manifest, and express it in our lives is the work given to man and also the path through which he can not only save the earth but also make it truly beautiful, one with the heavens as the seers of old saw it. This law of truth was not a dogma or a rigid moral rule but something much vaster and plastic. Its purpose was not to win adherents or convert people to a single belief system. On the contrary, it provided enough plasticity to accommodate the different layers and sections of humanity that were steps of the great evolutionary journey. It was in this evolutionary journey of man, from birth to birth, that the seers saw the justification for rebirth. Sri Aurobindo reveals to us the vastness of Sanatana Dharma thus.

What is this religion which we call Sanatana, eternal? It is the Hindu religion only because the Hindu nation has kept it, because in this peninsula it grew up in the seclusion of the sea and the Himalayas, because in this sacred and ancient land it was given as a charge to the Aryan race to preserve through the ages. But it is not circumscribed by the confines of a single country, it does not belong peculiarly and for ever to a bounded part of the world. That which we call the Hindu religion is really the eternal religion, because it is the universal religion which embraces all others. If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose. This is the one religion that can triumph over materialism by including and anticipating the discoveries of science and the speculations of philosophy. It is the one religion which impresses on mankind the closeness of God to us and embraces in its compass all the possible means by which man can approach God. It is the one religion which insists every moment on the truth which all religions acknowledge, that He is in all men and all things and that in Him we move and have our being. It is the one religion which enables us not only to understand and believe this truth but to realise it with every part of our being. It is the one religion which shows the world what the world is, that it is the lila of Vasudeva. It is the one religion which shows us how we can best play our part in that lila, its subtlest laws and its noblest rules. It is the one religion which does not separate life in any smallest detail from religion, which knows what immortality is and has utterly removed from us the reality of death. (CWSA 09: 11–12)

But equally he, as well as the other great apostle of Sanatana Dharma and a lover of India, drew a distinction between Sanatana Dharma and the later Hinduism of the dark ages. In fact, Hinduism is a term that came much later into existence, thanks to the hotch-potch understanding of the Sanatana Dharma by the European mind as well as of modern thinkers who draw a sharp divide between religious life and the secular aspirations of the race. The modern mind needs to strictly define and separate these two, which is understandable in the Western context where one nearly saw a war between science and religion to which religion has lost ground.

Science has become universally prevalent, whereas religion is confined to believers and places of worship. But in the Indian context there was no such divide because science itself was part of Sanatana Dharma. The conception of god was universal, and no activity, place, or person was bereft of the divine presence. In every field of life, be it arts or sciences, dance or music, sculpture and painting, law and polity, administration, and war, the spirit of Sanatana Dharma is present and can be brought into play. Nor should we limit this Sanatana Dharma to a set of narrow codes of conduct or rigid rules of living. It is a wide and plastic movement towards the infinite and not a narrow stream flowing from one limited spot to another. In other words, we must first recognize and isolate the true Hinduism that takes its stand upon the Sanatana Dharma, upon which Sri Krishna and Rama, Bhisma and Shiva, Harischandra and Viswamitra, Vasistha and Agastya, and many others lived and propounded, breathing the divine spirit into every sphere of life from the latter mixtures that have crept into Hindu thought and practice, turning it into yet another narrow religion. Swami Vivekananda once spoke of kitchen spirituality, which he distinguished from the true spiritual movement that rises from the depths of the heart, mind, and soul towards intangible heights of consciousness. Sri Aurobindo reveals to us in a similar vein the two types of Hinduism:

There are two Hinduisms; one which takes its stand on the kitchen and seeks its Paradise by cleaning the body; another which seeks God, not through the cooking pot and the social convention, but in the soul. The latter is also Hinduism and it is a good deal older and more enduring than the other; it is the Hinduism of Bhishma and Srikrishna, of Shankara and Chaitanya, the Hinduism which exceeds Hindusthan, was from of old and will be for ever, because it grows eternally through the aeons. Its watchword is not kriya, but karma; not shastra, but jnanam; not achar, but bhakti. Yet it accepts kriya, shastra and achar, not as ends to be followed for their own sake, but as means to perfect karma, jnanam and bhakti. Kriya in the dictionary means every practice which helps the gaining of higher knowledge such as the mastering of the breath, the repetition of the mantra, the habitual use of the Name, the daily meditation on the idea. By shastra it means the knowledge which regulates karma, which fixes the kartavyam and the akartavyam, that which should be done and that which should not, and it recognises two sources of that knowledge,—the eternal wisdom, as distinct from the temporary injunctions, in our ancient books and the book that is written by God in the human heart, the eternal and apaurusheya Veda. By achar it understands all moral discipline by which the heart is purified and made a fit vessel for divine love. There are certain kriyas, certain rules of shastra, certain details of achar, which are for all time and of perpetual application; there are others which are temporary, changing with the variation of desh, kal and patra, time, place and the needs of humanity. Among the temporary laws the cooking pot and the lustration had their place, but they are not for all, nor for ever. It was in a time of calamity, of contraction under external pressure that Hinduism fled from the inner temple and hid itself in the kitchen. (CWSA 1: 551)

Therefore, when we use the word ‘Hindu’, we must be careful about which kind of Hinduism we are referring to. None can deny that much of what we see today is a degraded and often disfigured version of the true Sanatana Dharma, which is our backbone and strength. One cannot throne a broken image of Shiva and call it the absolute, nor can one place just any monkey in the temple precincts and name it Hanuman. Perhaps, there is a need to save India from Indians and ‘Hinduism’ from Hindus.

The Modern Secular and the Ancient Understanding

Having said that, we must also be careful not to confuse the modern pseudo-secular interpretation of Hinduism as ‘a way of life’ which is more like a broad and nebulous umbrella to include anything and everything to suit our political purposes. Yes, there is indeed a Hindu or, better yet, an Aryan way of life, but it has little to do either with the fixed rites and rituals of later Hinduism or with the more modern version of acceptance of anything and everything without thought and discrimination. Hinduism is wide and vast, but this wideness is not the wideness of the wastepaper basket but the wideness of the sky and the earth. In fact, discrimination (viveka) and thoughtful reflection (vichar) are heavily stressed in Indian life and are part of the yogic methods that would lead us to the discovery of the truth. Surely, viveka and vichar are not the beginning or end of Hinduism, as some more modern thinkers who remain limited by thought tend to assume. There is also dharana and dhyana, concentration and meditation; prarthana and samarpana, prayer and surrender; sewa and sankalpa, dedicated service and right will in action; satyam and sanyama, truth and self-control, besides a host of other qualities and attitudes such as dhriti, kshama, ahimsa, tejah, swadhyaya, steadfastness, forgiveness, non-injury, luminous courage, and self-study, among others, best described in the sixteenth chapter of the Gita.

The Gita also describes attitudes and ways of life that are asuric and un-Aryan, such as arrogance, lust, anger, selfishness, fear, egoism, possessiveness, jealousy, and the rest that go with it. It does not matter whether a person belongs to this religion or that, whether he professes to be secular or spiritual, whether he is from this country or another, or speaks this language or the other; even his belief systems, practice of rituals, and wearing of sacred thread or an orange garb define the Sanatana Dharma way of life. Ravana was a Brahmin by birth; he wore the sacred thread and was a Shiva bhakta who had not only memorized the Vedas but also helped in its spread before his fall. Rama, on the other hand, was a Kshatriya, knew less about the shastras than the pundit Ravana, used his bow and arrow to kill, and was surely not a vegetarian (being a Kshatriya adopting a Kshatriya way of life). And yet it is not Ravana but Rama who is revered as the god incarnate whose noble example we are asked to follow! He is an embodiment of dharma even though some of his actions may seem to the modern mind unethical, whereas Ravana embodies adharma. The key to understanding this paradox lies in the simple fact that essentially dharma has little to do with our outward actions but more to do with our inner state, attitude, and motives. None of Rama’s actions are inspired by any selfish gain. His one criteria of action is the forward march of mankind. His one goal is to set the highest standards of living, not with an eye on being recognized as a moral man nor with that egoistic sense of self-righteousness that often exaggerates one virtue over all others, creating an imbalance. The moving force behind his actions is unselfishness and sacrifice for the fulfilment of the divine will in man and creation. His one goal is to discover and master oneself and next extend this mastery over all others. Sri Aurobindo beautifully summarized these high and noble Aryan ideals in one of his writings as follows:

If Arya were a purely racial term, a more probable derivation would be ar, meaning strength or valour, from ar, to fight, whence we have the name of the Greek war-god Ares, areios, brave or warlike, perhaps even aretē, virtue, signifying, like the Latin virtus, first, physical strength and courage and then moral force and elevation. This sense of the word also we may accept. ‘We fight to win sublime Wisdom, therefore men call us warriors.’ For Wisdom implies the choice as well as the knowledge of that which is best, noblest, most luminous, most divine. Certainly, it means also the knowledge of all things and charity and reverence for all things, even the most apparently mean, ugly or dark, for the sake of the universal Deity who chooses to dwell equally in all. But, also, the law of right action is a choice, the preference of that which expresses the godhead to that which conceals it. And the choice entails a battle, a struggle. It is not easily made, it is not easily enforced.

Whoever makes that choice, whoever seeks to climb from level to level up the hill of the divine, fearing nothing, deterred by no retardation or defeat, shrinking from no vastness because it is too vast for his intelligence, no height because it is too high for his spirit, no greatness because it is too great for his force and courage, he is the Aryan, the divine fighter and victor, the noble man, aristos, best, the śreṣṭha of the Gita.

Intrinsically, in its most fundamental sense, Arya means an effort or an uprising and overcoming. The Aryan is he who strives and overcomes all outside him and within him that stands opposed to the human advance. Self-conquest is the first law of his nature. He overcomes earth and the body and does not consent like ordinary men to their dullness, inertia, dead routine and tamasic limitations. He overcomes life and its energies and refuses to be dominated by their hungers and cravings or enslaved by their rajasic passions. He overcomes the mind and its habits, he does not live in a shell of ignorance, inherited prejudices, customary ideas, pleasant opinions, but knows how to seek and choose, to be large and flexible in intelligence even as he is firm and strong in his will. For in everything he seeks truth, in everything right, in everything height and freedom.

Self-perfection is the aim of his self-conquest. Therefore what he conquers he does not destroy, but ennobles and fulfils. He knows that the body, life and mind are given him in order to attain to something higher than they; therefore they must be transcended and overcome, their limitations denied, the absorption of their gratifications rejected. But he knows also that the Highest is something which is no nullity in the world, but increasingly expresses itself here,—a divine Will, Consciousness, Love, Beatitude which pours itself out, when found, through the terms of the lower life on the finder and on all in his environment that is capable of receiving it. Of that he is the servant, lover and seeker. When it is attained, he pours it forth in work, love, joy and knowledge upon mankind. (CWSA 13:442–43)

The Hindu Dharma

In essence, the Hindu is a person who is on the path of self-discovery, of god within and without, and for this he is free to take any or many paths or even, as the mighty Buddha and quite a few others did, create or discover a new path. For the true spirit of a Hindu truth lies beyond all formulas and exceeds the canons of every scripture, sabdabrahmaativartate, going beyond the written or spoken word of the scripture, as the Gita puts it. This and nothing less is meant by the true Hindu. To merely believe in a scripture and recite it daily and follow mechanically all the prescribed rituals in a soulless manner for worldly gains and petty benefits from the lesser gods can hardly be called Hinduism.

Though Hindu thought has accepted this too, but only as a step and a stage in our upwards progress, not as the main thing, let alone the core of its idea and vision. Wherever there is an aspiration and a seeking for truth, light, unity, peace, love, and beauty, there is Sanatana Dharma. In contrast, wherever these things are not present, resisted, or opposed actively; wherever there is darkness, obscurity, ill-will, quarrel, division, and ugliness of thought, deed, and feelings; wherever there is falsehood in speech and actions, a selfish shrinking from truth and light, there we can say is adharma. Adharma is indeed all that resists the human advance towards light, beauty, truth, unity, peace, and love. Adharma is all that fosters division, hatred, acrimony, lie, and bitterness. Adharma is wherever life is given to lust, ambition, anger, and lived for the sole fulfilment of one’s gigantic desires. However, recognizing the variety of human beings as well as the stages of our ascension towards the divine reality, Sanatana Dharma catered to this need by being plastic to the different evolutionary requirements, both individual and collective, using meaningful terms such as swadharma (an individual’s law of being that helps him evolve), yugadharma (the law of collective living that changes from age to age), and apad dharma (the law of action in moments of intense crisis when the very survival of an individual or the race is in danger). It is not an absolute rule but a wide and flexible movement towards our true and eternal reality.

But this flexibility has been provided for evolutionary purposes and not in the sense of the modern individualism that believes in ‘doing what one likes’ as long as it is not illegal! Going by this temporary legal standard, one can be selfish in one’s life as long as one is within the legal framework of the country. But according to Sanatana Dharma, the only sin, if at all, is selfishness since it runs counter to the great discovery we are to make, the discovery of the one reality behind all its countless manifestations, partial and distorted expressions. To be selfish is to remain tied to a temporary small formation and therefore runs counter to the effort at great discovery. We can even go as far as to say that ultimately selfishness is the mother of all evils, a state of extreme division where the individual thinks of no one else but one’s little self. It is harmful for the person as well as for the race and creation as such. Therefore, unselfishness is a supreme virtue that is far deeper than merely being a law-abiding citizen, even if our entire motive is to selfishly amass gains by using or manipulating the legal framework for our purposes. In other words, the divine law is far more important and sacred than any human or man-made law. This is another kind of individuality if we like, one that is deeper, truer, and healthier for our collective living than the kind advocated often as ‘doing what one likes’.

The Two Divine Examples

Rama and Krishna, two avataras whom Hindus revere and invoke, have set the gold standard for living. The former created for us the template of an ideal human society where the most menial, the animal and the rakshasa type of humanity, the vulture and the bear, have each their say, their unique contribution. The law of the land had to apply equally to the monarch as well as to the labourer and washerman. True, the law is necessarily imperfect, but until it changes, it has to be applied with fairness to all. Secondly, the king himself must be nothing less than a renunciate for whom the good of his subjects stands above all. He should be ready to renounce all personal happiness, including his personal life, and even face ignominy, criticism, and ridicule, but not swerve from the path of dharma. Of course, human society has advanced further in its thoughts, and the dharma of today (yuga dharma) is not the same as the dharma of yesterday. Today, we must follow our present yuga dharma and not mechanically replicate the actions of the mighty avatara during a time when the world was menaced by the animalistic and rakshasic types of humanity.

Krishna, on the other hand, represents change. Rama came to establish the dharma of his age, which was already in vogue among the high clan of Suryavanshi Kshatriyas and others, as well as among the animalistic and asuric humanity that refused to follow these high ideals and revolted against them. But here, too, a distinction was drawn between those who were ready to follow the highest ideals of the time, represented by Sugriva and Vibhisana, and those who resisted, choosing a path that would ultimately lead to the destruction of their entire race and pose a threat to the ideals of social justice and equality. Krishna’s work was also to establish dharma, but in a very different way, through revolt and uprising against the misuse of the yuga dharma. The high values embodied by Bhisma, Drona, Karna, and others were being misused and spurned for selfish gains by the strong and mighty kings of those times. Sri Krishna broke the whole machinery and established a new yuga dharma among mankind, which is best epitomized in the Gita. He gave a more intrinsic law of life than the outer moral and ethical law. Man had to discover this inner law of truth and live by it rather than follow mechanically the prescribed and proscribed, often archaic, laws of his time. In a sense, he sowed the seeds of divine anarchy and true individualism, which is yet a thing of the future. But because of his non-conformism, his stress on the law of each being (swadharma), and his willingness to change established norms for the greater good of all (lokasangrahartha), he is more appreciated and liked by the modern mind that has come to cherish these things.

But both together complete the picture. One shows us how to respect the law of the times (dharma), while the other shows how to change the law and set a new standard for the rest. Dharma therefore is neither a blind adherence to the scriptural and religious injunctions nor is it a blind revolt against everything religious and scriptural. Truth is everywhere and must be respected wherever it is found. It does not matter whether it belongs to this or that religion, or to no religion; beliefs and non-beliefs, secular and religious perspectives are non-issues. The real and only issue in individual and collective life is dharma vis-à-vis adharma. What India can and must become is a dharma rashtra rather than a Hindu rashtra. It is in a unique position to create a society based on divine values—true spiritual values—rather than merely religious or secular ones. This means inclusiveness, but on one condition: to live by dharma, the national dharma. The rest of it, such as believing in this or that doctrine or practicing this or that ritual, is a personal business so long as it passes the crucial test of dharma. If it does not, then pressure must be put on society at large through education and internal reform to change and refine, to evolve and transform.

Dharma is a word which has an ethical and practical, a natural and philosophical and a religious and spiritual significance, and it may be used in any of these senses exclusive of the others, in a purely ethical, a purely philosophical or a purely religious sense. Ethically it means the law of righteousness, the moral rule of conduct, or in a still more outward and practical significance social and political justice, or even simply the observation of the social law.

. . .

Dharma in the Indian conception is not merely the good, the right, morality and justice, ethics; it is the whole government of all the relations of man with other beings, with Nature, with God, considered from the point of view of a divine principle working itself out in forms and laws of action, forms of the inner and the outer life, orderings of relations of every kind in the world. Dharma is both that which we hold to and that which holds together our inner and outer activities. In its primary sense it means a fundamental law of our nature which secretly conditions all our activities, and in this sense each being, type, species, individual, group has its own dharma. Secondly, there is the divine nature which has to develop and manifest in us, and in this sense dharma is the law of the inner workings by which that grows in our being. Thirdly, there is the law by which we govern our outgoing thought and action and our relations with each other so as to help best both our own growth and that of the human race towards the divine ideal.

Dharma is generally spoken of as something eternal and unchanging, and so it is in the fundamental principle, in the ideal, but in its forms it is continually changing and evolving, because man does not already possess the ideal or live in it, but aspires more or less perfectly towards it, is growing towards its knowledge and practice. And in this growth dharma is all that helps us to grow into the divine purity, largeness, light, freedom, power, strength, joy, love, good, unity, beauty, and against it stands its shadow and denial, all that resists its growth and has not undergone its law, all that has not yielded up and does not will to yield up its secret of divine values, but presents a front of perversion and contradiction, of impurity, narrowness, bondage, darkness, weakness, vileness, discord and suffering and division, and the hideous and the crude, all that man has to leave behind in his progress. This is the adharma, not dharma, which strives with and seeks to overcome the dharma, to draw backward and downward, the reactionary force which makes for evil, ignorance and darkness. Between the two there is perpetual battle and struggle, oscillation of victory and defeat in which sometimes the upward and sometimes the downward forces prevail. (CWSA 19:169, 172–73)

The Universal Nature of Dharma and Hindu Nationalism

Two such examples in two different groupings of humanity are the caste system that the time spirit has broken and the triple talaq/halala that is inconsistent with any right-thinking progressive society. Equally so, among secular apologists, we can find practices such as deliberate appeasement of one group over another and a tendency to divide along religious and caste lines. So too, with the socialists we see endorsing injustice in the name of justice, not giving due credence to the evolving human potential, and levelling everyone and everything with the flat equality of death. Or with the communists, we witness the rabid spread of the doctrine of violence and hate. Each group has its own shibboleths, each with its own fault lines. Of course, there are many common and important forms of adharma, such as bribery, corruption, political killings, murders, and rapes, and those who shelter such elements, miserable treatment of women and girls, and similar issues. These are crucial problems that have brought the group-life of India to a critical stage. Weeding out these issues is the real need of the hour, regardless of the means or which party is involved.

But along with this negative side of the work, it is equally important to instil the sense of a living nation, which is much more than a dead piece of land. In Sanatana Dharma, everything is living and conscious since the divine dwells in everything. The land is not just a piece of matter; it is Bhoodevi. She shelters and fosters us and must be respected. The rivers, too, are living and divine realities that should be cared for. Likewise, the wind and fire (forms of energy) are each important and conscious elements that have gone into the warp and woof of creation and must be fostered and nurtured. When we respect these elements inwardly and in their subtle forms, then we grow into manhood; when we foster and care for them outwardly, then we grow into a nation. These are the common and shared values that need to be fostered in the Indian society that claims to base itself on Sanatana dharma. This would be a true Hindu rashtra or Ramarajya, not the one propagated by the great and mighty Hindu and Sikh warriors of the past. Sri Aurobindo cautions us:

Hindu nationalism had a meaning in the times of Shivaji and Ramdas, when the object of national revival was to overthrow a Mahomedan domination which, once tending to Indian unity and toleration, had become oppressive and disruptive. It was possible because India was then a world to itself and the existence of two geographical units entirely Hindu, Maharashtra and Rajputana, provided it with a basis. It was necessary because the misuse of their domination by the Mahomedan element was fatal to India’s future and had to be punished and corrected by the resurgence and domination of the Hindu. And because it was possible and necessary, it came into being. But under modern conditions India can only exist as a whole. A nation depends for its existence on geographical separateness and geographical compactness, on having a distinct and separate country. The existence of this geographical separateness is sure in the end to bear down all differences of race, language, religion, history. It has done so in Great Britain, in Switzerland, in Germany. It will do so in India. But geographical compactness is also necessary. In other words, the desh or country must be so compact that mutual communication and the organisation of a central government becomes easy or, at least, not prohibitively difficult. The absence of such compactness is the reason why great Empires are sure in the end to fall to pieces; they cannot get the support of that immortal and indestructible national self which can alone ensure permanence. This difficulty stands in the way of British Imperial Federation and is so great that any temporary success of that specious aspiration will surely result in the speedy disruption of the Empire. In addition, there must be a uniting force strong enough to take advantage of the geographical compactness and separateness,—either a wise and skillfully organised government with a persistent tradition of beneficence, impartiality and oneness with the nation, or else a living national sense insisting on its separate inviolability and self-realisation.

. . .

But the country, the swadesh, which must be the base and fundament of our nationality, is India, a country where Mahomedan and Hindu live intermingled and side by side. What geographical base can a Hindu nationality possess? Maharashtra and Rajasthan are no longer separate geographical units but merely provincial divisions of a single country. The very first requisite of a Hindu nationalism is wanting. The Mahomedans base their separateness and their refusal to regard themselves as Indians first and Mahomedans afterwards on the existence of great Mahomedan nations to which they feel themselves more akin, in spite of our common birth and blood, than to us. Hindus have no such resource. For good or evil, they are bound to the soil and to the soil alone. They cannot deny their Mother, neither can they mutilate her. Our ideal therefore is an Indian Nationalism, largely Hindu in its spirit and traditions, because the Hindu made the land and the people and persists, by the greatness of his past, his civilisation and his culture and his invincible virility, in holding it, but wide enough also to include the Moslem and his culture and traditions and absorb them into itself. It is possible that the Mahomedan may not recognise the inevitable future and may prefer to throw himself into the opposite scale. If so, the Hindu, with what little Mahomedan help he may get, must win Swaraj both for himself and the Mahomedan in spite of that resistance. There is a sufficient force and manhood in us to do a greater and more difficult task than that, but we lack unity, brotherhood, intensity of single action among ourselves. (CWSA 08: 304–06)

The Complete Vision of the Mother

India was unfortunately divided along religious lines because our leaders had neither the vision nor the courage, or perhaps were too driven by self-interest to think of the nation’s good. But to unite India, we need a vision greater than the religious. This vision of India as a goddess, a deity, an aspect of the divine existed in the past but has been lost over time. We must reclaim this vision, not just in thought and speech, but in vision and action. When it is said that India is our mother, we are not just referring to a common soil, which of course is there as a base, but much more to a common soul. It is this soul of India that we must discover or rather recover for it is the soul that builds the body and not the body that builds the soul. The soul of a nation, just as the soul of an individual, is above our religious, linguistic, and even geographical identities. It is the aspiration rooted in the soil that represents the cry of the soul towards higher things. In this cry, we find figures like Shivaji and Guru Gobind Singh, who, though they ruled over different domains, share a common spirit. It is in this cry of the soul that we differ from the Englishmen, the Germans, and the Arabs. We must discover this cry within us and then fill the nation with its rhythm through an inner vision, silent prayer, and powerful action. Serving in any province or state, we must know that it is Mother India we serve and not just a limited geographical boundary determined falsely by language and religion. Sri Aurobindo gives us this vision of Mother India.

Our chief obstacle, however, is an absence of vision of the country as our Mother. For the most part, our politicians have been incapable of a close and full vision of the Mother. Ranjit Singh or Guru Gobind Singh had seen only the Mother of the Land of the Five Rivers instead of Mother India; Shivaji or Baji Rao had seen a Mother of the Hindus instead of Mother India. The other Maharashtrian statesmen had seen only a Mother for the Maharashtrians. At the time of the Partition we ourselves had been blessed with a vision of Mother Bengal, that was a vision of unity, hence the future unity and progress of Bengal is assured. But the unified image of Mother India is yet to be realised. In the Congress, the Mother India that we hymned, adored and worshipped was a figure of fancy, a companion and obliging maid of the British Raj, an undivine illusion in occidental outfit. She was indeed not our Mother. All the same, hid in a deep or vague murkiness our true Mother drew our heart and soul. The day we see Her true indivisible image, struck by Her beauty and grace, we shall eagerly lay down our lives in Her service. Then this obstacle will be gone, and India’s unity, freedom and progress be easier to achieve. The barrier of language will no longer divide. Accepting Hindi as a link language but with due regard for one’s own regional language, we shall get rid of the disability. We shall succeed in finding a true solution of the Hindu-Muslim conflict. For want of a vision of the country as the Mother, the urge to do away with these obstacles has not been strongly felt. That is why the means has not been found and the conflict been growing worse. What is required is an image of the country, true and indivisible. But if, under the illusion of that true vision, we still cherish only the Mother of the Hindus or Hindu nationalism we shall fall for the old error and deprive ourselves of the full flowering of Nationalism itself. (CWSA 9: 225–26)

True, it was necessary at that time when Arabs and Britishers descended upon India as locusts, catching us by surprise with their aggressive conversions. Their attempts at violent conversion was not merely religious; they were also political ploys aimed at winning over the local population (with a majority of Hindus) by creating a sub-religious identity first and then expanding it to create a pan-religious identity that would transcend the nation boundaries, ultimately to decimate one nation and install another king or queen. Employing fear and ruse, as well as lure and reward, they succeeded and continue to play the same game, ensnaring our Christian and Muslim brothers in this web of falsehood carefully woven around their beliefs. Of course, not all are the same; many are not. But there is a subtle and even not-so-subtle effort to change the demographics, which needs to be checked, possibly by enacting anti-conversion laws but even more importantly by removing all government-sponsored appeasement of communities for vote banks and giving all a fair and equal chance before the law and equal opportunity for progress. But for this it is necessary to remove fear and suspicion within communities and find ways and means for mutual interactions and interchanges, even mutual interdependence due to common issues, in other words points of common engagement and meeting grounds rather than points of divergence, which are bound to be there in any healthy cosmopolitan society. It is also important to educate and uplift the different communities about the deeper truths of Sanatana Dharma, which is the original way of life that India has always deeply revered, if not always followed in letter and spirit. Finally, it is important to look upon the country no more as a country of the Hindus or the Muslims but as a common mother to all, Mother India, who allows us to grow and prosper each in his own unique way, provided he does not become a menace to others.

Chapter 2
The Paradox Called India

It would be a tragic irony of fate if India were to throw away her spiritual heritage at the very moment when in the rest of the world there is more and more a turning towards her for spiritual help and a saving Light. This must not and will surely not happen, but it cannot be said that the danger is not there. (CWSA 36:504)

Times of Transition

These are times of transition when we are moving from one age to another or, to put it more succinctly, from the age of Kali to the age of satya. The gift of Kali was man’s discovery of the secrets of our material existence. It was an age when all else was veiled as if by a thick iron curtain except our physical selves. As a deft surgeon working on one part of our body covers up the rest with a thick, clean sheet so that his vision and mind are not distracted, so did the operations of Kali drape us with a thick sheet of ignorance so that nothing was visible to us except our physical bodies. Our mind was anesthetized or rather hypnotized into believing that there was nothing else save our material universe and its forces, and man’s sole business was to survive and protect himself physically against the threat of other forms of physical life, and of course by physical means. But as we walk into the new cycle where a greater truth dawns upon man, we wake up slowly from our swoon to a new light and with it to new seekings and a renewed labour. Therefore, we have today very clearly two seemingly opposite and conflicting tendencies driving man, or rather pulling him in apparently different directions, though albeit towards the same end of a grand synthesis of human existence itself. These two tendencies can be broadly considered, for want of a better term, the material and the spiritual.

The material pull and attraction for physical betterment, comfort, etc. is the remnant of our immediate past. It is the strong hold of Kali that roots our consciousness in the very physical essence of things. On the one side, this rooting into the physical has grounded us well into the body, preventing an easy exit out of the physical universe. It tests and retests everything on the crucible of the physical, demonstrating its power to change the physical world. At the same time, it directs our gaze towards earthly and terrestrial aims, providing a strong foothold in material life. To make its task perfect and easier, in this age of Kali that we leave behind us, a veil is put upon the mother of wisdom, Mother India, so that the world is not blinded by her intense light and leaving the work upon earth too soon and incomplete vanish into some beyond of nirvana and bliss. But the side-effect of this prolonged engagement with matter is that we have been led into a state of hypnosis that fails to see or recognize anything but matter and judges everything by material appearances alone. On the other hand, we are slowly being pulled out of our slumber with new openings, discoveries, and powers that are rising from matter’s sleep. There is an increasing interest worldwide in the powers of life, as is evident in the emergent systems of alternative energy healing systems such as reiki, as well as techniques related to the powers of the mind, such as biofeedback, guided imagery, creative visualization, mind–body medicine, and psychoneuroimmunology, all coming to the forefront of human play. The authentic spiritual powers are still waiting in the dusk of transition, while their mental and vital dupes are being sold in marts of an imitative spirituality. That India has a great role to play in this new emergence is beyond question, as it has traditionally been the guardian of the keys to the doors of the spirit. Whether India will take the definitive lead in this matter—instead of being continuously hypnotized with the physical and vital aspects of existence that Kali magnified—remains an unanswered question. Will it dehypnotize itself and the world, showing once more the ways of the spirit, or will it throw away this golden opportunity and follow the rest of the world into a progressive sinking into the oblivion of the atomic void?

When we look at the surface, the appearances are no doubt dismal. What problem in the world has not been given more than its fair share of India’s destiny? Its very rebirth in modern times has been a fractured one. And then the two important aspects that are necessary for a nation’s outer growth, wealth and power, have been usurped by the asura in man. Cutting across party lines, the managers of the nation stand united in corruption and legalized loot. Of deception, they have made a decent profession, and falsehood lurks in every corridor of the high and mighty where decisions of crucial importance are being taken. The forces of division still continue to divide us along lines of language, caste, religion, and all the rest and are even craftily hidden under the cover of acceptable names such as social justice, equality, secularism, tradition, and all the rest that men use as a shield to hide their evil intentions. This, combined with the unconscious masses driven blindly by the whip of fear and passion, while the rest loathing with greed and given to crudity in every form, makes an ugly sight to watch. It is as if the devil had adopted its most diabolic strategy to subvert the truth, which is to join its bandwagon as a helper and loot it on the way rather than openly oppose it.

Not to speak of poverty and population and a host of illnesses and natural disasters. It is as if the spirit of time had collected the bundle of unsolved problems of the human race since man’s quest and struggle began beneath the stars. It is as if the great and ancient adversary force met the ‘burdened great’ to test its strength to suffer and to save. It is as if the gods sanctioned the paradox that the bringer of light must be thrust into the densest darkness to heal the abyss and the valleys of death with the deathless light and the flowers of an unfailing courage and faith. It is as if the child of an adverse fate questioned the great mother to reveal her wisdom to the world not just theoretically but practically. It is as if the body and mind of the mighty nation called India had become the field of the world’s inner conflicts and its deepest afflictions, for so alone could a cure be found.

Looking Behind Appearances

But these are appearances, and one can see behind them the deeper forces that work through contraries to hasten the ultimate fulfilment. It is indeed a distortion of the work of these deeper forces, as their action and push rise to the surface and are mistranslated by our outer mind. The forces of destruction work in the depths to remove the accretions of the past and its errors and conditioning and forms that have become lifeless and empty, and we see on the surface wanton rage, destruction, rebel, revolt, disbelief, and cynicism, a loss of faith in the sacred sense of things. The forces of preservation work in the depths to keep safe the essential spirit and deep foundations of truth on which India has to be rebuilt, and we see on the surface a blind clinging to traditions and conventions and religious formulas of old that have become a lifeless ritual. The forces of creation work in the depths to release new powers for growth and progress, and we see on the surface the search for novelty and attraction for fashion and new age experimentations in every sphere of life and action.

It is indeed a veritable yoga of the nation going on. But, in India, it has taken on a very different hue and dimension. For, to begin with, India’s great and glorious past is both an advantage and a disadvantage. It is an advantage because the inner being of India is largely prepared to undertake the hardships that one needs to take for a high and difficult path. It has, so to speak, the necessary inner qualities such as trust, faith in the divine, devotion, surrender, and an innate ability to sense and feel spiritual things. It has a natural spiritual bent, so to speak. But the disadvantage is that over the past few centuries, India has been following a very different form of yoga. It had engaged itself in a very world-negating spiritual endeavour, and that has somehow seeped very deep into the Indian psyche. It has neglected the outer life in a terrible way, and therefore it finds itself miserable and almost helpless when dealing with the outer life and mundane problems of existence. It has little hold over matter, and the impulse of life struggles to flow through the earth, enriching its floors and cutting its way through mire and stone. Its streams turn upwards or, in reaction, downwards. Yet this is not a permanent disadvantage, as it is not a native Indian temperament but rather an encrustation—something superimposed upon it or perhaps deliberately accepted as a defence against the excess influence of the age of Kali. The native Indian temperament is, however, as attached to earth as anywhere else. And that is what creates an imbalance in the Indian temperament. The Indian suffers greater conflict than any other because it experiences both the spiritual hunger and the material hunger much more intensely. He feels his sorrows, passions, emotions, and impulses much more intensely. This in itself would not be so much of a problem, but the difficulty is that the Indian, whatever and wherever he may be, also feels the spiritual impulse much more acutely and strongly in him. But his mind, unable to integrate these diverse elements, finds itself in a quandary. He finds it difficult to focus fully either on the material or on the spiritual aspect of life. The result is that an average Indian becomes a hypocrite, adopting two standards, one for his private life and another for his public posture.

The Indian Experiment

The other difficulty is that the Indian experiment has largely been a collective one. The importance given to collective life and its lesser child social life is much greater than that given to an individual. Everything here has been organized into groups, beginning from family lineages to religious sects. And we have entered an age of individualism when each one must find his own truth. This kind of individualism is not natural to the Indian temperament. And yet, the sad truth is that what India most lacks in its outer life is a sense of collective discipline. This paradox has been created partly because the sense of a national identity has not yet fully dawned upon the Indian mind, which is so used to living in smaller groups such as clans, castes, and religious groups. But the deeper reason for this paradox is again the neglect of physical life. For when it comes to psychological aspects, the Indian can be fairly disciplined and even austere in his approach, but when it comes to the physical, he is most neglectful and wasteful. Therefore, contact with the Western spirit and even its strong influence is perhaps necessary for the moment and is part of nature’s plan that is going to benefit both.

The Indian diaspora migrating to the West is infusing the Indian spirit and awakening the souls of nations. While coming in contact with the West, it is learning some lessons in material life and organizing outer existence, as well as something of the value of an individual. This is an important preparation for all since we are fast entering an age when spirituality will involve the entire earth, and it will by its nature integrate the material life and outer existence. For this very reason, it is important for nations across the world to keep a living contact and a healthy interchange with India, as it is by such contact that the spiritual impulse can awaken in other parts of the world. This is so evident when we travel around the globe that one can easily say without any exaggeration that the spiritual gift of India to the world has already begun. And in return for this priceless gift, the soul of India is learning to accommodate matter and deal with physical things.

But there is yet another reason for the dichotomy between India’s inner being and its outer life. Because of its rich diversity and immense complexity and its past experience in spirituality as well as in organizing collective life on a spiritual basis, India is especially suitable to be the priest of the sacrifice in this new yoga of transformation that is being given to the world. But precisely for this reason, the normal ordinary means of organizing national life are unlikely to succeed here. If insisted upon by short-sighted politicians, then the deeper possibility of India and, with it, of the world may well get frustrated and stifled. The ordinary mental and moral methods, the normal means of regulating and perfecting outer life through an increasing mechanization, law, and governmental machinery would not work here. The inner being of this nation is far too complex for any overly simplistic solution, as some impatient well-wishers would suggest. Its solutions for life’s problems cannot come from the mind or from the level of the thinker, but from the very fount of life, from deeper feelings, and from the soul of the nation. The cut-and-dried formulas of a rational system do not work because something higher than reason and more durable than the mind must be found, and that is not easy. Yet India can find it, and if India cannot, then perhaps no nation in the world can. However, this need not be the case; we are already seeing the first beginnings. The offshoots of Indian spirituality are beginning to find worldwide application in the fields of management, health, science, art forms, mathematics, etc. In the field of education, there is an increasing recognition to touch some deeper core of the child. Law, administration, politics, and business, though, are yet far from yielding.

We may well close by raising the hope that India has been the land of contradictions and India will be the land of a divine reconciliation and resolution of all the problems that have vexed humanity so far.

The Yoga of a Nation

What India needs most is not just national reconstruction but a national yoga. For along what lines are we going to construct a new India if we have not the vision to reconstruct—along the lines of Western polity and science that revels in well-polished external surfaces and a crafty manipulation of outward things while the inner being remains hollow, lacklustre, struggles, and suffers since stifled by appearances? Or along the lines of our own native genius that built such a mighty nation once by the ancient power of yoga that it has resisted millenniums of shocks, invasions, subjugation, and calamities. True, its centuries of struggle, especially in the past few hundred years, have made it weary and tired. Its resistance against foreign invasions and influences has hardened into a fixed tradition, limiting its fluid adaptability to evolutionary forces. But these are momentary lapses and temporary setbacks. The Indian genius will bounce back, rediscovering the splendours of the spirit and restoring the true glory of life by connecting it to its divine origin. That is India’s unique, difficult, and dangerous task; fulfiling it will enable the nation to achieve its highest destiny. If it fails, however, it will frustrate itself and frustrate the world in its attempt to create a new world order.

The national yoga of India indeed started in 1905, when the forces of division goaded the cry of Bande Mataram to resonate through India’s heart. It was an invocation not only to the soul of India but also to the world mother, Shakti of the supreme, to come and manifest in the land of India, liberating it from error, falsehood, and division; awakening it out of its tamas and darkness in which it had sunk deeply. This was and still is the initiating mantra of this nation. Its aspiration—poorna swaraj, a perfect self-conquest, self-mastery, self-rule; its path—satyameva jayate, victory to the truth, a constant choice of the growing truth over the falsehoods of our mental, vital, and physical nature. The world mother did arrive in India in her physical embodiment, but few recognized her. Her coming from the Western world towards the East was itself a clear indication that while the drama of the previous millennium, the age of rational enlightenment, was played out with Europe as its centre, the next act of her creative play would be played out in the East with India as the main stage. The path of truth, satya pantha, did open up, and the boon of poorna swaraj brought close to our trembling hands, but our limbs were too weak to receive it. India responded to the descending light of truth first with a flurry of rajasic activity, engaging in acts of petty violence often driven by blind sentimental patriotic fervour. As was inevitable, this force soon spent itself, and the nation lapsed back into tamoguna again, with only a few elements embodying the sattwic impulse and the spirit of authentic sacrifice carrying the flag further. That freedom came was a boon and a grace—indeed, it was the result of a silent tapasya of Sri Aurobindo, who initiated the nation and awakened its aspiration. But as happens, the sattwic and rajasic elements took the credit and went on to glorify their own greatness, refusing to see the hand of the eternal, refusing to listen to the voice of the prophet of life divine and the true progenitor of Indian nationalism. The story of Pandavas believing themselves to be the cause of the victory and the story of the gods in the Kenā Upanishad believing that theirs is the victory were repeated once again. And once again, the eternal had to break our sattwic and rajasic egoism so that, kneaded as dough by the divine hands, we may become supple and pliant to the light that has dawned and is already active upon earth.

A long period of preparation must now intervene, during which the Pandavas are repeatedly exiled from the kingdom while the Kauravas loot the nation and enjoy the spoils. Yet this too is grace, for when we refuse to wake up to the call of the flute and rush to join the dance of Krishna, then we need to hear the world-shaking, world-destroying laughter of Kali. For the purification must be as thorough as the crown of victory we seek. Therefore, we see even the strong and the mighty broken again, like helpless reeds, their dreams slain and buried beneath their eyelids. For these are dreams of men who wish to see in India only a show of military strength, political power, and the rupee swaying the world market in a swoon of luxury and comfort. But wherefore is her greatness born only for these perishable gifts? These boons of the vital gods, creating an imitation of heaven on earth and luring us with false glimmers towards a blinding abyss, are not meant for India. They are for lesser hearts, for nerves that tire too soon, and for minds that are entrapped in the hedge of the senses and its charmed fragrances. India has asked for more, and therefore India must meet with a much greater challenge. For it is a subtle law of life that the difficulties we meet are in proportion to our capacities and the scope of our destiny. India has lived through the ages to deliver a greater light to the world; therefore, the darkness it must slay must be greater, and the abyss it must fill with light and heal must be deeper. For this too is a subtle law of life that the higher the prize we demand, the greater must be our endurance and the obstacles to conquer. India lives to deliver not only to itself but also to the world; therefore, India must be riddled with all the problems and must become symbolic of all the representative difficulties of the world. For this too is a subtle law of our growth that the wider we grow in our consciousness, the more our own being takes on a universal character, both in terms of possibilities and difficulties. The little pool of clear reflecting water with a garden around it may be an idler’s dream to rest and relax, but mighty spirits born to tame the sea must be prepared to meet the whales and the sharks, to rise with the billowing waves and fall into the blue deeps till one day they make the storms their companions and delight in the strong piercing gaze of the sun god and the tossing manes of the wind gods. That which lesser hearts dread and fear, the strong must meet, conquer, and bear.

This rather long period of preparatory purification is a threefold process. First, the nation must confront its unique as well as universal problems. It must come face to face and acknowledge not only problems of the present moment but those buried deep into its own and the earth’s subconscient memory. Next, it must try the various physical, vital, and mental ways to solve them and, needless to add, fail. Finally, as a result of the growing pressure within and outside, it must perforce seek its own true identity and, in the process, end up finding its national soul. The first part of this process is nearly over, and the next is going on, even as we are beginning to have the first few glimpses of the third. It is interesting to note that the question of national identity is being raised before the Indian nation through various means and circumstances. And during the first anniversary of India’s spiritual new birth, that is, the year 2005 (the anniversary of Bande Mataram), it was made clear that the issue of our national identity is far from being settled. True, our impatient hearts may find this long period of preparation painful, and indeed, it is long compared to the human lifespan. But truth cannot be seen by impatient eyes—tamatmastham yenu pasyanti dheera—nor felt by nerves that succumb under duress and shatter under the pressure of adverse circumstances. And what are fifty years, or even a 100 and 500 years, but a reflection of its growth from childhood into adolescence and then into youth. Those who serve India’s interests best are those who can grow vast, looking beyond immediate gains to the deeper forces at work and the light that is slowly but steadily emerging from its depths.

National Awakening and National Renaissance

We must therefore understand that the task of reconstructing India is not an easy one, and there are no quick-fix solutions, as our childish minds may rush to suggest. Firstly, India is not a new nation. It had many lives, and as happens with souls that have lived many lives, the Indian temperament has become exceedingly complex. This happens because several layers of states of consciousness and memories pile up in its subconscient and subliminal layers with complex knots of karmic energies that need to be disentangled, worked out, and each discover their own truth, reintegrated with the whole in the light of a greater truth. This is no easy task even for an individual, let alone a nation. Unlike other nations, the Indian psyche is very complex, existing at many levels at the same time. It is even reflected in its physical components. The Space Age mingles here with the Stone Age; the jet aircraft and the bullock cart exist in the same city, and the Vedas are recited in the same quarters as where the complex atomic problems are being tackled in the light of the discoveries of modern physics. Deep inside, India is inherently spiritual, possessing an innate intelligence that is subtle and plastic.

However, as a result of its recent past experiences, it has also developed a rule book mind and a school master mentality. Such a method cannot work with India; its nature is too complex to accept it. The impersonal law and the dictates of a faceless government are often too unimaginative for the Indian mind, which has populated its inner worlds with gods and demons. It is much more likely to observe a religious authority, obey the command of a spiritual master, or even make extraordinary sacrifices in moments of emotional and religious fervour. Alternatively, it may logically analyse a situation to determine what it should do or should not do, rather than simply following a rule because a government has made it legal. This applies to everything like observing traffic rules to filing income tax returns honestly. The sense of government, the idea of legal binding, and political unity of the kind practiced in the world are difficult to take root here. The Indian will readily unite for sentimental, religious, cultural, and social reasons rather than for the sake of law and administration for its own sake. He acts either because he is moved by some vital interest, deep emotion, logical thought, or else a soul motivation. In either case, as is true for most complex beings, he must find his locus standi inside.

This complexity of the Indian temperament creates another difficulty. His being is like a melting pot of many things—sacred and profane. He is moved by passion, struck by emotions, haunted by logicizing and philosophizing reason, attracted by vital charm, yet long periods of asceticism create in him a poor hold on outer life. He is drawn to soul depths yet holds parleys with the demons at night. The gods and the djinns both visit him in his dreams, and therefore the Indian often experiences more internal conflict and becomes less focused, not because of any deficiency of concentration but rather because he has too many internal things to handle, which prevent him from being one-pointed. He has many simultaneous goals that are often self-contradictory: making a quick and huge buck, solving family problems and emotional issues, satisfying social expectations, enjoying a quiet time with friends, as well as spending time in isolated contemplation on cosmic problems that may not concern him at all. He loses a lot of creative energy in internal conflicts and therefore takes a long time to succeed outwardly in anything. But once he has worked out a path through the complex maze of his inner nature, his victory is much more complete, stable, and enduring. And he arrives at this stability and victory by finding his spiritual reference point. The light of Buddha, the word of Krishna, the call of Vivekananda, the cry of the Vedas, the myths and legends of the Puranic literature, the fascination of Sanskrit, and many such high achievements have not only endured but continue to grow and inspire mankind.

