Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)

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What you have written about "International Spiritualism" is correct in essence. By the way I should like you to speak not of Spiritualism but of Spirituality. The former term has now popularly acquired a special meaning, referring to communication with the spirits of the dead through mediums. As for certain experiences being not exclusively Indian, the lines you have quoted from Wordsworth clearly show the truth of your contention. But Wordsworth's Prelude and other mystical poems are not typical of Western spirituality. The West is Christian, and to the bulk of Christians the universe is not something emanating from the Divine and ultimately God-stuff, with a "within" and a "without" to be realised as wonderfully balanced as Wordsworth perceives. The universe in the orthodox Christian view is a creation by a supra-cosmic deity "out of nothing" and substantially different from Himself. Christianity has a horror of pantheism - because it believes that pantheism would exclude Divine Transcendence and annul all moral values. European pantheism does tend to restrict the Divine to the universe. Indian pantheism does not, it is just one aspect of a complex and many-sided spirituality such as the West does not know except in a few scattered individuals. Even Wordsworth who knew it in his early life reacted against it later and became an orthodox Churchman just as in politics the revolutionary of his early days died and stiffened into an ultra-conservative. The Christian milieu was too strong for him and he could not himself bring his mind to be on comfortable terms with the Vedantic mysticism which ran through his best poetry. In one of my articles in Mother India ("A Poet's Sincerity"), I have mentioned that the best known stanza in the great Immortality Ode had no clear roots in Wordsworth's thought and he expressly denied believing in its contents when he was asked about the matter. How then can you suggest that Indian spirituality is not typically Indian but international?

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Of course, we do not wish to say that the West is incapable of such spirituality or that it has absolutely nothing of it. Hut on the whole there is certainly an absence in the West of what is common air and water to the Indian spiritual aspirant. Further, Indian spirituality is assimilative and progressive - it can take into itself all the finest and deepest of Christianity -but Christianity knows itself only by opposing itself to Indian spirituality, by which it mostly understands a Western-type pantheism or Shankarite Illusionism (without appreciating Shahkara's lifelong devotion to the Divine Mother). Illusionism itself is misunderstood as landing the mystic in material unconsciousness instead of in spiritual superconsciousness. Look at what the most progressive Christian - Teilhard de Chardin - has to say on Indian spirituality in general. He rejects it - for all its fascination through its sense of the cosmic - with horror and even tries to explain away his own pantheistic inclinations in terms of orthodox Roman Catholic theology!

We are not by any chance fanatics of Indianism but it should be clear that the future spirituality, multi-faceted, all-embracing, even science-coloured, can arise only from an Indian basis and with an Indian background. Has it not struck you that Sri Aurobindo, who calls the whole world to his Integral Yoga and who sets up no barrier to the claims and capacities of the true soul whether in the Occident or the Orient, goes back only to the Vedas and the Upanishads and the Gita and the Tantra for his spiritual antecedents? He was himself more Westernised than any Indian of a comparable calibre - but he came to see, as soon as he plunged into the ocean of spiritual realisation, that nowhere except in India could there be the basis of a world-spirituality. No doubt, he has gone beyond all that traditional India has taught, but the hints and glints of his integral spirituality could be traced by him only in neglected or forgotten parts of old Indian scriptures. We are Aurobindonians and thus belong to the future and are more than Indians, but the time has not come yet to put the world on a par with India in spirituality and we

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cannot set aside the background of India's illumined past in relation to the Aurobindonian future.

Sri Aurobindo's Ashram stands in India. It is to India that the world has to turn to become Aurobindonian - and this is because India is always more than Indian and holds the best promise of being Aurobindonian. In our modernism and our eclecticism and our universalism let us not underrate the role and the soul of Mother India. We shall be most modem, most eclectic, most universal if we remember what Mother India essentially is. You must have seen that in our monthly review of culture we deal with all sorts of topics and not merely Indian ones but we should not repudiate the vastly nourishing milieu of the Spirit that is our country, .

(3.10.1970)

I am sorry I have delayed replying to your kind and considerate letter of inquiry about certain subjects. As for the question of historicity of Rama and Krishna, Sri Aurobindo is positive about the actual existence of the latter. One of his most interesting statements about Krishna is to the effect that it is a great thing to know that at least once in human history the Divine has definitely touched the earth. In regard to Rama he has said that the Ramayana is a mingling of fact and fiction on the one hand and on the other of events of earth with events of other planes of being. Whether there existed a particular person whom we identify as Rama, son of Dasa-ratha, is not certain but someone who performed an evolutionary function - namely, of establishing in man the dharmic (moral-religious) mind and averting the strong alternative trend towards both the titan and the vital-animal consciousness - was a necessary part of the human past. Someone Rama-like was assuredly there and Valmiki has so projected him that all his actions bear the stamp of an Avatar's universal consciousness. Sri Aurobindo declared that he could clearly recognise the Avataric afflatus in all the decisions and deeds of Valmiki's Rama. I think that for all prac-

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tical purposes the basic Rama can be taken to be as historical as the Krishna of the Mahabharata.

