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		<b><font face="Times New Roman"><i>Darshana and Philosophy</i></font></b></p>
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<font face="Times New Roman">THERE is a mental approach to spiritual truths and there is a
direct and immediate approach or rather contact. The mind sees as though through a mist, a darkling glass, a more or less
opaque veil, and the thing envisaged presents a blurred and
not unoften a deformed appearance. The mind has its own predispositions—its own categories and terms, its own forms and
figures—which it has to use when it seeks to express that which
is beyond it. Naturally the object, the truth as it is, it cannot
apprehend or represent; it gives as it were the reverse side of
an embroidery work. It goes round about the thing, has to take
recourse to all kinds of contortions and gymnastics and
grimaces to ape the natural gesture of the truth. But mind acts
in this way, as a veil rather than a medium, when one is
stationed in it or below it and strains to look at what is above
and beyond. On the other hand, if the consciousness is stationed
above the mind, that is to say, if it has direct access or contact
with the truth, the spiritual reality, in that case, mind need
not act as a veil, it too can be made transparent, and suffused
with the higher light, it too can translate faithfully, present
and embody the reality beyond somewhat as it acutally is, in
its native rhythm and figure and not diffracted and diffused<br>
through a hazy atmosphere.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; European thought, European philosophy particularly, moves
under the aegis of the Mind. It takes its stand within the Mind
and from there tries to reach out to truths and realities; and
therefore, however far it goes, its highest flights of perception,
its most intimate contacts with spirit-truths are 'sicklied o'er
with the pale cast of thought'. The Indian standpoint, on the
contrary, is first to contact the truth by a direct realisation—through meditation, concentration, an uplifting and a deepening </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">of the consciousness, through Yoga, spiritual discipline,
and then endeavour to express the truth thus realised, directly
intuited or revealed, through mental terms, to make it familiar
and communicable to the normal intelligence. Mind, so
subordinated and keyed to a new rhythm, becomes, as far as
it is possible for it, a channel, a vehicle and not a veil. All the
main systems of Indian philosophy have this characteristic as
their background. Each stands on a definite experience, a
spiritual realisation, a direct contact with an aspect of truth
and in and through that seeks to give a world-view, building
up an intellectual system, marshalling rational conclusions that
are natural to it or derive inevitably from it. In the Upanishads, which preceded the Darshanas, the spiritual realisations were not yet mentally systematised or logically buttressed:</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">truths were delivered there as self-evident statements, as
certitudes luminous in their own authenticity. We accept them
without question and take them into our consciousness as
forming its fundamental norms, structuring its most intimate
inscape. This is <i>darsana,</i> seeing, as philosophy is named in
India. One sees the truth or reality and describes it as it is
seen, its limbs and gestures, its constituents and functions.
Philosophy here is fundamentally a recording of one's vision
and a translation or presentation of it in mental terms.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The procedure of European philosophy is different. There
the reason or the mental light is the starting-point. That light
is cast about: one collects facts, one observes things and
happenings and then proceeds to find out a general truth—a
law, a hypothesis—justified by such observations. But as a
matter of fact this is the ostensible method: it is only a make-
believe. For mind and reason are not normally so neutral and
impersonal, a <i>tabula rasa.</i> The observer already comes into the
field with a definite observational angle, and a settled viewpoint.
The precise sciences of today have almost foundered on this
question of the observer entering inextricably into his observations and vitiating them. So in philosophy too as it is practised
in Europe, on a closer observation, if the observer is carefully
observed, one finds not unoften a core of suppositions, major
premises taken for granted hidden behind the logical apparatus. In other words, even a hardened philosopher cherishes
at the back of his mind a <i>priori</i> judgments and his whole</font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;philosophy is only a rationalisation of an inner prejudgment,
almost a window-dressing of a perception that came to him
direct and in other secret ways. That was what Kant meant
when he made the famous distinction between the Pure and
the Practical Reason and their categories. Only the direct
perceptions, the spiritual realisations are so much imbedded
behind, covered so much with the mist of mind's struggle and
tension and imaginative construction that it is not always easy
to disengage the pure metal from the ore.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We shall take the case of one such philosopher and try to
illustrate our point. We are thinking of Whitehead. The
character of European philosophical mind is well exemplified
in this remarkable modern philosopher. The anxiety to put
the inferences into a strict logical frame makes a naturally
abstruse and abstract procedure more abstruse and abstract.
The .effort to present suprarational truths in terms of reason
and syllogism clouds the issues more than it clarifies them. The<br>
fundamental perception, the living intuition that is behind his
entire philosophy and world outlook' is that of an Immanent
God, a dynamic evolving Power working out the growth and
redemption of mankind and the world (the apotheosis of the
World, as he puts it). It is the theme which comes last in the
development of his system, as the culminating conclusion of his
philosophy, but it is the basic presupposition, the first principle
that inspires his whole outlook, all the rest is woven and<br>
extended around this central nucleus. The other perception
intimate to this basic original perception and inseparable from
it is a synthetic view in which things that are usually supposed
to be contraries find their harmony and union, <i>viz;</i> God and
the World, Permanence and Flux, Unity and Multiplicity, the&nbsp;
Universal and the Individual. The equal reality of the two
poles of an integral truth is characteristic of many of the modern
philosophical systems. In this respect Whitehead echoes a<br>
fundamental conclusion of Sri Aurobindo.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There is another concept in Whitehead which seems to be
moulded after a parallel concept in Sri Aurobindo: it is with
regard to the working out of the process of creation, the
mechanism of its dynamism. It is almost a glimpse into the
occult functioning of the world forces. Whitehead speaks of</font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">two principles that guide the world process, first, the principle
of limitation, and second, the principle of <i>ingress.</i> The first
one Sri Aurobindo calls the principle of concentration (and
of exclusive concentration) by which the infinite and the
eternal limits himself, makes himself finite and temporal and
infinitesimal, the universal transforms itself into the individual
and the particular. The second is the principle of descent,
which is almost the corner-stone in Sri Aurobindo's system. </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">There are layers of reality: the higher forces and formulations
enter into the lower, work upon it and bring about a change
and transformation, purification and redemption. All progress
and evolution is due to this influx of the higher, the deeper into
the lower and superficial plane of existence.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There is one concept in Whitehead which seems rather
strange to us; it is surely a product of the brain-mind. God,
according to him, is not the creator: he is only the Redeemer,
he is a shaper but not the source and origin of things. That is
because he thinks that if God is made the creator of the world,
he would be held responsible for the evil there. This difficulty
comes when one thinks of God too much in the popular anthropomorphic way, like someone seated above the world and
passing judgment upon a world which is not his doing. God
is perhaps a lover of the world, but not its Master—a certain
Christian outlook says. According to Sri Aurobindo, God is a
triple reality in his transcendental, cosmic and individual
aspect. In creating the world, God creates, that is to say,
manifests himself. And. Evil is an evolute in the process of
God's self-creation through self-limitation: it proceeds to self-annihilation and even self-transmutation in a farther process
of God's self-unfoldment in world and Nature.</font><p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
<font face="Times New Roman">To return to our main theme, we should point out, however, that in Europe too at one time (during the whole Middle
Age, the Age of Scholasticism) philosophy was considered
only as a handmaid of Religion, it had to echo and amplify
and reason out the dogmas (which were sometimes real
spiritual experiences or revelations); but the New Illumination
came and philosophy declared her autonomy, only that
autonomy did not last long. For today in Europe, Philosophy
has become the handmaid of Science. It was natural, since</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Reason is not a self-sufficient faculty, it is mediatory and must
be ancillary either to something above it or something below
it—either to Revelation or to sense-perception.</font>

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