A BOOK-REVIEW
Dictionary of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. Compiled from the Writings of
Sri Aurobindo by M.P.Pandit. Sponsored by C.C. Mulgund.
Dipti Publications, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry,
1966. Rs.10.¹
This is a most welcome addition to the various experiments in compiling passages from Sri Aurobindo to serve particular practical ends. What Sri Aurobindo has written on Culture, on Science, on Education, on Yoga - we have had fine anthologies of such matter, the largest and of the greatest interest being on the last-named theme. But these, in spite of helpful headings, cannot immediately enlighten one on a question vexing one's unhelpful head. An alphabetical arrangement, combing all the works of Sri Aurobindo for pronouncements that would pointedly assist one towards a specific goal, is an excellent inspiration.
And the purpose for which the present book has been made by M.P. Pandit goes to the very heart of the Aurobindonian body of the Truth-Word. Yoga ("Yoga means union with the Divine, but it also means awaking first to your inner self and then to your highest self, - a movement inward and a movement upward", as one of the definitions in the book has it ²) - Yoga is indeed the luminous centre of Sri Aurobindo's action in the world, and to be able to consult him at a moment's notice and draw the rays of his seer-wisdom on to a pressing problem is a boon.
Nor is Pandit's Dictionary a treasure-trove for just a coterie of spiritual aspirants. The very nature of Sri Aurobindo's personality and authorship breaks through an exclusive utility. This Master of the Via Mystica is at the same time, in a super-Aristotelian sense, "the Master of those who know" (to quote a phrase from Dante) and, we may add, the Master of all who love literature. Philosopher and stylist at every instant, Sri Aurobindo
¹. Printed at the Jupiter Press Private Ltd., Madras-18.
². P. 312.
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comes out in the Dictionary not only as a boon to disciples bent on Yoga but also as "boon nature" to students looking for ideas and as "a boon companion" to connoisseurs of the mot juste.
Just one example picked out from the section we have already opened will serve to illustrate the threefold drive of Sri Aurobindo. Here are psycho-spiritual profundity, intellectual perspicacity and literary felicity - and all with a natural ease befitting what was written by way of a letter to a disciple:
"Yoga and Occident: The difficulties of the occidental nature are born of the dominant trend of the European mind in the immediate past. A greater readiness of essential doubt and sceptical reserve; a habit of mental activity as a necessity of the nature which makes it more difficult to achieve a complete mental silence; a stronger turn towards outside things born of the plenitude of active life; a habit of mental and vital self-assertion and sometimes an aggressively vigilant independence which renders difficult any completeness of internal surrender even to a greater Light and Knowledge, even to the divine influence - these are frequent obstacles.
"But these things are not universal in Westerners; they are super-structural formations, not the very grain of the being. They cannot permanently stand in the way of the soul, if the soul's aspiration is strong and firm, if the spiritual aim is the chief thing in the life."³
Yes, the lexicographer cannot help bringing out Sri Aurobindo in a trmürti aspect - Brahma of the Creative Word, Vishnu the World-Preserver and Dharma-Saviour, Shiva the Destroyer of Darkness. But naturally the stress falls on the main work for which the Truth-Consciousness that is Sri Aurobindo brought East and West together in one living light of all-round development. And many indeed are the flashing surprises of insight the seeker of the Spirit receives on turning the pages. The present reviewer has been an assiduous reader of the Aurobindonian corpus, but he has been happily struck with several discoveries - or, rather, with the springing of several known lines of Sri Aurobindo's thought and teaching into sudden bright relief. The trouvailles range from cross-illuminations on a surface spot to specialist information on subtle details and little peeps into huge depths.
³ . Pp. 310-11.
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Thus there is a double approach to difficulties in one's nature:
"When there is something in the nature that has to be got over, it is always drawing on itself incidents that put it to the test till the sadhaka has overcome and is free....4 It very often happens that when there is an exceptional power in the nature, there is found in the exterior being some contrary element which opens it to a quite opposite influence."5
Again, we have the arresting definition of the cross-symbol: "Sign of the Divine Descent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which turns life into a state of suffering and misfortune."6 To pass from the sublime to what may seem ridiculous but is still a terror for all its tinyness, the dream of teeth falling is given its de-terrifying significance which has even a subliming touch: "The falling of teeth means disappearance of old or fixed mental habits belonging to the physical mind."7
Finally, here are two bits of "inlook" achieved effortlessly. First, on how Knowledge can by itself be Power: "Knowledge, when it goes to the root of our troubles, has in itself a marvellous healing power as it were. As soon as you touch the quick of the trouble, as soon as you, diving down and down, get at what really ails you, the pain disappears as though by a miracle."8 Next, on what the Ideal Prayer is: "Not prayer insisting on immediate fulfilment, but prayer that is itself a communion of the mind and heart with the Divine and can have the joy and satisfaction of itself, trusting for fulfilment by the Divine in his own time."9
In an undertaking which calls for a concentrated and systematic movement of study over a vast terrain, a few slips or omissions are bound to occur. If we notice any of them, it is not in the mood of cavil but with the aim of helping the second edition. We are sure a perfectionist like Pandit will welcome our procedure.
