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<p align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><b>
<font size="4">Caesar
versus the Divine</font></b></p>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>&quot;RENDER
unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.&quot; We do
not subscribe to the motto. We do not admit that the world and the
spirit are irreconcilables and incommensurables. On the contrary we
assert their essential unity and identity. The spiritual force is not
and need not be impotent or out of place in Caesar's domain. Rather
it is the spiritual man who alone can possess the secret of mastering
the forces that work out mundane things, perfectly and faultlessly.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>But then, it may be asked, how is it that in the history
of the world we find men of action, great dynamic personalities to be
mostly not spiritual but rather mundane in their character and
outlook? Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Chandragupta, Akbar, even
Shivaji, were not spiritual personalities; their actions were of the
world and of worldly nature. And the force they wielded cannot be
described as spiritual, and yet how effective it was, what mighty
changes it brought about in the affairs of men! And do we not
actually see in the lives of saints and true spiritual souls that the
force of the spirit, if force it can be called, moves away from the
field of dynamism, turns towards a plane or height where all
incentives and impulses to action fall silent and vanish in the end?
The spiritual force is applied to negate all mundane activity, to get
out of the profane field of life. That is the skill of Yoga referred
to in the Gita, that is how we are to understand the injunction to
see &quot;inaction in action&quot;, and &quot;action in inaction&quot;.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Now there are several things to be distinguished here.
First of all, even if it is accepted as true that in the past it is
worldly men alone who were dynamically active in the world and that
spiritual men were men of inaction whose role was to withdraw from
the world, at least to be passive and indifferent with</FONT><BR>
</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 394</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>regard to mundane activities, that does not prove that
it is an eternal truth and it is bound to be so ever and always. We
must remember, if we admit the evolutionary character of Nature, of
man and his growth and fulfilment, that spirituality in one of its
forms at an early stage is and should be a movement of withdrawal, of
diminishing dynamism in the sense of an &quot;introversion&quot;. For
when man still lives mostly in the vital domain and is full of the
crude life urge, when the animal is still dominant in him (as the
Tantrik discipline also points out), then a rigorous asceticism and
self-denial is needed for the purification and sublimation of the
nature. At that stage powers and dynamic capacities that often
develop in the course of such discipline should also be carefully
avoided and discarded; for they are more likely to bring down the
consciousness to the ordinary level. But if that were the procedure
and principle in the past, one need not eternise it into the present
and the future. We Believe mankind – a good part of mankind in its
inner consciousness – has advanced sufficiently on the vital level
as to be able to give a new turn to his life and follow a different
course of development. If he has not totally outgrown the animal, at
least some higher element has been superimposed on it or infused into
it and he can very well find the fulcrum of his nature in this
superior station and order a new pattern of values and way of
becoming. In<B> </B>other words, he need no longer altogether shun or
avoid the so-called inferior forces – the physico-vital – in him,
but try to control and utilise them for higher diviner purposes in
the world, upon the earth. For the earth embodies after all the
crucial complex. Whatever is to be done in the end has to be done
here, effected and established here. The withdrawal was needed for a
purification and husbanding of the forces so that they may be brought
forth and applied at the proper time and place, it is <I>reculer pour
mieux sauter, </I>to fall back in order to leap forward all the
better.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>In<B> </B>reality, however, to a vision that sees behind
and beyond the appearances, spirituality-the force of the Spirit-is
ever dynamic: the spiritual soul, even when it appears passive and
inert, is most active not merely in the subtle psychological domain,
but also in the material field. To the gross pragmatic eye
Ramakrishna, for example, appears as a less dynamic personality, a
less strong and heroic, if not positively weaker</FONT><BR>
</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 395</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>character than Vivekananda. Well, that is only
face-value reading. Vivekananda himself knew and felt and said that
he was only one of hundreds of Vivekanandas that his simple and,
modest-looking Guru could create if he chose. Even so a Ramdas.
Ramdas was not merely a spiritual adviser to Shivaji, concerned
chiefly with the inner salvation and development of his disciple, and
only secondarily with the gross material activities, the things of
Caesar. The two domains are not separate at least in this case: the
spiritual here directly and dynamically affects the physical. The
spiritual guide is the dynamo – the matrix – of the power, the
power spiritual; he wields and marshals the hidden, the secret forces
that are behind the outward forms and movements. And the disciple by
his attitude of obeisance and receptivity becomes all the better a
channel and instrument for the actual play and fulfilment of that
force. A Govind Singh is another instance of spiritual power made
dynamic in mundane things. And we always have the classical instance
of Rajarshi Janaka.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Only, in the future a yet greater source of spiritual
power is destined to be tapped and brought into play, into the plane
of happenings, so that the material domain, the pattern of our actual
day to day life will put on a different aspect; for a radiant
consciousness will have breathed a new life into our very bodily
cells.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 396</FONT></P>
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