SECTION THREE
Religion,
Morality, Idealism and Yoga
THE spiritual
life (adhyātma-jīvana),
the religious life (dharma-jīvana) and the ordinary human life of which
morality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one
desires and not confuse the three together. The ordinary life is that of the
average human consciousness separated from its own true self and from the
Divine and led by the common habits of the mind, life and body which are the
laws of the Ignorance. The religious life is a movement of the same ignorant
human consciousness, turning or trying to turn away from the earth towards the
Divine, but as yet without knowledge and led by the dogmatic tenets and rules
of some sect or creed which claims to have found the way out of the bonds of
the earth-consciousness into some beatific Beyond. The religious life may be
the first approach to the spiritual, but very often it is only a turning about
in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without
any issue. The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change
of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and
separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which
one finds one's true being and comes first into direct and living contact and
then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of
consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters.
Morality is a part
of the ordinary life; it is an attempt to govern the outward conduct by certain
mental rules or to form the character by these rules in the image of a certain
mental ideal. The spiritual life goes beyond the mind; it enters into the
deeper consciousness of the Spirit and acts out of the truth of the Spirit. As
for the question about the ethical life and the need to realise God, it depends
on what is meant by fulfilment of the objects of life. If an entry into the
spiritual consciousness is part of it, then mere morality will not give it to
you.
Politics as such
has nothing to do with the spiritual life.
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If the spiritual man does
anything for his country, it is in order to do the will of the Divine and as
part of a divinely appointed work and not from any other common human motive.
In none of his acts does he proceed from the common mental and vital motives
which move ordinary men but acts out of the truth of the Spirit and from an
inner command of which he knows the source.
The kind of worship
(pūjā)
spoken of in the letter belongs to the religious life. It can, if rightly done
in the deepest religious spirit, prepare the mind and heart to some extent but
no more. But if worship is done as a part of meditation or with a true
aspiration to the spiritual reality and the spiritual consciousness and with
the yearning for contact and union with the Divine, then it can be spiritually
effective.
If you have a
sincere aspiration to the spiritual change in your heart and soul, then you
will find the way and the Guide. A mere mental seeking and questioning are not
enough to open the doors of the Spirit.
Obviously to seek the Divine only for what one can get out of Him is
not the proper attitude; but if it were absolutely forbidden to seek Him for
these things, most people in the world would not turn towards Him at all. I
suppose therefore it is allowed so that they may make a beginning – if they
have faith, they may get what they ask for and think it a good thing to go on
and then one day they may suddenly stumble upon the idea that this is after all
not quite the one thing to do and that there are better ways and a better
spirit in which one can approach the Divine. If they do not get what they want
and still come to the Divine and trust in Him, well, that shows they are
getting ready. Let us look at it as a sort of infants' school for the unready.
But of course that is not the spiritual life, it is only a sort of elementary
religious approach. For the spiritual life to give and not to demand is the
rule. The sadhak, however, can ask for the Divine Force to aid him in keeping
his health or recovering it if he does that as part of his sadhana so that his
body may be
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able and fit for the spiritual life
and a capable instrument for the Divine Work.
It is correct, religions at best
modify only the surface of the nature. Moreover, they degenerate very soon into
a routine of ceremonial habitual worship and fixed dogmas.
I do not take the same view of
the Hindu religion as J. Religion is always imperfect because it is a mixture
of man's spirituality with his endeavours that come
in in trying to sublimate ignorantly his lower
nature. Hindu religion appears to me as a cathedral-temple, half in ruins,
noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail but always fantastic with a
significance – crumbling or badly outworn in places, but a cathedral-temple in
which service is still done to the Unseen and its real presence can be felt by
those who enter with the right spirit. The outer social structure which it
built for its approach is another matter.
I regard the spiritual history of
mankind and especially of India as a constant development of a divine purpose,
not a book that is closed, the lines of which have to be constantly repeated.
