(1464,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:32','2021-11-23 17:21:32','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-019_Goal of Evolution.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">GOAL OF EVOLUTION\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nYou say it is obvious that evolution has a goal and that it cannot stop here or now. It seems to you obvious because you have read Sri Aurobindo\'s books. But if you take anybody you meet in the street and ask him what is the purpose of the universe or of the evolution, you will see that he will answer by saying that he knows nothing about it. Even here there are many, perhaps hundreds, if you ask them individually not to repeat what they have read but to say what they feel and think by themselves about the question, what is the intention behind the universal evolution or if there is any intention at all, they will not be able to give a better answer. I do not think that there are many who will be able to tell you in all sincerity, &quot;It is like this, it is like that, it is evident, etc., etc.&quot; A good number may be able to quote passages from Sri Aurobindo; otherwise, if you cease thinking, thinking with what you have read or heard, if you try to express your own personal experience, would you have any certitude to declare ? I do not\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-101</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">speak of the result of what you have learnt, what you have read or heard about, I speak of your own personal experience, exclusively genuinely your own, something that is evident because it is your life and realisation. Are you capable of anything of that kind ?\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIf you have an experience of the kind, I shall be glad to congratulate you and say that you have , not wasted your time here.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nLet us then look within ourselves.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-102</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-019_Goal of Evolution','','publish','closed','open','','019_goal-of-evolution','','','2021-11-23 17:21:32','2021-11-23 17:21:32','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/019_goal-of-evolution/',0,'post','',0),(1465,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:32','2021-11-23 17:21:32','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-014_Supramental Manifestation and World-Change.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">THE SUPRAMENTAL MANIFESTATION AND \nWORLD-CHANGE\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> I have been asked what difference \nthe presence of the Supermind will make, in what way it will change the trend of \nevents and how, since the Supramental manifestation, life has to be reviewed. I \nam asked to give practical examples. I do not know what this means, but here is \nwhat I have seen in a somewhat mathematical mood. Although the mathematical \nlanguage is quite foreign to me, still I may call it a mathematical mood, that \nis to say, a mathematical way of looking at the problem.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> I believe you have done \nsufficient mathematics to know the complexity of combinations that arises when \nyou take as your basis some elements out of a sum-total. To make it clearer I \nshall give you an example—but without using the terms you have been taught at \nschool—from the letters of the alphabet. There are a certain number of letters. \nNow, if you want to calculate or know the number of combinations possible with \nthese letters, taking all the letters together and organi-\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-73</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">sing them in as many ways as you can, you find, as you have been \ntaught, that it runs into a fantastic figure.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Similarly, take the material \nworld and come down to the most minute particle—you know scientists have arrived \nat things that are absolutely invisible and incalculable—and take this particle \nas your basis and the material world as the total and, further, imagine a \nConsciousness or a Will playing with these particles, making all sorts of \npossible combinations, never repeating the same combination. Of course, \nmathematically they say that the number of particles is finite and therefore the \nnumber of combinations also is finite, but this is purely theoretical, and \ntheory does not interest us. Coming to the practical, even if you suppose that \nthese combinations follow each other in such a manner and at such a speed that \nthe change from one to another is hardly perceptible, it is clear that the time \nneeded for the working out of all these combinations would be, apparently, \ninfinite. That is to say, the number of combinations would be so immense that \npractically no end could be assigned to it.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Now imagine, as I have just asked \nyou to do, that really there exists a Consciousness, a Will manifesting these \ncombinations successively and\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-74</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">indefinitely, never repeating twice the same; then we must come \nto the conclusion that the universe is new at each moment of eternity, and if \nthe universe is new at each moment of eternity we are forced to admit there is \nnothing absolutely impossible; even further, what we call logical is not \nnecessarily the true, and the logic or what might almost be called the fancy of \nthe Creator has no limit to it.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Therefore, if for some reason \n(which it is difficult to express) a combination is not followed up by that \nwhich is nearest to it, but another one freely chosen by the Supreme Freedom, \nall our external certainties and all our surface logic would fall to the ground.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> For, the problem is much more \ncomplicated than you imagine. It is not merely on one plane, in one domain, that \nis to say, what may be called the surface of things, that there is this almost \ninfinite quantity of elements allowing combinations eternally new. There is more \nthan that, there is what may be termed depth, that is to say. other dimensions.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Creation is the result not only \nof combinations on the surface but also of combinations in the depths of this \nsurface : in other words, there are psychological factors. But I am looking from\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-75</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">the purely mathematical standpoint; although I do not speak the \nmathematical language, it is still a mathematical conception. Here is then the \nproblem.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Each time a new element is \nintroduced into the sum-total of possible combinations, it is as it were a \ntearing of its limits; the introduction of something that effaces the past \nlimits, brings in new possibilities into play, multiplies indefinitely the old \npossibilities. You had, for example, a world, as the ancient knowledge found it, \nwith twelve layers of depth or successive dimensions. Now suppose in this world \nof twelve dimensions suddenly other dimensions were precipitated; all the old \nformulas would be changed immediately and the whole possibility according to the \nold unfolding would be, one cannot say increased, but supplemented by an almost \ninfinite number of new possibilities, and that in such a manner that all the old \nlogic would become illogical in the presence of the new logic.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> I do not speak at all of what the \nhuman mind has built up with the universe, because that is a reduction to its \nown dimension. I speak of the fact as it is, of the sum-total of combinations \nthat realise themselves successively according to an order and a choice which \nevidently escape wholly\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-76</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">the human consciousness, a sum-total to which man has somewhat \nadapted himself and has at last succeeded in giving an expression that links \nitself to something tangible, after a great effort of study made through the \ncenturies.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> It is evident that the modern \nscientific perception is much nearer to something that corresponds to the \nuniversal Reality than the perceptions, say, of the Stone Age; there is no \nshadow of a doubt about that. But even this will be completely transcended, \nsurpassed and probably upset by the intrusion of something which was not in the \nuniverse and has not been studied so far.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> This change, this sudden mutation \nin the universal elements will very certainly bring a kind of chaos in our \nperceptions, but out of it a new knowledge will arise. That, in a most general \nway, will be the result of the New Manifestation.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> From a more restricted, external \nand limited point of view I shall speak now of things which are not within my \nown experience, but which I have heard being spoken about. It is said, for \nexample, that one finds now a larger number of what they call child prodigies. \nPersonally I have met none, so I cannot say what exactly is &quot;prodigious&quot; in \nthese children. However, as the stories go, there is a new type or types of con-\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-77</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">sciousness which appear surprising to the ordinary human \nconsciousness. It is such examples, I suppose, that you would like to have in \norder to understand what is happening.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Indeed it is quite possible that \nthings are happening now which people are not accustomed to meet with. But that \nis a question of interpretation. The only fact I am sure of is what I have just \ntold you, that the quality, the quantity and the nature of the possible \nuniversal combinations are about to change to such an extent that it will \nstagger all those who deal with life. Let us wait and see.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> I may add one word, a practical \nword, to what I have already said; it is an illustration of a detail, but it \nwill be a kind of reply to some other questions put to me sometime ago about the \nso-called laws of Nature, causes and effects, inevitable consequences in the \nmaterial world, more particularly from the point of view of health : we are told \nthat if some precautions are not taken, if we do not eat as we should, if we do \nnot follow certain rules, necessarily there will be consequences.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> True. But if you look at the \nthing in the light of what I have told you—that there are no two universal \ncombinations that are alike—then how can you establish laws and what is the \nabsolute truth of such laws?\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-78</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\"> There is no such truth. For, if \nyou are logical, that is to say, with a little higher logic, how can you say \nthat a thing repeats itself, since there are no two things, no two combinations, \nno two universal manifestations that are the same? The &quot;sameness&quot; could be only \nan appearance, not a fact. The mind sets up rigid laws, and when it does that, \nyou do not cut yourself off from the apparent surface existence, for the \nsurface, in a very obliging manner, seems to satisfy these laws. But that is an \nappearance, and it does cut you off from the creative Power of the Spirit, cut \nyou off from the true Power of Grace. You can understand that if, by your \naspiration and your attitude, you bring down a higher element, a new element \n—which now we may call the Supramental—into the existing combinations, you can \nall on a sudden change their nature and then all these so-called necessary and \ninexorable laws become absurdities. It is you, with your conception, your \nattitude, your acceptance of certain so-called principles, it is yourself who \nshut the door against the possibility of what you call miracles. They are not \nmiracles, if you know how they come about, but evidently for your consciousness \nthey have the look of the miraculous.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> It is you who say with a logic \nthat appears quite\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-79</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">reasonable : &quot;If I do this, necessarily this will happen&quot;, or \n&quot;If I do not do this, this other thing will surely come about&quot;, and that is how \nyou put, as it were, an iron curtain between yourself and the free action of the \nGrace.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> How good would it be to imagine \nthat the Supreme Consciousness, essentially free, that presides over the \nuniversal manifestation, is fanciful in its choice and that it makes things \nsucceed each other, not according to a logic that is accessible to the human \nthought, but according to another kind of logic, the logic of the unforeseen !\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Then there would be no limit to \nthe possibilities, the unexpected and the wonderful. And one could hope for the \nmost splendid, the most delightful things from this Will, sovereignly free, \nplaying eternally with the elements, ceaselessly bringing forth a new world that \nwould have logically nothing to do with the world that went before. Don\'t you \nthink it would be the happiest of things? We have had enough of the world as it \nis.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> All this I am telling you so that \neach one of you may put as few barriers as possible against future \npossibilities. And that is my conclusion.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> I do not know if I have made \nmyself understood or not, but I suppose a day will come when you will know what \nI have wanted to say.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-80</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-014_Supramental Manifestation and World-Change','','publish','closed','open','','014_supramental-manifestation-and-world-change','','','2021-11-23 17:21:32','2021-11-23 17:21:32','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/014_supramental-manifestation-and-world-change/',0,'post','',0),(1466,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-003_Prayer and Meditation.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">Section One \n</p>\n<br>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">PRAYER AND ASPIRATION</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">(I)\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> Prayers are of many kinds. There \nis a prayer, purely mechanical and physical, that is to say, merely words learnt \nby rote and repeated machine-like. It does not mean much and generally has only \none effect, making the person calm who prays; if you repeat a prayer several \ntimes, it calms you in the end.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> There is a prayer which is a \nformula welling out spontaneously in order to give expression to something very \nprecise which you ask for. You may pray for something, for some person; you may \npray even for certain circumstances; you may pray for yourself also.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Or you may pray to express your \ngratitude to the Divine for what He has done for you, for what you see in Him, \nfor what you wish to do to Him in thankfulness. Evidently it is the highest kind \nof prayer, for it is not exclusively concerned with one\'s own self. It is of a \ngreat order, this prayer of thanksgiving.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-3</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\"> It is the meeting ground of \nprayer and aspiration. Such prayers are the spontaneous formulation of an \nexperience that has been lived; it pours out from within the being, as the \nexpression of a deep realisation, a yearning to sing praises for this experience \nthat has been granted, a desire that the experience may continue or be \nexplained. All this is very near to aspiration.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Again there is a prayer, \nspontaneous and disinterested, a great call as it were, a call for divine \nintercession. It is a very powerful thing. I have had innumerable examples of \nthings being fulfilled instantaneously by prayers of this kind. It means a great \nfaith, a great fervour, a great sincerity, also a great simplicity of heart — \nsomething that does not calculate, that does not arrange, that does not bargain, \nthat does not give with the idea of a return.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">(2)\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> You can pray in all domains. A \nprayer belongs to the domain in which you pray.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Prayers may be purely physical, \neven material. They may be vital or mental or psychic or spiritual. Each one has \nits own character and its own value.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-4</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\"> Prayer is a thing much more \nexternal than aspiration. It concerns generally a definite object and it is \nalways formulated, for it is the formula itself that is the prayer. One can have \nan aspiration and transcribe it in a prayer, but if it is formulated in words, \nit is almost a movement of invocation.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Aspiration goes beyond prayer on \nall sides. It is much more self-forgetful, living only in the thing that one \nwills to do or become, in the offering that one seeks to make to the Divine. \nAspiration may come from any plane, but the centre lies in the psychic.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">(3)\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> You aspire for a certain state of \nbeing. You have, for example, discovered within you something which does not \nagree with your ideal, a movement of obscurity or ignorance, even perhaps a bad \nwill, something which goes against what you want to realise. You do not \nformulate a vow in words but something rises up in you like a flame, an offering \nmade of a living experience which asks for a greater, larger being, a being more \nand more clear and precise. The thing can be reproduced in words later on, when\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-5</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">one tries to remember and note down the experience.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Aspiration bursts forth like a \nmounting flame bearing in itself the thing that one desires to become, to do or \nto have. I said &quot;desires&quot;, but &quot;aspires&quot; is the right word, for it has neither \nthe quality nor the form of a desire. It is truly a great flame of purifying \nwill and it bears in its core what seeks to realise itself.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">(4)\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> You have, for example, done a \nthing which you regret to have done. That has unfortunate consequences and \nupsets things, involving also other persons. You do not know the reaction of \nothers, but as for yourself you wish that what has been done should turn to good \nand if a fault has been committed it should be admitted and made an occasion for \na greater progress, a greater discipline and a new ascent towards the Divine, \nfor opening a door towards a future that you want to be clearer, more true and \nmore intense.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Then, the thing gathers like a \nforce and rushes forth, mounts like a great ascending movement, sometimes \nwithout being formulated in the least,\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-6</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">without words, without expression, but like a flame.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> That is true aspiration. That can \nhappen a hundred times, a thousand times every day, if you are in the state when \nyou want to progress constantly, become more true, more integrally in harmony \nwith what the Divine Will wants of you.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">(5)\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> It seems difficult to pray \nwithout praying to someone. There are people who have a conception of the \nuniverse from which they have driven out all notion of the Divine. There are \nmany, I suppose, like that. It troubles them, the idea that there is something \nthat knows all, is capable of all, and is superior to them in such a formidable \nmanner that there is no comparison; it is troublesome to their self-love, so \nthey try to make a world without the Divine. They certainly cannot pray. To whom \nwould they pray—unless they pray to themselves, which is not the normal custom ? \nBut one can aspire for something without having a faith in the Divine. One can \nhave an aspiration for a condition, a knowledge, a realisation, a state of \nconsciousness. You do aspire for something. There are people who have\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-7</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">no faith in the existence of God, but they have faith in \nprogress; they believe that the world is progressing constantly and this \nprogress will go on indefinitely without stop towards a <i>better </i>\nthat will be always greater than the \npreceding <i>better. </i>Such people may indeed have a great aspiration, \nthey need have no notion of a divine existence for that.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Aspiration necessarily includes a \nfaith, but it need not be a faith in the divine Being. Prayer, on the other \nhand, cannot exist unless it is addressed to a divine Being.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">(6)\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> What to pray unless one prays to \nsome person for something. You pray to someone who can listen to you. If there \nis none to listen to you, how can you pray ? Therefore, if you pray, it means, \neven in case you do not admit it, you have a faith in something which is \ninfinitely greater and infinitely more powerful than you and which can change \nyour destiny and change yourself, provided you pray in a way that the prayer is \nheard.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> The intellectuals recognise \naspiration and say that prayer is an inferior thing. The mystics\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-8</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">tell you that aspiration is all right, but if you wish to be \nheard and wish the Divine to hear, you must pray—and pray with the simplicity of \na child, with a perfect candour, that is to say, perfect trust. &quot;I have need of \nthis or that&quot;— whether a moral or material need—&quot;I ask it of you—give me.&quot;\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> &quot;You gave me what I asked for. \nYou have brought to my close touch experiences that were unknown and that are \nnow wonders which I reach at will. I am infinitely grateful and I offer you this \nhymn of thanksgiving for your intervention.&quot;\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">(7)\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> Instead of lighting a lamp and \nkneeling before it with folded hands, light a flame within your heart and then \nhave a great aspiration towards something more beautiful, more true, more noble, \nbetter than anything you know.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> &quot;I ask that tomorrow all the \nthings that I do not know I may begin to know, all the things that I cannot do, \nI may begin to do, and every day more and more.&quot;\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-9</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\"> And if you are put in the \npresence of much misery in the world, if you have friends who are unhappy and \nrelatives who suffer, if you have difficulties or anything whatsoever, ask:\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> &quot;May the entire consciousness \naltogether rise to that Perfection which shall manifest ! May all this ignorance \nthat has made the world so unhappy change into an enlightened knowledge ! May \nthis bad will be illumined and transformed into good will.&quot;\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> And in proportion to what you are \nable to do, what you are able to understand, you wish with all your heart that \nit may be like that. It may take the form of a prayer, and you can ask—ask of \nwhat or whom ? Ask of that which knows, ask of that which is capable, ask of all \nthat is better and stronger than yourself to give the help that it may be so. \nAnd how beautiful such prayers would be !\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-10</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-003_Prayer and Meditation','','publish','closed','open','','003_prayer-and-meditation','','','2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/003_prayer-and-meditation/',0,'post','',0),(1467,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-006_Divine Grace - 1.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">THE DIVINE GRACE (I)\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> When you are in a certain set of \ncircumstances and when certain things happen, these things often go against your \ndesire or against what appears to you best. And you regret and say: &quot;Oh! How \nmuch better it would have been had it been otherwise !&quot; It does not matter \nwhether the thing concerned is small or big.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> The years pass, events roll on. \nYou progress, become more conscious, understand better. And when you look back, \nyou discover, at first with surprise, later on with a smile, that the famous \ncircumstances which once appeared to you disastrous or unfavourable were just \nthe very best thing that could have happened for your needed progress. And if \nyou were a little wise you would say, &quot;truly, the Divine Grace is infinite !&quot;\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> And when this happens to you a \ngood number of times, you begin to understand that in spite of man\'s blindness \nand wrong appearances, the Grace is at work everywhere and because of the Grace \nit is the best possible that happens in the state where the world is at a given \nmoment.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-23</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\"> It is because our vision is \nlimited or because we are blinded by our preferences that we are unable to \ndiscover why things are as they are. But when one begins to see one enters into \nthat state of wonder which nothing can describe. Behind the appearances one \nfinds this infinite, wonderful, all-powerful Grace that knows everything, \norganises everything, arranges everything, and leads us, whether we want it or \nnot, whether we know it or not, towards the supreme goal, the union with the \nDivine, the awareness of the Divine Consciousness and becoming one with it.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Thus living in the action and the \npresence of the Grace one lives a life full of delight and wonder, the sense of \na marvellous power and at the same time, full of a quiet and complete trust \nwhich nothing can shake.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n&#8258;\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> Whatever may be the faith and the \ntrust you have in the Divine Grace, whatever your capacity of seeing it at work \nin all circumstances, at every moment and at all points of life, you can never \nfully understand the marvellous immensity of its action and the precision and \nthe exactitude with which it works. Never shall one grasp in\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-24</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">what degree the Grace does everything, is behind everything, \norganises everything in order that the advance towards the divine realisation \nmay be as swift, as complete, as total as it can be under the given \ncircumstances of the world.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> As soon as you come in contact \nwith it, you find that there is not a second in time, not a point in space which \ndoes not show in a signal manner this ceaseless work of the Grace, its constant \nintervention. And once you have seen that, you feel you are never up to the \nmark. For you must never forget that you must not have fear or anguish or regret \nor recoil or even suffering. If you were in union with this Grace, if you saw it \neverywhere, you would begin to live a life of exultation, all power and infinite \nhappiness. And that would be the best possible collaboration in the Divine Work.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-25</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-006_Divine Grace - 1','','publish','closed','open','','006_divine-grace-1','','','2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/006_divine-grace-1/',0,'post','',0),(1468,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-002_Publishers Note.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"><i>\nPUBLISHERS\' NOTE</i></p>\n	<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThe writings included in this volume are based on talks given by the Mother. They originally appeared in the Ashram Journals during the years 1957-1958.</p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n	</blockquote>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-002_Publishers Note','','publish','closed','open','','002_publishers-note-5','','','2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/002_publishers-note-5/',0,'post','',0),(1469,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-000_Contents.htm</title>\n</head>\n	<p class=\"paracenter\">\n	THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO</p>\n	<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n	<p class=\"paracenter\">\n	Part Nine</p>\n	<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n	<p class=\"paracenter\">\n	Contents</p>\n	<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n	<p class=\"paracenter\">\n	<a href=\"the-yoga-of-sri-aurobindo-part-9-001_Pre_Content\">Pre-Content</a></p>\n	<p class=\"paracenter\">\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"paracenter\">\n	<a href=\"-002_Publishers-Note\">Publisher\'s Note</a></p>\n	<p class=\"paracenter\">\n	</p>\n	<div align=\"center\">\n<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\nSection One</td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-003_Prayer-and-Meditation\">Prayer and Meditation</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-004_Meditation\">Meditation</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-005_Psychic-Being\">Psychic Being</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-006_Divine-Grace---1\">Divine Grace (I)</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-007_Divine-Grace---2\">Divine Grace (II)</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-008_The-Story-of-Love\">The Story of Love</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-009_How-can-Time-be-a-Friend\">How can Time be a Friend?</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-010_How-to-Become-Indifferent-to-Criticism\">How to Become Indifferent to Criticism?</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-011_Modern-Taste\">Modern Taste</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-012_The-Origin\">The Origin</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-013_The-Supramental-Vision\">The Supramental Vision</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-014_Supramental-Manifestation-and-World-Change\">Supramental Manifestation and World-Change</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\nSection Two \n</td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td><i>\nTo the Children of the Ashram</i></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-015_The-True-Teaching\">The True Teaching</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-016_On-Teachers-and-Teaching\">On Teachers and Teaching</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-017_Education-of-Girls\">Education of Girls</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-018_How-to-Listen\">How to Listen</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-019_Goal-of-Evolution\">Goal of Evolution</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\nSection Three \n</td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\nTo the Sadhaks of the Ashram</td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-020_Health-in-the-Ashram\">Health in the \nAshram</a></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td></td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\nSection Four \n</td>\n	</tr>\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"45%\"></td>\n<td>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<a href=\"-021_The-Mother-on-Herself\">The Mother on Herself</a></td>\n	</tr>\n</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','the-yoga-of-sri-aurobindo-part-9-00_Contents','','publish','closed','open','','the-yoga-of-sri-aurobindo-part-9-00_contents','','','2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/the-yoga-of-sri-aurobindo-part-9-00_contents/',0,'post','',0),(1470,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-009_How can Time be a Friend.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">HOW CAN TIME BE A FRIEND?\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> It depends on the way you look at \nit. It depends on the relation you have with it. If you take it as a friend, it \nbecomes a friend, if you consider it as an enemy, it becomes an enemy.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> But, perhaps, what you wanted to \nask is how to feel when it is an enemy and when it is a friend. Well, when you \nare impatient and say, &quot;Oh, I cannot get to the end of the thing, oh, when shall \nI finish it ?&quot; and when you are not able to do the thing immediately and get \ndesperate, then time is your enemy. But when you say, &quot;Well and good, I have not \ndone this time, I shall do it next time, and I am sure, one day or another, I \nshall do it&quot;, then it becomes your friend.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> <i>Is time merely subjective or \nis there something concrete, something like a personality in it ?</i>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Perhaps this also depends on how \nyou look at it. All forces are personal forces, all forces of Nature are also \npersonal forces. But if we\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-52</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">look at them as impersonal things, our relation with them \nbecomes impersonal. Take for example what has happened just now. If you were a \nmeteorologist, you would calculate the currents of the wind, the pressures of \nthe atmosphere etc., etc. and conclude : &quot;Given all that, what has happened had \nexactly to happen and there will be so many days of rain and so on&quot;. So it is \nfor you a force which you are obliged to call a force of Nature and you can only \nlook at it quietly and wait for the fixed number of rainy days to pass.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> But it may happen also that you \nare in a sort of personal relation with the little conscious beings that are \nbehind wind and storm and rain, behind thunder and lightning and the so-called \nforces of Nature, which are, however, personal forces; then through the relation \nyou establish a kind of friendship with them. And instead of looking at them as \nenemies and mechanical inexorables that you have simply to bear without being \nable to do anything, you arrive at a cordial understanding with them, you \nsucceed in having an influence over them and you may tell them : &quot;But why, you \nwant to blow and pour here, why don\'t you do it just by the side where there is \na field ?&quot;\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-53</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\"> And I have seen with my own eyes, \nhere and in France and Algeria, the rain falling on a very definite spot exactly \nwhere it should rain, because it was dry and there was a field that needed to be \nwatered. And at another place, just a few yards away, it was all sunny and dry, \nbecause the place needed to be sunny and dry. Naturally, if you proceed very \nscientifically, they will explain the thing scientifically; but as for myself, I \nsaw it happen as the result of an intervention from someone who asked for it and \ngot it.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> I have told you of my experiences \nin Algeria. Very many interesting things happened there. For a certain \natmosphere was there, an atmosphere, one might say, of a little more real \nknowledge. There were certain small beings, those that controlled or produced \nsnow. They could come and enter into a room and say : &quot;Now, it must snow \nhere&quot;—&quot;But there has been no snow in this country ! Snow ? You don\'t mean that ? \nNear the Sahara, it\'s going to snow ?&quot; —&quot;It must snow, because they have planted \nfir trees on the mountain and when we see fir trees we come. Fir trees mean we \nare called and so we come.&quot; Thus there was a little discussion and the little \nbeings went away with the permission to snow. The mountain was covered\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-54</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">with snow. And it was quite near the Sahara. You come down a few \nmiles and you reach the Sahara.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Someone took the fancy of \ncovering the hills with fir and fir is a tree of cold countries. The beings were \ncalled in and there they came. All that is true fact, it is not an invention.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Everything depends on your \nrelation. It may be that the meteorologists could explain the thing, explain it \naway, I do not know—they explain all things in all ways.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Things are as you look at them. \nThat is the truth. I have seen other things also, not so pleasant as the one I \nhave just described. For since men have invented—not invented but discovered \nthings they did not know of, atomic bombs and things worse than that and have \nbegun to play with them like babies, it has thoroughly upset the little beings \nwhich lived according to their own rhythm of life and were accustomed to habits \nthat answered to events they could foresee. Now all that is changed and they \nhave suffered in consequence. They have lost their head and they do not know \nwhat they do.