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<b><font size="4">Hamlet
: A Crisis of the Evolving Soul</font></b></p>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">THE consciousness that rules over the tragedy of </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Hamlet,
</span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">the destiny that works itself out in the play of the forces
portrayed in that great drama, are the consciousness and the destiny
of the human soul at a most fateful crisis, a crucial turning-point
in the course of its evolution. The soul, lodged in the human
embodiment, moves forward and upward, towards a greater and greater
self-expression and self-expansion, a continual heightening and
widening of its consciousness, a constant subli&shy;mation and
transfiguration of its mode of being and living. And in the
progressive gradient so pursued, there are certain stages or
level-crossings that can be clearly marked out in view of their
importance and significance.</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">Shakespeare himself records, in two other of his major
dramas, the mystery of two such stages preceding the one he deals
with in </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Hamlet: </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">one in </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Macbeth </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">and the other in </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">King
Lear. </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Indeed these three mighty creations form a triology with
the Karma of the human soul at different crises as its theme. </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">King
Lear </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">represents human consciousness low down in the scale of
evolution, almost at its start – a nature primitive and barbarian.
We seem to go back into a prehistoric world, a paleolithic age –
the domain of utter ignorance, of vulgar greed and hunger, where one
sees the rank play of a raw and crude and aboriginal nature. Man is
here simply the eater, a true brother of the rest of the animal kind,
one in blood with the tiger and the wolf. He is the sheer biological
or </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">vital </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">being – &shy;the </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Rakshasa – into </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">whom the
light of the Mind has not yet descended, at least not to the extent
of effecting an appreciable change in his original and primitive
texture. It is a world ruled by the mode of </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">tamas. </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">*</span></P>
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<FONT SIZE=2>----------</FONT></P>
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<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;">*The angelic Cordelia is a ray
that has strayed down from some higher region,</span></FONT><BR>
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<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">page –
185</span></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><span style="font-size:12pt;">In
</span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Macbeth </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">we move up one step farther; human consciousness
attains here a higher level. Something of the mental being enters
into the purely vital creature: instead of the Eater, the man with
the mere stomach, we have here the Ruler, the Tyrant, the human being
with its will – and its arms that execute the will: the dominating
motive is no longer hunger and greed and cruelty for cruelty's sake,
but power and position and lordship, and the driving force, not blind
passion and dark fury – sheer unconsciousness – but deliberate
resolution, foreseeing calculation and steady purposiveness; the
</span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Rakshasa </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">gives place to the </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Asura. </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">The </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Asura </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">is
the incarnation of conscious egotism, the will to dominate, to be the
sole master and monarch; he is the self-aggrandising ‘vaulting
ambition’. He does not seek to possess things for their own sake,
not so much to enjoy them as to hold them as symbols of his royalty,
of his personal worth and majesty. In </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Macbeth </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">we have the
world of the </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Asura-a </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">creation of the mode of </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">rajas.</span></I></P>
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<I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Hamlet </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">is the third stage; it is a vision of
</span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">sattva-guna </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">and a creation attempted by that vision. The human
consciousness that was imprisoned in the vital mind, is released here
into the higher or pure mind. The soul escapes from its sheath of
sheer hunger and desire and egoism and self-aggrandisement – yearns
for light, more light. Lear is a dark mass of unconsciousness, crude
and violent, even like the naked and raging elements into whose arms
he is thrown; Macbeth is the beginning of consciousness in which one
is conscious of one's own self alone, and keenly and deliberately
attached to it, – here light has dawned, but a lurid light. Hamlet
is consciousness that is seeking to transcend the barrier of the
little self and its narrow and vulgar 'appetites and impulses. Man
here comes into touch with something that is impersonal,
other-regarding, afar; he has grown interests that are not merely
mundane, utilitarian, pragmatic, self-centred, but abstract,
metaphysical, beyond the individual's own and immediate concern: he
has now ideals and aspirations – he is a seeker of the true, the</span></P>
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</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=2>-------------------</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=1 STYLE="font-size: 8pt">t</FONT><FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;">o
evolve hereafter, not for immediate fruition and fulfilment. It is
the Light that shines always even in this naughty world, a spark of
the Grace that still relieves the blight that mars an otherwise
sinful earth. She is the symbol of a promise or prophecy that will
justify itself sometime in the future, but for the moment the burden
of the gloom is too much upon her and she is engulfed in it and
sacrificed.</span></FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=1 STYLE="font-size: 8pt">Page –
186</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><span style="font-size:12pt;">good,
the beautiful. He has been initiated into the divine – </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">daiva –
nature. </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Culture, refinement, sensibility, understanding – all
the graces of a truly rational being make Hamlet the very flower of
an evolving humanity.</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">Over against the personality of Hamlet stands another
which represents false height, the wrong perfection, the counterfeit
ideal. Polonius is humanity arrested in its path of straight
development and deviated into a </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">cut-de-sac </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">of self-conceit and
surface urbanity, apparent cleverness and success and pretentious and
copy-book morality. When one has outgrown the barbarian, one runs the
risk of becoming a snob or philistine. It is a side table-land, as it
were, on mid-heights, the standard perhaps of a commoner humanity,
but which the younger ideal has to transcend or avoid or even to
destroy, so that it may find itself and live its own life. To the
philistine too the mere bio&shy;logical man is a taboo, but he seeks
to confine human nature into a scheme of codes and maxims and
lifeless injunctions and prohibitions. He is also the man of Reason
