Sri Aurobindo - some aspects of His Vision

PART II

SRI AUROBINDO AND

INDIAN CULTURAL RENAISSANCE

When I think of the subject my mind goes back to the nineties of the last century and the first decade of our century The urge for political freedom was becoming irresistible. In my memory I still see my old uncle scolding my elder brother, the late Sri C. B. Purani, for holding nationalist views as against the philosophy of moderatism; his arguments were logically sound.

The incident and the subsequent trend of events that followed brings home to us a great truth that the intellect is not always able to give correct guidance, especially in moments of individual or national crisis. Something else. some other power in man alone can give the Light.

The stalwarts like Sir P. M. Mehta, the lion of Bombay, G. K. Gokhale of the Servants of India Society, the disciple of M. G. Ranade, and others, men who certainly were patriots, were moderates. Their logic was indubitable, their premises were not mistaken; only their conclusion was wrong, their method effete and foredoomed to failure. India, they argued, had never been a nation politically; it is a subcontinent of many groups, speaking two dozen languages, unorganised, enslaved, disunited, poor. A disarmed people without a living national consciousness could only slowly march to the temple of freedom, particularly, when it has to challenge an empire over which the sun never sets. So, their method was ." prayer, petition and protest. " As it turned out, and it always turns out in such great causes ... " not failure but low aim was crime. "

It was a not a time for logic; there are times in the history of nations when the logic of material facts has to be laid aside. And Sri Aurobindo in those days did concede to the

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moderate argument and wrote : " Yes, externally we are nothing "; but he argued " spiritually we are everything. "

It was a time when there was a call, a call to every one in the nation; it was a time when the Mother called. And thank God, there were her children who disregarding all logic of facts responded to her call and ran to her rescue taking, as we say, their life in their hands. The feeling has been vividly preserved in the now famous letter to Mrinalini Devi by Sri Aurobindo fortunately brought to light unintentionally by the Police in the Vande Mataram trial. He wrote : " whereas others regard the country as an inert object, and know it as consisting of some plains, fields, forests, mountains and rivers I look upon my country as my Mother, I worship and adore her as mother. What would a son do when a demon is sitting on the breast of his mother and drinking her blood ? Would he sit down content to take his meals and go on enjoying himself in the company of his wife and children, or would he rather, run to the rescue of his mother ? I know I have the strength to uplift this fallen race; it is not physical strength, I am not going to fight with sword or with gun, but with the power of knowledge. The strength of the warriors is not the only kind of strength, there is also the power of the Brahman, which is founded on knowledge. " This was the logic of the soul of India which the small number of the nationalists, like Sri Aurobindo, followed.

After the nine nationalist leaders were deported from East Bengal the Jhalakati Conference was held in 1909. A photo of Ashwini Kumar Dutt, the deported leader, was placed in the presidential chair and Sri Aurobindo, the only leader who happened to be out being acquitted in the Alipur bomb case, declared from the platform : " Great as he is Aswini Kumar Dutt is not the leader of this movement Tilak is not the leader. .... God is the leader." He assur et the audience : " God is within you..... An immortal Power is

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working in you ". This faith was common to all the nationalist leaders. They strengthened the faith in the ultimate victory, taught the nation self-reliance, self-sacrifice and organisation.

Their patriotism had the fervour of religion. The farewell message which Sri Aurobindo gave to the students of the First National College in India in 1906 remains true, even today, for the whole student world of India. He said, " Work that she (India ) may prosper; suffer that she may rejoice."

But it was no narrow patriotism or collective ambition, for even in those days of political subjection he declared the aim of the political struggle.

" It was to save the light, to save the spirit of India from lasting obscurantism and debasement," Sri Aurobindo said: " God was raising the nation. Something must come from you which is to save the world. " That " something " was further made clear in the following words: " That something is what the ancient Rishis knew and revealed. " In the international field they saw " beyond the unity of the nation and envisaged the ultimate unity of mankind."¹

It was the time when the national consciousness lying dormant for centuries suddenly awoke and its dawn automatically emphasised the fundamental elements of India's culture, a spiritual attitude towards life, a dynamic faith in the guiding Divine Spirit.