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> There was a time, at the end of \nthe war, when things over there became terribly chaotic and one lived in the \nabsurd and as the unfortunate experience continues, the little beings have not\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-55</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">yet been able to come out of their maddening confusion. Yes, \nthey have become maddened. Men play with things of which they know only the \nexterior, that is to say, which they do not know at all. Anything may happen, \nincluding, alas ! catastrophes that have been foretold long long ago.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> That may happen and may not. It \ndepends on the thing that will intervene.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> I had once spoken to you of all \nthat, of wind and cloud and rain and I told you to pray if you wanted the \nweather to change, but I am afraid you thought I was joking.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> One thing is certain. It is this. \nIf you are able to see the deeper law of things and if you are in contact with a \nhigher consciousness in order to realise something that is far beyond all human \nconceptions, why should you be concerned with any human opinion ? Ordinary men \nhave no notion of what spiritual life or divine realisation may be like. \nNaturally, it is precisely because of their ignorance they come and judge those \nthings quite nonchalantly and advise you as to how you should live and move and \nact and be. They know nothing, they see nothing. Your attitude towards them \nshould be one of supreme indifference. And yet you should not feel superior\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-56</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">to them. On the other hand, you should be kind and wish that \nthey should be reborn in the Light. You should avoid discussing with such people \nand never try to convince them, that would be a vain attempt. You should be \nabsolutely indifferent, indifferent to their criticisms and indifferent to their \npraise. You should know it is easier to be indifferent to criticism than to \ncompliments. I tell you a story in this connection.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> I have spoken to you more than \nonce of Madame D.N. She was a militant personality and a great Buddhist \nluminary. When she came to India she wanted to see some of the great Indian \nsages, Gurus, that is to say, and she went to one of them —I do not give you his \nname—who looked at her and asked her, as the talk was about Yoga and personal \neffort and all that, whether she was indifferent to criticism. She answered him \nin the classical expression : &quot;Does one mind the barking of a dog ?&quot; She added, \nwhen she was narrating to me the story, with much humour : &quot;Happily, he did not \nask me whether I was indifferent to praise—for that is much more difficult !&quot;\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> So, then, you should neither \nconsider yourself superior to others and I shall tell you why; you must know \nthat in a being, human or other, it is</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-57</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">the consciousness that matters and you are either conscious or \nunconscious : you can consider yourself superior only when you are unconscious; \nthe very moment you are conscious, truly conscious, you lose the sense of \nsuperiority or inferiority. In either case you must not feel superior, for it is \nsmallness, pettiness; but you must be full of good will and sympathy and care \nlittle about what one says or does not say; however, be always polite, for it is \nalways better to be polite than to be impolite. In that way you put yourself in \nrelation with forces that are more harmonious and you can fight better against \nthe forces of destruction and ugliness. But in reality you must rise above all \nthat and feel yourself interested only in the Divine, in what He expects of you \nand in what you want to do for Him, for that is the only thing that counts. The \nrest has no importance.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-58</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-009_How can Time be a Friend','','publish','closed','open','','009_how-can-time-be-a-friend','','','2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/009_how-can-time-be-a-friend/',0,'post','',0),(1471,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-020_Health in the Ashram.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">Section Three</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">Three <i>To the Sadhaks of the Ash</i>\n</p>\n<br>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">HEALTH IN THE ASHRAM\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">(I)</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThere are people who come to me and say that they would like to go home, for their health does not permit them to continue here; it gradually gets worse and worse and they ask for my permission.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nI wonder at their ignorance. Perhaps I should not wonder; human nature is like that. These people do not know or see or feel in the least that they are here in the best of conditions for cure, nowhere else in the world would they get anything like the opportunity or the help that is here. Naturally, if one is to be here and derive the full benefit of his stay, one has to fulfil certain conditions or rather one<i> </i>\ncondition. That one condition is to give \nup the ego, not to live the life of the ego, but \nto live \nthe life of the soul, to dedicate oneself to the Divine. So it is evident that \nif this condition is not fu1filled, that is to say, being here you continue\nto live the life of your old self, your ego, if you\n<br>\n</p><p class=\"pageno\">Page-105</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">refuse to change, naturally you do not get the benefit of the help that is given here. And when you refuse to go forward, not only do you halt where you are, you go backward. That is the meaning of one\'-s health getting worse. Of course if you ask my permission to go away, you have it. The Grace is everywhere for all to the extent they can receive and allow it to come to them. But that is not what things would be if you were here and agreed to attempt to fulfil the conditions of the life here.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTo be able to stay here one must have faith. But people\'s faith depends upon what the ego desires and seeks. &quot;I believe in the Divine if I find Him doing or arranging things as I would like them to be. If things happen contrary to my notions and wishes, then I believe no more in the Divine.&quot; That is their attitude.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nNow it is precisely this ego-view that vitiates one\'s approach to life and existence. In the true and the most ancient tradition of spirituality, the world was never looked upon as Maya or illusion, it was the ego that was considered as an illusion and the generator of illusions. It is the ego and ego\'s view that puts us in a wrong relation with the world and the consequences are all the falsehoods and miseries. Be egoless, do not\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-106</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">contaminate your perception or your movement with the ego\'s touch, you will see the world changed and transformed.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIf you had faith, if you had less of the egoistic demands and shrinkings, you would see how beautifully Nature collaborates with you.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThe greatest thing that can ever be, the most marvellous thing since the beginning of creation, the <i>miracle </i>\nhas happened. And that is the only thing \nthat concerns us most intimately and the only thing we should be concerned with. \nA new world, yes a completely new world, is born and is here. Nothing can be \nmore momentous. And yet, do you know, feel or perceive it? Unless things give a \nphysical knock upon your nose, you do not believe in its reality. And yet it is \nthere. You are blind and without sense because you are ego-bound. It is your I, \nMy and Mine that has woven around you a web, a screen.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">(2)\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWake up in yourself a will to conquer. Not a mere will in the mind but a will in the very cells of your body. Without that you can\'t do anything, e.g., you may take a hundred medicines\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-107</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">but they won\'t cure you unless you have a will to overcome the physical illness.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nI may destroy the adverse force that has possessed you. I may repeat the action a thousand times. But each time that a vacuum is created it will be filled up by one of the many forces that try to rush in. That is why, I say, wake up the will to conquer.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-108</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-020_Health in the Ashram','','publish','closed','open','','020_health-in-the-ashram','','','2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/020_health-in-the-ashram/',0,'post','',0),(1472,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-018_How to Listen.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">HOW TO LISTEN\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nI have begun to notice that many among you, perhaps a very large portion, do not listen to what I say. For not unoften you have put questions on a subject on which I talked in detail just a moment before, as if nothing was spoken. The fact is surely this : each one of you is shut up in his own thought, exactly as, I suppose, you do in the class also at school. You repeat to yourself your own lesson, thinking of what is expected of you—provided, of course, you are at all diligent and attentive—and do not listen to what your teacher asks and explains or what the other students answer. You miss in this way three-fourths of the advantage of being not all alone but in a group.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nHere the matter is more serious. For I do not give an individual or personal answer, I answer in such a way that all may profit and if, instead of listening, you continue to think what you have in your own head, you lose the opportunity to learn anything.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThat is the first point. If you are here, you\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-98</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">must first of all, listen and not think of other things. But that is not sufficient, it is only the beginning. For there is a good way and there are many bad ways of listening. I do not know if any of you likes to hear music. But if you want to hear music, you must make an absolute silence in your head; you should not follow or accept any thought, you should be wholly concentrated, make yourself a kind of screen, noiseless and immobile. That is the only way of hearing and understanding music. If you allow the least movement or waywardness in your thought, the whole value of the music will escape you.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nNow, to understand a teaching which is not altogether of a material kind, which implies an opening to things that are within, the necessity of silence is all the greater. But if instead of listening to what is said, you jumped about for an idea in order to put another question or if you started arguing about the things said under the specious pretext of understanding better, all you heard would pass like smoke without leaving an effect.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIn the same way, when you have an experien e, as long as it lasts, do not try to understand what it means; if you do that, it vanishes, of you deform and disfigure it, taking away all its purity.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-99</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIn the same way also if you want a spiritual experience to enter into you, you must have a brain absolutely quiet and immobile, like a mirror which not only reflects but absorbs, allows the ray to enter and penetrate deep within so that out of the profundities of your consciousness it may rise up one day or other in the form of knowledge..</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIf you come here, come with the intention of listening in silence. What will happen you will recognise later on; the effect of this attitude of silence you will find out in course of time. But in the meanwhile the only thing to do is to be silent, still, attentive.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-100</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-018_How to Listen','','publish','closed','open','','018_how-to-listen','','','2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/018_how-to-listen/',0,'post','',0),(1473,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-017_Education of Girls.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">EDUCATION OF GIRLS\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThe question is about our physical education and, in a general way, the psychological basis of our activities here. These things have, of course, been written about and spoken of by me and by Sri Aurobindo very often, but evidently the idea does not seem to have entered your consciousness.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nI do not wish to wage a war against what you feel and do, but I would like you at least to understand why things are done here in the way they are being done instead of letting yourself go thoughtlessly in a retrograde movement towards all that is done elsewhere, under the plea that that is how your fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers and all the ancestors of yourself and of all your friends and relatives did in the past and considered it as the normal and natural way of doing things.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nI do not contradict the fact, in the sense that humanity was created by Nature with special intentions and special purposes; it is in order to\nrealise her ends that Nature fashioned her\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-92</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">creatures and gave them special habits and functions. Therefore, if you speak of natural things, I cannot say that they are not natural, for it is Nature\'s way.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nBut all the same I have told you, I suppose, not once but many times, and Sri Aurobindo also has written, not once but more than once, that we are not here to recommence, perpetuate, continue what is done elsewhere. And we have given a concrete shape to this fact specially in our education. For, I must avow, without giving offence to anyone, that they who come here after having lived much and who carry a heavy load of the past upon their back find it difficult to change immediately their attitude and their point of view, but if you take the young ones, who are not spoilt yet—although they too get spoilt too easily— those who are not spoilt too much by the usual education, by family ideas, ancestral inclinations, you have just a chance of turning their consciousness to the true path and obtain somewhat tangible and concrete results.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTo speak the truth, we have had nothing to complain; for we had absolutely clear proofs that what we wanted to do is quite possible, if one knows how to go about it.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThis is then what we say : given similar conditions,</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-93</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">the same education, identical possibilities, there is no reason to make a categorical, final and imperative distinction between what is called men and women. For us, human beings are the expression of one and the same soul; and if, as I already said in the beginning, Nature has made a differentiation in the expression with a view to satisfying her needs and realising her purposes, but if our needs and our purposes are different and we do not recognise the physical ends as conceived by Nature to be the final and absolute ends, then we can try and develop our consciousness along another line.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nUnfortunately we have come to notice one thing. As years pass and small girls grow up, they suddenly begin to remember that they are girls and that they must live and move in a special manner, they must be pleasant, agreeable, pretty, etc., etc. So all our efforts seem to go in vain. Naturally, there are exceptions—there are always exceptions to the rule—but even among these, in the background of their consciousness there is this feeling of being not quite like the others, the satisfaction of having done better than the others, the conceit that they stand comparison with the others—the males !\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nI am told people have been remarking—people\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-94</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">naturally not accustomed to our ways—people with their own old-world ideas—and asking why we have the same programme of physical education for both boys and girls, why the girls are not treated in a special way, quite differently from the boys—is it not a gross error even from the physical point of view to level them together ? Their crowning argument being, that is the way things are done everywhere else.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nI say if that is the way things are done elsewhere, it is no use our repeating the same here. We cannot do it better than they. On the contrary, if things are done elsewhere in that way, it is just the reason why we should not do that way. What we want is precisely to bring into the world something which is not there. But if we keep to all the habits of the world, all its preferences and prejudices, all its constructions, how shall we come out of the rut and do something new ?\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nI have told you, my children, I have repeated in all kinds of tone and temper : if you wish truly to benefit by your stay here, try to look at things and understand them with a new eye and a new perception based on something higher, deeper, truer, something which is yet not there, but will be one day. And it is to build up this future that we have taken a special attitude.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-95</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">\nI tell you, we have had quite material proofs of the correctness and truth of our position. They do not last, however. Why? Because it is extremely easy to fall back into the ordinary consciousness, but there is nothing more difficult than to hold oneself high all the time on the top rung of the ladder and look at the world from up there.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nBut we will not obey Nature\'s orders, even if these orders have behind them thousands and thousands of years of habit. Yet one thing is certain : the argument that Nature puts forward against any change in things that they have been always as they are is not true. Whether she wants it or not, things do change and a day will come when people will say, &quot;Ah yes, things were so in those days, but now it is all different !&quot;\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nYou may naturally complain that I am addressing myself only to the girls and that I am telling you all this in the presence of the &quot;other sex&quot;. But I include them also in the ridiculousness of the whole thing. For if they did not think in the way they think, if they did not feel in the way they feel and if they did not behave in the way they behave, long long ago you would have been disgusted with these childish mannerisms of yours.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nHowever, I ask you only to understand and\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-96</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">admit this much for some time that we still belong to a period of faith and trust, that things are on the way to change, that we have reached a point of time when things are turning and taking a new direction. I ask of you a little more faith, a little more trust, just letting yourself be guided. Otherwise you lose the advantage of being here. That is all.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-97</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-017_Education of Girls','','publish','closed','open','','017_education-of-girls','','','2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/017_education-of-girls/',0,'post','',0),(1474,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-015_The True Teaching.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">Section \nTwo </p>\n	<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n	<p class=\"paracenter\">\n	To the Children of the Ashram</p><hr>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">THE TRUE TEACHING\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> You must have observed that my \nway of talking to you is not always the same. I don\'t know whether you are very \nsensitive to the difference, but for me it is considerable.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Sometimes, on rare occasions, \nbecause of something read or for another reason, there comes to me in the wake \nof a question what is called an experience but what is simply the fact of \nentering into a certain state of consciousness and, having entered into it, \ndescribing that very state. In such a case, the Force, the Consciousness that \nexpress themselves pass across the individual mind, use it like a store-house of \nwords and draw from it by a sort of affinity the words necessary for the \nexpression. This is the true teaching, the teaching that is difficult to find in \nbooks. It can be there, but one must be oneself in that state of consciousness \nto be able to discover it, whereas, with the spoken word, the sound-vibration \ntransmits at least something of the experience and this can be contagious for \nall who are sensitive.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> On other occasions, the questions \nposed and\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\nPage-83</p><hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">the subject chosen are conveyed by the mind to the higher \nConsciousness. The mind receives a response from that Consciousness and conveys \nit through the word. This is what generally happens in all teachings, provided \nthat the one who teaches has the capacity to pass the question on to the higher \nConsciousness—a capacity not always present. \n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> I should tell you that the second \nmethod does not interest me much. Very often, when the question or the subject \nfails to give me the possibility of entering into a state of consciousness that \ninterests me, I far prefer to keep silent. And it is, as it were, a sense of \nduty that makes me talk.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> I am informing you in advance, \nbecause in the past I have cut short the conversation and passed abruptly into \nmeditation.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\nPage-84</p></td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>','-015_The True Teaching','','publish','closed','open','','015_the-true-teaching','','','2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/015_the-true-teaching/',0,'post','',0),(1475,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-007_Divine Grace - 2.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">THE DIVINE GRACE (2)\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> There is a time when one becomes \nconscious enough to see that things in themselves are neither good nor bad. What \nthey are and what their effects are upon us depends entirely upon the attitude \nthat we have towards them. The same thing, the same circumstance, identically \nthe same, if taken as a gift from God, as a Divine Grace, as the effect of a \ntotal harmony, helps us to become more conscious, more strong and more true. On \nthe other hand, taken as a blow given by Fate, as a bad force that seeks to hurt \nus it will serve only to diminish us, make us dull and heavy; it will take away \nour consciousness, our force and the harmony.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> I wish you all to have this \nexperience. For when you have it, you become master of yourself, not only master \nof yourself, but master of the circumstances of your life, at least so far as \nthey concern you personally. And that depends exclusively on the attitude that \nyou take. It is not an experience that passes through your head (it may begin \nthere); it is an experience\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-26</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">that may happen even in your body. Its completion however needs \nmuch labour for concentration, self-mastery, for driving the consciousness into \nMatter. The result of a shock received by the body from outside will vary \naccording to the manner in which the body receives it. And the body can be so \nperfected in this line that you become master of accidents.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> This power some of you have, \nfully developed and realised in the mind, the power, namely, to act upon the \nouter circumstances so that they are altogether changed when they act upon you. \nThis power can come down into matter, into the physical substance itself, in the \ncells of the body and give to the body the same control over surrounding things. \nThat is sure to come. This opens to you fresh horizons; it is one step on the \nway towards transformation.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n&#8258;\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> If you are truly in a state of \nintense aspiration there is no circumstance that will not serve to help you in \nthe realisation of your aspiration. All will come to help you, as if it were the \nperfect and absolute Consciousness that organised all things around you.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-27</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\"> And you in your external \nignorance may not recognise it, may at first protest against the circumstances \nas they come to you, may complain and try even to change them. But after a time \nyou will have become wiser, with a little distance put in between you and the \nevent, you will find out that that was just the thing necessary for you to make \nthe required progress. It is a Will, a supreme Good Will that arranges \neverything around you.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n&#8258;\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> If you say to the Divine with \nconviction, &quot;I want you alone&quot;, the Divine will arrange all circumstances in \nsuch a way as to oblige you to be sincere. Something in you says, &quot;I want \nnothing but you&quot;, and then all the while you want a hundred different things. \nUsually it is one thing particularly that comes and troubles you and prevents \nyou from realising your aspiration. Well, the Divine will come without showing \nhimself, without even your suspecting it and He will arrange circumstances in \nsuch a way that whatever prevents you from being solely given to the Divine, \nwill be inevitably removed\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-28</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">from your path. And then when all such things are removed you \nbegin to complain and shout. But subsequendy, if you are sincere, you remember \nthat you said to the Divine that you belonged to Him alone. And then He will \nremain with you, all the rest will pass. That is the greater Grace.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Only you must say it with \nconviction—I do not mean that it has to be immediately integral, for if it is \nintegral, the work is already done —but that the central will of the being must \nsay with conviction, &quot;I want nothing but you.&quot; Even once would be sufficient. \nThat may take time more or less, sometimes it may extend to years, but you reach \nyour goal. You are certain to reach.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n&#8258;\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> If you want a precise thing, if \nyou have a special reason for invoking the Grace, you must formulate your prayer \nexactly and clearly. Naturally, if you are in a state of complete surrender, if \nyou are giving yourself, offering yourself wholly, simply to the Grace and you \nlet it work as it wants, there is nothing to say, it is all right. But after a \ntime you must not begin to question about what\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-29</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">it has done, you must not say, &quot;I did that with the idea of \ngetting this&quot;. Indeed if you have in you the idea of getting something then it \nis better to formulate the thing sincerely and simply, just as you see it. \nThereafter it is for the Grace to choose, whether it will do or not do as you \nwant. In any case, you have clearly formulated your desire and there is nothing \nbad in that. It becomes bad only when it is not granted and you revolt. You must \nunderstand at that moment that the desire or the aspiration that one has may not \nbe very enlightened and that one might ask for a thing that is not exactly good \nfor oneself. So one must be wise and say, &quot;Let Thy Will be done.&quot;\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> But so long as you have an inner \nperception and a choice of your own, there is no harm in formulating it. It is \nquite a natural movement. For example, if you have committed a fault and wish \nsincerely not to repeat it, I do not see any harm in asking for it. On the \ncontrary, if you ask for it with a true inner sincerity, there is a great chance \nof its being granted. You must not believe that the Divine likes to contradict \nyou. He is not at all particular about it. Only He may know better what exactly \nis good for you. He contradicts your aspiration only when it is absolutely\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-30</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">indispensable. Otherwise he is always ready to give you what you \nwant.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n&#8258;\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> If you have a very strong \nimagination, and you build up a formation of your desire in all details and if \nthe structure is well made, complete and existing by itself, then you may be \nsure that if you live long enough the thing will be realised. What is not given \nat the disposal of men is the time it takes : it may be tomorrow, it may be the \nnext moment, or it may take years and even centuries, but it will be realised.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> If to this power of imagination \nyou can add a kind of creative power of the vital, then you raise a wholly \nliving force. Like all living forces tending towards manifestation, this force \ntoo will exercise a pressure upon earthly events in order to realise itself and \nit will realise itself.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Only personal desires and \npersonal circumstances are things that are not persistent or stable. After a \ntime, a thing that interested you very much does not interest you any more: you \nthink of another thing, you have another desire, you make another formation. But \nthen if the earlier formation had been well thought out and built up,\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-31</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">then after having followed its course in space it would realise \nitself. You are put in front of your first desire now realised while you have \nalready embarked upon your second, or may be your third, or your fourth. You say \nthen almost indignantly, &quot;But I do not want that, why does it come to me \n?&quot;—without however taking into account the fact that it is the result of your \nprevious action.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> But if instead of being desires \nthese are aspirations for things spiritual, and if you follow your line of \nregular progression, then it is absolutely certain that you will get one day \nwhat you have imagined. It may be sooner, or it may be later if there are very \nmany obstacles on the way. For example, if you have made a formation that is \nstill foreign to the earth\'s atmosphere, then it may take some time to prepare \nthe conditions for its appearance. But if it is something already realised many \ntimes upon earth and not too radical a transformation, then you can have it \nquickly provided you follow the line with persistence.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> And if to that now you add the \nardour of faith and trust in the Divine Grace and that self-giving to the Grace \nwhich makes you await everything from the Divine, then it becomes a formidable\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-32</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">matter. You can see before your eyes things happening more and \nmore, the most wonderful things realised one after another.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> But there are conditions to \nfulfil: a great purity must be there and a great intensity in the self-giving, \nand that absolute trust in the supreme wisdom of the Divine Grace which knows \nbetter than us what is truly good for ourselves. If the aspiration is offered to \nThat and the offering is made truly and with enough intensity, the result will \nbe marvellous.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> But then you must be able to see. \nWhen things are realised, most often people find that quite natural; they do not \ncare to see even why and how it has so happened; they simply say, &quot;Yes, but of \ncourse it had to be so.&quot; And thus they lose the joy of gratefulness. After all, \nif one can be full of gratefulness and gratitude for the Divine Grace, then that \nis the last thing; you begin to see that at every step things are exactly what \nthey should be and the very best that can be. It is then that Sachchidananda \nbegins to gather Himself and refashion His Unity.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-33</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-007_Divine Grace - 2','','publish','closed','open','','007_divine-grace-2','','','2021-11-23 17:21:33','2021-11-23 17:21:33','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/007_divine-grace-2/',0,'post','',0),(1476,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:34','2021-11-23 17:21:34','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-016_On Teachers and Teaching.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">ON TEACHERS AND TEACHING\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nMastery means to know how to deal with certain vibrations. If you have the knowledge and can deal with the vibrations, you have the mastery. The best field for such an experience and experiment is yourself. First, you must have mastery over yourself and when you have it, you can transmit its vibrations to others in so far as you are capable of identifying yourself with them. But if you cannot deal with the vibrations in yourself, how can you deal with them in others ? You can, by word or by influence, encourage people so that they do what is necessary to master themselves, but you cannot yourself have direct mastery over them.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTo master something, a movement, for example, means, by your simple presence, without any word, any explanation, to replace a bad vibration by the true one. By means of the word, by means of explanation and discussion, even a certain emanation of force, you exert an influence upon another, but you do not master the movement. Mastery over a movement is the capacity to set\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-85</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">against the vibration of the movement a stronger, truer vibration that can stop the other vibration. An example can be easily given.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTwo persons are quarrelling in your presence; not only are they quarrelling, they are about to come to blows. Then you approach and explain to them that it is not the thing to do and you give good reasons so that they stop in the end. You exercise an influence over them in this way. But if, on the other hand, you simply stand before them, look at them and send out a vibration of peace and calm and quietness without uttering a word, without any explanation whatsoever, and if as a result the other vibration does not stand but falls off by itself, that is mastery.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIt is the same with regard to curing ignorance. If words are necessary to explain a certain thing, then you have not the true knowledge. If I have to speak out all that I mean to say in order to make you understand, then I have not the mastery, simply I exercise an influence upon your intelligence and help you to understand, awaken in you the desire to know, to discipline yourself, etc., etc. But if I am not able, simply by looking at you, without saying anything, to make you enter into the light that will make you understand, well, I have not mastered the state of ignorance.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-86</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<i>Q. The problem of teachers is: how to control the classes, how to bring the students under discipline ?</i>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nHow can you have control over your students or discipline them unless you have control over yourself ?\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<i>Q. But to learn to have control or mastery over oneself would take a whole lifetime !</i>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIt is a pity ! But how can you hope otherwise ? When you have an undisciplined, disobedient, insolent student, it means a certain vibration in the atmosphere which is unfortunately very contagious. If you do not have in yourself the contrary vibration, the vibration of discipline, order, humility, calmness, peace that nothing disturbs, how can you hope, I say, to have an influence ? You may tell the student that such a thing should not be done; but the result may be worse or he may mock at you. And if, on top of it, you do not know how to control yourself, but get into a temper, well, you may be done for, you may lose for your whole life all possibility of controlling your students.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Teachers who do not possess \nperfect calm, endurance\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-87</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">that can stand all test, tranquillity that nothing shakes, who have not cast off their <i>amour propre </i>\nare not the kind that can ever succeed. You must be \na saint, a hero in order to be a good teacher. You must be a great Yogi to be a \ngood teacher. You must yourself have always the perfect attitude if you demand \nfrom your students a perfect attitude. You cannot ask of any person a thing \nwhich you cannot do yourself.