Even the Upanishads and the Gita were not final though everything may be there
in seed. In this development the recent spiritual history of India is a very
important stage and the names I mentioned had a special prominence in my
thought at the time – they seemed to me to indicate the lines from which the
future spiritual development had most directly to proceed, not staying but
passing on. I may say that it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion,
new or old, for humanity in the future. A way to be opened that is still
blocked, not a religion to be founded, is my conception of the matter.
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If it is meant by the statement 1
that the form of religion is something permanent and unchangeable, then
that cannot be accepted. But if religion here means one's way of communion with
the Divine, then it is true that that is something belonging to the inner being
and cannot be changed like a house or a cloak for the sake of some personal,
social or worldly convenience. If a change is to be made, it can only be for an
inner spiritual reason, because of some development from within. No one can be
bound to any form of religion or any particular creed or system, but if he
changes the one he has accepted for another, for external reasons, that means
he has inwardly no religion at all and both his old and his new religion are
only an empty formula. At bottom that is, I suppose, what the statement drives
at. Preference for a different approach to the Truth or the desire of inner
spiritual self-expression are not the motives of the recommendation of change to
which objection is made here; – the object proposed is an enhancement of social
status and consideration which is no more a spiritual motive than conversion
for the sake of money or marriage. If a man has no religion in himself, he can
change his credal profession for any motive; if he
has, he cannot; he can only change it in response to an inner spiritual need.
If a man has a bhakti for the Divine in the form of Krishna, he can't very well
say, “I will scrap Krishna for Christ, so that I may become socially
respectable.”
Vairagya
is certainly one way of progressing towards the goal – the traditional way and
a drastic if painful one. To lose the desire for human vital enjoyments, to
lose the passion for literary or other success, praise, fame, to lose even the
insistence on spiritual success, the inner bhoga of
yoga, have always been recognised as steps towards
the goal – provided one keeps the one insistence on the Divine. I prefer myself
the calmer way of equality, the way pointed out by Krishna, rather than the
1 These comments are on the
following statement of Mahatma Gandhi on Dr. Ambedkar's
view about change of religion:
“But religion is not like a
house or a cloak which can be changed at will. It is more an integral part of
one's self than of one's body. Religion is the tie that binds one to one's creator,
and while the body perishes as it has to, religion persists even after that.”
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more painful one of Vairagya. But if the compulsion in one's nature or the
compulsion of one's inner being forcing its way by that means through the difficulties
of the nature is on that line, it must be recognised
as a valid line. What has to be got rid of in that case is the note of despair
in the vital which responds to the cry you speak of – that it will never gain
the Divine because it has not yet got the Divine or that there has been no
progress. There has certainly been a progress, this greater push of the
psychic, this very detachment itself always growing somewhere in you. The thing
is to hold on, not to cut the cord which is pulling you up because it hurts the
hands, to keep the one insistence if all the others fall away from you.
It is evident
that something in you, continuing the unfinished curve of a past life, is
pushing you on this path of Vairagya and the more
stormy way of Bhakti, – in spite of our preference for a less painful one and
yours also, – something that is determined to be drastic with the outer nature
so as to make itself free to fulfil its secret aspiration. But do not listen to
these suggestions of the voice that says, “You shall not succeed and it is no
use trying.” That is a thing that need never be said in the Way of the Spirit,
however difficult it may seem at the moment to be. Keep through all the
aspiration which you express so beautifully in your poems; for it is certainly
there and comes out from the depths, and if it is the cause of suffering,—as
great aspirations are, in a world and nature where there is so much to oppose
them, – it is also the promise and surety of emergence and victory in the
future.
I have objected in the past to Vairagya of the ascetic kind and the tamasic kind. By the
tamasic kind I mean that spirit which comes defeated from life, not because it
is really disgusted with life, but because it could not cope with it or conquer
its prizes; for it comes to yoga as a kind of asylum for the maimed or weak and
to the Divine as a consolation prize for the failed boys in the world-class.
