CWTVKS Volume 2

3) Is it Eclecticism? - A Reply

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Readers of The Advent are aware that some time ago there appeared in it serially the Tattwaprabha, ‘Lights on the Fundamentals’ which was later published in book-form in 1950. While it has received a good welcome from the Press and individuals even from distant quarters outside Madras, recently my attention was drawn to a solitary instance of bitter and hostile criticism⁴ laden with extravagant injustice meted out to the work by a light-hearted mind tarring it as a ‘pointless disservice’. This is so, notwithstanding the Prefatory Note which shows that this treatise was included in the list of works that can be considered as ‘service’! Now the object of my writing is not to answer the charges in detail and show that the critic is wrong. A contemptuous silence would have been the only right reply had he not used certain terms and thrown ideas which slyly, if not ambiguously, extend the attack using this small treatise as a jumping board on the System of Philosophy and Yoga to which I have thoroughly given myself these thirty years and more. The writer is clever and acts the admirer who appreciates The Life Divine, ostensibly in order to condemn this book in comparison, but really for a show-off of his learning and catholicity and use whatever information he may have obtained from reading these and similar books for self-gratification, appreciation, and also to sermonise on the probable unsoundness of ‘Emergent Evolution’ and his proficiency in the field of ‘alternate theories’. He is a connoisseur of the art of mnemonic verse composition and refers to Shankara, for comparison, and he has himself or mouths the opinions, ideas, preferences, prejudices and the rest current among Pundits of this school and that. He 'fabricates’ a title to this treatise as a ‘fabrication’ of Eclecticism and all dogma. He finds no theological tradition to support the statements made in the book, i.e. about the system expounded.

It is about this eclecticism and theory and dogma and the alleged absence of theological tradition that I propose to write here, not necessarily to convince the critic of his error but to make the position clear to those who are interested in getting a correct idea and true appreciation of what I have done on the basis of Sri Aurobindo's Teachings.

First about this system: it must be understood at the outset, as I have stated elsewhere, that Sri Aurobindo never wrote anything in the traditional spirit of orthodox exponents of systems, to win support for his teachings by proving their conformity to the accepted authorities. He saw that his own realisations bore testimony to the truths embodied in the teachings of the Gita, the Upanishads and last, by no means least, the Rig Veda. Hence he wrote on all these into the details of which I need not enter here. And when he began to build his philosophical system, to write serially The Life Divine in the Arya, at bottom it was his realisation that gave him the strength but the materials for building the system were undoubtedly provided by the Vedantic scriptures, the Upanishads and the Gita. While later on, in revising the series for publication in two Volumes, he took into account the increasing volume of modern thought that flowed from the West, judged it in proper light and assimilated it into his system. Thus at the base, as he himself has stated, it is Vedantic; at the apex it is his distinct contribution. It is certainly not borrowed from the West—in spite of the term Evolution which in his sense of the term is soul's evolution which is not foreign to ancient Indian thought e.g. Patanjali's jatyantara parinamah, only it is there Nature's, here it is soul's. But the further development, and the logical sequel to the evolving soul in man, he envisaged as the one above the mental level. Here too the Upanishad has given him the clue, the hint.

It must be noted that a system is not built out of a previous non-existence; the system-builder does not start with a nil, tabula rasa, does not evolve a system out of his brain, he takes up the materials that are already there—in this instance the material has come down from the Vedic Age down to modern times—tests them, chooses and selects the substantial element, rejects the outworn forms, develops the latent suggestions, gives the system in a finished form, maintaining the structure intact, but supple not rigid so that it can accommodate, if it is comprehensive enough, fresh ideas and details of experiences and truths discovered to fit in with the system and fall into their place in right adjustment.