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nSo then look within yourself at the difference there is between what is and what should be; that will give you the measure of your lack of success in the class.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nNow I would like to add one word, since I have the occasion. We have asked many of our students, when they are grown up and know something, to teach others. There are some, I believe, who know the reason why; but there are others who think that it is because it is good to serve in some way or other, because teachers are needed after all and that we are glad to have them. But I tell you, for it is a fact, I have never asked any of those who were educated here to give lessons unless I saw that that was the best way for them to get self-discipline, to learn what they are to teach, to attain an inner perfection which they would not otherwise than by being teachers\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-88</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">and having this opportunity, an exceptionally severe one for self-discipline.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThey who are successful here as teachers,— I do not mean an external, artificial and superficial success,—they who become truly good teachers, are exactly those who are capable of making an inner progress towards impersonalisa-tion, capable of eliminating their egoism, becoming masters of their movements, possessing insight, comprehension of others and a patience, proof against all test and trial.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIf you have passed through that discipline and succeeded, then you will not have wasted your time here. I ask every one who accepts the work of giving lessons to accept it in that spirit. It is all very nice to be obliging to give service, to be useful; it is a very good thing, certainly. But it is only one side, perhaps the most unimportant side of the question. The much greater, more important side is this, that you have been given the Grace so that you may arrive at mastering yourself, at an understanding of your subject and of other persons which you could not have done but for this opportunity. And if you have not profited during all these years that you have been teaching, well, it means you have wasted at least half of your time.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-89</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\"> <i>Q. What about the organisation of studies at the Ashram school ? If the students are given full freedom, as it is supposed you have given them, that is to say, if they are permitted to come to the classes or go away from them as they like or learn or not learn their lessons according to their choice, then how can a system or organisation work?</i>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nBut when did I say that a student is free to come and go as he likes ? You must not confuse matters. I said and I repeat that if a student feels that a particular subject is foreign to him, if, for example, he has a capacity for literature and poetry and a disgust or even dislike for mathematics, in that case, if the student comes and tells me, &quot;I prefer not to follow the course of mathematics&quot;, I cannot answer him, &quot;No, you must absolutely do it&quot;. But once a student has decided to follow a class, it is quite an elementary discipline for him to follow the class, to attend it regularly, to behave decently while he is there. Otherwise it is unworthy of him to go to school at all. I have never encouraged people to loiter about during class hours or to come one day and be absent the next day, never, for, to begin with, if you are not able to submit yourself to this very elementary discipline, you will never succeed in\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-90</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">having the least control over yourself; you will be always the slave of every impulse and fancy of yours.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIf you do not want to study a certain line of knowledge, it is all right, you are not obliged to do so. But if you decide to do a thing in life, whatever it is, you must do it honestly, in a disciplined, regular and methodical manner, without giving yourself to fancy. I have never approved that a person should be the plaything of his impulses and caprices. You can never get sanction for that out of me, for you are then no longer a human being but an animal.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-91</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-016_On Teachers and Teaching','','publish','closed','open','','016_on-teachers-and-teaching','','','2021-11-23 17:21:34','2021-11-23 17:21:34','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/016_on-teachers-and-teaching/',0,'post','',0),(1477,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:34','2021-11-23 17:21:34','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-008_The Story of Love.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">THE STORY OF LOVE\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">(I)</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> Love, in its essence, is the joy \nof identity. It finds its final expression in the felicity of union. Between the \ntwo there are all the phases that make up the universal manifestation.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Love comes from the very origin \nof the universe. Love in its essence, I say, that is, before the manifestation, \nis the delight of identity. Something there was which became conscious of the \nidentity. And that is precisely Love. Afterwards comes the manifestation of \nLove. In its highest form, when it comes back to its origin across all its \nhistory of manifestation, it becomes the felicity of union. The sense of union \ncomes as a consequence of the sense of separation. The passage through the whole \nmanifested universe gives the sense of separation from the origin and the return \nto the origin is the felicity of reunion—union of two things which were \nseparated and are united again. That is Love in its great circuit of \nmanifestation.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-34</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\"> When it climbs back to its \norigin, it returns to the starting-point with something more than what it had \nbefore it started. It is the experience of the universe and universality. \nFundamentally, that is the reason for the existence of creation. Consciousness \nwould not be what it is had it not been expressed in a creation. There is an \nenrichment of consciousness through the experience gathered in an objective \nuniverse, a richness of content and a plenitude it would not have if there were \nnot a manifested universe.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> The return movement of creation \nis not a thing that happens in time. It is difficult to conceive, because for us \nthings are successive. But if one could conceive a movement as a whole embracing \neverything, which would be at the same time the beginning and the end, and \ncontain all, it would then be not a return in time, but a return in \nconsciousness.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> If there were not the circuit, \nthere would never be the Ananda of union, there would be only the Ananda of \nidentity. And it is precisely in order that this Ananda of identity may find its \nculmination and crowning in the Ananda of union that the whole circuit has been \ndone.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n&#8258;\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-35</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\"> The very moment when the \nindividual consciousness moved away from its divine origin and remained no \nlonger identified with the movement of the divine consciousness, the sense of \nseparation was created. The individual consciousness did not separate wilfully, \nbut it remained no longer identified. Not being identified, the Divine \nConsciousness followed a certain movement and the individual consciousness \nfollowed another, and naturally they moved away from each other more and more. \nLet us say, as an image, that the Divine Consciousness advances at a certain \nspeed and the individual consciousness, not having remained united with it, \ncould not follow it and therefore fell back more and more, far behind. The \nDivine moves forward, the individual stops; when the individual moves, the \nDivine flies. When the individual takes one step, the Divine leaps. That \nincreases the gap of separation more and more. It is this original separation \nthat has produced others in its train and these separations all together have \ncreated the universal misery, at least the earthly misery as we know it.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> It all began by a separation in \nthe consciousness and it ended by a separation in respect of the worlds and \ntheir elements, by a division\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-36</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">that we witness down to the material nature. The separation in \nconsciousness has produced the separation of forms and the separation of forms \nhas induced pain and suffering. Now therefore there are these countless objects \nthat lie about divided and separated from one another. Since, however, the \nuniverse had to be a progressive thing, the bliss of identity, the full \nconsciousness of this identity had necessarily to be veiled, otherwise nothing \nwould have moved.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Evidently, if the sense of unity \nwere reestablished, the miseries would disappear. But if you realised the \nperfect identity and the whole universe in its totality, realised this absolute \nunity in which there is no possibility of any distinction, then there would be \nno universe at all, it would be the return to Pralaya. The solution then is to \nfind Ananda in the play of mutual exchange and union.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> What has been projected into \nspace and time must be brought back to itself, without thereby annulling the \nworld so created. That is why Love burst forth as the irresistible power of \nUnion. It soared over darkness and unconsciousness, it scattered itself, \npulverised itself into the bosom of unfathomable night. It\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-37</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">is from then that began the awakening and the ascension, the \nslow formation in and out of Matter and a progress without end.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">(2)\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> There is a state of consciousness \nin which one experiences the Divine Love everywhere. One does not feel then a \n.great difference between one creature and another except in their physical \nappearance. Even in unconsciousness and immobility, the apparently complete \ninertia—of the stone, for example—can be found a dazzling light, the light of \nthe divine Presence. There is much more aspiration than one thinks in objects \nthat are usually called inanimate. In the stone precisely there is a spontaneous \nsense of what is there high above and although it cannot express it, it feels \nthe thing and that affects it although in different ways. In the stone, in \nthings and objects, there is a strange receptivity that comes from this \nPresence.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> You can take what you call a \nprecious stone and concentrate a force or forces in it. It retains them. These \nforces radiate afterwards very slowly, but increasingly, progressively. And if \nyou know how to do it, you can accumulate a\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-38</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">quantity of force to last almost indefinitely so to say. There \nare stones that serve as intermediaries of union, stones that serve as \naccumulators of energy and stones that may serve as foretellers of \ncircumstances, they may carry messages. Therefore, as they can serve as \naccumulators, it means that they carry in themselves the source of the Force \nitself, otherwise they would not be receptive.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> It is a force of this kind that \nis the origin of the phenomenon of crystallisation. Crystals gather together in \nmatter, it is already a movement of love. Stones that crystallise, rock \ncrystals, for example, form wonderful designs, so magnificent in their absolute \nharmony; that comes because of only one thing—the Force of Love.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> You do not see the thing, because \nyou have not the inner sensibility. But once you have the direct perception of \nthe forces of love behind things you see that it is everywhere the same. And you \ncan even come to understand what man-made manufactured things tell you.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> The movement is quite perceptible \nin the vegetable kingdom, in the tree and the plant. These trees that rise up \nand up always, the small ones trying to catch up with the big ones, the big\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-39</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">ones endeavouring to mount still further ! The plants always \nseek to find out a direction from where they can receive as much light as \npossible. It is the need to grow in order to get more light, more air, more \nspace.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> When you see a rose opening out \nto the sun, it is as it were for the need of giving away its beauty. For us it \nis unintelligible, for flowers do not think out what they do. A human being \nalways associates with what he does the capacity to see what he does, to think \nwhat he does. But flowers are not, so to say, conscious at all, theirs is a \nspontaneous movement. It is a mighty Force that is at work through all this, the \ngreat universal Consciousness, the great force of universal Love that makes all \nthings flower in beauty.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> It is said the tiger\'s need to \ndevour is one of the first expressions of love in the world. What is likely to \nprove that this is not quite false is that when a tiger or a serpent catches its \nvictim, the victim usually gives himself up in a kind of delight of being eaten. \nA testimony comes in the experience of a man in the following true story. He \nhappened to be in the midst of bushes with his comrades. He was a little behind, \naway from others and a tiger caught him. The others\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-40</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">returned when they noticed that he had disappeared. They found \nand followed the traces and arrived just in time to save him from the jaws of \nthe tiger. When he had recovered a little, he was told what a terrible \nexperience he must have had ! He replied that it was nothing of the kind : &quot;Just \nimagine, I don\'t know what happened to me, but as soon as the tiger seized me \nand began to drag me along the ground, I felt an intense love for him and a \ngreat desire that he should eat me&quot;. This is I say, a true story.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> As a matter of fact, long before \nthe tiger came on the scene, there must have been early creatures dwelling at \nthe bottom of the sea that had only one function, the stomach. They existed only \nas stomachs and their only activity was to swallow. One may say that these are \nthe first expressions of love seeping through matter. For, before that there was \nnothing, except perfect inconscience, complete immobility, nothing was moving. \nIt is with love that movement began, consciousness awakened, transformation \nstarted. Love is the power of the world.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> The need to swallow is a \nprimitive way of uniting with things, but it is a very direct way, you swallow \nand you absorb the thing. The\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-41</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">tiger takes a great joy in the thing; there is a joy and that is \nalready a higher form of love.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> If you want to know what love is, \nyou must love the Divine. It is a very well-known fact that in the end you \nbecome similar to the thing you love. If you love the Divine, by the force of \nthis love, little by little, you will become more and more like the Divine. And \nthen one can identify oneself with the divine Love and know what it is, you \ncannot know it in any other way.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Necessarily, the love between two \nhuman beings is always made of ignorance, misunderstanding, weakness and a \nterrible sense of isolation. It would be as if you wanted to gain entrance into \nthe presence of a unique Splendour and the first thing you do is to put a screen \nbetween yourself and this Splendour and you are very astonished at not having \nbut a vague impression of it ! The first thing then to do is to do away with the \nscreen, pass through and stand in the presence of the Splendour. Then you know \nwhat it is. But if you go on piling veil after veil between you and That, you \nwill never see it. You may have just a vague impression, &quot;there is something&quot; \nand that is all.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> One of the highest expressions of \nlove in human beings is the giving of oneself entirely\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-42</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">to the person loved. That is to say, to sacrifice oneself for \nthe motherland, give one\'s life in defending another person etc. This may not be \nthe very highest form, but it is already something. From there you have to climb \nvery high up to arrive at the true expression which is on the summit of the \nascent. The ultimate expression of love is in the felicity of union.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> That brings us to the symbol of \nKrishna and Radha. Krishna is he of whom Sri Aurobindo speaks as the divine \nFlute-player, that is to say, the immanent and universal Divine who is the \nsupreme power of attraction. Radha is the name given to the soul, the psychic \npersonality responding to the call of the Flute-player.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Radha consciousness is \nessentially the way in which the individual answers to the divine call. Sri \nAurobindo describes it as the capacity to find Ananda in all things through \nidentification with the one divine Presence and through total self-giving to \nthis Presence. That has the power of changing everything into perpetual ecstasy. \nInstead of seeing things in their apparent discord, you see the Presence alone, \nthe Will and the Grace in all things. And every event, every element, every \ncircumstance, every form changes into a way, a detail through which you can \napproach\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-43</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">more intimately and more profoundly the Divine. The discordances \ndisappear, the uglinesses vanish, there remains only the splendour of the divine \npresence in the Love that radiates in all things.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">(3)\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> <i>Love for the Divine means an \nexclusive attachment to the divine Reality. This concentration finds its \nculmination in an integral identification and is instrumental to the supramental \nrealisation upon earth.</i>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Love alone is capable of putting \nan end to the suffering of the world. Only the ineffable delight of Love in its \nessence can wipe out of the universe the burning pain of separation. For it is \nonly in the ecstasy of the supreme union that creation will discover the reason \nof its existence and its fulfilment.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> It is this marvellous state that \nwe wish to realise upon earth. It is this that will be able to transform the \nworld, make of it a dwelling place worthy of the divine Presence. And then only \nLove, true and pure, will incarnate in a body that will no longer be a disguise \nor a veil. That is why no effort is too arduous, no austerity too\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-44</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">rigorous to illumine, perfect, transform the physical substance \nso that it no more hides the Divine, when the Divine takes an external form \nthrough Love. For, then there will be freely manifested in the world that \nmarvellous divine Kindness that can change life into a paradise of the sweetest \ndelight.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> The Divine Love is there with all \nits intensity, with all its tremendous power. But most people do not feel \nanything. What they feel is exclusively proportionate to what they are and what \nthey are capable of receiving.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Just imagine that you are bathed \nin an atmosphere wholly vibrant with divine love. But you perceive nothing of \nit. Sometimes, rarely, all on a sudden you get the impression of something. Then \nyou say : &quot;Oh ! Divine Love came to me !&quot; It may seem to be an illusion, but the \nsimple thing is that for some reason or other you were open just a little and \nyou perceived the Thing. But it is always there.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> The Divine Consciousness also \nmeans the same thing. This too is there in its full intensity. Yet people do not \nperceive it or perceive only spasmodically. But at one moment you happen to be \nin a good condition, you feel something and say : &quot;Oh ! the Divine Consciousness \nappeared\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-45</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">to me&quot;. But, as I said, it is not quite that. When you have a \nsmall opening, sometimes even like that of a pinhead, it rushes into you, for it \nis an active atmosphere. Whenever there is a possibility of its being received, \nit is received.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> It is the same thing with regard \nto all divine things. They are all there.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Only you do not receive them, \nbecause you are closed up, blocked up. And you are very actively occupied with \nother things all the while. All the while you are full of yourself. As you are \nfull of yourself, there is no place for the Divine. But He is there.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> All wonderful things are there \naround you. You do not see them, or see them sometimes only, at a moment when \nyou are a little more receptive, or perhaps in sleep, when you are less \nexclusively occupied with your little affairs. Then a light comes to you of \nsomething; you see, you feel something. But generally, as soon as you wake up, \nall that is obliterated by the formidable ego that is full of itself.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> If you look at yourself closely \nyou will see that it is always like that. Your vision of the universe is this \nthat you are at the centre and the universe is around you. It is not the \nuniverse that you see.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-46</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">but you see yourself in the universe. So there is no room for \nany other thing.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> The surest means of \nre-establishing the right perspective is to give yourself to the Divine. Then \nyou are obliged to come out of yourself a little at least to begin with.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Generally, when people think of \nthe Divine, the first thing they do is to pull as much as they can and they \nreceive nothing. They tell you : &quot;Oh, I have called, I have prayed and I have \nhad no answer&quot;. If they are asked : &quot;Have you offered yourself ?&quot;, they reply : \n&quot;No, I have pulled&quot;. &quot;But that is why you have not received.&quot; It is not that the \nanswer did not come. But when you pull, you are so much shut up within your ego \nthat you raise a wall between what is to be received and yourself. You confine \nyourself within a prison and you are astonished that in your prison you feel \nnothing.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Throw yourself out of yourself. \nGive yourself without holding back anything, simply for the joy of the \nself-giving. Then there is a chance of your feeling something.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> When you do not ask whether you \nare loved or you are not loved, when you are absolutely indifferent to that, \nthen only there is the beginning of true love.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-47</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\"> You love because you love, not \nbecause you receive an answer to your love, or because the other person loves \nyou. You love because you cannot do otherwise than love. You do not pay any \nattention to what may happen. You are perfectly satisfied with your feeling of \nlove. You love because you love. Everything else is bargaining, it is not love.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Besides, it is sure and certain \nthat as soon as you are truly in love, you do not put the question any more. It \nis so childish, ridiculous and insignificant to put the question. As soon as you \nare truly in love, you have the entire plenitude of delight and realisation. You \ndo not need any kind of answer. You are the Love. That is all. You have the full \nsatisfaction of love. And there is no need of reciprocity.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">(4)\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> <i>&quot;To become conscious of the \nDivine Love, you must abandon all other love&quot;. What is the best way of rejecting \n&quot;the other love&quot; which is so obstinate in its denial and which does not leave \nyou easily ?</i>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> To pass through—yes, pass through \nand see what is behind, not to stop at the appearance, not to rest satisfied \nwith the external form, but\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-48</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">to look for the principle that is behind the love, not to be \nsatisfied until you have found the source of the feeling in you. Then the \nexternal form will fall away of itself and you will be in contact with the \nDivine Love that is behind everything. That is the best way. To try to reject \none to find the other is very difficult, almost impossible. Because human nature \nis so limited, so full of contradictions and so exclusive in its movements that \nif you want to reject love in its lower form, that is to say, human love as \nhuman beings feel it, if you force yourself towards rejecting that, then \ngenerally you reject even the capacity to feel love and you become as it were a \nstone. Then sometimes you have to wait years or even centuries for the capacity \nof receiving and manifesting love to reawaken in you.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Therefore the best means is, when \nlove comes in any form whatsoever, to try to pierce through its external \nappearance, to find out the divine principle that is behind and that is the \ncause of its existence. Naturally it is full of snares and difficulties, but it \nis the most effective. In other words, instead of ceasing to love, because you \nlove in the wrong way, you must cease to love in the wrong way and try to love \nin the right way. For example, the love between human</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-49</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">creatures, in all its forms, the love of the parents for their \nchildren, of the children for their parents, the love between brothers, between \nlovers, all are tainted with ignorance and egoism and every other fault that is \nthe common human fault. So, instead of ceasing altogether to love, which is \nbesides very difficult, as it will simply dry up the heart and therefore serve \nno purpose, you must learn to love with devotion and self-giving and \nself-abnegation, you are to fight not against love itself but against its \ndeformities. All forms of appropriation, the sense of possession, jealousy, all \nother feelings that accompany and support these root feelings are to be \nrejected. Instead you must not seek to possess, dominate,impose your will or \ncaprice or desire, must not be eager to take and receive, but to give. Do not \ndemand a return from the other, but be satisfied with your own love; do not seek \nyour interest, your personal pleasure, the fulfilment of your own desire but \nrest content with your love and affection, do not ask for an answer, but remain \nhappy with loving only, nothing more.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> If you have done that, you have \ntaken a big step, and then through that attitude, little by little you may \nprogress more into the feeling itself, and you will find one day that love is \nnot\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-50</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">a personal thing, love is a divine universal feeling that \nmanifests through you as well as it can, but it is in its essence a divine \nthing.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> The first step then is to cease \nto be egoistic. It is the same rule for all, not only for those who want to do \nYoga, but even in ordinary life, if you want to love truly, first of all you \nmust not love yourself and particularly do not love in an egoistic way; you must \ngive yourself to the object of your love without asking for anything in return. \nThis is the very elementary discipline, if you are to transcend yourself, and \nlive a life that is not wholly commonplace.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> In Yoga, you add something more. \nIt is, as I have said, the will to pierce through this limited and human form of \nlove and discover the principle of Divine Love that is there behind; it is there \nthen that you are sure to arrive at a result. That is better than drying up \none\'s heart. It is more difficult perhaps, but it is the better in any way, \nbecause, by doing so, you do not make others suffer egoistically, you leave \nothers to their own movements, you concern yourself with your own \ntransformation, without imposing your will upon others and that, even in \nordinary life, is a step towards something that is a little higher and more \nharmonious.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-51</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-008_The Story of Love','','publish','closed','open','','008_the-story-of-love','','','2021-11-23 17:21:34','2021-11-23 17:21:34','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/008_the-story-of-love/',0,'post','',0),(1478,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:34','2021-11-23 17:21:34','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-010_How to Become Indifferent to Criticism.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">HOW TO BECOME INDIFFERENT TO \nCRITICISM ?\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> In one\'s own consciousness one \nmust look at things from a wider, more general standpoint. If at any moment \nsomething holds you, holds you tight and you have to face it, if you are \ncompelled to wrestle with a formidable obstacle and at that time you begin to \nfeel that before this moment thousands and thousands of years passed and after \nthe moment yet more thousands and thousands of years will pass, you immediately \nsee the inconsequence of this little point of time; you need not enter into a \nhigh spiritual condition, you have simply to contact Time and Space, with all \nthat is before and all that is after and all that is happening at the time, and \nif you are not an idiot you say immediately: &quot;Ah, well, I am giving importance \nto something that has no importance.&quot;\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> Your little moment loses then and \nthere all its mportance if you can visualise simply the immensity of the \ncreation. I am not speaking of rising to spiritual heights, I speak only of the \nimmensity of the creation in time and space and the small\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-59</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">event on which you are concentrated as if it were of great \nconsequence. All that dissolves immediately if you go about the thing in a \nsincere spirit. Naturally, there is a part in you that will protest and say, \n&quot;But for me it has an importance.&quot; You have only to leave it aside and go on \nwith the other part of light and consciousness. If you are sincere there, it is \nnot difficult.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> There are other procedures. A \nChinese sage, I read out to you once, advises you to lie down on the flow of \nevents as on a plank in the ocean, and imagine yourself to be on the vast \nimmensity, drifting upon the waves, contemplating the sky above. In Chinese they \ncall it Wu Wei. When you can do that all trouble disappears.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> I knew one Irishman who used to \nlie on his back and look up to the sky in the night when there were stars. He \nlooked, contemplated on the sky, imagined as if he was floating in this \nimmensity studded with countless luminous points and immediately he felt all his \ntroubles were gone. There are many such ways. What you have to do is to get the \nsense of relativity, your little person and the importance you attach to things \nconcerning you as against the boundless infinity of the universe. Naturally, \nthere is the other way of separating yourself from the earthly consciousness\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-60</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\"> and rising into a higher \nconsciousness, there earthly things take their true place, that is to say, they \nbecome small things.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-61</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-010_How to Become Indifferent to Criticism','','publish','closed','open','','010_how-to-become-indifferent-to-criticism','','','2021-11-23 17:21:34','2021-11-23 17:21:34','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/010_how-to-become-indifferent-to-criticism/',0,'post','',0),(1479,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:34','2021-11-23 17:21:34','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252\">\n<title>-013_The Supramental Vision.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">THE SUPRAMENTAL VISION\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> In the supramental vision there \nis a direct, full and immediate knowledge of things, in the sense that you see \nall things at the same time totally, integrally; you see the truth of a thing in \nall its aspects simultaneously.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> But as soon as you want to \nexplain or describe it, you are obliged to come down to a lower level. Sri \nAurobindo calls it the Mind of Light. Here things have to be said or even \nthought or expressed and realised in action one after another in a certain \norder, in a certain relation to each other. Therefore the simultaneity \ndisappears; for, in the present condition of our way of expression it is \nimpossible to say everything at once outright. We are obliged to veil a portion \nof what we see and know in order to bring it out little by little. Sri Aurobindo \ntherefore calls it a transparent veil; for you see all, you know all at the same \ntime, you have the entire or total knowledge of a thing, but you cannot express \nit whole and entire at one stroke.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> There are no words, no possible \nmodes of expression\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-70</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">for the supramental vision, so long as we are what we are. We \nhave to use an inferior procedure to express ourselves, and yet we possess at \nthe same time the full knowledge. It is because of the necessity of transferring \nthis knowledge into words that we are compelled, so to say, to hold back a part \nof what we know, letting it come out step by step in a succession. It is the \nveil of expression that suits our need both for utterance and understanding. The \nknowledge is there, really there, we have not got to search for it and we have \nnot got to express it as we go on finding it; no, it is there in its totality, \nonly the necessity of expression makes us say things one after another, and that \nnaturally diminishes the omnipotence ascribed by Sri Aurobindo to the vision. \nFor what is omnipotent is the total vision expressing itself totally. \nOmniscience is there, in principle, it is perceptible; but this omniscience \ncannot act in its full power, for it has to come down a step to be able to \nexpress itself.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> To live totally in the \nsupramental knowledge, one must have other means of expression than those \navailable at present. New modes of expression have to be developed for \nexpressing supramental things in a supramental way. At present we have to raise \nour mental faculty to its maximum,</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-71</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">to a sort of frontier that is hardly visible and yet which \nexists; for our means of expression still belong to this mental world and they \ndo not possess supramental power. We do not have the necessary organs. We must \nbecome beings of the supramental world, with a supramental substance, a \nsupramental inner organisation, to express the supramental knowledge in a \nsupramental way. Till now we could, in some part of our consciousness, come out \nwholly into the supramental vision and knowledge, but could not express it from \nthere. We had to come, as I say, one plane lower down to be able to express \nourselves.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> That is how this veil is \ntransparent to the consciousness, for the consciousness sees and knows things in \na supramental way, but a part remains veiled and comes out only progressively, \nfor it has not the means to do otherwise.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"pageno\">Page-72</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-013_The Supramental Vision','','publish','closed','open','','013_the-supramental-vision','','','2021-11-23 17:21:34','2021-11-23 17:21:34','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/013_the-supramental-vision/',0,'post','',0),(1480,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:34','2021-11-23 17:21:34','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>22 the eternal.htm</title>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html;charset=windows-1252\">\r\n</head>\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>The Eternal East and West</i></font></b></p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">THE East and the West are two recognised wings of humanity.