You have mentioned Dr. Kanaiyalal Munshi as "calling the Ramayana a great literary work while expressing no opinion about the Mahabharata". When the archaeologist B.B. Lai excavated the various sites listed in the Mahabharata and, finding there the ceramic known as Painted Grey Ware, dated the sites to about 850 B.C. in accordance with the Indologist Pargiter's chronology, Munshi was exultant over the finds as indicating the life-style of the period depicted in that epic. Picturesquely he exclaimed that now we have in our hands "Duryodhana's feeding-bottle"! The historian and epigra-phist, D.C. Sircar, in a letter to me, poohpoohed the notion that the actual time and life-style of the Bharata-War period had been discovered: he was even sceptical whether there was ever such an event as the Bharata War. Most Indian historians don't share Sircar's scepticism, but, as you note, the datings differ. My dating of Krishna - either 1482 or 1452 B.C. - which involves that of the Bharata War has the support of S.R. Rao's recent marine excavation at Dwaraka: the drowned Dwaraka of roughly the fifteenth century B.C. which he has found tallying very well with the drowned Dwaraka of the Mahabharata story. Other researchers have postulated times different from mine, but I don't believe anybody has really suggested, as you say, 250 B.C. as the date. You draw my attention to the article "The Pandyas and the date of Kalidasa" in the March 1994 Mother India, p. 191. But you are mixing up the poem Mahabharata and the Bharata War whose story it recounts. The author of this article is talking of the poem and not of the War. Similarly he is talking of the poem Ramayana which he dates to the first century B.C. I have found no valid reason so far to doubt my chronology for Krishna.

I was impressed as well as amused by your following line of argument: "The existence of Rama and Krishna temples all over Asia cannot make them historical persons. They are such powerful personalities that people accepted them as true life figures. We have an example of a recent such incident. Some 10-15 years back a Hindi movie 'Jay Santoshima' was pro-

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duced and it became a great hit. Its impact was so great in the Hindi belt that people, particularly the village folks, started believing that 'Santoshima' was a real-life deity. As a result dozens of temples dedicated to 'Santoshima' cropped up in Bihar and U.P. and many of them even today have a good following and people believe that 'Ma' gives success to real believers. Rama and Krishna can be similar 'Santoshimas' of an earlier period."

You have very pointedly shown the possibility that Rama and Krishna were non-historical. But on behalf of Krishna we can put up a defence. In the second chapter of Essays on the Gita Sri Aurobindo tells us about him: "We meet the name first in the Chhandogya Upanishad where all we can gather about him is that he was well-known in spiritual tradition as a knower of the Brahman, so well-known indeed is his personality and the circumstances of his life that it was sufficient to refer to him by the name of his mother as Krishna son of Devaki for all to understand who was meant. In the same Upanishad we find mention of King Dhritarashtra son of Vichitravirya, and since tradition associated the two together so closely that they are both of them leading personages in the action of the Mahabharata, we may fairly conclude that they were actually contemporaries and that the epic is to a great extent dealing with historical characters and in the war of Kurukshetra with a historical occurrence imprinted on the memory of the race."

I appreciate the sympathetic picture you have conjured up of me and the instinctive sense you have of my temperament: "Sir, I know you are 89 and a virtual invalid. I also know that I should not be putting any additional load on your already overburdened life, and yet I have a feeling that you may like to clear the doubts from the minds of persons like me. There may be many."

This letter in reply to 'yours has been written very gladly and without any sense of strain. Although I am confined to a wheelchair I am extremely happy at heart and psychologically feel no sign of old age.

(17.4.1994)

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I was glad to read your letter. There is sincerity in your search for the Divine. But I would not advise you to be over-hasty in shunning your family life when your wife is eager to continue it. You may carry on its normal course. Then your wife will not feel that your attempt at spirituality is something against her. Don't let adverse vibrations be created from her side. But you should inwardly offer at the Mother's feet every part of your family life. Let the flame of "remembering and offering" burn steadily within you without its standing in the way of cordial relations with your partner.

Your wife's dream clearly shows she's a genuinely religious person. To be so naturally in touch with Shiva is rather rare. And her attempt to climb a gigantic hill to reach a Shiva-temple or Shiva-symbol at the top proves the strength of her devotion. The actual intercession by Shiva on her behalf by coming and catching her hands when she was at a dangerous height is proved by her getting so soon the boon she had asked of him. To get in a short time what she had failed to get for years - namely, a job - is a rare phenomenon. It is made rarer by the fact that the job was a very good one and that it was got without the usual practice of what you euphemistically call a "donation".