Culture which is a collective creation is not like a house built of bricks; it is a mould of collective consciousness that organises life round values which it evolves during the course of its history. Culture is, more truly, a living organism that must change according to changing conditions. When a culture becomes rigid, i.e. unable to change, it becomes what Tagore calls Achalayatana', inert, a dead mass.

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¹ Speeches

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Like all organisms, a culture lives, grows, matures, decay and dies. But there is a difference which endows culture with a -power of longevity; it is the power of .revival. A culture that is vitally weak goes down and is either destroyed or changed beyond recognition by the impact of a more powerful culture. India came in contact with European culture and was dominated by it during the period of her decline. But the very impact of European ideas and literature, its political and social ideals, set into movement a powerful and many-sided revival of Indian culture.

The most important elements of the revival were: ( 1 ) the awakening of the religious spirit in new and vigorous forms; ( 2) the challenge to the political domination of England. Of course, there were literary and other revivals also. In those early years the only support on which the political movement could count was that of the spirit, a faith in the spirit of Indian culture, a living faith in India's destiny.

The need for political freedom is not merely for securing material well-being. The chief aim is to have freedom for the expression of the nation's Soul. Just as the individual has a soul so the collectivity or nation has a soul. Nearly thirty years after the movement Sri Aurobindo wrote : "Each nation is a Shakti, or power of the evolving spirit in humanity, and lives by the principle which it embodies. India is the Bharat Shakti, the living energy of a great spiritual conception and fidelity to it is the very principle of her existence. "²

It was the feeling and living out this great spiritual truth, the feeling of a living spirit of India, Bharat Shakti that enabled the small band of Nationalist leaden to fire the imagination of the masses, in fact, to transmit the flame from their hearts to the people and capture the political organisation from the Moderates. And later on

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² The Foundations of Indian Culture, P. 5

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the same movement broadened out by emphasising, through the great personality of Mahatma Gandhi, some salient ethical elements of our spiritual culture and applying them to political and social problems led India to freedom and gave a new ethical weapon to the world for the solution of international problems.

What is culture ? We have partly answered the question, but a further consideration is needed to make clear the foundations of a culture. There are two sides to a culture; one, political, social and external, including religious institutions, other institutions consisting of basic inner factors, the spiritual elements of a living culture. The external forms must go on changing and adapting themselves to changing historical conditions.

The inner elements remain the same. It is the persistence of these inner elements that gives permanency and maintains the individuality of a culture and makes it grow. An example would make the point clear. Let us consider the forms which the " will to freedom" assumed in the course of Indian History. In the 17th century, at the time of Shivaji, the movement for freedom started with the cry of " Swadharma " and " Swaraj " and the method adopted was guerilla warfare. After three centuries the same "will to freedom ' burst forth with the cry of " Vande Mataram " with a vision of free Mother India, and satyagraha was the method or the technique. The earlier movement ended in the establishment of the Maratha confederacy falling short of a united India and now the latest movement has given us a republic and a united India (though paradoxically, it has also brought the division of India along religious lines). Sri Aurobindo enumerates the essential elements of a culture : " The Culture of a people may be roughly described as the expression of a consciousness of life which formulates itself in three aspects : First, there is a side of thought, of ideal, or upward will and the soul's

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aspiration; then, there is a side of creative self-expression and appreciative aesthesis and intelligence and imagination; thirdly, there is a side of practical and outward formulation. "

The content of History may be said to be man's " search for harmony. " Culture is a " harmony of spirit, mind and body"³ Some form of harmony was attained by certain cultures in the past. We shall consider only three : ( 1 ) The Greek, (2) The Modern European, (3) The Ancient Indian. The Greek culture was the harmony of disinterested intellectual curiosity, flexible aesthetic temperament, a sense of form, a strong and beautiful body. The modern European culture is the harmony of practical reason, scientific efficiency, and economic capacity of man. It takes these powers as the whole truth of the human being. The Greek mind was " philosophical, aesthetic, political," the modern. mind is " scientific, economic, utilitarian." The ancient Indian culture arrived at the harmony of " the spiritual mind, intuitive reason informed by a religious spirit, a living. sense of the Eternal and the Infinite."4 During the, struggle for independence in India very few leaders saw beyond the political horizon. But there were some who saw that freedom was only a means and not an end, that ,a new India should emerge as a natural sequel. They saw that new India would have to meet the challenge of European culture with its vital drive, its scientific discoveries and economy-centric outlook. Indian culture is vast and complex : it has been constantly building new forms adopting them, adapting old forms, changing some and even destroying some. At one time it completely gave the outer forms of Buddhism which it had created.