\r\nOnly the relation between them is somewhat in dispute.\r\nAccording to one view the two are quite separate and irreconcilable entities, because they .embody two outlooks that\r\nare contradictory to each other. The other view is that they\r\nare not contradictory, however distinct they may be; they are\r\ncomplementary or supplementary to each other. The interaction between the two across the centuries recorded in history\r\nhas been admitted and studied; it considerably influenced the\r\ngrowth and development of each in its line. Only the influence\r\nexerted some view with favour, others with disfavour. For\r\nsome consider the mixture of influence, like that of blood, as a\r\nnecessary condition of progress and creativity: others again\r\nare keen on maintaining the purity of stock, the particular\r\ntype of culture to which each is attached and any intrusion of\r\na foreign vein they consider as a lowering, a degeneration of\r\nthe type.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We all know the great \r\ndifference between the East and the West that has been pointed out and accepted \r\ngenerally as true is that of the spiritual East and the worldly or materialist \r\nWest. Crudely and categorically formulated the truth remains no longer true. \r\nThere is a very large amount of worldliness in the East, on the one hand, and on \r\nthe other, mystics and spiritual seekers or leaders are not a rare phenomenon in \r\nthe West. However, it can be said and admitted as a fact that there is in the \r\nEast an atmosphere that is predominantly spiritual and one can more easily come \r\nin contact with it; whereas in the West it is the mental and material culture \r\nthat predominates</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 166<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">and the approach to it is nearer and closer to man.\r\nThe science of the Spirit has received greater attention in the\r\nEast; it has been studied, experimented, organised, almost\r\nconsummated there in a supreme manner. Even as the science\r\nof Matter has reached its apotheosis in the West.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<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\r\nthe one and reject the other for the sake of human progress and\r\nfulfilment, or that a harmony and synthesis is possible and is\r\ndemanded ?</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For it is not unoften asserted that the so-called spiritual\r\noutlook of the East is only a mediaeval outlook. All people in\r\nthe world, including even the West, were once upon a time\r\npredominantly religious and spiritual; that was a certain stage\r\nin man\'s evolution. Europe has passed that stage of myth\r\nand imagination, has brought upon the earth and is living\r\nthe higher illumination that Science reveals. The East did\r\nnot or could not march with Time and continues the old\r\nworld with its backward glance; it stands arrested in its\r\ngrowth.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<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\r\nspiritual are taken to mean something transcending and\r\nrejecting the world and the things of the world, something\r\nexclusive of life and its fulfilment here on earth, if on the\r\nother hand, the world and its life are given only their face value\r\nemptying them of their deeper and transcendent contents—in\r\nthe manner of the great Laplace who could find no place for God in his map of \r\nthe world which seemed to be quite complete in itself, if this trenchant division is made in the very\r\ndefinition of the terms, in our primary axioms and postulates,\r\nthen, of course, we cannot avoid a scission and an eternal\r\nstruggle. If you consider the Spirit as only pure spirit, an\r\nabsolute without any relation, as an ever-fixed and static\r\nentity and if we view Matter as purely material and the law of\r\nmechanics as supreme and inviolable, then there cannot be a\r\nreconciliation or even a meeting between the two. There are\r\nsome who have a great goodwill, who wish to avoid clash and\r\nquarrel and are for concord and harmony. They have tried\r\nthe reconciliation, but failed. The two positions being fundamentally </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 167<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">exclusive of each other can, at best, be juxtaposed,\r\nbut not unified or fused together.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And yet mankind has always sought for an integral, an all-\r\ncomprehending fulfilment, a truth and a realisation that would\r\ngo round his entire existence. Man has always aspired, in the\r\nmidst of the transience and imperfection that the world is, for\r\nsomething stable and perfect, in the heart of disharmony for\r\nsome core of perfect harmony. He termed it God, Atman,\r\nSummum Bonum and he sought it sometimes, as he thought\r\nnecessary, even at the cost of the world and the life, if it is to be\r\nfound elsewhere. Man aspired also always to find this habitation\r\nof his made somewhat better. Dissatisfied with his present\r\nstate, he sought to mould it, remake it, put into it something\r\nwhich his aspiration and inspiration called the True, the\r\nBeautiful, the Good. There was always this double aspiration\r\nin man, one of ascent and the other of descent, one vertical\r\nand the other horizontal, one leading up and beyond—totally\r\nbeyond, in its extreme urge—the other probing into the\r\nmystery locked up there below, releasing the power to reform\r\nor recreate the world, although he was not always sure whether\r\nit was a power of mind or of matter.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This double aspiration has found its expression and symbol\r\nin 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\r\nthere. A new conception of the Spirit and \'a new conception of Matter are gaining ground more and more, moving towards\r\na true synthesis of the two, making for the creation of a new\r\nworld and a new human type.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The East is no longer the traditional East of the poet who\r\nviewed it as eternally static and meditative, drowned in an\r\n&quot;eyeless muse&quot; away and aloof from earth and world. Even if\r\nit had and has still in its essential nature a nostalgia for the\r\ntranscendence, yet it seeks today more and more for a hold\r\nupon the physical realities: it seems to remember again what\r\nthe Upanishadic Rishi sought—the Rishi being asked whether\r\nhe came for the mundane wealth of a thousand heads of cattle,\r\nwith golden rings round their horns, or for the knowledge of\r\nthe Transcendent Reality, replied that he had come for both.\r\nAnd the hidebound materialist West, the positivist scientific</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 168<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">West, finds this day many fissures and loopholes in the solid\r\nLaplacian scheme; as it dives down and enters into the\r\nsecrecies of even the most material things, curious mysteries\r\nsurge up and its eyes demand another look and another vision\r\nthan those to which the mere senses have accustomed them.\r\nPhysical Scientists bending towards or being compelled to\r\nbend towards metaphysics and even mysticism are no longer\r\nan anomaly in the scientific world.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Spirit is not the static transcendent absolute entity only.\r\nIt is dynamic Force, creative conscious Energy. The spiritual\r\nis not mere silence and status, it is expression and movement\r\nalso. Any silence and any status are not the silence and the\r\nstatus of the Spirit—the silence and status of death, for example;</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">so too any expression and movement are not of the Spirit\r\neither—but this does not mean that the Spirit cannot have its\r\nown expression and movement. God too likewise is not a mere\r\nsupracosmic being—a somewhat aggrandised human being—\r\ntreating and dominating man and the world as something\r\nforeign and essentially antagonistic to his nature. God himself\r\nhas made himself all creatures and all worlds. He is That and\r\nHe is This fundamentally and integrally. Again, at the other\r\nend. Matter is not mere dead mechanical matter. It is vibrant\r\nenergy, but energy that conceals within it life and consciousness.\r\nBesides, the whirl and motion of energies is not all, something\r\ninherently static looms large behind: you call it ether, field,\r\nspace or substratum—it is being, one would like to say, infused\r\nwith a secret consciousness and will.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We say then, symbolically at least, if not \r\nliterally, that the West is looking to the East for this revelation towards \r\nwhich it is groping or moving in its own way: the secret spirit-consciousness that is alive in and through the material cosmos,\r\nthat alone gives its total sense and significance. And the secret\r\nspirit must embody itself here below in material life, the status must be made \r\nsupremely dynamic—the transcendent consciousness, even while maintaining its transcendence, has to\r\ndeploy its immanence in things of the earth and earthly\r\nexistence. That is what the West brings to the East; that is\r\nwhat the Scientific and materialist look and labour offer to be\r\nintegrated into the aspiration and realisation of the East.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So then we say that the East starts from the summit and</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 169<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Surveys reality from above downwards, while the West starts\r\nfrom below and works upward. The two complementary\r\nmovements can be described in several other graphic terms.\r\nInstead of a movement from the summit to the base and of\r\nanother from the base to the apex, that is to say, a movement\r\nof ascent and of descent, we can speak of a movement from\r\nwithin outward and of that from outside inward, that is to say,\r\nfrom the centre to the periphery and from the periphery to\r\nthe centre; we can speak also of a movement of contraction,\r\nwithdrawal or concentration and a movement of expansion\r\nand expression and diffusion. Again, we can refer to a vertical\r\nmovement and a horizontal movement. All however express\r\nthe same truth. We postulate one reality, take our stand upon\r\nthat and work our way towards the other; the two together\r\nform the total reality and together can they give the integral\r\nlife fulfilment.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As I have said, die history of mankind, as a matter of fact,\r\nthe whole history of creation gives a graphic picture of the\r\ninteraction of this double movement. There are ages and\r\ncountries in which one or the other of the two takes precedence\r\nand special or exclusive emphasis. But the inner story is always\r\na converging movement.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Parallel lines meet at infinity, each overpasses its own limit\r\nand touches and coalesces with the other.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The marriage of Heaven and Earth, of even Heaven and\r\nHell, is a very ancient dream. It is an aspiration ingrained in\r\nexistence. It is a prophecy that shall be fulfilled and is being\r\nworked out every moment.</font>\r\n\r\n<p align=center style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><b>II</b></font>\r\n\r\n		<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For an integral vision of human achievement and perfection\r\nwe may consider another interesting contrast between the\r\nEast and the West. We usually attach the word &quot;freedom&quot; or\r\n&quot;liberty&quot; to Western culture and civilisation as expressing its \r\nessential character: similarly it is bondage, submission, suppression of the individual and individuality that come up in our\r\nmind when we think of Eastern culture and civilisation. The\r\njudgment is not without truth, so far as it goes; but looked at</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 170<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">from a different angle, a deeper standpoint, the true judgment\r\nshould be, curious to say, just the contrary.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The East does not consider the individual in his social\r\nbehaviour in terms of freedom and liberty but of service and\r\nobligation, not in terms of rights but of duties. The Indian\r\nterm for right and duty is the same—<i>adhikara.</i> The word\r\noriginally and usually meant duty, one\'s sphere of work or\r\nservice, capacity: the meaning of &quot;right&quot; was secondary and\r\nonly latterly, probably as a result of the impact from the\r\nWest, has gained predominance. The West measures human\r\nprogress by the amount of rights gained for the individual or\r\nfor the group. It does not seem to have any other standard:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">submission, obedience, any diminution of the sense of separate\r\nindividuality meant slavery and loss of human value and\r\ndignity. It was the Greek perhaps, with Socrates as the great\r\npioneer, who first declared the supremacy of the individual\r\nreason- (although he himself obeyed in all things his guardian\r\nangel, the Daemon). In India, generally in the East, the\r\nvalue of the individual is estimated in another way. So long\r\nas he is in the society, the individual is bound by its demands:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">he has to serve it according to his best capacity. That is the\r\n<i>dharma—</i>the Law—that one has to observe conscientiously.\r\nBut if he chooses, he can break the bonds forthwith, come\r\nout, come out of the society altogether and be free absolutely —that is the only \r\nmeaning of freedom. In the West the individual is taught to remain in the world and with the society,\r\nmaintain his individuality and independence and gradually\r\nenlarge them in and through the natural fetters and bondages\r\nthat a collective life and efficient organisation demands and inevitably \r\nimposes. The East, on the contrary, asks the individual never to protest and assert his individuality, which\r\nis in their view only another name for Ignorant egoism, but\r\nto know his position in the social scheme and fulfil the duties\r\nand obligations of that position. But the individual has the\r\nfreedom not to enter into the social frame at all. If he chooses\r\nfreedom as his ideal, it is the supreme freedom that he must\r\nchoose, out of the chain of a terrestrial life. He can become\r\nthe spiritual &quot;outlaw&quot;, the <i>sannyasi;</i> the word means one who\r\nhas abandoned everything totally and absolutely.</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </font>&nbsp;\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">The contrast points to a synthesis parallel to or an extension </font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 171<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">of the one we spoke of earlier. The first thing<b> </b> to note is\r\nthat the individual is the source of all progress; the individual\r\nhas the right, as it is also his duty to maintain himself and\r\nfulfil himself, grow to his largest and highest dimensions.\r\nSecondly, the individual has to take cognisance of the others,\r\nthe whole humanity, in fact, even for the sake of his own\r\nprogress. The individual is not an isolated entity, a freak\r\nproduct in Nature, but is integrated into it, a part and parcel\r\nof its texture and composition. Indeed the individual has a\r\ndouble role to perform, first to increase himself and secondly\r\nto increase others. Using the terms which the Sartrian view\r\nof existence has put into vogue, we can say, the individual <i>en soi</i> (in himself) is the individual in commonalty with others,\r\nliving and moving in and through every other person; and\r\nthen there is the individual <i>pour soi</i> (for himself), that is to\r\nsay, existing for himself, apart and away from others, in his\r\nown inner absolute autonomy. The individual is individualised, <i>i.e.</i> raises and lifts himself and then becomes the spearhead\r\nbreaking through the level where Nature stands fixed, leading\r\nothers to follow and raise themselves. The individual is the\r\npower of organised self-consciousness; the growth of the\r\nindividual means the growth of this power of organised consciousness. And growth means ascension or evolution from\r\nlevel to level. The individual starts from the organic cell,\r\nthat is the lower end, it progresses through various gradations\r\nof the vital and mental worlds till he reaches the culmination\r\nof its growth in the Spirit as <i>atman.</i> But this vertical growth\r\nmust be reflected in a horizontal growth too. There is a\r\nsolidarity among the individuals forming the collective\r\n\'humanity so that the progress of one means the progress of\r\nothers in the same direction, at least a chance and possibility\r\nopened for an advance. On the other hand, it may be noted\r\nthat unless the collectivity rises to a certain level the individual\r\ntoo cannot go very far from it. A higher lift in the individual\r\npresupposes a corresponding or some minimum lift in others.\r\nThere cannot or should not be too great a rift between the\r\nindividual and the collective.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As I said, the East usually ignores this correspondence and\r\nposits an exclusive <i>either-or</i> relation between the two terms.\r\nThe individual, according to it, can reach its true individuality</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 172<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<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\r\nsymptomatic of its fundamental character. The West does\r\nnot concern itself with these higher lines of individual growth\r\nand fulfilment, it limits the individual within the social frame\r\nand his mundane or profane life; but what we learn from\r\nthis outlook is the necessity of the collective growth through\r\nwhich only can the individual thrive and grow. It is however a growth in \r\nextension, rather than in intensity <i>i.e.</i> depth and\r\nheight. This outlook errs in the limitation put upon individuality, precisely identifying it more or less with the &quot;egoism&quot;\r\nto which the spirituality of the East objects. This normal\r\nindividual in its normal development cannot go very far, nor\r\ncan he lead the others, the society or humanity, to a perfect\r\nand supreme fulfilment. The ego-bound normal individuality\r\nmust transcend itself—exactly the thing that the East teaches;</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">only this transcendence need not mean an abolition of all\r\nindividuality, but a transformation, a higher integration in\r\na spiritualised, a universalised and divinised individuality.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Such an individual will not be like the blind leading the\r\nblind, one ego, in its half-light, with its small narrow mental\r\nformation imposing its ignorant and ineffective will upon\r\nothers in the same state of consciousness, but, as I have said,\r\na universalised individual, who has identified himself with all\r\nand everyone in his being and consciousness, who has also at\r\nthe same time transcended himself and others and attained\r\na supreme unitary consciousness and being. It is such a person\r\nwho is called the leader of human or terrestrial evolution and\r\nthey who are of the same make are the pioneers who shall\r\nbuild heaven upon earth.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Towards that consummation, these two great world currents,\r\nEast and West, are moving carrying each its own truth and\r\ncontributing to the realisation of the integral truth that is to\r\ntake body here below.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 173</p>\r\n		<hr>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-24_The Eternal East and West','','publish','closed','open','','24_the-eternal-east-and-west','','','2021-11-23 17:21:34','2021-11-23 17:21:34','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/24_the-eternal-east-and-west/',0,'post','',0),(1481,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:34','2021-11-23 17:21:34','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>25 the rel.htm</title>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html;charset=windows-1252\">\r\n</head>\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>The Relative Best</i></font></b></p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		&nbsp;</p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">WHATEVER happens is for the best—<i>under the circumstances,</i> it\r\nmust be added, for the best is the resultant of many forces\r\npulling in all directions for and against and sideways. The <i>best</i> means whatever leads to the goal, to the ultimate good,\r\nthe final reality, the Supreme, the Divine. The universe is so\r\narranged, the divine dispensation acts in such a way that\r\nevery event, every circumstance, whatever its appearance,\r\nalways leads to the Supreme Goal. So it is said the way, whatever it is, straight or crooked, always guides you to your final\r\nrealisation.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Only, in the progressive march, the best can always be\r\nbettered and must be bettered. In the earlier stages, when\r\none is in ignorance and darkness lies about, the path is sure to be tortuous \r\nwith ups and downs, aberrations and retrogressions, but as one advances and the consciousness grows the\r\nobscurity dissipates, gradually the path to be straightens itself,\r\nbecomes smooth and kindly. That is how the best at one\r\nmoment, which may appear to the superficial consciousness,\r\nvery bad or even the worst, is bettered—betterment means\r\nprecisely this that one rises into a clearer consciousness, one\r\nmoves along a straighter path, one takes a shorter and happier\r\ncourse to the Goal. This is true as much of the individual as of\r\nthe world as a whole, for the world too, like the individual,\r\nmoves inevitably towards its high destiny—the same as or\r\nparallel to that of the individual.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It is the best that happens always for nothing else can happen \r\nbut it is a relative best, relative to the situation that the consciousness according to its status creates around. As the\r\nconsciousness advances the nature of the best is also transformed.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 184<hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There is an absolute best but that can happen only when\r\nthe consciousness has arrived at, attained union with the\r\nSupreme Consciousness. In fact there is then no longer any\r\npath to traverse, the path has lapsed or merged into the goal,\r\nthe path and the goal have&nbsp; become one. This does not mean\r\nthat dangers and difficulties and pitfalls have to be accepted\r\nand welcomed but that they have to be faced in the right\r\nspirit as aids and helps necessary and inevitable at certain\r\npoints of the journey. One must grow into the consciousness\r\nthat will be able to see them as such, find their use and turn\r\nthem into the good that lies behind or ahead.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 185</p>\r\n		<hr>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-27_The Relative Best','','publish','closed','open','','27_the-relative-best','','','2021-11-23 17:21:34','2021-11-23 17:21:34','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/27_the-relative-best/',0,'post','',0),(1482,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:34','2021-11-23 17:21:34','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>23 the immortal.htm</title>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html;charset=windows-1252\">\r\n</head>\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p align=\"center\" style=\"margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0\">III</p>\r\n		<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0\">\r\n		EDUCATION</p>\r\n		<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;</td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n</table>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>The Immortal Person</i></font></b></p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n		&nbsp;</p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">THE whole purpose of man\'s life upon earth, it may be said,\r\nis to make an individuality of himself and to grow in that\r\nindividuality and organise it perfectly.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; An ordinary man is a most disorganised entity and possesses\r\nno individual character. His mind is a conglomeration of\r\nthoughts and ideas which do not particularly belong to him,\r\nbut to everybody, being elements of the world-mind in general.\r\nHis vital being too is a medley of desires, impulses, energies\r\nthat are not personal in any sense, but pass through him or\r\ntake a long or short-term asylum in him from the universal\r\nvital force. The body, being a definitely delimited object, is\r\nperhaps the only thing that appears to be personal—the\r\nchief, if not the only source and sign of personal identity; and\r\nwith the loss of the body, the whole personality seems to\r\ncrumble down and disappear in the world-existence—the\r\nbody particles get mixed into the world of matter, the life\r\nelements disperse in the vital world, the mental components\r\ndisintegrate into the world of mind. In fact, this is what\r\nhappens to the human person after death or would happen\r\nnormally.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thus man, the ordinary or &quot;natural&quot; man, has \r\nno personality, no real individuality. It is just like a wave-formation\r\nout of universal nature, moving in and being moved by the\r\ntotal swell and heave, being formed and being destroyed\r\nevery moment—as the poet says:</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; They take birth in you and they dissolve in you like\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; the waves in the sea.</font>&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<font face=\"Times New Roman\">And yet the building up of an abiding individual is the secret</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 177<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">urge of Nature\'s evolution: it is the hidden spring of human\r\naspiration and the purpose of God\'s creation. Not mere disparate particles—of substance or energy or consciousness—breaking up constantly and scattering and finally dissolving\r\ninto the void (the great law of <i>Running Down</i> or as the Veda\r\nfigures it, <i>tucchyena abwapihitam</i> absorbed by the infinitesimal)\r\n—but a gathering of elements, integrating them into organic\r\nwholes, moulding definite forces into definite forms—such is\r\nthe secret plan behind. Indeed, ego is the first formation, the\r\noriginal instrument which Nature fashioned to carry out this\r\nobject others.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ego means a hardened core that is not easily broken by\r\nthe impact of forces. It delimits, cuts out, endeavours to\r\nmaintain its formation by a strong violent self-assertion. Ego\r\nis a helper, but also it is a bar. It assists the \'first formation but\r\ndelays and obstructs the true and final formation. For the\r\nego is a formation, an individual formation, but on the level\r\nof universal Nature: it is of a piece with the normal cosmic\r\nmovement, only bounded by a peripheral line. In the general\r\nexpanse it puts up enclosures and preserves and fencings; the\r\nconstituting elements remaining the same in substance and\r\nquality. Even the delimitation is illusory in reality, it is something like the membrane in the body separating the different\r\nfunctional organs, rigid yet allowing interaction and inter-\r\npenetration. That is why, when death removes the outward\r\nfencing, the individuality also cannot long maintain itself and\r\nmerges into the general. We may look upon egoism as a kind of artificial or \r\nexperimental individuality, a laboratory formation, as it were, tried and developed under given conditions. In fact, however, egoism is a shadow or an echo upon\r\nthis side of our nature of the true individuality which lies and\r\ncomes from elsewhere.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And that is the soul of the man. We have spoken of the body, \r\nthe life and the mind of the individual, but beside and beyond\r\nthese elements which are only instruments there is this secret\r\nmaster and overlord. It is the particle of divinity in each, the\r\ndeveloping consciousness—the spark of Fire, the ray of Light—&quot;the immortal in the mortal no bigger than one\'s thumb.&quot;\r\nThe soul is an individual, an individual formation of the divine\r\nreality: it is a godhead formulating an aspect or function of</font>\r\n		<font face=\"Times New Roman\">God. </font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 178<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">We may thus say that the whole purpose of earthly\r\nevolution is the evolution of this soul-formation, that is to say,\r\nits growing individualisation in light and power, in the expression of the godhead. This growth is first in itself and of itself,\r\nits inherent being and consciousness; then, the growth is that\r\nof its instrumentation, in other words, the development and\r\norganisation of the mind, the life and the body.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So the individualisation and growth of the soul means a\r\ngrowth and individualisation of the mental being, the vital\r\nbeing and also of the physical being. Normally the purpose of\r\nintellectual culture is the growth and individualisation of the\r\nmind, the purpose of moral culture is the growth and individualisation of the vital being and the true purpose of physical\r\nculture too should be a well-balanced and well-developed\r\nphysical body, not only in a general sense, but in a very\r\nindividualised mode. But all these varieties and modes of\r\nculture can be truly individualised and not merely ordered or\r\norganised, more or less on the surface, only when they obey\r\nand subserve the culture of the soul. The mind, the vital and\r\nthe physical each has to grow its individuality in the growing\r\nindividuality of the soul. The soul, otherwise called the psychic\r\nbeing, is man\'s spiritual being: the growth of the spiritual being\r\nmeans the advent and establishment of the true personality.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There is, of course, a spiritual path that turns the soul away\r\nfrom its instruments and demands that it should concentrate\r\nexclusively upon itself, upon its essential essence, upon its\r\ntranscendent existence; but that is not our path and, according\r\nto us, that is only a temporary phase, an intermediate necessity\r\nfor some persons and at certain stages.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The individualisation of the mind, its organisation as a\r\nSpecial formation, as a vehicle of the true light, the light of the\r\nPsychic consciousness is comparatively easy for a man. Mind is the first member of the lower sphere that is taken up and\r\ndealt with by the soul; for it is the highest and the most\r\ncharacteristic element in man and less dense and less subject\r\nto the darkness inherent in human nature. The mental individual persists the longest after the dissolution of the body, it\r\nsurvives and may survive very long the disruption of the vital\r\nbeing. This vital being is next in the rung to be taken up,\r\norganised and individualised by and around the psychic being.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 179<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">The organisation of the vital being in view of a particular\r\nobject or aim in ordinary life is common enough: the purpose\r\nis limited, the scope restricted. Great men of action have done\r\nit and one has to do it more or less to be successful in life. This,\r\nhowever, may be called organisation; it is not individualisation in the true sense, much less personalisation. A limb is\r\nindividualised, personalised only when it is an instrument and\r\nformation of the soul consciousness, the psychic being. And the\r\nvital is not easily amenable to such a role. For, it is the dynamic\r\nelement, the effective power of life and it has acquired a strong\r\nnature and a definite function in its earthly relations. Naturally,\r\nthere is a secret drive and an occult inspiration behind over-\r\nriding or guiding all immediate and apparent forces and\r\nhappenings: in and through these the shape of things to come\r\nis being built up. In the meanwhile, however, actually the\r\nvital is an executive agent of the lower consciousness: it is an\r\nanonymous force of universal nature canalised in to a temporary\r\nfigure that is the normal individual man. The individualisation of the vital being would mean an immortal formulation of\r\nan immortal soul as energy consciousness with a specific role\r\nfor the Divine to play. It maintains its identity, its personality\r\nindependent of the vicissitudes of the physical body: it continues\r\nto function as a divine being, a godhead, to work for mankind\r\nand the world. The popular legend has imaged this phenomenon in the mystic figure of an immortal Aswatthama and\r\nVibhishana still wandering in earth\'s atmosphere.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Finally, it is the turn of the body to become individualised,\r\npersonalised, that is to say, when it takes up the <i>disposition</i> and <i>configuration</i> of the psychic person and individual. The first\r\nstage is that of a subtle body individualised, a radiant form of\r\netherealised elements consisting of the concentrated light\r\nparticles of the divine consciousness of the Psyche. This too is\r\nan immortalisation of the personal identity which can be\r\nachieved and is achieved by the gnostic man who is to come,\r\nwho will wholly psychicise and divinise his personality. The\r\nsecond stage is the reorganisation and individualisation of the\r\nmaterial sheath itself. The very cells of the body are impregnated with the radiant substance of the supreme spiritual\r\nconsciousness; they live the life of the spiritual individual, the\r\npersonal divine embodied in the individual. When the whole</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 180<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">process is gone through and the work done, the individual\r\nbody, physically too, shares in and attains the immortality of\r\nthe soul. The body is firm enough to maintain its physical\r\nidentity and yet plastic enough to change in the manner and\r\nto the degree demanded of it at any time.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the process of making the body personal and divine and\r\nimmortal, death or what appears as such may be a needed\r\noperation. It is no longer an ineluctable destiny forced upon\r\nyou, but an instrument which you use consciously for a definite\r\npurpose. It is a mystic or occult work <i>(kriya)</i> which we can try to\r\nunderstand by an analogy. The evolution of the ideal or divine\r\nman, the assumption of the mortal by the immortal involves a\r\ntwofold operation: rejection and integration. Rejection means\r\nthrowing out the elements that belong exclusively to the lower\r\ngrade and cannot be taken up and incorporated into the higher;</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">while integration means taking up and absorbing utilisable\r\nelements of the lower into the higher. This double process goes\r\non on all the levels, on the mental, on the vital, on the subtle\r\nphysical and even on the physical level. At a certain stage or in\r\na concentrated process of alchemy the process of rejection may\r\ndemand a mode of reshuffling and redisposition which physically appears like death, but it is inevitably followed or accompanied by the process of integration or recreation.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Perhaps this supreme and dangerous gesture only the Master\r\ncan make—as the pioneer and pathfinder—and he has made\r\nit.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 181</p>\r\n		<hr>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-25_The Immortal Person','','publish','closed','open','','25_the-immortal-person','','','2021-11-23 17:21:34','2021-11-23 17:21:34','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/25_the-immortal-person/',0,'post','',0),(1483,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','<html>\r\n\r\n<head>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=windows-1252\">\r\n<title>The Observer and the Observed</title>\r\n</head>\r\n\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>The Observer and the Observed</i> </font>\r\n		</b></p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">SCIENCE means objectivity, that is to say, elimination of the\r\npersonal element—truth as pure fact without being distorted\r\nor coloured by the feelings and impressions and notions of the\r\nobserver. It is the very opposite of the philosopher\'s standpoint\r\nwho says that a thing exists because (and so long. as) it is\r\nperceived. The scientist swears that a thing exists whether you\r\nperceive it or not, perception is possible because it exists, not\r\nthe other way. And yet Descartes is considered not only as the\r\nfather of modern philosophy, but also as the founder of modern\r\nmathematical science. But more of that anon. The scientific\r\nobserver observes as a witness impartial and aloof: he is\r\nnothing more than a recording machine, a sort of passive\r\nmirror reflecting accurately and faithfully what is presented\r\nto it. This is indeed the great revolution brought about by Science in the world \r\nof human inquiry and in human consciousness, <i>viz;</i> the isolation of the observer from the observed.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the old world, before Science was born, sufficient distinction or discrimination was not made between the observer and\r\nthe observed. The observer mixed himself up or identified\r\nhimself with what he observed and the result was not a\r\nscientific statement but a poetic description. Personal feelings,\r\nideas, judgments entered into the presentation of facts and the\r\nwhole mass passed as truth, the process often being given the\r\nhigh-sounding name of Intuition, Vision or Revelation but\r\nwhose real name is fancy. And if there happened to be truth\r\nof fact somewhere, it was almost by chance; Once we thought of\r\nthe eclipse being due to the greed of a demon, and pestilence\r\ndue to the evil eye of a wicked goddess. The universe was born\r\nout of an egg, the cosmos consisted of concentric circles of\r\nworlds that were meant to reward the virtuous and punish the</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 217<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">sinner in graded degrees. These are some of the very well-known instances of pathetic fallacy, that is to say, introducing\r\nthe element of personal sentiment in our appreciation of events\r\nand objects. Even today Nazi race history and Soviet Genetics\r\ncarry that unscientific prescientific tradition.