Here is no theory hatched by brooding in the brain, groping and guessing. He is in line with the ancients—the seers and sages and thinkers—whose tradition he appreciates and admits to be praiseworthy,—the tradition that a philosophy which is not based upon some experience of the fundamental Truth has no value and indeed Indian thought in the religio-philosophical systems abhors speculation and fanciful ingenuity. And Sri Aurobindo has pointed out that in the thinking age which followed the early Vedic and Vedantic Teachings, “when the great and integral truth of the Upanishads was broken into divergent schools of thought, even in giving so much prominence to the intellectual side, the systems do not depart from the constant need of the Indian temperament; it works out from spiritual experience through the exact and laborious inspection and introspection of the intellect—the intellectual method and form whose real substance is not intellectual but a result of a profound intelligence working on the stuff of the sight and spiritual experience.” Therefore if it has been able to make its conclusions articles of faith, it does so on the basis of experience by any one who will take the necessary means and apply the only possible test. You can call them dogmas; but they are not founded upon flimsy grounds of fancy, on the sands of conjecture, but on the firm and unshaky rock of experience. After all, what is a theory meant to be? If it can serve the purpose for which it is meant, any theory is good enough to hold on. ‘A theory may be one-sided or wrong, yet it may be useful and extremely practical as science has amply shown. A theory in philosophy is nothing else than a support for the mind, a practical device to help it to deal with its object, a staff to uphold it and make it walk more confidently and get along with its difficult journey.'

Now it must be borne in mind that the bulk of metaphysical thinking in the West differs fundamentally from the philosophical systems of India. They are hypotheses—theories and dogmas also—and conclusions which are not the result of the Reason working on the stuff of their own experiences and realisations or of others before them as in India beginning from the hoary ages of the Veda and Vedanta and coming down to modern times. However, certain bold thinkers in the West dissatisfied with the philosophies began to choose what they considered to be the best in each of the systems known to them and presented it as a whole, a workable hypothesis. They call it Eclecticism.

A word about the origin and movement of Eclecticism is necessary here to show how ludicrous and inapplicable it is to the Fundamentals of Sri Aurobindo's System, itself or even as it is briefly presented in the treatise animadverted upon. In the last century the term ‘eclectic’ “came to be applied to a number of French philosophers who differed considerably from one another. Of these the earliest were Pierre Paul Royer-Collard who was a follower of Thomas Reid in the main, and Maine de Biran; but the name is more appropriately given to the school of which Victor Cousin, Barthelemy St. Hilaire and a few others were distinguished members. But Victor Cousin whose views carried weight freely adopted what pleased him in the doctrines of Maine de Biran, Royer-Collard and others,” of Kant, Schelling and Hegel, and also of the ancient philosophies, expressly maintained that the eclectic is the only method now open to the philosopher. He was of the view that the philosopher's function resolves itself into critical selection and nothing more. ‘Each system,’ he asserted, ‘is not false, but incomplete, and in reuniting all incomplete systems we should have a complete philosophy, adequate to the totality of consciousness.’” This is the latest position of Eclecticism on the Continent. But the eclectic spirit began. to manifest itself in the early centuries of the Christian era “when the longing to arrive at the one explanation of all things, which had inspired the older Greek philosophers flagged and the belief that any such explanation was attinable began to fail. Men came to adopt from all systems the doctrine which best pleased them. Panaetius is one of the earliest instances of the modification of stoicism by the eclectic spirit. The same spirit was manifest among the Peripatetics. Philosophy was a secondary pursuit in Rome; naturally, therefore, the Roman thinkers for the most part were eclectic.” A striking illustration is Cicero who borrowed from Stoicism, Peripatetism and the Scepticism of the Middle Academy. “The eclectics of modern philosophy are too numerous to name; Italian philosophers form a large proportion. Among the German Eclectics Wolf and his followers are mentioned and to some extent Schelling.” Thus the peregrinations of the speculative mind caught in the circuit of the Eclectical spirit move on ceaselessly without a halt in spite of the fact that it has deservedly acquired a contemptuous significance partly because many eclectics are intellectual trimmers, sceptics or dilettanti. Also, Eclecticism is the result of a combination of principles of different and hostile theories, and must naturally end in an incoherent patchwork. “There can be no logical combination” remarks a writer on the subject whom I have quoted above in parts, “of elements from Christian ethics, with its divine sanction, and purely intuitional or evolutionary ethical theories, where the sanction is essentially different in quality.” Whatever may be its value among the thinkers in the West, it is admitted on all hands that it is a system of thought made up of views borrowed from various other systems.⁵