The Vairagya of one who has tasted the world's gifts
or prizes but found them insufficient or finally tasteless and turns away
towards a higher and more beautiful ideal or the
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Vairagya
of one who has done his part in life's battles but seen that something greater
is demanded of the soul, is perfectly helpful and a good gate to the yoga. Also
the sattwic Vairagya which has learnt what life is
and turns to what is above and behind life. By the ascetic Vairagya
I mean that which denies life and world altogether and wants to disappear into
the Indefinable – I object to it for those who come to this yoga because it is
incompatible with my aim which is to bring the Divine into life. But if one is
satisfied with life as it is, then there is no reason to seek to bring the
Divine into life, – so Vairagya in the sense of
dissatisfaction with life as it is is perfectly
admissible and even in a certain sense indispensable for my yoga.
I quite acknowledge the utility
of a temporary state of Vairagya as an antidote to
the too strong pull of the vital. But Vairagya always
tends to a turning away from life and the tamasic element in Vairagya – despair, depression, etc. – dilapidates the fire
of the being and may lead in some cases to falling between two stools so that
one loses earth and misses heaven. I therefore prefer to replace Vairagya by a firm and quiet rejection of what has to be
rejected – sex, vanity, ego-centrism, attachment, etc. – but that does not
include rejection of the activities and powers that can be made instruments of
the sadhana and the divine work, such as art, music, poetry, etc., though these
have to find a new spiritual or psychic base, a deeper inspiration, a turn
towards the Divine or things divine. Yoga can be done without the rejection of
life, without killing or impairing the life-joy or the vital force.
No, I didn't say that you chose
the rajasic or tamasic Vairagya. I only explained how
it came, of itself, as a result of the movement of the vital in place of the
sattwic Vairagya which is supposed to precede and
cause or accompany or result from a turning away from the world to seek the
Divine. The tamasic Vairagya comes from the recoil of
the vital when it feels that it
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has to give up the joy of life
and becomes listless and joyless; the rajasic Vairagya
comes when the vital begins to lose the joy of life but complains that it is
getting nothing in its place. Nobody chooses such movements; they come
independently of the mind as habitual reactions of the human nature. To refuse
these things by detachment, an increasing quiet aspiration, a pure bhakti, an
ardent surrender to the Divine, was what I suggested as the true forwarding
movement.
There is the sattwic Vairagya – but many people have the rajasic or tamasic
kind. The rajasic is carried by a revolt against the conditions of one's own
life, the tamasic arises from dissatisfaction, disappointment, a feeling of
inability to succeed or face life, a crushing under the grips and pains of
life. These bring a sense of the vanity of existence, a desire to seek
something less miserable, more sure and happy or else to seek a liberation from
existence here, but they do not bring immediately a luminous aspiration or pure
aspiration with peace and joy for the spiritual attainment.
The passage through sattwa is the
ordinary idea of yoga, it is the preparation and purification by the yama-niyama of
Patanjali or by other means in other yogas, e.g.,
saintliness in the bhakti schools, the eightfold path in Buddhism, etc., etc.
In our yoga the evolution through sattwa is replaced by the cultivation of
equanimity, samatā,
and by the psychic transformation.
Obviously, the rajasic movements
are likely to create more trouble in sadhana than the sattwic ones. The
greatest difficulty of the sattwic man is the snare of virtue and
self-righteousness, the ties of philanthropy, mental idealisations,
family affections, etc., but except the first, these are, though difficult,
still not so
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difficult to surpass or else
transform. Sometimes, however, these things are as sticky as the rajasic
difficulties.
Sannyasa does not take away attachment – it amounts only to
running away from the object of attachment which may help but cannot by itself
alone be the radical cure.
This is a feeling (the unimportance
of things in Time) that the ascetic discipline sometimes uses in order to get
rid of attachment to the world – but it is not good for any positive or dynamic
spiritual purpose.