The greatest of Indian empires were built and governed in a spiritual mood; its greatest works of art, science, polity, and law were inspired by its spiritual genius. Even as many empires fell and vanished, great traditions collapsed or are on their decline, and in the passing, the Indian shine still endures, and its light, though covered with the dust of centuries, still attracts and illuminates. By his very nature and temperament, the Indian lives in large spaces of time. He is more subjective, imaginative, and personal than objective, concretely real, and impersonal. Therefore, he lacks the killer instinct, though not, for that matter, the survival instinct. In fact, the latter is more developed; the adaptability to foreign atmospheres is much greater, as is the ability to take defeat as a passage rather than a permanent failure—this resilience factor is well-developed. On the one hand, it snatches away from him the do-or-die mentality and the sense of urgency and expediency, or for that matter a thing as simple as punctuality. But in return, it arms him with an endurance and forbearing perseverance that is useful in the long run. The yoga of the Indian nation must carve its way through this uniqueness of the Indian temperament; it cannot be otherwise.

The Stamp of Illusionism

There are, however, two more difficulties that the national soul must tackle, which are like the obverse and reverse side of a single problem before it can be fit for national yoga. It comes from its more recent past of a couple of thousand years, whence India lost the original Vedas in its heart and replaced it with a dubious script of other-worldly salvation, with moksha, mukti, and nirvana as the primary goals, leading to an abrupt closure on the creative delight of god. This has led to a loss of hold over physical reality and the world of concrete matter. But almost as a counterbalancing force, centuries of asceticism have suddenly led to a return of the suppressed elements and impulses with a vengeance. It is necessary for India to come to grips with these things. When god wants us to make lasting progress, he brings us face-to-face with that which must be truly conquered and not simply escaped from, bypassed, or suppressed. This we see happening today. The quarrel of the castes, the disputes of sects, the dogmas of religion, the hidden attraction to the lower vital impulses, and the roots of division, falsehood, and unconsciousness buried deep into the subconscious parts are suddenly emerging before the nation’s waking mind and taking the form of one problem or the other. These problems are not unique to India, but their intensity is felt most acutely here. For the role of India is to be the spiritual guru of the world, and to befit this role as a true spiritual leader, it must carry upon its shoulders not only its own but the cross of the world. The unsolved or partially or temporarily solved problems do not vanish with our lifetime. They change forms and appearances; the ghosts of our buried and bygone selves raise their heads again in the present to pull us back. Old ideas return, slain pasts survive, and forgotten memories resurface and prolong the drama and adventure of life upon earth. This is as true of an individual as for a nation. And there is no way but to go through it, with patience and perseverance, with courage, faith, and hope in our hearts, and if possible, to strive and ask for the vision that can pierce through the clouds and see behind appearances.

Indeed, the entire line of our national yoga has not only been laid down but is also being conducted from behind the scenes by Sri Aurobindo. He has not only foreseen the India’s destiny but has also kept it safe within the subtle atmosphere of the earth. Sri Aurobindo laid the foundations of national yoga by awakening the national soul from its torpor and initiating it into the yoga of the new world. He brought back to its surface consciousness the memory of its past spiritual efforts, recovered the lost Vedas in their full and original glory and splendour, vedanudharte, connected them through the unbroken thread of spiritual continuity down the ages of the Upanishads, the Gita, Tantrās, and the Purānas, the lineage of the great rishis and avataras (of which he is surely one), and finally linked it to our very own modern times!! By doing this, he was not only delivering the fully formed psychic being of India but also connecting it once again with the life and body of the nation. Secondly, he laid the broad lines for reshaping the inner being of India along the lines of its swadharma so that India can find its true place and become a conscious instrument of the divine design in this universe. The inner being of a nation is represented by its culture, its highest and noblest thoughts, feelings, and aspirations, and its output in terms of art, literature, and media. And finally, it has an outer body, and this too has been formed and kept safe in the mother’s divine hands as the spiritual map of united India. And having inwardly attempted and achieved all for us, Sri Aurobindo is preparing us to deserve these boons. And as is characteristic of Sri , he is leading us from within outwards, handling and manipulating the play of forces in such a way that we are compelled to make a choice. There is a constant, subtle pressure upon India that prevents it from resting. A power is acting upon it from the heights.

New Lamps for the Old

Yes, we need new lamps. What is meant by this is not discarding the old truths but to give them a new form. The spirit is eternal, but to live and progress forever, it must take a new body. Of late, an excess of other-worldliness took over the mind of India. This is not the spirit of India, which believed, in the language of the Vedas, to make earth and heaven equal and one. We have to come out of the search for an individual nirvana and practice yoga no more for ourselves alone but for god in the country, for god in the world, and for god in creation and all its creatures. We come to the crucial issue—can we and how are we to participate in this national yoga to facilitate the speedy and smooth realization of Sri Aurobindo’s dream of a new India? For one thing is sure: doubt and distrust do not help in the least. Nor does cynicism, complaining, and grumbling help. As in individual yoga, these things add to the pool of negative energies just as faith, trust, and hope help to increase the pool of positive forces. We must also be clear that since India is meant to express the ‘psychic law’, therefore other methods are not going to work much except as a temporary stopgap measure.

The old methods are fast losing their validity worldwide. Punishment and fear, for example, are becoming counter-productive in holding down anything for long. The human consciousness has certainly moved beyond that. Above all, one must not hope and expect for too much from the government machinery. It is doubtful that the nation will transform with a change in political parties. What is much more likely is that politics and the parties will be forced to change because of an uprising in the national consciousness. And things are fast reaching a boiling point when a little ferment at an opportune moment may precipitate a chain reaction of the kind we never expected. Indeed, the sense of the unexpected is clearly shaping the world much more than the planned execution of calculated ideas. This is another sign that the divine is behind this play and is forcing the change upon us by the power of crashing circumstances. Politics will perhaps be the last thing to change, more out of compulsion than choice. The major effort of national regeneration should therefore be directed towards this spiritual awakening, and for this the most powerful tool is not politics but education. That is where the stress of the nation should be. That is also the instrument through which the time-spirit is working most swiftly. Instead of changing old-fashioned politicians and old-fashioned parents, it is changing the children! And they are changing very fast. Can we imagine a child born today or after another ten years carrying such a religious or regional identity as a generation before us did? Even their national identity will be more fluid and plastic, something not sentimental and political but temperamental. Already the first signs are appearing, and the new generation is unlikely to carry the vendetta, the unfinished agenda of hatred and revenge beyond the history books, except perhaps in a few pockets of strong resistance. What we need is not the repair of the old lamps but to replace new lamps for the old ones.

Chapter 3
Historians, Cleanse Thyself:
Treading the Sacred Space in the Indian Context

There are two kinds of responses that human beings have to what they perceive as great and beyond their limited comprehension. The first response is that of awe and worship, reverence and devotion—an effort and attempt to reach out to that which exceeds oneself. The second response is one of fear and suspicion, doubt and denigration—an effort to pull down and reduce the vast to fit into one’s own idea of smallness. If this is true of those who have exceeded beyond the bounds of our ordinary humanity, how much more will it be true of those whom we in India regard as special representatives of the very highest, the guru or the spiritual master and the avatara or the divine incarnate. It is true that the first response may err by exaggerating qualities, adding attributes that the devout or the zealot believes would add to the beauty and grandeur of the greatness they envision. This is like the devotee who likes to dress his deity in the most beautiful attire. He does not do it because he feels something is missing or lacking in the object of his devotion and worship. He does it rather as a spontaneous gesture of love that makes us ‘see’ what the sceptic and ‘analytical’ mind easily misses—the being behind the figure of humanity. Through this act of worship, the adorer turns the outer form and body into an image and a symbol of some deeper truth that he feels intuitively stirring in his soul depths. These deeper truths may or may not be apparent on the surface of the human persona he loves. Even it is possible that the loved and the revered itself may not be aware of this deeper depth within, yet by the force and power of his love, the devotee is able to enter and penetrate into the secret heart of his adored one. Diving deep into that heart, he is able to fathom and discover secrets that the surface mind can never know and the critical intellect can never understand.

In the mystic traditions it is said, and rightly so, that the ideal devotee should be able to see the very highest, the Sacchiddananda Brahman in the object of his devotion, whether it be a human master or the divine incarnate, a chosen deity or a figure from the past no more visible to our outer human eye. The devotee is thus able to turn this image of a human persona into a powerful and intimate living divine reality, through which one can enter into a union and communion. This ‘divine reality’ and the mystic union is not an act of imagination or fantasy, as the surface mind may rush to conclude. It is simply an opening of some inner door of experience denied to the critical intellect, wherein the heart in us seizes the heart of the transcendent mystery. What the limited senses and the mind bound by them miss—the subtle truth and deeper reality—is grasped and enjoyed by the devotee. Viewed this way, a purely intellectual standpoint is narrow and surface-oriented, an inadequate instrument for exploring the truth of a spiritual persona. In contrast, the devotee’s account is wider, encompassing the heart’s deeper intuition and inner seeing alongside the head’s. It includes the subjective as well as the objective side of the one reality, and both are necessary to the completeness of each other. The intellectual who has an inner schism between his head and the heart sees only the sense-objective while disregarding all other accounts, which are termed by the intellectual, shut in his wasteland of barren ideas, mere imagination, and discredits it. But is it really so?

The Weaving of Many Layered Reality

We can take an example: What is the image of Krishna that comes out through the pages of the Bhagavad Gita—an image of beauty and strength, of the charm of love and the solemnity of wisdom, and many more qualities combined in a single form. It is an image that one instantly falls in love with. The rational-analytical mind would call the many stories of the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana a mere myth. But the seers and mystics who had transcended the barriers of the rational mind knew better. Through the story of Rama and Krishna, they brought down the truths of a higher plane and of much deeper significance into the little plot of our earthly life. The proof of their success lies in the fact that these stories have enchanted us and endured for so long. They have inspired the human psyche to seek for and find its own higher self imaged in the stories. Krishna and Rama are not just legendary figures of the past but also realities of the future. Concealed in the human persona, they represent man’s own greater possibility—of an ideal ethic, of a spirit of sacrifice and love, of a dance of delight with the divine, of his acts flowing in rhythm with a universal will, and of courage that fears not death. And through this image, even today, man can come into contact with the ever-living and ever-present Krishna, and by doing so, he can reproduce the real Krishna within him. For the real Krishna is not so much an outer form and figure alone, a certain son of Devaki reared in the family of cow herdsmen. No doubt such a figure did exist. But just as the outer reality of anything—whether an event or circumstance or a creature and being—derives its truth and significance from the idea-force it embodies, so too the truth of a great master or the divine incarnate lies not in the details of their outer life, but in the inner truth that they embodied, expressed, and manifested. This is true not only of great and luminous beings but also of lesser humanity. The stature of a man is not measured by the size of his boots, but by his height. Who cares whether Shakespeare stole deer or that Napoleon and Caesar had epilepsy? They are neither known nor remembered for that. Who cares if the leonine Vivekananda was fond of sweets, suffered from diabetes, or had his moments of anguish and anger? It is not these things that he may share with average humanity that define Vivekananda, but the extraordinary dynamic spiritual energy in him that influenced, and continues to influence, humanity long after his physical departure. How does it matter whether Sri Ramakrishna is judged as sane or insane by a ‘normal’ ordinary intelligentsia shut within its scientific box? Those who judged him and Christ and who crucified and assaulted them—whether through words or the jeers and mocks of the crowds—have passed the ordinary way, their names forgotten even before they were known or remembered. But the name and power of a Christ, a Ramakrishna, or a Buddha endure, continuing to help and heal. Time can destroy bodies, but the timeless spirit endures and returns triumphant through death. Science itself changes; thought evolves, and what was declared yesterday as madness becomes the ‘normal’ reality of tomorrow!

Itihasa or History

In fact, history in the Indian context is not so much the accumulation of bare facts and raw data of dates and details of outer events as much as it has been a means for psycho-spiritual learning and evolution. Of course, this was true of most areas of the ancient Indian thought and effort, whether in the field of science or art, law or polity, metaphysics or humanities—the predominant stress is on the spiritual side. The Indian tried to see everything with a deeper psychic vision rather than through the little opaque lens of the physical mind that conceals much more than it reveals, distorts much more than it reflects, obscures rather than clarifies, and even narrows and limits our vision to the surface view of life, people, and things rather than clarifies, widens, and deepens it. Thus, the ordinary historian trained to see only outer facts may not see in the Ramayana anything more than the story of a king who rightfully avenges his wife from the clutches of a powerful ruler with the help of a doubtful army of monkeys and a bear. Or in the story of Krishna anything more than the rise of a cow herdsman to a life of glory and fame. In that case, their life would not carry the deep psychic significance and the inspiring quality that have made it endure for so long in the human psyche.

But the Indian sees in it a representative symbol that makes history not just contemporary but universal and relevant for all times to come. The stories of Savitri, Damayanti, Draupadi, and Durga, along with many others, operate on many planes of consciousness simultaneously, unravelling many secrets of the human psyche. These stories become a means for the evolving feminine archetype, connecting our past to the future. For what else is the real use of history and biographies unless they can help us in some way to progress. It is this inspirational quality of the life of a great figure that justifies an attempt at biography—an example for humanity that can be held as a beacon and a concrete pointer. And those details that would help us do that or show how a human can transcend and become divine are welcome. But to take a voyeuristic pleasure in the small, insignificant details to over-emphasize the ordinary and the common is nothing but a vulgarization of taste, a perversity in the name of truth. To say that Siddhartha was engrossed in the world or a Ratnakar (turned Valmiki) was a highway robber before they underwent a radical inner and outer change is wonderful. But to describe in great detail the ‘worldly’ life of Siddhartha or the means employed by Ratnakar to rob and kill and the lawsuits against him and to simultaneously raise questions and doubt about their respective enlightenment (claims to enlightenment) and to even raise issues about the ‘veracity’ or ‘delusiveness’ of their claims and the greatness of their works and vision is to do a great disservice to truth itself. For truth is neither a bare physical fact that a limited human objectivity can see and study academically, as one would study grains of sand or a worm under a microscope. Nor is it a static or fixed quality or quantity; rather, it is something deeper and beyond both, progressively unfolds itself in terms of time and space. However, this is something our objective historian, stuck to his smallness and glued to his ignorance, will never understand. He sells a lie, calling it the truth. He is misleading man while claiming to help him. He brings Buddha, Krishna, Christ, or Sri Aurobindo closer to our ordinary mundane vision, but in the very process and with a subtle cunning, he takes them further from our psychic vision and sense. Such is the magic of his perverse rakshasic and asuric maya that it sees in Rama a mere helpless mortal struggling for his life and in Krishna a deceitful trickster and a manipulative diplomat. In Buddha’s life, he would show us an indulgent prince who has grown weary and tired of the world and runs away to escape responsibilities, possibly in a disturbed psychological state, and in the life of Christ a lowly born rebel struggling for his self-identity, who is catapulted to popularity by the masses that justify his kingly ambition and threaten the rulers of the time. It is a way of looking coloured and biased by one’s own limited understanding.

The Indian Vision of Life

The Indian vision of life is, in contrast, predominantly psychic and spiritual, while the other vision, the occidental, if we may say so, is primarily a mentalized-rational and vital vision. The psychic vision sees this universe not as a dead, inert expanse of space but as the living body of god. The earth and skies, the stars, and the planets are not lifeless entities but athrob with another kind of life than we know of upon earth. The food we eat, the water we drink, the medicines we may need to take, the material arrangements of life as much as the social aspects such as marriage and the grouping of mankind, and even our thought and temperament, nations and civilizations—the very cycles of humanity are not a mechanical phenomenon governed by some external laws but deeper truths emerging from that sacred inmost space and expressing themselves in outer terms. They derive their deepest value not from what they externally are but from what they are inwardly striving to express. The value of events, actions, and circumstances is not found so much in the outer happenings or the records of history, but in the inner motive force that drives them and the idea that this force is there to serve. Finally, the real worth of a man is not so much in what he externally does, but in what he inwardly is and becomes.

Thus, while the psychic vision sees in life the unfolding of the divine will and in the outer circumstances the expression of an inner working of the cosmic forces active behind the scene, the mental vision looks at it as mere chance events unconnected by anything other than a random sequence. It sees them as unconnected events because it sees only outer appearances and the bare physical realities. But it fails to catch the inner thread that links the various forms and appearances. This difference in approach is less obvious where hard physical facts are concerned. Here, this approach of the sense-bound physical mind, with its measuring rod and lens, does a fine job of defining, examining, observing, and understanding things, applying and utilizing them for practical purposes. It is largely this immense success in this sphere that has given to the erroneous impression that this is the only or the best approach. This approach reduces everything from men and events, inner and outer, as mere objects of study through observation by the sense apparatus. This sensorial approach to reality is often mistakenly called objective, though at its bottom it is not so much an objective approach as it is a limited surface approach. The right term for such an approach is phenomenological, to study the outer phenomenon and, through that, make inferences about the nature of things. This approach has an inherent defect. For it presumes, first that the phenomenon is an exact reproduction of the inner truth, and, secondly and even more importantly, it presumes that the instruments of observation are infallible and therefore cannot be faulted. The fallacy of this approach has become clear even in the field of hard-core material sciences, where it is becoming more and more difficult to explain the phenomenon of the inside of an atom based upon the outer laws that seem to govern its structure and dynamics. In fields that are primarily subjective and inner, such as those of psychology, the humanities, social sciences, etc., its predictive value is even more uncertain. Even where it can to some extent predict the outer behaviour, it certainly misses the most precious inner data—the inmost thoughts and feelings, the impulsions and motives—in short, all the hidden springs of human nature that drive and set it into motion. We may know the machinery and the different parts that constitute it; it may even be the sequence of events and the processes, yet we may know nothing about it at all. The fundamental truths would remain buried, the invisible elements hidden under the mass of observable and analysable data.

It is here that the Indian approach becomes indispensable, though even in the most material field it adds to the total understanding of things. But in the sphere of human psychology and the understanding of the human condition—whether in an individual’s biography or in collective history—the subjective side is at least as important, if not more so than the objective, and where the felt and thought are as important as the observed and measured, and outer actions hold equal weight to the intent from which they derive their true intrinsic worth. Therefore, it would be an absurd fallacy to rely only a phenomenological approach that focuses only on the outer and observable. Even in the life of the most ordinary individual, it is only the individual himself who can give the true value and meaning to himself. Alternatively, it takes someone who can penetrate deep into the secret and hidden penetralia of human nature and uncover the motives that men often hide from their own eyes.

The Psychic Vision and Faith

Here comes another important divergence between the Indian and the ‘other’ approach. The Indian is not only innately endowed with a trust in the psychic vision of life; it has always revered men and women who have risen to a greater psychic and spiritual vision and understanding. These great and luminous ones referred to in so many ways as saints, sages, yogis, and avataras were valued and treasured for what they gave to earth and mankind, a gift akin to lending a vision to the blind, a vision that the psychologically blind humanity, tied to the outposts of matter and bound by the sense-mind, cannot see so long as it chooses to remain bound in that state. The lives and works of such individuals were not subject to the scrutiny of the merely curious outer intellect that may find nothing exceptional about it but as a means to draw inspiration so that we too, through their contact and example, rise to a greater life and a greater vision. Starting with faith in the way taught by them, we may arrive ourselves at a greater knowledge; starting with servitude and humility towards them, we may arrive at discovering the ways and the will of a higher becoming; starting with love and surrender towards them, we may identify our consciousness so completely with theirs that we too may share through this inner identity something of their liberty and light, their bliss and beatitude. That is why the word of the guru, the spiritual master, the seer, and the saint was considered the highest form of truth, an irrefutable evidence, aptavakya pramana. It was not to be questioned and analysed, not subject to discussion and debate, but to be lived and followed.

Though this approach may appear as a strange one, almost an intellectual regression to slave-like obedience, in reality it is far from this. First of all, this approach was reserved only for special fields of inquiry and towards certain rare persons who, as we have said, had risen above the human limitation and entered fields of vision that were too vast and bright for the unrefined senses and the crude mind to explore. A great degree of purification and refinement of mind and thought, a subtilization of the senses and feelings, was necessary for discovering these truths, and the seer had done that tapasya, which to the ordinary human mortal was neither easy nor often possible. The truths they brought down within the sphere of human understanding and the outward gazing intellect were, in this deeper psychic vision, indriyatita and manatita, beyond the grasp of the senses and the human mind, conditioned by so many things and moving within a small sphere of seeing and understanding. The truth they gave was not narrower but vaster, and to see it as they saw required great patience and perseverance, great austerity, and inner purity, such that very few can command. Yet they could accept, follow, and mould their lives according to these higher and deeper truths so that, in course of time, our all too crude intellect and gross consciousness may become ready to embody that greater life. But having arrived at this inner refinement and higher atonement, this rule of an implicit obedience was no longer necessary. One could then go one’s way, make new discoveries, challenge established notions about the ultimate nature of reality and even in certain cases, enter into debates and discussions about it. In other words, this unquestioning obedience was necessary only as an initial schooling process, a schooling for which no term could be fixed and which, depending upon the capacity of the disciple and the readiness of his inner soil, could extend from a few moments to a few lives!! The sign of completion of this schooling was that the disciple not only shared but also lived these higher experiences and governed his life by them. Having reached there, or graduated, if we may say so, he could go further and beyond, as we see in the lives of some rare ones, such as Saint Kabir and Gorakhnath, and in our own times, Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Aurobindo, among a few others who went beyond, even far beyond the accomplishments of their respective masters. But so long as we had not arrived at that high degree of inner perfection that the guru embodied, the rule of implicit trust and obedience was mandatory unless the disciple chose to follow his own path and wandered away from the inner help and light that the master gave. This obedience, be it noted, was not something coerced or enforced upon anyone. It had to be freely accepted and of one’s own accord. In this sense, it was neither a religion nor a theocracy but simply the natural requirements of spiritual schooling, a process that is necessary in any learning. But more so in this since the very learning is not so much an intellectual learning as it is a growth and a becoming, a training and a development of faculties that one does not have.

This crude modern intellect living in its misguided idea of intellectual freedom does not understand. It would subject everything to the inquiry of its puny mind and, naturally finding nothing since it does not have the necessary inner equipment to find, hastily conclude that nothing is there—no light but only an artificial halo, no deeper vision but only a hallucination of the senses, no deeper truth but only incomprehensible statements, no godlike stature but only bright shadows and uncertain reflections, and no divine but only a struggling human and a striving animal. For as the Gita puts it, as men approach me, in whatsoever faith, so I receive them. But for the modern mind, this power of faith is only an imaginary building, and all that is constructed on that starting ground is merely subjective and untrue. Though in all spheres of life we proceed necessarily by faith and faith alone, a faith in our reason or a faith in science, a faith in objectivity or a faith in the testimony of the senses, a faith in the Freudian outlook or the Jungian one, a faith in behaviourism, or a faith in genes and heredity. We may say that this material faith is testified by experience, but that is equally true of inner and spiritual life. By using the same scientific and intellectual bogey, one may say that one sees what one choses or believes and wants to see. The lotus seeker thrills at the sight of the beautiful lotus and wonders at the marvel that broods over the mud and slush choosing for itself a most ungainly home, but the mud analyser sees in the lotus no marvel except the exceptional form that the mud has taken. Nay, he even dives into the mud to discover the secret of the lotus, and finding nothing out there that may correspond to his inquiry, he may simply conclude that a lotus is nothing else but mud dignified. And one who has not seen a lotus or possibly hastily glimpsed it may well conclude that such a thing does not exist and is an impossibility given the facts of the mud that he knows and all who claim to see it are either out of their minds or simply imagining things! Out of minds, of course, but not below it but beyond and above the mind as the Indian sees and understands it.

Life of Saints, Yogis, and Seers

Therefore, in the Indian context, the biography of a saint was not meant to be the story of his outer life alone but so much more the story of his inner life, his inner and spiritual achievements that were not questioned or analysed but simply left for each one to believe or disbelieve, to follow or to simply pass by. But they were not subject to criticism or analysis, as there was no way for the mind could know about them. Only by rising to a higher sphere of vision and understanding could one know and discern these deeper truths or the veracity of the claims and not otherwise. Similarly, the writings of such a person were not meant to be judged by any modern or ancient standards since their object and scope were very different. Of course, the writing style could be spoken about, but one had not the to speak about the subject unless one had oneself risen to that state or at least glimpsed it, that is to say, has the adhikara. When the Indian reads the Ramayana or the Bhagavad Gita, he is not so much looking for the historical facts of Rama’s life and the possibility of a monkey and a bear speaking to a man in human language, or demons and gods changing into human and sub-human forms. The Indian innately understands that the seer of the epic is not describing mere physical events, and the subject matter before him is not to be seen and analysed as great poetry or the mere outer story of a king and the people. He instinctively grasps the inner subtlety of the tale and knows it is about the divine incarnate and his exploits that are meant to uplift and inspire man, to give us and to those who will a dharma, a right law of living and being, even a spiritual path to arrive at some deepest and profoundest mysteries of existence. He does not even question whether the story is true to form or merely a poetic creation to convey some symbolic truth. The Indian mind does not create such an artificial division, which reflects a kind of poverty in modern intellect. It has absolutely no problem in understanding that Rama, the divine incarnate, weeps like an ordinary mortal or needs the help of an army of monkeys to cross the bridge and revive the avatara himself, caught as if helplessly under a spell of unconsciousness by the rakshasas dark and powerful maya. The Indian rather sees it with the psychic vision, as the lila of the lord, who must pass through the human condition and identify himself with it so completely that, as the divine, he acts and exists as a helpless mortal. Only in this way can he show the path to cross the human limits through human means itself. But from time to time there are glimpses in the narrative that reveal the inner divinity that sustains the whole epic, like an inner thread, now seen, now unseen, now somewhat felt, now slipped and missed while one is absorbed in the outer story, but one that is nevertheless always there. Rama and Krishna, to the Indian sense, are not less divine when they seemingly seem to behave like ordinary mortals. Yet, despite this knowledge of the avataras divinity, whether it appears human or godlike to our eyes accustomed to believing only that which dazzles as the marvellous, it does not focus too much on the outer details for the sake of the details as an obsessed historian would do. Nor is the outer narrative meant to be anything more than a scaffolding to build through the accustomed images that go far deeper than the surface phenomenon. Thus, to take another example, the stories of Krishna’s exploits with the gopas and gopis in Vrindavan or the killing of the various demons in disguise or the taming of the great serpent, the miraculous stories of Kansa’s prison opening up to help Vasudeva escape, if only for a night, the lowering of the Yamuna to facilitate the crossing of the river may seem like fantastic tales to the unregenerate surface mind, or at best as myths that have perhaps some symbolic meaning but have no relation to the outer life of the avatara. But to the Indian psyche, the two are conterminous, the outer deriving its meaning from the inner, even fulfilling and enriching it. Even in our more recent times, in the life of a Sri Ramakrishna it does not seek to know the outer qualifications of the great saint to decide whether his claims to the inner experiences are authentic or not. Nor, in the life of Mirabai, is he interested to know how old Mira was when she left her palace, whether she left it on her own or was forced to do so, whether she travelled on foot or in a camel cart. That, to the Indian mind, is irrelevant to the narrative, for in no way does it affect the truth of Mira’s love for Krishna, the greatness of her realizations, and the truth of her example for the world of god lovers. That is why the Indian mind does not see anything wrong in worshipping the guru and the divine incarnate. It is not seen as an act of egoism on the part of the guru nor an act of meek submission of one’s valued individuality, some kind of intellectual slavery and emotional dependency on the part of the devotee that would discourage his own natural growth or maim his freedom. It is in this outer act and gesture a symbol and a fulfilment of the inner truth. And the guru even seems to encourage it—at least accepts, though never enforces it—since this way the disciple can climb with much greater swiftness and ease towards the inner heights to which he aspires.

All this may appear to the modern mind that loves its freedom, independence, and individuality as a return to religion, but if we see it closely, it is not so at all. For the surrender required of a disciple is a surrender in freedom, a wilful choice unlike an enforced common rule, a forced conversion, or a baptization by a creed or a theology attracting human beings through some kind of a worldly or other-worldly lure or fear. In fact, the spiritual path demands that we get rid of both the lure of heaven and the fear of hell. Besides, the only freedom possible in this view is the freedom of the soul, stepping beyond the bounds of our limited and ignorant minds into the true, the right, and the vast. And that requires a methodical effort at self-culture and self-discipline. And this discipline too is not the crude outer discipline of an enforced outer ritual or code of conduct, followed merely out of some primitive need for conformity. Rather, it is an intrinsic and often outwardly unseen discipline of right thoughts and feelings, an inner struggle with our small and obscure motives, a tussle with the ego-self that camouflages itself in many colours. It is this free choice, this inner discipline and wllful obedience, and this conscious surrender that is the hallmark of the beginnings of an authentic spiritual life. And in this life there is the greatest role of the spiritual master, and therefore quite naturally, on the part of the disciple, the deepest respect, love, and gratitude for the guru.

This is again not easily understood by the modern mind that loves its vagabond ways and prefers being driven by the whiplash of desires and the falsifying lights of human ignorance to the divine leading that comes in the form of a spiritual master. It understands and even respects love for the family, even giving it the socially acceptable name of duty; it understands the love for the country and calls it patriotism; it understands the love for human beings and calls it humanitarianism, but it cannot understand the love that a human soul has for its master, who is to the seeking soul an earthly representative of the divine, the very highest goal to which man can hope to arrive and aspire. The love for the guru also accordingly takes the highest form; it is the most powerful of all forms of human love known if one has experienced it. Men can easily sacrifice their lives, happily and with a sense of deep satisfaction, for the love of their master. True, this force of an all-powerful love can be used sometimes by misdirected elements; it can be misguided into the most dangerous channels, but that is true of almost every good element and of every virtue of human nature. In fact, one can easily say without any exaggeration that what we call evil is simply a misplaced virtue, something that is otherwise good but is now out of place, out of context, and out of time. Or, to use another powerful image and a metaphor, we may say that evil is the shadow of good. Leaving aside these distortions, the master and the disciple’s unquestioning love for him is the most sacred of all spaces known to man. It is the inner space where even the disciple steps very carefully, lest the footfalls of his ego disturb the union sought in the silent spaces of his soul. None can enter there, not even his own unchaste self; none can vandalize that space or offend the dignity of the divine within. No ugliness is allowed in that space, nor any mean and small motives. Above all, it is the dictum of spiritual life that none can be regarded as greater than the guru and none, however close, is favoured above him. The joy of this utter love and abandon to the master is not easily understood by the occidental mind, though to the Indian it comes most naturally; most imbibe it with the mother’s milk and know that no offence ought to be committed in that sacred space, for nothing can be more obnoxious, nothing more unpardonable in the eyes of the cosmic forces than the transgressions and ingratitude towards one’s spiritual master. Even if the whole world were to be on one side and the master on the other, with failure and death inevitable, yet the Indian true to his grain would choose dying by the master’s side rather than choose an undisputed and termless reign over the three worlds. This is not an exaggeration but the deepest truth of the Indian psyche, a truth that the intellect drunken of pride and arrogance calls a mere sentiment. But that is simply a psychic blindness—an inability to see and feel deeper things. What the mind refuses to see in its pride is in fact a secret inner door opening within our hearts that leads us through a delightful and shorter passage towards the inmost chambers of the divine beloved whom one has come to love in the human persona of one’s spiritual master.

Reductio ad Absurdum

But the ‘rational’, ‘objective’, ‘unbiased’, and ‘impartial’ historian will have none of these. He must reduce everything to atoms and dust. He finds the lotus blooming in the mud an anomaly, a freak, or even a delusion and plunges into the mire to look for the secret of the lotus. The deeper he sinks, the less the lotus is seen or felt by him. And when he finally comes out, mud and stain in his hands and eyes, and looks at the lotus again through its mud-stained vision and holds it with his mud-stained hands, he remarks with a perverse joy, ‘here it is, here it is’, ‘I have at last discovered the secret of the lotus’, ‘what you see and feel and love is a delusion of the mind and a clouded vision’, ‘there is no real lotus but an illusion of the heart that has painted the mud with red and white hues’ for I, the historian, I, the psychoanalyst, I, the rationalist, I, the sole custodian of truth, has dug deep and laboriously found the truth that is hidden from your sight, clouded by your emotions and passion. There is indeed no real lotus but only mud sublime. Who would say to the ‘historian’ to wipe off the mud from his hands and his eyes, to purify his heart sullied by the love and attachment for the mire, quieten his restless mind flipping from appearance to appearance, and step out of the little box of his ego and see and behold the marvel of the sky blooming upon earth! Who would tell him that if only he knew how to fill his heart with wonder, he too might see the truth unpartitioned? He too could then see that the reality of the lotus cannot be known by analysing the contents of the mud or by stripping the petals bare and putting them under a microscope. The reality of the lotus, as indeed the reality of anything, can be known only by identifying ourselves with the being of the lotus, not as a dismembered reality but as a totality. Then the soul of the lotus itself will speak to us and reveal all its beauty, joy, and wonder. Then we shall see, in a deeper and greater light, the significance of its form, colour, and texture. It will reveal to us why it has chosen its home amidst the mud and built its outer body with elements gathered from the mire so that it can turn their stench into a subtle fragrance. A reductionist reality sees these as separate, lays its stress on one or the other depending upon its preferred angle of vision, and thereby misses the truth by its utter ‘objectivity’.

Two Sides of the Coin

In fact, every object, even the most material, has both a subjective side and an objective side. Though the two are inherently one, in human beings they appear separate and divided. We draw an unnecessary and artificial division between the head and the heart, which falsifies our vision. This is precisely the point that the blind historian misses or fails to see. He calls his blindness ‘impartiality’, like the bandaged eyes of justice, and terms his inability to feel a capacity for objectivity. He clothes his ever-doubting mind under the garb of ‘search for truth’. He covers up his cynicism with a rigorous logic and appeal to reason. He plants artificial trees on the hard, dry, and barren rocky soil of his intellect and calls them ‘realities’. The question is whether this blindness is real or deliberate, simply an incapacity or an unwillingness. In either case, the effect is the same. Instead of using the life of a great being as an inspirational doorway for us to climb, we turn it into a means to justify our smallness. All this is done in the name of bringing him closer to us, as if we could not be close to Krishna unless we proved him a ‘flirt’ and a ‘playboy’.

It is this that needs care and caution. For the modern mind, still labouring heavily under servitude to scepticism, is ever so ready to denounce and trivialize everything. From M.F. Hussain’s paintings to Kakkar’s Shamans, Mystics and Doctors, and from the ‘popsization’ of god’s name to the denigration of Rama by the rationalists, it is the same story. Of course, we can take a seemingly ‘wider’ stand and say, ‘How does it matter?’ ‘Truth is vast, and nothing can destroy or defile it!’ And that would be fine, provided we are alone unto ourselves and nothing else matters to us except our own salvation. But this is a sacred space, and we must treat it with the utmost care, respect, love, and concern. This sacred space is there not only in the individual but also in the collective psyche of a group. This sacred space, whether small or large depending upon the extent to which one has nurtured it, is the most priceless treasure that secretly sustains the group just as our soul sustains our individual nature. To discover, cultivate, and expand this sacred space, to devote time and energy to dwell within it, to draw inspiration from it, to keep it immaculate and untouched by the polluting touch of thoughts that defile, and above all to treat this space with the deepest love, care, and respect, is indispensable to our progress. We must be extremely careful about what enters and why it does so in that sacred space, for it does attract even dubious and diabolic elements that come to deny and destroy it. Whether such elements can succeed in their ungainly task is another question. But an individual or group that does not care for these dubious guests and lets anything to pass calls upon himself incalculable harm. Even if everything is destroyed, we can rebuild from there by the power secret in that sacred space, but if that place is defiled and the residing deity withdraws from it disgusted and unworshipped, then there is little hope, and even if outwardly all is well and seemingly prospering, the road towards perdition has been taken, and the end has begun!

That is why this sacred space needs to be safeguarded against intrusions that would try to corrupt and defile it. And such respect may sometimes need a strong stance and a firm dealing. Just because a strong stance may invite ‘secular displeasure’, a labelling of our name alongside the ‘narrow fundamentalist’, would we keep quiet so as to meet the approval of the ‘pseudo-intellectual’? Here too, we need to understand the difference and the subtle shades that a lack of intellectual rectitude tends to blur. It mixes up the simple devotee, the ardent god-lover, the over-enthusiastic zealot, the fervent follower, and the one-pointed faithful with the religious bigot, the rigid fundamentalist, and the narrow fanatic. The difference is important since it has a deep bearing upon the nature of our action and its consequences. The god-lover, the devotee, the faithful follower, and the zealot servant love the very body and soul of his god, in whatever name and form he has imaged him, but, and this is the difference, he does not denounce other faiths; he rather respects them and sees his chosen deity in all godheads. True, he is hurt to see the name of his deity, his guru, and his master dragged down to the abysses of human stupidity; he would even defend, in every way, if the symbol of his faith is attacked, whether openly or subtly, for what else is love if it does not cry with longing for its beloved, stands beside his object of love, or places himself in front as a shield, sacrificing his life to defend his most cherished one. But he will never attack or denounce another person’s faith. Seen this way, one will find greater fanatics among the intellectuals who stick vociferously to their preferred intellectual opinions than among the truly religious. It is the narrowness and exclusivity of our positions and opinions that give birth to dogmas and creeds rather than love for god and a valid and legitimate need to defend the object of one’s love. He becomes a part and parcel of the master even as the master becomes an extension of himself, and the two blend in an inseparable identity of oneness. The intellectual too experiences it, but in a much smaller degree and a far narrower scale, for he too loves someone, his family and friends, or at least himself. Would he not stand up and defend himself or his family and friends, unless he is a coward or selfish, if these are threatened? Would he simply stand and watch, if not justify and defend his intellectual stance, if he was questioned and criticized? Would he, if he defends his family, be called narrow-minded and a bigot? If such be the case with a unit as small as a family, if the defence of one’s country is called patriotism, then why should the defence of one’s object of faith be called bigotry?

One Last Question

One last question remains or rather emerges from this: does god need any defence? Is not faith an intrinsic thing that cannot be sullied by anything or anyone? True, neither god nor one’s faith needs to be defended. But there are symbols of faith, symbols that are external but carry a deep evocative power for those who are ready and receptive to reproduce the inner reality that the symbol represents. The name and form of the divine incarnate are precisely such a symbol. The words and works of the great masters are again such a symbol whose influence continues to inspire humanity to exceed itself. So too is the life of the divine incarnate, of Christ, Krishna, Buddha, and Rama. In our own recent past, the lives of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa and that of Sri Aurobindo are an example and a symbol. It is the story of the human ‘Aurobindo’ transforming itself into the divine Sri Aurobindo. It is this that lends significance to his unparalleled life. To reduce it to mere academic interest, subjecting it to scrutiny by unscrupulous minds and insensitive hearts, to bring him before the tribunal of the critical human intellect, or to turn his life into an object of voyeuristic curiosity or a scientific psychoanalysis in the name of freedom of expression, is a subtle and craftily attack on the symbol, cloaked in the dignified guise of broadness or the excuse of bringing Sri Aurobindo into academia. The academic world need not concern itself with the personal details of Sri Aurobindo’s life; such details are of interest only to those who seek inspiration or who love him. To cater to others is to reduce his life to the level of idle curiosity. True wideness is to accept, honour, and even respect the devotee’s love and not demean it. Furthermore, if it is done in the name of ‘freedom’, then a just and valid defence is equally valid under the same banner of freedom. Not only is it valid, it is also called for and necessary, not for one’s own sake but for the sake of what the symbol represents and its great significance for the posterity. It is a sacred trust to preserve the symbol in its original purity of splendour lest tomorrow Christ needs to be certified of his divinity by the pope, and a committee of intellectuals is called upon to do statistical research on the existence of Krishna or a tribunal of judges decide whether the words and work of Sri Aurobindo are good for human progress or not.

Or may be, a historian looking through the lens of his smallness decides whether what he sees is truly great, and observing and recording only a small data of outer life and cutting off all the wideness that escapes his small arc of vision, he may well declare, Oh, he is but like us, he is but like us. Well may the infinite smile upon the infinitesimal and reply that yes indeed thou art made in my image and leave the infinitesimal to remain what it is. But there can be another response, the response that Arjuna gave to his master, mentor, friend, and lover, even as the great words of the Gita penetrated deep into his soul and a cry of longing and adoration rose from his depths:

Who art Thou from whom nothing is hidden, neither the past nor the future. Who art Thou whose words fill me with such a Light and Delight as I have never known or experienced. Who art Thou n who seems to stand here unarmed in this great battlefield of life yet seems to my deeper sense already the master and the victor of the armies and their kings. Who art Thou whom my misguided eyes has seen only as a friend and an equal?

And the great vision of the eternal may be revealed to us by his grace—the timeless for whose birth no date can be fixed who yet consents to make one little earthly body his home; the transcendental and universal godhead who is also immanent in man as the all-wise guide who assumes a voice, a form, and a name, the immortal dallying with death.

The Inner Sanctum Sanctorum

This is our inner sacred space, the mansion where one cannot enter as long as we have the pride of an arrogant intellect, along with doubts and denial. Faith is the magic key that opens the door to this space, love is the language of this inner communion, and trust in the master, his vision, and his ways leads us far and deep into this inner road. Let us not vandalize this sacred space by throwing the garbage of our crude and vulgar notions about truth and god. Let us not reduce everything to figures, numbers, quantity, and measure. Let few things remain that can still instil us with wonder, love, and hope. For the sacred space vanishes when we enter into it wearing the lens of doubt and the dark robe of the ego. Even while there, we do not see it; even face-to-face with it, we do not recognize it, and yet without it, creation could not last nor come into existence. Let those who wish to know about this sacred space and these deeper truths adopt the right way, and they shall know. But there is a way and a process for everything, and we need to approach it in all humility with the freshness of a child who knows nothing and is willing to learn everything. For the rest, there is the whole wide world and its ways and methods. Let it follow its own ways if it wills, but let this sacred space in man be left untouched. For if this too is vandalized and vulgarized—turned into a marketplace for buying and selling products or chalking out one’s road to fame and other lesser purposes—then very little will be left of man that is worth preserving.

Chapter 4
Nationalism: A Spiritual Perspective

The Debate Over Nationalism

A debate is raging over nationalism and even the concept of a nation today. What really is nationalism, what is its value, and what role does it play in the overall development and progress of the individual and society? These questions are being raised today, and rightly so, especially since we see the upsurge of nationalism from the far east to the west, including India. Of course, the idea of a nation is neither new nor antiquated. In India, it has existed since the time of Lord Rama, when he declared that the place where one is born is greater even than the heavens themselves (janani janmabhoomi swargadapi gariyasi). Since then, the idea of motherland (or fatherland in many countries and cultures) has undergone modifications. Sri Krishna, for example, sees in the nation unit a place for the manifestation of dharma. It is both dharmakshetra as well as the chosen field of action, the kurukshetra. It is the outer field given to us by the very fact of our birth in certain surroundings. We owe a debt to the land, bhoomi rna, where we are born, as the Vedas say. Sri Aurobindo, who is at once modern as well as deeply well-versed with the ancient writings, declares the nation as being much more than merely a physical mass of land. Surely the mass of land is there surrounded by natural boundaries, such as, in India, by the Himalayas on the one side and the three oceans on the other with an interlacing network of seven rivers that connect its various parts. But just as an individual has a body but is not just a physical body alone, a nation too is much more than a physical mass of land. Like an individual, a nation also has an inner being, its high points, and the abysses. The high points are represented by its culture, and the low points are certain outdated customs that persist even when they have outlived their purpose. A nation also has a mind characterized by a certain trend and turn of thought. It has a heart too that is felt by patriots—a heart that expresses itself in the ways of being and living of a people who dwell within a nation. But above all, a nation has its own soul, a special mode of being, a spirit spark that declares itself through the ages in all its literature, strivings, and efforts at self-determination and self-expression. It is truly this that a true patriot loves and seeks to embody and express. It is this that must be saved at any cost. It is this that must be given a new body each time the soul of a nation is reborn after a period of decline, and decadence. Like individuals, nations too follow the cycle of birth, growth, decline and decadence before being reborn again. Like individuals, nations too have their unique destiny that is being fulfilled through all the upheavals of its national life.

We have gained the national consciousness but unless it is steeped in patriotism our national consciousness cannot blossom. Adoration of the Mother must be the foundation of that patriotism. The day ‘Bande Mataram’, the song of Bankimchandra, crossed the barrier of the outer senses and knocked at the heart, on that day patriotism was born in our heart; on that day the Mother’s image was enshrined in our heart. The country is Mother, the country is Divine,—this sublime precept which forms a part of the Upanishadic teachings is the seed of the national rising. As the ‘Jiva’ is a part of the Divine, as the power of the ‘Jiva’ is also a part of the Divine power, so also the seventy million Bengalis, the collectivity of three hundred million Indians are part of all-pervading Vasudeva; in the same manner, Mother India, adorned with many hands and powers, shelter of these three hundred millions, embodiment of Shakti, is a force of the Divine Mother, the Goddess, the very body of the universal Mahakali.

. . .

The country and nothing but the country is the foundation of Nationalism, neither the nation, nor religion, nothing else matters. All other elements are secondary and contributory, it is the country alone that is primary and essential. Many mutually exclusive races live in the land, perhaps there never was enough goodwill, unity or friendliness. What is there in that to worry about? When it is one country, one Mother—there is bound to be unity one day, and out of the union of many races shall emerge a strong and invincible nation. Our religious views may differ, there might be endless conflict among the communities, neither concordance nor any hope of concordance, still one need not have any misgivings. By the powerful magnetic attraction of the Mother embodied in the country, by fair means or foul—whether by mutual understanding, or by force or by appeasement—harmony will be achieved; communalism, separation will be drowned in fraternal feelings, in a common love and worship of the Mother. In a land of many languages brother is unable to understand brother, we do not sympathise with each other’s feelings, between heart and heart there are immense barriers. These have to be overcome with much effort. Yet one need not fear. There is the same current of thought in every mind, of one country, one life, and under pressure of need a common language is bound to evolve, either one of the existing languages will come to be accepted, else a new language will be created. In the Mother’s temple all will use that language. There is nothing permanent about these obstacles. The Mother’s need, her attraction and deeper desire are not to be frustrated, these will surmount all obstacles and conflicts. Born of the same Mother, on her lap we live, in her five elements we merge and melt, in spite of a thousand real dissensions we shall unite at Her call. (CWSA 9: 221–22, 224–25)

But there are two forms of nationalism. There is an aggressive and titanic nationalism with its ambitious and expansionist design. It is an egoistic nationalism, an identification with the collective ego rather than the soul of a nation. It multiplies war machines and debases the common universal values that are sacred to humanity at large. It likes to put the clock back in time. Such nationalism is a threat to the collective existence of humanity. It is a falsehood and must be countered at every level and in every way. But there is another, more godlike nationalism that seeks to bring out the best that its national genius is capable of. It creates institutions of excellence in every field, nurtures and nourishes the cultural roots from which each nation draws its strength and inspiration, and develops instruments that would help the human race advance towards its highest goal. Such a nation does not live for itself alone but for the greater good of the race. It is a spiritual nationalism, which is a religion by itself where the patriot worships and adores the nation as a living and conscious deity in the temple ground that is her body. Such nationalism is a boon to humanity; it is the first step that god takes in his collective self-expression in humanity. Indeed, this teaches man, the selfish creature, to subordinate his ego at the altar of the soul of a nation and not for the collective ego and its vain satisfaction.

