Share
this Print
this Write
to us
Instalment - XVII
Share this Print this Write to usInstalment - XVII
Mangesh Nadkarni
If you look at the contents page you’ll find something very interesting: the vital worlds are innumerable. Canto 1 of Book Two is The World-Stair; where are these worlds from, what do they represent, how does one go there, what are they made of—all these are briefly indicated in Canto 1. Canto 2 is the kingdom of subtle matter. Then Cantos 3-9 are of the vital level and something very close to the vital level. Aswapati looks at these worlds of life, the great activity there, the great hope there, the great zest in that life world. The Divine has manifested Himself in many forms of life, right from the unicellular amoeba to the dinosaur, to human beings. So there is great range of activity but still wherever there is life there is pain, wherever there is life, there is death.
After that you have two or three cantos devoted to the mental world, for example Cantos 10 and 11 while Cantos 12, 13, 14 and 15 are a description of the overmental worlds. These worlds have already manifested themselves, unlike the supramental world but Aswapti doesn’t find anything interesting here and he goes to the Divine Mother, the Transcendental Sakthi. Sri Aurobindo depicts these worlds with great care, almost with great love for, after all, this is about life, how life manifested, how life grew. All these things he describes from Canto 3 onwards.
The world on page 117 is a world of restlessness. One characteristic feature of life here is constant creativity, constantly creating new forms, new desires, new wants, new fulfilments, nothing satisfies you. Scientists will tell you there are innumerable forms, species of plants, innumerable life-forms in this world, there has been so much creativity. Many of these life forms have died and there is infinite activity going on there. This is all in the life-world and Sri Aurobindo gives you some flavour of the tremendous creativity going on in this world. He says,
Amid a tedious crawl of drab desires
She writhed, a worm mid-worms in Nature’s mud,The worms that you find in Nature’s mud, you may not have any use for them, you probably would like to run away from them but they are all our ancestors. If they were not there this creation would not have come about.
Then, Titan-statured, took all earth for food,
Then life also can take titan-like shapes, dinosaurs, huge shapes which can take the entire earth for food.
Ambitioned the seas for robe, for crown the stars
Life has such ambitions. How much would you like to drink? I would like to drink all the oceans, that’s the appetite life has. What would you like to wear? I’d like to wear all the stars in my crown. That is the ambition, that is the zest for life. So Sri Aurobindo says, life has these manifestations.
And shouting strode from peak to giant peak,
Life when it gets to this form doesn’t walk, it strides from one peak to another peak and
Clamouring for worlds to conquer and to rule.
I have conquered all the worlds; where are more worlds for me to conquer? That is the appetite for life. All the worlds she gave I have already conquered them, are there any more worlds for me to conquer, is the world so small? That is the characteristic feature of life, always conquest, always gobbling things, always eating, devouring. This is the flavour of the life world. Life has also another feature, what is it?
Then, wantonly enamoured of Sorrow’s face,
She plunged into the anguish of the depths
And, wallowing, clung to her own misery.There is ambition but life also has close association with misery, with sorrow.
In dolorous converse with her squandered self
She wrote the account of all that she had lost,
Or sat with grief as with an ancient friend.Life sits with grief. How? Like an ancient friend with whom you can gossip and exchange everything. So life always needs this little dose of sorrow, of sentimentality, of misery, this is the picture of life.
A romp of violent raptures soon was spent,
Or she lingered tied to an inadequate joy
Missing the turns of fate, missing life’s goal.On page 135 there are a few lines I wish to draw your attention to, which explain exactly what Aswapati is doing, why he is exploring these worlds. This is the beginning of the new section.
In this slow ascension he must follow her pace
Even from her faint and dim subconscious start:Sri Aurobindo says Aswapati wanted to go to the very beginning of the growth of consciousness, right from subtle matter. Why did he want to do that?
So only can earth’s last salvation come.
Only then will he be able to figure out what is it that is holding back man’s aspiration, what is it that is preventing man from reaching his destination?
For so only could he know the obscure cause
Of all that holds us back and baffles GodWhat is it that constantly frustrates us here? As I was saying, Aswapati’s quest was about this, that with all the revolutions that have come about, with all the grand glorious plans that man has for reaching a life of perfection, all the intellectual plans, manifestoes, all the scholars sit and draw plan after plan but nothing works here. Everything fails in this world. Why is God constantly frustrated in this world—that is the object of Aswapati’s search.
