Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6

In what does the human touch consist? What is the thing that is specially and particularly human and is not found elsewhere, what makes man human – not merely animal and not solely godly?

Well, it is the mortal element in immortality, mortality immortalised. An animal is mere mortality, a god solely immortality, man a bridge between the two, partaking of both. What makes mortality exquisite and poignant – as sacred indeed as immortality – is that which touched the great poet Virgil who found for it a mantra, almost a mantra, fairly well-known: "lacrimae rerum" – tears of things. There is in mortality a spring that brings forth tear-drops. There is a pathos in the very constitution of mortal things which tends to make the eye liquid as it were. A god is not given to shedding tears, a god is after all the still silent spirit, aloof and away, "beyond the little voice that prays".¹ One

¹I may quote here the lines of two poets who point to this Immortality that is aloof, beyond and indifferent, cold and callous:

"Like winds or waters were herº ways:

They heed not immemorial cries;

They move to their high destinies

Beyond the little voice that prays."

– A.E.

(º The One Will in the Cosmos)

"Nos destins ténébreux vont sous les lois immenses

Que rien ne déconcerte et que rien n'attendrit,

Vous ne pouvez avoir de subites clemencies

Qui dérangent le monde, Ô Dleu, tranquille esprit!"

– Victor Hugo

Page 253

may recall here the famous Mahabharata story: it is the swayamvara of princess Damayanti. Damayanti is to choose (that is to say, find out) her hero Nala from among the assembled gods who all aspired for the hand of the beautiful Damayanti. In order to confuse and baffle Damayanti all the gods put on the appearance of Nala. How to find out? How to distinguish? Damayanti was given clue by the winking eye: human eyes wink, a god's never wink. The still unwinking eye is a god's: the human eye blinks or twinkles. That is how Damayanti recognised her human partner.

And it is precisely winking, we may say, that brings out the tear-drop – this is the hallmark of human nature. Winking or blinking means time-bound, time-made, i.e., mortality, therefore inevitably, tearfulness; on the other hand unwinking means the unbroken even stretch of eternity, i.e., immortality. It is this weakness in a thing ephemeral that opens up a secret spring in the human soul. It is a feeling, an elemental feeling that comes naturally perhaps to a humanly divine being, a saint such for example as Buddha. In this case it was named compassion, karuna – one whose being melted in deep sympathy (karuna – karunardra). In the Christian tradition it was called "pieta" (although it is not pity exactly), it is the foundation of the Christian virtue, charity, which was originally named "caritas", it is an exquisite feeling which is crudely called fellow-feeling, it is a deeper sympathy now and then termed empathy, the feeling of intimate togetherness in the root sense. It is not love either which belongs to another category of human feeling. It is in a way the very core of love, love transmuted and subtilised into its very essence: that is per haps the utmost limit of divinisation that is possible for the human element. Beyond it is the Brahman - advaitam, aksaram, anantam, – sunyam – the de-humanised divinity. An exquisite instance of this almost divinised human element – this residuum of humanity raised and taken into

Page 254

divinity is given by Sophocles in his Antigone.¹ The very first words that Antigone utters addressing her sister express wonderfully this feeling I am trying to express here – this feeling of union and compassion in an exquisite beauty of expression: it has a tone of human frailty – the frailty with which Shakespeare condemns womanhood but a frailty which a divine being does not disdain to own or accept. It is the wonderful integrator of two, rather twin beats – not the subsumption, fusion or annihilation of either in a super-unity, but a close intermingling of two vibrations weaving a magic harmony.

How far can the human be divinised? The Divine as Avatara does become human, almost totally – in appearance at least. One may recall not only the impulses and passions, all the foibles and lapses, even misdeeds liberally recorded of Sri Krishna. But this does not mean that the human has been divinised in him, the Divine has only assumed the human character and qualities, it is after all a disguise, it is an assumption, the adhyaropa of Maya upon Brahman. The Divine is beyond the Maya. The question remains then how far can human remain human and yet be truly divinised. The feeling, the experience in the heart of the saintly human being which we have variously described as commiseration, 'caritas', 'karuna', seems to set the limit of divinisation. There is love of course, but it is a dangerous and ambiguous term. The central truth and reality of love is Ananda – ananda in the category of Sat-chit-ananda. But there I am afraid the human element gets dissolved.

The tear-drop in the eye of the Divine seems to be the supreme status of the human in the Divine. Can one go farther?

We have seen in our Mother the tear-drop, the mark of her Grace, transmuted into her smile – the smile that is supremely divine and supremely human, the utmost elevation of both becoming one.

¹ O lovely head of Ismene, common to both,

born of the same self.

Page 255