There is an all-round meeting, mixing and clash of

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² The Foundations of Indian Culture.

4 Ibid

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values in the world today based on difference of cultures. And if Indian culture is not merely to survive but make its contribution to humanity today it must rebuild the life of new India on her own spiritual foundation adapted to the needs of the scientific age. This is the reason why Sri Aurobindo with his cosmic vision of human history wriets at length about Indian culture which contains some values that are indispensable to the conception of a perfect human culture.

There have been various attempts to rebuild life in India on a new basis. The powers behind a few of them may be mentioned here : (1) Raja Rammohan Roy (2) Swami Dayanand Saraswati, (3) Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, (4) The Theosophical Society, ( 5 ) Rabindranath Tagore, ( 6 ) Mahatma Gandhi, ( 7) Jawaharlal Nehru, (8) Sri Aurobindo. These great men have tried to live, according to their faith, the aspect of Indian culture which appeared to them the most important. An outline of the approach of each and its appraisal is all that can be attempted here.

Swami Dayanand began his reformist movement, really, when at the age of 13; seeing the rats going over the image of Shiva on a Shivratri night, he ran away from his house in Saurashtra in search of the truth of Indian religion. Becoming a Sannyasi, he studied the Vedas and courageously founded the Arya Samaj on the basis of the Veda, the first book of humanity, and the fountainhead of Indian Culture. He gave a new interpretation of the Veda, discarded untouchability, encouraged widow re-marriage and tried to stop the mass conversions of the poor in India to Christianity. He wanted to revive the old Vedic Society and Culture as he understood them and though he introduced many reforms in Hindu religious practice and society, he could not, (not being fully familiar with the elements and forces of Western Culture) see the necessity and the form of the synthesis

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that was necessary. That Indian Culture was far more elastic and capable of absorbing and assimilating new elements and even forces of a true culture did not strike him. The life of this bold genius was cut short at forty-eight as he was poisoned by his enemies while serving the cause of Vedic Religion. Sri Aurobindo has paid a glowing tribute to Swami Dayanand. Arya Samaj is the reformist religious organisation spread out not only in India but in many foreign countries. The Guru-Kula system of education is an attempt to mould the future generations into Vedic Aryans. The attempt has not succeeded in overcoming the stress of modern European culture on the minds of Indians even after freedom, perhaps because of its insistence on the externals of Indian Religion.

Rammohan Roy may be called an imitative reformer, if Dayanand is a protestant reformist. He was among the first to oppose the blind orthodoxy of Hindu Religion and to found the Brahmo Samaj based on some ideas of the Unitarian Church and Upanishadic Vedanta. He worked, even at great risk, for the emancipation of Indian womanhood. one of his outstanding achievements being the abolition of the sati. " Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of man " was the inspiring ideal of his life.

More than Dayananda and Rammohan Roy, Ramakrishna Paramahansa represents the neo-spirituality of modern India and marks a stage in the evolution of Indian spirituality. Sri Aurobindo paid a tribute to Sri Ramakrishna in 1908 :

" In Bengal there came a flood of religious truth. Certain men were born, men whom the educated world would not have recognised if that belief, if that God within them, had not been there to open their eyes, men whose lives were very different from what our education, our Western education, taught us to admire. One of them, the man who had the greatest influence and has done the

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most to regenerate Bengal, could not read and write a single word. He was a man who had been what they call absolutely useless to the world. But he had this one divine faculty in him, that he had more than faith and had realised God.... He was a man without intellectual training... such a man as the English- educated Indian would ordinarily talk of as one useless to society. He will say, " This man is ignorant, what does he know? What can he teach me who have received from the West all that it can teach ? " But God knew what he was doing. He sent that man to Bengal and set him in the temple of Dakshineshwar in Calcutta, and from North and South and East and West, the educated men, men who were the pride of the University, Who had studied all that Europe can teach, came to fall at the feet of this ascetic. The work of salvation, the work of raising India was begun. "

In another book on Yoga, Sri Aurobindo wrote about Ramakrishna as one " with a colossal spiritual capacity taking the kingdom of heaven by storm. "

Ramakrishna taught the modern world that religion is a matter of experience, not of professing or believing and that experience in all religions, ultimately, is the same. This is one of the fundamental truths on which any future world culture would have to be founded. A man without literary education is a standing challenge to the modern world, its scepticism, atheism and materialism. Through him the power of Indian spirituality, in its pure form, was effectively brought to the notice of the modern world. Ramakrishna and Vivekananda inspired nearly two generations of Indians when they were in bondage with self-confidence and pride in their culture. The Ramakrishna Mission; organised by Vivekananda carries out the work.

