Instalment-29
In the first few pages of Canto
Four Book X, which we reviewed last month, the God of Death mounts an assault
on Savitri’s ideological position from a new flank. He begins by pointing
out that nature is immutable, unchanging and “Where nature changes not, man
cannot change”. Secondly, since man is “a captive in his net of mind” he cannot
rise beyond thought. All his prayers prove to be vain yearnings. He imparts
to his God his own will and his own wrath and love
Then
comes his long and shattering indictment on the drama of human history, which
concludes with these lines:
These
wars, carnage triumphant, ruin gone mad,
The work of centuries vanishing in an
hour,
The blood of the vanquished and the
victor's crown
Which men to be born must pay for with
their pain,
The hero's face divine on satyr's limbs,
The demon's grandeur mixed with the
demigod's,
The glory and the beasthood and the
shame;
Why is it all, the labour and the din,
The transient joys, the timeless sea
of tears,
The longing and the hoping and the cry,
The battle and the victory and the fall,
The aimless journey that can never pause,
The waking toil, the incoherent sleep,
Song, shouts and weeping, wisdom and
idle words,
The laughter of men, the irony of the
gods?
Page:
645
Then
he goes on to argue that even if there is a God, there is no home for him
on this earth. He thus concludes by declaring:
Dream not to
change the world that God has planned,
Strive not to alter his
eternal law.
Page: 647
He
then goes on to show two possible resolutions for man’s problems: if you think
that there are heavens shut to grief, then seek your fulfilment in such a
heaven. Or, if you think you are Spirit, and nature is only your garb, then
“cast off thy garb and be thy naked self”. In either case, I am the gate of
immortality.
Now
as was remarked earlier, this is the solution which has been most widely accepted
by almost all religious and spiritual traditions, and by the Indian tradition
as well, particularly after the Buddha gave it the stamp of his strong personality.
Thus renunciation came to be looked upon the sole path of knowledge, the acceptance
of physical life as the act of the ignorant, cessation of birth the right
use of human birth. The call of the Spirit came to signify the recoil from
Matter.
It
is against such a recoil from life in Matter that, in Part I of Savitri
Aswapati protested in these words as he stood on the threshold of Nirvana.
O
soul, it is too early to rejoice!
Thou hast reached the boundless silence
of the Self,
Thou hast leaped into a glad divine
abyss;
But where hast thou thrown Self's
mission and Self's power?
On what dead bank on the Eternal's
road?
One was within thee who was self and
world,
What hast thou done for his purpose
in the stars?
Escape brings not the victory and
the crown!
Something thou cam'st to do from the
Unknown,
But nothing is finished and the world
goes on
Because only half God's cosmic work
is done.
Page: 310
The
importance of this revolution in Indian spirituality which Sri Aurobindo brought
about cannot be emphasised enough. One of his principal contributions to Indian
spirituality is a new view of existence which is based on a synthesis of the
spiritual realisations of the Indian tradition with a full, active life in
the world. This gives our life in this world a new, enlarged spiritual significance
and character. Sri Aurobindo has emphasised enough the importance of the realisation
of the Self or Atman, which is the goal of most traditional yogas. But as
the Mother has pointed out, Sri Aurobindo’s yoga begins where the others leave
off. This does not take away anything from the primary importance of the realisation
of the true Self, but it also emphasises that there is plenty to realise even
after the nirvanic realisation.
The
realisation of the Self is looked upon in Sri Aurobindo’s yoga as a crucial
step, but there are others with which it must be integrated. This inner harmonisation
must enable us to achieve harmony with the whole world and all the experiences
which it throws at us. The realisation of the true Self comes about with the
dissolution of the ego which makes us identify ourselves with a particular
mind, life and body. To quote from Sri Aurobindo’s Synthesis of Yoga
(p. 341):
The formation of a mental and vital ego tied to the body-sense
was the first great labour of the cosmic Life in its progressive evolution;
for this was the means it found for creating out of matter a conscious individual.
The dissolution of this limiting ego is the one condition, the necessary means
for this very same Life to arrive at its divine fruition: for only so can
the conscious individual find either his transcendent self or his true Person.
