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		<b><font face="Times New Roman"><i>The Eternal East and West</i></font></b></p>
		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">&nbsp;</p>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">THE East and the West are two recognised wings of humanity.
Only the relation between them is somewhat in dispute.
According to one view the two are quite separate and irreconcilable entities, because they .embody two outlooks that
are contradictory to each other. The other view is that they
are not contradictory, however distinct they may be; they are
complementary or supplementary to each other. The interaction between the two across the centuries recorded in history
has been admitted and studied; it considerably influenced the
growth and development of each in its line. Only the influence
exerted some view with favour, others with disfavour. For
some consider the mixture of influence, like that of blood, as a
necessary condition of progress and creativity: others again
are keen on maintaining the purity of stock, the particular
type of culture to which each is attached and any intrusion of
a foreign vein they consider as a lowering, a degeneration of
the type.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We all know the great 
difference between the East and the West that has been pointed out and accepted 
generally as true is that of the spiritual East and the worldly or materialist 
West. Crudely and categorically formulated the truth remains no longer true. 
There is a very large amount of worldliness in the East, on the one hand, and on 
the other, mystics and spiritual seekers or leaders are not a rare phenomenon in 
the West. However, it can be said and admitted as a fact that there is in the 
East an atmosphere that is predominantly spiritual and one can more easily come 
in contact with it; whereas in the West it is the mental and material culture 
that predominates</font>
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Page 166<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">and the approach to it is nearer and closer to man.
The science of the Spirit has received greater attention in the
East; it has been studied, experimented, organised, almost
consummated there in a supreme manner. Even as the science
of Matter has reached its apotheosis in the West.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Recognising the difference, the momentous question confronting us is what should be our next move: must we accept
the one and reject the other for the sake of human progress and
fulfilment, or that a harmony and synthesis is possible and is
demanded ?</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For it is not unoften asserted that the so-called spiritual
outlook of the East is only a mediaeval outlook. All people in
the world, including even the West, were once upon a time
predominantly religious and spiritual; that was a certain stage
in man's evolution. Europe has passed that stage of myth
and imagination, has brought upon the earth and is living
the higher illumination that Science reveals. The East did
not or could not march with Time and continues the old
world with its backward glance; it stands arrested in its
growth.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This view finds its justification because of a particular out-look on spirituality and non-spirituality. If the Spirit and things
spiritual are taken to mean something transcending and
rejecting the world and the things of the world, something
exclusive of life and its fulfilment here on earth, if on the
other hand, the world and its life are given only their face value
emptying them of their deeper and transcendent contents—in
the manner of the great Laplace who could find no place for God in his map of 
the world which seemed to be quite complete in itself, if this trenchant division is made in the very
definition of the terms, in our primary axioms and postulates,
then, of course, we cannot avoid a scission and an eternal
struggle. If you consider the Spirit as only pure spirit, an
absolute without any relation, as an ever-fixed and static
entity and if we view Matter as purely material and the law of
mechanics as supreme and inviolable, then there cannot be a
reconciliation or even a meeting between the two. There are
some who have a great goodwill, who wish to avoid clash and
quarrel and are for concord and harmony. They have tried
the reconciliation, but failed. The two positions being fundamentally </font>
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Page 167<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">exclusive of each other can, at best, be juxtaposed,
but not unified or fused together.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And yet mankind has always sought for an integral, an all-
comprehending fulfilment, a truth and a realisation that would
go round his entire existence. Man has always aspired, in the
midst of the transience and imperfection that the world is, for
something stable and perfect, in the heart of disharmony for
some core of perfect harmony. He termed it God, Atman,
Summum Bonum and he sought it sometimes, as he thought
necessary, even at the cost of the world and the life, if it is to be
found elsewhere. Man aspired also always to find this habitation
of his made somewhat better. Dissatisfied with his present
state, he sought to mould it, remake it, put into it something
which his aspiration and inspiration called the True, the
Beautiful, the Good. There was always this double aspiration
in man, one of ascent and the other of descent, one vertical
and the other horizontal, one leading up and beyond—totally
beyond, in its extreme urge—the other probing into the
mystery locked up there below, releasing the power to reform
or recreate the world, although he was not always sure whether
it was a power of mind or of matter.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This double aspiration has found its expression and symbol
in the East and the West, each concentrating on one line, sometimes even to the neglect or denial of the other. But this division or incompatibility need not be there and must not be
there. A new conception of the Spirit and 'a new conception of Matter are gaining ground more and more, moving towards
a true synthesis of the two, making for the creation of a new
world and a new human type.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The East is no longer the traditional East of the poet who
viewed it as eternally static and meditative, drowned in an
&quot;eyeless muse&quot; away and aloof from earth and world. Even if
it had and has still in its essential nature a nostalgia for the
transcendence, yet it seeks today more and more for a hold
upon the physical realities: it seems to remember again what
the Upanishadic Rishi sought—the Rishi being asked whether
he came for the mundane wealth of a thousand heads of cattle,
with golden rings round their horns, or for the knowledge of
the Transcendent Reality, replied that he had come for both.