It is unfortunate that in recent years the spiritual work of Ramakrishna is put into the shade and the emphasis of

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outer social work for its own sake has gained ground.

Tagore's cultural contribution consists of his unique literary output and his educational institution, the ' Shantiniketan.' He burst into world fame with the Nobel Prize for the " Gitanjali ". From the vast literature he has created, it is possible to get an idea of his philosophy and his interpretation of Indian culture. The Upanishads, the works of the saints and mystics of the Middle Ages like Kabir, and aspects of Vaishnavism have influenced his outlook. He was a firm believer in international peace and Shantiniketan was started to promote it; he pointed out the dangers of exclusive nationalism. In his Gifford lectures he has worked out the conception of Vishwamanava, the collective man, a conception of growing perfection of the human being through collective effort. His influence has largely been active in the field of creative literature and fine arts.

Mahatma Gandhi through his long and active life tried what might be called, an ethico-politico-economic integration of Indian culture. Ethics is the basis of his outlook. His book ' Hind-Swaraj' gives most of his fundamental ideas on life and philosophy. Simplicity, non-possession ( of wealth), self-control and service are some of the elements on which India would rebuild her life. Among religions, Jainism, Vaishnavism and Christianity influenced him. Among leaders of thought Tolstoy inspired him. The rejuvenated India should, according to him, build her life on (1) rejection of machinery, (2) rejection of medicine, that is, of all the systems except naturopathy, ( 3 ) acceptance of absolute non-violence as the one method for the solution of all human problems. He equates non-violence with Truth. His contribution to the winning of India's freedom is very great, for, he led the Congress for thirty years in the political struggle with non-violence as the creed. His influence on Indian public life is far-reaching and his political philosophy of

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non-violence has attracted the attention of the world in this atomic age.

The cultural integration attempted by the Mahatma stressed the social aspect of ethics and religion, and created a demand for purity and integrity in public life which the ruling party in the country is not able to satisfy. Fasting as a method of achieving public welfare has found its limitations. Gandhi lays stress on the observance of Yama and Niyama and wishes to activate ethical values in the collective life. One may mention one result of the Gandhian outlook which seems to overlook some fundamental values. of Indian culture. In the stress for "doing" the more important fact of "being" is neglected. For instance, there are many today whom Ramakrishna does not strike as a " phenomenon ", a characteristic product of Indian culture, one who actually demonstrated that there is a divine element in man which is superior to his intellect and all other faculties, that knowledge can be acquired by a more direct method than the indirect, unsatisfactory and imperfect method of intellectual training. In the insistence on outer action the need for rising to a higher consciousness is often totally forgotten.

Jawaharlal Nehru, our great Prime Minister, has certainly put an indelible stamp upon our country, perhaps unintentionally. I say ' perhaps ' because it may be equally true that he may have arrived at not a stable integration, but a working, or a workable outlook which may be called "Secular Socialist"' or " Economic Socialist " or " Economic Secularist ". His Discovery of India " and " Glimpses of World History " give his vision of India and the world in modern context. He is a peculiar amalgam of the East and the West. To those like the late Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya or even, perhaps to Rajendra Babu, it would sound strange that an Indian has to ' discover ' India.

His acquaintance with and understanding of spirituality

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is limited, that is why though he is highly impressed by its popular manifestations like the Kumbha Mela at Prayag, he does not find it possible to canalise that tremendous energy for rejuvenating Indian Culture or building a New India. It may be due to the urgent need of industrialisation and his earnest desire to remove poverty from India that his mind is constantly turned to other countries whose technical and economic aid is indispensable.