The Two Sides of Our Existence

Indeed, there are two sides to our existence, one individual and the other collective. We need both for the divine fulfilment of our destiny. A nation that crushes individual freedom and liberty at the altar of the state denies the deep truth that god dwells within each unit of his creation (yat kinchya jjagatyam jagat). On the other hand, a nation that forgets the larger goal—the soul of a nation expressing itself through the collective body and effort of different individuals—by voicing only the gospel of individual freedom, goes soon towards perdition. Trapped in anarchy, its separate units soon turn into warring factions, dismembering the very body of their mother and rejoicing in a wild and reckless dance of the asura over it. What else does the asura in man enjoy most but to destroy, harm, and maim the national spirit? To hurt its heart and incapacitate the national mind by engaging it in endless mock debates under the guise of academics but always with the covert will to disintegrate the nation. All nation units have to face these challenges from within and without; some, like India, have a greater share of these challenges; others that are smaller in size and population, simpler, and more uniform in their composition face them to a lesser degree. India, for example, is, by its very nature and evolution, a far more complex nation with many types, layers, and levels of humanity. It is indeed the most diverse of nations, given its constitution. It has therefore a much bigger share of the challenge and the difficulty. Perhaps it is so ordained because India has within it the secret key to resolving the complex issues and most challenging problems that have vexed humanity for ages. We may in fact say without any exaggeration that if India succeeds in solving these complex issues that it faces every day, then the race will be saved. If it does not, then sooner or later the world will disintegrate under the pressure of its collective egoism.

The solution does not lie in uniformity, certainly not in the titanic ethnic cleansing where all differences are merely weeded out. All those who ever tried it, Aurangzeb and Hitler, for instance, have fallen to pieces since the time-spirit, much more powerful than any individual or a nation slays them and casts them aside on the highways of life. It is true that all attempts at disintegration must be resisted, with or without arms depending upon the method used by the titan adversary, but that is only one side of the story, a negative side, so to speak. More important is to bring out the national genius, the genius of each and every different and diverse group of humanity living on its soil. Such a national spirit is like a garden where many types and varieties of flowers bloom, making it richer in beauty and content. What we end up doing instead is either to please and placate or to tolerate and accommodate. What we, however, do not do is help each group-life develop towards its own highest genius, find its own true soul, and live in its true spirit. To take just one example among many, a Muslim may feel threatened by a Hindu and fight him because he identifies primarily with his surface religious identity, as declared by the Ulema. But if he goes deep within his soul and discovers the one true shrine and the godhead thereof, as the Sufi mystics did, then there is no more quarrel. But this self-discovery has to be facilitated. The priestly class does not encourage it or even dissuade it since if each one discovers the secret godhead within themselves, then who will go to the priest? If men are truly set free, they would live in harmony, and the business of those who thrive on hatred and the cult of death would cease to be. This is true empowerment—to help each unit discover its own unique strength and turn it into a national asset.

Rebirth of a Nation

We see today that a nation is being reborn in India. The ancient Bharatvarsha, Jambudweep, and Aryavarta are awakening once again to their divine mission. It has taken a new name, but the spirit is still the same. It is this spirit that must be recovered and rediscovered by all its members if India must fulfil its true purpose in the comity of nations. This purpose, very evidently, is to become once again what it always was: a land of the highest spiritual light. This is no easy task. There are many dangers along the way. There are forces that would not like to see India rise, many of which are within India itself. The rise of India means the rise of dharma, and there are forces that hate light and peace; they hate truth, beauty, harmony, and love. They advance instead a cult of hate and division, a sect of disintegration and violence. Dubious and cunning are their ways, and they work best when they imitate light and try to poison the divine child in its crib while posing as its caretaker. If they fail, they spread the network of terror and fear or raise storms to destabilise the national mind. But eventually, they leave a nation stronger and greater, and at the same time, humbler and wiser.

However much the difficulties, we must have the faith that India of the ages is not dead. The land of light and wisdom is once again acquiring a new body, but its spirit is always the same. Its destiny is to be the guru of the world and to teach humanity the ways of the spirit. But for this to happen, it must discover its own soul and, by bringing it out, awaken mankind to the higher laws and the deeper forces that move man. It does not matter what outer form this knowledge takes or whether it is called by this or that name; what matters is the Indian spirit. But for this, India and Indians must first discover the master key to that spirit. This master key, handed to us by the forefathers, is ‘dharma’. This is our secret source of inspiration and strength. This alone can save us and save the world. This dharma conjured by the soul of India and preserved through the words of its countless seers and sages is neither a formal organized religion nor a dogma for all to follow. It is simply an attitude towards life and creation, a way of looking at life and understanding its deeper purpose, and within it our own individual role and collective responsibility towards earth. Dharma simply means that which holds us and the creation. It is the secret of oneness and the foundation of unity. Dharma means to live and strive towards harmony, beauty, truth, and vastness regardless of our beliefs and non-beliefs. Dharma means to help mankind move swiftly and smoothly on the path towards self-perfection through whatever path comes naturally to them. Dharma also means removing all that obstructs this collective march of mankind, first through an awakening of knowledge and the growth of light and peace. But also, if a group of humanity obstinately refuses to support man’s collective progress and attacks the very foundations of life upon earth, then it is necessary to stand against it, but without hatred and with a heart full of compassion. Yes, dharma does not mean that one will never fight or raise arms, for such a thing may in fact be the cause of a larger collective adharma, but that if pushed to the point where nothing else works, then we fight for the good of the world, not for our own selfish interests and never for any territorial expansion or forced acquisition.

If we can live by the dharma, the voice of the seers will be there to help and guide us, and the strength of their Tapasya will fill us once again with the spiritual energy that once flowed through our veins. Let us then close with these luminous and uplifting words of Sri Aurobindo, written at the beginning of the previous century, whose time for fruition seems to have arrived now:

A Nation is building in India today before the eyes of the world so swiftly, so palpably that all can watch the process and those who have sympathy and intuition distinguish the forces at work, the materials in use, the lines of the divine architecture. This nation is not a new race raw from the workshop of Nature or created by modern circumstances. One of the oldest races and greatest civilisations on this earth, the most indomitable in vitality, the most fecund in greatness, the deepest in life, the most wonderful in potentiality, after taking into itself numerous sources of strength from foreign strains of blood and other types of human civilisation, is now seeking to lift itself for good into an organised national unity. Formerly a congeries of kindred nations with a single life and a single culture, always by the law of this essential oneness tending to unity, always by its excess of fecundity engendering fresh diversities and divisions, it has never yet been able to overcome permanently the almost insuperable obstacles to the organisation of a continent. The time has now come when those obstacles can be overcome. The attempt which our race has been making throughout its long history, it will now make under entirely new circumstances. A keen observer would predict its success because the only important obstacles have been or are in the process of being removed. But we go farther and believe that it is sure to succeed because the freedom, unity and greatness of India have now become necessary to the world.

. . .

The task we set before ourselves is not mechanical but moral and spiritual. We aim not at the alteration of a form of government but at the building up of a nation. Of that task politics is a part, but only a part. We shall devote ourselves not to politics alone, nor to social questions alone, nor to theology or philosophy or literature or science by themselves, but we include all these in one entity which we believe to be all-important, the dharma, the national religion which we also believe to be universal. There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be guardian, exemplar and missionary. This is the sanatana dharma, the eternal religion. Under the stress of alien impacts she has largely lost hold not of the structure of that dharma, but of its living reality. For the religion of India is nothing if it is not lived. It has to be applied not only to life, but to the whole of life; its spirit has to enter into and mould our society, our politics, our literature, our science, our individual character, affections and aspirations. To understand the heart of this dharma, to experience it as a truth, to feel the high emotions to which it rises and to express and execute it in life is what we understand by Karmayoga. We believe that it is to make the yoga the ideal of human life that India rises today; by the yoga she will get the strength to realize her freedom, unity and greatness, by the yoga she will keep the strength to preserve it. It is a spiritual revolution we foresee and the material is only its shadow and reflex. (CWSA 8: 23–24)

The Problem of Unity: An Illustrative Example

To understand what the deeper cure of India is and how we can find it, we have to first understand India’s complexity. The being of a nation as ancient as India is bound to be complex and rich in many-sided experiences. There are at least three layers at which India exists. First, there is the surface India, which people notice when they look at the country superficially. This surface gives the impression of a huge building, broken in several places, with cracked walls and disfigured plaster. But right behind this we also find it bubbling with activity and dynamism, as if a lot of outworn things needed mending and a lot of work was going on. When we have borne this first shock and moved a little inside its inner being, we feel the breath of fresh air, a different atmosphere the kind of which one finds nowhere in the world; it is literally so to say Air India. This inner atmosphere carries in itself something that supports and nurtures hope, washes us of cynicism, and gives strength and peace despite all outer appearances. While most nations exist largely on the material and intellectual plane, we find in India the sudden surprise of meeting life in many shades and colours. We are led into the inner India through many doors, each carved with rich artistry, even though the door appears as if it had gathered dust over the centuries. We begin to feel the magic of India of the old, its many-tiered existence with wonderful creative possibilities for the future. And if, like the rare few, we can venture into India’s great and mighty soul, we are wonderstruck with its magnanimity of thought, nobility of feelings, and its heart rich with mysteries of the beyond. We see an ancient face full of deep wisdom and compassion, as of a graceful goddess that has been long suffering and yet carries a light upon her face and a strength in her bosom that yet can save the world. It is this inmost India, the soul of India, the mighty goddess, and the wise and compassionate mother that we must first discover as a nation, love her, and identify with her. Only then can we truly help in the task of national resurrection. Then India herself will reveal her secrets and the way to truth, harmony, and progress. But now she hides herself in oblivion, in a shroud of darkness, her dress covered with dirt and smoke thrown upon her by her own children whom she loves and gives shelter in her arms. On the surface is the shadow, and in the depth she carries a light that is greater than reason and thought, and if brought to the forefront, this light can solve problems that seem insoluble to the human race.

One illustrative example is the problem of unity that threatens both India and the world today, perhaps more than any other problem. It is in fact one of the core problems that the world faces, for much of our earth resources are sapped out, much of the disparity generated, much of war, famine, and eco-disasters spring from this one core issue of division between one group of humanity and another. With regard to this diversity, India is incomparable so much as to qualify the term subcontinent for it. India has this big problem of an amazing range of diversity of groups—ethnic, religious, cultural, temperamental, social, political, ideological, and even philosophical. What India needs most at this moment is unity, and what India suffers most from is division. It is no possible to solve the problem arbitrarily by either repressing one group over another or by blurring out all distinctions. The politicians who profess to solve it only deepen the divide further, either through the politics of appeasement or through the politics of revenge. The politics of reservations and the politics of discrimination stand at par and are two aspects of the same farce—the force of division and disunity. Both of these stand at the same level, and the existence of one is justified by the existence of the other. They are like counterbalancing forces. Another way must be found, the right key to harmonize all without anyone losing their separate identity. It must discover the means to fulfil that which nature overtly intends—to create unity in diversity. And this cannot be done by any mere surface manipulation, whether political, governmental, social, or legislative means. We must find a more durable way, some secret key lost within our own being. For it is true that nature never presents a problem without first creating the means to solve it. We are never given a difficulty without simultaneously being granted the strength to endure and resolve it. India must find that lost key.

Strangely, the soul of India carries the memory of an earlier solution that can be applied even today, albeit modified to our own times. In far ancient times when the spiritual impulse was strong, India saw human beings as children of one family, the family of the one divine immanent in man whom no sole religion, group, or cult could monopolize, whom all could discover and discover their secret oneness with all. This inner self cut across the boundaries of class and caste, race and religion, custom and tradition, country and education; it was one for all. Deep inside, mankind shares a common aspiration, or let’s say some common aspirations, and it is in that that we must unite. This aspiration is not simply about food, shelter, and clothing, as our more biologically orientated friends may suggest. In fact, it is the distortion of a profound truth. We are indeed one, and we have a common seeking, but it is not simply a common seeking to satisfy our most basal animal needs but a seeking for something lasting and permanent, something that transcends the human mould and yet fulfils it—an aspiration for lasting peace, durable happiness, true knowledge, unconditional love—in short, a perfect life here upon earth irrespective of our beliefs and non-beliefs. It is these that must be emphasized as the enduring needs of the race and the basis of our mutuality. The success story of science is partly because it professed to satisfy these common seekings of the race, and no wonder very soon it gathered almost a mass following trampling under its feet as it marched, religion, orthodoxy, and whatever else governed the world in the Middle Ages. But science has its limitations; it can bring diverse groups of humanity together in its common seeking for practical knowledge and material comfort. Its limitation is that it cannot satisfy man’s hunger for the permanent, the real, and the eternal. It cannot fulfil our thirst for love, joy, beauty, and all that makes life hope, dare, dream, and endure despite being haunted by failure, defeat, and even death. But just as science is the gift of our physical mind playing with matter and the body of the universe, there exists in man, in his own depths, the gift of goodness, beauty, and joy that can endure, the gift of love that triumphs over division and death. Man must be shown the way to connect with these depths beyond the outer forms of his beliefs and non-beliefs, religious or otherwise, or even to transcend these initial scaffoldings to reach the reality that the religious symbols represent. This cannot be done merely through intellectual debates and discussions, though that can be a starter, but most of all by the force of realization. The more such realized men arise, men who live and breathe upon the summits of consciousness, men who have drunk the nectar wine of truth and love and joy in their own depths, the sooner they will create a force field for unity to thrive, blossom, and spread. And who knows, as an ancient Indian saying goes, each such spiritually realized man may neutralize a hundred thousandfold the darkness of the human race. And who else but India must lead the way?

That this has happened and can still happen is exemplified by India’s own history of the Sufi movement. It was indeed nature’s first strong experiment in recent times to see how far the spiritual force can unite even extremely diverse groups such as the Hindus and the Muslims, diverse not only in language, customs, traditions, and beliefs but also in the temperamental cast of the inner being. One comes from a large-spirited, calm, secular, and richly complex refreshingly rejuvenating spiritual striving of the Hindu; the other is born of a breakaway fiery and passionate spirit of a narrow and exclusivist religious outlook, full of zeal and fervour, that easily borders onto fanaticism. Yet the Sufi mystics found no contradictions in it and easily reconciled the two. Their body and outer mind, their vital nature, habits, and customs belonged to the religious tradition to which they were born, while their soul soared into oneness and radiated the spirit of truth and love. Both Hindus and Muslims approached these living embodiments of light, whether they came from the Hindu background as Guru Nanak Dev did, a Muslim background as Sheikh Salim Chisti and Hazrat Nizamuddin, or a dubious background as Saint Kabir. All our differences of caste, creed, and orthodox religion melted in their spiritual embrace and even enriched each other. That the movement could not sustain itself was for various reasons. The movement was largely limited to the heart; its appeal was to some deeper emotion from where some rejuvenating streams of love could flow out and unite us in a common spiritual bond. But the intellect and the crude vital were not touched. It was subdued or sublimated but not purified. Therefore, the movement could not involve our entire being. The conflicts were not healed but overridden for a moment by a strong spiritual impulse that uplifted us beyond the limits of our pettiness and smallness—but only for a moment. The subconscious parts pulled us back again, but not without showing that there exists in us a strong force of unity in our own depths. Perhaps the masses were not yet ready, and the movement dwindled, lacking in force that comes from realized men. Perhaps the time had not yet come and more water had to flow before the bridge could be ready. Most of all, the movement started taking more and more an other-worldly turn and began loosing its grip on earthly realities and failed to check the onslaught of the adverse powers there. The fanatic likes of Aurangzeb and the cunning divisive policies of the British came in and occupied the outer field left unconquered by these great mystics. Yet they prepared the way for a more complete realization to come later on and showed in their passing the first promise and hint in our more recent memory of reconciling outer differences by the force of an inner truth.

It is little wonder then that the forces of disruption and division targeted the very centre of this unity. For though Sufism travelled from Persia to India, it flourished most along the banks of the Indus, Sutlej, and Beas in regions that we know today as Pakistan and Punjab. In the beautiful valleys of Kashmir, it grew not only in its spirit but also in its outward expressions. The glad and friendly co-existence of the chaste Kashmiri Pandits and the devout Muslims, the rich and happy confluence of the two traditions, became widely appreciated and known as Kashmiriyat, which in essence reflected the natural outflowing of the Sufi culture. It is no wonder then that Kashmir became the target of violent attacks of the worst kind, for if Kashmir or rather Kashmiriyat remains, then there remains a possibility of uniting two diverse streams of spiritual and vital energies, of uniting two diverse strains of national thought and ideologies, and making each stronger and richer by this union. In fact, the Sufi movement may well have been an attempt for the collective consciousness of Islam to find its own soul, but it could not endure it for long and ended up confusing its hardened vital will for the authentic soul. The heart was ready, but the mind was small and narrow, not ready for receiving its soul intimations, the vital forceful but obstinately rigid lacking in plasticity and suppleness. It is only for a brief period that a few Mughal kings, coming into contact with the Indian ethos, developed their own deeper aesthesis and suffused a touch of gentleness, beauty, and grace in an otherwise savagely warring lot of humanity. The Muslims, like the Christians, came to India to learn from her the deeper ways of unity and the eternal truths of life. But, instead, they paid the great mother’s debt by plundering and dismembering her. Yet the great mother took them in her folds as one would take a sick child in his arms to heal his misery and anguish with a deeper light and love.

Therefore, the forces of division and disorder that wish to delay the manifestation of unity have furiously attacked this centre of a rare kind of unity. In fact, one may well say that Kashmir is of crucial importance to the very existence of Islam; it is the only hope left today for Islam to yet find its true soul and integrate with the great evolutionary impetus that is carrying this world today with a mighty force. If Kashmir falls to the radicals, then Islam may well lose its way and fail to live up to its own aspiration for a fairer and equal world that belongs to god. How the forces of evolutionary transformation would deal with such a scenario is anybody’s guess, but the signs are growing clearer. But if Kashmir lives, not just physically but spiritually (for which it must remain part of India), then it may well become a strong force field for unity. The very Kashmir that we consider today as part of the problem carries in itself the seed of its own remedy. If applied rightly, it would become not only a means and a force for uniting India and Pakistan but also generate a larger movement for uniting the best in Islam with the best in Hindu thought. And who knows if this symbolic union might not spread to other groups spontaneously, as a contagion? Kashmir is making the two nations talk; it bleeds with fate’s whip so that both nations can look deeper to discover the inner solution to the problem of their own self-identity. What appears today as the hard bedrock of difficulties may well be the seat of solution tomorrow. But, it is unlikely that this solution can come about by any mere political means. Rather, if the political interference is reduced to a minimum from both sides of the fence, if the state of Kashmir is allowed to discover its own hidden springs of harmonious energies, it will bring out of its own depths the force for unity. The main focus of any facilitator solving the Indo-Pak problem should be to encourage the emergence of the true composite culture of Kashmir, its Kashmiriyat that expressed itself through the lips of the Sufi mystics, and the rest will follow. Unfortunately, it is this that the terrorists and hard-core Islamic radicals have targeted and largely destroyed—in form but not yet in spirit and essence. Everything must be done to preserve, bring it to the forefront, and actively popularize it among the hardened groups on both sides. Such efforts as cultural exchanges through Sufi music and poetry may seem small in their power to solve big problems, but they act like homoeopathic medicines that, if rightly used in optimal dilution, can create sudden reversals and great effects. Happily, such a movement has begun. The sharing of common sentiments, whether in cricket or the earthquake, further cements the fault lines. What seem today to be opposites, and therefore, a source of conflict for the group ego are, in reality, complementarities for the soul.

The Need for a National Yoga

How will unity in diversity come about, and how will this sense of complementarity grow? It has to be tackled at three different levels of our being. At the outermost level, it will help to engage representatives of different groups and nations ‘together’ in a common action, a common sentiment, a common ground of association. There are many issues of common interest where joint action would be much more beneficial to both than each going its way alone. These issues can be sports, environmental, commercial, ecological, resource management, scientific, etc. We are actually being pushed towards this by necessity rather than choice, often by negative means such as terrorism and ecological disasters, rather than positive means such as resource pooling and commerce for mutual benefit. In this sense, science and commerce are doing well to link up the different units of the world into a unity of necessity. But this is not enough. A second and deeper level of work is at the inner being of the nation-unit. This inner being is best represented through ‘culture’ in its deepest sense. This inner and deeper side of each culture needs to be brought out and rightly represented through media and cultural exchange programs. Unfortunately, most often this ‘inner side’ is neglected or willfully ignored, and what is presented is simply a set of customs and traditions. One has to simply tune in to the TV documentaries on ‘India’, which will show ash-smeared, half-naked ‘sadhus’ with begging bowls, taking a dip in the Ganges, the crowded temple streets, the weird practices of piercing the tongue, etc. as a representative of Indian cultures. This is either a wilful misinterpretation or a gross ignorance. It has only generated confusion or an idle curiosity for something ‘different’ rather than bridging the gaps and building bridges through a deeper intellectual and philosophical understanding of different ethos. Finally, and most importantly, there has to be a nucleus of humanity that can go deeper within themselves not merely as individuals (that is indeed the first step) but as representatives of different groups. These must discover the group-soul that they belong to and, by a natural spiritual extension, rediscover their complimentary oneness with other groups. The more such human beings of deeper understanding and spiritual unity grow, the more we shall have peace and unity upon earth. Indeed, Auroville is precisely such a threefold effort at unity.

What applies to the problem of unity applies in every field of humanity. Corruption, greed, hate, conservatism, and fanaticism are all at their bottom spiritual problems. They arise because the individual and the group live in the sense of the ego and not in their soul. What is needed therefore is to discover the individual as well as the national soul. Yes, there is something we can call as the national soul. Ancient India knew this truth but has forgotten it today. It saw the nation as a living deity, a real mother, a goddess and not merely a piece of land nor even a mass of people. People are part of a nation, they are its important constituent elements but the nation exists through its natural boundaries, its unique flora and fauna, its mountains and rivers and seasons and trees, its rocks and minerals that antedate humanity. And what antedates these too is the soul of a nation of which the physical space is a crystallization. First thing of importance is to find its soul. What India therefore needs most is not just a national reconstruction but a national yoga. For along what lines are we going to construct a new India if we have not the vision to reconstruct—along the lines of Western polity and science that revels in well-polished external surfaces and a crafty manipulation of outward things while the inner being remains hollow, lacklustre, struggles, and suffers since stifled by appearances? Or along the lines of our own native genius that built such a mighty nation once by the ancient power of yoga that it has resisted millenniums of shocks, invasions, subjugation, and calamities. True, its centuries of struggle, especially in the past few hundred years, have made it weary and tired. Its resistance against foreign invasions and influences has hardened into fixed tradition, its own fluid adaptability to evolutionary forces. But these are momentary lapses and temporary setbacks. The Indian genius will bounce back and rediscover the splendours of the spirit and restore the true glory of life by connecting it to its divine origin. That is India’s unique, difficult, and dangerous task, fulfilling which will fulfill its highest destiny. And failing which it will frustrate itself and the world in its attempt to create a new world order. Of all the nations, India is most suited for this purpose, given its deep spiritual background and several strata of spiritual experience in its inner being and subconscious memory of the race; its unique and complex temperament and subtle intelligence combined with deliberate faith and qualities of the heart; its sense of the collective; and its resilient vital, which are especially suited for such a work. But it has to do it now under difficult circumstances due to the various admixtures that have taken place, but in the process the results are going to be far superior in quality and universal in applicability to the whole human race, since now it carries upon itself the additional imprint of the Middle East and the Western world.

Chapter 5
Mother India:
A Vision of the Indian Nation

A country’s mission is not something which can be decided mentally with all the egoistic and ignorant preferences of the external consciousness, for in that case the field of conflict between nations might be shifted, but the conflict would continue, probably with even greater force.

Just as each individual has a psychic being which is his true self and which governs his destiny more or less overtly, so too each nation has a psychic being which is its true being and moulds its destiny from behind the veil: it is the soul of the country, the national genius, the spirit of the people, the centre of national aspiration, the fountainhead of all that is beautiful, noble, great and generous in the life of the country. True patriots feel its presence as a tangible reality. In India it has been made into an almost divine entity, and all who truly love their country call it ‘Mother India’ (Bharat Mata) and offer her a daily prayer for the welfare of their country. It is she who symbolises and embodies the true ideal of the country, its true mission in the world. (CWM 12: 42–43)

Invocation: 15 August 1947

O our Mother, O Soul of India, Mother who hast never forsaken thy children even in the days of darkest depression, even when they turned away from thy voice, served other masters and denied thee, now when they have arisen and the light is on thy face in this dawn of thy liberation, in this great hour we salute thee. Guide us so that the horizon of freedom opening before us may be also a horizon of true greatness and of thy true life in the community of the nations. Guide us so that we may be always on the side of great ideals and show to men thy true visage, as a leader in the ways of the spirit and a friend and helper of all the peoples. (CWM 13: 352)

The Soul of India

A debate has started in the Indian mind about the definition of nationalism. Though much of this debate seems to have been prompted by certain ideological positions that appear to be destructive of the very fabric of what a nation is generally meant to be. Yet like all things, this ‘negative’ start has served one god and a positive purpose. It has begun to stir the Indian mind, its thoughts and imaginations, to search and grope for what constitutes an Indian identity. Of course, this is not the first time this has happened. The soul of India was stirred into rebirth with the song of Rishi Bankim Chandra, who adored in India the eternal goddess, the Shakti of a million people, an aspect of the divine mother as Durga. Sri Aurobindo fully awakened her from the remote and inaccessible caves where she had withdrawn into a restorative slumber during the dark passage through which India and the world passed before the tide of time turned once again with the sun rising in the Eastern horizons and setting over the kingdoms and empires of the West. In a more general way, the debate on Indian nationalism started during the Indian Independence Movement, precipitated by the partition of Bengal by the British. Sri Aurobindo, the champion of swaraj had at that time written and spoken extensively on the idea of nationalism and what really constitutes the Indian nation.

The Meaning of and the Need for Unity

As was his method, Sri Aurobindo worked from within outwards. He first invoked the soul of India and installed her in the body and soul of the nation. When Sri Aurobindo invoked Mother Durga or saw in the country the million-armed mother, he was seeing much far and wide in time than we could realize. Its importance is revealed today when so many forces of division, disunity, and disintegration are busy pulling down the ramparts of true freedom while proclaiming the need for freedom! The last weapon of the devil is to imitate truth, drawing in the good by playing the note that they like to hear, all the while using it as an advertisement to attract the gullible and murder the very cause he proclaims and announces from rooftops. Freedom in any country is only possible when the country itself survives. That is plain common sense if nothing else. Besides, freedom is a double-edged sword. When misused, it falls upon the one who wields it, ultimately destroying the person who claims it. But rightly used, it can set the person truly free, within and without. That is why Sri Aurobindo, the champion of Indian nationalism and its complete independence from British rule, spoke of the double sense in which the word swaraj has to be understood. At the turn of the previous century, he wrote:

Freedom is the goal of our political struggle, but there is a difference of opinion regarding the true meaning of freedom. Some say it is full autonomy, some say it is colonial self-government (Dominion Status), and yet others mention that it is ‘Swaraj’, full political independence. The Aryan Rishis used to designate the practical and spiritual freedom and its fruit, the inviolable Ananda, as ‘Swarajya’, self-empire. Political freedom is but a limb of Swarajya, self-empire. It has two aspects—external freedom and internal freedom. Complete liberty from foreign domination is the external freedom, and democracy is the highest expression of the internal freedom. (CWSA 9: 226)

It is only when we deeply regard ourselves as foreigners in our own land that we begin to think and speak of freedom from the very nation that has nourished and nurtured us. And we demand this freedom not by making a conscious choice to live elsewhere but by disintegrating the very nation. Basically, it means that we do not feel that it is our nation unless it follows my ideology. But nation is much more than ideology or religion. It is, as Sri Aurobindo saw, a living entity, a conscious goddess, and to disintegrate a nation is to try dismembering this goddess! And just as a soul cannot manifest its fullness through a dismembered and mutilated body, so too the national spirit cannot express itself fully if its limbs are cut off. Therefore, unity is the first need, the need of the hour. But how are we to create this much needed unity? The solution is to see the country as our mother and ourselves as children of one mother. Thus alone can the sense of one family grow, and despite our differences of speech and custom, religion, and ideologies, we can still remain one, being tied to each other through a common fraternal bond. This is how Sri Aurobindo envisaged it:

We have gained the national consciousness but unless it is steeped in patriotism our national consciousness cannot blossom. Adoration of the Mother must be the foundation of that patriotism. The day ‘Bande Mataram’, the song of Bankimchandra, crossed the barrier of the outer senses and knocked at the heart, on that day patriotism was born in our heart; on that day the Mother’s image was enshrined in our heart. The country is Mother, the country is Divine,—this sublime precept which forms a part of the Upanishadic teachings is the seed of the national rising. As the ‘Jiva’ is a part of the Divine, as the power of the ‘Jiva’ is also a part of the Divine power, so also the seventy million Bengalis, the collectivity of three hundred million Indians are part of all-pervading Vasudeva; in the same manner, Mother India, adorned with many hands and powers, shelter of these three hundred millions, embodiment of Shakti, is a force of the Divine Mother, the Goddess, the very body of the universal Mahakali.

. . .

The country and nothing but the country is the foundation of Nationalism, neither the nation, nor religion, nothing else matters. All other elements are secondary and contributory, it is the country alone that is primary and essential. Many mutually exclusive races live in the land, perhaps there never was enough goodwill, unity or friendliness. What is there in that to worry about? When it is one country, one Mother—there is bound to be unity one day, and out of the union of many races shall emerge a strong and invincible nation. Our religious views may differ, there might be endless conflict among the communities, neither concordance nor any hope of concordance, still one need not have any misgivings. By the powerful magnetic attraction of the Mother embodied in the country, by fair means or foul—whether by mutual understanding, or by force or by appeasement—harmony will be achieved; communalism, separation will be drowned in fraternal feelings, in a common love and worship of the Mother. In a land of many languages brother is unable to understand brother, we do not sympathise with each other’s feelings, between heart and heart there are immense barriers. These have to be overcome with much effort. Yet one need not fear. There is the same current of thought in every mind, of one country, one life, and under pressure of need a common language is bound to evolve, either one of the existing languages will come to be accepted, else a new language will be created. In the Mother’s temple all will use that language. There is nothing permanent about these obstacles. The Mother’s need, her attraction and deeper desire are not to be frustrated, these will surmount all obstacles and conflicts. Born of the same Mother, on her lap we live, in her five elements we merge and melt, in spite of a thousand real dissensions we shall unite at Her call.

. . .

There were some major obstacles regarding this natural attempt: first, the provincial differences; secondly, the Hindu-Muslim conflict; thirdly, the lack of a vision of the country as Mother. Its vast area, the delays and difficulties of communication, and the differences in language are some of the primary factors responsible for provincial disunity. Thanks to modern science, except for the last factor, the rest have lost their separative vigour.

. . .

Our chief obstacle, however, is an absence of vision of the country as our Mother. For the most part our politicians have been incapable of a close and full vision of the Mother. Ranjit Singh or Guru Gobind Singh had seen only the Mother of the Land of the Five Rivers instead of Mother India; Shivaji or Baji Rao had seen a Mother of the Hindus instead of Mother India. The other Maharashtrian statesmen had seen only a Mother for the Maharashtrians. At the time of the Partition we ourselves had been blessed with a vision of Mother Bengal, that was a vision of unity, hence the future unity and progress of Bengal is assured. But the unified image of Mother India is yet to be realised. In the Congress, the Mother India that we hymned, adored and worshipped was a figure of fancy, a companion and obliging maid of the British Raj, an undivine illusion in occidental outfit. She was indeed not our Mother. All the same, hid in a deep or vague murkiness our true Mother drew our heart and soul. The day we see Her true indivisible image, struck by Her beauty and grace, we shall eagerly lay down our lives in Her service. Then this obstacle will be gone, and India’s unity, freedom and progress be easier to achieve . . . The barrier of language will no longer divide. Accepting Hindi as a link language but with due regard for one’s own regional language, we shall get rid of the disability. We shall succeed in finding a true solution of the Hindu-Muslim conflict. For want of a vision of the country as the Mother, the urge to do away with these obstacles has not been strongly felt. That is why the means has not been found and the conflict been growing worse. What is required is an image of the country, true and indivisible. But if, under the illusion of that true vision, we still cherish only the Mother of the Hindus or Hindu nationalism we shall fall for the old error and deprive ourselves of the full flowering of Nationalism itself. (CWSA 9: 221–22, 224–26)

The Inner Being of India

But just as a human being is not just a soul but also a body and a mind, an outer as well as an inner being, a nation too is not just a physical entity, a geographical boundary where different sections of humanity have somehow come to reside. Nor can a nation be defined merely by its peoples. People come and go; samples of humanity change just as our thoughts and feelings change as we grow, but there is something that endures through the change. It is the inner being that grows and absorbs the different strands of experiences acquired through the shocks of outer contacts, integrating them with its inner life. This inner being of a nation that lasts through time and grows through its complex history is the ‘culture’, the basic trend and temperament that the soul of the nation has come to manifest. Finally, this inner being needs a concrete physical body, a geographical space to manifest its energies that have accumulated over millennia. That is what we generally recognize as a country. Just as an individual’s identity is not discerned by the colour of his skin, the language he speaks, or the costume and customs of his existence so too, and even more so, a thing as complex as a national identity cannot be determined by these external things. These things are instruments of expression but are not the soul of who or what we are. That at least is how the Indian mind has always looked at life. Our true identity is hidden deep within us. It is the spark of an indestructible fire that illumines the whole universe and energizes it, setting all things into dynamic motion. This fire, the source of light and warmth, reveals itself in man as faith and will, knowledge and power. It is these things that truly define us, our faith, and will-to-be, the knowledge base through which we operate, and the kind of energy we outpour upon the world. This is the key to our national identity as well. The ancient seers defined it as Aryavarta, the home of those who followed an Aryan way of life. And what was that way? Sri Aurobindo brings it out beautifully when he dwells upon the meaning of the word Arya:

To most European readers the name figuring on our cover is likely to be a hieroglyph which attracts or repels according to the temperament. Indians know the word, but it has lost for them the significance which it bore to their forefathers. Western Philology has converted it into a racial term, an unknown ethnological quantity on which different speculations fix different values. Now, even among the philologists, some are beginning to recognise that the word in its original use expressed not a difference of race, but a difference of culture. For in the Veda the Aryan peoples are those who had accepted a particular type of self-culture, of inward and outward practice, of ideality, of aspiration. The Aryan gods were the supraphysical powers who assisted the mortal in his struggle towards the nature of the godhead. All the highest aspirations of the early human race, its noblest religious temper, its most idealistic velleities of thought are summed up in this single vocable.

In later times, the word Arya expressed a particular ethical and social ideal, an ideal of well-governed life, candour, courtesy, nobility, straight dealing, courage, gentleness, purity, humanity, compassion, protection of the weak, liberality, observance of social duty, eagerness for knowledge, respect for the wise and learned, the social accomplishments. It was the combined ideal of the Brahmana and the Kshatriya. Everything that departed from this ideal, everything that tended towards the ignoble, mean, obscure, rude, cruel or false, was termed un-Aryan. There is no word in human speech that has a nobler history.

. . .

If Arya were a purely racial term, a more probable derivation would be ar, meaning strength or valour, from ar, to fight, whence we have the name of the Greek war-god Ares, areios, brave or warlike, perhaps even aretē, virtue, signifying, like the Latin virtus, first, physical strength and courage and then moral force and elevation. This sense of the word also we may accept. ‘We fight to win sublime Wisdom, therefore men call us warriors.’ For Wisdom implies the choice as well as the knowledge of that which is best, noblest, most luminous, most divine. Certainly, it means also the knowledge of all things and charity and reverence for all things, even the most apparently mean, ugly or dark, for the sake of the universal Deity who chooses to dwell equally in all. But, also, the law of right action is a choice, the preference of that which expresses the godhead to that which conceals it. And the choice entails a battle, a struggle. It is not easily made, it is not easily enforced.

Whoever makes that choice, whoever seeks to climb from level to level up the hill of the divine, fearing nothing, deterred by no retardation or defeat, shrinking from no vastness because it is too vast for his intelligence, no height because it is too high for his spirit, no greatness because it is too great for his force and courage, he is the Aryan, the divine fighter and victor, the noble man, aristos, best, the śreṣṭha of the Gita.

Intrinsically, in its most fundamental sense, Arya means an effort or an uprising and overcoming. The Aryan is he who strives and overcomes all outside him and within him that stands opposed to the human advance. Self-conquest is the first law of his nature. He overcomes earth and the body and does not consent like ordinary men to their dullness, inertia, dead routine and tamasic limitations. He overcomes life and its energies and refuses to be dominated by their hungers and cravings or enslaved by their rajasic passions. He overcomes the mind and its habits, he does not live in a shell of ignorance, inherited prejudices, customary ideas, pleasant opinions, but knows how to seek and choose, to be large and flexible in intelligence even as he is firm and strong in his will. For in everything he seeks truth, in everything right, in everything height and freedom.

Self-perfection is the aim of his self-conquest. Therefore what he conquers he does not destroy, but ennobles and fulfils. He knows that the body, life and mind are given him in order to attain to something higher than they; therefore they must be transcended and overcome, their limitations denied, the absorption of their gratifications rejected. But he knows also that the Highest is something which is no nullity in the world, but increasingly expresses itself here,—a divine Will, Consciousness, Love, Beatitude which pours itself out, when found, through the terms of the lower life on the finder and on all in his environment that is capable of receiving it. Of that he is the servant, lover and seeker. When it is attained, he pours it forth in work, love, joy and knowledge upon mankind. For always the Aryan is a worker and warrior. He spares himself no labour of mind or body whether to seek the Highest or to serve it. He avoids no difficulty, he accepts no cessation from fatigue. Always he fights for the coming of that kingdom within himself and in the world. (CWSA 13: 441–43)

There is a section of humanity that does not believe in a nation at all. This ideal is compelling and appealing since something in us wishes a world free of boundaries. However, what this section means when they refute the truth of nationality is not this higher state of universalism, nor even the lesser god of internationalism or human unity, but its very shadow. They see in the world nothing more than a class struggle, much like the ancient tribes that jostled for space and fought each other to dominate and occupy territories. In this ideological setting, might is right, and the more, the merrier. If we get rid of the shine and gloss of words, we will see that this is actually a regressive state, a kind of jungle raj through which humanity moved and has already moved past in its search for a group identity that is larger than a tribe or a family and clan and more durable than a class. In fact, the nation-idea, by its very nature, does away with all these physical and other differences that group-life ordinarily perpetuates. A nation, by its very nature, would include people of diverse faiths and religions, different belief systems, different layers and levels of humanity, and different social and other strata. And therein lies also the challenge of forming a national identity. A nation-unit based on only one type or section of humanity or one kind of life or political system is yet to come of age. It is much like a child that knows only its body and is governed by a few simple elementary functions such as eating, drinking, some basic comforts, etc., but there is yet to develop in him the capacity and complexity of thought, the refinement of feelings that go beyond the few elementary emotions, few needs, and a small repertoire of activities. But as the child grows and develops, he must discover within himself a world of endless complexity, diverse tendencies, and even contradictory wills and impulses pulling and pushing him in opposite directions. So too, the sign of maturity of a nation is that it can contain and integrate a large variety and diversity of humanity. Groupings built upon one religious belief system or ideological position (two sides of the same coin) are yet in their infancy, which must grow up with the passage of time. In this sense, India is truly a mature nation. This does not make its task easy. In fact, just as with growing up, the complexity of life and tasks we must perform also grows in difficulty so too with national life. As a nation grows through layers of experience, its task becomes much more challenging. Nature has indeed laboured long and with tremendous difficulties and challenges evolved the group-life beyond tribes and clans, sects and religions, and ideological units and parties to a more enduring, more recent group-life called the nation. The previous groupings are only initial steps to teach and train mankind to come together, live together, and grow together towards the far-off goal of humanity. The individual and the collective are both equally important terms of human existence, just as the individual and the universal are two terms of the divine existence that unite in the transcendent. The nation too allows the possibility of fusion of these two terms of our life—the individual and the collective. But to do that, we must reach out one step higher and discover the transcendent origin of these two; otherwise, the balance will always remain precarious, swinging between anarchy and totalitarianism and all the rest in-between.

It is here that we see the genius creative thought of India. The seers and sages whom we recognize as the original inhabitants of the Indian Peninsula sought to create this unity neither through purely physical means such as the geographical boundaries nor through external means such as language, colour of the skin, racial features, etc., but by discovering the deeper truth that binds us all in a harmonious whole. This discovery is the divine principle in creation, the one enduring truth that can bear and endure the rub and change of time and yet emerge intact, albeit with new forms of itself suited to the temperament of the individual and the age through which mankind is transiting. In a significant verse from the Rig Veda, the seer poet invokes the fire and invites us all to unite around this fire of aspiration that burns deep in every human being—the aspiration for light, truth, peace, love, and bliss. It is this common factor—the highest common factor, so to speak—that binds us all in a mutual effort at terrestrial perfection. But instead, we have inverted it into the least common multiple of bread and butter, food and shelter, as if mankind needed nothing more than the animal and sought for nothing higher than its belly, nothing deeper than its skin. Christ, the champion of freedom and equality, put it beautifully that man does not live by bread alone. There is much more to life than bread and butter or mere satisfaction of blind lusts and ambitions, a truth brought out powerfully in the Ramayana. Rama, the warrior-prince, the scion of Ikshvaku clan, in fact abandons his rightful throne to follow the higher truth of life termed dharma. It is dharma that unites man and earth, beast and bird, and river and stone. Each creature follows the law of its being, and as long as it is faithful to this inner truth, it finds its harmonious place in the whole. But when it deviates from dharma, it becomes a cause and source of confusion, an imbalance that needs to be addressed so that dharma can be restored and, with it, the harmonious and natural order re-established. That is why Ravana must be contained so that his proud lust does not hijack the world agenda and thwart its progress. That is why Kansa must be slain so that truth and order, harmony, and balance may be restored. That is why a man-eater tiger lion that has entered the village life and is causing damage to cattle and man needs to be killed, however rare and endangered species it may belong to. That is also the reason why military action gets justified so long as it is in self-defence and to preserve the larger national life and ensure its safety. But when self-styled champions of an unbridled license and freedom proclaim the rights of an individual to speak and do as they please, they forget that by doing this they are pushing the world order towards anarchy and disintegration of dharma.

The Ramayana and the Mahabharata

The seers who built this nation, by yagna and tapasya, by the force of knowledge that pierces all coverings to bring out the truth, instilled this sense of dharma in the Indian psyche through countless stories, legends, and myths. It hardly matters whether these stories are actual physical narratives or historical facts since, by the magic of their words, the rishis have turned them into truths of our complex psychological existence. This does not mean that the rishis were peddling lies or indulging in imaginations and fantasies. On the contrary, the stories usually have a clear nucleus of actual events around which the narrative is woven. But the wonder of the weaver is that they apply at once to many levels of our existence, including the physical. Rama, therefore, is an archetype of humanity—whether past or the future type yet to come—who embodies the dharma, who is at once chivalrous and compassionate, strong and tender, loving and wise, easy to forgive, but if challenged to fight, fearless and strong in the battle. He can as easily abandon a rightful kingdom as he can march into a demon king’s vast and well-fortified empire with the help of untrained warriors. In all his actions one feels a divinely inspired movement, an uplifting stress of life that calls us to exceed ourselves and to be noble and courageous and generous and compassionate and strong and fearless, the qualities that were and are cherished and nourished by the Indian. Rama, in fact, is the first socialist who beautifully combines socialism and monarchy, democracy and kingship because his vision and action are based on the divine truth and its unfolding.

In the life of Rama, we see that the systems matter little as long as the man is unselfish and noble. But if a man is greedy and selfish, egoistic and ambitious, then he will misuse even the most beautiful system to his personal advantage. Is this not relevant to us even today? The rishis aware of this challenge busied themselves much more with man-making, or rather divine man-making, than with propounding theories of governance or schools of thought. These came later when the great civilization was already on the decline, a necessary decline since this initial experiment at collective self-exceeding had to be subsequently generalized in the whole world. That is the significance and relevance of Indian thought in the modern context. There is a possibility of an ideal humanity, an evolved and developed humanity, not evolved in the Nietzschean sense but in the Indian sense, an evolution that takes us towards our divine source—not the titanic evolution of the Ravana type of man but the godlike evolution of the Rama type. Rama is our own idealized self, and by loving Rama, we begin to love and become the ideal type of humanity we aspire to become. In the same story running through the twists and turns of fate, we also discover the ideal feminine Sita, who faces all with courage and faith and yet refuses to yield either to despair or fill her heart with bitterness. She silently bears all because in her is embodied the power of love that turns all things to sweetness and helps the best emerge even out of the worst. She is the daughter of earth, and like earth, she bears all with love and hope. Rama is the child of heaven, and in their meeting, the rishis foresaw the possibility of the meeting of earthly nature and divine nature. Albeit it was not yet to be in that age, the possibility is there, and only when this possibility actualizes itself can we have the true Ramarajya where lust and greed, doubt and suspicion, fear and evil are not, and when these are not, then only can man discover his individual and collective emancipation! It is when man changes that all will change and not be merely changing forms of governance.