And the hidebound materialist West, the positivist scientific</font>
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Page 168<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">West, finds this day many fissures and loopholes in the solid
Laplacian scheme; as it dives down and enters into the
secrecies of even the most material things, curious mysteries
surge up and its eyes demand another look and another vision
than those to which the mere senses have accustomed them.
Physical Scientists bending towards or being compelled to
bend towards metaphysics and even mysticism are no longer
an anomaly in the scientific world.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Spirit is not the static transcendent absolute entity only.
It is dynamic Force, creative conscious Energy. The spiritual
is not mere silence and status, it is expression and movement
also. Any silence and any status are not the silence and the
status of the Spirit—the silence and status of death, for example;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">so too any expression and movement are not of the Spirit
either—but this does not mean that the Spirit cannot have its
own expression and movement. God too likewise is not a mere
supracosmic being—a somewhat aggrandised human being—
treating and dominating man and the world as something
foreign and essentially antagonistic to his nature. God himself
has made himself all creatures and all worlds. He is That and
He is This fundamentally and integrally. Again, at the other
end. Matter is not mere dead mechanical matter. It is vibrant
energy, but energy that conceals within it life and consciousness.
Besides, the whirl and motion of energies is not all, something
inherently static looms large behind: you call it ether, field,
space or substratum—it is being, one would like to say, infused
with a secret consciousness and will.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We say then, symbolically at least, if not 
literally, that the West is looking to the East for this revelation towards 
which it is groping or moving in its own way: the secret spirit-consciousness that is alive in and through the material cosmos,
that alone gives its total sense and significance. And the secret
spirit must embody itself here below in material life, the status must be made 
supremely dynamic—the transcendent consciousness, even while maintaining its transcendence, has to
deploy its immanence in things of the earth and earthly
existence. That is what the West brings to the East; that is
what the Scientific and materialist look and labour offer to be
integrated into the aspiration and realisation of the East.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So then we say that the East starts from the summit and</font>
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Page 169<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">Surveys reality from above downwards, while the West starts
from below and works upward. The two complementary
movements can be described in several other graphic terms.
Instead of a movement from the summit to the base and of
another from the base to the apex, that is to say, a movement
of ascent and of descent, we can speak of a movement from
within outward and of that from outside inward, that is to say,
from the centre to the periphery and from the periphery to
the centre; we can speak also of a movement of contraction,
withdrawal or concentration and a movement of expansion
and expression and diffusion. Again, we can refer to a vertical
movement and a horizontal movement. All however express
the same truth. We postulate one reality, take our stand upon
that and work our way towards the other; the two together
form the total reality and together can they give the integral
life fulfilment.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As I have said, die history of mankind, as a matter of fact,
the whole history of creation gives a graphic picture of the
interaction of this double movement. There are ages and
countries in which one or the other of the two takes precedence
and special or exclusive emphasis. But the inner story is always
a converging movement.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Parallel lines meet at infinity, each overpasses its own limit
and touches and coalesces with the other.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The marriage of Heaven and Earth, of even Heaven and
Hell, is a very ancient dream. It is an aspiration ingrained in
existence. It is a prophecy that shall be fulfilled and is being
worked out every moment.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman"><b>II</b></font>

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&nbsp;<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For an integral vision of human achievement and perfection
we may consider another interesting contrast between the
East and the West. We usually attach the word &quot;freedom&quot; or
&quot;liberty&quot; to Western culture and civilisation as expressing its 
essential character: similarly it is bondage, submission, suppression of the individual and individuality that come up in our
mind when we think of Eastern culture and civilisation. The
judgment is not without truth, so far as it goes; but looked at</font>
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Page 170<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">from a different angle, a deeper standpoint, the true judgment
should be, curious to say, just the contrary.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The East does not consider the individual in his social
behaviour in terms of freedom and liberty but of service and
obligation, not in terms of rights but of duties. The Indian
term for right and duty is the same—<i>adhikara.</i> The word
originally and usually meant duty, one's sphere of work or
service, capacity: the meaning of &quot;right&quot; was secondary and
only latterly, probably as a result of the impact from the
West, has gained predominance. The West measures human
progress by the amount of rights gained for the individual or
for the group. It does not seem to have any other standard:</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">submission, obedience, any diminution of the sense of separate
individuality meant slavery and loss of human value and
dignity. It was the Greek perhaps, with Socrates as the great
pioneer, who first declared the supremacy of the individual
reason- (although he himself obeyed in all things his guardian
angel, the Daemon). In India, generally in the East, the
value of the individual is estimated in another way. So long
as he is in the society, the individual is bound by its demands:</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">he has to serve it according to his best capacity. That is the
<i>dharma—</i>the Law—that one has to observe conscientiously.