This much is enough about the eclectic system to mark out the difference in the basic approach to the ultimate problem in Philosophy between the West and ages-old India; and the latter's line of tackling the ultimate problem has been already indicated in explaining the position of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy in its relation to modern thought as well as to the Wisdom of the mystics and sages of a dateless past. Nowadays, we hear occasionally the aggrieved moanings of patriot purists to the effect that Sri Aurobindo includes in his system many things which are not Indian, but which are either modern, or alien to the Indian philosophical systems. Here it must be stated Sri Aurobindo does not build his system on this ground or that, nor is it claimed for his system that it is partly Indian and partly modern or western, but it is a whole in itself both in theory and practice. For practice, his own personal testimony is the basis; for theory, his own intellectual adequacy is responsible for unearthing the forgotten truths and secrets buried alive in the Vedic texts primarily, and sifting the right and precious materials from other general scriptures of India. The spirit of his intellectual approach is that of the ancient seers and sages and thinkers of this land; this does not bind him to the orthodox notions of what an Indian system ought to be. From the beginning the West has had no opportunity of getting a glimpse into the basis, the direct perception or revelation that is fundamental to his system as to the earlier systems of Indian Philosophy. And as such, the West cannot be accused of or credited with claiming that Sri Aurobindo's system is modern and so western. All that has been done is that he has presented the whole problem and the solution in a language that the modern West can understand, appreciate, accept and even adopt in practice though with hesitancy due to difference in temperament and training, but which the representative section of decadent and fossilised India—not the renascent, rising and arisen India—in the purity of its ignorance, in its zeal to cling to forms and shells and rags could afford to call derisively modern, partly at least un-Indian or by any other name, not certainly eclectic. When all is said the fact remains, the Teaching is not for the West or East as such, or Indian orthodoxy or unorthodoxy. It is for Man wherever he be born, here, there or anywhere. When the light enters into dark chambers, its value is realised directly and not judged by referring to the whence of it. Nor do we think of Newton's Gravity as English Gravity, nor when we get oxygen tubes, we say this is American oxygen or German oxygen. But enough of examples. In this spirit, Sri Aurobindo's teaching is given to the world. Though it is not the exclusive monopoly of any country, it being Indian in its birth and substance and base, India has a better chance of benefitting by it in spite of any section that may act as the brake in the rear van representing the atavistic forces in the movement of advanced thought and evolving Spirit.

Now I come to the critic's irrelevant remarks about the unsoundness of the theory of ‘Emergent Evolution’. I did not use the term, it has a technical significance implying that it is distinct from ‘Creative Evolution’. In the light of what I have stated about the theories and their use in general, I need not concern myself with the ‘alternate theories’ with which the critic professes to be conversant. The book takes the place of Pancikarana and similar prakarana treatises where the fundamental principles alone are stated, elucidated and dialectical warfare has no place. Reasonings and arguments in support of the system and demolishing other theories in order to establish itself have value and a place elsewhere, as in some of the Vartika texts to which the critic alludes. In the scheme of such works as these in simple and lucid, almost self-explanatory lines, dialectics is grotesque and out of place.

On the point of this treatise being painted black as ‘eclectic’ I have to say this much: this treatise undertakes to show that the Creation by the Word, the Seven Principles of Existence, the Seven Worlds and Planes and the Ladder of Existence are fundamental to Sri Aurobindo's system, and that these Principles are based upon truths arrived at by the ancients and are founded upon the spiritual and mystic experience of the Vedic seers, the sages and thinkers of the earlier Vedanta, and later popularised to a certain extent by the Puranas in their usual gross fashion. For this purpose reconciliation was effected between the sevenfold Principle of the Rig Veda and the Purana on the one hand, and the fivefold Principle of some of the Upanishads and at the same time was explained the triple formula of Sat-chit-ananda as answering to the Uncreate Higher-half, parardha, of the sevenfold existence. The treatise in the opening verses assumed as incontrovertible the fact of the Creation of the world of objects, artha, by the Word, sabda, as an essential truth of the Vedic and Tantric (agamic) lines of thought. In all this I followed in the footsteps of Sri Aurobindo whine references to these texts are scattered over a number of works including The Life Divine. Any one who has had a ‘glimpse of the Life Divine’ could find that the mottos selected for the chapters in The Life Divine are taken from the sacred texts of ancient India—the Rig Veda, the Upanishads, the Gita and occasionally from the Puranas and even from some of the celebrated- treatises of latter day Acharyas. The chapters on the Order of the Worlds, those on the Sevenfold Existence and one or two other chapters have for their mottos verses from the Rig Veda, lines from the Mundaka and other Upanishads, which all put in a nutshell the substance of these chapters. And sheer common sense—not loud learning—is enough to show that these are not given in an eclectic spirit, but in a large all-embracing spirit which incidentally throws light on the wisdom of the ancients whose origins are revealed in the Rig Veda; and it is essentially—not always in details and imagery and occult means used by the mystics—preserved in the profound texts of the Upanishads and later in the Tantras, but eventually gets more and more covered and veiled in the Puranas where encrustation reaches its acme of obscuration. One who does not know or care to know that the pristine source of Indian Theological traditions is to be found in the Vedas, at least can be partly traced to the Vedas and later to the Agamas, will certainly be at a loss to appreciate the fact that some Puranic texts can be directly traced to the Rig Veda, even so the Upanishads, and the occult truths embedded in the Tantras of the Shaiva, Shakta and Vaishnava.