India under his leadership may be said to have definitely given up the Mahatma's opposition to machinery, and embarked upon a historic programme of phenomenal proportions to rebuild Indian economy on the modern European model. His great service to the country is the promotion of scientific knowledge and research. This is a crucial step fraught with immense consequences to the culture of India and that of the world.

Of the three great men, Tagore, Gandhi and Nehru, none believed in renunciation of life. Tagore seeks aesthetic harmony and delight in life. To Gandhiji life is austerity, penance, tapasya, an adventure, a new discovery every moment. Some of these attempts at cultural rejuvenation seem to lack the very central springs of Indian culture. These may be regarded as three independent approaches to the problem of the Indian renaissance.

Sri Aurobindo's synthetic vision is cosmic and has the merits of comprehensiveness and clarity. It points the way to a new creation ( may I say, a world culture ? ) on sound foundations of our culture. Is he a mere revivalist, or only a proud nationalist who glories in the past ? Is he merely an enthusiastic exponent of our culture, a mere intellectual ?

He himself expresses his attitude to all human cultures:" There is here no real question between barbarism and civilisation, for all masses of men are barbarians, labouring to civilise themselves".5 He does not assert that Indian culture

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5 The Foundations of Indian Culture, P. 93

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is the highest and others are not needed or useful : "There is a need of divergent lines of advance until we can raise our heads into that infinity of the spirit in which there is a light broad enough to draw together and reconcile all highest ways of thinking, feeling and living ".6 He admits the imperfections of our culture : " Certainly, it was not perfect or final or complete ; for that can be alleged, of no past or present cultural idea or system... These structures in which he (man ) lives are incomplete and provisional "7 Still he says : " Each ( culture ) has achieved something of special value to humanity ". Further he observes: " Mankind is no more than semi-civilised and it was never anything else in the recorded history of its present cycle".8

As for reviving the past or living on its capital he says, " But to live on our capital without using it for fresh gains is to end in bankruptcy and pauperism. " Further he adds: " To shrink from enlargement and change is, too, a false confession of impotence. It is to hold that India's creative Capacity in religion and in philosophy came to an end with Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva and Chaitanya".9

He evaluates the two cultures and their achievements in following terms : " From the view of evolutionary future European and Indian Civilisations at their best have only been half achievements, infant dawns pointing to the mature sunlight that is to come"10. He can forecast a severe judgment of the future against the present : " The coming ages may look on Europe and Asia of today much as we look on savage tribes or primitive people".11 "Not only are there every-

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6 The Foundations of Indian Culture

7 Ibid P. 193

8 Ibid P. 199

9 Ibid P. 25

10.Ibid P.37

11. Ibid

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where positive, ugly, even ' hideous " blots on the life of man, but much that we now accept with equanimity, much in which we take pride, may well be regarded by a future humanity as barbarism or at least as semi-barbarous and immature ".12 He looks at the future and says: " But the real and perfect civilisation yet waits to be discovered; for the life of mankind is still nine-tenths of barbarism and one tenth of culture".13

In his great epic " Savitri " his vision rises to prophetic heights :

Ever the centuries and millenniums pass.

* * * *

The aeons ever repeat their changeless round,

The cycles all rebuild and ever aspire.

* * *

Huge revolutions of life's fruitless gyre,

The new-born ages perish like the old. 14

As to man :

" Nothing has he learnt from Time and its history;"15

" A growing register of calamities

Is the past's account, the future's book of Fate

The centuries pile man's follies and man's crimes

Upon the countless crowd of Nature's ills;"16

Holding that all human cultures are imperfect, why, it may be asked, does he take so much trouble to lay bare the foundations of Indian culture ? It is because, Indian culture stands for a great truth, an indispensable truth of human life and its perfection. In spite of India having achieved freedom there is still need for the defence and preservation of its fundamental values, for there is danger of their being

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12 The Foundations of Indian Culture P. 38

13. Ibid P.44

14.Savitri Book III, Canto 4

15 Ibid Book VI, Canto 2

16. Ibid Book VI, Canto 2

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neglected or destroyed. Other externally more powerful cultures have arisen and have challenged the basis of Indian culture. I believe there was a second reason also. Even great leaders are puzzled by the baffling complexity of Indian culture and are at a loss to find its true foundations. There was a need for a clear exposition of the integral foundations which would, in effect, be the international form of Indian culture. He declares : " The living aim of culture is the realisation on earth of the Kingdom of Heaven ".17