So too we see in the story of Krishna, not just a historical figure, the son of Devaki, brought up by a foster mother, but an icon of youth. Krishna, with his youthful energies and revolutionary thought, breaks the patterns of the past to usher in a new and clearer future. He shrinks from nothing and is the very antithesis of our conventional understanding of a spiritual life that is often mistaken for asceticism. The wonder-boy of Gokul continues to inspire generation after generation of youth; his sweetness charms and attracts; his subtle yet practical wisdom becomes the subject of much contemplation, engaging us to exceed ourselves and resolve the conflicts and dilemmas of life not through the narrow doorway of escape but by entering into the wider ways of the spirit. If Rama is the perfect image of an idealized man, Krishna is the perfect image of a complete man. By fostering Krishna and by loving him, we too draw a little closer to this youthfulness that is ever ready to advance forward through the thick and thin of life, even if sometimes through a gory battle. No wonder before the cult of psychiatrists became popular, and even after that, many men in crisis find their ultimate answers to complex and vexing life problems in the Gita. The rest does not matter. The historicity of Krishna becomes something of a minor importance so long as we can reproduce Krishna’s inner reality within ourselves. This inner reality far exceeds the outer form and life of Krishna and adapts itself in a myriad ways to our varied approaches to the divine. Saints and sages of different religions and backgrounds as diverse as Hindu and Muslim, Christian and Jews have felt inspired by the divinely human personality of Krishna and his grand discourse on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. The modern historian may debate till the end of the world as to whether it is possible or not to deliver the Gita on the battlefield, but the Indian mind finds these discussions futile. The real thing is whether the Gita can uplift our consciousness or not. The rest is immaterial, even if it is based on the most material facts.

The importance given to symbolic and therefore universal truths by the Indian mind is seen yet again in the Puranic legends. In the story of Shiva and Shakti, to take just one instance among many, the Indian mind sees clearly the symbol of a perfect couple, the perfect union of the masculine and the feminine energies in creation, the union of soul and nature. Shiva is the ultimate renunciate, and yet he is held by the Indian mind, paradoxically though, as the perfect example of a householder! The greatest among the gods, he is also the simplest and the humblest. Easy to please, dressed as a beggar with no possessions, he leans to embrace not only the pious and the holy but even more so the low and the fallen. An iconoclast and an anarchist, he is the lover of freedom, and no earthly or heavenly laws can bind him. It is because of these narratives that the Indian mind understands the concept of freedom differently from the Western one. To the West, the ultimate freedom is the freedom of speech and expression. To the Indian mind, the ultimate freedom is freedom from ignorance that comes by transcending speech and thought. In fact, thought and speech are merely vehicles and instruments, and their power and value depend upon the force that uses them. That is why the Indian mind does not appreciate unbridled freedom and licentious behaviour. That, to its subtle understanding, is simply another kind of bondage. But the untrained gross intellect of the academic and scholarly mind, unchaste to understand the symbol, can see nothing else in the Shiva and Shakti legend except the sexual union of a man and a woman!

The Indian is therefore much more a psychological type than a physical and geographical entity. An Indian is not someone who merely follows the law of the land and obeys the Constitution—that is something to be done anyways and in every country; an Indian is one who looks beyond the Constitution and follows that subtle law of life called dharma. He does not follow a rule book out of fear but is much more keenly aware of the inner shastra, the Veda concealed in the heart of every living and thinking creature. If his dharma bids him to do something, he will do it even if the rule book is silent about it or glosses over it. If his deepest heart is inspired to make a soul gesture, he will go ahead and do it even if there is nothing written in the Constitution about it. That is why an Indian will never ask for a constitutional authority to utter ‘Bande Mataram’ or else look for rule book guidance to say Bharat Mata ki jai. There are religions and ideologies that are slaves to a book and will follow strictly the code given in the book. But an Indian, even while reading and understanding and respecting and valuing a sacred text, knows that the truth of things goes beyond the book and is enshrined in the heart. He will respond much more readily to this psychic prompting than to the external shastra. There are countless stories, myths, and parables through which this innate psychic sense has been nourished and nurtured in the Indian Peninsula, and that is why the Indian ultimately holds the man who has realized unity with the eternal in the highest esteem rather than a book or many books.

The Body of India

Unlike ideas and ideologies that spread across boundaries, a nation needs physical boundaries, which is called a country. In this sense, a nation is preordained. Its unique geography formed through the millions of years following a clash of physical forces prepares that body of a nation. Where boundaries are indistinct, there is a tendency to merge. If we take a look at India, we shall see clearly how the Himalayas in the north, Hindukush in the north-west, and the oceans on the three sides guard form the physical body of India. Even there is a sharing of common culture and common shared memories across India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh that goes beyond religious differences. The very image of this country that existed much before the Islamic invasion and the subsequent Partition resembles the silhouette of a goddess. It is unfortunate that at present there is a division, but obviously this present reality is neither something permanent nor final. The politics of today has created division, but the transformed politics of tomorrow are bound to heal this division created artificially by man’s foolish ignorance. Waves of time are bound to bring a merger, again, even as in the past. But does this physical body matter? Surely it does because the soul needs a body to have its full play, even to evolve and grow towards its fullness. It is from this perspective that a united India is necessary for our own deeper evolution and even the evolution of the world, for when India evolves, the world evolves spiritually. But when India refuses to grow and evolve and express her soul, the world is plunged into a dense darkness of matter and a sole material understanding of life that sees in man nothing more than a bundle of chemicals or an animal struggling for survival like any other beast. An Indian rather sees the beast as a sleeping god, man as a half-awake divinity, and the seer and the yogi as the fully accomplished humanity. Even matter is the outward cloak of the spirit, and this vast material universe is the outer body of the cosmic purusha, the virat, the galaxies as necklaces and garlands around his body, the stars as guiding lamplights, the sun and moon as his eyes, the fire as his head, the winds as his speech and force in motion. The unending curve of space is his cosmic house, and the atom is his tiniest temple. The importance of matter and this vast, complex world is only because he dwells in it and uses it as an instrument of his expression, a means to manifest himself. In fact, even the various types of humanity are born of the various functions of his single body. To see this vision is to be an Indian. To feel the unity of all things in the divine is to be an Indian; to engage with this world and its myriad forces; to act in and upon the diverse strands of the world movements while seeing only oneness is to be an Indian. To even fight a battle, a fierce and gruesome battle, if need be, to uphold this collective march of mankind is to be an Indian. Many who do not have the Indian sensitivity speak of violence in our texts. What they fail to see is the consciousness that permeates these profound works. When Ravana kills, he acts out of selfish greed, for the expansion of an empire, for feeding his ambitions and satisfying his unending lusts. But when Rama kills, be it Vali or Ravana, it is simply to uphold dharma; it is to open the way for mankind to go beyond the animal and the asuric nature and its gigantic appetites and propensities to a more rationally ethical, more sattwic and illumined, a wiser humanity. An Indian understands this instinctively, and that is why he regards these texts as sacred and profound. But others, who lack this inner sensitivity or the psychic touch, see in it merely a gospel of violence. Nay worse still, for they see in Durga’s slaying of the titan king Mahisasura a travesty of justice but find Mahisasura’s lust for women and blind ambitions perfectly natural that none has a right to stay or stop even if one man’s ambition to expand his empire leads to the massacre of millions. An Indian sees in Durga the mother and the icon and ideal of womanhood, a wonderful synthesis of beauty and strength, but the un-Arya sees in her merely the conspiracy and cunning of the gods. That is the difference between an Indian and a non-Indian. And this has nothing much to do in today’s mixed world with the passport we hold. There are many with an Indian worldview who hold a different nationality, whereas there are many within India who, in their inner being, do not belong here. Yet the grand experiment undertaken by India’s soul continues to take place regardless of these diverse types of humanity. That is part of her greatness that the ages have not dimmed. Even the repeated trampling of the asura has only strengthened her heart and increased her compassion.

It may be interesting to note how the ancient seers mapped the body of India. The Himalayas in the north and the three seas surrounding its flanks and feet were the general description of India. It was the piece that broke off from the two original continents and eventually joined with what we know today as Asia, thereby literally creating the form of a heart where the soul of the world resides. Where else and in which country today can we find the all-encompassing vision of man and creation that can unite and harmonize diverse strands of human thought and show the way for man to surpass himself and be yet greater than man? The rishis, not satisfied with geographical boundaries, created India out of the power of their creative thought and seer vision. Thus, they saw India as the mother with Durga as her guardian deity, thereby at once uniting the geography with its timeless history, the material land with its secret soul. And since Durga is a form and aspect of the universal mother, they found in this description a natural extension with the world, the earth, and beyond. But for the boundaries of India, it was Durga as Parvati, daughter of the mountains in the north; Kanyakumari, the ever-virgin daughter at the tip of the south; Kamakhya Devi, the giver of all desires in the far east; and Hinglaj Mata, the warrior goddess in the west in what is now the Balochistan province of Pakistan. The rest of India was built through the fifty-one parts of Mata Sati, known today as Shakti Peeth. Bring them together, and you have what may be called the prevision of the spiritual map of India, which we find drawn in the playground of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. It is this truth that some have caught in the idea of akhand Bharat. It is a truth that will surely manifest one day.

The Land of Dharma

We could go on with countless examples. But suffice it to say that an Indian, even when most illiterate and uncouth, is somewhere still conscious, however obscurely, of the psychic law that must govern humanity. His need and will for change spring from this deep fount and not from a revolt and anger against all who do not follow his ideology or worship his god, since an Indian also knows that many are the paths through which man approaches the one and all ideas, however divergent, converge in the one. That is why an Indian can easily enter a church or a mosque without feeling defiled. He can also, with equal ease, understand diverse systems of thought and philosophy and accommodate them in his complex inner life and yet subscribe to none. For going beyond ideas and ideologies, he is instinctively aware of that which no thought or idea can capture or fully express. These things are ingrained in the very fabric of an Indian mind, and he assimilates them with ease since, of all things, it is this he has inherited from the minds that conceived and revealed high, profound truths through the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Gita.

Of course, one might ask: Is dharma something fixed and unchangeable, or can it be altered and changed? Indian though provides insight into this question. The root of dharma is eternal and unchanging. It is truth that is vast and all-encompassing, but this truth is manifesting itself through the flux and flow of time and therefore is also subject to change. But this change has direction and a purpose. It may either be a change that is regressive, a change that reels back the collective march of mankind towards some primitive dark age from which it has emerged, or is emerging, with much difficulty. Or else this change may be evolutionary and push humanity forward towards its higher collective goal. That is the difference between the change brought about by Shiva and Krishna, through destruction and revolution if needed, and the change brought by the demon hordes who indulge in wanton destruction for their selfish ends without care and respect for the collective life of humanity. To put it simply, the spirit of dharma does not change; the forms and institutions change.

What really is this spirit of dharma? Sri Aurobindo puts it beautifully and succinctly:

Dharma is a word which has an ethical and practical, a natural and philosophical and a religious and spiritual significance, and it may be used in any of these senses exclusive of the others, in a purely ethical, a purely philosophical or a purely religious sense. Ethically it means the law of righteousness, the moral rule of conduct, or in a still more outward and practical significance social and political justice, or even simply the observation of the social law. If used in this sense we shall have to understand that when unrighteousness, injustice and oppression prevail, the Avatar descends to deliver the good and destroy the wicked, to break down injustice and oppression and restore the ethical balance of mankind.

We must then, in order to understand the Gita’s description of the work of the Avatar, take the idea of the Dharma in its fullest, deepest and largest conception, as the inner and the outer law by which the divine Will and Wisdom work out the spiritual evolution of mankind and its circumstances and results in the life of the race. Dharma in the Indian conception is not merely the good, the right, morality and justice, ethics; it is the whole government of all the relations of man with other beings, with Nature, with God, considered from the point of view of a divine principle working itself out in forms and laws of action, forms of the inner and the outer life, orderings of relations of every kind in the world. Dharma is both that which we hold to and that which holds together our inner and outer activities. In its primary sense it means a fundamental law of our nature which secretly conditions all our activities, and in this sense each being, type, species, individual, group has its own dharma. Secondly, there is the divine nature which has to develop and manifest in us, and in this sense dharma is the law of the inner workings by which that grows in our being. Thirdly, there is the law by which we govern our outgoing thought and action and our relations with each other so as to help best both our own growth and that of the human race towards the divine ideal.

Dharma is generally spoken of as something eternal and unchanging, and so it is in the fundamental principle, in the ideal, but in its forms it is continually changing and evolving, because man does not already possess the ideal or live in it, but aspires more or less perfectly towards it, is growing towards its knowledge and practice. And in this growth dharma is all that helps us to grow into the divine purity, largeness, light, freedom, power, strength, joy, love, good, unity, beauty, and against it stands its shadow and denial, all that resists its growth and has not undergone its law, all that has not yielded up and does not will to yield up its secret of divine values, but presents a front of perversion and contradiction, of impurity, narrowness, bondage, darkness, weakness, vileness, discord and suffering and division, and the hideous and the crude, all that man has to leave behind in his progress. This is the adharma, not dharma, which strives with and seeks to overcome the dharma, to draw backward and downward, the reactionary force which makes for evil, ignorance and darkness. Between the two there is perpetual battle and struggle, oscillation of victory and defeat in which sometimes the upward and sometimes the downward forces prevail. This has been typified in the Vedic image of the struggle between the divine and the Titanic powers, the sons of the Light and the undivided Infinity and the children of the Darkness and Division, in Zoroastrianism by Ahuramazda and Ahriman, and in later religions in the contest between God and his angels and Satan or Iblis and his demons for the possession of human life and the human soul.

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The Gita lays stress upon the struggle of which the world is the theatre, in its two aspects, the inner struggle and the outer battle. In the inner struggle the enemies are within, in the individual, and the slaying of desire, ignorance, egoism is the victory. But there is an outer struggle between the powers of the Dharma and the Adharma in the human collectivity. The former is supported by the divine, the godlike nature in man, and by those who represent it or strive to realise it in human life, the latter by the Titanic or demoniac, the Asuric and Rakshasic nature whose head is a violent egoism, and by those who represent and strive to satisfy it. This is the war of the Gods and Titans, the symbol of which the old Indian literature is full, the struggle of the Mahabharata of which Krishna is the central figure being often represented in that image; the Pandavas who fight for the establishment of the kingdom of the Dharma, are the sons of the Gods, their powers in human form, their adversaries are incarnations of the Titanic powers, they are Asuras. This outer struggle too the Avatar comes to aid, directly or indirectly, to destroy the reign of the Asuras, the evil-doers, and in them depress the power they represent and to restore the oppressed ideals of the Dharma. He comes to bring nearer the kingdom of heaven on earth in the collectivity as well as to build the kingdom of heaven within in the individual human soul. (CWSA 19: 169–75)

The Essence of Indian-ness

It is dharma and not the Constitution and the rule book, not ideologies and religions that see one side of the truth while ignoring other equally important aspects that should ideally be man’s guide for social justice. Or we may say, to put things in perspective, that the Constitution and the rules of a nation should be derived from the sense and spirit of dharma. At least this is what India and indian-ness are destined to reveal to the world as to how an individual and collective life can be organized around dharma. But to do that, we need space and unity within that space—a unity of thought and aspiration, a unity of purpose and goals. The practical ways will then evolve even when they differ. But as of now, this still seems a far cry. We are stuck to the outward ‘facts’ and glued to immediate and selfish gains. This is not Indian-ness. The manual of dharma is within us. It is also important to understand that dharma is not something that can be put into a rule book or contained within an almanac with its list of dos and don’ts. These things are, at best, a shadow and an imitation of dharma that man tries to recreate in his ignorance since deep within he feels its presence but is not equipped to read the script. At worst, our rules and regulations are a deformation of the real thing. Dharma is in fact far more subtle, a truth to be lived rather than read in textbooks of moral science. Our mind, in its ignorance, tries to cut everything into fixed standards, but real life is different. The actual forces that move man are subtle and elude our grasp. Even those moved by these forces that penetrate our human psychological apparatus are not aware of what is really moving them. Each one has to therefore grow into this inner law of being through his or her own individual path that leads towards the unfolding of the divine in life. This line of growth unique and peculiar to each one was beautifully called swadharma in Indian thought. Swadharma allowed for individual freedom and liberty without ignoring the larger universal context and background in which the individual develops. By following and practicing swadharma, we help the march of civilization and help humanity grow towards its maximum fullness, thereby replacing the artificial standards of duties, rights, and responsibilities, which are again another imitative shadow that try to reproduce this deeper inner truth that connects the individual to the collective. The man who lives by dharma will invariably respect all life, and his deeds will never harm the general drift of creation since they will be in accord with the wisdom and will that operate in the depths of nature.

Therefore, the essence of India and Indian-ness has little to do with professing to be a Hindu or not. One may be a ‘Hindu’ by birth and surname but totally un-Aryan in his ways and attitudes. On the other hand, one may be a Muslim or a Christian by birth but very Aryan in thought and temperament. The Aryan is a way of life and not something in our genes or blood. Even the humblest peasant and the most modest labourer may be an Aryan in his or her ways. On the other hand, a Brahmin by birth may be the most demonic in his nature. Does not the story of Ravan reveal this? Was he not a Brahmin by birth and a highly qualified man, well-versed in the Vedic scriptures, as well as in philosophy, music, and art, even a successful emperor who could provide wealth like no one else to his subjects, and yet he is not considered the ideal type since something important, something crucial, and even critical is missing, and that is the inmost soul that alone gives life its true worth and real value. To erect a shining superstructure of life without the spiritual foundation is to build poorly, a building that is destined to doom and collapse like the Lanka of old. It is better to be in rags in the wilderness, with only the flame of dharma as support, than an egoistic emperor whose ears are sealed to the call of the soul and open only to flattery and favour. It is better to keep one’s word of honour and promise, as King Harishchandra, than to hold on to one’s throne by hook or crook.

Yes, the Aryan is not confined to India alone and is spread everywhere. The only difference is that India has been the honoured custodian of Aryan thought and practice. Yet the mixture of these two types and streams of humanity is everywhere, and it is this that creates confusion. What is to be done—that is a question worth pondering about. It is never the Aryan way to stamp out something simply because it is different. In fact, the true Aryan type can assimilate and integrate diverse views and approaches, even as India has integrated and assimilated many cultural and historical invasions. This assimilation is, however, not to be confused with forgetting its own uniqueness. It is rather enriching itself and the other culture with which it comes into contact. A dialogue of cultures, a returning to the core issues connected with the very origins of humanity, a language that suits the secular and the religious and yet is spiritual in its deepest sense, a rewriting of our books in a way that connects with the modern mind without losing its core truth, a symbolic interpretation of our scriptures, and even a defensive aggression where need be when the Indian thought is misrepresented are some of the ways to recover the truths about our Indian-ness. But the most powerful way is to live these truths and not merely talk about them. This has always been the key process of the Indian approach. It means to engage seriously and sincerely with yoga rather than turn it into an academic discourse or a textbook curriculum on Indian thought. The truths of the spirit have to be lived, the dharma has to manifest in our everyday actions and daily living, and then only it can have the power to change humanity into the very highest and the noblest that Indian thought envisaged. And this change is not to expand any particular cult or sect, but a change needed for the very survival of the human race and of all that is best in it. It is an inner conversion, a conversion of the spirit rather than an external baptism that is the crux of the matter. As the number of these types who live the truth increases, it is bound to exert exponential pressure on the rest of humanity. One mighty Buddha inspires millions across the globe even though Buddha does not move out to the world. One Vivekananda is enough to convert an entire nation to take up yoga. This is the way to change the scheme of human life lived collectively on one planet, which has been maimed and seriously impaired by various divisions, and to tilt the balance in favour of a better and higher life. This after all is why India must rise—not to assert its hegemony over the world, not for blind expansion of its borders or exercise control over wealth and money, or to exploit the nations for furthering one’s self-interest, but to give to the world a vivifying breath of hope and a new lease of life for the future. Sri Aurobindo summed it up beautifully:

When you go forth, speak to your nation always this word that it is for the Sanatana Dharma that they arise, it is for the world and not for themselves that they arise. I am giving them freedom for the service of the world. When therefore it is said that India shall rise, it is the Sanatana Dharma that shall rise. When it is said that India shall be great, it is the Sanatana Dharma that shall be great. When it is said that India shall expand and extend herself, it is the Sanatana Dharma that shall expand and extend itself over the world. It is for the dharma and by the dharma that India exists To magnify the religion means to magnify the country. I have shown you that I am everywhere and in all men and in all things, that I am in this movement and I am not only working in those who are striving for the country but I am working also in those who oppose them and stand in their path. I am working in everybody and whatever men may think or do they can do nothing but help on my purpose. They also are doing my work; they are not my enemies but my instruments. In all your actions you are moving forward without knowing which way you move. You mean to do one thing and you do another. You aim at a result and your efforts subserve one that is different or contrary. It is Shakti that has gone forth and entered into the people. Since long ago I have been preparing this uprising and now the time has come and it is I who will lead it to its fulfilment. (CWSA 08: 10–11)

We do not believe that by multiplying new sects limited within the narrower and inferior ideas of religion imported from the West or by creating organisations for the perpetuation of the mere dress and body of Hinduism we can recover our spiritual health, energy and greatness. The world moves through an indispensable interregnum of free thought and materialism to a new synthesis of religious thought and experience, a new religious world-life free from intolerance, yet full of faith and fervour, accepting all forms of religion because it has an unshakable faith in the One. The religion which embraces Science and faith, Theism, Christianity, Mahomedanism and Buddhism and yet is none of these, is that to which the World-Spirit moves. In our own, which is the most sceptical and the most believing of all, the most sceptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge,—that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which rejects nothing but insists on testing and experiencing everything and when tested and experienced turning it to the soul’s uses, in this Hinduism we find the basis of the future world-religion. This sanatana dharma has many scriptures, Veda, Vedanta, Gita, Upanishad, Darshana, Purana, Tantra, nor could it reject the Bible or the Koran; but its real, most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has His dwelling. It is in our inner spiritual experiences that we shall find the proof and source of the world’s Scriptures, the law of knowledge, love and conduct, the basis and inspiration of Karmayoga.

Our aim will therefore be to help in building up India for the sake of humanity—this is the spirit of the Nationalism which we profess and follow. We say to humanity, ‘The time has come when you must take the great step and rise out of a material existence into the higher, deeper and wider life towards which humanity moves. The problems which have troubled mankind can only be solved by conquering the kingdom within, not by harnessing the forces of Nature to the service of comfort and luxury, but by mastering the forces of the intellect and the spirit, by vindicating the freedom of man within as well as without and by conquering from within external Nature. For that work the resurgence of Asia is necessary, therefore Asia rises. For that work the freedom and greatness of India is essential, therefore she claims her destined freedom and greatness, and it is to the interest of all humanity, not excluding England, that she should wholly establish her claim.’

We say to the nation, ‘It is God’s will that we should be ourselves and not Europe. We have sought to regain life by following the law of another being than our own. We must return and seek the sources of life and strength within ourselves. We must know our past and recover it for the purposes of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the law of India’s eternal life and nature.’

We say to the individual and especially to the young who are now arising to do India’s work, the world’s work, God’s work, ‘You cannot cherish these ideals, still less can you fulfil them if you subject your minds to European ideas or look at life from the material standpoint. Materially you are nothing, spiritually you are everything. It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice everything. First therefore become Indians. Recover the patrimony of your forefathers. Recover the Aryan thought, the Aryan discipline, the Aryan character, the Aryan life. Recover the Vedanta, the Gita, the Yoga. Recover them not only in intellect or sentiment but in your lives. Live them and you will be great and strong, mighty, invincible and fearless. Neither life nor death will have any terrors for you. Difficulty and impossibility will vanish from your vocabularies. For it is in the spirit that strength is eternal and you must win back the kingdom of yourselves, the inner Swaraj, before you can win back your outer empire. There the Mother dwells and She waits for worship that She may give strength. Believe in Her, serve Her, lose your wills in Hers, your egoism in the greater ego of the country, your separate selfishness in the service of humanity. Recover the source of all strength in yourselves and all else will be added to you, social soundness, intellectual preeminence, political freedom, the mastery of human thought, the hegemony of the world.’ (CWSA 08: 26–28)

India and the March of Civilization

We must go beyond beliefs and non-beliefs and touch the very core of truth through yoga. This is needed if the world must survive another millennium. That is why it is so necessary, even urgent, and incumbent for India to not only preserve its wonderful and rich heritage but to give it a new form and figure. If this cannot be done, then nothing can save India and the world. Neither democracy nor socialism, neither the huge production engines of the capitalist empire, nor all the guns and revolt of communism, nor the pompous farce of religions and sects, new and old, nor the half-blind, rigid, and narrow ideologue can save the world. Neither constitutional authority nor monarchy, neither the ever-increasing maze of rules and regulations nor the human laws blinded by appearances and designed around ‘external facts’ can help humanity discover its one law of truth. Something else is needed, and it is India that can still supply that missing something, that most crucial critical element of our planet—the divine touch of the soul.

But how are we then to ‘teach’ dharma to humanity in general and at large? Here too, the seers had found a wonderful way. Practical to the core, they realized the difficulty and took upon themselves the challenge. They organized the society or the collective order of humanity in a hierarchical manner. But this hierarchy was neither arbitrary based on birth and heredity nor something external based on work and position or riches and external authority. It was based on an inner hierarchy that respects the degree to which man has been able to unfold and discover the dharma. Thus at the apex were those who, through steady and patient application of their knowledge and will, discovered the subtle workings of creation and were the guardians of dharma. It was their wisdom that guided the state in times of crisis and even otherwise. Next were those who were the upholders of the dharma, whose task was to see that the dharma is put into practice and no man is deprived of his rightful place and just share in the totality of things. But still, the mass of mankind was left out. For them there was the shastra, the external guide that gave the principles for managing and conducting their lives. Though practical, it was not a perfect system, and as history subsequently showed, it suffered its own defects and broke down with the passage of time. The outer shastra, however great and good, can never replace the inner awakening and the discovery of the dharma within. The outer shastras may even divide sometimes when we look only to the external body of words and do not dwell deep into their meaning. Words are like luminous fingers. Instead of looking at the finger, we need to look in the direction where the finger is pointing. The inner shastra, however, unites since it is read not with the mind but with the deeper, an inmost heart, where it is much more natural to discover the oneness of mankind and creation. Those who discover this inner shastra respect and admire nobility and greatness, truth and sincerity, love and light wherever they find it, even in one’s opponents or those who outwardly follow other paths. But the mind looks only at superficial similarities and differences and is lost in its maze. Now we see that the old order and the old forms have broken down, and rightly so since the time-spirit has another vision and purpose in the future that waits for us. It wants that each individual must discover their inner dharma, which is possible only by taking off from his shoulders the burden of all shastras good and bad. Circumstances must compel mankind to discover its inner law of being, the one true law that no shastra or rule book can contain. If individuals fail to do so, they risk perishing and making way for another type to emerge out of man that will be naturally attuned to the truth of dharma within him and in all things. It is a great and grand experiment undertaken by the time-spirit, for which it has put many things at stake. On the one side, the old established systems and institutions, the religious books of authority, are losing their hold, and at the same time, man is feeling the inadequacy of external compulsion and social laws, thereby becoming intolerant of and unhappy with constitutional authority and legal systems. Obviously, these things are imperfect even when written by the best minds, just as the old shastras had their own defects even though they were created by wise men who had the deeper vision and kept the larger interest of all in their mind. That is why mankind has been left free in this age, even dangerously free, to either discover the true law or dharma within them or else perish.

What then is the way to the future? We cannot go back to the past and reconstruct the ancient shastras. Time has moved forward, much has happened, and mankind has grown through many more layers of experience. The ancient authority can no longer hold for the present. Equally, mankind cannot rest for long with the imperfect systems and other external authorities. It is bound to revolt today or tomorrow, leading to a breakdown of the mind-centric, elaborately arranged ‘modern civilization’ that swears by the Constitution and is guided by the rule book. We have to discover another way, and that way is really not very far. It is within the reach of all, provided we start looking that way. But we are only too busy replacing old bottles with new ones while the wine remains the same. We are busy replacing one imperfect system with another while man remains the same. That is where the cardinal error lies.

The Way Forward and the Battle for the Future

Herein lies India’s great role and work ahead for the future. In fact, in nature’s great wisdom, we discover that the solution to a problem is almost co-existent with the problem itself. It is right there, bed-in-arms, but we turn away from the problem and start looking for a solution elsewhere. Thus, for example, if bad education or a wrong education is the cause of many ills, then the solution is to make provisions for the right kind of education. Of course, the dissenters will continue to debate what is right and what is wrong almost endlessly. Let them do so. Yet to satisfy them, it may be said that whatever helps or encourages hope, peace, and love for truth and light, whatever creates harmony within and without, whatever increases the ability to discern, teaches self-mastery, and opens the heart to love and joy is right. On the other hand, whatever encourages or creates revolt and restlessness, division, and disharmony; whatever gives birth to anger and hatred, selfish ambition, and uncharitable thoughts and feelings; whatever creates clouding of judgement through passion and error, confusion in thoughts and feelings, and teaches self-indulgence is bad as it is hurtful and harmful to the individual as well as the collective milieu which he inhabits. But the way to teach this is not through moral science textbooks but in a living and organic way through a free discussion of life experiences right from childhood, before the encrustation and masking of our natural sense of dharma begins with the growth of the human mind. We may use the word psychic and spiritual education for this kind of education, but any other word would be fine if it helps acceptance.

In fact, the human mind does worse. Not only can it mask but also distort the dharma by twisting facts and sprinkling truths with half-lies. The mind often takes an a priori position, a position that justifies its basic belief, and then goes about fishing partial facts or twisting the tail of truth to suit its viewpoints. And these basic beliefs are not our deeper faith and will-to-be but a mere conditioning received from our early imprints or else a habitual standpoint adopted unconsciously. It is these things that subsequently grow into adopted ideologies that blind us and bar us from seeing the truth even when it stares at our face and all facts are to the contrary. Therefore, it will do good if, with the development of the mind, the children are shown by experience the relative worth of our opinions, the partiality of our chosen standpoint, the wideness and plasticity to unite and fuse different and divergent points of view into a synthetic whole, and to develop the discernment to separate the husk from the grain, the chaff from the kernel. This would be the essence of free-thinking and encouraging freedom of speech in the true way. What we do instead is to just let anything and everything pass off under this umbrella as if it were an excuse for abusive and abrasive behaviour, as if we could shout and scream or twist facts and distort truths, spit venom and spew out hatred, manufacture lies and pervert and pollute the mental domain with our consciousness. Freedom of thought is something sacred, freedom of speech is something of great value, and that is why it should not be debased to mean any and every opinion and passing fanciful judgements. First, we need to discover freedom, and then only can we hope to discover free thought. But just as all great truths have suffered distortions by our human ignorance, so too has this great truth suffered diminution. Constitution and rule of law has replaced dharma; religious scriptures and secular ideologies have replaced truth; egoistic individuality and its vehement assertions have replaced the authentic soul-movement called swadharma; selfish interests in saving our own kind, while turning a blind eye to other’s pain, have replaced kindness; a weak, sentimental pity has replaced true compassion; information has replaced wisdom; a host of desires, many artificially created, has replaced the deeper soul values and the true needs of an individual; ambition has overshadowed excellence; earning money and making profits have replaced the joy of work and the spirit of service; indulgence towards those who serve our common interests, combined with harshness towards those who do not concern us or are our opponents in the great game of life, has replaced charity and love; flattery and appeasement have replaced gratitude; and the will to harm those who oppose our ideas has taken the place of courage. Thus, all is inverted as if a whole mental world created by the human mind is heading straight towards the abyss. It is no more a question of talking about one issue and then another and yet another; it is a whole world that needs to change and change its will and change it must since such is the inevitable logic of creation and evolution. But this change cannot come with merely tampering the surfaces, by replacing forms and systems of governments; neither can it come by living in time-warps that hang on to some distortion of the past nor by rushing after every passing fancy as the guiding light of the future. Truth works deeper and is not found through sloganeering and pamphleteering but by a steady and silent, a sincere and serious search, even if we have to pay for it by the body’s death. Few are ready for this sacrifice. Most are content with sticking on to fixed nostrums and flying high on passing waves of time until they crash and the next wave arrives. In fact, one can almost say with certainty that wherever there is sloganeering and pamphleteering, falsehood and lies have found their home. Truth needs no advertisement; it stands in its own self-evident light. But lies need announcements, pronouncements, and the beating of kettle drums, and shouting from rooftops, to draw attention. But truth works hidden in the heart and reveals itself in silent moments to the true seeker. Even though illumining all things, it can hardly be seen by time-born eyes or understood by the mortal mind that is so much enmeshed by the senses. Truth is neither the property of one ideology nor confined to one religion. It is everywhere and in everything if we look deep within in the spirit of things, yet nowhere and in nothing if we restrict and confine our inquiry to the surface forms and appearances of life. But to discover it, we need to pass beyond the limited and limiting barriers of the mind or dive deep into the very heart of things.

It is here that one may still have to fight a battle; perhaps it is being fought in the mental world since, unlike the heroic ages ours is a mentalized rather than a vital humanity. The battle too is consequently being fought in the mental world, in the world of ideas and thoughts. While one can educate the ignorant, bring light of wisdom where there is darkness and unconsciousness, point towards the self-evident truth with the luminous finger where there is simply a specious structure trying to trap and conceal the light. But the worst defence of falsehood is not when it opposes but when it imitates truth, when it tries to destroy truth by claiming to pay homage to it, when it takes the body of truth but looks at it in the inverse way from the other end, thus reversing everything in the process. May be the mental world is coming to a close, and the inversion of values and the blatant play of falsehood that we witness today are simply the shrapnel thrown out of the fast-collapsing structures created by the mental consciousness. But also, if we look deep enough, we shall also witness the birth of a new world, a world of truth striving to be born, now covered in the heap and debris of the collapse. It is showing itself here and there as a lone voice, familiar to those attuned to hear its voice and a stranger to those who are caught by surprise. This voice is not the shout of a political outfit; it is not the scream and screech of the television talk-shows, but a quiet assertion despite the appearances, a solemn challenge thrown out at falsehood, a growth of dharma that emerges successful despite all the force of adharma trying to stifle it. Is that not the lesson of our past itself? Krishna, persecuted by Kansa, the army of the Kuru clan, and a host of other jealous kings, yet grows and is crowned a victor by the almighty deity time, whom none can resist, except one who has attained the vision of the timeless. The emperors and empires of today gloating over their glitter and glamour are nothing but a child’s marble play for the time-spirit. Now they are here, the next moment elsewhere, pushed by the powerful deity. Perhaps it is the time-spirit that has risen once again to destroy the arrogant assertions of the mental world. Yet those who know how to rise above in this blinding storm and have the courage and the faith to surrender to the all-wise presence that works in the heart of everything will survive the onslaught, and, after the storm has passed and the past broken to pieces, shall we witness the great birth for which earth and humanity have waited for long, the birth of a new being with a new mind, a new life, and a new body. Perhaps it is no more in the hands of any individual or group since it is the breath of god that awakens us and sifts the elements of creation. Men become merely instruments, and everything, including the oppositions to truth, is becoming a means to fuel the fire that would rise to the throne of truth and reclaim the birthright of our divinity. Let us prepare silently for that becoming, for the new manifestation, rather than trying to add to the confusion by more rabble-rousing voices. Let us work quietly for the new creation, the creation of tomorrow, rather than lament the present and the past. Instead of being hypnotized by the many challenges and difficulties that seem appalling, let us try our bit to build the bridge towards the future, even if our contribution may be just as much of the little squirrel rolling in the mud and taking a dip in the sea so as to assist the work of Rama. And we are fortunate to have the word of the promise of Sri Aurobindo that ushers in the new dawn for mankind. Let us remember the great assurance of the Gita that he who has loved and served the lord never perishes. Men, institutions, political outfits and systems, governments, and administrative machinery will come and go, but the word of the new creation stands firm. This promise to earth and men is captured in the line: ‘when first man’s heart dared death and suffered life’ (CWSA 33–34:59). Sri Aurobindo reminds us, and as always his luminous words not only give hope and courage but also point the way towards the future:

A Nation is building in India today before the eyes of the world so swiftly, so palpably that all can watch the process and those who have sympathy and intuition distinguish the forces at work, the materials in use, the lines of the divine architecture. This nation is not a new race raw from the workshop of Nature or created by modern circumstances. One of the oldest races and greatest civilisations on this earth, the most indomitable in vitality, the most fecund in greatness, the deepest in life, the most wonderful in potentiality, after taking into itself numerous sources of strength from foreign strains of blood and other types of human civilisation, is now seeking to lift itself for good into an organised national unity. Formerly a congeries of kindred nations with a single life and a single culture, always by the law of this essential oneness tending to unity, always by its excess of fecundity engendering fresh diversities and divisions, it has never yet been able to overcome permanently the almost insuperable obstacles to the organisation of a continent. The time has now come when those obstacles can be overcome. The attempt which our race has been making throughout its long history, it will now make under entirely new circumstances. A keen observer would predict its success because the only important obstacles have been or are in the process of being removed. But we go farther and believe that it is sure to succeed because the freedom, unity and greatness of India have now become necessary to the world. This is the faith in which the Karmayogin puts its hand to the work and will persist in it, refusing to be discouraged by difficulties however immense and apparently insuperable. We believe that God is with us and in that faith we shall conquer. We believe that humanity needs us and it is the love and service of humanity, of our country, of the race, of our religion that will purify our heart and inspire our action in the struggle.

The task we set before ourselves is not mechanical but moral and spiritual. We aim not at the alteration of a form of government but at the building up of a nation. Of that task politics is a part, but only a part. We shall devote ourselves not to politics alone, nor to social questions alone, nor to theology or philosophy or literature or science by themselves, but we include all these in one entity which we believe to be all-important, the dharma, the national religion which we also believe to be universal. There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be guardian, exemplar and missionary. This is the sanatana dharma, the eternal religion. Under the stress of alien impacts she has largely lost hold not of the structure of that dharma, but of its living reality. For the religion of India is nothing if it is not lived. It has to be applied not only to life, but to the whole of life; its spirit has to enter into and mould our society, our politics, our literature, our science, our individual character, affections and aspirations. To understand the heart of this dharma, to experience it as a truth, to feel the high emotions to which it rises and to express and execute it in life is what we understand by Karmayoga. We believe that it is to make the yoga the ideal of human life that India rises today; by the yoga she will get the strength to realize her freedom, unity and greatness, by the yoga she will keep the strength to preserve it. It is a spiritual revolution we foresee and the material is only its shadow and reflex. (CWSA 8: 23–24)

Chapter 6
The Many Layered Reality

The Two Approaches to the Mystery of Life

Life is a mystery, an original mystery, so to speak. Birth and death are only two facets of it. Since man began to think and seek, he has tried to find answers to the greatest puzzle of all—that is, life itself. Climbing some inner stair of consciousness in the vast stretches of his subjective inner space, he has reached the very source and all things. Looking out from that inmost self, he has discovered the river of life as it descends from its mighty source. But the process has eluded him still. How does this pure and mighty river turn into a thin and struggling stream full of mud and mire? Perhaps the mud and mire of earth holds the seeds of a mystery that the force and power of life must unlock. Then, diving deep into the heart of the mud, man discovered the immense world machine that runs like a blind, time-bound clock—precise, exact, and intricate, but meaningless, absurd, and fantastic! A tiny little seed holds within itself the potential of a giant tree. A little worm crawling in the sand presages the birth of birds and men. The secret has still eluded him. Whence came this profitless wilderness of the stars, wherefore this cry and shrill of the animal world basking and rolling the mud and struggling to survive? Whence came this slow but steady emergence of man through random chance and blind fate? Perhaps the answer lies not at the extremes where we search for it, but in that third meeting point where spirit and matter meet in a marriage not yet unfortunate. It is this third point that both the extreme spiritual effort at world extinction and the extreme scientific effort to discover the building blocks of matter from which the world is built overlook. Here lies the key to the secret. It is the meeting point of the inner and the outer, this subtle range and hierarchy of forces, energies, and worlds within worlds that we need explore until we reach the mystic knot that ties the stars and learn the secret truth that built the worlds.

Since the beginning of man’s conscious thought, man has searched for these ultimate mysteries. Thus science developed alongside the spiritual and religious sense, as if exploring the same truth but from two different angles. Science begins from the surface with its instrument, the corporeal mind and the senses. Spirituality takes the stand that we must first develop man and his latent capacities so that we can observe better and understand more completely through an ascent of mind and senses itself. The process of this ascension is called yoga, in short conscious evolution of that which is now latent in man, just as man evolved out of the ape where he was latent. While the physical scientists have explored the material worlds, the scientists of the spirit have explored the subtle worlds and studied their laws and their influence upon our human lives. These worlds are many with their own time-space continuum, beings, energies, and forces and often lean down upon earth to express themselves through matter and man. Thus, man and his earthly life become a playfield for these forces. It is a vast and complex play that weaves the texture of our lives, arranges its small and big events, writes the plot and enacts the scenes of the drama of our lives, and ties the knot of fate. Caught up in this complex play, we end up being puppets whose strings are pulled elsewhere, and we wonder at the hidden cause of things. How many times have we not felt that things did not take the turn we expected despite our very best efforts? How many times has not man knocked helplessly at the gates of destiny with no clue or key to open the doors and choose another fate? Yet man is not meant to be forever a slave. He can and must be a master of circumstances. But for that mastery, he must know the subtle laws that govern him, just as he knows today at least some of the physical laws and can harness their powers for his use. So also, there are powers within his being waiting to be discovered and reclaimed. But they are denied with a purpose. One has to deserve them. The inner door that leads to the scroll of destiny cannot be forcefully opened by mere human wish. More is needed.

Scientists of the Inner World of Man

Now there are those who have precisely made this effort. They are the knowers of the science and art of life. Such men and women have existed in all ages and in every place. They have revealed the knowledge that they discovered with much effort. But since this knowledge, like all knowledge, could be liable to misuse, they took care to give it only to the deserving, the adhikari. Thus came up the schools of secret initiation, where a disciple was admitted only after testing his readiness to receive this knowledge whose doors are sealed to human eyes and denied to rational inquiry and our casual search. Yet with a view not to completely deny that section of humanity not yet ready and also to prepare it for receiving this knowledge one day, they expressed it in a symbolic language. Thus, they preserved the great truths for posterity while taking care to prevent their misuse. They trusted or perhaps foresaw that a time will come when mankind as a whole or at least in large groups and an increasing number will be ready for this knowledge. They may not be there till then, but mankind will be there and evolving. And one day, when it has played enough with earthly toys and explored the length and breadth of the oceans, spanned the limits of the skies, drawn the diameter of the universe, and mapped the laws and processes of the earth, he will surely turn towards deeper things. His very quest will lead him to subtler and subtler realms and worlds yet unconquered, like unexplored continents. It is in great love for this quest of man and to assist him in this evolutionary march that these seers of truth took care not only to preserve the secrets but also to pass them on through an unbroken long chain and sacred lineage that is our spiritual legacy. It is important to note that in ancient India there was no division between science and spirituality or between the world and god. They were two poles of one reality with connecting links through a ladder of consciousness. It is just that the spiritual path prefers to first climb to the top of the ladder, free our vision of ignorance, and then see so that we can see truly, completely, holistically.

We believe that humanity has at last reached that limit, that breaking point where either it must break and fall apart or else rediscover itself and remake its life anew. Now is perhaps the time that man must receive the secret knowledge, perhaps as an exigency or even an emergency, if it must survive and evolve. It is in response to this need that we see all over the world today a sudden upsurge of interest in the ancient truths long lost to man. Foremost, among these books of wisdom are the mystic and mysterious Vedas. Mystic and profound, the symbolism of the Vedas is not easy to crack since it is clothed in a language that is both ancient as well as plastic, allowing for different shades of meaning. To the non-initiate, the meanings are veiled in a mass of rituals and externalities, but to the spiritually sensitive and psychologically developed, the Vedas reveal the story of man’s inner life, the life of his soul battling with darkness to gain light, freedom, bliss, and immortality. The world and humanity owe this to Sri Aurobindo, who revealed the deeper sense of the Vedas, making it almost modern and contemporary. His was a rare and unique combination of a multi-faceted genius and a yogi par excellence who shot through the deepest layers of the spirit in his pursuit of truth and light, much like the Vedic rishis of yore. His quest and finding in this field of Vedic lore is best described in his own words:

[T]he Rig Veda is itself the one considerable document that remains to us from the early period of human thought of which the historic Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries were the failing remnants, when the spiritual and psychological knowledge of the race was concealed, for reasons now difficult to determine, in a veil of concrete and material figures and symbols which protected the sense from the profane and revealed it to the initiated. One of the leading principles of the mystics was the sacredness and secrecy of self-knowledge and the true knowledge of the Gods. This wisdom was, they thought, unfit, perhaps even dangerous to the ordinary human mind or in any case liable to perversion and misuse and loss of virtue if revealed to vulgar and unpurified spirits. Hence they favoured the existence of an outer worship, effective but imperfect, for the profane, an inner discipline for the initiate, and clothed their language in words and images which had, equally, a spiritual sense for the elect, a concrete sense for the mass of ordinary worshippers. The Vedic hymns were conceived and constructed on this principle. Their formulas and ceremonies are, overtly, the details of an outward ritual devised for the Pantheistic Nature-Worship which was then the common religion, covertly the sacred words, the effective symbols of a spiritual experience and knowledge and a psychological discipline of self-culture which were then the highest achievement of the human race. The ritual system recognised by Sayana may, in its externalities, stand; the naturalistic sense discovered by European scholarship may, in its general conceptions, be accepted; but behind them there is always the true and still hidden secret of the Veda,—the secret words, niṇyāvacāṁsi, which were spoken for the purified in soul and the awakened in knowledge. To disengage this less obvious but more important sense by fixing the import of Vedic terms, the sense of Vedic symbols and the psychological functions of the Gods is thus a difficult but necessary task, for which these chapters and the translations that accompany them are only a preparation. (CWSA 15: 8)

No wonder Sri Aurobindo chose the Vedic legend of Savitri and Satyavan as a framework to pour out his highest and deepest revelations in the form of a poetry that surpasses both ancient and modern and opens the doors to the sun future poetry yet to emerge out of the dark and fallen state of the present-day human consciousness. Close to the legends and ‘myths’ of the Vedic cycle are the tales of the Upanishads, less mysterious but as profound and clothed in intellectual terms. The symbols are less esoteric but also, for that matter, a little less flexible. Unlike the Vedic legends, they are less liable to multiple interpretations. In fact, the closer the symbol stands to the mind, the more rigidity it acquires, until the symbol is completely lost in the mental domain with its fixed meanings. Further down the line, we have the age of the Puranas, whereby the stories and their symbols are once again less intellectual but more vital and therefore somewhat closer to the common average man whose imagination they grip simply by the force of the vital element in these stories.