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Science was born the day when the observer cut himself\r\naloof from the observed. Not only so, not only he is to stand\r\naside, outside the field of observation and be a bare recorder,\r\nbut that he must let the observed record itself, that is, be its\'\r\nown observer. Modern Science means not so much the observer\r\nnarrating the story of the observed but the observed telling its\r\nown story. The first step is well exemplified in the story of\r\nGalileo. When hot discussion was going on and people insisted\r\non saying—as Aristotle decided and common sense declared—that heavier bodies most naturally fall quicker from a height,\r\nit was this prince of experimenters who straightaway took\r\ntwo different weights, went up the tower of Pisa and let them\r\ndrop and astounded the people by showing that both travel\r\nwith equal speed and fall to the ground at the same time.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Science also declared that it is not the observation of one\r\nperson, however qualified, that determines the truth or otherwise of a fact, but the observation of many persons and the\r\npossibility of observations of all persons converging, coinciding,\r\ncorroborating. It is only when observation has thus been tested\r\nand checked that one can be sure that the personal element has\r\nbeen eliminated. Indeed the ideal condition would be if the\r\nobserver, the scientist himself, could act as part of the machine\r\nfor observation: at the most he should be a mere assembler of\r\nthe parts of the machine that would record itself, impersonally,\r\nautomatically. The rocket instruments that are sent high up in\r\nthe sky to record the temperature, pressure or other weather\r\ncondition in the stratosphere or the deep-sea recording machines\r\nare ingenious inventions in that line. The wizard Jagadish\r\nChandra Bose showed his genius precisely in the way he made\r\nthe plant itself declare its life-story: it is not what the scientist\r\nthinks or feels about the plant, but what the plant has to say\r\nof its own accord, as it were—its own tale of growth and decay,\r\nof suffering, spasm, swoon, suffocation or death under given\r\nconditions. This is the second step that Science took in the\r\ndirection of impersonal and objective inquiry.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 218<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It was thought\' for long a very easy matter—at least not\r\nextraordinarily difficult—to eliminate the observer and keep\r\nonly to the observed. It was always known how the view of the\r\nobserver, that is to say, his observation changed in, respect of\r\nthe observed fact with his change of position. The sun rises\r\nand sets to the observer on earth: to an observer on Mars, for\r\nexample, the sun would rise and set, no doubt, but earth too\r\nalong with, in the same way as Mars and sun appear to us now,\r\nwhile to an observer on the sun, the sun would seem fixed while\r\nthe planets would be seen moving round. Again, we all know\r\nthe observer in a moving train sees things outside the train\r\nmoving past and himself at stand-still; the same observer would\r\nsee another train moving alongside in the same direction and\r\nwith the same speed as stuck to it and at stand-still, but as\r\nmoving with double the speed if going in a contrary direction:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">and so on.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The method proposed for eliminating the observer was\r\nobservation, more and more observation, and experiment,\r\ntesting the observation under given conditions. I observe\r\nand record a series of facts and when I have found a sufficient number of them I see I am, able to put them all together\r\nunder a general title, a law of the occurrence or pattern of the\r\nobjects observed. Further it is not I alone who can do it in any\r\npeculiar way personal to me, but that everybody else can do<br>\r\nthe same thing and arrive at the same series of facts leading to\r\nthe same conclusion. I note, for example, the sun\'s path from\r\nday to day in the sky; soon we find that the curves described\r\nby the sun are shifted along the curve of an ellipse (that is to\r\nsay, their locus is an ellipse). The ecliptic is thus found to be\r\nan ellipse which means that the earth moves round the sun\r\nin an ellipse.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But in the end a difficulty arose in the operation of observation. It proved to be not a simple process. The scientific observer\r\nrequires for his observation the yard-stick and the time-piece.\r\nNow, we have been pushed to admit a queer phenomenon\r\n(partly by observation and partly by a compelling deduction)\r\nthat these two measuring units are not constant; they\r\nchange with the change of system, that is to say, according to\r\nthe velocity of the system. In other words, each observer has\r\nhis own unit of space and time measure. So the elimination of</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 219<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">the personal element of the observer has become a complicated\r\nmathematical problem, even if one is sure of it finally.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There is still something more. The matter of calculating\r\nand measuring objectively was comparatively easy when the\r\nobject in view was of medium size, neither too big nor too small.\r\nBut in the field of the infinite and the infinitesimal, when from\r\nthe domain of mechanical forces we enter into the region of\r\nelectric and radiant energy, we find our normal measuring\r\napparatus almost breaks down. Here accurate observation can-\r\nnot be made because of the very presence of the observer,<br>\r\nbecause of the very fact of observation. The ultimates that are\r\nobserved are trails of light particles: now when the observer\r\ndirects his eye (or the beam of light replacing the eye) upon the\r\nlight particle, its direction and velocity are interfered with:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">the photon is such a tiny infinitesimal -that a ray from the\r\nobserver\'s eye is sufficient to deflect and modify its movement.\r\nAnd there is no way of determining or eliminating this element\r\nof deflection or interference. The old Science knew certainly\r\nthat a thermometer dipped in the water whose&nbsp; temperature it is\r\nto measure itself changes the initial temperature. But that\r\nwas something calculable and objective.<b> </b> Here the position of the\r\nobserver is something like a &quot;possession&quot;, imbedded, ingrained,\r\ninvolved in the observed itself.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The crux of the difficulty is this. We say the observing eye or\r\nwhatever mechanism is made to function for it, disturbs the\r\nprocess of observation. Now to calculate that degree or measure\r\nof disturbance one has to fall back upon another observing\r\neye, and this again has to depend upon yet another behind.\r\nThus there is an infinite regress and no final solution. So, it has\r\nbeen declared, in the ultimate analysis, scientific calculation\r\ngives us only the average result, and it is only average calculations that are possible.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Now we come to the sanctum, the Shekinah,<b> </b> of the problem.\r\nFor there is a still deeper mystery. And pre-eminently it is an\r\nEinsteinian discovery. It is not merely the measuring ray<b> \r\n</b>of\r\nlight, not merely the beam in the eye of the observer that is the\r\ncause of interference: the very mind behind the eye is involved\r\nin a strange manner. The mind is not a <i>tabula rasa,</i> it comes into\r\nthe field with certain presuppositions—axioms and postulates, as it calls them—due to its angle of vision and perhaps</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 220<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">to the influence upon it of immediate sense perception. It\r\ntakes for granted, for example, that light travels in a straight\r\nline, that parallels do not meet, indeed all the theorems and\r\ndeductions of Euclidean geometry. There is a strong inclination in the mind to view things as arranged according to that\r\npattern. Einstein has suggested that the spherical scheme can\r\nserve as well or even better our observations. Riemann\'s non-Euclidean geometry has assumed momentous importance in<br>\r\ncontemporary scientific enquiry. It is through that scheme\r\nthat Einstein proposes to find the equation that will subsume\r\nthe largest number of actual and possible or potential facts\r\nand bring about the reconciliation of such irreconcilables as\r\nwave and particle, gravitation and electricity.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In any case, at the end of all our peregrinations we seem\r\nto circle back to our original Cartesian-cum-Berkeleyean position; we discover that it is not easy to extricate the observed\r\nfrom the observer: the observer is so deep set in the observed,\r\npart and parcel of it that there are scientists who consider their\r\nwhole scientific scheme of the world as only a mental set-up,\r\nwe may replace it very soon by another scheme equally cogent,\r\nsubjective all the same. The subject has entered into all objects\r\nand any definition of the object must necessarily depend upon\r\nthe particular poise of the subject. That is the cosmic immanence of the Purusha spoken of in the Upanishads—the one\r\nPurusha become many and installed in the heart of each and\r\nevery object. There is indeed a status of the Subject in which\r\nthe subject and the object are gathered into or form one reality.\r\nThe observer and the observed are the two ends, the polarisation of a single entity: and all are realise at that level. But the\r\nscientific observer is only the mental purusha and in his observation the \r\nabsolute objectivisation is not possible. The Einsteinian\r\nequations that purport to rule out all local view-points can\r\nhardly be said to have transcended the co-ordinates of the\r\nsubject. That is possible only to the consciousness of the cosmic\r\nPurusha.</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<b>2</b><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </b> Is it then to say that science is no longer science, it has now\r\nbeen converted into philosophy, even into idealistic philosophy ?</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 221<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">In spite of Russell and Eddington who may be considered\r\nin this respect as counsellors of despair, the objective reality\r\nof the scientific field stands, it is asserted, although somewhat\r\nchanged.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, there are four positions possible with regard<b> \r\n</b>to the<b> \r\n</b>world and reality, depending on the relation between the<b> \r\n</b>observer and the observed, the subject and the object. They are:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">(1) subjective, (2) objective, (3) subjective objective and\r\n(4) objective subjective. The first two are extreme positions,\r\none holding the subject as the sole or absolute reality, the\r\nobject being a pure fabrication of its will and idea, an illusion,\r\nand the other considering the object as the true reality, the\r\nsubject being an outcome, an epiphenomenon of the object\r\nitself, an illusion after all. The first leads to radical or as it<b> \r\n</b>is<b>&nbsp;\r\n</b>called monistic spirituality the type of which is Mayavada:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">the second is the highway of materialism, the various avataras of\r\nwhich are Marxism, Pragmatism, Behaviourism etc. In between\r\nlie the other two intermediate positions according to the stress\r\nor value given to either of the two extremes. The first of the\r\nintermediates is the position held generally by the idealists,\r\nby many schools of spirituality: it is a major Vedantic position.\r\nIt says that the outside world, the object, is not an illusion, a\r\nmere fabrication of the mind or consciousness of the subject,\r\nbut that it exists and is as real as the subject: it is dovetailed\r\ninto the subject which is a kind of linchpin, holding together\r\nand even energising the object. The object can further be\r\nconsidered as an expression or embodiment of the subject. Both\r\nthe subject and the object are made of the same stuff of consciousness—the ultimate reality being consciousness. The\r\nsubject is the consciousness turned on itself and the object is\r\nconsciousness turned outside or going abroad. This is pre-eminently the Upanishadic position. In Europe, Kant holds a\r\nkey position in this line: and on the whole, idealists from Plato\r\nto Bradley and Bosanquet can be said more or less to belong\r\nto this category. The second intermediate position views the\r\nsubject as imbedded into the object, not the object into the\r\nsubject as in the first one: the subject itself is part of the object\r\nsomething like its self-regarding or self-recording function. In\r\nEurope apart possibly from some of the early Greek thinkers\r\n(Anaxagoras or Democritus, for example), coming to more</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 222<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">recent times, we can say that line runs fairly well-represented\r\nfrom Leibnitz to Bergson. In India the Sankhyas and the\r\nVaisheshikas move towards and approach the position; the\r\nTantriks make a still more near approach.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Once again, to repeat in other terms the distinction which\r\nmay sometimes appear to carry no difference. First, the subjective objective in which the subject assumes the preponderant\r\nposition, not denying or minimising the reality of the object.\r\nThe external world, in this view, is a movement in and of the\r\nconsciousness of a universal subject. It is subjective in the sense\r\nthat it is essentially a function of the subject and does not exist\r\napart from it or outside it; it is objective in the sense that it\r\nexists really and is not a figment or imaginative construction\r\nof any individual consciousness, although it exists in and through the \r\nindividual consciousness in so far as that consciousness is universalised, is \r\none with the universal consciousness (or the transcendental, the two can be taken together\r\nin the present connection). Instead of the Kantian transcendental idealism we can name it transcendental realism.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the other case the world exists here below in its own\r\nreality, outside all apprehending subject; even the universal\r\nsubject is in a sense part of it, immanent in it—it embraces the\r\nsubject in its comprehending consciousness and posits it as\r\npart of itself or a function of its apprehension. The many\r\nPurushas (conscious beings or subjects) are imbedded in the\r\nuniversal Nature, say the Sankhyas. Kali, Divine Nature, is\r\nthe manifest omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent reality\r\nholding within her the transcendent divine Purusha who\r\nsupports, sanctions and inspires secretly, yet is dependent on\r\nthe Mahashakti and without her is nothing, <i>sunyam.</i> That is\r\nhow the Tantriks put it. We may mention here, among\r\nEuropean philosophers, the rather interesting conclusion of\r\nLeibnitz (to which Russell draws our attention): space is\r\nsubjective to the view of each monad (subject unit) separately,\r\nit is objective when it consists of the assemblage of the view-points of all the monads.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The scientific outlook was a protest against the extreme\r\nsubjective view: it started with the extreme objective stand-point and that remained the fundamental note till the other\r\nday, till the fissure of the nucleus .opened new horizons to our</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 223<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">somewhat bewildered mentality. We seem to have entered into a region where we still hold to the objective, no doubt, but\r\nnot absolutely free from an insistent presence of the subjective. It is the second of the intermediate positions we have tried to\r\ndescribe. Science has yet to decide the implications of that\r\nposition; whether it will try to entrench itself as much as\r\npossible on this side of the subjective or whether it can yield\r\nfurther and go over to or link itself with the deeper subjective\r\nposition.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The distinction between the two may after all be found to be\r\na matter of stress only, involving no fundamental difference,\r\nespecially as there are sure to be gradations from the one to the\r\nother. The most important landmark, however, the most\r\nrevolutionary step in modern science would be the discovery of\r\nthe eternal observer or some sign or image of his seated within\r\nthe observed phenomena of moving things—<i>purusah prakritistho\r\nhi,</i> as the Gita says.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 224<hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n</body>\r\n\r\n</html>\r\n','-36_The Observer and the Observed','','publish','closed','open','','36_the-observer-and-the-observed','','','2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/36_the-observer-and-the-observed/',0,'post','',0),(1484,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','<html>\r\n\r\n<head>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=windows-1252\">\r\n<title>Consciousness as Freedom</title>\r\n</head>\r\n\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Consciousness as Freedom</i></font></b></p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">CONSCIOUSNESS is liberty, unconsciousness is slavery. When\r\nyou are unconscious you are a prey to all kinds of forces and\r\nbeings outside yourself and over which you have no control.\r\nYou are a plaything in the hands of any power or influence\r\nthat seeks to possess you and when you are in such a state it\r\nis the undesirable powers that seek and secure hospitality in\r\nyou. It is only when you become conscious that you begin\r\nto react to the outside forces that try to control you or utilise</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">you.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the lower creation it is always a play of divergent forces</font>&nbsp;\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">and the individual being is only a field, a passive field for the\r\nplay of cosmic or collective forces. It is in man, with the\r\nawakening of an individual consciousness in him, that a\r\nmovement of self-assertion, of willed reaction has started in\r\nnature, that is to say, one is no more content with playing the\r\nrole of a slave executing helplessly what is demanded of him\r\nby an external agent but is now making his own terms and\r\npropositions. That is how man is man because he is creating\r\nhis own self and his own environment.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Consciousness, however, is not mere consciousness, that is to\r\nsay, awareness; it is also power, power for organisation and\r\nexecution. It is unconsciousness that is or invariably leads to\r\ndisorderliness, disorganisation and confusion. It is the light\r\nof consciousness that brings order out of chaos, gives an organised direction to forces moving at random and with no purpose. Man has started organising his life since he acquired the\r\nlight of consciousness. He has been doing the yoga pf the\r\nintelligent will (Gita\'s <i>buddhi-yoga)</i> since his advent upon earth.\r\nBut even in man this force of light, the energy of consciousness</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">not fully operative- because man is not fully conscious, he is</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 199<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<font face=\"Times New Roman\">only partially so. His mind is conscious and has developed into\r\nintelligence (a little strayed into intellectuality); but there are\r\nlarge domains in him that are wholly unconscious, that is to\r\nsay, move in mechanical rounds, a passive slave of external\r\nimpacts. I am referring to his vital being and his physical being.\r\nEven like the mind these too must admit into themselves the\r\nlight of the consciousness in order to free themselves from the\r\ninfluence of other external forces and attain the sense of their\r\nown truth and self-fulfilment.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Indeed each part, even each constituent element of our\r\nbeing has an individuality of its own, a personal being and\r\nconsciousness. And it is because it is not aware of that inner\r\nreality, because it has fallen unconscious, therefore it has\r\nentered into this life of bondage and slavery and mechanical\r\nexistence. When life becomes conscious, the life-energy becomes luminous, the vital being gradually gains self-control and\r\nself-direction. Instead of being moved about by irresponsible<br>\r\nand irrepressible desires and impulses it attains a clarity as to\r\nwhat it should desire and what it should effectuate; and along\r\nwith that light secures the strength also to act up to the directions of that light.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The body too similarly can be filled with light and light-energy; instead of being wholly at the mercy of the physical\r\nenvironment, the natural conditions around or even subject\r\nto its own innate or atavistic suggestions, it can be aware of\r\nits true reality, its inner nature, its higher potentialities.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I have spoken of the light in the mind, the consciousness\r\nthat has awakened there and has organised its activities as\r\nan autonomous unit. But we must not forget that it is only\r\npartially so. The autonomy is very limited, for a good part of\r\nthe human mind is far from being conscious, there is a part\r\nhalf-conscious and a part almost wholly unconscious. This\r\nhemisphere so to say is under the influence of the vital and\r\nthe physical being with their unconscious and ill-organised\r\ninfluence. The true light comes from elsewhere, the mind in\r\nso far as it receives the light becomes conscious and proportionately autonomous. The light is always the spiritual light,\r\nthe consciousness of the spirit which is above and beyond mind.\r\nNot only the mind but the vital too, and the physical too in\r\norder to be consciously organised and free and autonomous</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 200<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">must know how to take in that light beyond the mind and\r\nbathe in its liberating influence.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In fact, education means precisely this instilling of the\r\nconsciousness into the part that is sought to be educated.\r\nUsually the thing is done in a different way which is wrong,\r\nat least an inefficient way. By education we usually mean\r\nexercising, that is teaching some exercises mostly of memory\r\non some subject in which one seeks education. It is more or\r\nless an exercise of mechanical repetition. Whether it is of the\r\nmind or of the body the procedure is the same. As the muscles\r\nof the body are sought to be strengthened and developed\r\nthrough repetitive exercises, the mental faculties too are put\r\nunder a training that consists of similar repetitive exercises. To store the \r\nmind with as many kinds of information as possible, hammer all ingredients of knowledge into the brain\r\ncells learning by rote as it is termed, this is what education\r\nnormally means; but as I said, it is consciousness that is to be\r\nevoked in the mind and it is not done by mere mechanical\r\nexercises. Even the body does not reach its true perfection\r\nunless the exercises are attended with consciousness, awareness,\r\na play of light into the movements of the body, into the limbs\r\nthat participate in the play of the exercises. Naturally the vital\r\ndoes not need any exercise for its development, it is naturally <i>exercised,</i> much exercised. It has to be not <i>exercised</i> but <i>exorcised,\r\n</i>that is to say, purified and controlled. And that means the\r\nintroduction of the pure light of consciousness into it.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I have laid stress on <i>consciousness,</i> but consciousness has\r\nthree facets or steps. The first is simple consciousness, the\r\nnext is self-consciousness and the last supra-consciousness. First you become \r\nconscious of a thing, next you become conscious that you are conscious of the thing, last something else\r\nis conscious in and through your consciousness.</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 201<hr>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n</body>\r\n\r\n</html>\r\n','-33_Consciousness as Freedom','','publish','closed','open','','33_consciousness-as-freedom','','','2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/33_consciousness-as-freedom/',0,'post','',0),(1485,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>15 the basic.htm</title>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html;charset=windows-1252\">\r\n</head>\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"5\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n		<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\">\r\n		<i>The Basis of Unify</i> </font>\r\n\r\n		</b>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">A MODERN society or people cannot have religion, that is<b> \r\n</b>to<b> \r\n</b>say, credal religion, as the basis of its organized collective life. It was mediaeval society and people that were organized on\r\nthat line. Indeed mediaevalism means nothing more—and\r\nnothing less —than that. But whatever the need and justification in the past, the principle is an anachronism under modern\r\nconditions. It was needed, perhaps, to keep alive a truth which\r\ngoes into the very roots of human life and its deepest aspiration; and it was needed also for a dynamic application of that\r\ntruth on a larger scale and in smaller details, on the mass of\r\nmankind and in its day to day life. That was the aim of the\r\nChurch Militant and the Khilafat; that was the spirit, although in a more Sattwic way, behind the Buddhistic evangelism or even Hindu colonization.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The truth behind a credal religion is the aspiration, towards\r\nthe realization of the Divine, some ultimate reality that gives a\r\npermanent meaning and value to the human life, to the\r\nexistence lodged in this \'sphere of sorrow\' here below. Credal\r\nparaphernalia were necessary to express or buttress this core of\r\nspiritual truth when mankind, in the mass, had not attained a\r\ncertain level of enlightenment in the mind and a certain degree\r\nof development in its life-relations. The modern age is modern\r\nprecisely because it had attained to a necessary extent this\r\nmental enlightenment and this life development. So the scheme\r\nor scaffolding that was required in the past is no longer unavoidable and can have either no reality at all or only a modified</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">utility.<br>\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\r\nA modern people is a composite entity, especially with</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 128<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">regard to its religious affiliation. Not religion, but culture is\r\nthe basis of modern collective life, national or social. Culture\r\nincludes in its grain that fineness of temperament which\r\nappreciates all truths behind all forms, even when there is a\r\npersonal allegiance to one particular form.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In India, it is well known, the diversity of affiliations is\r\ncolossal, <i>sui generis.</i> Two major affiliations have today almost\r\ncut the country into two; and desperate remedies are suggested\r\nwhich are worse than the malady itself, as they may kill the\r\npatient outright. If it is so, it is, I repeat, the mediaeval spirit\r\nthat is at the bottom of the trouble.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The rise of this spirit in modern times and conditions is a\r\nphenomenon that has to be explained and faced: it is a ghost\r\nthat has come out of the past and has got to be laid and laid\r\nfor good. First of all, it is a reaction from modernism; it is a\r\nreaction from the modernist denial of certain fundamental and\r\neternal truths, of God, soul, and immortality: it is a reaction\r\nfrom the modernist affirmation of the mere economic man.\r\nAnd it is also a defensive gesture of a particular complex of\r\nconsciousness that has grown and lives powerfully and now\r\napprehends expurgation and elimination.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In Europe such a contingency did not arise, because the\r\nreligious spirit, rampant in the days of Inquisitions and St.Bartholomews, died away: it died, and (or, because) it was\r\nreplaced by a spirit that was felt as being equally, if not more,\r\nauthentic and, which for the moment, suffused the whole\r\nconsciousness with a large and high afflatus, commensurate\r\nwith the amplitude of man\'s aspiration. I refer, of course, to\r\nthe spirit of the Renaissance. It was a spirit profane and secular,\r\nno doubt, but on that level it brought a catholicity of temper\r\nand a richness in varied interest—a humanistic culture, as it is\r\ncalled—which constituted a living and unifying ideal for\r\nEurope. That spirit culminated in the great French Revolution\r\nwhich was the final <i>coup de grace</i> to all that still remained of\r\nmediaevalism, even in its outer structure, political and\r\neconomical.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In India the spirit of renascence came very late, late almost\r\nby three centuries; and even then it could not flood the whole\r\nof the continent in all its nooks and corners, psychological and\r\nphysical. There were any number of pockets (to use a current</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 129<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">military phrase) left behind which guarded the spirit of<b> \r\n</b>the<b> \r\n</b>past and offered persistent and obdurate resistance. Perhaps,\r\nsuch a dispensation was needed in India and inevitable also;</font>&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">inevitable, because the religious spirit is closest to India\'s soul\r\nand is its most direct expression and cannot be uprooted so\r\neasily; needed, because India\'s and the world\'s future demands</font>&nbsp;\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">it and depends upon it.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Only, the religious spirit has to be bathed and purified and\r\nenlightened by the spirit of the renascence: that is to say, one\r\nmust learn and understand and realize that Spirit is the\r\nthing—the one thing needful—<i>Tamevaikam janatha;</i> \'religions\'\r\nare its names and forms, appliances and decorations. Let us\r\nhave by all means the religious spirit, the fundamental\r\nexperience that is the inmost truth of all religions, that is the\r\nmatter of our soul; but in our mind and life and body let there\r\nbe a luminous catholicity, let these organs and instruments be\r\ntrained to see and compare and appreciate the variety, the\r\nnumberless facets which the one Spirit naturally presents to\r\nthe human consciousness. <i>Ekam sat viprah bahudha vadanti.\r\n</i>It is an ancient truth that man discovered even in his earliest\r\nseekings; but it still awaits an adequate expression and application in life.</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p align=center style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<b>\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">II</font>\r\n\r\n		</b>\r\n\r\n		<p align=center style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; India\'s historical development is marked by a special\r\ncharacteristic which is at once the expression of her inmost\r\nnature and the setting of a problem which she has to solve for\r\nherself and for the whole human race. I have spoken of the\r\ndiversity and divergence of affiliations in a modern social unit.\r\nBut what distinguishes India from all other peoples is that the diversity and \r\ndivergence have culminated here in contradictoriness and mutual exclusion.                  </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The first extremes that met in India and fought and gradually\r\ncoalesced to form a single cultural and social whole were, as\r\nis well known, the Aryan and the non-Aryan. Indeed, the\r\ngeologists tell us, the land itself is divided into two parts\r\nstructurally quite different and distinct, the Deccan plateau\r\nand the Himalayan ranges with the Indo-Gangetic plain: the</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 130<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">former is formed out of the most ancient and stable and, on the\r\nwhole, horizontally bedded rocks of the earth, while the latter\r\nis of comparatively recent origin, formed out of a more flexible\r\nand weaker belt (the Himalayan region consisting of a colossal\r\nflexing and crumpling of strata). The disparity is so much that\r\na certain group of geologists hold that the Deccan plateau did\r\nnot at all form part of the Asiatic continent, but had drifted\r\nand dashed into it: in fact the Himalayas are the result of this\r\nmighty impact. The usual division of an Aryan and a Dravidian\r\nrace may be due to a memory of the clash of the two continents\r\nand their races.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; However, coming to historical times, we see wave after wave\r\nof the most heterogeneous and disparate elements—Sakas and\r\nHuns and Greeks, each bringing its quota of exotic material—\r\nenter into the oceanic Indian life and culture, lose their\r\nseparate foreign identity and become part and parcel of the\r\ncommon whole. Even so,—a single unitary body was formed\r\nout of such varied and shifting materials—not in the political,\r\nbut in a socio-religious sense. For a catholic religious spirit,\r\nnot being solely doctrinal and personal, admitted and embraced\r\nin its supple and wide texture almost an infinite variety of\r\napproaches to the Divine, of forms and norms of apprehending\r\nthe Beyond. It has been called Hinduism: it is a vast synthesis\r\nof multiple affiliations. It expresses the characteristic genius\r\nof India and hence Hinduism and Indianism came to be\r\nlooked upon as synonymous terms. And the same could be\r\ndefined also as Vedic religion and culture, for its invariable<br>\r\nbasis—the bed-rock on which it stood firm and erect—was\r\nthe Vedas, the Knowledge seen by the sages. But there had\r\nalready risen a voice of dissidence and discord—that of Buddha, not so much, \r\nperhaps, of Buddha as of Buddhism. The Buddhistic enlightenment and discipline did not admit the\r\nsupreme authority of the Vedas; it sought other bases of truth\r\nand reality. It was a great denial; and it meant and worked for\r\na vital schism. The denial of the Vedas by itself, perhaps,<br>\r\nwould not be serious, but it became so, as it was symptomatic\r\nof a deeper divergence. Denying the Vedas, the Buddhistic\r\nspirit denied life. It was quite a new thing in the Indian\r\nconsciousness and spiritual discipline. And it left such a stamp\r\nthere that even today it stands as the dominant character of</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 131<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">the Indian outlook. However, India\'s synthetic genius rose\r\nto the occasion and knew how to bridge the chasm, close up\r\nthe fissure, and present again a body whole and entire.\r\nBuddha became one of the Avataras: the discipline of Nirvana\r\nand Maya was reserved as the last duty to be performed at\r\nthe end of life, as the culmination of a full-length span of action\r\nand achievement; the way to Moksha lay through Dharma\r\nand Artha and Kama, Sannyasa had to be built upon Brahma-<br>\r\ncharya and Garhasthya. The integral ideal was epitomized\r\nby Kalidasa in his famous lines about the character of the\r\nRaghus:</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; They devoted themselves to study in their boyhood,\r\nin youth they pursued the objects of life; when old they\r\ntook to spiritual austerities, and in the end they died<br>\r\nunited with the higher consciousness.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Only this process of integration was not done in a day, it took\r\nsome centuries and had to pass through some unpleasant\r\nintermediary stages.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And still this was not the last—it could not be the last—\r\nantithesis that had to be synthetized. The dialectical movement led to a more serious and fiercer contradiction. The\r\nBuddhistic schism was after all a division brought about from\r\nwithin: it could be said that the two terms of the antinomy\r\nbelonged to the same genus and were commensurable. The\r\nidea or experience of Asat and Maya was not unknown to the\r\nUpanishads, only it had not there the exclusive stress which\r\nthe later developments gave it. Hence quite a different, an\r\naltogether foreign body was imported into what was or had\r\ncome to be a homogeneous entity, and in a considerable mass.\r\nUnlike the previous irruptions that merged and were lost in\r\nthe general life and consciousness, Islam entered as a leaven\r\nthat maintained its integrity and revolutionized Indian life\r\nand culture by infusing into its tone a Semitic accent. After\r\nthe Islamic impact India could not be what she was before—a\r\nchange became inevitable even in the major note. If was a\r\npsychological cataclysm almost on a par with the geological\r\none that formed her body; but the spirit behind which created\r\nthe body was working automatically, inexorably towards the</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 132<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">greater arid more difficult synthesis demanded by the situation. Only the thing is to be done\' now consciously, not through\r\nan unconscious process of <i>laissez-faire</i> as on the inferior stages\r\nof evolution in the past. And that is the true genesis of the\r\npresent conflict.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; History abounds in instances of racial and cultural immixture. Indeed, all major human groupings of today are\r\ninvariably composite formations. Excepting, perhaps, some\r\nprimitive aboriginal tribes there are no pure races existent.\r\nThe Briton, the Dane, the Anglo-Saxon, and the Norman\r\nhave combined to form the British; a Frenchman has a Gaul,\r\na Roman, a Frank in him; and a Spaniard\'s blood would show\r\n, an Iberian, a Latin, a Gothic, a Moorish element in it. And\r\nmuch more than a people, a culture in modern times has been\r\na veritable cockpit of multifarious and even incongruous\r\nelements. There are instances also in which a perfect fusion\r\ncould not be accomplished, and one element had to be rejected\r\nor crushed out. The complete disappearance of the Aztecs and\r\nMayas in South America, the decadence of the Red Indians\r\nin North America, of the Negroes in Africa as a result of a\r\nfierce clash with European peoples and European culture\r\nillustrate the point.