But if he chooses, he can break the bonds forthwith, come
out, come out of the society altogether and be free absolutely —that is the only 
meaning of freedom. In the West the individual is taught to remain in the world and with the society,
maintain his individuality and independence and gradually
enlarge them in and through the natural fetters and bondages
that a collective life and efficient organisation demands and inevitably 
imposes. The East, on the contrary, asks the individual never to protest and assert his individuality, which
is in their view only another name for Ignorant egoism, but
to know his position in the social scheme and fulfil the duties
and obligations of that position. But the individual has the
freedom not to enter into the social frame at all. If he chooses
freedom as his ideal, it is the supreme freedom that he must
choose, out of the chain of a terrestrial life. He can become
the spiritual &quot;outlaw&quot;, the <i>sannyasi;</i> the word means one who
has abandoned everything totally and absolutely.</font><p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </font>&nbsp;
<font face="Times New Roman">The contrast points to a synthesis parallel to or an extension </font>

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Page 171<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">of the one we spoke of earlier. The first thing<b> </b> to note is
that the individual is the source of all progress; the individual
has the right, as it is also his duty to maintain himself and
fulfil himself, grow to his largest and highest dimensions.
Secondly, the individual has to take cognisance of the others,
the whole humanity, in fact, even for the sake of his own
progress. The individual is not an isolated entity, a freak
product in Nature, but is integrated into it, a part and parcel
of its texture and composition. Indeed the individual has a
double role to perform, first to increase himself and secondly
to increase others. Using the terms which the Sartrian view
of existence has put into vogue, we can say, the individual <i>en soi</i> (in himself) is the individual in commonalty with others,
living and moving in and through every other person; and
then there is the individual <i>pour soi</i> (for himself), that is to
say, existing for himself, apart and away from others, in his
own inner absolute autonomy. The individual is individualised, <i>i.e.</i> raises and lifts himself and then becomes the spearhead
breaking through the level where Nature stands fixed, leading
others to follow and raise themselves. The individual is the
power of organised self-consciousness; the growth of the
individual means the growth of this power of organised consciousness. And growth means ascension or evolution from
level to level. The individual starts from the organic cell,
that is the lower end, it progresses through various gradations
of the vital and mental worlds till he reaches the culmination
of its growth in the Spirit as <i>atman.</i> But this vertical growth
must be reflected in a horizontal growth too. There is a
solidarity among the individuals forming the collective
'humanity so that the progress of one means the progress of
others in the same direction, at least a chance and possibility
opened for an advance. On the other hand, it may be noted
that unless the collectivity rises to a certain level the individual
too cannot go very far from it. A higher lift in the individual
presupposes a corresponding or some minimum lift in others.
There cannot or should not be too great a rift between the
individual and the collective.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As I said, the East usually ignores this correspondence and
posits an exclusive <i>either-or</i> relation between the two terms.
The individual, according to it, can reach its true individuality</font>
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Page 172<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">by only dissolving it—in the Infinite. Of course, I am referring to an extreme position which is general in the East and
symptomatic of its fundamental character. The West does
not concern itself with these higher lines of individual growth
and fulfilment, it limits the individual within the social frame
and his mundane or profane life; but what we learn from
this outlook is the necessity of the collective growth through
which only can the individual thrive and grow. It is however a growth in 
extension, rather than in intensity <i>i.e.</i> depth and
height. This outlook errs in the limitation put upon individuality, precisely identifying it more or less with the &quot;egoism&quot;
to which the spirituality of the East objects. This normal
individual in its normal development cannot go very far, nor
can he lead the others, the society or humanity, to a perfect
and supreme fulfilment. The ego-bound normal individuality
must transcend itself—exactly the thing that the East teaches;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">only this transcendence need not mean an abolition of all
individuality, but a transformation, a higher integration in
a spiritualised, a universalised and divinised individuality.</font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Such an individual will not be like the blind leading the
blind, one ego, in its half-light, with its small narrow mental
formation imposing its ignorant and ineffective will upon
others in the same state of consciousness, but, as I have said,
a universalised individual, who has identified himself with all
and everyone in his being and consciousness, who has also at
the same time transcended himself and others and attained
a supreme unitary consciousness and being. It is such a person
who is called the leader of human or terrestrial evolution and
they who are of the same make are the pioneers who shall
build heaven upon earth.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Towards that consummation, these two great world currents,
East and West, are moving carrying each its own truth and
contributing to the realisation of the integral truth that is to
take body here below.</font>
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