Finally, we have the two great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, rich in image and significance, style and substance, touching our heart and soul no less than the mind and thought. No wonder these two great epics have held the mind of the Indian nation captive and still continue to cast upon it the rays of light from a bygone era. They are rightly termed itihasas, or history, but not history as we understand it today. It is not merely the narration of outer events and circumstances, of dynasties and kings and their subjects. It is not even merely the record of a civilization and its people that is now lost in antiquity. It is all these, of course, but also much more. It is the record of an inner seeing, of the forces that stand behind men and nations and move them psychologically, creating by their motion and impulse, their subtle unseen breath, the heave of events and the web of circumstances. These two great epic poems have endured simply because they touch some essential aspects of man—aspects that are universal and ingrained in the very stuff of our being. Modern psychology obsessed with superficialities of man’s life is too commonplace to even notice them, and yet without these elements, man would be little more than an animal or even a worm at a magnified scale. In the words of the great heroic seer Swami Vivekananda:

In speaking of the Mahabharata to you, it is simply impossible for me to present the unending array of the grand and majestic characters of the mighty heroes depicted by the genius and master-mind of Vyasa. The internal conflicts between righteousness and filial affection in the mind of the god-fearing, yet feeble, old, blind King Dhritarashtra; the majestic character of the grandsire Bhishma; the noble and virtuous nature of the royal Yudhishthira, and of the other four brothers, as mighty in valour as in devotion and loyalty; the peerless character of Krishna, unsurpassed in human wisdom; and not less brilliant, the characters of the women,—the stately queen Gandhari, the loving mother Kunti, the ever-devoted and all-suffering Draupadi. These and hundreds of other characters of this Epic and those of the Ramayana have been the cherished heritage of the whole Hindu world for the last several thousands of years and form the basis of their thoughts and of their moral and ethical ideas. In fact, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are the two encyclopaedias of the ancient Aryan life and wisdom, portraying an ideal civilisation which humanity has yet to aspire after. (Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 4.2.2)

The Rituals of Worship

Parallel to this side of the Indian ethos, its rich tapestry of myths and legends, we have another line of spiritual effort, even an extreme one that goes under the general name of Tantra. Once known as the path of the heroes, Tantra has fallen into disrepute due largely to a misunderstanding of its symbols and its wrong association with certain activities that are considered an anathema to spiritual life. Very few, however, realize that the truths of Tantra are woven into the very fabric of Indian life as intimately as form and colour in a flower. Indeed, if we take Vedanta as the fragrance of the best flower that human life has to offer, then Tantra is its form and colour. Many of the symbols still dynamic in the life of the Indian people derive directly from the Tantric tradition.

This takes us to the rituals—that much maligned term that modernity is most sceptic of. Yet man can hardly do without rituals, especially when it comes to handling the forces of our material or subtler existence. What we call a ritual in the realm of the subtle is simply an equivalent of the drill or standard operating procedure in the field of science or technology. We have, for instance, the ritual cleaning of the hands meticulously by the surgeons before starting an operation. There is here a precise technique, a method that all who enter the operating room must follow or else stay outside the limits of the operating room. An ignorant onlooker who understands nothing about germs and hygiene may find it a needless and over-elaborate practice, even overbearing. But those who know well understand its importance. Ritual is indeed an inner technology that is based on some subtle laws of existence that were observed, studied, discovered, tested, and perfected by the seekers of the occult mysteries. Though despised for perpetuating a rigid orthodoxy, there is nothing rigid about them. Once we have discovered the principle behind them, we can modify them and adapt them to the needs of the hour. Even we may generalize them and turn them into their intrinsic value, which is essentially a more plastic yet subtle law of living—a subtle science of life, a greater art of life, a deeper and hidden commerce of life. It is this that we seek to explore through this book, through the many stories right from the hoary past up to our modern times, through the many rituals and symbols that are part and parcel of our everyday life, even when we fail to recognize them as such. The purpose of this dwelling in the past is not to bring back to the fore a rigid orthodoxy of a bygone era, nor is it to convert the modern mind to an ancient way of thought. It is most certainly not with a view to propagate any one particular way of life or revive the conservative spirit that the time-spirit has broken and set aside. These things will in fact defeat its very purpose. The one aim before us is to dig out the secrets of the past so that its spirit, if not its form, can be integrated with the seeking for the future. Man’s progress does not hang in isolation with the rest of our efforts that have preceded us. It is in fact a continuum, and to dissociate one from the other is to do a great disservice to humanity by losing much that is of value, even of lasting value to man and his collective progress. The tide of materialistic thought with its overemphasis on a rather hasty and misguided secularism has done precisely such a disservice. It has taken away the soul from everything and replaced it with a machine perfect in its execution and heartless in its approach. We hope that these stories and essays will set this balance right and once again revitalize our thoughts and feelings with the rejuvenating streams of the past, that though blocked and clogged with our limited understanding, flow as an undercurrent of life and still have the potential to show us the lost path undertaken by the seers and sages in the great ascent of man towards light, truth, freedom, bliss, and immortality. If they serve to awaken some aspiration towards light and truth; if they clear our minds of some of the webs that spin around our heads and bring in its place some clarity and insight about the seeking that the ancient sons of the Indian soil embodied, these stories and reflections would have served their purpose.

Behind the acara (outer act) there is the vicara (thought), and behind the thought there is often a great body of experience that justifies the thought and the act. True it is that when the experience is missing and the thought is dead, the ritual is a soulless mechanical movement that does more harm than good. It ties us to a past form mechanically, and any effort to break free from the fixed form or an original thinking is discouraged. Safety and stability are ensured at a heavy cost: a delayed evolution, a fossilization, and a stifling of progress towards the new and the unknown. But that is no reason why the spirit behind the ritual act should be discarded. What is needed is to give it a new form, one most suited to the age and temperament. Take, for example, a daily ritual in ancient Indian homes of sandhya. It was a time for prayer when the sun set. Enjoined upon every Hindu, it was a typical setting with the head of the house sitting around the altar or the image of the house deity and other family members gathering around him to listen or participate actively, as the case may be. It was said that at this time of the day and in early pre-dawn hours, Lord Shiva takes a round of the cosmos, and those who are engaged in wrong and sinful acts at that moment suffer his wrath. However, he smiles and grants gracious boons upon those who are devoted and religious and pray to him at this hour specifically. Obviously, such a thing is impossible even to imagine in times as these. But if we look carefully, we will still. The modern mind may even feel repulsed by the thought of a god who is wrathful simply because you did not pray when he was going around looking at you. But when we look carefully, we notice that the time attributed to Lord Shiva for his daily rounds is the hour when nature is in a state of general stillness, and anyone with any perceptiveness can feel it. Shiva is, of course, the master tapaswi. Perhaps at this hour he pours the fruits of his tapasya upon earth, and the glance of his mighty gaze is experienced by nature as a stillness. Now we can tune in with that sacred presence at this hour much better since it is supported by nature. When we understand, we can give it a new form. Thus, we may say that while one can meditate or pray at any time, it is best facilitated at this hour since nature itself is in a conducive condition. Equally to disturb this moment by restless feverish activities given to our lower appetites is not only to lose the opportune moment but to disturb the fine rhythm between us and the cosmos and thereby subject ourselves to an imbalance. Whether this imbalance will take the form of an illness or not is for later time to tell. But the secret law is there, and we can take advantage of it if we like.

We can take up the story of goddess Durga as an example, she being the guardian deity of India as well as worshipped in some form or the other in almost every part of the nation. The daughter of the mountains, Parvati, in the north becomes Kanyakumari in the far tip of south. Kamakhya, the giver of desires, becomes Hingalaj Devi, the warrior goddess in far Balochistan. Not only that, if we look carefully, one can see the entire map of India mapped through the legend of Sati and her fifty-one body parts that fell all over the Aryavarta or the ancient land of India. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo considered goddess Durga as the guardian deity of India. Here is her legend and the deeper symbols as an illustration.

Goddess Durga and the festival of Devi

Durga is the mother’s power of protection

The lion is the attribute of Goddess Durga, the conquering and protecting aspect of the universal mother.

— Sri Aurobindo

The Evolutionary Struggle as a Battle

The festival of Devi is celebrated in India to mark the victory of the great goddess Durga over the demon King Mahisasura and his demon cohorts. Though outwardly it seems to be symbolic of the victory of truth over falsehood, which of course it is, there is much in it to help us understand the process of individual and cosmic evolution. The ancient yogis and seers saw the process of rebirth as the evolutionary journey of the human soul. The soul is the divine essence that has been buried in matter as the seed of divinity. It is like a seed that has been placed carefully in the soil so that one day it will awaken and grow in man, and ultimately arriving at the full fruition of the divine possibilities embedded within it. Until then, it remains dormant in the lower forms of creation, much as a seed that stays under the soil, preparing to begin a new journey upwards. With man comes a point of transition because man has the ability to experience life somewhat consciously and, through reflection and contemplation, enter into some kind of conscious evolution. Before the coming of man, evolution is an unconscious process. Something of course is happening there too, but it is more like the dissolving of the hard outer crust of the seed. With the advent of humanity, at least after a certain stage this hard crust of ignorance, the denser, thicker veil begins to become slightly more amenable to dissolution. At first, of course, this urge for freedom from ignorance takes the form of mental education, a mental seeking to know about oneself and the world around rather than being satisfied with a life of instincts driven by hunger of various kinds, ‘a hunger that is death’, as the Upanishad say. This hunger, not only for food but for all other kinds of material things and objects, and the will to acquire and possess more and more is the sign of this craving self of desire. It is the great badge of ignorance that all creatures wear. But a time comes when this first formulation of life no longer satisfies us. Man begins to seek something greater, something higher, something that can endure the rub of change and time, something permanent and eternal. It is here that the soul in man begins to awaken and a new phase of its journey begins.

This journey begins to assume the form of a battle, a battle between the animal state out of which it must emerge and which continues to torment and assail through the various hungers, now modified and made worse by the presence of a mind that is at the mercy of the desire self. The mind adds to the animal appetites a certain perversion with its capacity to deceive and the will towards endless gains. When the powers of the mind freshly awakening in man are at the mercy of the animal appetites, then we have the birth of the rakshasa. When the mind grows into a sharper intelligence but the heart remains cold and the intellect is used consciously to satisfy the animal appetites, then we have the birth of the asura. It is only when the heart is touched by the ray of love from within and the mind is attracted by a light, however distant and remote, from above that the proper human journey begins. By obeying the soul’s godward impulsion, the human being grows into the likeness of a god whence becoming one with the cosmic powers of light. He participates as an ally of the gods in the cosmic labour to help other souls and creation grow towards truth, light, freedom, and immortality. But this is no easy task. The rakshasa and the asura continue to halt his advance, even capturing some of the fields of nature that were conquered by the growing godhead in humanity. This is the well-known devasura sangram, the battle between the gods and the titans. It is at once an individual and a cosmic battle, which Sri Aurobindo points out while revealing The Doctrine of the Mystics:

The soul of man is a world full of beings, a kingdom in which armies clash to help or hinder a supreme conquest, a house where the gods are our guests and which the demons strive to possess; the fullness of its energies and wideness of its being make a seat of sacrifice spread, arranged and purified for a celestial session. (CWSA 16: 30)

Gods and the Titans

It is against this background that we can understand the story of Goddess Durga slaying the demons along with their king Mahisasura. Mahisasura is the ill-begotten child of the asura king Rambha and a buffalo-woman. Buffalo is clearly symbolic of an animal type of humanity that is largely tamasic and full of greed and lust. Now Mahisasura, like almost all asuras, covets the treasures and kingdoms of the gods. But he eyes on it with lust and greed rather than the path that is proper for an ascent towards the kingdom of the gods. The proper path is through a sacrifice or the progressive refining and sublimation through purification of the animal energies in us. But the asura will have none of these. He rises in revolt and wants to storm into the kingdom of heaven not for or through an inner change but for an expansion of his ostentatious empire of lust, domination, and control. That is why he is not favoured by the indwelling universal godhead Narayana, who has to keep the balance of dharma. That is why asuras tend to eventually lose, even when they seem on the verge of victory. Sri Aurobindo reveals the subtle difference between these two types of striving:

God and Titan, Deva and Asura, are indeed close kin in their differences; nor could either have been spared in the evolution. Yet do they inhabit opposite poles of a common existence and common nature. The one descends from the light and the infinity, satisfied, to the play; the other ascends from the obscurity and the vagueness, angry, to the struggle. All the acts of the God derive from the universal and tend to the universal. He was born out of a victorious harmony. His qualities join pure and gracious hands and link themselves together naturally and with delight as in the pastoral round of Brindavan, divine Krishna dominating and holding together its perfect circles. To evolve in the sense of the God is to grow in intuition, in light, in joy, in love, in happy mastery; to serve by rule and to rule by service; to be able to be bold and swift and even violent without hurt or wickedness and mild and kindly and even self-indulgent without laxity or vice or weakness; to make a bright and happy whole in oneself and, by sympathy, with mankind and all creatures. And in the end it is to evolve a large impersonal personality and to heighten sympathy into constant experience of world-oneness. For such are the Gods, conscious always of their universality and therefore divine.

. . .

But the Titan will have nothing of all this; it is too great and subtle for his comprehension. His instincts call for a visible, tangible mastery and a sensational domination. How shall he feel sure of his empire unless he can feel something writhing helpless under his heel,—if in agony, so much the better? What is exploitation to him, unless it diminishes the exploited? To be able to coerce, exact, slay, overtly, irresistibly,—it is this that fills him with the sense of glory and dominion. For he is the son of division and the strong flowering of the Ego. To feel the comparative limitation of others is necessary to him that he may imagine himself immeasurable; for he has not the real, self-existent sense of infinity which no outward circumstance can abrogate. Contrast, division, negation of the wills and lives of others are essential to his self-development and self-assertion. The Titan would unify by devouring, not by harmonising; he must conquer and trample what is not himself either out of existence or into subservience so that his own image may stand out stamped upon all things and dominating all his environment.

In Nature, since it started from division and egoism, the Titan had to come first; he is here in us as the elder god, the first ruler of man’s heaven and earth. Then arrives the God and delivers and harmonises. Thus the old legend tells us that the Deva and the Asura laboured together to churn the ocean of life for the supreme draught of immortality, but, once it had been won, Vishnu kept it for the God and defrauded the fiercer and more violent worker. And this seems unjust; for the Asura has the heavier and less grateful portion of the burden. He begins and leads; he goes his way hewing, shaping, planting: the God follows, amends, concludes, reaps. He prepares fiercely and with anguish against a thousand obstacles the force that we shall use: the other enjoys the victory and the delight. And therefore to the great God Shiva the stained and stormy Titan is very dear,—Shiva who took for himself the fierce, dark and bitter poison first churned up from the sea of life and left to others the nectar. But the choice that Shiva made with knowledge and from love, the Titans made from darkness and passion,—desirous really of something very different and deceived by their stormy egoism. Therefore the award of Vishnu stands; to the God shall fall the crown and the immortality and not, unless he divinise himself, to the proud and strenuous Asura. (CWSA 13: 152–54)

Birth of the Mighty Goddess

The story of Durga is the story of one such moment in the evolutionary history of earth. Though this battle takes place on the subtle planes, its repercussions are felt upon earth and humanity.

Mahisasura performed a tapasya to appease Lord Brahma to get the boon of immortality. Brahma told him that this is not in his hands since he cannot change the cosmic law. At best, he can modify some of the conditions therein. We may remember here how Nachiketa is told by Yama, the guardian of the cosmic law, that even the gods know not the secret of the immortality of man. This is so because man carries the secret within himself. It is embedded in his secret immortal soul. By finding the soul, man discovers the first key to immortality, the key that will open the other doors for him that will eventually lead him even to physical immortality. Gods know it not because they do not have the psychic being, which is a unique grace given to man through which man can directly contact the supreme. It is man’s secret door in matters of coming into contact with the supreme divine, who is beyond all the gods. Coming back to our story, the boon of immortality was denied as it was not even in the hands of the cosmic powers to grant it; the demon king chose the next best alternative. He asked that neither a man nor a god may be able to kill him. In doing so, he underestimated the feminine power. Drunk with pride and the feeling of invulnerability due to the boon, he attacked the heavens and started creating havoc upon heaven and earth. The gods could not defeat him, and hence they went to Brahma again to seek a way out of the impasse. It is then that Goddess Durga was born with a portion of each god, thereby incarnating in her body all the celestial powers of the gods. While describing the boon that would ensure the birth of the divine mother as Savitri, Sri Aurobindo reveals in this exquisitely beautiful passage hints and glimpses of what this may mean. Though in the passage below, the master poet is revealing to us the secret of the avatara, we feel in it the tremendous moment when the gods must have come together to give form and shape to the mighty mother as Durga, the formidable slayer of the demon hordes.

O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.
One shall descend and break the iron Law,
Change Nature’s doom by the lone spirit’s power.
A limitless Mind that can contain the world,
A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms
Moved by the passions of the gods shall come.
All mights and greatnesses shall join in her;
Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth,
Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair,
And in her body as on his homing tree
Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings.
A music of griefless things shall weave her charm;
The harps of the Perfect shall attune her voice,
The streams of Heaven shall murmur in her laugh,
Her lips shall be the honeycombs of God,
Her limbs his golden jars of ecstasy,
Her breasts the rapture-flowers of Paradise.
She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,
Strength shall be with her like a conqueror’s sword
And from her eyes the Eternal’s bliss shall gaze.
A seed shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.

(CWSA 33–34: 346)

The Mighty Goddess

The mighty mother is born, which means that she takes upon herself a limited form. The form depicted in the story of Durga is evidently on the subtle planes, where each of her hands represents the power of one of the gods. The lion is a symbol of quiet power, a strength that can tear through the very body of the asura and repel his advance. She challenges Mahisasura, who laughs with pride not knowing that nemesis follows hubris. He sends his generals from the demon army, who are all slain by the mighty ten-armed goddess, who is dear to Shiva since she was born out of the tremendous energy of Shiva. She comes riding on the lion with her trident in hand. She is beautiful, strong, and radiant, scattering the darkness all around her. We must, however, note that she is a one-time conquest over Mahisasura and that the demon is not limited to a single form depicted in the stories. The titans are as much cosmic powers as the gods. Even when the form of one particular titan is destroyed, he assumes another form. He actively seeks human receptacles in whom he can incarnate, spreading havoc and vitiating the earth’s atmosphere with forces of lust, greed, hate, spite, arrogance, and falsehood. They fill human hearts and minds with suffering born out of ignorance and egoism, creating confusion by throwing upon man the spell and influence of an adverse asuric maya that creates wrong suggestions, wrong thoughts, and wrong impulsions, thereby ruining man’s life. Each of these gods can send out many emanations out of itself. One such emanation of Durga is the presiding deity of India, who guards her. It is her whom Sri Aurobindo invoked during the nationalist days to drive away the British and to inspire the countrymen to rise to nobility, courage, wisdom, and strength. This beautiful invocation reproduced below has indeed a mantric power in it, like the powerful mantras used in certain Tantric rituals to invoke aspects and forms of the divine mother.

Hymn to Durga

MOTHER DURGA! Rider on the lion, giver of all strength,
Mother, beloved of Siva! We born from thy parts of Power,
we the youth of India, are seated here in thy temple.
Listen, O Mother, descend upon earth, make thyself manifest
in this land of India.

MOTHER DURGA! From age to age, in life after life, we
come down into the human body, do thy work and return
to the Home of Delight. Now too we are born, dedicated
to thy work. Listen, O Mother, descend upon earth, come
to our help.

MOTHER DURGA! Rider on the lion, trident in hand, thy
body of beauty armour-clad, Mother, giver of victory, India
awaits thee, eager to see the gracious form of thine.
Listen, O Mother, descend upon earth, make thyself manifest
in this land of India.

MOTHER DURGA! Giver of force and love and knowledge,
terrible art thou in thy own self of might, Mother
beautiful and fierce. In the battle of life, in India’s battle,
we are warriors commissioned by thee; Mother, give to our
heart and mind a titan’s strength, a titan’s energy, to our
soul and intelligence a god’s character and knowledge.

MOTHER DURGA! India, world’s noblest race, lay
whelmed in darkness. Mother, thou risest on the eastern
horizon, the dawn comes with the glow of thy divine limbs
scattering the darkness. Spread thy light, Mother, destroy
the darkness.

MOTHER DURGA! We are thy children, through thy grace,
by thy influence may we become fit for the great work, for
the great Ideal. Mother, destroy our smallness, our selfishness, our fear.

MOTHER DURGA! Thou art Kali, naked, garlanded with
human heads, sword in hand, thou slayest the Asura. Goddess,
do thou slay with thy pitiless cry the enemies who
dwell within us, may none remain alive there, not one. May
we become pure and spotless, this is our prayer, O Mother,
make thyself manifest.

MOTHER DURGA! India lies low in selfishness and fearfulness and littleness.
Make us great, make our efforts great, our hearts vast, make us true to our resolve.
May we no longer desire the small, void of energy, given to laziness,
stricken with fear.

MOTHER DURGA! Extend wide the power of Yoga. We
are thy Aryan children, develop in us again the lost teaching,
character, strength of intelligence, faith and devotion,
force of austerity, power of chastity and true knowledge,
bestow all that upon the world. To help mankind, appear,
O Mother of the world, dispel all ills.

MOTHER DURGA! Slay the enemy within, then root out
all obstacles outside. May the noble heroic mighty Indian
race, supreme in love and unity, truth and strength, arts and
letters, force and knowledge ever dwell in its holy woodlands,
its fertile fields, under its sky-scraping hills, along the
banks of its pure-streaming rivers. This is our prayer at the
feet of the Mother. Make thyself manifest.

MOTHER DURGA! Enter our bodies in thy Yogic strength.
We shall become thy instruments, thy sword slaying all evil,
thy lamp dispelling all ignorance. Fulfil this yearning of thy
young children, O Mother. Be the master and drive thy
instrument, wield thy sword and slay the evil, hold up
the lamp and spread the light of knowledge. Make thyself
manifest.

MOTHER DURGA! When we possess thee, we shall no
longer cast thee away; we shall bind thee to us with the tie
of love and devotion. Come, Mother, manifest thyself in
our mind and life and body.

Come, Revealer of the hero-path. We shall no longer
cast thee away. May our entire life become a ceaseless
worship of the Mother, all our acts a continuous service
to the Mother, full of love, full of energy. This is our prayer,
O Mother, descend upon earth, make thyself manifest in
this land of India.

(CWSA 9: 3-5)

The Story and the Symbol

The story of Durga and her nine-day-long battle with the asuric forces is narrated in the Puranas in a very interesting way, which is at once symbolic and suggestive. The demon king assumes the form of a handsome man to woo her, but the great goddess cannot be fooled by any maya, asuric or daivic, for she is mahamaya herself. Ultimately, the demon is slain, and his dark energy reabsorbed back into the mighty goddess. The nine forms of the goddess form an ascending hierarchy, rising from the root chakra at the base of the spine, mooladhara, and travelling upwards, gaining strength, force, and momentum with each upward gust and impulse until it reaches the crown, passing beyond, and unites with its lord. In this perfect union of the divine self and the divine energy awakening in matter lies the secret of perfection. This image of the perfect union of Shiva and Parvati (daughter of the mountains) is depicted in legends of Parvati’s tapasya and in the significant image of the Shivalinga. Regarding the Shivalinga, this is what the Mother had to reveal:

The next morning the Mother sent me a huge card illustrating Shiva and Shakti. She had written on it:

This can be taken as one aspect of the collaboration between the Spiritual Power and the Material Nature.

Mother You Said so: Huta

Now when we look at the nine aspects and their powers we can immediately connect them to the process of awakening of the Kundalini, the Shakti of the Divine Mother coiled up at the base of the spine submerged in Matter. A quick glance can be taken of this as below.

Shailabala: The awakening of the Divine Energy in matter. For our yoga it is a new possibility in matter.

Brahmacharini: Our consciousness and energies become one pointed towards the Goal.

Chandraghanta: Light dawning upon the mind like the waxing and waning moon

Kusumanda: Consciousness concentrated with the heat of tapas as an egg holding within it the new birth, the birth of the psychic being in us.

Skandmata: The power born of the dual union of Divine and His Shakti that is the psychic being. It is this who will now become the leader of the march, the priest of the sacrifice, the head chieftain of the army of gods, devasenapati.

Katyayani: The individual who has realized his soul now enters the world play and battles with the asura and darkness within and without. He assists the gods in the battle and becomes their companion in the cosmic yagna.

Kalaratri: All systems of thought constructs of mind of good and evil and dualities of ego-self taken away. The field of nature ridden with limitations and ignorance is completely wiped away and becomes like a clean slate for the Infinite to manifest through finite forms.

Mahagauri: With this clearing of the field of nature is ready to ascend into bright radiant purity of the great Goddess who is the divine consort of Shiva.

Siddhidatri: The Perfection that one discovers when the energy in matter finally meets the Lord and becomes one with Him.

This is the traditional Kundalini Yoga. In Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, the action of the divine Shakti is from above downwards as a strong descending current transforming our fields of nature in a diviner mould. One of the conversations of the Mother reveals this beautifully:

But then what is this consciousness we feel like a force inside us? For instance, sometimes in meditation it rises, then descends; it’s not fixed anywhere. What is this consciousness?

The Shakti!

Some receive it from above; for others, it rises from below (gesture to the base of the spine). As I once told you, the old system always proceeds from below upwards, while Sri Aurobindo pulls from above downwards. This becomes very clear in meditation (well, in yoga, in yogic experience): for those who follow the old system, it’s invariably the kundalini at the base [of the spine] rising from center to center, center to center, until the lotus (in an ironic tone) bursts open here (gesture at the crown of the head). With Sri Aurobindo, it comes like this (gesture of descending Force) and then settles here (above the head); it enters, and from there it comes down, down, down, everywhere, to the very bottom, and even below the feet—the subconscient—and lower still, the inconscient.

It’s the Shakti. He said, you know (I am still translating it), that the shakti drawn up from below (this is what happens in the individual process) is already what could be called a ‘veiled’ shakti (it has power, but it is veiled). While the Shakti drawn down from above is a PURE Shakti; and if it can be brought down carefully and slowly enough so that it isn’t (how shall I put it?) polluted or, in any case, obscured as it enters matter, then the result is immediately much better. As he has explained, if you start out with this feeling of a great power in yourself (because it’s always a great power no matter where it awakens), there’s inevitably a danger of the ego meddling in. But if it comes pure and you are very careful to keep it pure, not to rush the movement but let it purify as it descends, then half the work is done. (The Mother: Conversation with a Disciple, 25 July 1962)

Thus seen, the festival of the mighty mother, Devi, becomes at once a symbol that reveals important secrets of our inner evolution. There was a time when these secrets had to be safeguarded against misuse and hence preserved in the memory of the race through stories and legends. The uninitiated simply held the story as reminiscent of some event that takes place annually, but to the initiate it was replete with deeper meanings. At the same time, the annual celebration was used for creating a state of invocation in the collective consciousness, which in turn brought down these gods and goddesses to re-enact the event in its cosmic significance through the cycles of time. The Mother reveals this secret to us:

You want to know if this has an effect on all identical vibratory modes in the world . . . In principle, yes. But the effects may not be immediately visible; in the first place, our field of observation is nothing—materially, what do we know? . . . Only our immediate surroundings—that’s nothing. In 1920, for example, I had an experience of that type, which resulted in a symbolic but terrestrial action. It was a vision (I don’t remember enough details to make it interesting) where each nation was represented by a symbolic entity, and there was a certain type of horror—of terror, rather. A certain ‘will of terror’ was trying to manifest in that gathering of all nations. And I was witness to the whole thing. I remember it being a very conscious and rather long and detailed vision with a more intense reality than physical things have (it was in the subtle physical). And after it was over and I had done what needed to be done (I am not saying what because I don’t remember all the details, and without accuracy it loses its value), when I came out of it I could say with TOTAL conviction: ‘Terror has been overcome in the world.’ Of course, it’s not literally true, plenty of people still feel terror, but a certain type of terror was as if UNDERMINED at the foundations. What had already manifested kept on and is gradually being exhausted, but the terror that was trying to increase and dominate the life of nations was stopped cold.
(The Mother: Conversation with a Disciple, 8 August 1962)

Let us close with a wonderful description of the awakening of this divine Shakti in man, revealed in Savitri, which is going to open the doors to an inevitable divine destiny bequeathed to man since first his heart dared death and suffered life. It is this that is symbolized in the legend of Durga, a truth that we can relive within us by undergoing the intended transformation by opening to her divine force, Shakti, and undergoing the desired transformation:

In its deep lotus home her being sat
As if on concentration’s marble seat,
Calling the mighty Mother of the worlds
To make this earthly tenement her house.
As in a flash from a supernal light,
A living image of the original Power,
A face, a form came down into her heart
And made of it its temple and pure abode.
But when its feet had touched the quivering bloom,
A mighty movement rocked the inner space
As if a world were shaken and found its soul:
Out of the Inconscient’s soulless mindless night
A flaming Serpent rose released from sleep.
It rose billowing its coils and stood erect
And climbing mightily, stormily on its way
It touched her centres with its flaming mouth;
As if a fiery kiss had broken their sleep,
They bloomed and laughed surcharged with light and bliss.
Then at the crown it joined the Eternal’s space.
In the flower of the head, in the flower of Matter’s base,
In each divine stronghold and Nature-knot
It held together the mystic stream which joins
The viewless summits with the unseen depths,
The string of forts that make the frail defence
Safeguarding us against the enormous world,
Our lines of self-expression in its Vast.
An image sat of the original Power
Wearing the mighty Mother’s form and face.
Armed, bearer of the weapon and the sign
Whose occult might no magic can imitate,
Manifold yet one she sat, a guardian force:
A saviour gesture stretched her lifted arm,
And symbol of some native cosmic strength,
A sacred beast lay prone below her feet,
A silent flame-eyed mass of living force.
All underwent a high celestial change:
Breaking the black Inconscient’s blind mute wall,
Effacing the circles of the Ignorance,
Powers and divinities burst flaming forth;
Each part of the being trembling with delight
Lay overwhelmed with tides of happiness
And saw her hand in every circumstance
And felt her touch in every limb and cell.

(CWSA 33–34:528–29)

Chapter 7
Rama and the Soul of India

The Purpose of Divine Advent

The year 2020 is clearly one that cannot be easily forgotten. The most significant event has, of course, been the pandemic and the fever of fear that has gripped mankind right at its very throat. It is as if stifling man, pushing him towards a narrow gorge where he has either to face the challenge of death or let himself be born to a new life. It is also an year of massive geopolitical shifts leading to new alignments among nations and within groups of humanity. The year is also witnessing another shift that is subtle and yet not too subtle in human thinking and its way of life. It is as if a mighty force is working upon earth and mankind that is churning the human consciousness swiftly in unprecedented ways, like the great sea-churning of old. This ancient tale of the churning of the ocean is therefore not just an ancient myth and fable but a deeply symbolic story that is at once contemporary and relevant to what we are going through at this point in time. Many gifts emerge out of this great churning, which go to different participants, but all eyes are set on the nectar of immortality. As the event approaches its close, dark and dangerous fumes emerge from the ocean depths, their poison threatening the whole world. Shiva, the lord of Tapasya, consumes it and frees the world for the emergence of the nectar. But now it is the turn for Vishnu, the great preserver of dharma who sustains the balance of the worlds, to intervene and see to it that the nectar reaches the right recipients, the adhikari, who want it not for any personal egoistic enjoyment or furtherance of their personal garden of pleasure but only as a means to enhance the forces of light, truth, beauty, love, and harmony upon earth. Today, we are each individually and collectively facing a choice: whether we want the future only for the expansion of our ego’s empire, driven by the ambitious rakshasa and asura within us? Or do we choose to use the strength and energies given to us to establish a new world-order based on dharma and truth? A world where unity, freedom, and fraternity reigns, freed of the menace of the asura—a world where the animal in man serves his higher illumined intellect, rather than being a force that restlessly goes about its own petty desires and satisfactions of the body and vital. Depending upon the choices we make today, the doors of the future shall open for us. After all, it is the centenary year of the permanent return of the divine mother, the avatara of the supreme Shakti, to India, the land she chose for her mighty work along with her divine and eternal companion, the lord of yoga Sri Aurobindo, who along with her have opened the doors of a new age of mankind. All that we witness today and all that we yet shall witness in years to come will be a means to prepare us for her coming. The difference, however, will be that this time she is not returning only to a material space, her karmabhoomi, Puducherry, but to the whole earth, and most importantly, she is coming to open and build a temple of her and the lord in the heart of man. It is clearly a period of great transition whose impact will remain imprinted upon us for a long time to come.

The Indian mind, sensitive always to such events that have turned the tides of time and reshaped the history of earth, has captured them in myths, legends, and stories that have openly or subtly governed the thought and mind of the race, inspired its heart, and awakened its soul to these deeper truths that are often forgotten in the blind race of life driven by our usual desires and ambitions. The two great epics that have governed the psyche of the ancient Indian people and whose charm and appeal are perennial and continue in our modern times are the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Both are stories woven around a great war that changed the course of history. Both have at their centre the avatara, the conscious descent of the divine in animal and human forms for the redemption of earth and humanity. Though the essential significance of both epics is the same, their scopes are very different. The Ramayana belongs to an earlier stage of evolution when the animal, rakshasic, and asuric humanity is struggling to evolve into a more humanized type. Given the nature of humanity that one is dealing with here, the epic also stays faithful to its style. We find here the simple animal-humanity still one with nature, raw in its dealings with life yet undefiled by all the complexities brought in by the human mind and its excessive development. In the Mahabharata, the evolutionary crisis is no more between the asura and man, with the animal type called upon to make its choices. Here the struggle and conflict are between two types of humanity. One that belongs to the old consciousness that has albeit lost its way, dharmasya glanir, and struggles to find its way towards the future. The other belongs to the new tpe of humanity that comes as instruments of the divine to uphold the dharma and lead man through the conflict towards a new way of being. The characters are heroic human beings but also experts in both shastr (weapons) and shastras (scriptural knowledge). They are complex, and being largely mentalized, we can identify in them quite a few archetypes of our own times. It is for this reason that the Mahabharata often appeals more to the modern mind than the Ramayana. However, the Ramayana contains something precious, even indispensable for human progress, and it is the deeper heart, the emotional being that can open rather easily to soul influence. That is why the Ramayana appeals much more to the heart and soul, whereas the Mahabharata appeals to the mind and the moral/ ethical dilemmas we face. Perhaps realizing this deficit of the heart that makes an epic rich and beautiful we find in the Mahabharata, interspersed as it were the exploits of Sri Krishna, the avatara of Dwapara. The images of Sri Krishna’s lila drawn from the Mahabharata as well as the Bhagawat Purana have governed the Indian psyche for long and inspired the heart towards bhakti and that complete love and surrender to god. It is not just a clash of civilization and ideologies that we find as the central theme but a clash of two types of humanity, two lines of evolutionary development through which humanity passes from time to time in its long and complex winding road towards some high and far off destiny.

The epics reveal to us the road that man must take in his evolutionary journey. It is conjured in that one word, dharma, which has fascinated the Indian mind since the Aryan forefathers moved through the mountains, plains, and rivers of the subcontinent we know today as India. The stamps of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata can be found everywhere here. We find mention of its mountains and rivers, its sacred places, the kingdoms, cities, and hermitages of rishis along river banks and forests. It is amazing how the great epics have been carried through the generations; their inspiring influence sown as a seed in the early stages of development of a nation is a unique example of creating a nation from within outwards. Unlike most modern nations, India has a very long history of development. At first is sown a seed in the form of high spiritual aspiration and an account of the realizations of the rishis who forged the soul of this land and its people. Once the soul was awakened and the body generally defined surrounded by the mountain and the seas, then the rishis started shaping its mind and inner being through the great philosophies and epics. The epics were particularly helpful in shaping our ethical mind, refining the vital energies, purifying the emotional being, and teaching and training the twin great powers of sacrifice and renunciation through which we arrive at a greater perfection intended for man. But since even the highest and noblest of aspirations need an outer body and flesh here upon earth, there developed around these central truths—keeping them as a base—certain ways of life, customs, and even celebrations to imprint the soul with memories of India’s glorious past. These practices will help future generations, so that invigorated and enlightened by these soul imprints, we may move towards a yet greater future. But these great epics and books of wisdom were never allowed to crystallize into fixed, dogmatic, and rigid religious formulas. This did happen, though, as a means of self-defence when India was exposed to barbaric and alien cultures. It was the spirit of conservation, a matter of extreme necessity, and not the original way of life, which was always built on harmonious ground where law and liberty worked together. The name given to this harmonious synthesis of law and liberty is what is called as dharma.

Rama and Sita—The Ideal of Man and Woman

The most powerful means, however, of transmitting and instilling the spirit of dharma can be found in the two great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The Ramayana, at the centre of which we find Lord Rama, the seventh avatara of Vishnu, and Mata Sita, the divine mother in her gracious aspect of goddess Lakshmi, is essentially a story of love rather than of war. Of course, war is an aspect of life. Even the power of love when it enters the earth must battle against all its inferior and lesser forms; ruthlessly, it must excise all that stands in the way of its purity and sullies its beauty before it can find its true expression in human beings. The Ramayana is not just the story of a unique divine love between Rama and Sita but the love that the divine has for creation. It is to rescue creation from the trampling feet of asura and to restore dharma, righteousness, and goodness that the avatara descends. The divine assumes a human body so that man can follow his divine example and make the needed effort to elevate himself to a diviner way of life. But since it is not possible to do so all at once, a big gap lies between man and his largely animal-like consciousness that often and easily enough comes under the spell of the asura with its gigantic appetites that would swallow the whole world for its selfish purposes. This evolutionary journey of man has to be graded in a stepwise manner. Each step forward is a battle between the past forms and past ways of life and the immediate future that the avatara has come to establish.

The Ramayana is a story of one such step wherein a link is made between the animal-man and a more ethical way of life. Rama is an embodiment of the highest dharma possible at that time, wherein humanity was still struggling with the pashu (animal) and the rakshasa and asura (titanic) in man. It is true that human progress is never static, and mankind has moved far ahead in its surge towards the light and truth. Other rungs in our evolutionary history have been added. Christ came to sow the seeds of love, while Buddha showed man the way of compassion. Sri Krishna came to show the path of freedom and delight. But Indian thought, knowing that all these are luminous links in the great evolutionary becoming, foresaw a yet to come avatara of the future, who would take up the work of all the past avataras and carry it to its final divine consummation and intended perfection. Such an avatara would embody at once the nobility and courage of Rama, the subtlety of wisdom and freedom even while engaged in all the works that we find in Krishna, the deep compassion of Buddha, and the sacrifice of Christ. This is what the Indian thought envisaged as the future type of humanity, or rather a superhumanity whose early glimpses we find in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Conversion of the Asura

The Ramayana is not just about the killing of an asura but to try and convert him back to his origin. Since according to Hindu thought everything, even what seems to be ugly and wicked, has an ultimate divine origin. The ugliness and distortions are crusts that have been added as the energies and forces released by the divine have strayed from their straight path and rolled in the mud of earthly nature, still in the grip of the inconscient darkness into which creation had plunged. An asura is therefore someone who has not only completely forgotten his divine origin but revolts against all that is beautiful and divine. He is driven by the impetus of the shadow that lies at the back of every human being, and hence his steps are retrogressive, so to speak. But the way for man is to look up and look forward. The deva type of humanity is engaged in the forward march, while Ravana represents the retrogressive movement in nature. He wants to undo what has been done over the centuries by the seers and sages. He wants to sow the seeds of an aggressive and ambitious type of humanity, focusing on material and technological advancement at the expense of the spiritual side. His idea of liberty is licentiousness, as typified in the story of his sister Surpanakha and reflected in his own life, led by lust and blind impulses. He cannot accept dharma since it means effort at self-mastery. He prefers to be driven by every impulse to satisfy his desire for selfish gains and personal pleasure. And yet, even he is an angel, who has strayed from his true path. But the lord remembers, and hence he assumes an earthly body to redeem and restore him to his divine origins, which he has forgotten completely. It is this sublime love that leans down to rescue and redeem what is fallen, disturbed, and distorted, releasing the divinity within it, as seen in the Ramayana (and, also at another level, in the Mahabharata).

Spiritual Feminism

The work of this redemption has been undertaken primarily by Sita, the embodiment of Lakshmi. The Ramayana is as much a story of Sita as of Rama. Though certain modern historians judging an ancient epic by modern standards and without going into its tremendous spirit see in her either a too virtuous woman to be true or else a weak lady who is always at the mercy of her father, husband, the demon king, or even a commoner whose one word is enough for her to be banished. But the Sita that emerges through all this is indeed a strong woman, strengthened by the spell of adverse fate that has transformed a once princess and queen into the life of a sannyasini in the forest. It is her love for her husband that carries her there, and she is willing to face every kind of danger. Then she is kidnapped by the asura through deceit. It is said that this was one of her divine strategies to bring him back and convert him through love. But the asura is not yet ready for divine love. For him, love is synonymous with lust. He must usurp and possess and fulfil the impulses of his body and vital, rather than dive deep into his soul, where alone true love can be found. To dominate, to possess, to crush everything that does not yield to his ambition, and to stamp his ego on the whole world is his way. It is said that the whole story of Mayamriga (the golden deer for whom she sent Rama hunting while Ravana kidnapped her) was done by deliberately putting upon herself the veil of avidya for a moment so that the asura could come near. Otherwise, Ravana would not have been able to touch her. The agni pariksha that she has to undergo later is clearly a symbolic story (unless we believe that a human body can survive fire, which would mean a transformed body and not a humanly built one as it now is). It is a symbol of the purification that earthly nature must undergo for its redemption, having been stamped by the touch of the asura. It is through this fire of aspiration and purification that the state of avidya (ignorance) can be converted into vidya (knowledge of truth and oneness). She accepts all these ordeals willingly since she is born to redeem the earth, which is suffering under the spell of the asura.

The hyper-intellectual man who has studied the Vedas has some kind of mental knowledge even of the truths that are contained therein, and yet he misapplies them and uses even such profound things for his personal and egoistic ambitions. For such are asuras—whatever intellectual ability and even religiosity they may have, their real creed is the expansion of the empire of the ego. This asura in man is typified in Ravana, once a devotee of the lord who has hence fallen due to his lust for power and wealth and wanton ambition. Though the main antagonist in the plot, he is not a villain to be simply weeded out of existence, if such a thing were at all possible. Killing Ravana becomes inevitable only because he refuses to change his ways. The chance is given even until the last moments, but he refuses and insists on his doctrine that might is right, and hence Rama must take the challenge and fight him on his own grounds.

With the fall of the asura and the conversion of the animal, the path of humanity is secured at least for a few millenniums until the necessity for the coming of another avatara arises. The work of Lord Rama and Mata Sita is to convert back the asura and restore the forces and energies that have strayed from their real purpose back to their original divine purposes. In the end, when she is banished, we see Sita grow stronger, while Rama suffers and is unable to bear the loss that has come in the course of following his rajadharma of those times. Sita never allows a trace of bitterness or grievance to enter her heart. Such is the beauty and strength of her love that she rears her two children with all grace and dignity and teaches them the way of nobility and courage. She is indeed the ultimate feminine—strong, wise, patient, and forbearing, whose divinity shines more and more as she faces the challenges of earthly life. Later, when her earthly mission is over, she refuses to go back to the palace of a repentant Rama and prefers to be identified back with the earth out of which she has emerged. Even in her departure, we see her great sacrifice, wherein she redeems earthly matter by permanently merging with it rather than choosing the comforts of the palace or the riches and splendour of her heavenly home. In the early dawns of humanity, Sita sets some of the highest standards of spiritual feminism and empowerment by awakening one’s own inner strength rather than following the asuric impulse of a licentious life or an egoistic love that loves only as long as one is loved. If Rama embodies the strength born out of a spiritual manhood, Sita embodies the strength born out of true love.

The Setting and the Context

Indeed, if killing Ravana was the main thing about the Ramayana, then the incarnate divine would not take so many twists and turns to get hold of him. Rama, the mighty king, is a warrior par excellence so much so that Sri Krishna declares in the Gita that among the men of valour, Paurush, I am Rama. His valour is known throughout Jambudweep, as India was known then. It was a land inhabited, it seems, largely with an early humanity closer to the animal kind (vanara is not just a monkey but a type of early human race presaging the modern man) and the rakshasa, the crude humanity with gigantic appetites whose life is centred around satisfying his vital desires. The asura, on the other hand, is a humanity that has developed intellectually, but its lower vital appetites have remained unchanged. His brilliant mind is driven by ambition, and he believes that the whole earth is meant for his enjoyment and fiefdom. He governs the rakshasa who will fight and die for him and keeps them on his payrolls but also smites them if they refuse or are unable to fulfil his lustful dreams of expansion. Among this, we have mainly two kingdoms that try to keep the flag of dharma and a nobler humanity flying high. They are the kingdoms of Ayodhya and Mithila.

The kingdom of Ayodhya is ruled by the mighty kings of the solar dynasty. Known for their steadfastness and adherence to truth, they never broke a promise, even if it was given in a dream state. The lineage of Lord Rama and his ancestors is still available in records of ancient India, which had a method of maintaining elaborate details of history. Notable among them are Ikshvaku, the son of Shraddhavan Manu, who survived the last great deluge; Muchukunda, who fought in the battle between the devas and asuras on behalf of the gods; and Trishanku, who attempted a bodily ascension to heavens, which would literally mean a transformation of the presently death-bound body into an immortal one. He has been immortalized by Sri Aurobindo in his poem The Triumph-Song of Trishancou. Then there is King Harishchandra, who goes to an extreme degree of truthfulness in giving away his kingdom to a sage whom he had promised thus only in his dream. He, his wife, and his son walk away from the kingdom without looking back. The twist and turn of fate makes them lose everything, including their freedom and even the piece of cloth upon their body, and yet they do not go back upon their promise and remain steadfast to the practice of truth. Later, it is told that they were tested by Shiva, Indra, and other gods to see how steadfast they were to truth. Eventually Shiva is pleased and declares that the place where the king turned into a low menial slave for helping burn the dead is sanctified, and anyone who is given to fire there would ascend straight to moksha without need of any return for completing the cycle of rebirths. Then there was King Bhagirath, who brought down the Ganges through intense tapasya and Dasratha himself, father of Rama, who fought against asuras. Such was the dynasty in which Rama was born as a result of a yagna whereby a divinely burdened being was invoked by the king as his child. Such were the high and noble ideals that were sown as seeds of an early humanity that developed in the lap of the great mountains by the rishis, whose will and wisdom matched the heights of the Himalayas and the Vindhyas, and yet whose hearts harnessed the sweetest founts of love that nourished India’s soul even as the seven rivers nourished its body. It is a different story altogether that modern India, still reeling under the spell of an alien dharma imposed upon it through centuries of foreign rule, has lost connection with its own soul and has caught the universal disease of utilitarianism as the yardstick of every system of knowledge and action. Perhaps that is why it is even more important to re-establish the truth of the ancient Aryan world. Otherwise, with the sinking of India, all hope may sink, and the world, deprived of its psychic nourishment, could descend into abysses of lust, greed, material power, money, and the pursuit of immediate success. The ancient Indian rishis and kings knew how to shun and renounce immediate success and small gains for expanding their spirits and growing in strength and wisdom through challenges, hardships, and high sacrifice, which they valued above everything else.