In Sri Aurobindo's vision the element of Tapas-concentrated force of consciousness, is not lacking. The programme he has put before the individual and the collective man is dynamic and its carrying out would require not only human but also divine Tapas. He advocates the pressing need of realising international unity and peace, which cannot be realised without active will. Harmony and beauty are, according to him, the highest attributes of the Divine. In addition to all these elements that are commonly stressed by the great leaders there is one element, the most fundamental, I believe, to our culture , in which Sri Aurobindo stands apart: it is in his insistence on founding life with the Divine as the centre. That is the element he has in common with Ramakrishna and I believe that it is the 'central stone in the arch of our ancient culture.

Sri Aurobindo has put the ideal before the whole of humanity because he sees it as the rational, nay inevitable culmination of the process of cosmic evolution and he points out that it is man's special privilege to be called upon to participate consciously in his own self-exceeding.

About the foundation of Indian culture Sri Aurobindo says : " Spirituality is, indeed, the master-key of Indian culture ". Nowadays the word ' Spirituality ' is being used in a vague sense and it is interpreted variously including at

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17. The Foundations of Indian Culture, p.8

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times, intellectual idealism, ethical effort, even social service. It is true that all elevating activities of man do contain some element of spirituality. But with regard to Indian culture it carries a definite sense.

Sri Aurobindo gives the meaning of what is spirituality :

" Spirituality has meant hitherto a recognition of something greater than mind and life, the aspiration to a consciousness pure, great, divine beyond our normal mental and vital nature, a surge and rising of the soul in man out of the littleness and bondage of our lower parts towards a greater thing secret within him."18

" The Indian idea of the world, of Nature and of existence is not physical, but psychological and spiritual. Spirit, soul, consciousness are not only greater than inert Matter and inconscient Force but they precede and originate these lesser things. All force is power, or means of a secret Spirit; the force that sustains the world is a conscious Will, and Nature is its machinery of executive power. Matter is body or field of a consciousness hidden within it, the material universe a form and movement of the Spirit. Man himself is not a life and mind born of Matter and eternally subject to physical Nature, but a Spirit that uses life and body. It is an understanding faith in this conception of existence... and it is the aspiration to break out in the end from this mind bound to life and matter into a greater spiritual consciousness that is the innermost sense of Indian Culture. "19

"The Indian believes that the ultimate truths are truths of the Spirit and that truths of the Spirit

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18 The Foundations of Indian Culture, P. 74-75.

19. Ibid P. 110-111.

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are the most fundamental and most effective truths ¦ of our existence, powerfully creative of the inner, salutorily reformative of the outer life"20

" Indian culture ... has held up the goal of a supreme and arduous self-exceeding as the summit of human endeavour."21

" Indian spirituality in its greatest eras and in its inmost significance has not been a tired quietism or a conventional monasticism, but a high effort of the human spirit to rise beyond the life of desire and vital satisfaction and arrive at an acme of spiritual calm, greatness, strength, illumination, divine realisation, settled peace and bliss. The question is ... whether such an endeavour is or is not essential to man's highest perfection. "22

" It must therefore be emphasised that spirituality is not a high intellectuality, not idealism, not an ethical turn of mind or moral purity and austerity, not religiosity or an ' ardent and exalted emotional fervour, not even a compound i of all these excellent things; a mental belief, creed or faith, an emotional aspiration, a regulation of conduct according to a religious or ethical formula are not spiritual achievement and experience. These things are of considerable value to mind and life, they are of value to the spiritual evolution itself as preparatory movements disciplining, purifying or giving a suitable form to the nature; but they still belong to, the mental evolution,-the beginning of a spiritual realisation, experience, change is not yet there. Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body. An inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter into

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20 The Foundations of Indian Culture, P. 66.