The principle of life which I
seek to establish is spiritual. Morality is a question of man's mind and vital,
it belongs to a lower plane of consciousness. A spiritual life therefore cannot
be founded on a moral basis, it must be founded on a spiritual basis. This does
not mean that the spiritual man must be immoral – as if there were no other law
of conduct than the moral. The law of action of the spiritual consciousness is
higher, not lower than the moral – it is founded on union with the Divine and
living in the Divine Consciousness and its action is founded on obedience to
the Divine Will.
The beliefs you speak of with
regard to right and wrong, beauty and ugliness etc. are necessary for the human
being and for the guidance of his life. He cannot do without the distinctions
they involve. But in a higher consciousness when he enters into the Light or is
touched by it, these distinctions disappear, for he is then approaching the
eternal and infinite good and right which he reaches perfectly when he is able
to enter into the Truth-Consciousness or supermind. The belief in the guidance
of God is
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also justified by spiritual
experience and is very necessary for the sadhana; this also rises to its
highest and completest truth when one enters into the Light.
What you say
about prayer is correct. That is the highest kind of prayer, but the other kind
also (i.e., the more personal) is permissible and even desirable. All prayer
rightly offered brings us closer to the Divine and establishes a right relation
with Him.
The obstacles
you speak of are the ordinary obstacles in the sadhana, brought up by parts of
the being, especially through vital disturbance and physical inertia, movements
which have to be gradually worked out of the consciousness.
I suppose each man makes or tries
to make his own organisation of life out of the mass of possibilities the
forces present to him. Self (physical self) and family are the building most
make – to earn, to create a family and maintain it, work for or get some
position in the means of life one chooses, in business, the profession, etc.,
etc. Country or humanity are usually added to that by a minority. A few take up
some ideal and follow it as the mainstay of their life. It is only the very
religious who try to make God the centre of their life – that too rather
imperfectly, except for a few. None of these things are secure or certain, even
the last being certain only if it is followed with an absoluteness which only a
few are willing to give. The life of the Ignorance is a play of forces through
which man seeks his way and all depends on his growth through experience to the
point at which he can grow out of it into something else. That something else
is in fact a new consciousness – whether a new consciousness beyond the earthly
life or a new consciousness within it.
Family, society, country are a
larger ego – they are not the Divine. One can work for them and say that one is
working for the Divine only if one is conscious of the Divine Adesh to act for that purpose or of the Divine Force
working within one.
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Otherwise it is only an idea of
the mind identifying country etc. with the Divine.
Everything depends upon the aim
you put before you. If, for the realisation of one's spiritual aim, it is necessary
to give up the ordinary life of the Ignorance (samsāra), it must be done;
the claim of the ordinary life cannot stand against that of the spirit.
If a yoga of
works alone is chosen as the path, then one may remain in the samsāra, but
it will be freely, as a field of action and not from any sense of obligation;
for the yogin must be free inwardly from all ties and
attachments. On the other hand, there is no necessity to live the family life –
one can leave it and take any kind of works as a field of action.
In the yoga
practised here the aim is to rise to a higher consciousness and to live out of
the higher consciousness alone, not with the ordinary motives. This means a
change of life as well as a change of consciousness. But all are not so circumstanced
that they can cut loose from the ordinary life; they accept it therefore as a
field of experience and self-training in the earlier stages of the sadhana. But
they must take care to look at it as a field of experience only and to get free
from the ordinary desires, attachments and ideas which usually go with it;
otherwise, it becomes a drag and hindrance on their sadhana. When one is not
compelled by circumstances there is no necessity to continue the ordinary life.
One becomes
tamasic by leaving the ordinary actions and life, only if the vital is so
accustomed to draw its motives of energy from the ordinary consciousness and
its desires and activities that if it loses them, it loses all joy and charm
and energy of existence. But if one has
a spiritual aim and an inner life and the vital part accepts them, then it
draws its energies from within and there is no danger of one's being tamasic.
