The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8

The Significance of Dates

Does a particular date or a series of date's carry any special significance ?

The way of framing a calendar is a convention. If the convention is made general, as there is an attempt now to do, it can become a very powerful formation. But in order to become significant for many, many must first accept it. I mean by a formation an image infused with a force that makes it something living, an image which can be used as a symbol. There are people who may form images and use them as symbols, but all is done only for themselves, as in the case of dream-symbols. These are purely subjective and valid in so far as those people are personally concerned.

But if your calendar is adopted by almost the whole of mankind, then the symbol is capable of acting upon a very wide field. You can act upon the major population through this formation. As it is purely conventional, I repeat, it is fruitful only in the measure in which it has been accepted. If instead of millions of people who are now following the European calendar there were only three or four persons, then it would be symbolic only for these few. The thing itself has no value, its value depends upon the use you make of it.

Page 148

The conventions are useful as symbols, I said,— that is, they are a means to put you in contact with what is more subtle, to put what is material in contact with the more subtle. That is their use.

Here comes also the error which people make in respect of stars and horoscopes. For all that is simply a language and a convention. If you accept the convention you can use it for a particular work. But it has value and importance only in proportion to the number of people who believe in it. But if you simplify, the more you do so the more the thing becomes a superstition. For, what is superstition? It is the abuse of generalisation from a particular.

I always give the example of a person passing under a ladder. A man was working on its top-rung and accidentally he dropped his instrument on the person below who got his head broken. The witness of this whole incident then made a general rule that to pass under a ladder was a bad sign. Well, it is superstition pure and simple.

In fact, much of our knowledge originates in the same way. Thus, a certain medicine is found, because of favourable circumstances, to cure a number of people of a particular disease. Then it is announced that the medicine is an absolute remedy for that disease. But it is not true. If the same medicine is given to a hundred persons, it will affect them in a hundred different ways: sometimes the reactions are quite opposite. In no two cases will the result be similar. Therefore it is not the

Page 149

Virtue of the medicine itself that effects the cure. It is a superstition to believe in the absolute efficacy of medicines.

But going further we can say that there is very little difference between science and superstition! The only difference is in the manner of expressing oneself. If you take care to say like the scientists, "it seems it is like that, one might conclude that things appear like that" etc., etc., then it is no longer superstition. But if you assert point-blank, "it is like that", then you land in superstition.

Page 150