The critic thinks that the imagery of the Ladder of Existence has nothing to do with any Indian Theology. But the imagery is not my invention. Sri Aurobindo discovered it, but the real Seer-poet who used the figure is a Rig Vedic Seer, thousands of years ago, who says that the seers climbed Indra like a ladder. And in the same opening hymns of the first Book it is further amplified by the statement that the sages journeyed upwards from ‘plateau to plateau’ or from ‘peak to peak’. The ascent by steps, sopana aroha, used in the Purana and the Tantra can be plainly traced to the Truth-vision of Seer Madhucchandas.

This much I have stated on the legitimate assumption that there may be on the critic's part a genuine misunderstanding or un-understanding of the nature of Indian Theologies of any persuasion and its relation to Sri Aurobindo's system.

Before closing, it must be stated that this review is no criticism of a genuine critic, it is a wordy pugilism of an objectionable sort, of an irresponsible brood. If hostile criticism can have any sound value, it must be criticism, it must recognise and state the claim of the book, not necessarily to accept it, and in exposing any weakness it must observe certain modes of etiquette, must make at least an effort at measure, sanity, justice. Here is the prefactory Note which mentions that years ago the Master after keeping the Mss. for some time with him gave his word of approval and blessings for appending it to the ‘Four Powers of the Mother’ (in Sanskrit), but the verdict of the critic ignores this fact and audaciously passes the unreasoning and malafide sentence of the removal of this book from the list of works dedicated to the service of the Master and his Teachings. At the close of the book, it is clearly stated that this treatise is arc-like, and compared to a tanvi, which simile is explained, in order to show that these seventy verses in a compact mould would be sufficient to give an adequate idea of the whole system. The dry-as-dust intellectual formalism and dialectical battle were purposely avoided, as that would be incongruous and out of place in the scheme of the work and defeat its purpose, which like the slender figure of the fair sex, is to be pleasing and attractive to the reader. Notwithstanding statements to this effect, the critic ignoring or seeming to ignore the point of view of the author of the work, goes on delivering a deathblow to a caricatured effigy of the substance of the book and utters the final word—the ultimate mantra for its last journey to the delectation of his own self at least and to the pleasure of those who engaged him to undertake this task. It must be added that it is the sureness of fire-eating instinct that impels him in this scornful temper to a callous temerity of judgment on things which he cannot approach with sympathy of mind and intellectual and spiritual straightforwardness. It is this that has succeeded in pulling down to the common passion-level whatever higher faculties of mind, and general learning and culture he may have developed or acquired—and this is quite manifest in his pronouncement that this book is a’ pointless disservice' made with an air of obviousness in a rude, censorious and inimical tone.

There is an element of irony here. The Journal that has given quarter to this attack gave a very welcome review to this very work when it appeared in print some ten years ago. But times have changed. It is a goodluck of all concerned that learned minds of a crude type were not serviceable as reviewers to the Journal at that time.

One word more. The only unprejudiced statement of fact which this reviewer makes as a tribute at the altar of untarnished truth is that the author is an accredited disciple of Sri Aurobindo. Here also I suspect that the ‘accredited’ is meant to bring into bold relief his own performance and thus to enhance his value to those who are responsible for his envenomed pen which in a single page has covered a multitude of sins of commission and omission by the author. When I find that the critic is not an ignoramus, but a learned mind though unfortunately given to pugilistic habits, I am reminded of Dr. Johnson saying, ‘Why Sir, a man who talks nonsense so well must know that he is talking nonsense.’