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Nature, on the whole, has solved the problem of blood fusion\r\nand mental fusion of different peoples, although on a smaller\r\nscale. India today presents the problem on a larger scale and\r\non a higher or deeper level. The demand is for a spiritual\r\nfusion and unity. Strange to say, although the Spirit is the true\r\nbed-rock of unity—since, at bottom, it means identity—it is\r\non this plane that mankind has not yet been able to really\r\nmeet and coalesce. India\'s genius has been precisely working\r\nin the line of a perfect Solution of this supreme problem.</font>&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Islam comes with a full-fledged spiritual soul and a mental\r\nand vital formation commensurable with that inner being\r\nand consciousness. It comes with a dynamic spirit, a warrior\r\nmood, that aims at conquering the physical world, for the\r\nLord, a temperament which Indian spirituality had not, or\r\nhad lost long before, if she had anything of it. This was,\r\nperhaps, what Vivekananda meant when he spoke graphically\r\nof a Hindu soul with a Muslim body. The Islamic dispensation, however, brings with it not only something complementary,</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 133<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">but also something contradictory, if not for anything\r\nelse, at least for the strong individuality which does not easily\r\nyield to assimilation. Still, in spite of great odds, the process of\r\nassimilation was going on slowly and surely. But of late it\r\nappears to have come to a dead halt; difficulties have been\r\npresented which seem insuperable.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If religious toleration were enough, if that made up man\'s\r\nhighest and largest achievement, then Nature need not have\r\nattempted to go beyond cultural fusion; a liberal culture is the\r\nsurest basis for a catholic religious spirit. But such a spirit of\r\ntoleration and catholicity, although it bespeaks a widened\r\nconsciousness, does not always enshrine a profundity of being.\r\nNobody is more tolerant and catholic than a dilettante, <i>but\r\n</i>an ardent spiritual soul is different.</font>&nbsp;\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <font face=\"Times New Roman\">To be loyal to one\'s line of self-fulfilment, to follow one\'s\r\nself-law, <i>swadharma,</i> wholly and absolutely—without this no\r\nspiritual life is possible—and yet not to come into clash with\r\nother lines and loyalties, nay more, to be in positive harmony\r\nwith them, is a problem which has not been really solved. It\r\nwas solved, perhaps, in the consciousness of a Ramakrishna,\r\na few individuals here and there, but it has always remained a\r\nsource of conflict and disharmony in the general mind even\r\nin the field of spirituality. The clash of spiritual or religious\r\nloyalties has taken such an acute form in India today, they have\r\nbeen carried to the bitter extreme, in order, we venture to<br>\r\nsay, that the final synthesis might be absolute and irrevocable.\r\nThis is India\'s mission to work out, and this is the lesson which\r\nshe brings to the world.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The solution can come, first, by going to the true religion of\r\nthe Spirit, by being truly spiritual and not merely religious,\r\nfor, as we have said, real unity lies only in and through the\r\nSpirit, since Spirit is one and indivisible; secondly, by bringing\r\ndown something—a great part, indeed, if not the whole—of\r\nthis puissant and marvellous Spirit into our life of emotions\r\nand sensations and activities.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If it is said that this is an ideal for the few only, not for the\r\nmass, our answer to that is the answer of the Gita—<i>Yad yad\r\nacharati sreshthah.</i> Let the few then practise and achieve the\r\nideal: the mass will have to follow as far as it is possible and\r\nnecessary. It is the very character of the evolutionary system of</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 134<hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Nature, as expressed in the principle of symbiosis, that any\r\nconsiderable change in one place (in one species) is accompanied by a corresponding change in the same direction in\r\nother contiguous places (in other associated species) in order\r\nthat the poise and balance of the system may be maintained.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It is precisely strong nuclei that are needed (even, perhaps,\r\none strong nucleus is sufficient) where the single and integrated\r\nspiritual consciousness is an accomplished and established fact:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">that acts inevitably as a solvent drawing in and assimilating\r\nor transforming and re-creating as much of the surroundings\r\nas its own degree and nature of achievement inevitably</font>&nbsp;\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">demand.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; India did not and could not stop at mere cultural fusion—</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">which was a supreme gift of the Moguls. She did not and could\r\nnot stop at another momentous cultural fusion brought about\r\nby the European impact. She aimed at something more.\r\nNature demanded of her that she should discover a greater\r\nsecret of human unity and through progressive experiments\r\napply and establish it in fact. Christianity did not raise this\r\nproblem of the greater synthesis, for the Christian peoples\r\nwere more culture-minded than religious-minded. It was\r\nleft for an Asiatic people to set the problem and for India to\r\nwork out the solution.</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 135</p>\r\n		<hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></p></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-17_The Basis of Unify','','publish','closed','open','','17_the-basis-of-unify','','','2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/17_the-basis-of-unify/',0,'post','',0),(1486,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>4 lines.htm</title>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html;charset=windows-1252\">\r\n</head>\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n		<b>\r\n		<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Lines of the Descent of Consciousness</i> </font>\r\n		</b>\r\n		<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n		&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">The&nbsp; world has been created by a descent of consciousness; it maintains itself, it proceeds and develops through a series\r\nof descents. In fact, creation itself is a descent, the first and\r\noriginal one, the descent of the supreme Reality into Matter\r\nand as Matter. The supreme Reality—the fount and origin\r\nof things and even that which is beyond—although essentially\r\nsomething absolute, indescribable, ineffable, indeterminable,\r\nhas been, for purposes of the human understanding, signalised\r\nas a triune entity of Existence, Consciousness and Bliss. That\r\nis to say, first of all, it is, it exists always and for ever—invariably, in unbroken continuity; secondly, it exists not unconsciously, but consciously, in and as full consciousness; thirdly, it exists in delight—through delight and for and as\r\ndelight; it has no other reason for existence but the pleasure\r\nand joy of simply existing. This primal, this original truth or\r\nreality transcends creation and is beyond and antecedent to it.\r\nWhat then is creation, what is its nature and character?\r\nStrange to say, it is the very opposite of the primal reality.\r\nFirst of all, it is not really existent: its existence is only another\r\nname for non-existence, as, in its phenomenal constitution,\r\nit is variable, ephemeral, transient and fragmentary or even\r\nseems made, as it were, of the stuff of dream. Secondly, it is\r\nnot conscious; on the contrary, it is unconsciousness. And lastly\r\nit is not delight; there is an original insensibility and much\r\nundelight, grief and sorrow. That is the actual physical\r\ncreation; or so, at least, it appears to be. How is this paradox\r\nto be explained? What is the significance of this riddle ?&nbsp;</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Descent is the master-key that unravels the mystery—that\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 31</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">is to say, the descent of the delightful conscious existence as\r\nthe material world. But why this descent at all? What was the\r\nnecessity ? What was the purpose ? The <i>why</i> of a thing is always\r\ndifficult, if not impossible, to gauge. But we shall try to understand the <i>how</i> of the phenomenon, and in so doing perhaps we\r\nmay get at the why of it also. At present let us content ourselves by saying that such was His will—<i>la sua voluntade—</i>such was His wish—<i>sa aicchat.</i> For once perhaps instead of\r\nsaying, &quot;Let there be light&quot;, He (or something in Him) must\r\nhave said, &quot;Let there be darkness&quot;, and there was Darkness.&nbsp;</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But the point is, this darkness did not come all on a sudden\r\nbut arrived gradually through a developing process—we do\r\nnot refer to physical time here but something antecedent,\r\nsomething parallel to it in another dimension. Let us see how\r\nit all came about. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The absolute in its triple or triune status (not in its supreme\r\nbeing but as we see it prior to manifestation) is in essence and\r\nprinciple an infinity and unity. Indeed, it is <i>the</i> infinite unity,\r\nand its fundamental character is a supreme and utter equality\r\n—<i>samam brahma.</i> It is then a <i>status</i> or <i>statis,</i> that is to say, a \r\nstate of perfectly stable equilibrium in which there is ho movement of difference or distinction, no ripple of high and low\r\nor ebb and flow, no mark of quantity or quality. It is a stilled\r\nsea of self-identity, a vast limitless or pure consciousness brooding in trance and immobility. And yet in the bosom of this\r\nineffable and inviolable equality, in the \'very hush and lull\r\nthere lies secreted an urge, a pressure, a possibility towards\r\nactivity, variation and even an eventual inequality. For the\r\npresence and possibility of dynamism is posited by the very\r\ninfinity of the Infinite, since without it, the Infinite would be\r\nincapable of motion, expression and fulfilment of its Force. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There is thus inherent in the vast inalienable equality of\r\nthe absolute Reality, a Force which can bring out centres of pressure, nuclei of \r\ndynamism, nodes of modulation. It is precisely round these centres of precipitation that the original\r\nand basic unity crystallises itself and weaves a pattern of\r\nharmonious multiplicity. Consciousness, by self-pressure,— <i>tapas taptva—</i>turns its even and undifferentiated pristine\r\nequanimity into ripples and swirls, eddies and vortices of\r\ndelight, matrices of creative activity. Thus the One becomes </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 32 </font>\r\n<hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Many by a process of self-concentration and self-limitation.&nbsp;</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; At the very outset when and where the Many has come \r\nout into manifestation in the One—here also it must be remembered that we are using a temporal figure in respect of\r\nan extra-temporal fact—there and then is formed a characteristic range of reality which is a perfect equation of the one\r\nand the many: that is to say, the one in becoming many still\r\nremains the same immaculate one in and through the many,\r\nand likewise the many in spite of its manifoldness—and because of the special \r\nquality of the manifoldness—still continues to be the one in the uttermost degree. It is the world of\r\nfundamental realities. Sri Aurobindo names it the Supermind\r\nor Gnosis. It is something higher than but distantly akin to\r\nPlato\'s world of Ideas or Noumena <i>(ideai, nooumena)</i> or to\r\nwhat Plotinus calls the first divine emanation <i>(nous).</i> These\r\narchetypal realities are realities of the Spirit, Idea-forces,\r\ntruth-energies, the root consciousness-forms, <i>rta cit,</i> in Vedic\r\nterminology. They are seed-truths, the original mother-truths\r\nin the Divine Consciousness. They comprise the fundamental\r\nessential many aspects and formulations of an infinite Infinity. At this stage these do not come into clash or conflict, for here\r\neach contains all and the All contains each one in absolute\r\nunity and essential identity. Each individual formation is\r\nunited with and partakes of the nature of the one supreme\r\nReality. Although difference is born here, separation is not\r\nyet come. Variety is there, but not discord, individuality is\r\nthere, not egoism. This is the first step of Descent, the earliest\r\none—not, we must remind ourselves again, historically but\r\npsychologically and logically—the descent of the Transcendent\r\ninto the Cosmic as the vast and varied Supermind—<i>citrah\r\npraketo ajanista vibhwa—</i>of the Absolute into the relational\r\nmanifestation as <i>Vidyasakti</i> (Gnosis). </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The next steps, farther down or away, arrive when the\r\ndrive towards differentiation and multiplication gathers\r\nmomentum becomes accentuated, and separation and isolation\r\nincrease in degree and emphasis. The lines of individuation\r\nfall more and more apart from each other, tending to form\r\nclosed circles, each confining more and more exclusively to\r\nitself, stressing its own particular and special value and function, in contradistinction to or even against other lines. Thus </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 33</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">the descent or fall from the Supermind leads, in the first\r\ninstance, to the creation or appearance of the Overmind. It is\r\nthe level of consciousness where the perfect balance of the\r\nOne and the Many is disturbed and the emphasis begins to be\r\nlaid on the many. The source of incompatibility between the\r\ntwo just starts here as if Many is not-One and One is not-\r\nMany. It is the beginning of Ignorance, Avidya, Maya. Still\r\nin the higher hemisphere of the Overmind, the sense of unity\r\nis yet maintained, although there is no longer the sense of absolute identity of \r\nthe two; they are experienced as complementaries, both form a harmony, a harmony as of different\r\nand distinct but conjoint notes. The Many has come forward,\r\nyet the unity is also there supporting it—the unity is an\r\nimmanent godhead, controlling the patent reality of the Many.\r\nIt is in the lower hemisphere of the Overmind that unity is\r\nthrown into the background half-submerged, nickering, and\r\nthe principle of multiplicity comes forward with all insistence. Division and \r\nrivalry are the characteristic marks of its organisation. Yet the unity does not disappear altogether, only it\r\nremains very much inactive, like a sleeping partner. It is not\r\ndirectly perceived and envisaged, not immediately felt but is\r\nevoked as a reminiscence. The Supermind, then, is the first\r\ncrystallisation of the Infinite into individual centres, in the\r\nOvermind these centres at the outset become more exclusively\r\nindividualised and then jealously self-centred. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The next step of Descent is the Mind where the original\r\nunity and identity and harmony are disrupted to a yet greater degree, almost \r\ncompletely. The self-delimitation\' of consciousness—which is proper to the Supermind and even to\r\nthe Overmind, at least in its higher domains—gives way to self-limitation, to \r\nintolerant egoism and solipsism. The consciousness withdraws from its high and wide sweep, narrows\r\ndown to introvert orbits. The sense of unity in the mind is, at\r\nmost, a thing of idealism and imagination; it is an abstract\r\nnotion, a supposition and a deduction. Here we enter into\r\nthe very arcana of Maya, the rightful possession of Ignorance.\r\nThe individualities here have become totally isolated and\r\nindependent and mutually conflicting lines of movement. Hence the natural \r\nincapacity of mind, as it is said, to comprehend more than one object simultaneously. The Supermind </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 34</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">and, less absolutely, the Overmind have a global and\r\nintegral outlook: they can take in each one in its purview all\r\nat once the total assemblage of things, they differentiate but\r\ndo not divide—the Supermind not at all, the Overmind not\r\ncategorically. The Mind has not this synthetic view, it proceeds\r\nanalytically. It observes its object by division, taking the parts\r\npiecemeal, dismantling them, separating them, attending to\r\neach one at a time. And when it observes it fixes itself on one\r\npoint, withdrawing its attention from all the rest. If it has to\r\narrive at a synthesis, it can only do so by collating, aggregating <i>:</i> and summing. Menta} consciousness is thus narrowly one-\r\npointed: and in narrowing itself, being farther away from\r\nthe source it becomes obscurer, more and more outward\r\ngazing <i>[parafici khani)</i> and superficial. The One Absolute in\r\nits downward march towards multiplicity, fragmentation and\r\npartiality loses also gradually its subtlety, its suppleness, its\r\nrefinement, becomes more and more obtuse, crude, rigid and\r\ndense. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Between the Overmind and the Mind proper, varying\r\naccording to the degree of immixture of the two, according\r\nto the degree of descent and of emergence of one and the other\r\nrespectively, there are several levels of consciousness of which\r\nthree main ones have been named and described by Sri\r\nAurobindo. The first one nearest to the Overmind and the\r\nleast contaminated by the Mind is pure Intuition; next, the\r\nintermediary one is called the Illumined Mind, and last\r\ncomes the Higher Mind. They are all powers of the Overmind\r\nfunctioning in the Mind. The higher ranges are always more\r\ndirect, intense, synthetic, dynamic than the lower ones where\r\nconsciousness is slower, duller, more uncertain, more disintegrated. The lower the consciousness descends the more veiled\r\nit becomes, losing more and more the directness, the sureness,\r\nthe intensity and force and the synthetic unity native to the\r\nhighest ranges of our consciousness and being. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A further descent into obscurity occurs when consciousness\r\npasses from Mind to Life. Darkness is almost visible here:&nbsp; there is a greater withdrawal on the part of each unit from its\r\nsurrounding reality, a narrower concentration upon one\'s\r\nown separative existence—shades of the prison-house have\r\ngathered close around. The light, already dulled and faint in </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 35</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">the mind, has become a lurid glare here. Passion has arisen\r\nand desire and hunger and battle and combat. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Here also in the vital three ranges can be distinguished—\r\nthe lower becoming more and more turbid and turbulent and\r\nfierce or more and more self-centred and selfish. These levels can. best be seen \r\nby their impact on our vital being and formations there. The first, the highest \r\none, the meeting or confluence of the Mind and the Vital is the Heart, the centre of\r\nemotion, the knot of the external or instrumental vehicle, of\r\nthe frontal consciousness, behind which is born and hides the\r\ntrue individualised consciousness, the psyche. The mid-region\r\nis the Higher Vital consisting of larger (egoistic) dynamisms,\r\nsuch as high ambition, great enterprise, heroic courage, capacity for work, \r\nadventure, masterfulness, also such movements as sweeping violences, mighty hungers, intense arrogances. The physical seat of this movement is, as perhaps the\r\n<i>Tantras</i> would say, the domain ranging between the heart\r\nand the navel. Lower down ranges the Lower Vital which\r\nconsists of small desires, petty hankerings, blind cravings—all\r\nurges and impulses that are more or less linked up with the\r\n&quot; body and move to gross physical satisfactions. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But always the Consciousness is driving towards a yet\r\ngreater disintegration and fragmentation, obscuration and\r\ncondensation of self-oblivion. The last step in the process of\r\ntransmutation or involution is Matter where consciousness\r\nhas wiped itself out or buried itself within so completely and\r\nthoroughly that it has become in its outward form totally dark,\r\ndense, hard, pulverised into mutually exclusive grains. The\r\nsupreme luminous Will of Consciousness in its gradual descent\r\nand self-obliteration finally ends in a rigid process of mere\r\nmechanised drive. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This is, so far then, the original and primal line of descent. It is the line down which the absolute Reality, the absolute\r\nConsciousness and the absolute Delight have turned into unreality and unconsciousness and undelight. But it is not all\r\nloss and debit. There is a credit side too. For it is only in this\r\nway, viz, by the manifestation of utter Ignorance, that the\r\nsupreme Absolute has become concrete, the Formless has\r\nentered into form, the Bodiless has found a body: what was\r\noriginally<b> </b> an indeterminate equal Infinity of pure consciousness, </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 36</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">has become determinate and dynamic in the individual\r\nmultiplicity of corporeal consciousness. What is the sense in\r\nall that, what is the gain or upshot ? We shall presently see.&nbsp;</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When consciousness has reached the farthest limit of its\r\nopposite, when it has reduced itself to absolutely unconscious and mechanical \r\natoms of Matter, when the highest has descended into and become the lowest, then, by the very force\r\nof its downward drive, it has swung round and begun to mount\r\nup again. As it could not proceed farther on the downward\r\ngradient, having reached the extreme and ultimate limit of inconscience, consciousness had to turn round, as it were, by\r\nthe very pressure of its inner impetus. First, then, there is a\r\ndescent, a gradual involution, a veiling and closing up; next,\r\nan ascent, a gradual evolution, unfoldment and expression.\r\nWe now see, however, that the last limit at the bottom—Matter—although appearing to be unconscious, is really not\r\nso: it is inconscient. That is to say, it holds consciousness\r\nsecreted and involved within itself; it is, indeed, a special\r\nformulation of consciousness. It is the exclusive concentration\r\nof consciousness upon single points in itself: it is consciousness\r\nthrowing itself out in scattered units and, by reason of separative\r\nidentification with them and absorption into them, losing\r\nitself, forgetting itself in an absolute fixation of attention. The\r\nphenomenon is very similar to what happens when in the\r\nordinary consciousness a worker, while doing a work, becomes\r\nso engrossed in it that he loses consciousness of himself, identifies\r\nhimself with the work and in fact becomes the work, the visible\r\nresultant being a mechanical execution. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Now this imprisoned consciousness in Matter forces Matter\r\nto be conscious again when driven on the upward gradient.\r\nThis tension creates a fire, as it were, in the heart of Matter, a\r\nmighty combustion and whorl in the core of things, of which\r\nthe blazing sun is an image and a symbol. All this pressure and\r\nheat and concussion and explosion mean a mighty struggle in\r\nMatter to give birth to that which is within. Consciousness\r\nthat is latent must be made patent; it must reveal itself in\r\nMatter and through Matter, making Matter its vehicle and\r\nembodiment. This is the mystery of the birth of Life, the first\r\nsprouting of consciousness in Matter. Life is half-awakened\r\nconsciousness, consciousness yet in a dream state. Its earliest </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 37</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">and most rudimentary manifestation is embodied in the plant\r\nor vegetable world. The submerged consciousness strives to\r\ncome still further up, to express itself to a greater degree and\r\nin a clearer mode, to become more free and plastic in its\r\nmovements; hence the appearance of the animal as the next\r\nhigher formulation. Here consciousness delivers itself as a\r\npsyche, a rudimentary one, no doubt, a being of feeling and\r\nsensation, and elementary mentality playing in a field of\r\nvitalised Matter. Even then it is not satisfied with itself, it\r\nasks for a still more free and clear articulation: it is not satisfied,\r\nfor it has not yet found its own level. Hence after the animal,\r\narrives man with a full-fledged Mind, with intelligence and\r\nself-consciousness and capacity for self-determination. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thus we see that evolution, the unfolding of consciousness\r\nfollows exactly the line of its involution, only the other way\r\nround: the mounting consciousness re-ascends step by step the\r\nsame gradient, retraces the same path along which it had\r\ndescended. The descending steps are broadly speaking (1)\r\nExistence-Consciousness-Bliss, (2) Supermind and its secondary\r\nform Overmind, (3) Mind—<i>(i)</i> mind proper and <i>(ii)</i> the\r\nintermediary psyche, (4) Life, (5) Matter. The ascending\r\nconsciousness starting from Matter rises into Life; passes on\r\nthrough Life and Psyche into Mind, driving towards the\r\nSupermind and Schchidananda. At the present stage of evolution, consciousness has arrived at the higher levels of Mind; it\r\nis now striving to cross it altogether and enter the Overmind\r\nand the Supermind. It will not rest content until it arrives\r\nat the organisation in and through the Supermind: for that\r\nis the drive and purpose of Nature in the next cycle of evolution. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Physical Science speaks of irreversibility and entropy in\r\nNature\'s process. That is to say, it is stated that Nature is\r\nrushing down and running down: she is falling irrevocably\r\nfrom a higher to an ever lower potential of energy. The\r\nmachine that Nature is, is driven by energy made available\r\nby a break-up of parts and particles constituting its substance.\r\nThis katabolic process cannot be stopped or retraced; it can\r\nend only when the break-up ceases at dead equilibrium. You\r\ncannot lead the river up the channel to its source, it moves\r\ninevitably, unceasingly towards the sea in which it exhausts\r\nitself and finds its last repose and—extinction.<b> </b> But whatever </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 38</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n		<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">physical Science may say, the science of the spirit declares emphatically that Nature\'s process is reversible, that a growing\r\nentropy can be checked and countermanded: in other words,\r\nNature\'s downward current resulting in a continual loss of\r\nenergy and a break-up of substance is not the only process of\r\nher activity. This aspect is more than counterbalanced by\r\nanother one of upward drive and building up, of re-energisation\r\nand re-integration. Indeed, evolution, as we have explained it,\r\nis nothing but such a process of synthesis and new creation.</font><p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Evolution, which means the return movement of consciousness, consists, in its apparent and outward aspect, of two\r\nprocesses, or rather two parallel lines in a single process.\r\nFirst, there is the line of sublimation, that is to say, the lower\r\npurifies and modifies itself into the higher; the denser, the\r\nobscurer, the baser mode of consciousness is led into and\r\nbecomes the finer, the clearer, the nobler mode. Thus it is that\r\nMatter rises into Life, Life into Psyche and Mind, Mind into\r\nOvermind and Supermind. Now this sublimation is not\r\nsimply a process of refinement or elimination, something in\r\nthe nature of our old Indian <i>nivrtti</i> or <i>pratyahara,</i> or what\r\nPlotinus called <i>epistrophe</i> (a turning back, withdrawal or re-absorption) : it includes and is attended by the process of\r\nintegration also. That is to say, as the lower rises into the\r\nhigher, the lower does not cease to exist thereby, it exists but\r\nlifted up into the higher, infused and modified by the higher.\r\nThus when Matter yields Life, Matter is not destroyed: it\r\nmeans Life has appeared in Matter and exists in and through\r\nMatter and Matter thereby has attained a new mode and\r\nconstitution, for it is no longer merely a bundle of chemical or\r\nmechanical reactions, it is instinct with life, it has become\r\norganic matter. Even so, when Life arrives at Mind, it is not\r\ndissolved into Mind but both Life and Matter are taken up by\r\nthe mental stuff, life becomes dynamic sentience and Matter is\r\ntransformed into the grey substance of the brain. Matter thus\r\nhas passed through a first transformation in Life and a second\r\ntransformation in Mind; it awaits other transformations on\r\nother levels beyond Mind. Likewise, Life has passed through\r\na first transformation in Mind and there are stages in this\r\ntransformation. In the plant. Life is in its original pristine\r\nmode; in the animal, it has become sentient and centralised </font>\r\n		<p align=center style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 39</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">round a rudimentary desire-soul; in man, life-force is taken up&nbsp;by the higher mind and intelligence giving birth to idealism\r\nand ambition, dynamisms of a forward-looking purposive will.\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We have, till now, spoken of the evolution of consciousness&nbsp;as a movement of ascension, consisting of a double process<b> </b> of&nbsp; sublimation and integration. But ascension itself is only one\r\nline of a yet another larger double process. For along with the\r\nvisible movement of ascent, there is a hidden movement of\r\ndescent. The ascent represents the pressure from below, the force of buoyancy \r\nexerted by the involved and secreted consciousness. But the mere drive from below is not sufficient all\r\nby itself to bring out or establish the higher status. The higher\r\nstatus itself has to descend in order to be manifest. The urge\r\nfrom below is an aspiration, a yearning to move ever upward\r\nand forward; but the precise goal, the status to be arrived at\r\nis not given there. The more or less vague and groping surge\r\nfrom below is canalised, it assumes a definite figure and\r\nshape, assumes a local habitation and a name when the higher\r\ndescends at the crucial moment, takes the lower at its peak-\r\ntide and fixes upon it its own norm and form. We have said\r\nthat all the levels of consciousness have been created—loosened&nbsp; out—by a first Descent; but in the line of the first. Descent\r\nthe only level that stands in front at the outset is Matter, all\r\nthe other levels are created no doubt but remain invisible in\r\nthe background, behind the gross veil of Matter. Each status\r\nstands confined, as it were, to its own region and bides its\r\ntime when each will be summoned to concretise itself in\r\nMatter. Thus Life was already there on the plane of Life even when it did not manifest itself in Matter, when mere Matter,\r\ndead Matter was the only apparent reality on the material\r\nplane. When Matter was stirred and churned sufficiently so\r\nas to reach a certain tension and saturation, when it was\r\nraised to a certain degree of maturity, as it were, then Life\r\nappeared: Life appeared, not because that was the inevitable\r\nand unavoidable result of the churning, but because Life\r\ndescended from its own level to the level of Matter and took\r\nMatter up in its embrace. The churning, the development in\r\nMatter was only the occasion, the condition precedent. For,\r\nhowever much one may shake or churn Matter, whatever\r\nchange one may create in it by a shuffling and reshuffling of </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 40</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">its elements, one can never produce Life by that alone. A\r\nnew and unforeseen factor makes its appearance, precisely\r\nbecause it comes from elsewhere. It is true all the planes are\r\nimbedded, submerged, involved in the complex of Matter; but, in point of fact, all planes are involved in every other\r\nplane. The appearance or manifestation of a new plane is\r\ncertainly prepared, made ready to the last—the last but one\r\n—degree by the urge of the inner, the latent mode of consciousness that is to be; still the actualization, the bursting forth \r\nhappens only when the thing that has to manifest itself descends, the actual form and pattern can be imprinted and\r\nestablished by that alone. Thus, again, when Life attains a\r\ncertain level of growth and maturity, a certain tension and\r\norientation—a definite vector, so to say, in the mathematical\r\nlanguage—when it has, for example, sufficiently organised\r\nitself as a vehicle of the psychic element of consciousness, then. it buds forth \r\ninto Mind, but only when the Mind has descended upon it and into it. As in the previous stage, here also-\r\nLife cannot produce Mind, cannot develop into Mind by any\r\namount of mechanical or chemical operations within itself, by&nbsp;\r\nany amount of permutation and combination or commutation.\r\nand culture of its constituent elements, unless it is seized on. by Mind itself. \r\nAfter the Mind, the next higher grade of consciousness shall come by the same method and process, viz,\r\nfirst by an uplifting of the mental consciousness—a certain.\r\nwidening and deepening and katharsis of the mental consciousness—and then by a descent, gradual or sudden, of the level\r\nor levels that lie above it.&nbsp;</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This, then, is the nature of creation and its process. First,.\r\nthere is an Involution, a gradual foreshortening—a disintegration and concretisation, an exclusive concentration and self-oblivion of consciousness by which the various levels of diminishing consciousness are brought forth from the plenary\r\nlight of the one supreme Spirit, all the levels down to the\r\ncomplete eclipse in the unconsciousness of the multiple and\r\ndisintegrate Matter. Next, there is an Evolution, that is to\r\nsay, embodiment in Matter of all these successive states, appearing one by one from the downmost to the topmost; Matter incarnates, all other states contribute to the incarnation&nbsp; </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 41</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">and uphold it, the higher always transforming the\r\nlower in a new degree of consciousness. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Creation, the universe in its activity, is thus not simply a\r\nmeaningless play, a pointless fancy. It has a purpose, an end,\r\na goal, a fulfilment, and it follows naturally a definite pattern\r\nof process. The goal is the concretisation, the materialisation\r\n(which includes, of course, vitalisation and mentalisation) of the Spirit and \r\nthe spiritual values. It means the establishment of divine names and forms in terrestrial individuals\r\nleading a divine life, individually and collectively here below. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We have so far spoken of two lines of descent. But in either\r\ncase the descent was of a general and impersonal character.\r\nConsciousness was considered as a mere force, movement or\r\nquality. There is another aspect, however, in which the\r\ndescent is of a particular and personal character and consciousness is not force or status only but conscious being or Person. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The various movements or forces of consciousness that\r\nplay in the various fields or levels of creation are not merely\r\nstates or degrees and magnitudes, currents and streams of\r\nconsciousness: they are also personalities with definite forms\r\nand figures—not physical indeed, yet very definite even when\r\nsubtle and fluidic. Thus the supreme Reality, which is usually\r\ndescribed as the perfect status of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, is not merely a principle but a personality. It is the\r\nSupreme Person with his triune nature (Purushottama). It is\r\nthe Divine as the supreme Knower and Doer or Creator and\r\nLover. The creation in or from that status of consciousness is\r\nnot simply a play or result of the force of consciousness, it is\r\neven more truly the embodiment of a conscious Will; it is the\r\nwill of the Divine Father executed by the Divine Mother. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, as the Reality along with its consciousness, in the\r\ndownward involutionary course towards materialisation, has\r\nbeen gradually disintegrating itself, multiplying itself, becoming more and more obscure and dense in separated and isolated\r\nunits, even so the Person too has been following a parallel\r\ncourse of disintegration and multiplication and obscuration </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 42</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">and isolation-At the origin lies, as we have said, the Perfect\r\nPerson, the Supreme Person, in his dual aspect of being and\r\nnature, appearing as the supreme <i>purusa</i> and the supreme <i>prakrti,</i> our Father and our Mother in the highest heaven. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Next is the domain of the Supermind with which the\r\n<i>manifestation</i> of the Divine starts. We have said it is the world\r\nof typal realities, of the first seed-realities, where the<b> </b> One and\r\nthe Many are united and fused in each other, where the\r\nabsolute unity of the Supreme maintains itself in undiminished\r\nmagnitude and expresses and formulates itself perfectly in and\r\nthrough the original multiplicity. Here take birth the first\r\npersonalities, absolute truth-forms of the Divine. Here are the\r\nhighest gods, the direct formations of the Divine himself.\r\nHere are the Four Powers and Personalities of <i>iswara</i> whom\r\nSri Aurobindo has named after the Vaishnava terminology: (z) Mahavira, embodying the Brahmin quality of Knowledge\r\nand Light and wide Consciousness, (n) Balarama, embodying\r\nthe Kshatriya quality of Force and intense dynamism, (w)\r\nPradyumna, embodying the quality of love and beauty—the\r\nVaishya virtue of mutuality and harmony and solidarity, and <i>(iv)</i> Aniruddha, embodying the Sudra quality of competent\r\nservice, of organisation and execution in detail. Corresponding with these Four \r\nthere are the other Four Powers and Personalities of the Divine Mother—<i>Iswari:</i> (i) Maheshwari, (ii) Mahakali, (iii) Mahalakshmi and\r\n<i>(iv}</i> Mahasaraswati. Next\r\nin the downward gradient comes the Overmind where the\r\nindividualised powers and personalities of the Divine tend to\r\nbecome self-sufficient and self-regarding; their absolute unity\r\nis loosened and the lines of multiplicity begin to be more\r\nindependent of each other, each aiming at a special fulfilment\r\nof its own. Still the veil that is being drawn over the unity is\r\nyet transparent which continues to be sufficiently dynamic.