but without the higher inflatus, the living and creative Something
More – the poetry, the vision, the dream that would transfigure the
merely pragmatic, practical, worldly wise – the bourgeois – into
the princely aristocratic idealist, elevate the drab </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">terre &agrave;
terre </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">To-day into the glory of a soaring To-morrow.</span></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">What is the crisis that confronts the ascending
visionary soul? What is the obstacle that the Idealist has to face,
the danger zone that he has to traverse in order to arrive at- the
realisation of his ideal?</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">In Hamlet we have a dreamer, an ardent optimist, a young
enthusiast who has lived so long in his own rosy world, in his </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">tour
d'ivoire, </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">and thought that that was the only world, even the
world as it is outside. Also in the simplicity of his faith he
dedicated all his love and admiration, all his yearning for a sweet
and glorious ideal, to a child of common humanity who appeared to him
to be an emblem and promise of Realisation. Alas, the promise had not
attained the strength and force that would lead inevitably to
maturity and fruition, the child was yet too loyal to its origin to
cut away from its moorings and soar with him.</span></P>
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<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page –
187</span></FONT></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">The crisis then is the revelation to the aspiring
dream-lifted soul that the original and aboriginal humanity that
seemed to have been traversed and transcended and left far behind is
not wholly obliterated; indeed it is still there in its stark
reality. The light and air and space and colour of the high dreamland
are reared upon dark and dingy abysses, &quot;this brave o’erhanging
firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire&quot; is
none other than&quot; a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.â€&sup1;
All the wisdom and culture and virtue and apparent beauty in human
nature cannot prevent a man from becoming an arrant knave and a woman
from being a whore, even if she were one's own mother.</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">This disillusionment is the crisis at which the soul has
arrived-this tearing down of the painted arras that hid the naked
horror of man's beastly nature and the ugly vanity and stagy show
that the world is. The revelation was so sudden and stunning to the
innocent and aspiring soul that it lost for the moment all its
bearings, its natural strength and capacity and will, and fell from
its high status into the slough of dark and despondent impotency.</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">Another person – Laertes – placed in an analogous
situation but not worried by the promptings of idealism and the sense
of discrepancy between the ideal and the real, takes the world as it
is, considers it all right and moves straight to his purpose; he is
not a divided being, but in full and integral pos&shy;session of
himself and of his instruments of action-even though this solid
pragmatism does not avail him much in the end.</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">The crisis in Hamlet reminds us of another somewhat
similar one, that is the basis and starting-point of the great
episode in the </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Mahabharata – the Gita. </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Arjuna, the ideal
hero and man of action, in absolute self-confidence and certitude,
with no doubt or hesitation about anything in the world, advances
into the very thick of the bloody strife – and lo! all is changed
as with a magic wand! What was to him a moment before a clear duty,
an evident act of righteousness, the noblest of deeds, now appears
nothing less than an inglorious slaughter. The bow of victory slips
from the hand of the mighty warrior and, all nerve and tremor, he
sinks down in gloom and dejection and complete confusion. 
</span></P>
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<BR>
</P>
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<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;">&sup1;</span><I><span style="font-size:10pt;">Hamlet, </span></I><span style="font-size:10pt;">Act II, Sc.
2.</span></FONT><BR>
</P>
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<FONT SIZE=1 STYLE="font-size: 8pt">Page –
188</FONT><BR>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">Arjuna tided over the crisis as he could avail himself
of the knowledge of the way out and the necessary help that was given
by the Divine Guide. Hamlet bears the full crash of doom upon his
head and makes others also share its consequences with him. At one
point, however, he seemed to make just a move towards the right
solution of the difficulty. He finds that the avoidance of the Evil
by self-destruction – which is a common and natural temptation in
like situations-is no solution: it may lead you into a still greater
evil. One has to face the evil, stand and fight it. Once this is
decided, the right course for the hero (the Aryan fighter, as the
</span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Gita </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">would say) would be to live<BR>
</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">Has ta’en with equal thanks – &sup2;<BR>
</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">Hamlet thus seems to fall upon the teaching of </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">samata
– equanimit</span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">y – with which the </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Gita </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">begins Arjuna's
initiation into the secret of Deliverance. He has had a glimpse of
the divine portals from a distance; but he did not know how to
proceed &shy;in the straight and narrow path; he is diverted into an
Asuric handling of the forces of lower nature and is himself broken
in the process.</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">A poignant vision or experience of evil in God's world
which otherwise appears so work living in, the perception of the
canker in the rose, has been the turning-point of many a destiny. It
has been the occasion of the birth of saints and sages, souls that
have traversed beyond and found the solution of the enigma. It has
also hurled back into confusion and ruin souls that faced the Sphinx
but could not answer her riddle – such, for example, as were Hamlet
and Faust.</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">In these latter the human consciousness has reached its
high water-mark of normal development. They are the finest expression
of man’s capacities and powers in the ordinary nature. Here we have
the play of the higher, even perhaps the highest ranges of the Mind –
the mind, that is to say, of the poet and the philosopher. But here
also stands revealed the counterfoil, the obverse of that high
achievement – the feet</span><BR>
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<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;">&sup2;</span><I><span style="font-size:10pt;">Hamlet, </span></I><span style="font-size:10pt;">Act III, Sc.
2.</span></FONT><BR>
</P>
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<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;">Page –
189</span></FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><span style="font-size:12pt;">of
clay on which is reared the head of gold, the flesh that is tied
irrevocably to the spirit.</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">The human soul, as represented in Hamlet, has evolved so
far as to stand on a summit from where it can contemplate the entire
creation. It has attained a kind of universal consciousness and has
the vision of a global movement of nature – even as Arjuna had of
the Lord's universal body, and like him is awed and overwhelmed – a
harsh world, in which one draws one's breath in pain. But this is a
mental summit, and the contradiction that is revealed here can be
resolved only by passing beyond into a higher domain of
consciousness.</span><BR>
</P>
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<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;">Page –
190</span></FONT></P>
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