One feels a small oversight in the definition of "aparārdha": "Lower half of world-existence: Mind, Life, Matter."10 This has sanction from Sri Aurobindo's pen, but strictly speaking either in early writings or in a special universe of discourse. It was valid when beyond Mind he put Supermind in a wide connotation. Afterwards it could hold when he extended the range of Mind to
4. p. 29.
5. p. 42.
6. p. 44.
7. p. 274.
8. p. 143.
9. p.193.
10. p. 8.
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include in general the Spiritual Mind, the domain of the Cosmic Knowledge, which he described as standing between the Cosmic Ignorance and the Transcendental or Integral Truth - Supermind. But the definition falls short when he distinguishes Mind from Spiritual Mind as well as demarcates the highest grade of the latter - namely, Overmind - from Supermind. In the final detailed vision, the aparārdha begins with Overmind, of which Mind is the extreme lopsided diminution. Thus The Life Divine¹¹ says of Overmind: "It is a power, though the highest power, of the lower hemisphere." A reference to the Dictionary's own section on Overmind" can broadly clarify the point.
With assistance from the omitted portion of a passage appearing in that section and from a sentence in The Life Divine,¹² we may propose, instead of a single-titled entry, a double-titled one, expanding the present definition thus:
Parārdha, aparārdha: Higher and lower halves or hemispheres. A line is drawn between the higher half of the universe of consciousness and the lower half. The higher half is constituted of Sat, Chit, Ananda, Mahas (the supramental) - the lower half of Mind, Life, Matter. This line is the intermediary Overmind. In certain contexts, the knot of the two, the higher and the lower hemispheres, is where Mind and Supermind meet with a veil between them.
No doubt, the little lacuna we have somewhat heavily put our finger on can be defended on the ground that the distinction we have laboured is after all a fine philosophical nuance and the book is essentially one of day-to-day Yogic guidance.
In a guide to the Godly a couple of printer's devils may be considered odd presences; but, in a world of multitudinous mixture resulting from the Overmind's vidyā-avidyā, so rare an intrusion is almost an entry on the credit side. Indeed, only two misprints we have spotted of a possibly confusing type, and we are attending to them merely in order to save some readers' grey cells from getting greyer with puzzlement. But even this pair of errors can be relished once they are seen through. One of them constitutes a pleasant paradox of merging opposites by turning
11. SABCL Vol. 19, p. 952. 12. SABCL Vol. 18, p. 264.
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"none" into "more" in a sentence on "Absolute": "... It is the individual soul and all souls and more of them; it is the formless Brahman and the universe."¹³ The other instance effects an entertaining anagram on the nature of dead matter by giving us "cold" for "clod" in a phrase on the surrender, in "Adhyātma Yoga", to the transcendent, infinite and universal Personality who "informs with his being not only the Gods above, but man and the worm and the cold below."14 Such diminutive misprints are passing occurrences of mystification quite enjoyable in a compendium of mysticism. They are rather "intelligence tests" for the common reader than a blot on the reputation of the proof-reader.
Talking of "tests", one cannot - in closing the review of so useful and "luminiferous" a medium of vibrant Word meant to become Flesh in us - do better than quote an extremely helpful hint for all who are troubled on the spiritual path by "tests" when they make sincere efforts to overcome defects: "One does not always know whether it is the hostiles who are trying to break the resolution or putting it to the test (for they claim the right to do it) or whether it is, let us say, the gods who are doing it so as to press and hasten the progress or insisting on the surety and thoroughness of the change aspired for. Perhaps it helps most when one can take it from the latter standpoint."15
Rs.10 for a Dictionary of such secrets of Yogic attitude and action is almost like getting everything for nothing - and one may well include in "everything" on the material side a fine finish in printing and get-up and binding and jacket. No Aurobindonian can afford to go without this publication.
13. P. 2.
14. P. 3.
15. P. 29.
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The Goal and the Guide
Path to Perfection. Compiled from the Writings of the Mother
by Keshavmurti. Dipti Publications, Sri Aurobindo Ashram,
Pondicherry, 1968. Rs.12.
Close on the heels of M. P. Pandit's compilation, Dictionary of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, comes this ordered ensemble from another disciple, aiming to do for the Mother's writings what the former book did for the Master's. The work has been admirably done, spreading out in a super-rainbow spectrum of multiple tones the white light of the Mother's truth-consciousness.
The word "tones" is apt, for here we get not only the diverse shades of a spiritual being's vision-moulded thought but also the varied modulations of a living voice - the soft or strong, intimate or commanding, piercing or wide-vibrationed utterance of one who stands amongst us with a face and form at once human and divine. As we read the extracts we see her and hear her, we feel permeated with her personal aroma, as it were, and the alphabetical arrangement of the extracts renders this presence accessible at a moment's notice for a word of wisdom, as warm as it is luminous, on any problem of spiritual knowledge or practice.