Sita is not born but rather discovered when the King of Mithila is tilling the soil, rendered barren by severe famine. It is again clearly a symbolic story that links Sita’s birth with her mission, which is to redeem earthly nature. King Janak, her father, belongs to a whole family of kings known as rajrishis. They were yogis of the highest order, Jivanmuktas, liberated even while engaged in all worldly works. Sri Aurobindo has again spoken highly of the ideal that the lineage of King Janaka represented. It is to him that the divine mother chooses to come as a child. The story of her being found in an urn buried in the earth is clearly symbolic, as she embodies the aspiration and anguish of material nature tormented by the rakshasa and asuras. These beings hostile to truth and dharma would often accumulate occult powers of various kinds and misuse them to further their ambition, just like certain nations and groups of mankind misuse technology and wealth towards ends that are detrimental to the human race. The leader of this gang of hostiles is Ravana, whose ten heads clearly indicate an enormous ego. To those who turn it into an Aryan–Dravidian clash or of the upper and lower class would do well to remember that Ravana, the king of Lanka, was himself the son of a rishi, born into the lineage of Brahma.

Fall from the Heavens

Ravana is, in fact, a Brahmin coming from a high priestly class, someone who has thoroughly studied the Vedas and has even been instrumental in spreading them. He is a devotee as well; however, he belongs to a class or type of bhaktas whose devotion is tainted with ego and ambition. They long to appropriate the deity whom they worship in a way as to hold exclusive rights in much the same way as some religions do and thereby become a breeding ground for fundamentalism. Or else these devotees are in search of power, and their worship, penance, and religious observances are all driven by a lust for power, even the ultimate power if possible, so that they can remain the uncontested sovereign of the world. Such a devotee is Ravana. He is a pundit, a scholar, even an accomplished poet and music lover. He is sometimes portrayed as playing the difficult veena, and his famous composition on Lord Shiva, his chosen deity, Rudrastakam, is well known. That the Rudrastakam of Ravana is still looked upon as a beautiful hymn in praise of Lord Shiva is a sign of the Aryan society, which, keeping in tune with the Vedas, accepted great ideas regardless of the origin. The world of ideas belongs to nobody, and if it is good, true, and beautiful, it can find its rightful place regardless of the person through whom it came into existence.

The mighty king of Lanka has accumulated various kinds of powers, harnessing all the elements and forces of nature, and also looks after his subjects very well. Such is the opulence of ancient Lanka that its houses had gold-tipped domes, and it was the only kingdom to possess a flying machine, called the Pushpak Vimana. Yet for all his material development and technological advancement, he leads his kingdom to ruin by following the path of adharma. This is indeed a lesson of history that is as valid today as yesterday. Clearly, the story also reveals to us that it is not your circumstances of birth that make you great but what you eventually do with your life, your actions, so to speak. The terms rakshasa and asura are clearly not a surname or decided by birth, but rather something into which man can grow. Even a deva-type can degenerate into an asura, just as an asura can evolve into a deva-type, as the story of his brother Vibhishana indicates. It is this, among other things, that makes the Ramayana so contemporary. It is, like the Mahabharata, truly a history—a history that repeats itself unless we have learnt its lessons well.

If Ravana represents one class of humanity that would use everything, including religion and worship, as a cloak to cover up its ambitions, Vibhishana represents the kind of bhakta who, by his force of devotion, can be converted from his asuric birth to a diviner status. The rigid distinctions that we sometimes draw between the devas and asuras were clearly not so distinct in ancient times. Originally a divine being, Ravana’s life reveals, among other things, that there is an asura concealed within us. No matter how close we may seem to the lord—outwardly speaking—Ravana and Kumbhakarna were dwarpal (gatekeepers) of Lord Vishnu. Yet if we allow our ego to take the better of us, it is bound to spell ruin. On the other hand, there is Vibhishana, who is also with asuras by birth, and yet he has kept himself aloof from the misdeeds of his brother. It speaks of a man’s character when he does not succumb to the influences of family and society but follows what he believes to be the right things to do and speaks his mind freely, even if it means being cast out of his kingdom and comfort zones of family. Such a person, regardless of his birth, is an adhikari (deserving and fit) for friendship with the lord. Thus, we see here that the distinction the Ramayana draws between two types of humanity is not based on birth or beliefs, least of all on colour of the skin and language, but on only one thing: the subtle yet clear line between dharma and adharma. This is what differentiates the Aryan from the un-Aryan, as the scriptures distinguish these two types. This deep truth was later deliberately presented as Aryan and Dravidian. It is subtle because dharma is not defined as a rule book prescribing certain dos and don’ts. It is something to be felt within our soul, which is truly the seat of dharma and not the mind that tends to draw a line dividing black and white. Yet what is unclear to the mind is clear to the evolving soul of man. We see this great importance given to dharma at every step of Indian spirituality. Yet knowing that it is subtle in nature, it has presented to us various examples to bring home the point. The Ramayana itself touches upon this with a subtlety and fineness that is rare to find elsewhere.

Dharma and Adharma

Thus, for example, it takes up the question asked by Vali, who asks Rama as to why he killed him hiding from behind a tree, especially since Vali had no personal enmity with him. Rama answers, explaining the subtle nature of dharma by stating that in the forest, he is wandering as a servant of his brother Baharat, who is right now the King. Therefore, to maintain the law and order of a just society, he must punish the aggressors who rule along the principles of might. Being a Kshatriya, it is also his duty to protect the righteous. In this case, Vali was clearly the unjust aggressor against his own brother, Sugriva. Additionally, he had married his sister-in-law, who should have been rather looked upon as a sister or mother. Hence, his killing of Vali is justified. When asked about why in the hiding, Rama clearly states that he has shot at him as a hunter would to a wild animal. Since Vali has been like an animal in all his behaviour. Besides, it was impossible for anyone to kill Vali in frontal combat, leaving no other option than to kill him thus. Yet, and here comes the final verdict. Rama accepts inwardly that though he did what he did due to exigency of time and circumstances, it is not the ideal way. Hence, in his next incarnation as Krishna, he chooses to be killed accidentally by Vali’s son Angad, now born as a hunter, who shoots an arrow from the hiding. mistaking Krishna’s foot for a deer’s eye. The circle of dharma is completed. Even though Rama is none else but the divine incarnate, he at first identifies himself as the servant of the then king of Ayodhya and later, as an upholder of dharma, takes upon himself the consequences of the act, thereby respecting the cosmic law. The only other blot on his rather impeccable and noble character is the banishment of his spouse Sita at the instance of doubt raised by a commoner. Leaving aside the symbolism part, here again we see Rama setting the highest standards of dharma by wilfully binding himself to the then law of the land even as a commoner had to rather than conveniently overrule the law by his regal powers. And yet, even though his banishment is to uphold the rajadharma (the code of governance of a king), he refuses to remarry and even suffers in silent agony for Sita.

But apart from these two stories, which have their own justification given the age, context, and background, the image of Rama long imprinted upon the Indian psyche is of the ideal Kshatriya: strong and fierce in combat yet gentle in demeanour, fearless in battle yet tender in feelings when it comes to his dealings with the different segments of society, wise in his counsels and yet humble in his approach towards knowledge. He is ready to gather pearls of wisdom from all the sages whom he meets on the way during his sojourn in the forest and even does not spare his younger brother Lakshmana to seek the ways of good governance from Ravana before he dies, even as his archrival is fallen on the ground during his final moments. His deep compassion for the lowly and the outcaste, Guhak, his upholding of friendship with the vanra Sugriva, his redemption of Ahilya—whom her husband and society had abandoned as a sinner—his treatment of all, whether it be eating from the hands of an ordinary woman Shabari or performing the last rites for the vulture king, Jatayu, sowed the seeds of a divine socialism in the Indian mind and opened the path towards an ideal society known till date as ramarajya. The key element of this perfect society being that the king held himself responsible for all that happened in his kingdom, including the various forms of suffering and diseases in his subjects. His renunciation of the kingdom to uphold his father’s or rather a king’s promise given to his wife is matched only with his valiant stand to rescue the daughter of Janaka from the clutches of Ravana. Here we can see the true meaning of renunciation, which is not an outer abandonment of life and action but to act always, not under the impulsion of ego and desires, but to uphold the dharma. In the single persona and figure of Rama, we see a perfect symbol of the high and noble Aryan-type, the heroic humanity that shrinks not from any battle, whether it be inner or outer. But his battles are never for the ostentatious expansion of ambition; rather they are for the expansion of dharma. Conquest is as much a part of dharma as everything else. In him, we see the meeting of the triumvirate of manhood, in the form of wisdom, strength, and love, all knit together around the ideal of dharma.

The Ideal Bhakta

Finally, the story of the Ramayana cannot be complete without Hanuman, the avatar of Shiva, as Rudra, who comes to aid the work of Vishnu embodied in Rama. He represents the perfect bhakta whose life is dedicated in the service of the lord. One-pointed in his mission to serve the lord, he has taken a body despite being a celestial being since, thus alone, he could serve him best. Every ready to listen and obey the slightest command of the divine, he is fearless and strong, knowing that his life and death are in the lord’s hands. But he is also wise; he knows how to distinguish truth from falsehood and to find the way through every difficulty and obstacle that may arise in the path of his service. He is the ideal that man must follow in his ascension towards divine consciousness, transcending our present animal nature. For while the mind can enjoy the study scriptures and the heart can feel joy in singing the name of the lord, the animal arts in us can only be tamed through service of the lord. This is what the life and story of Hanuman reveal. Without service, knowledge remains theoretical; without service, bhakti remains incomplete; and without service, our freedom remains imperfect.

This and much more is there in the Ramayana, if we care to find it. But a word of caution is needed. We should be careful not to fall prey to this modern mentality that is nitpicking and eager to find faults in the great ones. Great beings may and do have their imperfections. In fact, the greater the light, the deeper the shadow it casts by contrast. So too, the characters of the Ramayana are not perfect beings, certainly not by our standards. But their imperfection is overarched by the spirit of dharma in which they dwell, the light of dharma that they hold as a light and guide for all action, and the love for dharma that impels them to make any amount of sacrifice that may be needed for the victory of truth and the advent of a diviner life upon earth. Most importantly, the Ramayana, especially the work of Tulsidas (and other poets like Kamban), provides for man the much-needed food and nourishment for his soul. For while we have all kinds of food to nourish (or harm) our mind, senses, and the bodily self, there is very little to nourish our heart and soul. The story of Rama and Sita fulfils that purpose, and hence its relevance will continue as long as earth remains a field for the evolution of the human soul through the various challenges and vicissitudes of life, striving towards truth, light, beauty of love, and the dream of harmonious collective living.

Sri Aurobindo remarks about the Ramayana and its main hero, Rama, the legendary king and avatara of Vishnu:

The Ramayana is a work of the same essential kind as the Mahabharata; it differs only by a greater simplicity of plan, a more delicate ideal temperament and a finer glow of poetic warmth and colour. The main bulk of the poem in spite of much accretion is evidently by a single hand and has a less complex and more obvious unity of structure. There is less of the philosophic, more of the purely poetic mind, more of the artist, less of the builder. The whole story is from beginning to end of one piece and there is no deviation from the stream of the narrative. At the same time there is a like vastness of vision, an even more wide-winged flight of epic sublimity in the conception and sustained richness of minute execution in the detail. The structural power, strong workmanship and method of disposition of the Mahabharata remind one of the art of the Indian builders, the grandeur and boldness of outline and wealth of colour and minute decorative execution of the Ramayana suggest rather a transcript into literature of the spirit and style of Indian painting. The epic poet has taken here also as his subject an Itihasa, an ancient tale or legend associated with an old Indian dynasty and filled it in with detail from myth and folklore, but has exalted all into a scale of grandiose epic figure that it may bear more worthily the high intention and significance. The subject is the same as in the Mahabharata, the strife of the divine with the titanic forces in the life of the earth, but in more purely ideal forms, in frankly supernatural dimensions and an imaginative heightening of both the good and the evil in human character. On one side is portrayed an ideal manhood, a divine beauty of virtue and ethical order, a civilization founded on the Dharma and realising an exaltation of the moral ideal which is presented with a singularly strong appeal of aesthetic grace and harmony and sweetness; on the other are wild and anarchic and almost amorphous forces of superhuman egoism and self-will and exultant violence, and the two ideas and powers of mental nature living and embodied are brought into conflict and led to a decisive issue of the victory of the divine man over the Rakshasa. All shade and complexity are omitted which would diminish the single purity of the idea, the representative force in the outline of the figures, the significance of the temperamental colour and only so much admitted as is sufficient to humanise the appeal and the significance. The poet makes us conscious of the immense forces that are behind our life and sets his action in a magnificent epic scenery, the great imperial city, the mountains and the ocean, the forest and wilderness, described with such a largeness as to make us feel as if the whole world were the scene of his poem and its subject the whole divine and titanic possibility of man imaged in a few great or monstrous figures. The ethical and the aesthetic mind of India have here fused themselves into a harmonious unity and reached an unexampled pure wideness and beauty of self-expression. The Ramayana embodied for the Indian imagination its highest and tenderest human ideals of character, made strength and courage and gentleness and purity and fidelity and self-sacrifice familiar to it in the suavest and most harmonious forms coloured so as to attract the emotion and the aesthetic sense, stripped morals of all repellent austerity on one side or on the other of mere commonness and lent a certain high divineness to the ordinary things of life, conjugal and filial and maternal and fraternal feeling, the duty of the prince and leader and the loyalty of follower and subject, the greatness of the great and the truth and worth of the simple, toning things ethical to the beauty of a more psychical meaning by the glow of its ideal hues. The work of Valmiki has been an agent of almost incalculable power in the moulding of the cultural mind of India: it has presented to it to be loved and imitated in figures like Rama and Sita, made so divinely and with such a revelation of reality as to become objects of enduring cult and worship, or like Hanuman, Lakshmana, Bharata the living human image of its ethical ideals; it has fashioned much of what is best and sweetest in the national character, and it has evoked and fixed in it those finer and exquisite yet firm soul tones and that more delicate humanity of temperament which are a more valuable thing than the formal outsides of virtue and conduct. (CWSA 20: 349–51)

I do not consider your method of dealing with Rama’s personality to be the right one. It has to be taken as a whole in the setting that Valmiki gave it (not treated as if it were the story of a modern man), with the significance that he gave to his hero’s Personality, deeds and works. If it is pulled out of its setting and analysed under the dissecting knife of a modern ethical mind, it loses all its significance at once. Krishna so treated becomes a [mere?] debauchee and trickster who no doubt did great things in politics—but so did Rama in war. Achilles and Odysseus pulled of their setting become one furious egoistic savage and the other a cruel and cunning the savage. I consider myself under an obligation to enter into the spirit, significance, atmosphere of the Mahabharata, Iliad, a and identify myself with their time-spirit before I can feel what their heroes were in themselves apart from the details of their outer actions.

As for the Avatarhood, I accept it for Rama first because he fills a place in the scheme—and seems to me to fill it rightly—and because when I read the Ramayana I feel a great afflatus which I recognise and which makes of its story—mere faerytale though it seems—a parable of a great critical transitional event that happened in the terrestrial evolution and gives to the main character’s personality and action a significance of the large typical cosmic kind which these actions would not have had if they had been done by another man in another scheme of events. The Avatar is not bound to do extraordinary actions, but he is bound to give his acts or his work or what he is—any of these or all—a significance and an effective power that are part of something essential to be done in the history of the earth and its races.

. . .

It was not at all Rama’s business to establish the spiritual stage of that evolution—so he did not at all concern himself with that. His business was to destroy Ravana and to establish the Ramarajya—in other words, to fix for the future the possibility of an order proper to the sattwic civilised human being who governs his life by the reason, the finer emotions, morality, or at least moral ideals, such as truth, obedience, co-operation and harmony, the sense of honour, the sense of domestic and public order, to establish this in a world still occupied by anarchic forces, the Animal Mind and the powers of the vital Ego making its own satisfaction the rule of life, in other words, the Vānara and the Raksasa. This is the meaning of Rama and his life-work and it is according as he fulfilled it or not that he must be judged as Avatar or no Avatar. It was not his business to play the comedy of the chivalrous Ksatriya with the formidable brute beast that was Ball, it was his business to kill him and get the Animal Mind under his control. It was his business to be not necessarily a perfect, but a largely representative sattwic Man, a faithful husband and a lover, a loving and obedient son, a tender and perfect brother, rather, friend—he is friend of all kinds of people, friend of he kinds of people, friend of the outcast Guhaka, friend of the Animal leaders, Sugriva, Hanuman, friend of the vulture Jatayu, friend even of the Rāksasa Vibhisana. All that he was in a brilliant, striking but of this note or that like Harishchandra or Shivi, but with a certain harmonious completeness. but most of all, it was his business to typify and establish the things on which the social idea and its stability depend, truth and honour, the sense of the Dharama, public spirit and sense of order. To the first to truth and honour, much more than to his filial love and obedience to his father—though to that also—he sacrificed his personal rights as the elect of the King and the assembly and fourteen of the best years of his life and went into exile in the forests. To his public spirit and his sense of public order (the great and supreme civic virtue in the eyes of the ancient Indians, Greeks, Romans, for at that time the maintenance of the ordered community, not the separate development and satisfaction of the individual was the pressing need of the human evolution) he sacrificed his own happiness and domestic life and the happiness of Sita. In that he was at one with the moral sense of all the antique races, though at variance with the later romantic individualistic sentimental morality c the modern man who can afford to have that less stern morality just because the ancients sacrificed the individual in order to make the world safe for the spirit of social order. Finally it was Rama’s business to make the world safe for the ideal of the sattwic human being by destroying the sovereignty of Ravana, the Rāksasa menace. All this he did with such a divine afflatus in his personality and action that his figure has been stamped for more than two millenniums on the mind of Indian culture, and what he stood for has dominated the reason and idealising mind of man in all countries—and in spite of the constant revolt of the human vital, is likely to continue to do so until a greater Ideal arises. And you say in spite of all these that he was no Avatar? If you like—but at any rate he stands among the few greatest of the great Vibhūtis. You may dethrone him now—for man is no longer satisfied with the sattwic ideal and is seeking for something more—but his work and meaning remain stamped on the past of the earth’s evolving race.

When I spoke of the gap that would be left by his absence, I did not mean a gap among the prophets and intellectuals, but a gap in the scheme of Avatarhood—there ‘was somebody who was the Avatar of the sattwic Human as Krishna was the Avatar of the overmental Superhuman—I see no one but Rama who can fill the place. Spiritual teachers and prophet (as also intellectuals, scientists, artists, poets, etc.)—these a at the greatest Vibhūtis, but they are not Avatars. (CWSA 28: 492–93)

Chapter 8
Reflections on the Mahabharata

Background and Introduction

Mahabharata is the longest epic written in any language. Comprising of nearly 1,00,000 slokas or 2,00,000 lines (each sloka being a couplet of two lines), it includes within its framework one of the subtlest and most practical scriptures, a book at once of yoga and metaphysics, known as the Bhagawad Gita, or the song divine. Whether the Gita has been later inserted, as some scholars suggest, or is part of the epic is not of much practical relevance. It is so beautifully interwoven into the fabric of the story that it flows naturally from the moment of its inception. Additionally, it is not of much importance how much of the story can be regarded as historically factual and scientifically true. The style of the mystics has always been this way. Whether we see the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the many Puranas, or the Greek and Egyptian and all other myths—including the famous Odyssey and the Illiad—they all move simultaneously on a number of planes of our own and world existence. It is the limitation of material science, which is now beginning to open us to the idea of other worlds, that confines itself to the most material of all worlds. But the mystic vision goes behind and beyond what is concrete and visible. He sees hidden aspects and powers. The world of the mystic is a world where forces of other worlds incarnate and push human life and world events; armies clash not only on the outer battlefields but also the inner ones. The soul of man is visualized by them as a world full of battle and surprise where forces that hinder and help, the gigantic titans that inflate the egos filling the human world with carnage and death, and the luminous gods who guide the life of man, filling it with hope and life. Through all this clash and wrestle of forces within and outside (two terms of one reality), the caravan of human life moves through the difficult evolutionary march. To this, the Indian mystic adds the story of direct divine interventions through the incarnate divine or the avatara. This gives us the final missing clue to the great purpose towards which our life moves amidst all its bewildering complexities. The divine, in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, does not simply stand behind the veil, pushing men and events through the fiat of his will, using instruments to fulfil his grand design woven by fate. He enters the play, assumes a human form, and stands at the centre of the conflict during crucial periods of the world-churning. He drinks the poison that emerges out of this churning, bears the fatal strokes and wounds, and finally gives a new lease on life to the civilization and epoch in which he is born. Nor is his action confined and limited to the age in which the divine advent takes place. The tremors of this divine birth reverberate through centuries and millennia, upholding humanity until the time for the next incarnation arrives.

The Mahabharata (and the Ramayana) can thus be seen and understood at many levels, and each is valid and complements the others. Outwardly, it represents a crisis that humanity undergoes from time to time, one that has the potential to plunge it into abysses of destruction, setting the clock of human evolution back by a few centuries, if not millennia. The crisis itself comes due to a steady degeneration of the high and sublime values, the noble ways of life that are given to man for his evolution. This is what the Gita calls as dharmasya glani, which has little to do with any formally organized religion (possibly there were none at that time), but rather with a way of life based on certain eternal truths and the eternal law given to mankind from time immemorial, activated in the memory of the race by countless rishis, sages, and yogis. A time comes when the degeneration is so large that there is a need for a complete changeover. When the time comes for this complete changeover, a near total transition from one age, yuga, to another, then the divine himself appears in the font of the human march as its leader. He once again speaks the eternal word that man has forgotten and helps humanity both by his own life as an example and by other direct and indirect means to navigate through this dangerous period. These periods when the divine himself assumes a body to lead earth and humanity are indeed eternal moments when humanity takes a leap across a perilous bridge. The advent of the divine during such moments when he himself takes the rein of humanity directly as the leader of the human march (lokasangrahartha) is called the avatara. The avatara comes not only to establish the eternal truths, but he also gives them a new form, a form that is in accord with the age, yugadharma, so to speak. There was a purpose that the old ways of life die so that the new ways may be born. This new way course is based on the eternal law, Sanatana Dharma, the spirit of which is always intact but the outer body changes as happens when the individual soul changes from one body to another. That is how evolution takes place.

The Evolutionary Crisis and the Divine Advent

Sri Krishna not only restored Sanatana Dharma to its original glory and splendour but also gave it a new body and form. The established custom of the birthright of the king was changed. The king had to be a servant of the people. His life had to be an embodiment of dharma; otherwise, the common folks—the gwal bal and the cowherdmen—had the right to overthrow him. Secondly, Sri Krishna established the nation-unit. India was reborn through the Mahabharata. Of course, Bharatvarsha is as old as the Himalayas, but its name has changed several times. The Jambudweep of Lord Rama, the Bharatavarsha of the mighty Kuru clan born of the coming together of a rishi and a rishika, Shakuntala, whose son Bharata ruled the ancient land of India mightily and wisely, eventually changed into Aryavarta and Aryabhumi. As we know by now, the Aryan was not a physically distinct-type, as certain sections of politically motivated scholars insist holding the corpse of a now-dead Aryan invasion theory. It was rather a psychological type of humanity epitomized in Bhisma, Arjuna, Vidura, and Sri Krishna himself. In brief, it was the ideal of true and complete manhood, embodying the triumvirate of wisdom, strength, and love. This is the kind of divine humanity that Sri Krishna envisages in the Gita, and the way shown towards it is by following the triple path of knowledge, works, and bhakti.

We see a similar crisis in the previous century, which saw two goriest and bloodiest of wars that man could ever imagine. It was as if all the rot and pus shimmering within the belly of humanity came out in one dark flow. Kali descended to drink it and, in the process, destroyed the asuras, whose names were Nazism, imperialism, scientific materialism, Freudianism, and the like. Communism, too, has been destroyed though, yet pockets of political units still exist that thrive on its mask, capitalizing on its dead body to erect upon it a tomb for a political cult. These zealots, with their faithful followers, aggressively attack, threaten, and pull down all that contradicts their idea of another kind of hegemony—a form of an ideological hegemony that has no essential difference from religious hegemony and conversion, except that the gods and the gospel are replaced. All the rest is the same, with as dangerous consequences as the effort at religious domination of one cult or group over another. But the same previous century also saw once again the descent or the advent of the avatara, who steered humanity through this narrow gorge into which civilization had entered and was being stifled into death. He rescued it in the age of Kali, even as Sri Krishna in the previous age, Dwapara, restored the eternal truths of Sanatana Dharma, breathed a new life in the spirit that gave birth to it, but also gave it a new form consistent with the yuga dharma. He opened the ways to the future and showed the way for man to navigate through this crisis towards a luminous future. We know whom we are referring to here. It is none else but Sri Aurobindo. He did in our age what Sri Krishna did in the Dwpara yuga.

Though the story of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana may appear as crises of outer events, at their core, they represent an evolutionary crisis wherein humanity is called upon to make a choice. Depending on this choice, humanity will find itself on one side of history or the other. Each of the main characters in the Mahabharata represents one such archetype of humanity who stands either on the side of the intended progress or who resists the human advance by its obstinate refusals, denials, or simply inaction when destiny demands it to act aligned to the time-spirit. We can take them one by one.

Lord of the Gita

Sri Krishna, of course, is the centre of the entire scene. The epic, in a way, revolves around him. Even though his action in the actual war seems limited to the ordinary eye of man, the sage and seers know it is he who is conducting the war even though sitting unarmed on the chariot on the battlefield of life. He is conducting the war not by outer means as much as by the silent, impersonal will that a yogin has access to. It is this will that drives the stars, the sun, the moon, and the earth on their course. It is this will that orders the atoms and the galaxies in their orbits. It is this will that awakens as life in the plant and animal, blooms in the flower, flows in the river, and stands erect and lofty in the mountain ranges high. It is this will that climbs as thought in man, kindles within him the fire of aspiration, and leads him on the inner paths towards god, freedom, truth, bliss, and immortality. It is this will that labours in the whole creation as love. Though the scientist sees it as something mechanical since he is not yet blessed with the divine vision as Sanjay has or which a yogi like Vyasa develops, hidden behind this mechanical energy in the atom and man there is a conscious force that arranges all the events and circumstances of individual and collective life. Random though they seem, there is behind them the workings of a deep cosmic intelligence, a wisdom from the heights, pragya purusho purano, that one can realize through yoga. Once we know this will and align our acts to its rhythms, then life flows beautifully as it catches hold of the secret music that rings in our soul. Then even the battle of Kurkshetra becomes a tremendous means for our growth. It is this divine will that Sri Krishna embodies on the great battlefield of Kurukshetra. The Gita is his teaching to Arjuna and to man, the various ways and means through which man can and must align to this divine will that is operating within us and within the world. In aligning to it, rather than living by our mental standards, which are but partial and shadowy, gleams, man can find his ultimate salvation. This is not an other-worldly ‘moksha’ achieved by shunning the world existence, but a ‘moksha’ that can be realised here and now, even while engaged in the various activities of life. He can live his life as a jivanmukta if his heart, mind, and being can attune to this divine will within. But first we must disabuse ourselves of all that distorts this will within us. This distortion arises due to the intrusion of ego and desire. It is this that is the cause of our suffering. The first thing that the Gita teaches, therefore, is to draw back the old ways of working of nature and its impulsions through the ego-self and desire. It teaches us jnana yoga, so to speak. By this we realize another self within us, our true self, which is one, though it expresses itself in three-fold ways.

Next, it teaches us ‘karma yoga’, the way of aligning ourselves with the divine will. This takes time and involves a whole process, includes nishkama karma to take away the sting of desire, the practice of equanimity to further break the knot of the ego that distorts and falsifies our vision and actions, and the constant remembrance and offering of all we think, feel, and do, as a conscious sacrifice or yajna, to the master of works. This purifies our nature of egoism and thereby prepares us for the direct divine action flowing through us. Finally, it crowns its gospel with bhakti yoga, through which we enter into an entire and completest possible union and communion with the lord. When this happens, when our surrender is complete, then are we completely freed from all bondage to ignorance? Then whatever we do becomes a means of serving, loving, adoring, and worshipping the eternal until all in us becomes one with his being, one with his consciousness, and one with his vast delight. Sri Krishna comes to reveal all this to man through Arjuna.

Krishna and Arjuna

Arjuna comes next in the line of great characters in the Mahabharata. He is the hero on the battlefield of Kurukshetra and, most importantly, the recipient of the great teaching of the Gita directly from Sri Krishna. His qualification is very simply that he has stood with Sri Krishna from age to age in the great battle of the future, not shrinking from action but rather working together for the consummation of the divine will in humanity. He has forgotten his previous births, but the lord remembers, and hence he is the chosen hero of a great plot that is going to change time and usher in a new age for mankind. In his personality, he represents the rajo-sattwic man, the kinetic dynamic man who is moved not so much by personal ambition and desire as much as by higher and nobler ideals. He is the srestha, the true Aryan in spirit and deeds.

In his personal evolution, he has arrived at a high point wherein he can go beyond the circle of trigunatmic prakriti, the threefold modes of nature called tamas, rajas, and sattwa, and find himself completely one with the lord, living in him forever, and doing his deeds in the world. He is the ‘Kshatriya’, the warrior of a high and noble-type like the knights and the Samurai who do not fight for personal gains but for defending the honour of their people and their country, for protecting the helpless and the weak, and for taking on the strong rakshasa and standing up against the forces of injustice and evil that oppress the world. Such is Arjuna, the noble warrior prince, who naturally becomes the hero of the great war and is the recipient of a special grace from the embodied divine, Sri Krishna. Sri Aurobindo reveals to us the truth of this relationship between Krishna and Arjuna, between god and man:

Secondly, there is the typical, almost the symbolic significance of the human Krishna who stands behind the great action of the Mahabharata, not as its hero, but as its secret centre and hidden guide. That action is the action of a whole world of men and nations, some of whom have come as helpers of an effort and result by which they do not personally profit, and to these he is a leader, some as its opponents and to them he also is an opponent, the baffler of their designs and their slayer and he seems even to some of them an instigator of all evil and destroyer of their old order and familiar world and secure conventions of virtue and good; some are representatives of that which has to be fulfilled and to them he is counsellor, helper, friend. Where the action pursues its natural course or the doers of the work have to suffer at the hands of its enemies and undergo the ordeals which prepare them for mastery, the Avatar is unseen or appears only for occasional comfort and aid, but at every crisis his hand is felt, yet in such a way that all imagine themselves to be the protagonists and even Arjuna, his nearest friend and chief instrument, does not perceive that he is an instrument and has to confess at last that all the while he did not really know his divine Friend. He has received counsel from his wisdom, help from his power, has loved and been loved, has even adored without understanding his divine nature; but he has been guided like all others through his own egoism and the counsel, help and direction have been given in the language and received by the thoughts of the Ignorance. Until the moment when all has been pushed to the terrible issue of the struggle on the field of Kurukshetra and the Avatar stands at last, still not as fighter, but as the charioteer in the battle-car which carries the destiny of the fight, he has not revealed Himself even to those whom he has chosen.

Thus the figure of Krishna becomes, as it were, the symbol of the divine dealings with humanity. Through our egoism and ignorance we are moved, thinking that we are the doers of the work, vaunting of ourselves as the real causes of the result, and that which moves us we see only occasionally as some vague or even some human and earthly fountain of knowledge, aspiration, force, some Principle or Light or Power which we acknowledge and adore without knowing what it is until the occasion arises that forces us to stand arrested before the Veil. And the action in which this divine figure moves is the whole wide action of man in life, not merely the inner life, but all this obscure course of the world which we can judge only by the twilight of the human reason as it opens up dimly before our uncertain advance the little span in front. This is the distinguishing feature of the Gita that it is the culmination of such an action which gives rise to its teaching and assigns that prominence and bold relief to the gospel of works which it enunciates with an emphasis and force we do not find in other Indian Scriptures. Not only in the Gita, but in other passages of the Mahabharata we meet with Krishna declaring emphatically the necessity of action, but it is here that he reveals its secret and the divinity behind our works.

The symbolic companionship of Arjuna and Krishna, the human and the divine soul, is expressed elsewhere in Indian thought, in the heavenward journey of Indra and Kutsa seated in one chariot, in the figure of the two birds upon one tree in the Upanishad, in the twin figures of Nara and Narayana, the seers who do tapasyā together for the knowledge. But in all three it is the idea of the divine knowledge in which, as the Gita says, all action culminates that is in view; here it is instead the action which leads to that knowledge and in which the divine Knower figures himself. Arjuna and Krishna, this human and this divine, stand together not as seers in the peaceful hermitage of meditation, but as fighter and holder of the reins in the clamorous field, in the midst of the hurtling shafts, in the chariot of battle. The Teacher of the Gita is therefore not only the God in man who unveils himself in the word of knowledge, but the God in man who moves our whole world of action, by and for whom all our humanity exists and struggles and labours, towards whom all human life travels and progresses. He is the secret Master of works and sacrifice and the Friend of the human peoples. (CWSA 19: 19)

The Ideal Aryan Warrior

One of the purposes of the epic is to establish and impress upon the human mind the conception of ideal humanity. This is also what makes the epic endure through all the rub and flow of time. Of course, the Mahabharata, which is much more subtle and complex in its craft, does not draw a rigid dividing line between the good and bad human beings. It is not a Manichean point of view that it presents before man. All human beings have their own flaws and weaknesses, just as all human beings have their strengths. The Pandavas are not perfect human beings; far from it. Nor are all those who stand on the opposite camp all bad and evil. Duryodhana is himself described as a great warrior. He has many defects, but one thing he does not have is cowardice. He is also generous by nature. It is only because ambition and lust take the better of him that he becomes what he does and thereby meets his end in this inglorious way. So too, the Pandava brothers are not all epitomes of goodness. Yudhisthira, the very embodiment of dharma, commits a serious mistake when he puts the kingdom and Draupadi as stakes in the game of dice. The wife and kingdom are not personal properties, and yet he succumbs to this falsehood, and hence must suffer for thirteen long years in exile, even though he had lost the game through deceit. It must be understood here that in the ancient Aryan world, humanity was not divided into virtuous and sinners according to some arbitrary moral rule of living but whether they lived in tune with their dharma or significantly deviated from it.

Virtue is an artificial, coarse, and ill-fitting dress, which is more of a temporary thing. Dharma is the real truth, but dharma is a thing subtle and profound and cannot be captured simply in the rule book of guidance for one and all and for all times to come. Moral rules spring from the mind; dharma springs from the soul of man. Dharma is that which helps the individual towards the eternal, the eternal truth of his being, the eternal truths that govern his own and world existence, and the eternal truth that is the basis of all creation. Dharma holds the march of humanity and keeps it moving in the direction of its upward spiral of ascent. Adharma, on the other hand, is all that stands in the way of human progress towards the eternal. When man follows the deepest calling of his soul and his true soul nature, swadharma, then he cannot go astray. But if his true nature is clouded and confused by the enemies of the soul, namely lust, greed, fear, ambition, jealousy, and various forms of delusions and confusions of the mind and heart, then he deviates from dharma and lands up with adharma. That the dharma is so subtle is revealed to us in the Gita itself. Arjuna’s conflict, which is the starting point of the great divine song, starts with such a conflict between two moral standards: to fight a just war or to refuse to fight so as to save his own people from perishing. Both seem justifiable to the intellect; one appeals to one line of moral reasoning, which is justice, while the other appeals to another law of life, which is love for the family and the clan. The Gita bids Arjuna to rise beyond both and make his choice based on his intrinsic soul nature! If still there is confusion left, then let him fight in submission to the divine will in creation and as manifested upon the battlefield of Kurukshetra. The whole of the Mahabharata is replete with this manifold and subtle understanding of dharma and adharma, which are locked in the world in a strange wrestle and embrace. But since the centre-stage of the story are the Kshatriya type of humanity, who bear the mantle of protecting and preserving the social fabric against evil, the focus is largely on this aspect. Though, from time to time, we find many other aspects of dharma emerge, forming a necklace of rare jewels around the main epic.

Sri Aurobindo beautifully reveals to us the creed of the heroic Aryan warrior as enunciated in the Gita:

It is the creed of the Aryan fighter. ‘Know God’, it says, ‘know thyself, help man; protect the Right, do without fear or weakness or faltering thy work of battle in the world. Thou art the eternal and imperishable Spirit, thy soul is here on its upward path to immortality; life and death are nothing, sorrow and wounds and suffering are nothing, for these things have to be conquered and overcome. Look not at thy own pleasure and gain and profit, but above and around, above at the shining summits to which thou climbest, around at this world of battle and trial in which good and evil, progress and retrogression are locked in stern conflict. Men call to thee, their strong man, their The hero for help; help then, fight. Destroy when by destruction the world must advance, but hate not that which thou destroyest, neither grieve for all those who perish. Know everywhere the one self, know all to be immortal souls and the body to be but dust. Do thy work with a calm, strong and equal spirit; fight and fall nobly or conquer mightily. For this is the work that God and thy nature have given to thee to accomplish.’ (CWSA 19: 66–67)

The Champions of dharma

Pandavas, all five of them, represent a new humanity that is born amidst the old. They are portrayed as the champions in the cause of dharma. They belong to the noble Kshatriya-type, who will stand steadfast on the path of righteousness and fight for what is true and beautiful. Their mother is Kunti, the long-suffering yet strong and patient woman that the ancient Aryans cherished as one of the ideal types. She has faced many challenges, from being socially ostracized to the untimely death of her husband, the newly anointed king of the Kuru clan, to injustice at the hands of her own people who usurp the kingdom wrongly and through deceit, and yet she refuses to give up. She is the epitome of a strong Aryan woman who, like Sita, Draupadi, and Savitri, grows stronger with the blows of fate. They do not become cynics or complain about what destiny gives them. Instead, they take the challenge of destiny head-on and with courage and confidence and win against all odds. The only little stain on Kunti’s noble nature is the abandonment of Karna born before her marriage, an act for which she suffers life-long remorse and pain.

Each of her five sons is born through the intervention of the gods. They represent power and aspects of the divine, vibhutis, as they are called in India. Yudhisthira, the eldest, represents justice and dharma; Bhima, the strongest, represents life energy in its tremendous power, submitting itself to nothing and none except dharma, which his own elder brother embodies. Arjuna represents Indra, the leader of the gods, who is fierce in battle and is armed with a subtle intelligence. The other two from Madri, the second wife of King Pandu, Nakul and Sahadeva represent the Aswins, the gods of youth, vitality, and health. Among them, Nakul is the prototype of someone who is balanced in his living, whereas Sahadeva is a more meditative type who has a clear vision of truth.

Last comes Karna, who is also born to Kunti. He is not a Pandava, so to speak, since he was born before Kunti was married. His life is an interesting story of a man who is in search of his true identity. He is a Kshatriya by temperament and equal to Arjuna in his prowess and skill in the battle. But what differentiates him from Arjuna is that he is overtaken by ambition and jealousy. The spirit of vain competition drives him, the will to prove himself better than Arjuna, to the extent that he makes it almost his life’s goal to challenge and defeat him, even deal on him a mortal blow to prove his superiority. His ambitious nature takes the better of him, enslaving him to the evil-doer Duryodhana just because he offers him a kingdom to rule. Though a born deva-type, he represents someone who has lost his way and falls from his high possibility and thereby finds himself in the camp of the evil-doers and thereby on the wrong side of history. His is the worst fate since it is one thing when our basic nature is still unevolved, like Duryodhana, but quite another when you abandon a divine possibility with which you are born and stand in support of evil. The tragedy of his life is not that his identity remains unknown; after all, what is identity by birth? He does discover his Kshatriya nature, and destiny gives him the opportunity to learn all that he needs to learn under the tutelage of the most able master of that time. His real tragedy is his fall from his high divine possibility. His guru, Lord Parashuram, an avatara himself, cautions him about the seeds of ambition and deceit in his nature, warning that he should not use his skills to defend ‘adharma’, or he will lose it all. He does not listen to his wise advice, even as he does not listen to the entreaties of Sri Krishna to step aside from the battle and therefore meets his nemesis. Modern commentators wrongly think that Sri Krishna was being diplomatic in asking him to join the Pandavas. Whatever divine diplomacy there may be, Sri Krishna, knowing his true Kshatriya nature and his godlike birth, wanted to give him a fair chance to come out of grip of the evil of the gang of Duryodhana and Shakuni and join the forces of dharma. He refused, and hence the gods took away their protection from him, the famous armour presented to him by his godly father, Surya. The armour given by the gods is not meant to be used for evil purposes. If we do it, then we stand to lose the protection and fall on the battlefields of life. All who have tried to put the powers given to them to wrong use have failed, and Karna is no exception.

The Old and the New Dharma

Then there is Bhishma, the fierce, who stands as the very noblest and best of the old world. He is dutiful, virtuous, and mighty. His virtues and might were at the service of the clan. To protect the clan was his dharma. That was the highest collective unit of the times. But Sri Krishna had come to break the clan system and establish instead a larger nation-unit. Bhishma with all his wisdom, virtue, and might stood on the wrong side of history. He had to go, and towards this end, destiny had already provided a big chink in his armour. He carried a blemish from the past. He once forcibly took away the three daughters of the king of Kashi to get his co-brothers married so that the clan could continue. This act opened the doors to his nemesis. In this story, as in quite a few others, we also see the complex workings of destiny. Bhishma and Karna silently watched the disrobing of Draupadi, an act heinous for a Kshatriya. Whatever their justification may have been, they had fixed their destiny at that very moment, as had others like Dronacharya and Dhritrashtra. Strangely, while they win the immediate game of dice, by this very act the dice of destiny is loaded heavily against them. The time comes and destiny brings out its destined cards, and Bhishma, Drona, and Karna all fall helplessly on the field of Kurukshetra. People often start debating about the fairness of the means that Pandavas used. Well, it is a war where the balance of justice must prevail. It is not a competition about who fought the war fairly when the war itself was unfairly thrust upon the Pandavas. The rules of the game were already altered with the killing of Abhimanyu, and the end was just a matter of time.

Abhimanyu is, of course, a rare jewel of the Mahabharata. His life typifies the difference between courage and valour. Capacities are inborn, skills can be developed, and courage can be imbibed, but the birthplace of valour is in the soul of man. Abhimanyu defies death, then embraces it and becomes immortal in history. Men would later swear by his courage and valour. His life shows us the distinction between true glory (kirti) and mere name and fame (yash). Men like Duryodhana pursue their blind ambition, earning name and fame through their outer position, wealth, and strength. But they are weak in their soul power. Abhimanyu is endowed with soul power, which is why he fights as if death does not exist. This is true valour, and in his life, we see one of the highest Kshatriya-type. No wonder that it is his seed, Parikshit, who must eventually inherit the great kingdom. The stress in the Mahabharata is on the heroic soul since Dwapara was the age of heroism everywhere, in Greece, Egypt, and India, where the clash of forces was taking place at the vital level.

There are, of course, many other interesting characters, as if a whole range of humanity is on display; all shades and varieties of human possibilities are there in the Mahabharata. There is the infamous Dhritarashtra, blind physically but also psychologically. His charioteer Sanjay, who is blessed with a subtle vision, can be seen symbolically. But it is also true that the power of subtle vision exists, and Sanjay has been blessed with it. But this blessing is more of a curse for the king, who must now not only hear but see through Sanjay all the gory details of his children’s deaths one by one. It is as if the divine wisdom wants him to know what fate befalls a man who stays with adharma despite knowing what is the right thing to do. He is by far the most unfortunate character, but his misfortune is of his own making. Then his wife, Gandhari, who chooses to blindfold herself, shares her husband’s pain instead of keeping her eyes open and guiding him on the path of dharma. No wonder they pass on their shadows to the one hundred children. Of course, Vikarna and the hundredth one Kaurava, Yuyutsu, child of Dhritarashtra and a maid, turn out to be the only jewel in the entire clan. It is Yuyutsu who later looks after the kingdom and also his parents, proving the point that a high position does not necessarily make a high human being. We see this point stressed again and again in the Mahabharata. Vyasa the sage, the author of the great epic, which is also incidentally the longest epic in any language, is a multifaceted genius who can be termed an illegitimate offspring (in modern language) born of a sage and a fisherwoman, whose destiny changes with this strange betrothal. Satyavati will go on to become the empress of one of the greatest kingdoms of all time. Vidura, again the son of a dasi (maid), turns out to be another jewel in the Kuru clan. We see this point reiterated when the son of Bhima, the mighty, born of a rakshasi tribal woman, turns out to be another strong and valiant character. His sacrifice is one of the least sung, yet it is among the most glorious of all. There are many other characters and stories interwoven in the epic, such as that of Aswatthama, whose immortality itself is a curse, or of Eklavya, who lays emphasis on adhikara bheda, an ill understood concept in modern times where everything is freely available to all. The world is only beginning to realize its consequences with the quick transfer of dangerous technology falling in the hands of the unchaste. Eklavya did finally join the rank of Duryodhana, though ideally he should have stood up against Dronacharya! But the most fascinating story that we find is the story of Draupadi, who also occupies quite a centre stage in the Mahabharata.

Born of Fire

Draupadi is born of the fire of ‘yajna’. Whatever occult processes there may be involved in this, it mainly indicates that hers is a conscious birth. She has been asked for a purpose, and therefore has a mission assigned to her right from her very birth. Though her father had asked for a son to defeat Dronacharya, at whose hands King Drupad had suffered humiliation, a case of tit for tat, the first child that comes out of this yajna is Draupadi, a woman. The father rejects the boon and asks for a son again. The son, Drishtadyuman, is born, but Darupadi, though rejected initially by her father, has been born with a purpose too. She is Sri Krishna’s counterpart in the great epic, His friend (sakhi). Like Radha, she is never married to the avatara, but a common divine work, a divine intention, has brought them together in the great battle of life. Inwardly, she is the avatara of Kali who has come to destroy the arrogant Kshatriyas who have lost their way in their pride and lust for power. She is ever pure, though married to five husbands, a sati who lives by truth. Where else in the world can we find such a bold portrayal of the feminine, such liberal views on women, and such a lesson that a society that does not respect women and treats them as pleasure objects deserves to be destroyed! Draupadi is the dynamic divine will, the incarnate divine force who has come to set the balance of justice right and once again restore the reign of dharma. Like Sri Krishna, she too does not lift a weapon in the great war, but her will is enough to ensure that the scales of destiny are tilted in Pandavas’, and thereby in dharma’s, favour.