Our
journey is from the inconscience to omniscience, and in this evolutionary
journey, breaking out of the temporary construction called the ego is the
first step. We should go on from there to the divine fruition of life in the
cosmos. Instead of this, the traditional yogas aim at the immersion of self
and its disappearance in the transcendent Self.
Savitri
takes this position in her debate with Death. This is what she says in reply
to the God of Death:
“Once
again, O Death, you are making use of light to blind with it Truth’s eyes.
You are making use of knowledge as a catch of the snare of Ignorance, and
are using the power of the sacred word as an arrow to slay my soul.”
(The
God of Death has used some bits of what is considered as accepted knowledge
to shut out greater truths. All that he has been saying has an appearance
of truth. It is true that there is no home for God in this world. But isn’t
there a possibility of this world itself undergoing fundamental changes which
will make it a proper home for God? This is after all an evolutionary world,
and what we see here is a progressive manifestation of the truth about this
world. Similarly, it is true that the drama of human history has been a long
aimless journey. But through all this the human consciousness is slowly advancing,
however falteringly, towards a higher consummation. Again, it is true that
if Mind is all, we will have to renounce the hope of bliss and truth. But
what if Mind is only a temporary halting station of the long journey of consciousness
from inconscience to the omniscience?)
“If
there are those who feel the bondage of body and mind too heavy for them to
bear, let then tear off these bonds that cannot bear the wounds inflicted
by Time, and let them seek refuge from the play of Gods and seek the boons
of peace and joy. But I cannot rest in such endless peace because I have in
me the dynamic force of the Divine Mother. I read the enigma of this world
through Her eyes. I carry within me Her will tempered in the blaze of Wisdom’s
sun, and her flaming silence of her heart of love.
“This
world is not easy to understand because it represents a spiritual paradox
invented by some need in the unseen. Our senses can make only a poor translation
of it. It is a symbol of that which always exceeds the capacity of thought
and speech; thought cannot fully comprehend it and speech cannot express it
adequately. It is a symbol for which no symbolisation is adequate. It is like
an expression in a language which is mis-pronounced and even mis-spelt but
which for that reason does not make it untrue. The powers that have created
this world have come from the eternal heights but they have plunged into the
Inconscient dim Abyss and are slowly rising to do their marvellous work.
“Our
soul is a representative of the Unmanifest. Our mind struggles to think the
Unthinkable, our life to call the immortal into birth, and the body to enshrine
the Illimitable. This world is not totally cut off from Truth and God. You,
Death, have dug the seemingly unbridgeable dark gulf of death to separate
it from God; in vain have you tried to build a blind and doorless wall around
life. But man’s soul can cross all your barriers to reach the happier realms
of Paradise. The radiant light from heaven forces its way through death and
darkness and its light is seen on the edges of our being. My mind is a torch
lit from the eternal sun; my life is a breath of the immortal Guest seated
in me, and my mortal body is yet the Eternal’s house. Already what looked
like a torch is looking more like an undying ray, already life looks like
the force of the Immortal; it is as though the house is taking on more and
more of the characteristics of the dweller of the house. Nature out of which
the human body, vital and mind have been fabricated to house a soul, has started
reflecting many features of the soul.”
Then
come some of the most memorable lines in this epic poem, which capture the
essence of the evolutionary movement and its progressive manifestation of
the qualities of the Divine:
How sayst thou Truth can never light the
human mind
And Bliss can never invade the mortal's
heart
Or God descend into the world he made?
If in the meaningless Void creation
rose,
If from a bodiless Force Matter was
born,
If Life could climb in the unconscious
tree,
Its green delight break into emerald
leaves
And its laughter of beauty blossom
in the flower,
If sense could wake in tissue, nerve
and cell
And Thought seize the grey matter
of the brain,
And soul peep from its secrecy through
the flesh,
How shall the nameless Light not leap
on men,
And unknown powers emerge from Nature's
sleep?
Even now hints of a luminous Truth
like stars
Arise in the mind-mooned splendour
of Ignorance;
Even now the deathless Lover's touch
we feel:
If the chamber's door is even a little
ajar,
What then can hinder God from stealing
in
Or who forbid his kiss on the sleeping
soul?