Of all that holds us back and baffles God
In the jail-delivery of the imprisoned soul.Why is it that Krishna is always born in the prison house of Kamsa? Why is this happening in this world?
Aswapati wants to find out and that is why he has undertaken this journey. I will read a couple of passages when Aswapati finds various life-worlds fascinating but he also feels that there is something holding back, a kind of unwanted influence constantly filtering through and baffling man’s efforts. He descends into the worlds of ignorance and what he finds there is terrible, its chilling. On page 208 Sri Aurobindo says about the world of darkness:A capital was there without a State:
It had no ruler, only groups that strove.
He saw a city of ancient Ignorance
Founded upon a soil that knew not Light.
There each in his own darkness walked alone:
Only they agreed to differ in Evil’s paths,
To live in their own way for their own selves
Or to enforce a common lie and wrong;
There Ego was lord upon his peacock seat
And Falsehood sat by him, his mate and queen:
The world turned to them as Heaven to Truth and God.
Injustice justified by firm decrees
The sovereign weights of Error’s legalised trade,
But all the weights were false and none the same;
Ever she watched with her balance and a sword,
Lest any sacrilegious word expose
The sanctified formulas of her old misrule.
In high professions wrapped self-will walked wide
And licence stalked prating of order and right:
There was no altar raised to Liberty;
True freedom was abhorred and hunted down:
Harmony and tolerance nowhere could be seen;
Each group proclaimed its dire and naked Law.
A frame of ethics knobbed with scriptural rules
Or a theory passionately believed and praised
A table seemed of high Heaven’s sacred code.The whole description is the rule of might, the rule of ignorance that you find even prevalent in our present times.
Another description of the same world, about five lines from the bottom on page 211.
Around him crowded grey and squalid huts
Neighbouring proud palaces of perverted Power,Wherever there are multi-storied mansions, around them it has become a common sight in India to have squalid huts, slums. This juxtaposition of palatial multi-storied buildings and squalid huts is also found in that world of ignorance that Aswapati explores.
Inhuman quarters and demoniac wards.
A pride in evil hugged its wretchedness;
A misery haunting splendour pressed those fell
Dun suburbs of the cities of dream-life.
There Life displayed to the spectator soul
The shadow depths of her strange miracle.
A strong and fallen goddess without hope,
Obscured, deformed by some dire Gorgon spell,
As might a harlot empress in a bouge,
Nude, unashamed, exulting she upraised
Her evil face of perilous beauty and charm
And, drawing panic to a shuddering kiss
Twixt the magnificence of her fatal breasts,
Allured to their abyss the spirit’s fall.
Across his field of sight she multiplied
As on a scenic film or moving plate
The implacable splendour of her nightmare pomps.It’s a terrible, terrible picture that Sri Aurobindo gives here. Very often people who have read something that Sri Aurobindo has said of the glorious dreams he has for mankind, quickly come to the conclusion, that he knows nothing of the ugliness of this world, the cruelty, the injustice or that he was in Pondicherry in blissful retreat, lost in some kind of ecstasy for 40 years. People who say this must read Savitri for some of the darkest, ugliest pictures of man, what he is capable of doing to his fellow men, are all found here. Savitri was not written by somebody who doesn’t know his world. The yogi who sat here in Pondicherry knew before the first atomic device was exploded even experimentally, what the explosion was going to bring. He has mentioned in a poem the devastation that nuclear power is going to bring.
So Sri Aurobindo when he talked about the glorious dreams of man never forgot how limited man is, how beast-like he is, he knew all this and yet he dared to hope, he dared to dream. And when he talked about the future, when he talked about the supramental consciousness, he says nothing on earth can prevent its advent. He says, “Even if the entire world were to say that I’m wasting my time I won’t be deterred. I am absolutely convinced that this dream is going to be one day a reality.” And he said this in spite of his knowledge of all the limitations of man, his tendency to hurt himself, to hurt his fellowman. Wasn’t Sri Aurobindo the very first person who knew what Hitler was, wasn’t he the first statesman who cautioned the world at that time? He said, this a representative of the asura, this man must be defeated. He knew what Hitler was capable of doing and yet he had his firm belief, firm conviction that man will transcend all these limitations—Savitri is a token of his faith in man and his future.
(to be continued...)