It is not absolutely necessary to
abandon the ordinary life in order to seek after the Light or to practise yoga.
This is usually done
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by those who want to make a clean
cut, to live a purely religious or exclusively inner and spiritual life, to
renounce the world entirely and to depart from the cosmic existence by
cessation of the human birth and passing away into some higher state or into
the transcendental Reality. Otherwise, it is only necessary when the pressure
of the inner urge becomes so great that the pursuit of the ordinary life is no
longer compatible with the pursuit of the dominant spiritual objective. Till
then what is necessary is a power to practise an inner isolation, to be able to
retire within oneself and concentrate at any time on the necessary spiritual purpose. There must also
be a power to deal with the ordinary outer life from a new inner attitude and
one can then make the happenings of that life itself a means for the inner
change of nature and the growth in spiritual experience.
As for your friend, it is not possible
to say that she can come here; for that depends on many things which are not
clearly present here. First, one must enter this Path or it must be seen that
one is called to it; afterwards there is the question whether one is meant for
the Ashram life here. The question about the family duties can be answered in
this way – the family duties exist so long as one is in the ordinary
consciousness of the grhastha; if the call to a
spiritual life comes, whether one keeps to them or not depends partly upon the
way of yoga one follows, partly on one's own spiritual necessity. There are
many who pursue inwardly the spiritual life and keep the family duties, not as
social duties but as a field for the practice of Karmayoga, others abandon
everything to follow the spiritual call or line and they are justified if that
is necessary for the yoga they practise or if that is the imperative demand of
the soul within them.
I don't remember the context; but
I suppose he means that when one has to escape from the lower Dharma, one has
often to renounce it so as to arrive at a larger one, e.g., social duties,
paying
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debts, looking after family, help
to serve your country, etc., etc. The man who turns to the spiritual life, has
to leave all that behind him often and he is reproached by lots of people for
his Adharma. But if he does not do this Adharma, he is bound for ever to the lower life – for there
is always some duty there to be done – and cannot take up the spiritual Dharma
or can do it only when he is old and his faculties impaired.
You may get his photograph – it
may help to see what kind of nature he has. But there is no need to go out of
the way to persuade him; from his letter he does not seem altogether ready for
the spiritual life. His idea of life seems to be rather moral and philanthropic
than spiritual at present; and behind it is the attachment to the family life.
If the impulse to seek the Divine of which he speaks is more than a mental turn
suggested by a vague emotion, if it has really anything psychic in it, it will
come out at its own time; there is no need to stimulate, and a premature
stimulation may push him towards something for which he is not yet fit.
The true object of the yoga is
not philanthropy, but to find the Divine, to enter into the divine
consciousness and find one's true being (which is not the ego) in the Divine.
The “Ripus” cannot be conquered by damana: even if it succeeds to some extent, it only keeps
them down, but does not destroy them; often compression only increases their
force. It is only by purification through the divine consciousness entering
into the egoistic nature and changing it that this thing can be done.
If the sadhak
gives himself from deep within and is absolutely persevering in the Way, then
only can he succeed.
The idea of usefulness to
humanity is the old confusion due to second-hand ideas imported from the West.
Obviously, to be
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“useful” to humanity there is no need
of yoga; everyone who leads the human life is useful to humanity in one way or
another.
Yoga is directed
towards God, not towards man. If a divine supramental consciousness and power
can be brought down and established in the material world, that obviously would
mean an immense change for the earth including humanity and its life. But the
effect on humanity would only be one result of the change; it cannot be the
object of the sadhana. The object of the sadhana can only be to live in the
divine consciousness and to manifest it in life.