21 Ibid P. 80.

22 Ibid P. 86.

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contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also our own being, to be in communion with It and union with It, and a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact, the union, a growth or waking into a new becoming or new being, a new self, a new nature."23

Sri Aurobindo warns :

" The danger is that the pressure of dominant European ideas and motives, the temptations of the political needs of the hour, the velocity of rapid inevitable change will leave no time for the growth of sound thought and spiritual reflection and may strain to bursting-point the old Indian cultural and social system, and shatter this ancient civilisation. "24

" There is need to emphasise this aspect of our culture, for, even though India is politically free the danger to her culture is, perhaps, greater than ever before. "

Jawaharlal after signing the third five-year plan said; " It was a challenge to India -I believe in more than one sense - it is a challenge. At this critical time of history, India stands at the crossroads. She has embarked upon a huge programme of economic reconstruction, a programme which may be said to be befitting her greatness. We all want to banish poverty from the land. Let more food, more goods of all kinds be produced. But the whole effort poses a question of supreme importance. Are we to be victims of the age, helplessly driven to be like others or have we some contribution to make to the world's culture ? Let us produce more steel because it is necessary, but in the process of producing it the higher values evolved by our culture should not suffer. Let us not produce steel at the expense of the precious golden ore of the human material."

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23 The Life Divine, P. 763.

24 The Foundations of Indian Culture, P. 22

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Man, today, is trying to overcome the limits of outer i space without overcoming the limitations of his consciousness. Man seems to be on the point of being overcome by his own achievements unless he changes himself.

Forty years ago Sri Aurobindo saw that mere political, economic, social or any other external changes would not solve the problems of life though all may be attempted by man in his present state. The change required is psychological—an inner change. And he pointed out long ago that the inner change needed was far more radical than merely embodying ethical values. Living up to ethical values and ideals can be a stage, an important step, in the direction of the required change which is radical. A radical transformation of man's nature is needed. Such a radical change can come by putting spirituality in the centre of all human activities.

Sri Aurobindo sees the course of Indian history as a, gradual and chequered growth towards a complete spiritual; living. " It is her founding of life upon this exalted conception and her urge towards the spiritual and Eternal that constitute the distinct value of her civilisation. And it is her fidelity, with whatever short-comings, to this highest ideal' that has made her people a nation apart in the human world." ;

He therefore wants free India to accept boldly the challenge of the age and give the world a lead in solving problems of collective life by applying her spiritual ideals. He states: " A widest and highest spiritualising of life on earth is the last vision of all that vast and unexampled seeking and experiments in a thousand ways of the Soul's outermost and innermost experience which is the unique character of her past; this in the end is the mission for which she was born and the meaning of her existence. "

" There are deeper issues for India herself, since by following certain tempting directions she may conceivably

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become a nation like many others evolving an opulent industry and commerce, a powerful organisation of social and political life, an immense military strength, practising power-politics with a high degree of success, guarding and extending zealously her gains and her interests, dominating even a large part of the world, but in this apparently magnificent progression forfeiting its Swadharma, losing its soul. Then ancient India and her Spirit might disappear altogether and we would have only one more nation like the others and that would be real gain neither to the world nor to us." " It would be a tragic irony of fate if India were to throw away her spiritual heritage at the very moment when in the rest of the world there is more and more turning towards her for spiritual help and a saving Light."25

" A new creation of the old Indian Swadharma, not a transmutation to some law of the Western nature, is our best way to serve and increase the sum of human progress. "

" Either India will be rationalised and industrialised out of all recognition and she will be no longer India or else she will be the leader in a new world phase, aid by her example and cultural infiltration the new tendencies of the West and spiritualise the human race. That is the one radical and poignant question at issue. Will the spiritual motive which India represents prevail on Europe and create there new forms congenial to the West, or will European rationalism and commercialism put an end ever to the Indian type of culture?"26 " Creative assimilation is needed, a mastering and helpful assimilation

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25 The Foundations of Indian Culture, P. 25

26 Ibid P. 15.

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of new stuff into eternal body has always been in the past a peculiar power of the genius of India."

" The renaissance of India is inevitable as the rising of tomorrow's sun, and the renaissance of a great nation of three hundred millions with so peculiar a temperament such unique traditions and ideas of life, so powerful a' intelligence and so great a mass of potential energies cannot but be one of the most formidable phenomena of the modern world. "

Sri Aurobindo has lived the great spiritual Truth about which he has written; he is the embodiment of the Spiritual Reality which he affirms in his great works. He has contributed a body of vast literature embodying his vision of the Reality and man's destiny on earth. He has built up, in collaboration with the Mother, an Ashram which has grown into an international centre for the seekers of Spirituality and he has started. an International Centre of Education where the younger generation is being moulded for the future .human culture.

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