Already God is near, the Truth is
close:
Because the dark atheist body knows
him not,
Must the sage deny the Light, the
seer his soul?
Page: 648
Savitri: “It is true that at the moment the mind in man
is incapable of seeing the whole truth; but how can you be sure that it will
for that reason remain so limited for all time to come? Similarly, human existence
is now beset with pain, suffering and evil and death, but how can you be sure
that this condition will remain unchanged forever? How can you be sure that
because the human heart is now often tortured by unhappiness, it will and
can never be a receptacle of bliss? God has not yet descended on earth and
he has not yet started working here. But how can you be sure that this will
be the situation of this world for all time to come?
“Look
at this bustling creation. It has evolved out of chaos. We learn from science
that after the big bang, there was a tremendous whirl of energy in what looked
like a meaningless Void. It took many billions of years for the chaos to settle
down into the creation we see around us today. Out of what was once a bodiless
Force, a blind, mechanical energy, Matter evolved gradually. And there was
a time a few billion years ago when there was no life here on earth. It looked
like a dead universe. That must have been the situation for several billion
years. But then slowly and gradually out of this seemingly dead and lifeless
universe, vegetation emerged signifying life. There were creepers, bushes,
plants and trees and forests.
“A
tree or a plant is all Matter except for this difference -- life has learnt
to climb from the roots to the top of the tree; the roots suck the energy
needed for the sustenance of the tree and then this is transported all along
its trunk, branches and twigs, and leaves, flowers and fruit. The tree can
propagate itself. From one tree there come about a number of trees and the
parent tree itself will die some day. All this in itself is a miracle. This
is what Matter evolved into Life is capable of achieving. The green leaves
on a tree manifest this delight of life just as the blossoms on its branches
constitute its laughter. There are further evolutionary miracles that have
taken place subsequently. From plant life evolved the life of the animal
world and with it slowly, sense became active in tissue, nerve and cell.
Then came man, in the grey cells of whose brain, thought began to form itself.
Thus out of chaos came this creation, from Matter evolved Life, and from Life
came the Mental Man. With the advent of man, slowly the spiritual being in
man began to peep from the secrecy of the flesh.
“If
these miracles have actually taken place in this world of ours, how can you
be so confident that further miracles of this kind will not happen? For example,
how can you be sure that the Light of the Spirit will not leap on men and
powers hitherto latent will not emerge from Nature’s sleep? Even now if
you look around carefully, you will see the early hints of a greater light
of consciousness adding to the splendour of the human mind. Even now, we can
feel the touch of the divine Lover only if only we kept the doors of the prison
of our ego a little ajar.
“Who
or what then will be able hinder God from stealing in, and who can forbid
his kiss on the sleeping soul? Already God is very close to us; we are very
near the truth. It is our physical being that still fails to feel the presence
of the divine within itself. This does not mean that the seer and the sage
in us also should go along with the body and deny the existence of the Light
of the Spirit in us.
“I
know that I am the Spirit although I have a body, the senses and the mind
with its thoughts. I experience and live in the glory of the Infinite. I am
very close to the Nameless and the Unknowable parts of my being. The Ineffable
glory of my spirit is an inalienable part of me. But standing on the brink
of Eternity, I have discovered that this world is also the becoming of the
Divine. I know myself as the Spirit and the Self, but I have also loved the
body of my God. I have come down on earth seeking him in his earthly form.
“I
have identified myself with the entire world, with the whole of humanity.
My heart has become one with every heart. Therefore a lonely freedom, exclusive
to my being alone does not satisfy me. I represent the aspiring humanity;
I ask the liberation given to me to be given to the whole of humanity.”
In
this reply to the God of Death Savitri brings into focus two important concepts
of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy of Integralism. One is that this is an evolutionary
world, which began with the Inconscience of Matter and is evolving towards
omniscience of the Superconscience or the Divine. The second important concept
is that the dichotomy between the Self and the non-Self, although useful
at a certain stage and for certain purposes, is fundamentally erroneous. Everything
here, including Nature is divine and therefore has a divine fulfilment. These
issues are of great importance to the understanding of Savitri, and
therefore I propose to spend some time looking at both of them briefly in
subsequent instalments.