As to the extract about
Vivekananda,1 the point I make there does not seem to me
humanitarian. You will see that I emphasise there the
last sentences of the page quoted from Vivekananda, not the words about God the
poor and sinner and criminal. The point is about the Divine in the world, the
All, sarva-bhūtāni
of the Gita. That is not merely humanity, still less, only the poor or the
wicked; surely, even the rich or the good are the part of the All and those also
who are neither good nor bad nor rich nor poor. Nor is there any question (I
mean in my own remarks) of philanthropic service; so neither daridrer sevā is
the point. I had formerly not the humanitarian but the humanity view – and
something of it may have stuck to my expressions in the Arya. But I had already altered
my viewpoint from the “Our yoga for the sake of humanity” to “Our yoga for the
sake of the Divine”. The Divine includes not only the supracosmic
but the cosmic and the individual – not only Nirvana or the Beyond but Life and
the All. It is that I stress everywhere.
1 “I have lost all wish for my salvation, may I be
born again and again and suffer thousands of miseries so that I may worship the
only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum-total of all souls, – and
above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all
races, of all species is the special object of my worship. He who is the high
and low, the saint and the sinner, the god and the worm, Him worship, the
visible, the knowable, the real, the omnipresent; break all other idols. In
whom there is neither past life nor future birth, nor death nor going nor
coming, in whom we always have been and always will be one, Him worship; break
all other idols.” (From a letter of Swami Vivekananda; quoted by Sri Aurobindo
in The Synthesis of Yoga, Centenary Edition, 1972, pp. 257-58.)
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I do not remember what I said
about Vivekananda. If I said he was a great Vedantist,
it is quite true. It does not follow that all he said or did must be accepted
as the highest truth or the best. His ideal of sevā was a need of his
nature and must have helped him – it does not follow that it must be accepted
as a universal spiritual necessity or ideal. Whether in declaring it he was the
mouthpiece of Ramakrishna or not, I cannot pronounce. It seems certain that
Ramakrishna expected him to be a great power for changing the world-mind in a
spiritual direction and it may be assumed that the mission came to the disciple
from the Master. The details of his action are another matter. As for
proceeding like a blind man, that is a feeling that easily comes when a Power
greater than one's mind is pushing one to a large action; for the mind does not
realise intellectually all that it is being pushed to do and may have its
moments of doubt or wonderment about it – and yet it is obliged to go on.
Vedantic (Adwaita) realisation is the realisation of the silent static or
absolute Brahman – one may have that and yet not have the same indubitable
clearness as to the significance of one's action – for over one's action for
the Adwaitin lies the shadow of Maya.
Today a Kanchanjungha
of correspondence has fallen on my head, so I could not write about Humanity and
its progress. Were not the later views of Lowes
Dickinson grayed over by the sickly cast of a disappointed idealism? I have not
myself an exaggerated respect for Humanity and what it is – but to say that
there has been no progress at all is as much an exaggerated pessimism as the
rapturous hallelujahs of the nineteenth century to a progressive Humanity were
an exaggerated optimism. I shall manage to read through the chapter you sent
me, though how I manage to find time for these things is a standing miracle and
a signal proof of a Divine Providence.
Yes, the
progress you are making is of the genuine kind, – the signs are recognisable. And after all, the best way to make Humanity progress
is to move on oneself, – that may sound
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either individualistic or
egoistic, but it isn't: it is only common sense. As the Gita says:
“Whatever the best do is taken as
the model by the rest.”1 There are always unregenerate parts tugging
people backwards and who is not divided? But it is best to put one's trust in
the soul, the spark of the Divine within and foster that till it rises into a
sufficient flame.
It is no use entertaining these
feelings. One has to see what the world is without becoming bitter; for the
bitterness comes from one's own ego and its disappointed expectations. If one
wants the victory of the Divine, one must achieve it in oneself first.
To concentrate most on one's own
spiritual growth and experience is the first necessity of the sadhak – to be
eager to help others draws away from the inner work. To grow in the spirit is
the greatest help one can give to others, for then something flows out
naturally to those around that helps them.
