Uttarkand and Balakand are debatable aspects of the Ramayana. However something similar does exist in Book 7 of Valmiki and hence the events mentioned cannot be ignored. Notable among these are Mata Sita’s banishment, her return to Earth, the departure of Lakshman and the final jalsamadhi of Lord Rama in the Saryu. Sri Aurobindo, who regarded Lord Rama as very much fitting into the scheme of the ten Avatars, as indeed he is known and revered, had this to say regarding some of the controversies raised about him: “Tangled is the way of works in the world. When Rama the Avatar murdered Vali, or Krishna, who was God himself, assassinated, to liberate his nation, his tyrant uncle Kansa, who shall say whether they did good or did evil? But this we can feel, that they acted divinely.”
The Mother’s remarks on the above aphorism: This is a supremely elegant way of saying that all notions of good and evil are exclusively human and are worthless in the eyes of the Divine.
And Sri Aurobindo to Dilip Kumar Roy
“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 1 s 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…..
Also I do not mean that I admit the validity of your remarks about Rama, even taken as a piecemeal criticism; but that I have no time for today. 1 maintain my position about the killing of Ball and the banishment of Sita—in spite of Ball’s preliminary objection to the procedure, afterwards retracted, and in spite of the opinion of Rama’s relatives. Necessarily from the point of view of the antique dharma—not from that of any universal moral standard—which besides does no exist, since the standard changes according to clime or age.
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.”
Sri Aurobindo did not go into the specifics but it is obvious from his remarks that he felt the modern way of dealing with ancient scriptures and legends is not the right one. Humanity has moved forwards in certain ways and the standards of conduct today are not and cannot be the same as they were a few thousand years back. This is the first thing we must consider when dealing with the life of Rama and Krishna.
Secondly, we have to see Lord Rama in his totality as the seer poet Valmiki portrays him, a king who honours the law of the land even if it goes against him, who honours the word of his father, even though it may sound like a personal injustice, a hero who honours the tie of friendship with the lowly and the menial even, a man of word and promise and integrity in every sphere of life, a warrior who is brave beyond measure, a man of supreme renunciation who is ready to sacrifice his kingdom and even his life, his own and his wife’s personal happiness for the larger collective good, a Kshatriya who goes to the extreme to fulfil his code of honour to bring the evil-doers like Ravana to justice, a courageous lover and husband who is ready to take on the mighty empire of the Asura king with the aid of ill-equipped tribes from Kishkindha. All this Lord Rama is and much more, most of all a man of extreme self-restraint despite his tremendous might, Maryada Purushottam.
Thirdly, we cannot judge even less than ordinary human being by his outer actions unless we know the inner intents. With an Avatar, the Divine become human, it is even more difficult, nay impossible. I find it rather amusing when I see people who sit in comfortable armchairs who have not one percent of the greatness and renunciation of Rama, leave aside his strength and wisdom and humility and ell else yet pass their judgments on him over a cup of coffee and then go about indulging in selfish deeds for their petty satisfactions. No wonder they see in Rama and Krishna and all Avatars nothing but their own shadow or reflection. But the Rama of Valmiki is different. He did not abandon Sita for any personal selfish reasons or because he himself doubted her. If he did so it was in obedience to an archaic law still prevailing in the land to curb the animal propensities of early humanity. He had come to establish the Rajdharma, which he did with a finesse given his context and the times he lived in, subduing the animal wants and personal comforts and selfish interests to the greater, larger good. Hence the judgment of History stands, the final verdict passed by Time that he is indeed God become human, a being so rare that even the sages and seers to come would revere and adorn him and vouchsafe by his name. It is to be noted that Rama, even in banishing Sita, yet set a high ideal of conjugal love in not marrying a second time despite it being acceptable for a Kshatriya king of those times.
As to Sita’s return to earth without Rama, it is clearly a symbolic story. Their coming together is, like the story of Shiva and Parvati, an earthly counterpart of the coming together of the Divine Soul and Material Nature. The Asura stands in between the two and even when he is conquered the human consciousness carries too much of the stamp of Asuric nature. The return of Lakshmana is already explained in Uttar Kand as a part of the lila as also Rama’s sending Hanuman to find his lost ring wherein he discovers that Rama is everywhere and in all things. The final act of Rama walking into the river Saryu is actually a form of Jalasamadhi that yogis have practiced for very long (right until this date) as a means of departure. Symbolically it also means that Rama did not leave the Earth, he simply dispersed himself into the ocean of ignorant world forces to awaken them to a greater light, the light of illumined Reason that he had come to establish amidst an early animal-type humanity.
I suppose this gives us sufficient hint about Rama’s last acts during his earthly lila.