Yes, a light, to make us both know and do, comes to us in these pages. The Mother, no doubt, does not philosophise in any intellectual fashion, but she often transmits in a systematised intellect-stirring shape the discoveries she has made in the realms of psychology, occultism, the universal consciousness, the transcendental being. To every subject discussed she brings a quickening insight. Sometimes the insight is simultaneously profound and piquant. Thus we read under Meditation and Progress: "The number of hours spent in meditation is no proof of spiritual progress. It is a proof of your progress when you no longer make an effort to meditate. Then you have rather to make an effort to stop meditating...." Equally felicitous and striking, with a flash of originality that goes to the heart of the theme, is the opening passage on Old Age: "Old age does not come with a great number of years, but with the incapacity or
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refusal to continue to grow and to progress. As soon as one wishes to settle down in life and to rest on the benefits of past efforts, as soon as one has done what one had to do, and accomplished what one had to accomplish, in short, as soon as one ceases to progress, to advance along the road to perfection, one is sure to fall back - to grow old."
"Progress" and "Perfection": here are the two guiding concepts, the two key-mantras. But what is the Perfection towards which we must progress? The Mother's answer is clear: "Perfection is not a maximum or an extreme. It is an equilibrium and a harmonisation.... Perfection is not a static state, it is a poise and a dynamic poise. The human being cannot attain perfection unless he comes out of himself. He must pass into a higher species or must give up this species to create another."
To evolve from the human into the divine: that must be the story of our progress. And here we may give a few glimpses of the Mother as the pragmatic Guru. "Nobody can say, 'there is no hope for me,' because the Divine Grace is there." - "The ego thinks of what it wants and has not. That is its constant preoccupation. The soul is aware of what it is receiving and lives in endless Gratitude." - "There is no better way to show one's gratefulness to the Divine than to be quietly happy." - "If you remember what you have given to the Divine, He will have no need of remembering it Himself; and if you were to mention the gift or speak of it to anybody, it is not to the Divine that you have made the offering but to the demon of your vanity." - "To give to the Divine what one has in excess is not an offering. One should give at least something out of what one needs."
On every page we strike upon living truths. Indeed, it seems as though with one single book in our hands we could hold the shining secret of fulfilling our lives. If any hands are still vacant of these 195 pages in their finely bound form, with a snow-white jacket bearing in gold letters a title that alliterates Time's movement with Eternity's plenitude, there is poverty indeed!
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To One on the Eve of a New-birth
Perhaps you want philosophical answers to your questions about the spiritual life you wish now to begin. But I am in a poetic mood and cannot pen you a discourse. All I can write is a sort of birthday letter of the soul and send you my best wishes by giving you in a few flashes what I feel and see from several sides.
What is the spiritual life? Every moment a remembrance of God, every moment an offering to God, and no prayer for any gift from God save God's own self!
And what is God! An infinite stillness behind all motion, an infinite motion without losing that stillness. A pure radiance within, an immense grace above, a myriad love around, a dense delight below. A perfection that needs nothing yet refuses nothing - not even the least of tributes. He holds in Himself the fulfilment of all desires when He is desired for His own sake. A King, He is to be served directly and not alone through service to His subjects: family, friends, society, the nation, all mankind, the whole earth, the entire universe - these you may serve yet not find Him unless you hold Him to be more than these. Nor is He a cold vacuity stripped of the colours of life: when life's colours are stripped away from Him, they fall like clothes from a naked body burning with love. But remember that in the love of this nakedness your own body is lost and forgotten.
Yes, lost and forgotten in the sense that its usual greed and jealousy and ambition have play no longer. There is, however, a sense in which the body must never be thrust out of thought. The clay from which we are made, the clay that is also the cosmos our body lives in - surely it did not emanate from the Spirit in order to get belittled and cast aside. The physical world is a form of the Spirit, a mode of slow struggling manifestation. Its impurities are to be shed but we are placed in it for realising God in physical terms and as part of the body's daily experience.
Men ask for strange signs from Eternity - I for nothing except daydawn and nightfall. The golden sun within the immeasurable blue and the silver stars against a black infinity are revelations enough for me of God magnificent and God mysterious. Not that my aspiration should stop with these phenomena; but they suffice for a start of the soul's journey. No other apocalypse is
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needed to set us on our way to the supreme Truth. Nor will that Truth be ours in full unless it finds in the revolvings of Nature its last even as its first apocalypse. Not in subtle meditation or rarefied love away from the visible objects is the Spirit finally possessed; it is through our two common eyes seeing far and seeing deep that the Eternal fulfils Himself in us. No amount of holding the Divine in a beyond of trance can satisfy us: He can be for our earth-life a lasting reality only if we behold Him every time we behold the universe.
And this beholding can best be done and at the same time the impurities cleaned from the temple of the body if we submit ourselves to the ancient practice of sitting at the feet of a Guru. The Teacher and the Master in flesh and blood, the Man of accomplished Yoga, is the safest as well as the easiest gate of entry into the Ineffable - and it is the gate that leads us deepest into the beatific destiny awaiting creatures of flesh and blood. He takes us out of the ego's prison that in various cunning ways can darken our sight and impede our search: he also takes us into the light our flesh and blood secretly are, the crystalline palace into which the ego's prison must grow.
O mystic about to be born, would you that your aspirations were crowned with success? The crown will come most quickly from the Guru's touch of blessing, day after day, upon your head.
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