You may tell your wife that many people who have come in contact with Sri Aurobindo have felt a very strong element of the Shiva-poise and Shiva-peace in him: If we think of Sri Aurobindo as an Avatar, I would say that in traditional terms he could be considered as much an incarnation of Shiva as of Vishnu.

If you can very quietly open your wife's eyes to this vision, much if not all of the division she feels between her religious life and your Yogic practice will vanish.

I would wish your wife and you to live in as much harmony as possible. Neither you nor she should think that the inner paths which both of you are following are far apart. I don't see why essentially they should not be concordant - especially if, as I am inclined to believe, both of you love each other.

(22.4.1994)

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You have asked me what hearing Yoga could have on Industry. The importance of Yoga for Industry may be realised if we attend to a few facts.

Industry can flourish only when there is industrial peace, which depends largely on good behaviour and healthy relations between management and labour.

To behave rightly, one must have the qualities of tolerance, love, kindness and joyfulness. Good behaviour is only possible when people rise above narrow-mindedness and selfishness.

Of course, an attempt to observe ethical rules by willpower is always to be encouraged; but it cannot be effective at all times. The reason is that one is acting as if one's natural bent were in the opposite direction and as if one had always to control one's nature. The assumption appears to be that one is naturally narrow-minded and selfish.

Now, the ancient philosophy of Yoga tells us that there is a divine centre in each of us - a centre which is a spontaneous source of tolerance, love, kindness and joyfulness, because it holds in each individual a sense of the One Self of all who is also the Supreme Being, the Infinite, the Eternal, the Godhead, the Highest Truth and Goodness and Beauty and Power.

The philosophy of Yoga further tells us that if we quiet our minds and concentrate our hearts upon the divine reality within us as well as everywhere we shall become conscious of the centre of our being, which is naturally a representation of this reality. Thus we establish contact with what is intrinsically and effortlessly tolerant, loving, kind and joyful.

A little daily exercise in such quieting and concentrating will make us better members of society and help greatly the relationship between management and labour. A fine sense of co-operation and equality will also arise, and the background of inner peace which will be realised will go even to make the mind more imaginative and creative so that better means of promoting industry are likely to be found.

(1974)

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You want to know how to study The Life Divine first as a sadhak and secondly as one who intends to deliver lectures now and then at Sri Aurobindo Centres.

You have to understand what sort of book The Life Divine is. No doubt it is addressed to the intellect but it is at the same time, as Aldous Huxley wrote to Dilip Kumar Roy, an extraordinarily fine piece of literature and, chiefly, a mass of spiritual knowledge couched in intellectual and literary terms. This spiritual knowledge is from what Sri Aurobindo has called the Overmind. The Overmind has a vast massive universal vision and looks at quite a multitude of things, appreciating the characteristic of each yet holding the multiplicity together. And the entire ensemble comes alive because of the literary language which is not a grace superadded but an integral part of the Overmind's natural manifestation in words.

So, if you want to know The Life Divine in its true form you have to be receptive to it on a number of levels. And unless you know it in its true form you will not be a true channel of communication between it and your audience.

As you go on reading, mark the passages that appeal to you most as well as those which strike to your mind the greatest note of originality. Also tabulate in numerical order the various steps leading to "the height of the great argument", as Milton would have put it. You have both to enjoy and to absorb the splendid process - or rather the grand procession of Sri Aurobindo's illumined thought. If enjoyment has not been there, you will not be able to set the mind of your audience on fire. Of course, you have to avoid being superficially rhetorical or cutting dramatic capers. Expounding The Life Divine is a serious business, but if your experience of it has made you say to yourself in those words from a sonnet of Sri Aurobindo's

I have drunk the Infinite like a giant's wine

something of your profound pleasure will keep your audi-

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ence relishing all that you set forth. And in setting it forth try to bring out the difference between ordinary philosophical brain-work and "the titan winging of the thought" which is the natural movement of the "overhead" consciousness and especially the Overmind's comprehension of totalities and apprehension of details.

I may draw your attention particularly to one patch of super-excellence in this book, the shortest chapter in it and even more than the rest of the volume a blend of simplicity with grandeur. I mean the very first chapter: "The Human Aspiration". It is most direct in its exposition but backed by a many-sided survey of the whole of the universe. It lays out, step by step, the ground-plan in a sort of self-sufficient design which will later be seen to anticipate all the circlings of the Overmind vision, yet which at first sight looks rounded off in a clean-cut summary. Its thought stands all the time on the ground though always with an os sublime, a face turned upwards to

The joy that beckons from the impossible.

This seeming unattainable is shown with a sweet severity, as the only logical goal because

Earth's winged chimeras are Truth's steeds in heaven,

The impossible God's sign of things to be.

(6.6.1994)

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