For
now let me leave with you a few quotations from Sri Aurobindo and one from
the Mother pertaining to the first of these important concepts, namely, evolution:
The Western idea of evolution is the statement of a process
of formation, not an explanation of our being. Limited to the physical
and biological data of Nature, it does not attempt except in a summary
or a superficial fashion to discover its own meaning, but is content to
announce itself as the general law of a quite mysterious and inexplicable
energy. Evolution becomes a problem in motion which is satisfied to work
up with an automatic regularity its own puzzle, but not to work it out,
because, since it is only a process, it has no understanding of itself,
and, since it is a blind perpetual automatism of mechanical energy, it
has neither an origin nor an issue. It began perhaps or is always beginning;
it will stop perhaps in time or is always somewhere stopping and going
back to its beginnings, but there is no why, only a great turmoil and
fuss of a how to its beginning and its cessation; for there is in its
acts no fountain of spiritual intention, but only the force of an unresting
material necessity. The ancient idea of evolution was the fruit of a philosophical
intuition, the modern is an effort of scientific observation. Each as
enounced misses something, but the ancient got at the spirit of the movement
where the modern is content with a form and the most external machinery…
The modern scientist strives to make a complete scheme and institution
of the physical method which he has detected in its minute workings, but
is blind to the miracle each step involves or content to lose the sense
of it in the satisfied observation of a vast ordered phenomenon.[1]
2
We speak of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution
of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon
without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Life should evolve
out of material elements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the
Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life
because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled
Consciousness. And then there seems to be little objection to a farther step
in the series and the admission that mental consciousness may itself be only
a form and a veil of higher states which are beyond Mind. In that case, the
unconquerable impulse of man towards God, Light, Bliss, Freedom, Immortality
presents itself in its right place in the chain as simply the imperative impulse
by which Nature is seeking to evolve beyond Mind, and appears to be as natural,
true and just as the impulse towards Life which she has planted in certain
forms of Matter or the impulse towards Mind which she has planted in certain
forms of Life…the animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is
said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory
in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the superman,
the god. Or shall we not say, rather, to manifest God?”[2]
3
Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected
with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as
it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious
animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar,
bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical
but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence,
then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars, leading the human development
from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental
superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages
of the spiritual development—Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha
tries to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still
negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki
is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying
the opposing Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable.”[3]
4
This evolution, this spiritual progression—does it stop
short here in the imperfect mental being called Man? …There is at least the
possibility, there comes at a certain point the certitude, that there is a
far greater consciousness than what we call Mind, and that by ascending the
ladder still farther we can find a point at which the hold of the material
Inconscience, the vital and mental Ignorance ceases; a principle of consciousness
becomes capable of manifestation which liberates not partially, not imperfectly,
but radically and wholly this imprisoned Divine. In this vision each stage
of evolution appears as due to the descent of a higher and higher Power of
consciousness, raising the terrestrial level, creating a new stratum, but
the highest yet remain to descend and it is by their descent that the riddle
of terrestrial existence will receive its solution and not only the soul but
Nature herself find her deliverance…”[4]
5
Man is a transitional being, he is not final; for in him
and high beyond him ascend the radiant degrees which climb to a divine supermanhood.
The step from man towards superman is the next approaching
achievement in the earth's evolution. There lies our destiny and the liberating
key to our aspiring, but troubled and limited human existence—inevitable because
it is at once the intention of the inner Spirit and the logic of Nature's
process. ”[5]
The following quotation comes from the Mother:
There is an ascending evolution in nature which goes
from the stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from animal to
man. Because man is, for the moment, the last rung at the summit of the ascending
evolution, he considers himself as the final stage in this ascension and believes
there can be nothing on earth superior to him. In that he is mistaken. In
his physical nature he is yet almost wholly an animal, a thinking and speaking
animal, but still an animal in his material habits and instincts. Undoubtedly,
nature cannot be satisfied with such an imperfect result; she endeavours to
bring out a being who will be to man what man is to the animal, a being who
will remain a man in its external form, and yet whose consciousness will rise
far above the mental and its slavery to ignorance.[6]