Of course, all this can be seen symbolically, but to see it only thus is to relegate its real significance. For example, the chariot of Arjuna being driven by Sri Krishna is very clearly, also a well-known, an Upanishadic symbol wherein the chariot is the body, the horses are the senses, and the reins are the mind, whereas the driver is the buddhi, the illumined intelligence in man. Arjuna is the soul that travels through the chariot. But a still better symbol is that Arjuna is the human soul and Sri Krishna is the immanent divine in man. As long as man drives his life with his senses and limited mental lights that we call moral and ethical doctrines, he has chances of being lost when crucial dilemmas confront and bewilder his soul. But when he can make the courageous act of surrendering to the lord within and live only to obey his will and his impulsion, abandoning all other standards of conduct, moral and mental, then is he truly delivered from delusion, grief, error, and sin. That is how the Gita declares as its mahavakya towards the end, revealing this great and profound truth, ‘Abandon all dharmas and take refuge in ME alone. I shall deliver thee from all fear. Do not grieve.’ Yet the war is not just the symbol of an inner war but a real war, where forces of light and darkness clash and their result will determine the destiny of the world. The inner war within man also has its collective counterpart and therefore needs to be understood as such. The epic, therefore, is at once symbolic and real, replete with spiritual wisdom and occult truths. To speak about all of them or even a fraction of them would need a whole book. But here we are touching upon just a few main issues.

Sri Aurobindo reveals to us:

There are many who say that the Mahabharata is only a symbol; Sri Krishna is God, Arjuna the human soul, the sons of Dhritarashtra the inner enemies of the soul’s progress, the Pandava army represents the forces that help towards liberation. This is to relegate the Mahabharata to a low position in the world of letters and at the same time to minimize and bring to nought the deep seriousness of the Gita, its utility for the life of the man of action and its high teaching that makes for the progress of mankind. The war of Kurukshetra is not simply a frame for the Gita picture; it is the prime motive and the best occasion for carrying out the law given in the Gita. To accept a symbolic meaning for the great war of Kurukshetra is to reduce the law of the Gita to a law of ascetic quietism inapplicable to life in this world, not a law of the heroic man, a law to be followed in life.

Sri Krishna is the Speaker. The scriptures say that Sri Krishna is God Himself. In the Gita too, Sri Krishna has proclaimed Himself as God. It has there been declared, on the basis of the Avatara doctrine in the fourth chapter and the theory of the Vibhuti in the tenth, that God dwells hidden in the bodies of all creatures, shows Himself to a certain extent through the manifestations of power in some particular beings, and is fully incarnated in the person of Sri Krishna. According to many, Sri Krishna, Arjuna and Kurukshetra are mere metaphors, and in order to recover the true meaning of the Gita these metaphors are to be ignored. But we cannot reject this part of the teaching. If the Avatara doctrine is there, why should Sri Krishna be ignored? Therefore, God Himself is the propounder of this knowledge and the teaching. (CWSA 9: 93)

Aftermath of the Mahabharata War

With the end of the great war, mankind entered the age of ‘Kali’, where the clash of forces will be played out at the most material level. The ideational clash will also be between a materialistic vision of life and the spiritual. This clash will end up both embracing each other and enriching life. That is what we are witnessing today. It is the age when man will explore matter, and one who finds its forces and uses them rightly for the good of all will advance, whereas one who refuses matter and material existence will suffer a fall. This is where India made a mistake post-Buddha. But now, we see a new wave occupying young India, with a stress of unifying material knowledge with the spiritual. It will also open doors to a new form of collectivity that we call ‘internationalism’ and a new religion that can be called the ‘spiritual religion of humanity’. Initially, this will enter the field of human thought as a sentiment and an intellectual creed, but as mankind advances, its real truth will begin to appear, which will support a larger spiritual evolution of the race. Sri Aurobindo foresaw all this post the two ‘Mahabharata of a Mahabharata wars’ of the previous century, where not just clans but nations were put to test in the hearth of purification. Of course there is so much more that we can write about the Mahabharata, but this is its brief essence. The characters are at once real and symbolic. To reduce them only to symbolic forces is to do great injustice to the great epic. Of course they are archetypes; each character is something that we can find distributed in humanity, ranging from the most barbaric, crude, and rakshasic to the various shades of humanity moving towards the godlike. Today all these shades are being taken up and summed to create a yet higher and new type of superhumanity of the future, the divine man. Sri Aurobindo reveals beautifully the work of Sri Krishna through the Mahabharata war:

In the age of the Mahabharata the earth was groaning under the load of titanic power. Neither before nor after, was there in India such an outbreak of strong and powerful and violent Kshatriya power, but there was little chance of that terrible power being turned to good purpose. Those who were the vehicles of this power were all of them of an asuric nature, vanity and pride, selfishness and selfwill were in their very bones. If Sri Krishna had not established the rule of law by destroying this power, then one or the other of the three types of results described above would certainly have happened. India would have fallen prematurely into the hands of the barbarian. It should be remembered, that the Kurukshetra war took place five thousand years ago, it was after two thousand five hundred years had elapsed that the first successful invasion of barbarians could reach up to the other side of the Indus. The rule of law founded by Arjuna was therefore able to protect the country under the influence of a Kshatriya power inspired by that of the Brahmin. Even at that time there was in the country such an accumulation of Kshatriya power that a fraction of itself has kept the country alive for two thousand years. On the strength of that Kshatriya power great men like Chandragupta, Pushyamitra, Samudragupta, Vikrama, Sangramasingha, Pratap, Rajasingha, Pratapaditya and Sivaji fought against the country’s misfortunes. Only the other day in the battle of Gujarat and on the funeral pyre of Lakshmibai was the last spark of that power extinguished; with that ended the good fruit and the virtue of Sri Krishna’s political work, there came necessity of another full Incarnation for the saving of India and the world. That Incarnation has rekindled the vanished power of the Brahmin, that power will create the Kshatriya power. Sri Krishna did not extinguish the Kshatriya power of India in the blood-bath of Kurukshetra; on the contrary by destroying the titanic power he saved both the power of the Brahmin and the Kshatriya. It is true that by the slaughter of Kshatriya families drunk with the strength of the titan, he reduced to tatters the violence of rajasic strength.

. . .

India too was saved in that manner by the war of Kurukshetra.

That India has undergone a downfall in the Kali age no one can deny. But God never descended on earth to bring about a downfall. The Incarnation is for saving the Law, the world and men. Particularly in the Kali age does God incarnate Himself in full. The reason is that in Kali there is the greatest danger of man’s downfall, there is a natural increase of unrighteousness. Therefore, in order to save mankind, destroy unrighteousness and establish the Right by barring the way of Kali, there are incarnations again and again in this age. When Sri Krishna incarnated, it was already time for the beginning of Kali’s reign. It was through fear of His advent that Kali could not set his feet on his own kingdom. It was through His grace that Parikshit could hold up the exercise of Kali’s sovereignty in his own age, by granting him five villages. From the beginning to the end of this Kali age, a fierce battle has been raging and will continue to rage between man and Kali. As helpers or leaders in that battle, the emanations and incarnations of God come down frequently during this period. God took on a human form at the opening of Kali in order to maintain the power of the Brahmin, the knowledge, devotion and desireless works, and teach these things that they might be of use in that battle. On the safety of India rest the hope and foundation of man’s well-being. God saved India in Kurukshetra. In that ocean of blood, the Great Being in the form of Time the Destroyer began to take his delight in the sporting Lotus of a new world. (CWSA 9: 148–50)

Sanatana Dharma and War

War and destruction are not only a universal principle of our life here in its purely material aspects, but also of our mental and moral existence. It is self-evident that in the actual life of man intellectual, social, political, moral we can make no real step forward without a struggle, a battle between what exists and lives and what seeks to exist and live and between all that stands behind either. It is impossible, at least as men and things are, to advance, to grow, to fulfil and still to observe really and utterly that principle of harmlessness which is yet placed before us as the highest and best law of conduct. We will use only soul-force and never destroy by war or any even defensive employment of physical violence? Good, though until soul-force is effective, the Asuric force in men and nations tramples down, breaks, slaughters, burns, pollutes, as we see it doing today, but then at its ease and unhindered, and you have perhaps caused as much destruction of life by your abstinence as others by resort to violence; still you have set up an ideal which may some day and at any rate ought to lead up to better things. But even soul-force, when it is effective, destroys. Only those who have used it with eyes open, know how much more terrible and destructive it is than the sword and the cannon; and only those who do not limit their view to the act and its immediate results, can see how tremendous are its after-effects, how much is eventually destroyed and with that much all the life that depended on it and fed upon it. Evil cannot perish without the destruction of much that lives by the evil, and it is no less destruction even if we personally are saved the pain of a sensational act of violence.

. . .

It is only a few religions which have had the courage to say without any reserve, like the Indian, that this enigmatic World-Power is one Deity, one Trinity, to lift up the image of the Force that acts in the world in the figure not only of the beneficent Durga, but of the terrible Kali in her blood-stained dance of destruction and to say, ‘This too is the Mother; this also know to be God; this too, if thou hast the strength, adore.’ And it is significant that the religion which has had this unflinching honesty and tremendous courage, has succeeded in creating a profound and wide-spread spirituality such as no other can parallel. For truth is the foundation of real spirituality and courage is its soul. Tasyai satyam āyatanam.

All this is not to say that strife and destruction are the alpha and omega of existence, that harmony is not greater than war, love more the manifest divine than death or that we must not move towards the replacement of physical force by soul-force, of war by peace, of strife by union, of devouring by love, of egoism by universality, of death by immortal life. God is not only the Destroyer, but the Friend of creatures; not only the cosmic Trinity, but the Transcendent; the terrible Kali is also the loving and beneficent Mother; the lord of Kurukshetra is the divine comrade and charioteer, the attracter of beings, incarnate Krishna. And whithersoever he is driving through all the strife and clash and confusion, to whatever goal or godhead he may be attracting us, it is—no doubt of that—to some transcendence of all these aspects upon which we have been so firmly insisting. But where, how, with what kind of transcendence, under what conditions, this we have to discover; and to discover it, the first necessity is to see the world as it is, to observe and value rightly his action as it reveals itself at the start and now; afterwards the way and the goal will better reveal themselves. We must acknowledge Kurukshetra; we must submit to the law of Life by Death before we can find our way to the life immortal; we must open our eyes, with a less appalled gaze than Arjuna’s, to the vision of our Lord of Time and Death and cease to deny, hate or recoil from the universal Destroyer. (CWSA 19: 42, 45–46)

An All-Encompassing Approach to Life

There is a common misconception that Sanatana Dharma is only about certain religious rituals, festivals, belief in and worship of gods and goddesses, and a way of life inbuilt in its culture. These things are no doubt there, but they neither form the core nor even the main aspects of Sanatana Dharma. Sanatana Dharma is an all-comprehending, all-encompassing, and all-inclusive way of life that has its own unique way of looking at everything. Not only does it shed its light upon every sphere of human activity but also holds a lamp to guide us through the entire field of human action, turning it into a labour to feed our spiritual growth. Nor is it oblivious to the fact that the growth of the individual is incomplete without the growth of the human collectivities as well. Its wide vision includes not only the life of man but the life of bird and beast, plant and tree, rivers and mountains, and the planetary system and the stars. Its cosmology includes not only our earth and the material universe as well as other universes, their beings and forces, and their impact upon earth and humanity. Nothing is left out of its ambit of discussion and inquiry; nothing that is taboo for human thought and understanding; and nothing about which it has not pondered, shed its light, and tried to give answers. Most importantly, its answers often endure the rub and change of time because instead of giving us a list of dos and don’ts that may be contextual and temporal, it almost invariably sees them in the light of something higher and deeper, giving us rather principles of action rather than dictating to us as to how to do it.

War and History

A classical example of this blending of the temporal and the eternal are the two great epics, termed as itihaas or history, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The Ramayana gives us a living account of an event that took place in far back times. Yet it leaves for us the example of Rama, the avatars who upholds the dharma in the age of silver. Its focus is to teach us, through living examples and sometimes larger-than-life characters, values and virtues of family and friendship, the ideal ethic for a king, and the law of dharma to maintain a just and harmonious social order that includes the entire range of humanity and even the subhuman animal and plant, the titanic superhuman, as well as the godlike superhuman. Rama, the hero around whom the story is woven, is the centre of a vast theme that would decide the evolutionary future of mankind. And since these events repeat themselves with a certain regularity and persistence, the epic becomes a history that continues to shed light on the present and even show us the way towards the future.

It may be noted that history, in the context of the Sanatana Dharma, is not merely the meticulous documentation of certain events in the past but equally a message and a lesson for the future. The exact dates and the details of how things happened, if possible at all, are not as important as why they happened. And this why is not so much about the outer factors alone, important though they may be, as about the inner causes that spring from the hidden springs and occult roots of our action. War, for example, to take a modern analogy, is not just about oil and wealth occupation of land as it is, and even more so, about human greed, lust, and ambition. Pushing for war, we shall often find ruthless cults, crude and savage impulses, and cruel natures that feel insecure unless they have eliminated all that not only opposes but is simply different from their own type. These doers of evil and violent deeds, leaving behind them a trail of loot and plunder, driven by excessive ambition and lust for power, drunken with pride and arrogance, were the asuras and rakshasa, who would not let man live in harmony and peace.

But wars have also been fought in self-defence, to uphold an ideal for justice, as well as to establish a fair and just society. This too is war, and war implies violence, but here it is not driven by hate, ambition, fear, and lust, nor by will to injure and torture, nor to destroy every form of difference and flatten all mankind into a single homogeneous type. Nor is it driven by intolerance to different ways of life but by the noble impulse to sacrifice oneself and save humanity and the cherished ideals of the human race such as liberty, fraternity, and equality. Those who thus fight are the deva-type who are moved by a righteous impulse, even a divine wrath and powerful action that may be sometimes be devastating and out of proportion. Yet the motive is the triumph of truth, nobility, love, and peace that sometimes must be won by humanity after passing through the doors of hell.

Dharma and Adharma

However, we must be careful and cautious not to be carried away by what human groups may profess. The falsehood that drives humanity towards cruel deeds and meaningless violence is master at the power of deception. It professes to be moved by some high and noble impulse, while actually it is driven by all that is low and ignoble. The beauty of the two great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, called itihaas or history, is that they vividly describe these archetypes and their modus operandi. Thus seen, wars become an offshoot, even a natural byproduct, and an inevitable consequence of certain idea-forces and ideologies. The asuras and rakshasa have their own gospel, sometimes clothed in deceptive words, just as the deva-type have their own code of conduct and ideals for which they stand and fight and against the forces of darkness. It is this inner dimension of war that is described in the Gita, given to man during an hour of crisis—on the battlefield and at the cross roads of human destiny. Sri Aurobindo describes this in his Essays on the Gita.

Dharma is generally spoken of as something eternal and unchanging, and so it is in the fundamental principle, in the ideal, but in its forms it is continually changing and evolving, because man does not already possess the ideal or live in it, but aspires more or less perfectly towards it, is growing towards its knowledge and practice. And in this growth dharma is all that helps us to grow into the divine purity, largeness, light, freedom, power, strength, joy, love, good, unity, beauty, and against it stands its shadow and denial, all that resists its growth and has not undergone its law, all that has not yielded up and does not will to yield up its secret of divine values, but presents a front of perversion and contradiction, of impurity, narrowness, bondage, darkness, weakness, vileness, discord and suffering and division, and the hideous and the crude, all that man has to leave behind in his progress. This is the adharma, not-dharma, which strives with and seeks to overcome the dharma, to draw backward and downward, the reactionary force which makes for evil, ignorance and darkness. Between the two there is perpetual battle and struggle, oscillation of victory and defeat in which sometimes the upward and sometimes the downward forces prevail. (CWSA 19: 172)

The End of Wars?

Of course, not all wars are as distinct in their character as we see exemplified in the two great epics. Nor do all human beings fall into clear human types and categories as asura and deva. In fact, most human beings start as an asura, and it is only through a spiritual conversion that they evolve into a deva. In this conception, we can see the two sides as representing two different stages of evolution. It is no more about an absolute good or an absolute evil that anyways rarely exist given the relativity of right and wrong. But this relativity of binaries should not confuse or paralyse us from action. Action, whether battle or war, takes place in the present moment, and yet it has the potential to push us backwards or else impel us forwards. What we find evil today was a necessary good at one time. When man was crude, he needed extreme measures and violent means of punishment to maintain law and order. But as we evolve, our ways of dealing with the outlaw also must evolve. We see this already happening through the sports, wherein the competitive and combative impulses are channelized in ways that help us grow and evolve. On the other hand, we also see that war itself has assumed new dimensions, such as economic sanctions, financial hegemony, and such ways to choke and stifle a nation or a community. Be it as it may, wars will not cease until man’s consciousness changes, until he transforms the animal in him completely and converts or dissolves the asura and the asuric tendencies. Until then, wars will not only be inevitable but even an evolutionary necessity, a painful passage that destroys the old and clears the way for the new. Shiva’s tandav destroys the old, and the same Shiva’s lasya brings out the new rhythms into creation. The Krishna of Kurukshetra and the Krishna of Vrindavan are a single god. Whence does he rise up to destroy? When man is not ready to dance with Shyamsundar and usher the new dawn.

Sri Aurobindo shows us the way.

A dark concealed hostility is lodged
In the human depths, in the hidden heart of Time
That claims the right to change and mar God’s work.
A secret enmity ambushes the world’s march;
It leaves a mark on thought and speech and act:
It stamps stain and defect on all things done;
Till it is slain peace is forbidden on earth.
There is no visible foe, but the unseen
Is round us, forces intangible besiege,
Touches from alien realms, thoughts not our own
Overtake us and compel the erring heart;
Our lives are caught in an ambiguous net.
An adversary Force was born of old:
Invader of the life of mortal man,
It hides from him the straight immortal path.
A power came in to veil the eternal Light,
A power opposed to the eternal will
Diverts the messages of the infallible Word,
Contorts the contours of the cosmic plan:
A whisper lures to evil the human heart,
It seals up wisdom’s eyes, the soul’s regard,
It is the origin of our suffering here,
It binds earth to calamity and pain.
This all must conquer who would bring down God’s peace.
This hidden foe lodged in the human breast
Man must overcome or miss his higher fate.
This is the inner war without escape.

(CWSA 33–34: 447–48)

Ahinsa Parmo Dharma!

But meanwhile, as the divine does his bit to change the earth consciousness, man has a role to play, however small it may be. He can either collaborate in the change towards a new world order or the change will be thrust upon us by the power of crashing circumstances. Our role is to fight the battle within us as well as outside and around us. Ahimsa is all good, but in practice it is unwise and dangerous for the world to throw away the sword of the Kshatriya as long as the tiger prowls, the snake hides in the backyard with poisonous fangs, and the asura laughs a demonic laughter, drawing his strength from deception, cruelty, and pain.

It is the creed of the Aryan fighter. ‘Know God’, it says, ‘know thyself, help man; protect the Right, do without fear or weakness or faltering thy work of battle in the world. Thou art the eternal and imperishable Spirit, thy soul is here on its upward path to immortality; life and death are nothing, sorrow and wounds and suffering are nothing, for these things have to be conquered and overcome. Look not at thy own pleasure and gain and profit, but above and around, above at the shining summits to which thou climbest, around at this world of battle and trial in which good and evil, progress and retrogression are locked in stern conflict. Men call to thee, their strong man, their hero for help; help then, fight. Destroy when by destruction the world must advance, but hate not that which thou destroyest, neither grieve for all those who perish. Know everywhere the one self, know all to be immortal souls and the body to be but dust. Do thy work with a calm, strong and equal spirit; fight and fall nobly or conquer mightily. For this is the work that God and thy nature have given to thee to accomplish.’ (CWSA 19: 66–67)

Ahimsa or non-violence is no doubt the highest of virtues because it is an indirect acknowledgement of the deep truth of oneness that dwells in all things. But there is the ahimsa of the weak and the cowardly afraid of death; there is even a call for ahimsa so that the perpetrators of terror and engineers of doom may go free to plan another spree of destruction. Besides, this oneness is dynamic when it applies to creation. The force that gives to the tiger its strength is the same that gives to the deer its swiftness. The very body maintains itself by destroying and removing all that has outlived its time so that new and healthier cells may come. Besides, ahimsa is an inner state where there is a complete absence of hate and violence done with a deliberate will to injure and harm. One may engage in a battle while being inwardly in a state of calm and even full of love and goodwill for the world and for all that is true, good, and beautiful. Equally, one may be seething with anger and cunningly engineering the worst for humanity while keeping one’s hands clean. Peace, yes, no doubt is greater than strife; yet it will delude us if we believe it to come merely by closing our eyes to the truth.

Sri Aurobindo reminds us.

What then is the master man, the divine worker, the opened channel of the universal Will to do when he finds the World-Spirit turned towards some immense catastrophe, figured before his eyes as Time the destroyer arisen and increased for the destruction of the nations, and himself put there in the forefront whether as a fighter with physical weapons or a leader and guide or an inspirer of men, as he cannot fail to be by the very force of his nature and the power within him, svabhāvajena svena karmaṇā? To abstain, to sit silent, to protest by non-intervention? But abstention will not help, will not prevent the fulfilment of the destroying Will, but rather by the lacuna it creates increase confusion. Even without thee, cries the Godhead, my will of destruction would still be accomplished ṛtépi tvām. If Arjuna were to abstain or even if the battle of Kurukshetra were not to be fought, that evasion would only prolong and make worse the inevitable confusion, disorder, ruin that are coming. For these things are no accident, but an inevitable seed that has been sown and a harvest that must be reaped. They who have sown the wind, must reap the whirlwind. Nor indeed will his own nature allow him any real abstention, prakṛtis tvāṁ niyokṣyati. This the Teacher tells Arjuna at the close, ‘That which in thy egoism thou thinkest saying, I will not fight, vain is this thy resolve: Nature shall yoke thee to thy work. Bound by thy own action which is born of the law of thy being, what from delusion thou desirest not to do, that thou shalt do even perforce.’ Then to give another turn, to use some kind of soul force, spiritual method and power, not physical weapons? But that is only another form of the same action; the destruction will still take place, and the turn given too will be not what the individual ego, but what the World-Spirit wills. Even, the force of destruction may feed on this new power, may get a more formidable impetus and Kali arise filling the world with a more terrible sound of her laughters. No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid. To turn aside then and preach to a still unevolved mankind the law of love and oneness? Teachers of the law of love and oneness there must be, for by that way must come the ultimate salvation. But not till the Time-Spirit in man is ready, can the inner and ultimate prevail over the outer and immediate reality. Christ and Buddha have come and gone, but it is Rudra who still holds the world in the hollow of his hand. And meanwhile the fierce forward labour of mankind tormented and oppressed by the Powers that are profiteers of egoistic force and their servants cries for the sword of the Hero of the struggle and the word of its prophet. (CWSA 19: 385-86)

Chapter 9
The Mysterious World of the Puranas

Bharat is a land that abounds in scriptures. They are broadly categorized as Shruti or the revealed scriptures, the Truth as the seers saw and heard (received as intuition and inspiration), and Smriti or transmitted through memory and oral tradition. The Purana belongs to the latter. Though the shruti, that is, the Vedas and the Upanishads, as well as the Gita and later Tantra, are regarded as more authentic; the smritis, especially the Puranas, carry their own importance and significance. Their style, the stories and narratives they carry, the mysterious worlds of gods and demons, kings and sages, strange encounters, epic colloquies and magical powers, the grandiose strains of its poetry and music combining the fantastic and the sublime, the worldly and the other-worldly, are a feast for the soul. These mystical books open doors after doors to the beyond and yet, without ever losing sight of the one or the wheel of dharma, the weavings of fate, and, through it all, the great goal of human existence. For millenniums, these books have not only nourished the soul of Bharat and influenced its art and culture but also have gone a long way in making the Indian mind and intelligence wide, supple, and subtle, which is what has empowered it to fight and bounce back and given it the unique ability to survive every onslaught and grow through everything. Whatever is left is completed and given a perfect shape in the itihasa, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

While some find this vast body of mystic literature appalling and even sometimes confusing, those of us who have grown up through these voluminous writings have felt richly rewarded not only in understanding the spiritual life which the scriptures are primarily meant to address but also the worldly life of man. But we first need to understand that the Indian scriptures are not a handbook of ethics or a moral science text book of dos and don’ts. And even where these things are there, they occupy a small part in a large and complex world where several layers of our existence are intertwined into each other. Therefore, to dwell upon these wonderful works is to at once know the three main things that are our main concern, both independently as well as in their relation with each other. These three things that form the subject of these works are god, world, and man. These three are, in their deepest sense, one—three sides of one reality, so to speak—yet there is a purpose in their distinction as well as differentiation.

It needs to be, however, noted that different Puranas come from different levels, not only in terms of the poetry but also in terms of their content. That is why not all are considered authentic. The gold standard of authenticity is, of course, the alignment of their thought and vision with the Vedas. Among the authentic ones are two of the Puranas that stand out not only because of their widespread acceptance but also, especially for us, because they have received a special mention by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

The Puranas are the most important among the ‘Smritis’. The spiritual knowledge contained in the Upanishads has, in the Puranas, been transformed into fiction and metaphors; we find in them much useful information on Indian history, the gradual growth and expression of the Hindu dharma, the condition of the society in ancient times, social customs, religious ceremonies, Yogic methods of discipline and ways of thinking. Apart from this, the composers of the Puranas are either accomplished yogis or seekers of Truth. The Knowledge and spiritual realisations obtained by their sadhana remain recorded in the respective Puranas. The Vedas and the Upanishads are the fundamental scriptures of the Hindu religion, the Puranas are commentaries on these scriptures. A commentary can never be equal to the original. My commentary may be different from yours but none of us have the right to alter or ignore the fundamental scripture. That which is at variance with the Vedas and the Upanishads cannot be accepted as a limb of the Hindu dharma; but a new idea even if it differs from the Puranas is welcome. The value of a commentary depends on the intellectual capacity, knowledge and erudition of the commentator. For example, if the Purana written by Vyasa were still existing, then it would be honoured as a ‘Sruti’. In the absence of this Purana and the one written by Lomaharshana, the eighteen Puranas that still exist cannot all be given the same place of honour; among them, the Vishnu and the Bhagwata Purana composed by accomplished yogis are definitely more precious and we must recognise that the Markandeya Purana written by a sage devoted to spiritual pursuits is more profound in Knowledge than either the Shiva or the Agni Purana. (CWSA 9: 71–72)

It must be admitted that we have lost the sight and the mind that gave birth to these magnificent writings. Instead of cultivating this lost vision, we chose to read these wonderful scriptures through the borrowed lens of the modern material intellect, which can hardly see beyond the frame of the bodily senses as they stand organized today. This is one of the slaverys that still continues. We are politically free, but our mind, heart, and even soul continue to be imprisoned within the framework of European thought, ideas, and the way of life imposed by the Mughal rulers and the British plunderers. It is one thing to rob a nation of its material wealth but quite another—and, in a certain sense, worse—to rob it of its legitimate pride, culture, and unique way of life. Hence today we see these stories with profound spiritual symbols and deep truths that belong to other dimensions of existence as mere ‘myths’, fantasies, and imaginations of a primitive race.

The Mother helps us.

Does Brindavan exist anywhere else than on earth?

The whole earth and everything it contains is a kind of concentration, a condensation of something which exists in other worlds invisible to the material eye. Each thing manifested here has its principle, idea or essence somewhere in the subtler regions. This is an indispensable condition for the manifestation. And the importance of the manifestation will always depend on the origin of the thing manifested.

In the world of the gods there is an ideal and harmonious Brindavan of which the earthly Brindavan is but a deformation and a caricature.

Those who are developed inwardly, either in their senses or in their minds, perceive these realities which are invisible (to the ordinary man) and receive their inspiration from them.

So the writer or writers of the Bhagavat were certainly in contact with a whole inner world that is well and truly real and existent, where they saw and experienced everything they have described or revealed.

Whether Krishna existed or not in a human form, living on earth, is only of very secondary importance (except perhaps from an exclusively historical point of view), for Krishna is a real, living and active being; and his influence has been one of the great factors in the progress and transformation of the earth. (CWSA 10: 60-61)

So what do we find in the Puranas when we see them with a spiritual and psychic vision? First, we see in these books a multi-layered and many-faceted existence of god or the one ultimate supreme reality. The Puranas, like the Vedas, affirm one single ultimate reality. But the stress of the Puranas is on a personal relation with god. Even more interesting is that each Purana affirms that the god it describes is the door to the ultimate reality. Each of these gods is one or another aspect of the one reality. Those who read these scriptures casually and without the grounding of thought in the Vedas and the Upanishads, which are the eternal fountains of the highest wisdom, are unable to comprehend these multiple gods, each claimed to be the highest by the author of the particular Purana. It is this superficial reading that has led to the hasty conclusion of Hinduism being a polytheistic religion. But the Puranas keep referring to the Vedas that categorically affirm the one reality without a second, ekamevadwitiyam. On the other hand, the Vedas themselves reveal that though the reality is one, it can be approached through many names, ekamsadviprabahudhavadanti. It is this multiplicity of approach while always pointing back to the one that makes the Puranas a necessary complement to the Vedas. At the same time, it brings the absolute brahman very near and intimate to us. It makes the one reality, otherwise so abstract and impersonal to the mind, intensely personal, desirable, and dear. Reconciling the one with the many that we find hinted in the Upanishads, the Puranas open for man a wide door upon the infinite and a multiplicity of approaches catering to the unique psychological temperament of each individual. For each god represents not only one aspect of the infinite; they also represent some unique tendency of human nature. This is so because man has indeed been made in the image of god. The Puranas reveal this subtle but profoundly practical truth through various stories and significant symbols.

The other important aspect of the Puranas that is hinted in the Vedas but developed fully in the Puranas is the way of bhakti. The Bhagwat Purana even goes to the extent to say that in the age of Kali, the force of tapasya and knowledge is weakened. Yet this dark age of mankind serves a great purpose in the divine providence by awakening Bhakti, which alone is sufficient to grant the highest possible spiritual realizations. Bhakti alone is enough in the age of Kali, says the Bhagwat Purana; it alone can revive and give the fruits that come through tapasya, gyana, and vairagya. Sri Aurobindo confirms the power of bhakti and the influence of Sri Krishna and his legends in releasing the streams of bhakti locked up deep within the human heart or lost in the tangled forest of human attachments.

There are four very great events in history, the siege of Troy, the life and crucifixion of Christ, the exile of Krishna in Brindavan and the colloquy with Arjuna on the field of Kurukshetra. The siege of Troy created Hellas, the exile in Brindavan created devotional religion (for before there was only meditation and worship), Christ from his cross humanised Europe, the colloquy at Kurukshetra will yet liberate humanity. Yet it is said that none of these four events ever happened.

There is nothing which is beyond the reach of the God-lover or denied to him; for he is the favourite of the divine Lover and the self of the Beloved. (CWSA 3–24: 606)

No wonder we see a surge of Pauranik literature closer to us, in an age that has lost its power of tapasya and with it the spiritual strength native to Indian culture. If the great secrets of meditation and revelation of profound truths are the gifts of the Vedic Age, then the flaming intensities of bhakti and the revelation of god’s dealings with man and the charm and sweetness of man’s relationship with god are the gifts of the Puranas.

There are other interesting asides of the Puranic literature that elaborate the truths of the Vedas through stories, legends, and parables in an exceptional way. The gods and the demons wrestle on the edges of creation as well as in the human heart against the background of the all-knowing, all-powerful, supremely benevolent god who assumes different names in different Puranas, offering a wide range and spectrum of deities to attract the human soul towards the supreme. The greater gods of the Puranas are very different from the Greek, Egyptian, Norse, and Roman gods. Sri Aurobindo describes this beautifully.

The main difference between our country and Europe is this, our life is turned inward, Europe’s outward. We judge of good and evil, etc., from the point of motive, Europe judges it on the basis of action done. Knowing God as one who dwells within and who knows all that passes in our minds we seek Him in the soul, Europe looks upon Him as the King of the world and seeks and worships Him in the world outside. The heaven of Europe is in the material world; worldly riches, beauty, luxury are welcome and to be sought after; if they imagine any other heaven, that too is a reflection of these riches, beauty and luxury. Their God is akin to our Indra, who rules his world empire, sitting like an earthly monarch on a bejewelled throne, swollen by the hymns and prayers of a thousand flatterers. Our Shiva is the supreme among gods, yet he is but a beggar, out of his senses, uncaring and forgetful; our Krishna is a youth, fond of laughter, fun and love, it is in his nature to be playful. The God of Europe never laughs or plays, since His majesty is hurt by these activities, His godhead suffers. The extrovert attitude is at the back of it—signs of wealth are, for them, the support of splendour, they cannot see a thing unless they see the sign, they have no divine, no subtle vision, everything is material. Our Shiva is a beggar, but to the spiritual seeker he easily gives away all the wealth and wisdom of the three worlds; he is generous to a fault, but the wisdom beyond the reach of the wise is his inborn possession. Our loving, gay Krishna is the hero of the Kurukshetra, father of the worlds, friend and companion of the universe. India’s immense knowledge and subtle vision, unfettered divine vision pierces through the material veils and brings out the inner attitude, the true truth, the inner and subtle principles. (CWSA 9: 253–54)

The world of the Puranas is not a flat material world but rather a collection of subtler realms that criss-cross with the material world, building a lattice through which we enter each typal world independently. At other times, we find ourselves at the junction or meeting point of two or more worlds in relation to the earth and earthly creatures. The soul of man becomes a meeting ground where different orders of realities—along with their beings, forces, and energies—meet and embrace, wrestle and battle. Behind these unfolding events and circumstances, one glimpses the divine lila.

Such is the mysterious world of the Puranas, where history, genealogy, and the lineage of truthful and courageous kings coexist with wise and passionate sages—ready to bless and quick to curse—where each curse turns out to be a blessing in the end, and each ordeal turns out to be a gateway to a higher possibility. In this realm, heavenly damsels and titan kings can suddenly change the course of things. To the modern mind, lacking sympathy for a richly nuanced culture and stuck in the groves of material intellect, these stories and legends may seem nothing more than an unreal myths, fantastic stories, and magical thinking of early primitive humanity. But to the ripe and developed soul that has opened the doors to the luminous fields of higher knowledge, the Puranas appear as a rich and magnificent literature that has adorned the ramparts of Indian culture with beautiful brocades, making the human journey from ignorance towards wisdom, light, and love a delightful one.

Let us close with these luminous words of Sri Aurobindo.

The Puranas are the most important among the ‘Smritis’. The spiritual knowledge contained in the Upanishads has, in the Puranas, been transformed into fiction and metaphors; we find in them much useful information on Indian history, the gradual growth and expression of the Hindu dharma, the condition of the society in ancient times, social customs, religious ceremonies, Yogic methods of discipline and ways of thinking. Apart from this, the composers of the Puranas are either accomplished yogis or seekers of Truth. The Knowledge and spiritual realisations obtained by their sadhana remain recorded in the respective Puranas. The Vedas and the Upanishads are the fundamental scriptures of the Hindu religion, the Puranas are commentaries on these scriptures. (CWSA 9: 71–72)

Chapter 10
The Highest Secret

India is a land that abounds in scriptures, the most authoritative of which are the Vedas. It is said that the Vedas emerged from the mouth of the great creator Brahma himself. In other words, the Vedas represent that truth that has been laid down as the base and support of creation. It is the book of the creator that describes and explains to us the why and how of creation, as well as the wisdom and power that have gone forth in it. Based on this deeper knowledge, the Vedas also give us the science and art of life, as well as its secret inner commerce. Of course, it is a deeper science than the material science that studies objects from the outside and then probes deeper based on the data received by our sense-mind. Our material science is a science of appearances. It tells us something about the external composition and the material forces that constitute an object, its physical properties, so to speak. But the Vedas reveal to us the deeper fabric of creation and created things, the subtler and occult dimension of shapes, forms, and properties, along with their symbolic sense and rightful place in the total scheme of things. This knowledge is secret and hidden from our mind and senses, but it can be received by transcending the mind through inspiration, revelation, intuition, and illumination—the four goddesses (Ila, Mahi, Saraswati, and Sarama) and their powers. Thus did the rishis receive it and reveal it to man. Therein lies the great value of the Vedas. The Vedas are the essence of all knowledge and show us the way to constantly exceed ourselves.

Then there are the Upanishadas that make the Vedas accessible to man’s awakened intelligence. The truths of the Vedas are given a less mystic and more comprehensible form. The deeper symbolism and occult formulas of the Vedas are brought into the realm of thought and higher intelligence. While many of the Vedic truths cannot be easily grasped by the logical mind or even by that higher faculty of discrimination called the buddhi, the Upanishadas touch the buddhi and awaken it to light, allowing us to begin to grasping, by reflection, something of that glory that is otherwise too bright for our death-bound eyes. The divine logic of creation becomes clearer to our sight, and from this vision flows naturally the right way to live and be. This is the great contribution of the Upanishadas. ‘

Where then does the Gita stand amidst all this stupendous mass of revelatory scriptures whose sheer size and, of course, substance are mind boggling? One may even ask what extra truth, if any, this rather short treatise of just about 700 shlokas brings. Is it just a compendium of the Vedas and the Upanishadas, as some say—‘the Gita is the essence of the Upanishadas’—or is there something more in it? Well, in a sense, it is true that whatever has followed subsequently has, in one way or another, carried the stamp of the Vedas. And yet, there is something in the Gita that we find nowhere before it. It makes us privy to a secret that one finds nowhere except in the Veda, inscribed in the hearts of living beings. It is the secret light that emerges from within the depths of the human heart, showing us the way and becoming the pilgrim’s staff to help us cross the ocean of life. This secret, which the arrogant mind of man misses—though his heart knows and holds it as the greatest of all treasures—is faith: sraddhavan labhate jnanam. How does this faith, mere faith, redeem us? Sri Aurobindo answers this for us:

Finally, we must have a faith which no intellectual doubt can be allowed to disturb, sraddhavan labhate jnanam. ‘The ignorant who has not faith, the soul of doubt goeth to perdition; neither this world, nor the supreme world, nor any happiness is for the soul full of doubts.’ In fact, it is true that without faith nothing decisive can be achieved either in this world or for possession of the world above, and that it is only by laying hold of some sure basis and positive support that man can attain any measure of terrestrial or celestial success and satisfaction and happiness; the merely sceptical mind loses itself in the void. But still in the lower knowledge doubt and scepticism have their temporary uses; in the higher they are stumbling-blocks: for there the whole secret is not the balancing of truth and error, but a constantly progressing realisation of revealed truth. In intellectual knowledge there is always a mixture of falsehood or incompleteness which has to be got rid of by subjecting the truth itself to sceptical inquiry; but in the higher knowledge falsehood cannot enter and that which intellect contributes by attaching itself to this or that opinion, cannot be got rid of by mere questioning, but will fall away of itself by persistence in realisation. Whatever incompleteness there is in the knowledge attained, it must be got rid of, not by questioning in its roots what has already been realised, but by proceeding to further and more complete realisation through a deeper, higher and wider living in the Spirit. And what is not yet realised must be prepared for by faith, not by sceptical questioning, because this truth is one which the intellect cannot give and which is indeed often quite opposed to the ideas in which the reasoning and logical mind gets entangled: it is not a truth which has to be proved, but a truth which has to be lived inwardly, a greater reality into which we have to grow. Finally, it is in itself a self-existent truth and would be self-evident if it were not for the sorceries of the ignorance in which we live; the doubts, the perplexities which prevent us from accepting and following it, arise from that ignorance, from the sense-bewildered, opinion-perplexed heart and mind, living as they do in a lower and phenomenal truth and therefore questioning the higher realities, ajnana-sambhutam hrtstham samsayam. They have to be cut away by the sword of knowledge, says the Gita, by the knowledge that realises, by resorting constantly to Yoga, that is, by living out the union with the Supreme whose truth being known all is known, yasmin vijnate sarvam vijnatam. (CWSA 19: 204–05)

But in whom should one have faith? Who is the godhead towards whom all our love must flow and in whom all finds its supreme consummation? The obvious answer would be that, quite naturally, it must flow towards the source and origin of all things. The next question that the mind would raise is if that origin and source are an impersonal state or a universal person. Depending upon the vantage point and the angle of our vision, we see it as either. The mind leaning upon the impersonal side of existence sees this origin as something that is remote and aloof from all existence. Or it sees the universal impersonal behind all things as completely disconnected with the world, the existence as we experience it being simply the result of a huge blind desire that unfolds itself mechanically as this vast unintelligible universe. Others see that origin in the form of a being, an infinite personal who resides in the heart of each and every finite and is yet beyond these. But the Gita goes beyond the personal and the impersonal, beyond the universal and the individual, and reveals to us the integral godhead who is at once all these different ways that men have experienced and realized him, and yet is something or someone, none can wholly know. This idea is germane to the Vedas, but it finds a very forceful expression in the Gita and at once links creation to its origin, in more ways than one.

But the real secret, the highest secret that the Gita reveals to us, is not even this vision of the integral godhead described with such vividness in the vision of the universal being. This highest secret, as the Gita itself puts it, is in the idea of the avatara, the great divine descent amidst our earth, assuming shapes of beast and man, to lead us through the great battle of life towards its great consummation. Of course, we find this idea developed later in the Puranas, especially in the Srimada Bhagwata Purana. But in the Gita, it is thrown as a seed with such a great force and power that just those four shlokas that relate directly to the avatara can potentially transform the way we look at ourselves and the world. These four shlokas are:

Though I am the Unborn, though I am Imperishable in my Self-existence, though I am the Lord of all-existences, yet I stand upon my own Nature and I come into birth by my Self-maya.

Whensoever there is the fading of the Dharma and the uprising of unrighteousness, then I loose myself forth into birth.

For the deliverance of the good, for the destruction of the evil-doers, for the enthroning of the Right, I am born from Age to Age.

He who knoweth thus in its right principles my divine birth and my divine work, when he abandons his body, comes not to rebirth, he comes to Me, O Arjuna. (CWSA 19: 146)

The shlokas strike us with a force even in their simplicity. The first is, of course, about the principle and process of avatarahood. The divine, who transcends all existence and is the lord of nature and all that exists, chooses to enter the magic fence of nature, which appears to us as an impregnable fortress—hard to overcome, maya duratya. Thus born, he seems to limit himself, being born and dying as ordinary human beings; yet, he remains ever and always the same unborn and imperishable lord all existence. He is higher and greater than Brahma himself, as is well-illustrated in one of the stories of the Srimada Bhagwatam. He is beyond creation, the one supreme existence from whom all existences derive. The Vedas sing his glory, the Upanishads reflect the light of his eyes, and the Puranas only try to capture something of his greatness and power. The trinity are only three moods and the gods aspects and powers of his infinite being. And yet, that unborn, who transcends and exceeds all existence, takes birth in a human form. This secret is found nowhere—not even in the Vedas and the Upanishads, which speak of the ascent of creation with man as the link towards the supreme, but not of the divine descent into creation to uplift and redeem it. Sri Aurobindo reveals the truth of avatarahood and dharma in his Essays on the Gita:

It is, we might say, to exemplify the possibility of the Divine manifest in the human being, so that man may see what that is and take courage to grow into it. It is also to leave the influence of that manifestation vibrating in the earth-nature and the soul of that manifestation presiding over its upward endeavour. It is to give a spiritual mould of divine manhood into which the seeking soul of the human being can cast itself. It is to give a dharma, a religion,—not a mere creed, but a method of inner and outer living,—a way, a rule and law of self-moulding by which he can grow towards divinity. It is too, since this growth, this ascent is no mere isolated and individual phenomenon, but like all in the divine world-activities a collective business, a work and the work for the race, to assist the human march, to hold it together in its great crises, to break the forces of the downward gravitation when they grow too insistent, to uphold or restore the great dharma of the Godward law in man’s nature, to prepare even, however far off, the kingdom of God, the victory of the seekers of light and perfection, sādhūnām, and the overthrow of those who fight for the continuance of the evil and the darkness. All these are recognised objects of the descent of the Avatar, and it is usually by his work that the mass of men seek to distinguish him and for that that they are ready to worship him. It is only the spiritual who see that this external Avatarhood is a sign, in the symbol of a human life, of the eternal inner Godhead making himself manifest in the field of their own human mentality and corporeality so that they can grow into unity with that and be possessed by it. The divine manifestation of a Christ, Krishna, Buddha in external humanity has for its inner truth the same manifestation of the eternal Avatar within in our own inner humanity. That which has been done in the outer human life of earth, may be repeated in the inner life of all human beings.

. . .

The outward action of the Avatar is described in the Gita as the restoration of the Dharma; when from age to age the Dharma fades, languishes, loses force and its opposite arises, strong and oppressive, then the Avatar comes and raises it again to power; and as these things in idea are always represented by things in action and by human beings who obey their impulsion, his mission is, in its most human and outward terms, to relieve the seekers of the Dharma who are oppressed by the reign of the reactionary darkness and to destroy the wrong-doers who seek to maintain the denial of the Dharma. But the language used can easily be given a poor and insufficient connotation which would deprive Avatarhood of all its spiritual depth of meaning. Dharma is a word which has an ethical and practical, a natural and philosophical and a religious and spiritual significance, and it may be used in any of these senses exclusive of the others, in a purely ethical, a purely philosophical or a purely religious sense. Ethically it means the law of righteousness, the moral rule of conduct, or in a still more outward and practical significance social and political justice, or even simply the observation of the social law. If used in this sense we shall have to understand that when unrighteousness, injustice and oppression prevail, the Avatar descends to deliver the good and destroy the wicked, to break down injustice and oppression and restore the ethical balance of mankind.

. . .

The Avatar may descend as a great spiritual teacher and saviour, the Christ, the Buddha, but always his work leads, after he has finished his earthly manifestation, to a profound and powerful change not only in the ethical, but in the social and outward life and ideals of the race. He may, on the other hand, descend as an incarnation of the divine life, the divine personality and power in its characteristic action, for a mission ostensibly social, ethical and political, as is represented in the story of Rama or Krishna; but always then this descent becomes in the soul of the race a permanent power for the inner living and the spiritual rebirth.