All this insistence upon action
is absurd if one has not the light by which to act. “Yoga must include life and
not exclude it” does not mean that we are bound to accept life as it is with
all its stumbling ignorance and misery and the obscure confusion of human will
and reason and impulse and instinct which it expresses. The advocates of action
think that by human intellect and energy making an always new rush, everything
can be put right; the present state of the world after a development of the
intellect and a stupendous output of energy for which there is no historical
parallel is a signal proof of the emptiness of the illusion under which they
labour. Yoga takes the stand that it is only by a change of consciousness that
the true basis of life can be discovered; from within outward is indeed the
rule. But
1 Yadyadācarati śresthastattadevetaro
janah.
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within does not mean some quarter
inch behind the surface. One must go deep and find the soul, the self, the
Divine Reality within us and only then can life become a true expression of
what we can be instead of a blind and always repeated confused blur of the
inadequate and imperfect thing we were. The choice is between remaining in the
old jumble and groping about in the hope of stumbling on some discovery or
standing back and seeking the Light within till we discover and can build the
Godhead within and without us.
I had never a very great
confidence in X's yoga-turn getting the better of his activism, he has two strong
ties that prevent it, – ambition and need to act and lead in the vital, and in
the mind a mental idealism; these two things are the great fosterers of
illusion. The spiritual path needs a certain amount of realism – one has to see
the real value of the things that are, which is very little except as steps in
evolution. Then one can either follow the spiritual static path of rest and
release or the spiritual dynamic path of a greater truth to be brought down
into life.
As for your question – Tagore, of course, belonged to an age which had faith in
its ideas and whose very denials were creative affirmations. That makes an
immense difference. Your strictures on his later development may or may not be
correct, but this mixture even was the note of the day and it expressed a
tangible hope of a fusion into something new and true – therefore it could
create. Now all that idealism has been smashed to pieces by the immense adverse
event and everybody is busy exposing its weaknesses – but nobody knows what to
put in its place. A mixture of scepticism and
slogans, “Heil-Hitler” and the Fascist salute and the
Five-Year-Plan and the beating of everybody into one amorphous shape, a
disabused denial of all ideals on one side and on the other a blind
“shut-my-eyes and shut-everybody's-eyes” plunge into the bog in the hope of
finding some firm foundation there, will not carry us very far. And what else
is there?
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Until new spiritual values are
discovered, no great enduring creation is possible.
It is queer these intellectuals
go on talking of creation while all they stand for is collapsing into the Néant without their being able to raise a finger to save
it. What are they going to create, and from what material? Besides what use is
it all if a Hitler with his cudgel or a Mussolini with his castor oil can come
at any moment and wash it out or beat it into dust?
Yes, but human reason is a very
convenient and accommodating instrument and works only in the circle set for it
by interest, partiality and prejudice. The politicians reason wrongly or
insincerely and have power to enforce the results of their reasoning so as to
make a mess of the world's affairs: the intellectuals reason and show what
their minds show them, which is far from being always the truth, for it is
generally decided by intellectual preference and the mind's inborn
education-inculcated angle of vision; but even when they see it, they have no
power to enforce it. So between blind power and seeing impotence the world
moves, achieving destiny through a mental muddle.
You write as if what is going on
in Europe were a war between the powers of the Light and the powers of Darkness
– but that is no more so than during the Great War. It is a fight between two
kinds of Ignorance. Our aim is to bring down a higher Truth, but that Truth
must be able to live by its own strength and not depend upon the victory of one
or other of the forces of the Ignorance. That is the reason why we are not to
mix in political or social controversies and struggles; it would simply keep
down our endeavour to a lower level and prevent the Truth from descending which
is none of these things but has a quite
Page – 153
different law and basis. You speak
of Brahmatej being overpowered by Kshatratej,
but where is that happening? None of the warring parties incarnate either.
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