Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

The Soul in Anguish

IT is very interesting to observe how in the modern epoch depths of consciousness. are being dug up and laid bare to the common gaze, even like the archaeological finds of great antiquity and of immense value that are springing surprise after surprise upon our present-day civilisation. In our inner explorations too we have often come to strike psychological veins of unusual importance and significance. It is natural to the Yogin to do so; for it is the business of his life. But even thinkers and philosophers who do not ostensibly lead the mystic life are arriving at judgments and conclusions that are not normally warranted or covered by the unaided activities of the human reason. That proves once more that man is not reason alone, that he has other faculties to go by even in the field of ordinary knowledge.

A range of mystics and philosophers or philosopher-mystics from Kierkegaard to Sartre have made much of the sentiment of "anguish". Naturally, it is not the usual feeling of grief or sorrow due to disappointment or frustration that they refer to, nor is it the "repentance" which is a cardinal virtue in the Christian spiritual discipline. Repentance or grief is for something amiss, for some wrong done, for some good not done. It has a definite cause that gives rise to it and determinate conditions that maintain and foster it: and therefore it has also an end, at least the possibility of an ending. It is not eternal and can be mastered and got over: it is of the category of the Sankhyan or Buddhistic dukhatrayabhighata – for that matter even the lacrimae rerum (tears inherent in things) of Virgil* are not eternal.

But the new Anguish spoken of is a strange phenomenon: it is causeless and it is eternal. It has sprung unbidden with no
------------------------

*Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt [Aeneid, 1. 462]

Page 375

antecedent cause or condition: it is woven into the stuff of the being, part and parcel of the consciousness itself. Indeed it seems to be the veritable original sin, pertaining to the very nature. Kierkegaard makes of it an absolute necessity in the spiritual constituent and growth of the human soul – something akin to, but deeper, because ineradicable, than the Socratic "divine discontent". Sartre puts it in more philosophical and rational terms, in a secular atmosphere as a kind of inevitable accompaniment to the sense of freedom and responsibility and loneliness that besets the individual being and consciousness at its inmost core, its deepest depth.

I was speaking of the depth, of the sounding of consciousness in present-day inquiries into human nature. Sartre's investigation links itself up with the eternal inquiry graphically and beautifully described in the famous parable of the Taittiriya Upanishad (III).

In his quest for Brahman, Bhrigu came in contact first of all with the material existence and so took Matter to be the ultimate Reality. He was asked to move on and at the next step he met Life and considered that as Brahman. He was asked to move farther on and at the third stage he found Mind which then appeared to him as the Reality. He had to proceed farther and enter and pass through other higher formulations till finally he entered the highest expanse (parame vyoman). Now applying the parable to the situation today and the modern quest we can say that Science like Bhrigu is at the first step – and, for some, stuck there contented like the Asura Virochana of another Upanishadic parable, although it has become fidgety and somewhat uncertain in recent times: some others – the "vitalist" scientists and philosophers – are in the second stage. And yet there is a third category, the idealist philosophers generally, who are emerging from the second into the third.

It seems that the School of Anguish is on the borderland between the second and the third stage, that is to say, the vital rising into the mental or the mental still carrying an impress of the vital consciousness. It is the emergence of the Purusha consciousness, the individual being in its heart of hearts, in its pure status: for it is that that truly evolves, progresses from level to level, deploying and marshalling according to its stress and scheme the play of its outward nature. Now the Purusha

Page 376

consciousness, as separate from the outward nature, has certain marked characteristics which have been fairly observed and comprehended by the exponents of the school we are dealing with. Sartre, for example, characterises this being – être en soi, as distinguished from être pour soi which is something like dynamic purusha or purusha identified or associated with prakrti – as composed of the sense of absolute freedom, of full responsibility, of unhindered choice and initiation. Indeed, Purusha is freedom, for in its own status it means liberation from all obligations to Prakriti. But such freedom brings in its train, not necessarily always but under certain conditions, a terrible sense of being all alone, of infinite loneliness. One is oneself, naked and face to face with one's singleness and unbreakable, unsharable individual unity. The others come as a product or corollary to this original sui generis entity. Along with the sense of freedom and choice or responsibility and loneness, there is added and gets ingrained into it the sense of fear and anxiety – the anguish (Angst). The burden that freedom and loneliness brings seems to be too great. The Purusha that has risen completely into the mental zone becomes wholly a witness, as the Sankhyans discovered, and all the movements of his nature appear outside, as if foreign: an absolute calm and unperturbed tranquillity or indifference is his character. But it is not so with regard to the being that has still one foot imbedded in the lower region of the vital consciousness; for that indeed is the proper region of anguish, of fear and apprehension, and it is there that the soul becoming conscious of itself and separate from others feels lone, lonely, companionless, without support, as it were. The mentalised vital Purusha suffers from this peculiar night of the soul. Sartre's outlook is shot through with very many experiences of this intermediary zone of consciousness.

The being immersed in Prakriti, as normally it is, in relation and communion with others, may entertain as a pleasure and luxury, the illusion of its separateness and freedom: it can do so at ease, because it feels it has the secret support of its environment, it is courageous because it feels itself in good company. But once it rises out of the environmental level and stands truly apart and outside it – it is the mental being which can do so more or less successfully – the first feeling is that of freedom, no

Page 377

doubt, but along with it there is also the uncanny sense of isolation, of heavy responsibility, also a certain impotence, a loss of bearings. The normal Cartesian Co-ordinates, as it were, are gone and the being does not know where to look for the higher multi-dimensional co-ordinates. That is the real meaning of the Anguish which suddenly invades a being at a certain stage of his ascending consciousness.

The solution, the issue out is, of course, to go ahead. Instead of making the intermediary poise, however necessary it may be, a permanent character of the being and its destiny, as these philosophers tend to do, one should take another bold step, a jump upward. For the next stage, the stage when the true equilibrium, the inherent reconciliation is realised between oneself and others, between the inner soul and its outer nature is what the Upanishad describes as Vijnana, the Vast Knowledge.

Page 378