. . .

We must then, in order to understand the Gita’s description of the work of the Avatar, take the idea of the Dharma in its fullest, deepest and largest conception, as the inner and the outer law by which the divine Will and Wisdom work out the spiritual evolution of mankind and its circumstances and results in the life of the race. Dharma in the Indian conception is not merely the good, the right, morality and justice, ethics; it is the whole government of all the relations of man with other beings, with Nature, with God, considered from the point of view of a divine principle working itself out in forms and laws of action, forms of the inner and the outer life, orderings of relations of every kind in the world. Dharma is both that which we hold to and that which holds together our inner and outer activities. In its primary sense it means a fundamental law of our nature which secretly conditions all our activities, and in this sense each being, type, species, individual, group has its own dharma. Secondly, there is the divine nature which has to develop and manifest in us, and in this sense dharma is the law of the inner workings by which that grows in our being. Thirdly, there is the law by which we govern our outgoing thought and action and our relations with each other so as to help best both our own growth and that of the human race towards the divine ideal.

Dharma is generally spoken of as something eternal and unchanging, and so it is in the fundamental principle, in the ideal, but in its forms it is continually changing and evolving, because man does not already possess the ideal or live in it, but aspires more or less perfectly towards it, is growing towards its knowledge and practice. And in this growth dharma is all that helps us to grow into the divine purity, largeness, light, freedom, power, strength, joy, love, good, unity, beauty, and against it stands its shadow and denial, all that resists its growth and has not undergone its law, all that has not yielded up and does not will to yield up its secret of divine values, but presents a front of perversion and contradiction, of impurity, narrowness, bondage, darkness, weakness, vileness, discord and suffering and division, and the hideous and the crude, all that man has to leave behind in his progress. This is the adharma, not dharma, which strives with and seeks to overcome the dharma, to draw backward and downward, the reactionary force which makes for evil, ignorance and darkness. Between the two there is perpetual battle and struggle, oscillation of victory and defeat in which sometimes the upward and sometimes the downward forces prevail. This has been typified in the Vedic image of the struggle between the divine and the Titanic powers, the sons of the Light and the undivided Infinity and the children of the Darkness and Division, in Zoroastrianism by Ahuramazda and Ahriman, and in later religions in the contest between God and his angels and Satan or Iblis and his demons for the possession of human life and the human soul.

. . .

The Gita lays stress upon the struggle of which the world is the theatre, in its two aspects, the inner struggle and the outer battle. In the inner struggle the enemies are within, in the individual, and the slaying of desire, ignorance, egoism is the victory. But there is an outer struggle between the powers of the Dharma and the Adharma in the human collectivity. The former is supported by the divine, the godlike nature in man, and by those who represent it or strive to realise it in human life, the latter by the Titanic or demoniac, the Asuric and Rakshasic nature whose head is a violent egoism, and by those who represent and strive to satisfy it. This is the war of the Gods and Titans, the symbol of which the old Indian literature is full, the struggle of the Mahabharata of which Krishna is the central figure being often represented in that image; the Pandavas who fight for the establishment of the kingdom of the Dharma, are the sons of the Gods, their powers in human form, their adversaries are incarnations of the Titanic powers, they are Asuras. This outer struggle too the Avatar comes to aid, directly or indirectly, to destroy the reign of the Asuras, the evil-doers, and in them depress the power they represent and to restore the oppressed ideals of the Dharma. He comes to bring nearer the kingdom of heaven on earth in the collectivity as well as to build the kingdom of heaven within in the individual human soul. (CWSA 19: 159–60, 169–75)

The next two shlokas reveal the nature and purpose of this descent. It is a descent in response to the cry of earth and men, as the later Puranas developing upon this idea will put it. It is not only the earth that longs and aspires for the supreme; the supreme too has a special link for the earth and descends here from time to time. Earth is his favourite in a sense, and he would not abandon it to dark powers. True, these powers of darkness may have their term and play for a while. They may even seem to be on the ascendance for the moment, but not beyond a point. The divine sees to it that when the balance of earth is disturbed and goodness and righteousness shrink from the heart of mankind, he descends again to take charge of the evolutionary journey, to turn the tide of thought, and to lead the march of mankind upwards again. He descends to rekindle faith, to reawaken the great effort, and to establish the true, the good, and the beautiful once again.

Finally, we have this great secret revealed: he who knows this truth about the divine birth and the divine works is released from all bonds of birth and death and comes straight to the supreme lord. The lord has already alluded to this as the highest secret, rahasyhyam hyotaduttamam, before revealing it to Arjuna. To the unchaste mind, this may seem like an exaggeration of sorts. How can merely knowing that the divine is born amidst the tumult of creation to redeem it save us from the cycle of birth and death? As if to emphasize and elaborate on this truth, the incarnate divine repeats this secret once again, a little later. The lord reveals:

‘hat I am going to tell thee, the uncarping, is the most secret thing of all, the essential knowledge attended with all the comprehensive knowledge, by knowing which thou shall be released from evil. (CWSA 19: 266)

Here again, the lord emphasizes that one needs faith to receive this knowledge, this king-secret, rajguhyam:

The soul that fails to get faith in the higher truth and law, O Parantapa, not attaining to Me, must return into the path of ordinary mortal living. (CWSA 19: 310)

The lord reveals how this secret is higher even than the knowledge one receives from the three Vedas. Having revealed through a series of shlokas the supreme nature of the godhead, who is ever present in all beings and things, though most of all in the human body, manavi tanu asritam, the lord goes on to lay emphasis once again on this aspect of redemption with faith and devotion:

If even a man of very evil conduct turns to Me with a sole and entire love, he must be regarded as a saint . . . Swiftly he becomes a soul of righteousness and obtains eternal Peace. This is My word of promise, O Arjuna, that he who loves Me shall not perish, na me bhakta pranasyati. (CWSA 19: 334)

Finally, towards the close of this luminous discourse, he once again reveals this highest of all secrets, guhyad guhyataram, sarva guhyatamam, whereby faith, devotion, and surrender are emphasized in ‘two brief and direct shlokas’:

Become My-minded, My lover and adorer, a sacrificer to Me, bow thyself to Me, to Me thou shall come, this is my pledge and promise to thee, for dear art thou to Me.

Abandon all dharmas and take refuge in Me alone. I will deliver thee from all sin and evil, do not grieve. (CWSA 19: 556)

Of course this knowledge is not mere mental knowledge or the logical acceptance of a possibility. It is seeing by the eye of faith. This faith, which is much more than mere belief and acceptance of a doctrine, is a power that helps us to love and surrender to the incarnate divine. Faith and surrender are the first secrets of life that stand behind all our efforts right from the moment of conception. Faith and surrender are also the last words that close our life’s journey through this world. At the end, it is not knowledge that makes us walk, for which child has the knowledge and the capacity to start on its own. It must perforce learn the lesson of surrender—surrender to those who take care of him or her—and must be trained in the ways of human life, which he accepts as an act of faith. It is this act of surrender that brings the desired result.

Through his life’s journey and its countless experiences, he simply shifts his focus of faith from one thing to another, from one person to another, until he finds that in the end everything fails a man except the divine. So also, as he moves from the stage of childhood to adulthood, he learns to surrender, now to his parents, then to his friends, to his advisers and his teachers, and if nothing else, then to his own whims and fancy. Until again he realizes that all this was just a primary schooling of nature and that he has yet to make the boldest of all surrenders, the surrender to the divine presence in matter. But since man cannot have faith and surrender easily unless he has some mental concept or figure of that presence, therefore we have this great gospel of the incarnate divine, for by surrendering to him, he surrenders to the divine within and the divine who is in the universe as well as transcends it. In fact, it is even considered the greatest of all surrenders since, unlike surrender to some chosen but limited deity, this surrender is not only at once to the personal and the impersonal but also to the divine, who resides in each atom of existence and enters into creation and leans over it to heal its ignorance, suffering, and pain. A limited godhead can give us things we desire, but the incarnate divine knows our true needs and the way human beings experience life. Therefore, he knows the perfect remedy and lasting solution, the way towards the lasting freedom. Faith, devotion, and surrender become the great secret of redemption.

Sri Aurobindo reveals to us the mystery behind this greatest of all secrets:

The inner fruit of the Avatar’s coming is gained by those who learn from it the true nature of the divine birth and the divine works and who, growing full of him in their consciousness and taking refuge in him with their whole being, manmayā māṁ upāśritāḥ, purified by the realising force of their knowledge and delivered from the lower nature, attain to the divine being and divine nature, madbhāvam. The Avatar comes to reveal the divine nature in man above this lower nature and to show what are the divine works, free, unegoistic, disinterested, impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine love. He comes as the divine personality which shall fill the consciousness of the human being and replace the limited egoistic personality, so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out of birth into immortality. He comes as the divine power and love which calls men to itself, so that they may take refuge in that and no longer in the insufficiency of their human wills and the strife of their human fear, wrath and passion, and liberated from all this unquiet and suffering may live in the calm and bliss of the Divine. Nor does it matter essentially in what form and name or putting forward what aspect of the Divine he comes; for in all ways, varying with their nature, men are following the path set to them by the Divine which will in the end lead them to him and the aspect of him which suits their nature is that which they can best follow when he comes to lead them; in whatever way men accept, love and take joy in God, in that way God accepts, loves and takes joy in man. Ye yatḥā. māṁ prapadyante tāṁs tathaiva bhajāmyaham. (CWSA 19: 175–76)

This then is the mystery and the secret of the incarnate’s tread upon earth. His touch redeems this struggling atom just as the touch of Rama’s foot liberated Ahilya from her accursed and fallen state. We too are accursed and fallen from our spiritual birth. We too can recover our divine portion by placing ourselves in the hands of divine. He becomes human so that we may, by his example and help, become divine. So long as man lives in and by his surface mind, this secret will remain a secret. It is only when he plunges into the deep profundities of his soul that he will discover the magic key to his golden change—the change foreseen of old in the Vedas, promised by the Gita, and carried to its utmost culmination by Sri Aurobindo.

Let me close with some lines from Sri Aurobindo’s masterpiece Savitri that reveals to us this great secret in its own unique and wonderful style:

The Absolute, the Perfect, the Immune,
One who is in us as our secret self,
Our mask of imperfection has assumed,
He has made this tenement of flesh his own,
His image in the human measure cast
That to his divine measure we might rise;
Then in a figure of divinity
The Maker shall recast us and impose
A plan of godhead on the mortal’s mould
Lifting our finite minds to his infinite,
Touching the moment with eternity.
This transfiguration is earth’s due to heaven:
A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:
His nature we must put on as he put ours;
We are sons of God and must be even as he:
His human portion, we must grow divine.
Our life is a paradox with God for key.

(CWSA 33–34: 67)

Chapter 11
Rediscovering Yoga

Defining Yoga

Over a hundred years back, at the turn of the previous century, Sri Aurobindo wrote in a prophetic vein about the important place that yoga was going to take in the sum total of human activities of the future.

We are in an age, full of the throes of travail, when all forms of thought and activity that have in themselves any strong power of utility or any secret virtue of persistence are being subjected to a supreme test and given their opportunity of rebirth. The world today presents the aspect of a huge cauldron of Medea in which all things are being cast, shredded into pieces, experimented on, combined and recombined either to perish and provide the scattered material of new forms or to emerge rejuvenated and changed for a fresh term of existence. Indian Yoga, in its essence a special action or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided and variously formulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity. The child of immemorial ages, preserved by its vitality and truth into our modern times, it is now emerging from the secret schools and ascetic retreats in which it had taken refuge and is seeking its place in the future sum of living human powers and utilities. But it has first to rediscover itself, bring to the surface the profoundest reason of its being in that general truth and that unceasing aim of Nature which it represents, and find by virtue of this new self-knowledge and self-appreciation its own recovered and larger synthesis. (CWSA 23:5–6)

This prophecy is becoming true. Yoga has indeed become one of the major gifts of India to the world. With its appeal to a wide range of humanity, independent of religious beliefs and secular views, and with an increasing validation by scientific research and acceptance in academic circles, yoga is fast becoming popular among the different strata of society. Yet it is still ill-understood and its far-reaching effects and impacts are far from being understood. And until we discover or rather rediscover it, for yoga is as ancient as the hills, we shall remain deprived of its real potential and be satisfied with the husks while leaving the real grain that hides behind its elaborate systems, techniques, and processes.

What then is yoga? It is most commonly understood as a set of physical and breathing exercises meant for physical health and mental well-being. While these things are important for our immediate utilitarian purposes, they are neither the core nor the whole of yoga. As far as physical health is concerned, its importance lies in the purposes to which we shall put the instrumentality of the body. Besides, there are a number of different ways that one can acquire good health. Asanas are one of them. Though here too there is a need to make a distinction between asanas and yoga asanas, as they were once part of the original Hatha Yoga. A set of exercises does not automatically become yogic unless it is accompanied by certain attitudes and directed towards genuine yogic ends. Therefore, we see in the Astangayoga system of Patanjali, asanas and pranayama occur after the preliminary purification is practiced through moral rectitude. It is followed by mastery of the sense-mind, concentration, surrender to, and union with god.

Of course, the idea of god or ishwar is as wide as the universe, making the system free from the trappings of religion. Yet it brings home the fact that yoga is not meant for maintaining good health alone but rather the purpose of good health is to ultimately engage in our higher pursuit of the very highest, the divine. Good health through asanas, conservation, and the right flow of life energies by mastery over the breath is important for this reason. But Patanjali, a great codifier of the then prevalent yogic practices, is not the originator of yoga. Nor does he exhaust all the possibilities of yoga. Yoga existed much before his classical treatise on Yoga Sutras and continued, or rather continues to evolve, after him. If we take the definition given by Swami Vivekananda and endorsed by Sri Aurobindo, yoga is conscious and concentrated evolution—a compressed evolution instead of the long, winding, circuitous routes of nature in her wide wanderings, long preparations, and sudden unexpected leaps. Sri Aurobindo helps us:

In the right view both of life and of Yoga all life is either consciously or subconsciously a Yoga. For we mean by this term a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the secret potentialities latent in the being and—highest condition of victory in that effort—a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos. But all life, when we look behind its appearances, is a vast Yoga of Nature who attempts in the conscious and the subconscious to realise her perfection in an ever-increasing expression of her yet unrealised potentialities and to unite herself with her own divine reality. In man, her thinker, she for the first time upon this Earth devises self-conscious means and willed arrangements of activity by which this great purpose may be more swiftly and puissantly attained. Yoga, as Swami Vivekananda has said, may be regarded as a means of compressing one’s evolution into a single life or a few years or even a few months of bodily existence. (CWSA 23:6)

Where then does yoga begin, both in the life of the individual as well as in the life of the human race? Or perhaps it existed as a subtle principle or force in nature, drawing all things upwards towards the divine origin or source by a natural attraction or as the ‘compelling stuff in things’. For evolution is not unique to man. It is the one happening thing, possibly because of the concealed evolutionary energy hidden within matter or creation itself.

Yoga Systems

If we leave aside the standard academic textbooks about the beginnings of yoga, we find an interesting account of its beginnings in the Srimadbhagawad Gita. Sri Krishna explains to Arjuna that he gave the ancient yoga first to Vivaswan, the sun god. Vivaswan is the name of the sun specific to this chaturyuga. In other words, yoga was first given by the supreme godhead, immanent in creation, to the guardian of the law of truth, Sanatana Dharma. Subsequently, Vivaswan transmitted it to Manu, the original prototype of man, as the truth that he must abide by. Subsequently, the yoga is given to the lineage of kings from the Solar Dynasty, the Suryavankshi king, Ikshavaku. But this original yoga is lost from time to time. When the yoga is lost and men begin to live by their own fancies, desires, and egoistic selfish interests, then the Sanatana Dharma declines, dharmasya glani. At each of these points, the divine assumes a human birth to restore the dharma by giving the yoga again to mankind, at first to a few who are ready and then to humanity at large.

What is the purpose we may ask? As is implicit in the declaration, yoga is the supreme means to restore the dharma. And dharma here is not religion as we understand it today, but the means through which we draw nearer to the law of truth, and by that we grow in oneness with god—the origin and source. Thus seen, yoga becomes a means to join the creation of the created with the creator. Secretly and in their essence, they are always one since nothing can exist independent in itself, separate from the one supreme source. But it seems parted on the surface because of the various distortions and malalignments that come about due to the complex play of countless forces that mediate between the one creator and the manifold creation.

It is difficult for the modern mind, blinded by an extremely materialistic vision of science, to understand what Sri Krishna, the Yogyogeswar, is saying here. It was difficult even for Arjuna to understand this great declaration by Krishna. That is why the eye of faith must lead first before the eye of wisdom can open, and man must learn to recognize that he is nothing in himself and his greatness, if any, lies in his capacity to unite with the divine. In fact, he is here for that. Man is meant to become the bridge between that which is below him and that which is beyond. Matter and spirit, world and god, nature and soul, and earth and the heavens can come together and join in harmoniously fulfilling each other. For it is through this union that matter is fulfilled by being touched by the light divine as a lamp lights up as the current passes through its wires. The body is the lamp, and the divine is the source of light, while the wire that joins the two is the soul of man. True yoga begins in its real sense only after we discover our secret soul, now hidden and covered by our nature. Before that, there are various kinds of preparations, but the real yoga has not yet begun in its true sense. On the other hand, yoga also fulfils god in creation by drawing things closer to the original divine plan. Sri Aurobindo reveals the supreme human aim in these powerful words: ‘To fulfil God in life is man’s manhood.’ (CWSA 21–22: 41).

Yogic practices, therefore, can be either a preparation or else a means of moving towards this great aim. If we take yoga in this original sense of union with the divine, our highest self, or the source, then it implies at least three main elements. There is of course a fourth element, which is the matrix in which it is taking place. By matrix, we mean the gestalt or sum total elements of time, place, and circumstances. None of these elements have an absolute hold on the practice of yoga, but they do play a certain part in the eventual results. These differ from person to person. The rule of standardizing everything does not work in psychological matters, and ‘Yoga is nothing but practical psychology’ (CWSA 23: 44), as Sri Aurobindo puts it. It works even less in spiritual matters. If we take a vertical axis from matter to spirit, then we can say that the consciousness involved in matter ascends or emerges through increasing degrees of freedom. That is why it is never a good idea to outwardly imitate a truly spiritual person. What is important instead is to ascend to the inner freedom to which he has climbed by following the path he has been shown.

Of course, spiritual freedom is different from our ideas of freedom. The freedom that we understand and wish to have is the freedom to do as we like, to get what we like, and to be what we like. From the spiritual point of view, the only freedom, the true freedom, lies in the union with the divine and thereby manifesting and expressing his will in and through our lives and actions. This divine will, like truth, cannot be fixed into any standard formula. However, what we, ordinarily call freedom is in fact a bondage to ego and ignorance. Yoga is the way to free ourselves from ignorance and gives us freedom from all that binds us to desires and attachments and their results—grief, error, suffering, fear, greed, ambition, and lust.

The Seeker, the Sought, and the Path

Coming back to the three main elements or consenting parties, as Sri Aurobindo puts it:

‘In practice three conceptions are necessary before there can be any possibility of Yoga; there must be, as it were, three consenting parties to the effort,—God, Nature and the human soul or, in more abstract language, the Transcendental, the Universal and the Individual. If the individual and Nature are left to themselves, the one is bound to the other and unable to exceed appreciably her lingering march. Something transcendent is needed, free from her and greater, which will act upon us and her, attracting us upward to Itself and securing from her by good grace or by force her consent to the individual ascension. (CWSA 23: 31–32)

The seeker is defined by the intensity and sincerity of his or her aspiration. That which is sought for the union, the divine source or origin, is limited by our own conceptions. What stands between the two is the whole field of nature with a world of forces that help or hinder, assist or resist the journey. The seeker is not defined by the technique, though a faithful pursuance of a given method or technique does indicate the sincerity of effort in his pursuit. But it does not indicate the purpose of his pursuit, the goal he has put before himself, or the aim of his efforts. That goal, that aim, and the sincerity in pursuing his aim are written in his aspiration. This is known only to the divine in his heart or, if he is sincere, then to his own awakened consciousness. A given technique may make you an extremely skilled archer, perhaps even the best as far as the science and art of archery go. That is what Bhishma, Dronacharya, and Karna are. Yet the crown of victory and the wisdom of the Gita are given to Arjuna. Though he too is among the best yet, he has something in him that is missing in the others. Others are fighting for the kingdom of their promise or driven by ambition to be proven the best. But what makes Arjuna special is that initially he wants to fight only for the highest ideal, and when that fails him through the insufficiency of light, he fights in obedience to Krishna and his trust in the divine leading. Most modern movements of yoga miss upon this crucial element even as they miss upon the adhikar bheda. Moved often with a will to enrol and increase disciples—a spiritual ambition, so to speak—they forget that not all are ready for the spiritual life. Of course, fundamentally, none is barred from the yoga, yet it is equally true that not all are ready for the yoga. It is not a judgement for life but a truth of the moment. One who is not ready today can become ready tomorrow; in fact, they will become ready someday. But to push someone into yoga when the soul is not yet ripe is neither good for the person nor for the movement.

It is this knowledge of the adhikar bheda (readiness for the path) that prompted the Vedic rishis to write in cryptic language. It is also for this reason that there is no concept of outer or forced conversion in Hindu thought. True conversion must happen as a natural need. But wherever it is forced through fear and lure, the yoga is lost, and its spirit escapes, leaving an empty shell plastered with soulless mechanical rituals and blood-stained thrones, where the heady wine of politics and religion mix in the chalice and destroy both. No doubt politics, like everything, must awaken to its own spiritual possibilities, but for that, the leaders have to be genuinely and inwardly spiritual rather than merely believers in a doctrine enforced by the sword and the law.

The divine law that the aspirant for yoga is called upon to follow is not a rigid, narrow dogma, for that would be contrary to the vastness and freedom of the spirit. It is rather a wide and supple leading, a guidance that takes into account the entirety of things, including the individual variations of nature, the stage of development, the real motive of sadhana, the past formations and present personalities, the inner complexity, the future destiny, and above all god’s secret intent working itself out in the cosmos through the individual. No book or religious injunction can provide this, least of all, human interpretation of the divine law as revealed in ‘a sacred text’. Since very few minds are supple, vast, and discerning enough to feel the true inspiration leading from above or awakened to the promptings of the secret psychic being rising from within, the safe rule is to follow the guidance of the living guru. In his absence, the priest is supposed to substitute.

But to be a priest in the true sense means to be fully awake in the soul and be identified with it. But a priest who is simply echoing scholarly interpretation of ‘a sacred text’, or who is caught up in sophisticated dialectics and opinions because the eye of wisdom has not opened—as the Upanishads puts it—is like the blind leading the blind towards the abyss via the heavenly route. It is for this reason that the Gita asks the disciple to go beyond the word of the scripture, sabdabrahma ativartate. One could equally say to go behind the word and reach out to the inner truth embedded in the body of sound symbols. Sri Aurobindo affirms:

For the sadhaka of the Integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that no written Shastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture. Where the Scripture is profound, wide, catholic, it may exercise upon him an influence for the highest good and of incalculable importance. It may be associated in his experience with his awakening to crowning verities and his realisation of the highest experiences. His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one Scripture or by several successively,—if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita, for example, the Upanishads, the Veda. Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past. But in the end he must take his station, or better still, if he can, always and from the beginning he must live in his own soul beyond the limitations of the word that he uses. The Gita itself thus declares that the Yogin in his progress must pass beyond the written Truth,—śabdabrahmātivartate—beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear,—śrotavyasya śrutasya ca. For he is not the sadhaka of a book or of many books; he is a sadhaka of the Infinite. (CWSA 23:55–56)

This profound statement, uttered by two of the greatest yogis of all time, attracts us upward to itself and secures from her, by grace or by force, consent for individual ascension. Sri Krishna and Sri Aurobindo serve as antidotes to the quarrels and fights we see in different religions over the superiority of one scripture over the other. The true purpose of a scripture is not to debate it, but to live it. Life is the mirror that reveals what we have understood about it. It is the mirror that does not lie. The worth of a man or the religion he professes does not lie in a book or many books but in his way of life, his approach to circumstances, and his understanding of himself and others—not only in terms of what one is but also of what one can become, with or without a scripture. The greatness of man is not so much in what he is, his systems of beliefs, or his ability to win arguments, but in what he has faith in and wills to be. It is these two psychological powers, faith and will, that determine what we can become. Where we may find ourselves presently, in terms of our constitution and capacities, is the result of our past; but what we can yet become is the result of our faith and will in ourselves, in our destiny, and in the divine power that moves all things. It is these two central powers that all yoga utilizes to the maximum to accelerate our evolution.

The Universal Path

The Yoga that we practise is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the yoga, but the liberation and transformation of the human being. It is not personal Ananda, but the bringing down of the divine Ananda—Christ’s kingdom of heaven, our Satyayuga attracting us upward to Itself and securing from her by good grace or by force her consent to the individual ascension upon the earth. Of moksa we have no personal need; for the soul is nityamukta and bondage is an illusion. We play at being bound but we are not really bound. We can be free when God wills; for he, our supreme Self, is the master of the game, and without his grace and permission no soul can leave the game. It is often God’s will in us to take through the mind the bhoga of ignorance, of the dualities, of joy and grief, of pleasure and pain, of virtue and sin, of enjoyment and renunciation: for long ages, in many countries, he never even thinks of the yoga but plays out this play century after century without wearying of it. There is nothing evil in this, nothing which we need condemn or from which we need shrink,—it is God’s play. The wise man is he who recognises this truth and knowing his freedom, yet plays out God’s play, waiting for his command to change the methods of the game.

. . .

The first process of the yoga is to make the saṅkalpa of atmasamarpaṇa. Put yourself with all your heart and all your strength into God’s hands. Make no conditions, ask for nothing, not even for siddhi in the yoga, for nothing at all, except that in you and through you his will may be directly performed. To those who demand from him, God gives what they demand, but to those who give themselves and demand nothing, he gives everything that they might otherwise have asked or needed and in addition he gives himself and the spontaneous boons of his love.

The next process is to stand aside and watch the working of the divine power in yourself. This working is often attended with disturbance and trouble in the system, therefore faith is necessary, though perfect faith is not always possible at once; for whatever impurity is in you, harboured openly or secretly lurking, is likely to rise at first and be repeated so long as it is not exhaustively swept out, and doubt in this age is an almost universal impurity. But even when doubt assails, stand by and wait for it to pass, availing yourself if possible of the satsanga of those who are already advanced on the path, but when that is absent, still holding fast to the principle of the yoga, self-surrender. When distressed within or assailed from without, remember the words of the Gita. (CWSA 13: 71–74)

This does not mean following one’s whims and fancies, for no sadhana can mean that, but to discover and discern the illumining fire within the word rather than be caught up in analysing its outer body. Priesthood, in this sense, is a sacerdocy, but now it has largely become a matter of appointment for political and other vested interests. This has further led to the downfall of organized religions that die burdened with the volumes of interpretations, especially when they are tainted with political ambitions. Interpretations as such are philosophical or practical renderings of spiritual truths, and unless the interpreter has glimpsed something of the glory of the spirit, it is bound to take more and more a dead academic intellectual form rather than the power of the living word. At best, it can be a preparation for the mind and the intellect. At worst, it can be a prison fastened with bars of rigid dogma. That is why we see the Mother and Sri Aurobindo cautioning us against the tendency to quote them. Often out of context and without sufficient background in the totality of their writings or the actual journey of yoga these powerful luminous words can easily change into misquotes even where the reproduction of the phrase is accurate. The scripture is, no doubt, a great help on the path, and few, if any, can dispense with it. It is the living word-body of the master, and its value and power can never be overstated. But to truly derive the utmost benefit from it, there is a need to delve deep into its meaning, which far exceeds the dictionary usage of the term. Above all, it must be put into practice. To add to it, especially with reference to the writings of Sri Aurobindo, the Mother advised that to know what he is revealing to us, we must understand everything that he has said on a given subject. The same applies to the Mother’s works as well.

The second aspect, in terms of recognition by the seeker, is the divine, with whom the disciple seeks to become one. The truer truth hidden at first and often for a long time from the disciple is that he whom he seeks is in fact calling him. It is the divine who calls the soul when it is ready to heed, but in the disciple this call is felt as an aspiration or an irresistible attraction towards the divine in one or several of his aspects. The choice of the aspect towards which the disciple is drawn depends partly on his past evolution and partly on the ultimate destiny of the soul. The divine is infinite, but human consciousness dwells in the sense of the finite. It cannot at once conceive of the infinity of god and needs limited aspects through which it is drawn towards the one. It is this profound understanding that we see displayed in the Sanatana Dharma, which accepts and caters for a wide variety of approaches to the divine. Each aspect is often represented by a god through whom the seeker can climb to the one. For what else are the gods but the many aspects of the one divine? Each is unique in a certain sense and enjoys a certain degree of freedom in his action, which yet derives its knowledge and power from the one infinite. Yet the seeker may remain tied to the charm, glory, and greatness of one or another aspect for long.

To prevent this possibility of getting held back or held within the ambit of a god originally meant to climb through the stairway of the gods to the one supreme, the Sanatana Dharma placed the guru above all. We are well aware of the guru strotra that explicitly states that one has to see all the gods and even the supreme Parabrahman in the guru. While in integral yoga the relation of the disciple with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo is not confined to the traditional guru and shishya, Sri Aurobindo acknowledges the importance given to the guru in the practice of yoga. However, it is equally important to understand that not all are gurus regardless of self-proclaim, and not all gurus are the same, though they all come from the same source. Each represents some aspect or the other of the divine. There are gurus who point the way but do not walk with us. There are others who intervene from time to time, keeping a watch as we go along, as a cowherd keeps a watch over his cattle even while leaving them free to graze in the open ground. Some do not take any responsibility beyond showing the way and giving a lesson. Others take the responsibility and the burden of the disciple, hold him through all his struggles and stumbles, and ensure that he reaches. Each shows us a facet of the divine; each points towards a door to the beyond.

The important thing to realize is that though the divine is infinite, yogis seldom experience the divine in his totality, samagram mam. Our experience of the divine is limited by our faith and natural predilection towards one or other aspect of the divine. The aspect of the divine we meet depends also on our approach. The seeker after knowledge, approaching through his mind, often finds himself in a vast impersonal peace of immobility where knowledge rests in blissful light. The sadhak who enters through the doors of devotion and love finds his lover waiting for him, ready to carry him safely in arms of love and delight. The worker and servant of god finds the divine master who rules over all creatures by his sovereign will. Each emphasizes his own approach and way, thereby leading to cults, groups, and sects, each of which narrows down to one approach in which the guru has specialized.

This may be fine with those looking for a door of escape, but it is certainly not for the one engaged in the yoga of transformation. The seeker on the path of integral yoga is called upon to discover the divine everywhere and in everything. Not only is he to discover but also to express, to eventually manifest the divine in each and every activity. Surely the first contact with the divine may be conditioned by our unique constitution, faith, and approach. That is why we see that there are differences even among those who have realized the divine in one aspect of the other. There are common elements of this life-changing experience: a reversal of consciousness that completely changes our way of looking at, understanding, and responding to life. The contact with the divine in any of his many aspects invariably brings a deep inner peace and a state of felicity. It is often accompanied by an opening to the doors of knowledge that transcend our ordinary reason. One is freed from the false identification of the ego-individuality and the temporary personality built by nature for one brief life. A luminous vastness, a stable permanence, is felt behind the flux and flow of nature. But there are also unique aspects of relationship with the divine. After all, the world was not created for sameness. Unity in diversity, and not unity in uniformity, is the purpose of existence.

It is here that there is a great need for caution. When we force or impose one aspect of the divine—either as the highest or, worse still, as the only exclusive truth of the divine—we open the doors to fanaticism and bigotry. Even with regard to the guru, in whom the ancient traditions demand absolute fidelity, it should not be turned into a war of sects and cults to prove one’s master as the highest or the only one. It is this narrowness that turns a great truth into dangerous falsehood. The great truth is that one must see the supreme in one’s master and be faithful and surrendered to him. The dangerous falsehood is to want all others to believe that your master is the sole representative of god and the one and only human image of the supreme. The revelation of the supreme in a human form is an inner truth, which can easily turn into falsehood by misapplying this into a doctrine to be imposed formally and through outer means. It is what turns spiritual teaching into a formal organized religion that traps the human soul in fixed belief systems, from which escape in one life is often difficult.

Chapter 12
Founder of Sanatana Dharma

Who are the founders of the Sanatana Dharma, people ask? The usual answer is ‘the rishis’. Not one but a number of rishis, each of whom shared his revelations, confirmed the fundamental discoveries, and gave the path for others to discover these truths. In this sense, the Sanatana Dharma is so much like science. It is not a one man show to be accepted on the basis of belief or rejected equally blindly. The rishis documented what they discovered but did not force it upon others. They left it for the seekers to come of their own and showed them the path to the discovery. They described the path, the difficulties and challenges, the possibilities and experiences, and helped support the seekers as they walked the way. Their disciples made their own discoveries, each with his own unique angle. Thus, a vast body of knowledge was given, verified, and certified, as well as verifiable by all who seek to follow the path and make their own discoveries. It is this vastness and catholicity, combined with a return to the same fundamental experience through multiple approaches, that appeals to those with a scientific temperament, as well as to the philosophical and practical sense in man. If there is indeed a truth, it should be accessible to every seeker. It cannot stop with one person’s discovery for all time. That is why there was no antagonism in ancient India between material science and spirituality; their fields were simply different. The basic methods and principles of discovery were the same.

But where did the rishis get their knowledge from? In the Vedas, they speak of the forefathers who trod the way. In other words, the origin of Sanatana Dharma, in terms of date and time, is hidden in antiquity. But the rishis do give us the needed hint as to where the knowledge comes from. It comes from the divine seated in the heart of every creature, and therefore, it is accessible to all who seek. All can enter his temple in the heart, the only qualification being faith and aspiration to find. The founder of Sanatana Dharma is therefore god himself, not the god seated in the sky, controlling us as a king in absentia and regulating our behaviour with reward and punishment like a policeman or a school headmaster. The god of Sanatana Dharma is not just the king of kings but also the leader of the human march, the lover and beloved of our souls, the tranquil counselor and mentor, a friend in distress and difficulties, a father and mother, and even a child—a playmate in the great game of life and the eternal paramour whom we secretly love, though we are tied to the world by duty and obligation. He is the light that leans in the abyss, cancelling any eternal hell. He is the endless compassion that responds to our cries for help, heals and succours, bears our cross, and takes upon himself the burden of our suffering. He is the love whose miraculous touch transforms evil into good, suffering into happiness, and weakness into strength. He is all this and much more. Though far above creation and yet hidden in its depths, we can form relations with the divine friend. To lift worshipping hands to him is but one approach; to fear the king and master may be our first primitive response to his majesty. But in the end we discover god the eternal lover, whose love makes no distinction between religious beliefs and non-beliefs, and his grace reaches out to the lowliest of lowly and the worst of the sinners. This is the god of Sanatana Dharma, who teaches man to love god rather than fear him, takes away the burden of sin and guilt, and releases us into his beatitude so that we too can share his kingdom and glory, since we are, in our secret self, portions of him, even as he is the self of our self. Sanatana Dharma teaches us that all are equally his children and can approach him without fear or favour. All are received by him with love and compassion; all are illuminated and transfigured.

As the supreme Shastra of the integral Yoga is the eternal Veda secret in the heart of every man, so its supreme Guide and Teacher is the inner Guide, the World-Teacher, jagad-guru, secret within us. It is he who destroys our darkness by the resplendent light of his knowledge; that light becomes within us the increasing glory of his own self-revelation. He discloses progressively in us his own nature of freedom, bliss, love, power, immortal being. He sets above us his divine example as our ideal and transforms the lower existence into a reflection of that which it contemplates. By the inpouring of his own influence and presence into us he enables the individual being to attain to identity with the universal and transcendent.

. . .

All that the Light from above asks of us that it may begin its work is a call from the soul and a sufficient point of support in the mind. This support can be reached through an insistent idea of the Divine in the thought, a corresponding will in the dynamic parts, an aspiration, a faith, a need in the heart. Any one of these may lead or predominate, if all cannot move in unison or in an equal rhythm. The idea may be and must in the beginning be inadequate; the aspiration may be narrow and imperfect, the faith poorly illumined or even, as not surely founded on the rock of knowledge, fluctuating, uncertain, easily diminished; often even it may be extinguished and need to be lit again with difficulty like a torch in a windy pass. But if once there is a resolute self-consecration from deep within, if there is an awakening to the soul’s call, these inadequate things can be a sufficient instrument for the divine purpose. Therefore the wise have always been unwilling to limit man’s avenues towards God; they would not shut against his entry even the narrowest portal, the lowest and darkest postern, the humblest wicket-gate. Any name, any form, any symbol, any offering has been held to be sufficient if there is the consecration along with it; for the Divine knows himself in the heart of the seeker and accepts the sacrifice. (CWSA 23-24: 81-82)

The Scripture of Sanatana Dharma

The supreme scripture of Sanatana Dharma is the eternal Veda secret in every heart. The rishis were the first to discover it among men. But this eternal Veda, the book of wisdom secret in creation, is unfolding its pages through creation. Man has the unique privilege to read this book hidden in his own heart, live by its light, and embody its wisdom and truth. Any scripture, therefore, is only a partial and limited statement of the profound truth. Since this wisdom is infinite and eternal, it cannot be captured in any single book or even many books. Nor can it be exhausted by any single religion, sect, or cult, or guru, master, prophet, or seer. Even the avataras, who according to the Sanatana Dharma are divine assuming a human body, do not exhaust it in one birth. This is because this secret wisdom, though eternal, operates in terms of time and place. Truth is eternal, but its manifestation is subject to time; its unfolding is in terms of time. That is why even the divine descents form an evolutionary succession, each carrying earth and humanity to the next step until the last avatara takes it all up and divinises creation itself into a perfect divine manifestation. Right now it is an imperfect, partial, limited, and even distorted manifestation.

It is here that we have the conception of maya. It is the power of god to limit himself. This self-limitation is needed for bringing out the many finites out of the one infinite. It is a temporary necessity. But once each finite discovers its bond with infinity, each unit will become an integral part of the true unity. Therefore, all scriptures, masters, prophets, and avataras have an action in real time: it starts amidst resistance from the established past, rises towards a peak, and then slowly declines, allowing the eternal truth to be stated in a new way and new pages and chapters to be opened for man. It is for this reason and the natural limitation that any language poses that no scripture can be full and final. The Sanatana Dharma uses the scripture but also asks man to transcend it, shabdbrahmativartate.

The supreme Shastra of the integral Yoga is the eternal Veda secret in the heart of every thinking and living being. The lotus of the eternal knowledge and the eternal perfection is a bud closed and folded up within us. It opens swiftly or gradually, petal by petal, through successive realisations, once the mind of man begins to turn towards the Eternal, once his heart, no longer compressed and confined by attachment to finite appearances, becomes enamoured, in whatever degree, of the Infinite. All life, all thought, all energising of the faculties, all experiences passive or active, become thenceforward so many shocks which disintegrate the teguments of the soul and remove the obstacles to the inevitable efflorescence. He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite. He has received the divine touch without which there is no awakening, no opening of the spirit; but once it is received, attainment is sure, whether conquered swiftly in the course of one human life or pursued patiently through many stadia of the cycle of existence in the manifested universe.

. . .

For the sadhaka of the integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that no written Shastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture. Where the Scripture is profound, wide, catholic, it may exercise upon him an influence for the highest good and of incalculable importance. It may be associated in his experience with his awakening to crowning verities and his realisation of the highest experiences. His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one Scripture or by several successively,—if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita, for example, the Upanishads, the Veda. Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past. But in the end he must take his station, or better still, if he can, always and from the beginning he must live in his own soul beyond the limitations of the word that he uses. The Gita itself thus declares that the Yogin in his progress must pass beyond the written Truth,—śabdabrahmātivartate—beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear,—śrotavyasya śrutasya ca. For he is not the sadhaka of a book or of many books; he is a sadhaka of the Infinite. (CWSA 23-24: 55-56)

Sanatana Dharma and Hinduism

Apart from these fundamental core aspects, we see a whole lot of structures and superstructures built around these ideas. Many of them were perhaps allowed as a concession to human need for external props to aid in moving inwards. Some of them, like yagya, also had occult value and were based on deeper occult knowledge that was subsequently lost. It can still be found in fragments, but their exact nature and the detailed workings of forces that were a different kind of science have been lost. No doubt these things will be recovered and, in fact, are being recovered now from another angle. Yet for most, they remain a mass of rituals, ceremonies, and even simple myths and superstitious legends. Taking them up is not necessary to the spiritual core of Sanatana Dharma, which is mainly about the ascension of the human soul out of the state of ignorance towards the fullness of self-knowledge. Tyaga or inner renunciation of ego and desires, tapasya or the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour, yajna or the progressive purification of our consciousness from the mixtures of ego and desires, gyan or the true knowledge based on oneness, bhakti or the turning of all within us towards the divine in a gesture of self giving, and vairagya or disillusionment from the present state of the world and its transient nature. Dhyan and dharana refer to meditation and concentration. Similarly, mantra, japa, and pooja (upasana) are various aids and disciplines for the heart, mind, and will in their works to turn towards the divine. The list is quite exhaustive, and while nothing is binding on anyone, a variety of ways and means are provided for the struggling soul to grow into the fullness of its divine powers and possibilities. The later Hinduism relegated these core practices to the background while incorporating easier-to-practice outer rituals and observances into its way of life. Thus began the slow sliding down and eclipsing of the mighty civilization based on the solid bedrock of Sanatana Dharma. It is this dharmasya glani that we see Sri Aurobindo restoring, lighting the fire of aspiration in the yagya vedi of India, whose light has begun to radiate over the entire world.

There are two Hinduisms; one which takes its stand on the kitchen and seeks its Paradise by cleaning the body; another which seeks God, not through the cooking pot and the social convention, but in the soul. The latter is also Hinduism and it is a good deal older and more enduring than the other; it is the Hinduism of Bhishma and Srikrishna, of Shankara and Chaitanya, the Hinduism which exceeds Hindusthan, was from of old and will be for ever, because it grows eternally through the aeons. Its watchword is not kriya, but karma; not shastra, but jnanam; not achar, but bhakti. Yet it accepts kriya, shastra and achar, not as ends to be followed for their own sake, but as means to perfect karma, jnanam and bhakti. Kriya in the dictionary means every practice which helps the gaining of higher knowledge such as the mastering of the breath, the repetition of the mantra, the habitual use of the Name, the daily meditation on the idea. By shastra it means the knowledge which regulates karma, which fixes the kartavyam and the akartavyam, that which should be done and that which should not, and it recognises two sources of that knowledge,—the eternal wisdom, as distinct from the temporary injunctions, in our ancient books and the book that is written by God in the human heart, the eternal and apaurusheya Veda. By achar it understands all moral discipline by which the heart is purified and made a fit vessel for divine love. There are certain kriyas, certain rules of shastra, certain details of achar, which are for all time and of perpetual application; there are others which are temporary, changing with the variation of desh, kal and patra, time, place and the needs of humanity. Among the temporary laws the cooking-pot and the lustration had their place, but they are not for all, nor for ever. It was in a time of calamity, of contraction under external pressure that Hinduism fled from the inner temple and hid itself in the kitchen.

The higher and truer Hinduism is also of two kinds, sectarian and unsectarian, disruptive and synthetic, that which binds itself up in the aspect and that which seeks the All. The first is born of rajasic or tamasic attachment to an idea, an experience, an opinion or set of opinions, a temperament, an attitude, a particular guru, a chosen Avatar. This attachment is intolerant, arrogant, proud of a little knowledge, scornful of knowledge that is not its own. It is always talking of the kusanskars, superstitions, of others and is blind to its own; or it says, ‘My guru is the only guru and all others are either charlatans or inferior,’ or, ‘My temperament is the right temperament and those who do not follow my path are fools or pedants or insincere,’ or ‘My Avatar is the real God Himself and all the others are only lesser revelations,’ or ‘My ishta devata is God, the others are only His partial manifestations.’ When the soul rises higher, it follows by preference its own ideas, experiences, opinions, temperament, guru, ishta, but it does not turn an ignorant and exclusive eye upon others. ‘There are many paths’, it cries, ‘and all lead equally to God. All men, even the sinner and the atheist, are my brothers in sadhana and the Beloved is drawing them each in His own way to the One without a second.’ But when the full knowledge dawns, I embrace all experiences in myself, I know all ideas to be true, all opinions useful, all experiences and attitudes means and stages in the acquisition of universal experience and completeness, all gurus imperfect channels or incarnations of the one and only Teacher, all ishtas and Avatars to be God Himself.

That is what Ramakrishna taught by His life and sadhana and therefore is He the Avatar of the age, the One who prepares the future of humanity. But there is a danger of turning Him into the guru of a sect, the incarnate God of a dogmatic religion, to stultify His own life and teachings by making Him the object of a narrow attachment, an intolerant reverence, a sectarian worship. That must be avoided. It is the great curse which attends the organisation of religion. Let us have done with sects and Churches and worship God only.

The destruction of bondage, the realisation of freedom, the trampling upon our fetters, that is the first need of the future. It was to give mukti that Ramakrishna came, not to impose a new bondage. Therefore was Vivekananda His Apostle to the Gentiles, a man who in all things asserted freedom. The soul of Hinduism languishes in an unfit body. Break the mould that the soul may live. Is it not the first teaching of Yoga to destroy the dehatmak buddhi, the blindness that identifies the soul with its temporary body? If the body were young, adaptable, fit, the liberated soul might use it, but it is decrepit, full of ill health and impurity. It must be changed, not by the spirit of Western iconoclasm which destroys the soul with the body, but by national Yoga. (CWSA 1: 552-53)

References

Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo 9: Bengali Writings. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

CWSA 13: Essays in Philosophy and Yoga. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

CWSA 16: Hymns to the Mystic Fire. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

CWSA 19: Essays on the Gita. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

CWSA 20: The Foundation of Indian Culture. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

CWSA 21-22: The Life Divine. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

CWSA 23-24: The Synthesis of Yoga. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

CWSA 26: The Future Poetry. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

CWSA 26: The Future Poetry. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

CWSA 34: Savitri. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

CWSA 6-7: Bande Mataram. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

CWSA 8: Karmayogin. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

Complete Works of the Mother 12: On Education. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

Sri Aurobindo to Dilip Kumar, Vol. II, 1934-35. Hari Krishna Mandir Trust.

Sri Aurobindo. 2017. Writings in Bengali and Sanskrit. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.