\r\nThis is the abode of the gods, the true and high gods: it is these\r\nthat the Vedic Rishis appear to have envisaged and sought\r\nafter. The all gods <i>(visve devah)</i> were indeed acknowledged\'\r\nto be but different names and forms of one supreme godhead <i>(devah):</i> it is the one god, says Rishi Dirghatamas, who is\r\ncalled multifariously whether as Agni or Yama or Matariswan;&nbsp; it is the one god, again, who is described as having a thousand\r\nheads and a thousand feet. And yet they are separate entities, </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 43</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">each has his own distinct and distinctive character and attribute, each demands a characteristic way of approach and\r\nworship. The tendency towards an exclusive stress is already\r\nat work on this level and it is the perception of this truth that\r\nlies behind the term <i>henotheism</i> used by European scholars\r\nto describe the Vedic Religion. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The next stage of devolution is the Mind proper. There or\r\nperhaps even before, on the lower reaches of the Overmind,\r\nthe gods have become all quite separate,—self-centred, each\r\nbounded in his own particular sphere and horizon. The\r\nOvermind gods—the true gods—are creators in a world of\r\nbalanced or harmoniously held difference; they are powers\r\nthat fashion each a special fulfilment, enhancing one another\r\nat the same time <i>(parasparam bhavayanta).</i> Between the Over-mind and the Mind there is a class of lesser gods—they\r\nhave been called <i>formateurs;</i> they do not create in the strict\r\nsense of the term, they give form to what the anterior gods have created and \r\nprojected. These form-makers that consolidate the encasement, fix definitely the image, have most\r\nprobably been envisaged in the Indian <i>dhydnamurtis.</i> But in\r\nthe Mind the gods become still more fixed and rigid, &quot;stereotyped&quot;; the mental gods inspire exclusive systems, extreme\r\nand abstract generalisations, theories and principles and formulae that, even when they seek to force and englobe all in\r\ntheir cast-iron mould, can hardly understand or tolerate each\r\nother. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Mind is the birth-place of absolute division and exclusivism\r\n—it is the &quot;own home&quot; of egoism. Egoism is that ignorant\r\nmode—a twist or knot of consciousness which cuts up the\r\nuniversal unity into disparate and antagonistic units: it creates\r\nisolated, mutually exclusive whorls in the harmonious rhythm\r\nand vast commonalty of the one consciousness or conscious\r\nexistence. The Sankhya speaks of the principle of ego coming\r\nor appearing after the principle of vastness <i>[mahat).</i> The Vast\r\n\'is the region above the Mind, where the unitary consciousness is still intact; with the appearance of the Mind has also\r\nappeared an intolerant self-engrossed individualism that\r\nculminates, as its extreme and violent expression, in the <i>asura—</i>Asura, the mentalised vital being. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Asura or the Titan stands where consciousness descends </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 44</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">from the Mind into the Vital or Life-Force. He is \r\nthe personification of ambition and authority and arrogance, he is\r\nthe intolerant and absolute self-seeker—he is Daitya, the son\r\nof division. The Asura belongs to what we call the Higher\r\nVital; but lower down in the Mid Vital, made wholly of\r\nunmixed life impulses, appear beings that are still less luminous,\r\nless controlled, more passionate, vehement and. violent in\r\ntheir self-regarding appetite. They are the Rakshasas. If the\r\nAsura is perverse power, the Rakshasa is insatiate hunger. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; All the ancient legends about a principle—and a personality\r\n—of Denial and Ignorance, of an Everlasting Nay—refer to\r\nthis fact of a descending consciousness, a Fall. The Vedantic <i>mayd,</i> spoken of sometimes as the Dark Mother, seems to be\r\nthe personification of the lower Overmind, Jehovah and Satan\r\nof the Hebrews, Olympians and Titans of the Greeks, Ahriman\r\nand Ahura Mazda of old Iran, the sons of Diti and Aditi the\r\nIndian Puranas speak of, are powers and personalities of consciousness when it has descended entirely into the mind and\r\nthe vital where the division is complete. These lower reaches\r\nhave completely lost the unitary consciousness; still there are\r\nbeings even here that have succeeded in maintaining it as a\r\nmemory or an aspiration, although in a general way&nbsp; the\r\nliving reality of the oneness is absent. It is significant that the\r\nterm <i>asura</i> which came to mean in classical and mythological\r\nages <i>a</i> + <i>sura,</i> not-god, the Titan, had originally a different\r\nconnotation and etymology, <i>asu + ra,</i> one having force or\r\nstrength, and was used as a general attribute of all the gods.\r\nThe degradation in the sense of the word is a pointer to the\r\nspiritual Fall: Satan was once Lucifer, the bringer or bearer\r\nof light. We may mention in this connection that these beings\r\nof which we are speaking, dwelling in unseen worlds, are of\r\ntwo broad categories—(1) beings that are native to each plane\r\nand immutably confined and bound to that plane, and (2)\r\nthose that extend their existence through many or all planes\r\nand assume on each plane the norm and form appropriate to\r\nthat plane. But this is a problem of individual destiny with\r\nwhich we are not concerned at present. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We were speaking of the descent into the Vital, the domain\r\nof dynamism, desire and hunger. The Vital is also the field of\r\nsome strong creative Powers who follow, or are in secret </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 45</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">contact with the line of unitary consciousness, who are open\r\nto influences from a deeper or higher or subtler consciousness.\r\nAlong with the demons there is also a line of <i>daimona,</i> guardian\r\nangels, in the hierarchy of vital beings. Much of what is known\r\nas aesthetic or artistic creation derives its spirit from this\r\nsphere. Many of the gods of beauty and delight are denizens\r\nof this heaven. Gandharvas and Kinnaras are here, Dionysus\r\nand even Apollo perhaps (at least in their mythological\r\naspect—in their occult reality they properly belong to the\r\nOvermind which is the own home of the gods), many of the\r\nangels, seraphs and cherubs dwell here. In fact, the mythological heaven for the most part can be located in this region. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; All this is comprised within what we term the Higher \r\nor the Middle Vital. In the lower vital, we have said, consciousness has become still more circumscribed, dark, ignorantly\r\nobstinate, disparately disintegrated. It is the seed-bed of lust\r\nand cruelty, of all that is small and petty and low and mean,\r\nall that is dirt and filth.<b> </b> It is here that we place the <i>pisacas,\r\n</i>djinns, ghouls and ghosts, and vampires, beings who possess\r\nthe &quot;possessed&quot;. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Further down in the scale where life-force touches Matter,\r\nwhere Life is about to precipitate as Matter, appear beings of&nbsp;\r\na still lower order, of smaller dimensions and magnitudes—\r\nimps, elfs, pixies, goblins, gnomes, fairies or dryads and naiads.\r\nThere are even creatures or entities so close to Matter that\r\nthey come into being and pass away with the building up and\r\nbreaking of a definite pattern of material organisation. This\r\nindividualisation of consciousness as beings or persons seems\r\nto disappear altogether when we enter the strictly material\r\nplane. There is here only an agglomeration of uniform dead\r\nparticles. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We have thus far followed the course of the break-up of\r\nPersonality, from the original one supreme Person, through\r\na continuous process of multiplication and disintegration, of\r\nparcellation and crystallisation into more and more small self-centred units, until we reach the final pulverisation as purely\r\nmaterial physico-chemical atoms. Now with the reversal of consciousness, in its \r\nreturn movement, we have again a process of growth and building up of individuality and personality,\r\nwith the awakening and ascension of consciousness from level </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;page 46</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">to level on the physical plane and in the material embodiment,\r\nthere occurs too an evolution of the personal aspect of the\r\nreality. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We say that at the lowest level of involution, in Matter,.\r\nwhere consciousness has zero magnitude, there is no personality\r\nor individuality. It is all a mechanical play of clashing particles\r\nthat constantly fly apart or come together according to the\r\nforce or the resultant of forces that act upon them. An individuality means a bounded form as its basis of reaction and a\r\nform that tends to persist and grow by assimilation; it means\r\na centre of a definite manner and pattern of reaction. Individuality, in its literal sense, designates that which cannot be\r\ndivided <i>(in+ dividus).</i> Division is only another name for death\r\nfor the particular entity. Even in the case of cell-division or\r\nself-division of some lower organisms, in the first instance the\r\noriginal living entity disappears and, secondly, the succeeding\r\nentities, created by division, always re-form themselves again\r\ninto integral wholes. A material particle, on the other hand, is\r\ndivisible <i>ad infinitum.</i> We have been able to divide even an\r\natom (which means also <i>that which cannot be divided)</i> to such\r\nan extent as to reduce it to a mere charge of energy, nay, we\r\nhave sublimated it to a geometrical point. Individualisation\r\nstarts with the coming of life. It is a ganglion of life-force\r\nround which a particular system of action and reaction weaves.\r\nitself. The characteristic of individuality is that each one is\r\nunique, each relates itself to others and to the environment\r\nin its own way, each expresses itself, puts forth its energy,\r\nreceives impacts from outside in a manner that distinguishes.\r\nit from others. It is true this character of individuality is not\r\nvery pronounced in the earlier or rudimentary forms of life.\r\nStill it is there: it grows and develops slowly along the ladder\r\nof evolution. Only in the higher animals it attains a clear and\r\ndefinite norm and form. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In man something else or something more happens. For\r\nman is not merely an individual, he is also a personality. He\r\nis the outcome of a twofold growth and revelation. He has\r\noutgrown the vital and climbed into Mind, and he has dived\r\ninto the Heart and touched his inner soul, his true psychic\r\ncentre. It is this soul that is the source of his personality. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The formulation or revelation of the Psyche marks another </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 47</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">line of what we have been describing as the Descent \r\nof Consciousness. The phenomenon of individualisation has at its\r\nback the phenomenon of the growth of the Psyche. It is\r\noriginally a spark or nucleus of consciousness thrown into\r\nMatter that starts growing and organising itself behind the\r\nveil, in and through the movements and activities of the\r\napparent vehicle consisting of the triple nexus of Body (Matter)\r\nand Life and Mind. The extreme root of the psychic growth\r\nextends perhaps right into the body, consciousness of Matter,\r\nbut its real physical basis and tenement is found only with the\r\ngrowth and formation of the physical heart. And yet the psychic\r\nindividuality behind the animal organisation is very rudimentary. All that can be said is that it is there, <i>in potentia,</i> it\r\nexists, it is simple <i>being:</i> it has not started <i>becoming.</i> This is\r\nman\'s especiality: in him the psychic begins to be dynamic,\r\nto be organised and to organise, it is a psychic personality\r\nthat he possesses. Now this flowering of the psychic personality is due to an especial Descent, the descent of a Person\r\nfrom another level of consciousness. That Person (or Super-\r\nperson) is the <i>jivatman,</i> the Individual Self, the central being\r\nof each individual formation. The Jivas are centres of multiplicity thrown up in the bosom of the infinite Consciousness:&nbsp; it is the supreme Consciousness eddying in unit formations\r\nto serve as the basis for the play of manifestation. They are\r\n\'not within the frame of manifestation (as the typal formations\r\nin the Supermind are), they are above or beyond or beside it\r\nand stand there eternally and invariably in and as part and\r\nparcel of the one supreme Reality—Sachchidananda. But the\r\nJivatman from its own status casts its projection, representation, delegated formulation—&quot;emanation,&quot; in the phraseology of the neo-Platonists—into the manifestation of the triple\r\ncomplex of mind, life and body, that is to say, into the human\r\nvehicle, and thus stands behind as the psychic personality\r\nor the soul. This soul, we have seen, is a developing, organising\r\nfocus of consciousness growing from below and comes to its\r\nown in the human being: or we can put it the other way, that\r\nis to say, when it comes to its own, then the human being\r\nappears. And it has come to its own precisely by a descent of\r\nits own self from above, in the same manner as with the other\r\ndescents already described. Now, this &quot;coming to its own&quot; </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 48</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">means that it begins henceforth to exercise its royal power, its\r\nnatural and inherent divine right, viz, of consciously and\r\ndirectly controlling and organising its terrestrial kingdom\r\nwhich is the body and life and mind. The exercise of conscious\r\ndirective will, supported and illumined by a self-consciousness,\r\nthat occurs with the advent of the Mind is a function of the\r\nPurusha, the self-conscious being, in the Mind; but this selfconscious being has been able to come up, manifest itself and\r\nbe active, because of pressure of the underlying psychic personality that has formed here. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thus we have three characteristics of the human personality\r\naccruing from the psychic consciousness that supports and\r\ninspires it:—(1) self-consciousness: an animal acts, feels and\r\neven knows, but man knows that he acts, knows that he feels,\r\nknows even that he knows. This phenomenon of consciousness\r\nturning round upon itself is the hallmark of the human being; (2) a conscious will holding together and harmonising, \r\nfashioning and integrating the whole external nature evolved till\r\nnow; (3) a purposive drive, a deliberate and voluntary orientation towards a \r\nhigher and ever higher status of individualisation and personalisation,—not only a horizontal movement\r\nseeking to embrace and organise the normal, the already\r\nattained level of consciousness, but also a vertical movement\r\nseeking to raise the level, attain altogether a new poise of higher organisation. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; These characters, it is true, are not clear and pronounced,\r\ndo not lie in front, at the beginning of the human personality.\r\nThe normal human person has his psyche very much behind;&nbsp; but it is still there as <i>antaryamin,</i> as the secret Inner Controller.\r\nAnd whatever the vagaries of the outer instruments or their\r\nslavery to the mode of Ignorance, in and through all that, it is\r\nthis Inner Guide that holds the reins and drives upward in\r\nthe end. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thus naturally there appear gradations of the human\r\npersonality; as the consciousness in the human being rises\r\nhigher and higher, the psychic centre organises a higher and\r\nhigher—a richer, wider, deeper—personality. The first great\r\nconversion, the first turning of the human personality to a\r\nnew mode of life and living, that is to say, living even externally\r\naccording to the inner truth and reality, the first attempt at a </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 49</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">conscious harmonisation of the psychic consciousness with its\r\nsurface agents and vehicles, is what is known as spiritual\r\ninitiation. This may happen and it does happen even when\r\nman lives in his normal mental consciousness. But there is the\r\npossibility of growth and evolution and transformation of\r\npersonality in higher and higher spiritual degrees through the\r\nupper reaches of the higher Mind, the varying degrees of the\r\nOvermind and finally the Supermind. These are the spheres,\r\nthe fields, even the continents of the personality, but the stuff,\r\nthe substance of the personality, the inner nucleus of consciousness-force is formed, first, by the flaming aspiration, the\r\nupward drive within the, developing and increasing psychic\r\nbeing itself, and secondly, by the descent, to a greater and\r\ngreater degree, of the original Being from which it emanated.\r\nThe final coalescence of the fully and integrally developed\r\npsychic being with the supreme splendour of its very source,\r\nthe Jivatman, occurs in the Supermind. When this happens\r\nthe supramental personality becomes incarnate in the physical\r\nbody: Matter in the material plane is transformed into a\r\nradiant substance made of pure consciousness, the human\r\npersonality becomes a living form of the Divine. Thus the\r\nwheel comes full circle: creation returns to the point from\r\nwhich it started but with an added significance, a new fulfilment. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The mystery of rebirth in the evolution of the \r\nhuman personality is nothing but the mystery of the developing psyche.\r\nAt first this psyche or soul is truly a being: &quot;no bigger than\r\nthe thumb&quot;—it is the hardly audible &quot;still small voice&quot;. The\r\nexperiences of life—sweet or bitter, happy or unhappy, good\r\nor bad, howsoever they may appear to the outward eye and\r\nperception—all the dialectics of a terrestrial existence contribute to the growth and development of the psychic consciousness. Each span of life means a special degree or mode of\r\ngrowth necessitated by the inner demand and drive of the\r\ndivine Individual seated within the heart. The whole end in\r\nview of this secret soul is to move always towards and be\r\nunited again with its Oversoul, its original and high archetype\r\nin the Divine Consciousness: the entire course of its earthly\r\nevolution is chalked out and patterned by the exact need of\r\nits growth. Whatever happens in each particular life, all the </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 50</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">currents of all the lives converge and coalesce, and serve the\r\npsychic consciousness to swell in volume and intensity and be\r\none with the Divine Consciousness. Or, in a different imagery,\r\none can say that the multifarious experiences of various lives\r\nare as fuel to the Inner Fire—this Psychic Agni which is just\r\na spark or a thin tongue at the outset of the human evolutionary course; but with the addition of fuel from life to life\r\nthis Fire flames up, indeed, becomes ultimately a conflagration\r\nthat burns and purifies the entire outer vehicle and transforms\r\nit into radiant matter—a fit receptacle, incarnation of the\r\nsupernal Light. The mounting Fire (the consciousness-energy\r\nsecreted in the earth-bound heart of Matter) finally flares up,\r\ndiscloses itself in its full amplitude and calls and attracts into\r\nit the incandescent supramental Solar Sphere which is the\r\ntype and pattern it has to embody and express. This is the\r\nmarriage of Heaven and Earth, of which the mystics all over\r\nthe earth in all ages spoke and sang—to which the Vedic\r\nRishi refers when he declares: </font>\r\n\r\n<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Dyaur me pita mata prthivi [yam?</i></font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The supramentalisation of the personality which means the\r\nperfect divinisation of the personality, is yet not the final end\r\nof Nature\'s march. Her path is endless, since she follows the\r\ntrail of infinity. There are still higher modes of consciousness,\r\nor, if they cannot properly be called higher, other modes of\r\nconsciousness that lie in waiting to be brought out and placed\r\nand established in\' the front of terrestrial evolution. Only,\r\nsupramentalisation means the definite crossing over from\r\nIgnorance, from every trace and shadow of Ignorance, into\r\nthe abiding and perennial Knowledge and Freedom. Thence-forward the course of Nature\'s evolution may be more of the\r\nkind of expression than ascension; for, beyond the Supermind it is very \r\ndifficult to speak of a higher or lower order of consciousness. Everything thereafter is in the full perfect light— the difference \r\ncomes in the mode or manner or stress of expression. However, that is a problem with which we are not\r\nimmediately concerned.&nbsp; </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We have spoken of four lines of Descent in the evolution </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"2\">1 The Heaven is my Father and this Earth my Mother. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 51</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">and organisation of consciousness. There yet remains a fifth\r\nline. It is <i>more</i> occult. It is really the secret of secrets, the <i>Supreme Secret.</i> It is the descent of the Divine himself. The\r\nDivine, the supreme Person himself descends, not indirectly through emanations, \r\nprojections, partial or lesser formulations, but directly in his own plenary self. He descends not as\r\na disembodied force acting as a general movement, possessing,\r\nat the most, other objects and persons as its medium or instrument, but in an \r\nembodied form and in the fullness of his consciousness. The Indian word for Divine Incarnation, <i>avatara,\r\n</i>literally means <i>he who has descended.</i> The Divine comes down&nbsp; himself as a terrestrial being, on this material plane of ours,\r\n,in order to raise the terrestrial and material Nature to a new\r\nstatus in her evolutionary course—even so He incarnated as\r\nthe Great Boar who, with his mighty tusk, lifted a solid mass\r\nof earth from out of the waters of the Deluge. It is his purpose\r\nto effect an ascension of consciousness, a transmutation of\r\nbeing, to establish a truly New Order, a New Dharma, as it\r\nis termed—<i>dharmasamsthapanarthaya.</i> On the human level, he\r\nappears as a human person—for two purposes. First of all, he\r\nshows, by example, how the ascension, the transmutation is\r\nto be effected, how a normal human being can rise from a\r\nlower status of consciousness to a higher one. The Divine is\r\ntherefore known as the Lord of Yoga—for Yoga is the means\r\nand method by which one consciously uplifts oneself, unites\r\noneself with the Higher Reality. The embodied Divine is the\r\nideal and pattern: he shows the path, himself walks the path\r\nand man can follow, if he chooses. The Biblical conception of\r\nthe Son of God—God made flesh—as the intermediary between\r\nthe human and the Divine, declaring, &quot;I am the Way and\r\nthe Goal&quot;, expresses a very similar truth. The Divine takes a\r\nbody for another—occult—reason also. It is this: Matter or\r\nterrestrial life cannot be changed—changed radically, that\r\nis to <i>say, transformed—</i>by the pure spiritual consciousness alone,\r\nlying above or within; also it is not sufficient to bring about\r\nonly that much of change in terrestrial life which can be\r\neffected by the mere spiritual force acting in a general way.\r\nIt looks as if the physical transformation which is what is\r\nmeant by an ascension or emergence in the evolutionary\r\ngradient were possible only by a physical impact embodying </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 52</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">and canalising the spiritual force: it is with his physical<b> \r\n</b>body<b> \r\n</b>that the Divine Incarnation seems to push and lift up physical\r\nNature to a new and higher status. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The occult seers declare that we are today on the earth at\r\nsuch a crisis of evolution. Earth and Man and man\'s earthly\r\nlife need to be radically transfigured. The trouble and turbulence, the chaos and confusion that are now overwhelming\r\nthis earth, indicate the acute tension before the release, the&nbsp; <i>detente</i> of a NEW MANIFESTATION. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 53</p>\r\n		<hr>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-06_Lines of the Descent of Consciousness','','publish','closed','open','','06_lines-of-the-descent-of-consciousness','','','2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/06_lines-of-the-descent-of-consciousness/',0,'post','',0),(1487,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>6 conscious.htm</title>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html;charset=windows-1252\">\r\n</head>\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" height=\"4012\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n		<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Consciousness as Energy</i> </font>\r\n\r\n		</b>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">A LIVE wire—through which an electric current, say of several\r\nthousand volts, is passing—looks quite innocent, motionless,\r\ninactive, almost inert. The appearance, needless to say, is\r\ndeceptive. Even so the <i>still life</i> of a Yogin. Action does not\r\nconsist merely in mechanical motion visible to the eye: intra-atomic movements that are subtle, invisible, hard to detect\r\neven by the most sensitive instruments, possess a tremendous potency, even to unimaginable degrees. Likewise in\r\nman, the extent of muscular flexions does not give the measure\r\nor potential of his activity. One cannot say that the first-line\r\ninfantryman who rushes and charges, shoots, bayonets, kills\r\nand is killed is more active and dynamic than the general who\r\nsits quiet behind in a cabin and merely sends out orders.\r\nVivekananda wandered about the whole of India, crossed the\r\nseas, traversed continents, undertook whirlwind campaigns—talking, debating, lecturing: it was a life superbly\' rich in\r\nmuscular movements. By his side, Ramakrishna would appear quite tame—inactive, \r\n&quot;introvert&quot;: fewer physical displacements or muscular exercises marked his life. And yet, ask\r\nanyone who is in touch with the inner life of these great souls,\r\nhe will tell you, Vivekananda is only a spark from the mighty\r\nand concentrated Energy that Ramakrishna was. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What is this spiritual or Yogic Energy? Ordinary people,\r\npeople with a modern mind, would concede at the most that\r\nthere are two kinds of activity: (1) real activity—physical\r\naction, work, labour with muscle and nerve, and (2) passive\r\nactivity—activity of mind and thought. According to the\r\npragmatic standard especial, if not entire, importance is given </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 59<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">the the first category; the other category, &quot;sicklied over with\r\nthe pale cast of thought&quot;, is held at a discount. The <i>thoughtful\r\n</i>people are philosophers at the most, they are ineffectual\r\nangels in this workaday world of ours. We need upon earth\r\npeople of sterner stuff, dynamic people who are not thought\r\nbound, but know how to apply and execute their ideas,\r\nwhatever they may be. Lenin was great, not because he had\r\nrevolutionary ideas, but because he gave a muscular frame<b> \r\n</b>to<b> \r\n</b>them. Such people alone are the pragmatic, dynamic, useful\r\ncategory of humanity. The others are, according to the more\r\nradical leftist view, merely parasitic, and according to a more\r\ngenerous liberal view, chiefly decorative elements in human\r\nsociety. Mind-energy can draw dream pictures, beautiful\r\nperhaps, but inane; it is only muscular energy that gives a\r\nliving and material body—a local habitation and a name—\r\nto what otherwise would be airy nothing.&nbsp; </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Energy, however, is not merely either muscular (physical)\r\nor cerebral. There are energies subtler than thought and yet\r\nmore dynamic than the muscle (or the electric pile). One\r\nsuch, for example, is vital energy, although orthodox biochemists do not believe in any kind of vitalism that is something more than mere physico-chemical reaction. Indeed, this\r\nis the energy that counts in life; for it is this that brings about\r\nwhat we call success in the world. A man with push and go,\r\nas it is termed, is nothing but a person with abundant vital\r\nenergy. But even of this energy there are gradations. It can be\r\ndeep, controlled, organised or it can be hectic, effusive,\r\nconfused: the latter kind expresses and spends itself often in\r\nmere external, nervous and muscular movements. Those,\r\nhowever, who are known as great men of action are precisely\r\nthey who are endowed with life energy of the first kind. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Yogi—the Hatha Yogi, the Raja Yogi, the Tantrik—seeks consciously to master this life energy, to possess and\r\nuse it as he wills. The Yogi, the true Yogi, aims at a higher\r\nquality, a deeper potentiality of the life energy: it may be\r\ncalled the Inner Life Energy. This inner life energy is in a line\r\nwith, is one with the universal life energy; therefore it is said\r\nwhen one possesses and controls this power one has command\r\nover the universal power. All other energies—visible, tangible,\r\nconcretised and canalised—are particular formations and </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 60</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">embodiments of this mother energy. Even the most physical\r\nand material energies—mechanical, electrical, nervous, etc.—\r\n.—are all derivatives and lesser potentials of this fount and\r\norigin. The mastery of the inner vital energy is the whole\r\nsecret of what is known as occultism, even magic, black or\r\nwhite, spell and other allied powers or miracles. The eight <i>siddhis</i> well known to the Yogis are the natural results of this\r\nmastery. With such a mastery the Yogi controls and guides<br>\r\nhis own destiny; he can also in the same way control and guide\r\nthe destiny of others, even of peoples and humanity at large.\r\nThat is the deeper meaning the great phrase of the Gita— <i>lokasamgraha—</i>carries. Indeed, great souls are precisely they\r\nwho move with the upward current of Nature, in and through\r\nwhom Nature works out vast changes, prepares the steps of\r\nevolution in the world and humanity. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But what again is this universal vital energy? This also is\r\nan instrument, not the ultimate agent. After all, vital energy\r\nis blind by itself; it moves instinctively or intuitively, as\r\nBergson would say; it does not know consciously beforehand\r\nthe next step it is going to take. Consciousness&nbsp; then is the\r\nsecret. This is &quot;the power behind the throne&quot;, it is this to which\r\nthe Upanishad refers in its analysis of the ultimate dynamics of\r\nthings as the life of Life, <i>pranasya pranah.</i> </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It is the aim of all Yoga, spiritual discipline, finally<b> \r\n</b>to<b> \r\n</b>arrive at this consciousness, this supreme reality which is\r\nbehind all existence, which is the source and the substance of\r\nall. It is in this Consciousness that the whole creation is rolled\r\nup and it is from this that it is rolled out. Only there are some paths of \r\nspiritual discipline that prefer and follow the movement of in-rolling and others that seek the one of out-rolling:&nbsp; the former is the path of <i>nivrtti,</i> the latter that <i>of pravrtti.</i> </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thus consciousness is not merely a status of being, but also\r\na force of becoming. All that is to take form and be active,\r\nwhether in the grossest, the material mode or in the most\r\nsubtle, the ideative mode is originally a seed, a stress, a point\r\nof concentration of this consciousness. The Yogi becomes\r\npotentially all-powerful, because he is one with the All-Power,\r\nthe Mother Consciousness. The perfect spiritual man not\r\nmerely dwells with or is close to the Divine <i>{salokya),</i> he is not\r\nmerely made in the image of the Divine <i>(sarupya),</i> and again </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 61</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">he is riot merely unified and one with the Divine \r\n<i>(sayujya)</i> but\r\nwhat is most marvellous, he has the same nature, that is to\r\nsay, he has the same powers and capacities as the Divine <i>(sadharmya).</i> </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The dynamic becoming, becoming a power and personality\r\nof the omnipotent Divine, is a secret well known to the Yogis\r\nand mystics. Only it has not been worked out in all its implications, not given the full value and importance rightfully\r\ndue to it. The reason is that although the principle was discovered and admitted, the proper key had not been found\r\nthat could release and manipulate the Energy at its highest\r\npotential and largest amplitude. Because the major tendency\r\nin the spiritual man till now has been rather to follow the\r\npath of <i>nivrtti</i> than the path of <i>pravrtti,</i> this latter path being\r\nmore or less identified with the path of Ignorance. But there\r\nis a higher line <i>of pravrtti</i> which means the manifestation of\r\nthe Divine, not merely the expression of the inferior Nature. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<b>\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">2</font></b><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The force of .consciousness is not simply the force an idea or\r\nthought may have. The distinction between the two is not\r\nusually understood. In reality, however, thought or idea is a\r\nform of energy-action in the mind and mind is only one field\r\nor grade—not the most dynamic nor direct or immediate—among many for the play of consciousness, as I have already\r\nsaid. Mind energy, life energy, physical or material energy are\r\nvarious forms and stages in the expression of consciousness-\r\nenergy (Chit-Tapas). The nature and function of consciousness-energy we may elucidate and understand in another way,\r\nby following a different line of its <i>modus vivendi.</i> </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Consciousness has a fourfold potential. The first is the\r\nnormal consciousness, which is predominantly mental; it is\r\nthe sphere comprising movements of which man is usually and\r\nhabitually aware. It is what the Upanishad names <i>jagrat or\r\njagaritasthana</i> and characterises as <i>bahihprajna:</i> it is the waking\r\nstate and has cognition only of external things. In other words,\r\nthe consciousness here is wholly objectivised, externalised—\r\n&quot;extrovert&quot;: it is also a strongly individualised formation, the </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 62</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">consciousness is hedged in, isolated and contoured by a\r\nprotective ring, as it were, of a characteristically separative\r\npersonality; it is a surface formation, a web made out of day-\r\nto-day sensations and thoughts, perceptions and memories,\r\nimpressions and associations. It is a system of outward actions and reactions \r\nagainst or in the midst of one\'s actual environment. The second potential is that of the Inner Consciousness: its characteristic is that the consciousness here is no longer\r\ntrenchantly separative and individual, narrowly and rigidly\r\negoistic. It feels and sees itself as part of or one with the world\r\nconsciousness. It looks upon its individuality as only a wave\r\nof the universal movement. It is also sometimes called the\r\nsubliminal consciousness; for it plays below or behind the\r\nnormal surface range of consciousness. It is made up of the\r\nresiduary powers of the normal consciousness, the abiding\r\nvibrations and stresses that settle down and remain in the\r\nbackground and are not immediately required or utilised for\r\nlife purposes: also it contacts directly energies and movements\r\nthat well out of the universal life. The phenomena of clairvoyance and clairaudience, the knowledge of the past and\r\nthe future and of other worlds and persons and beings, certain\r\nmore dynamic movements such as distant influence and\r\nguidance and controlling without any external means, well\r\nknown in all yogic disciplines, are various manifestations of\r\nthe power of this Inner Consciousness. But there is not only\r\nan outward and an inner consciousness; there is also a deeper\r\nor nether consciousness. This is the great field that has been\r\nand is being explored by modern psychologists. It is called\r\nthe subconscious, sometimes also the unconscious: but really\r\nit should be named the inconscient, for it is not altogether&nbsp;\r\ndevoid of consciousness, but is conscious in its own way—the\r\nconsciousness is involved or lost within itself or lies buried. It\r\ncomprises those movements and impulsions, inclinations and\r\ndispositions that have no rational basis, on the contrary, have\r\nan irrational basis; they are not acquired or developed by the\r\nindividual in his normal course of life experience, they are\r\ningrained, lie imbedded in man\'s nature and are native to his\r\noriginal biological and physical make-up. As the human\r\nembryo recapitulates in the womb the whole history of man\'s\r\nanimal evolution, even so the normal man, even the most </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 63</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">civilised and apparently the farthest from his ancient moorings\r\nand sources, enshrines in his cells, in a miraculously living\r\nmanner, the memory of vast geological epochs, the great\r\nstruggles and convulsions through which earth and its inhabitants have passed, the basic urges of the crude life force,\r\nits hopes, fears, desires, hungers that constitute the rudimental\r\nand aboriginal consciousness, the atavism that links the man\r\nof today not only to his primitive ancestry but even to the\r\nplant world—even perhaps to the mineral world—out of\r\nwhich his body cells have issued and evolved. Legends and\r\nfairy tales, mythologies and fables are a rationalised pattern\r\nand picture of the vibrations and urges that moved the original\r\nconsciousness. It was a collective—a racial—and an aboriginal\r\nconsciousness. The same lies <i>chromosomic,</i> one can almost say,\r\nin the constitution of the individual man of today. This region\r\nof the unconscious (or the inconscient) is a veritable field of\r\nforce: it lies at the root of all surface dynamisms. The surface\r\nconsciousness, <i>jagrat,</i> is a very small portion of the whole, it is\r\nonly the tip of the pyramid or an iceberg, the major portion\r\nlies submerged beyond our normal view. In reflex movements,\r\nin sudden unthinking outbursts, in dreams and day-dreams, this undercurrent is \r\nsilhouetted and made visible and recognisable. Even otherwise, they exercise a profound influence \r\nupon all our conscious movements. This underground consciousness is the repository of the most dark and unenlightened\r\nelements that grew and flourished in the slime of man\'s\r\noriginal habitat. They are small, ugly, violent, anti-social,\r\nchaotic forces, their names are cruelty, lust, hunger, blind\r\nselfishness. Nowhere else than in this domain can the great\r\nUpanishadic truth find its fullest application—Hunger that\r\nis Death. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But this is the seamy side of Nature, there is also a sunny\r\nside. If there is a nadir, there must be a corresponding zenith.\r\nIn the Vedic image, if man is born of the Dark Mother, he is\r\nalso a child of the White Mother <i>(krsna</i> and <i>sveti)</i>, Or again,\r\nif Earth is our mother, the Heaven is our father—<i>dyaur me\r\npita mata prthivi iyam.</i> In other words, consciousness extends\r\nnot in depth alone, but in height also—it is vertically extended,\r\ninfinite both ways. As there is a subconsciousness or unconsciousness, so also there is at the other end superconsciousness. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 64</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Now this superconsciousness is the true origin of creation,\r\nalthough the apparent and objective, creation starts with and\r\nis based upon Unconsciousness. All norms and archetypes\r\nbelong to the superconsciousness; for the sake of material\r\ncreation they are thrown down or cast as seed into the Unconscious and in this process they undergo a change, a deformation and aberration. All the major themes of dream myths\r\nand prehistoric legends which the psychologists claim to have\r\nfound imbedded in man\'s subconscient consciousness are in\r\nfact echoes and mirages of great spiritual—superconscient—realities reflected here below. The theme of the Hero of the\r\nDual Mother (Dark and Fair), of Creation and Sacrifice,\r\nthese are, according to Jung, dramatisations of some fundamental movements and urges in the dark subconscient nature.\r\nJung, however, throws a luminous suggestion in characterising\r\nthe nature of this vast complex. The general sense, Jung says,\r\nis that of a movement forward, of a difficult journey, of a\r\npull backward and downward, of yawning abysses that call,\r\nof a light that beckons. It is an effort, a travail of what lies\r\nimbedded and suppressed to come out into the open, into the\r\nnormal consciousness and thus release an unhealthy tension,\r\nrestore a balance in the individual\'s system. Modern psychology lays great stress upon the integration of personality. Most\r\nof the ills that human nature suffers from, they say, are due to\r\nthis division or schism in it, a suppressed subconsciousness and\r\nan expressed consciousness seeking to express a negation of\r\nthat subconsciousness. Modern psychology teaches that one\r\nshould dive into the nether regions and face squarely whatever\r\nelements are there, help these to follow their natural bent to\r\ncome up and <i>see</i> the light of the day. Only thus there can be\r\nestablished \'a unitary movement, an even consistency and an\r\nequilibrium throughout the entire consciousness and being. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So far so good. But two things are to be taken note of.\r\nFirst of all, the resolution of the normal conflict in man\'s\r\nconsciousness, the integration of his personality, is not wholly\r\npracticable within the scope of the present nature and the\r\nfield of the actual forces at play. That can give only a shadow\r\nof the true resolution and integration. A conscious envisaging\r\nof the conflicting forces, a calm survey of the submerged or\r\nside-tracked <i>libidos</i> in their true nature, a voluntary acceptance&nbsp; </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 65</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">of these dark elements as a part of normal human\r\nnature, does not automatically make for their sublimation\r\nand purification or transformation. The thing is possible only through another \r\nforce and on another level, by the intervention and interfusion precisely of the superconsciousness.\r\nAnd here comes the second point to note. For it is this super-\r\nconsciousness towards which all the strife and struggle of the\r\nunder-consciousness are turned and directed. The yearning\r\nand urge in the subconsciousness to move forward, to escape\r\noutside into the light does not refer merely to the march towards\r\nnormal awareness and consciousness: it has a deeper direction\r\nand a higher aim—it seeks that of which it is an aberration\r\nand a deformation, the very origin and source, the height\r\nfrom which it fell. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This superconsciousness has a special mode of its quintessential energy which is omnipotent in action, immediate in\r\neffectivity. It is pure as the purest incandescent solar light and\r\nembodies the concentrated force of consciousness. It is the\r\noriginal creative vibration of the absolute or supreme Being.\r\nSri Aurobindo calls this supreme form of superconscient consciousness-energy, the Supermind. There are of course other\r\nlayers and strata of superconsciousness leading up to the super-mind which are of various potentials and embody different\r\ndegrees of spiritual power and consciousness. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We have spoken of the Inner Consciousness. But there is\r\nalso, we must now point out, an Inmost Consciousness. As the\r\nSuperconsciousness is a consciousness-energy in height, the\r\nInmost Consciousness is a consciousness-energy in depth, the\r\ndeepest depth, beyond or behind the Inner Consciousness.\r\nIf we wish to put it geometrically, we can say, the vertical\r\nsection of consciousness represents the line from the super-consciousness to the subconscious or vice versa; the horizontal\r\nsection represents the normal waking state of consciousness; and there is a transverse section leading from the surface \r\nfirst to the Inner and finally to the Inmost. This inmost consciousness—the consciousness most profound and secreted in\r\nthe cave of the heart, <i>guhahitam gahvarestham,—</i>is the consciousness of the soul, the Psychic Being, as Sri Aurobindo calls it:&nbsp; \r\nit is the immortal in the mortal. It is, as has often been described, the nucleus round which is crystallised and organised </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 66</font><hr>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">the triple nature of man consisting of his mind and life and\r\nbody, the centre of dynamic energy that secretly vivifies\r\nthem, gradually purifies and transforms them into higher\r\nfunctions and embodiments of consciousness. As a matter of\r\nfact, it is this inmost consciousness that serves as the link, at\r\nleast as the most powerful link, between the higher and lower\r\nforms of consciousness, between the Superconscient and the\r\nSubsconscient or Inconscient. It takes up within itself all the\r\nelements of consciousness that the past in its evolutionary\r\ncareer from the very lowest and basic levels has acquired and\r\nelaborated, and by its inherent pressure and secret gestation\r\ndelivers what was crude and base and unformed as the purest\r\nluminous noble substance of the perfectly organised super-conscient reality. Indeed, that is the mystic alchemy which\r\nthe philosophers experimented in the Middle Ages. In this\r\ncontext, the Inner Consciousness, we may note, serves as a\r\nmedium through which the action of the Inmost (as well as\r\nthat of the Uppermost) takes place. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We can picture the whole phenomenon in another way and\r\nsay in the devotional language of the Mystics that the Inmost\r\nConsciousness is the Divine Child, the Superconscient is the\r\nDivine Father and the Inferior Consciousness is the Great\r\nMother <i>(Magna Mater):</i> the Inner and the Outer Consciousness\r\nare the field of play and the instrument of action as well of this\r\nDivine Trinity. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Man, we thus see, is an infinitely composite being. We\r\nhave referred to the four or five major chords in him, but\r\neach one has again innumerable gradations of vibration.\r\nMan is a bundle or dynamo of energy and this energy is\r\nnothing but the force of consciousness. To different modes or\r\npotentials of this energy different names are given. And what\r\nmakes the thing still more complex is that all these elements\r\nexist simultaneously and act simultaneously, although in\r\nvarious degrees and stresses. They act upon each other, and\r\nseverally and collectively impress upon the nature and character of the individual being and mould and direct his physical\r\nstatus and pragmatic life. A man can, however, take consciously a definite position and status, identify himself with a\r\nparticular form and force of consciousness and build his being\r\nand life in the truth and rhythm of that consciousness. Naturally </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 67</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;the limits and the limitation of that consciousness mark also\r\nthe limits and limitation of the disposition he can effect in his\r\nlife. When it is said that the spiritual force is not effective on\r\nthe physical plane in mundane affairs—Buddha, it is said,\r\nfor example, has not been able to rid the earth of age, disease\r\nand death (although it was not Buddha\'s intention to do so,\r\nhis purpose was to show a way of escape, of bypassing the ills\r\nof life, and in that he wholly succeeded)—it only means that\r\nthe right mode or potential of spiritual energy has not been\r\nfound; for that matter even the mightiest mundane forces are\r\nnot sovereignly effective in mundane affairs, otherwise the\r\nNazi-Force would have been ruling the world today. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Still it must be remembered that all these apparently\r\ndiverse layers and degrees of being or consciousness or energy\r\nform essentially one indivisible unity and identity. What is\r\ncalled the highest and what is called the lowest are not in\r\nreality absolutely disparate and incommensurable entities:&nbsp; everywhere it is the highest that lies secreted and reigns\r\nsupreme. The lowest is the highest itself seen from the reverse\r\nside, as it were: the norms and typal truths that obtain in the\r\nsuperconsciousness are also the very guiding formulas and\r\nprinciples in the secret heart of the Inconscience too, only\r\nthey appear externally as deformations and caricatures of\r\ntheir true reality. But even here we can tap and release the full\r\nforce of a superconscient energy. A particle of dead matter,\r\nwe know today, is a mass of stilled energy, electrical and\r\nradiant in nature; even so an apparently inconscient entity\r\nis a packet of Superconsciousness in its highest potential of\r\nenergy. The secret of releasing this atomic energy of the\r\nSpirit is found in the Science of Yoga. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 68</font><hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></p>\r\n\r\n		</td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-08_Consciousness as Energy','','publish','closed','open','','08_consciousness-as-energy','','','2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/08_consciousness-as-energy/',0,'post','',0),(1488,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>3 the divine.htm</title>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html;charset=windows-1252\">\r\n</head>\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<b>\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>The Divine Man</i> </font></b>&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">THE core of Sri Aurobindo\'s teaching, the central pivot on\r\nwhich his Yoga arid his work rest is the mystery of the Divine\r\nDescent—Spirit descending into Matter and becoming Matter,\r\nGod coming down upon earth and becoming human, and as a\r\nnecessary and inevitable consequence, Matter rising and being\r\ntransformed into Spirit and man becoming God and Godlike. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This is a truth, a fact of creation—giving the whole clue to\r\nthe riddle of this world—that has not been envisaged at all in\r\nthe past, or otherwise overlooked and not given the value and\r\nimportance that it has. Poets and seers, sages and saints along\r\nwith common men from the very birth of humanity have\r\nmourned this vale of tears, this sorrowful transient earthly\r\nlife, <i>anityam asukham lokam imam<sup>1</sup>,</i> into which they have been\r\nthrown: they have wished and willed and endeavoured to\r\nchange or reform or re-create it, but have always failed, and\r\nin the end, finding it ultimately incorrigible, concluded that\r\nescape was the only solution, the only issue, either like the\r\nsage going out into Nirvana, spiritual dissolution, or like the\r\natheist stoically going down with a crumbling world into a\r\nmaterial disintegration. The truth of the matter is, however,\r\ndifferent as Sri Aurobindo sees it. The spectacle is not so\r\ngloomy and irremediable. The world has a future and man\r\nhas hope. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The world is not doomed nor man past cure; for it is not\r\nthat the world has been merely created by God but that God\r\nhas become and is the world at the same time: man is not\r\nmerely God\'s creature but that he is made of God\'s substance\r\nand is God himself. The Spirit has shed its supreme consciousness, that is to say, overtly has become dead matter; God has </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><b>&nbsp;</b><i><font size=\"2\">The Gita, IX.</font></i><font size=\"2\"> 33\r\n</font> </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 25<hr align=\"justify\">\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><b>&nbsp;</b>veiled his effulgent infinity and has taken up a human figure.\r\nThe Divine has clothed his inviolable felicity in pain and\r\nsuffering, has become an earthly creature, you and me, a\r\nmortal of mortals. And thus, viewed in another perspective\r\nbecause Matter is essentially Spirit, because man is essentially\r\nGod, therefore Matter can be resolved and transformed into\r\nSpirit and man too can become utterly divine. The urge of\r\nthe spiritual consciousness that is the essence of matter even,\r\nthe massed energy imbedded or lying frozen in it, manifests\r\nitself in the forward drive of evolution that brings out gradually, step by step, the various modes of the consciousness in\r\ndifferent degrees and potentials till the original summit is\r\nrevealed. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But there is a still closer mystery, the mystery of mysteries.\r\nThere has not been merely a general descent, the descent of a\r\nworld-force on a higher plane into another world-force on a&nbsp;\r\nlower plane; but that there is the descent of the individual,\r\nthe personal Godhead into and as an earthly human being.\r\nThe Divine born as a man and leading the life of a man among\r\nus and as one of us, the secret of Divine Incarnation is the\r\nsupreme secret. That is the mechanism adopted by the Divine\r\nto cure and transmute human ills—himself becoming a man,\r\ntaking upon himself the burden of the evil that vitiates and\r\nwithers life and working it out in and through himself. Something of this truth has been caught in the Christian view of\r\nIncarnation. God sent upon earth his only begotten son to\r\ntake upon himself the sins of man, suffer vicariously for him,\r\npay the ransom and thus liberate him, so that he may reach\r\nsalvation, procure his seat by the side of the Father in Heaven.\r\nMan corrupted as he is by an original sin cannot hope by his\r\nown merit to achieve salvation. He can only admit his sin and .\r\nrepent and wait for the Grace to save him. The Indian view of\r\nIncarnation laid more stress upon the positive aspect of the\r\nmatter, viz, the role of the Incarnation as the inaugurator and\r\nestablisher of a new order in life—<i>dharmasamsthdpanarthaya.\r\n</i>The Avatar brings down and embodies a higher principle of\r\nhuman organisation, a greater consciousness which he infuses\r\ninto the existing pattern, individual or collective, which has\r\nserved its purpose, has become otiose and time-barred and\r\nneeds to be remodelled, has been at the most preparatory to </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 26</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">something else. The Avatar means a new revelation and the\r\nuplift of the human consciousness into a higher mode of\r\nbeing. The physical form he takes signifies the physical pressure\r\nthat is exerted for the corroboration and fixation of the inner\r\nillumination that he brings upon earth and in the human\r\nframe. The Indian tradition has focussed its attention upon\r\nthe Good—<i>sreyas—</i>and did not consider it essential to dwell\r\nupon the Evil. For one who finds and sees the Good always\r\nand everywhere, the Evil does not exist. Sri Aurobindo lays\r\nequal emphasis on both the aspects. Naturally, however, he\r\ndoes not believe in an original evil, incurable upon earth and\r\nin earthly life. In conformity with the ancient Indian teaching\r\nhe declares the original divinity of man: it is because man is\r\npotentially and essentially divine that he can become actually\r\nand wholly divine. The Bible speaks indeed of man becoming\r\nperfect even as the Father in Heaven is perfect: but that is\r\ndue exclusively to the Grace showered upon man, not because\r\nof any inherent perfection in him. But in according full divinity\r\nto man, Sri Aurobindo does not minimise the part of the\r\nundivine in him. This does not mean any kind of Manicheism: for Evil, according to Sri Aurobindo, is not coeval or coterminous with the Divine, it is a later or derivative formation\r\nunder given conditions, although within the range and sphere\r\nof the infinite Divine. Evil exists as a stern reality; even though\r\nit may be temporary and does not touch the essential reality,\r\nit is not an illusion nor can it be ignored, brushed aside or\r\nbypassed as something superficial or momentary and of no\r\nimportance. It has its value, its function and implication. It is\r\nreal, but it is not irremediable. It is contrary to the Divine\r\nbut not contradictory. For even the Evil in its inmost substance\r\n&quot; carries or is the reality which it opposes or denies outwardly.\r\nDid not the very first of the apostles of Christ deny his master\r\nat the crucial moment? As we have said, evil is a formation\r\nnecessitated by certain circumstances, the circumstances\r\nchanged, the whole disposition as at present constituted\r\nchanges automatically and fundamentally. The Divine then descends into the earth-frame, not merely\r\nas an immanent and hidden essence—<i>sarvabhutantaratma—</i>but\r\nas an individual person embodying that essence—<i>manusim\r\ntanum asritam.</i> Man too, however earthly and impure he may </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 27</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">be, is essentially the Divine himself, carries in him the\r\nspark of the supreme consciousness that he is in his true and\r\nhighest reality. That is how in him is bridged the gulf that\r\napparently exists between the mortal and the immortal, the\r\nInfinite and the Finite, the Eternal and the Momentary, and\r\nthe Divine too can come into him and become, so to say, his\r\nlower self. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The individual or personal Divine leaves his home of all&nbsp; bliss—Vaikuntha—forgets himself and enters into this world\r\nof all misery; but this does not mean that he becomes wholly\r\nthe Man of Misery: he encompasses all misery within himself,\r\npenetrates as well into the stuff and substance of all misery,\r\nbut suffuses all that with the purifying and transforming\r\npressure of his own supreme consciousness. And yet pain and\r\nsuffering are real, cruelly real, even to the- Divine Man. Just\r\nas the ordinary human creature suffers and agonises in spite\r\nof the divine essence in him, in spite of his other deeper truth\r\nand reality, his soul of inalienable bliss, his psychic being, the\r\nDivine too suffers in the same way in spite of his divinity.\r\nThis double line of consciousness, this system of parallels\r\nrunning alongside each other, interacting upon each other\r\n(even intersecting each other, when viewed in a frame of\r\ninfinity) gives the whole secret mechanism of creation, its\r\npurpose, its working and its fulfilment. It is nothing else than the gradual \r\nreplacement or elimination, elevation or sublimation of the elements on one line that are transmuted\r\ninto those of the other. The Divine enters into the Evil to root\r\nout the Evil and plant there or release and fructify the seed of\r\nDivinity lying covered over and lost in the depths of dead\r\ninconscience. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Divine descends as an individual person fundamentally\r\nto hasten the evolutionary process and to complete it; he\r\ntakes the human form to raise humanity to divinity. The\r\nfact and the nature of the process have been well exemplified\r\nin Sri Ramakrishna who, it is said, took up successively different\r\nlines of spiritual discipline and by a supreme and sovereign\r\nforce of concentration achieved realisation in each line in the\r\ncourse of a few days what might take in normal circumstances\r\nyears or even lives to do. The Divine gathers and concentrates\r\nin himself the world-force, the Nature-Energy—even like a </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 28</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">dynamo—and focuses and canalises it to give it its full, integral\r\nand absolute effectivity. And mortal pain he accepts, and swallows the poison of ignorant life—even like Nilakantha Shiva </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">—to transmute it into ecstasy and immortality. The Divine\r\nMother sank into the earth-nature of a human body: </font>\r\n\r\n<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i><br>\r\n</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword... </font>\r\n		<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Hoping her greater being to implant</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\r\nThat heaven might native grow on mortal soil.<sup>1 </sup> </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But this is God\'s share—<i>la part de Dieu;</i> for man too as man\r\nhas to do his part. Because the Divine descending and accomplishing the work does not mean either of two things: first, it\r\ndoes not mean that it is a sudden miracle, <i>deus ex machina,</i> a\r\nfiat from the heaven which upsets and bears down everything\r\nbefore it and practically has no relation, logical or causal with\r\nwhat precedes and what follows. It is, on the contrary, as we have said, the culmination of a long process, the seal of fulfilment set upon a steady preparation and travailing growth.\r\nThe Divine descends when the time is ripe, that is to say,\r\nw hen forces and instruments have been developed, refined,\r\nsharpened and tempered, so that they can harness and wield the Power from above. But for the preparation, the necessary&nbsp; conditions being there, the Grace would not have descended,\r\nalthough it is also true that but for the Grace, the culmination\r\nand the utter fulfilment would not have come about—there\r\nwould have been only a vicious circle or an unending seesaw.\r\nNext, the Descent does not mean either that following upon\r\nit the whole business is done and completed automatically\r\nand immediately or nothing is left to be done any more. Not\r\nso. It means that what has been so long practically beyond\r\nreach, towards which one had to move with uncertainty and\r\nvague effort and in a roundabout way, as though through a\r\ntrackless virgin forest or across an uncharted sea, has now been\r\nbrought nearer and closer to human grasp, is now made part&nbsp;and parcel of earth\'s familiar atmosphere, so that any human\r\nbeing who genuinely aspires and looks for it can find it about\r\nhim: there is just a thin veil which has to be put aside a little,</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><br>\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\r\n<font size=\"2\">Sri Aurobindo: <i>Sasitri,</i> Book I, Canto I </font> </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 29</font><hr align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">into which a little opening is to be made and one comes in contact with or even enters into what one seeks. This means that the\r\nGrace has leaned down to man, but man too has at least to\r\nstretch his arms to touch and embrace it. Furthermore, to make\r\nthat Grace permanently active and real in the normal consciousness, one has to labour, work out in fact what is given potentially : the seed is planted for him, it will grow and bloom and\r\ncome to fruition provided necessary care and attention are\r\ngiven to the soil that bears it. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thus then the embodied human person who has the embodied Divine Person before his eyes must know how to install and incorporate the Divine Person in him, in his body and\r\nphysical existence. That was perhaps the mystery sought to\r\nbe conveyed in the Christian sacrament of transubstantiation.\r\nThe bread and wine that the initiate has to take in represent —are or become actually and physically, as the Christian\r\nmystics assert—the flesh and blood of Christ. One has to become the Divine Person in flesh and blood, wholly and integrally. As the fossil is a transmutation in stone, grain by grain,\r\nof a living body—organic elements eliminated and replaced\r\nby the inorganic in the very atomic structure and constitution —even so, the living human structure, the mental, vital and physical formation will be translated, grain by grain, atom\r\nby atom into the divine substance by the infusion and imposition of the Divine figure. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Christian mystics themselves, however, do not seem to\r\nhave aimed at real physical transubstantiation—although that might have been at \r\nthe back of the older Hebrew sacrament of the Eucharist; the perfection sought by them was to be\r\nenjoyed in Heaven in company of the Father and not on this\r\nearth and in this human body: it was more a sublimation\r\nthan a transformation that was their goal. The flesh for them.\r\nwas always too weak. </font>\r\n		<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0\">Page 30</p>\r\n		<hr>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-05_The Divine Man','','publish','closed','open','','05_the-divine-man','','','2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/05_the-divine-man/',0,'post','',0),(1489,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>27.htm</title>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html;charset=windows-1252\">\r\n</head>\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>A True Professor</i> </font></b></p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">THE Mother says a professor, a true professor, must be truly a\r\nyogi. That is to say, a teacher, even a schoolteacher, one\r\nimparting what is called secular education, has to be nothing\r\nless than a yogi. The Indian term for teacher is \'guru\' and\r\n\'guru\' meant a teacher both spiritual and secular. This distinction of the two words is made by the modern spirit, it did\r\nnot belong to the ancient culture. The secular knowledge was\r\nalso considered a necessary part of the spiritual knowledge,\r\nthat which prepared for it and led towards it. The \'aparavidya\' or the \'vedangas\' were but limbs of the supreme knowledge \'para vidya\' and \'veda\'.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A teacher has to be a yogi does not mean that he is to be a\r\nparagon of moral qualities, following, for example, the ten\r\ncommandments scrupulously. Not to tell a lie, not to lose\r\ntemper, to be patient, impartial, to be honest and unselfish,\r\nall these more or less social qualities have their values but\r\nsomething else is needed for the true teacher, something of\r\nanother category and quality. I said social qualities, I might\r\nsay also mental qualities. The consciousness of the teacher has\r\nto be other than mental, something deeper, more abiding,\r\nmore constant, less relative, something absolute. Do we then\r\nprescribe the supreme Brahma-consciousness for the teacher?\r\nNot quite. We mean the consciousness of a soul, the living\r\nlight that is within every aspiring human being. It is a glad\r\nluminousness in the heart that can exist with or without the\r\nbrilliant riches of a cultivated brain. And one need not go so\r\nfar as the vedantic Sachchidananda consciousness.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That is the first and primary necessity. When the teacher\r\napproaches the pupil, he must know how to do it in and through\r\nthat inner intimate consciousness. It means a fundamental</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 202<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">attitude, a mode of being of the whole nature rather than a\r\nscientific procedure: all the manuals of education will not be\r\nable to procure you this treasure. It is an acquisition that\r\ndevelops or manifests spontaneously through an earnest desire,\r\nthat is to say, aspiration for it. It is this that establishes a\r\nstrange contact with the pupil, radiates or infuses the knowledge, even the learning that the teacher possesses, infallibly\r\nand naturally into the mind and brain of the pupil.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Books and programmes are of secondary importance, they\r\nare only a scaffolding, the building within is made of a different\r\nkind of bricks. A happy luminous consciousness within is the\r\nteacher\'s asset, with that he achieves all; without it he fails\r\nalways.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If the teacher is to be a yogi, the pupil on his side must be\r\nat least an aspirant. But I suppose a pupil, so long as he is a&nbsp;\r\nchild, is a born aspirant. For, as the Mother says, a child\'s\r\nconsciousness retains generally something of the pure inner\r\nconsciousness for sometime at least until it is overshadowed\r\nby the development of the body and the mind in the ordinary\r\nnormal way. Something of this, we know, has been expressed\r\nin the famous lines of the visionary English poet:</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Soul that rises with us, our life\'s Star,\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Hath had elsewhere its setting,</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And cometh from afar.<b>. </b></font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But trailing clouds of glory do we come\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From God, who is our home:</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Heaven lies about us in our infancy!\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Shades of the prison-house begin to close\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Upon the growing Boy. .<sup>1</sup></font><sup>\r\n</sup>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But if the right teacher is found, that pure flame in the</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">child\'s consciousness can be kept burning, can even be made\r\nto burn brighter and higher. A teacher too on his side in the\r\npresence of a pure child-flame in his pupil may profit by its\r\nwarm touch; for the two by their intimate interaction grow\r\ntogether towards a greater fulfilment in both.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When we speak or think of education and consider the relation </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;<font size=\"2\">1 Wordsworth: Ode on the Intimations of Immortality.</font></font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 203<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">of the teacher and the pupil, we generally confine ourselves\r\nto the mental domain, that is to say, aim wholly or mainly at\r\nthe intellectual acquisition and attainment, and only sometimes as per Necessity as it were we turn at most to the moral\r\ndomain, that is to say, we look for the growth of character, of\r\ngood manners and behaviour—social values as we have said.\r\nHere we have tried to bring into the educationist\'s view a\r\nmore important, a much more important and interesting\r\ndomain—a new dimension of consciousness.</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 204</p>\r\n		<hr>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-34_A True Professor','','publish','closed','open','','34_a-true-professor','','','2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/34_a-true-professor/',0,'post','',0),(1490,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','<html>\r\n\r\n<head>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=windows-1252\">\r\n<title>The Philosopher as an Artist and</title>\r\n</head>\r\n\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>The Philosopher as an Artist&nbsp;\r\nand Philosophy as an Art</i> </font></b></p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">I WONDER why Philosophy has never been considered as a\r\nvariety of Art. Philosophy is admired for the depth and height\r\nof its substance, for its endeavour to discover the ultimate Truth,\r\nfor its one-pointed adherence to the supremely Real; but\r\nprecisely because it does so it is set in opposition to Art which\r\nis reputed as the domain of the ideal, the imaginative or the\r\nfictitious. Indeed it is the antagonism between the two that has\r\nalways been emphasised and upheld as an axiomatic truth and\r\nan indisputable fact. Of course, old Milton (he was young,\r\nhowever, when he wrote these lines) says that philosophy is\r\ndivine and charming:</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Not harsh, and crabbed as dull fools suppose,\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But musical as is Apollo\'s lute.<sup>1</sup></font><sup>\r\n</sup>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Well, I am not sure if the poet was anything more than being\r\nmetaphorically rhapsodical, at the most he had only a poetic\r\nperception, he did not give us the scientific truth of the matter.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">In the face of established opinion and tradition (and in the\r\nwake of the prophetic poet) I propose to demonstrate that\r\nPhilosophy has as much claim to be called an art, as any other\r\northodox art, painting or sculpture or music or architecture.\r\nI do not refer to the element of philosophy—perhaps the very\r\nlarge element of philosophy—that is imbedded and ingrained\r\nm every Art; I speak of Philosophy by itself as a distinct type\r\nof authentic art. I mean that Philosophy is composed or created\r\nin the same way as any other art and the philosopher is moved\r\nand driven by the inspiration and impulsion of a genuine artist.\r\nNow, what is Art ? Please do not be perturbed by the question.\r\nI am not trying to enter into the philosophy—the metaphysics—</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">1 <i>Camus,<b> </b> I<b>,</b> 477-8.</i> </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 251<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">of it, but only into the science—the physics—of it. Whatever\r\nelse it may be, the <i>sine qua non,</i> the minimum requisite of art is\r\nthat it must be a thing of beauty, that is to say, it must possess\r\na beautiful form. Even the Vedic Rishi says that the poet by\r\nhis poetic power created a heavenly form—<i>kavih kavitva divi\r\nrupam asajat.</i> As a matter of fact, a supreme beauty of form has\r\noften marked the very apex of artistic creation. Now, what does\r\nthe Philosopher do? The sculptor hews beautiful forms out\r\nof marble, the poet fashions beautiful forms out of words, the\r\nmusician shapes beautiful forms out of sounds. And the\r\nphilosopher ? The philosopher, I submit, builds beautiful forms\r\nout of thoughts and concepts. Thoughts and concepts are the aw materials out of which the artist philosopher creates<br>\r\nmosaics and patterns and designs architectonic edifices. For\r\nwhat else are philosophic systems ? A system -means, above all,\r\na form of beauty, symmetrical and harmonious, a unified\r\nwhole, rounded and polished and firmly holding together. Even\r\nas in Art, truth, bare sheer truth is not the object of philosophical inquiry either. Has it not been considered sufficient\r\nfor a truth to be philosophically true, if it is consistent, if it\r\ndoes not involve self-contradiction? The equation runs:</font>&nbsp;\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Truth=Self-consistency; Error =Self-contradiction. To discover the absolute truth is not the philosopher\'s task—it is\r\nan ambitious enterprise as futile and as much of a <i>maya</i> as the\r\npursuit of absolute space, absolute time or absolute motion in\r\nScience. Philosophy has nothing more to do—and nothing\r\nless—than to evolve or build up a system, in other words, a\r\nself-consistent whole (of concepts, in this case). Art also does\r\nexactly the same thing. Self-contradiction means at bottom,\r\nwant of harmony, balance, symmetry, unity, and self-consistency means the contrary of these things—the two terms used\r\nby philosophy are only the logical formulation of an essentially\r\naesthetic value.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Take, for example, the philosophical system of Kant or of\r\nHegel or of our own Shankara. What a beautiful edifice of\r\nthought each one has reared! How cogent and compact,\r\norganised and poised and finely modelled! Shankara\'s reminds\r\nme of a tower, strong and slender, mounting straight and\r\ntapering into a vanishing point among the clouds; it has the\r\ncharacteristic linear movement of Indian melody. On the other</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 252<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">hand, the march of the Kantian Critiques or of the Hegelian\r\nDialectic has a broader base and involves a composite strain, <i>a,</i> balancing of contraries, a blending of diverse notes: there\r\nis something here of the amplitude and comprehensiveness of\r\nharmonic architecture (without perhaps a corresponding\r\ndegree of altitude).</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; All these systems, commonly called philosophical, appear<b> \r\n</b>to me supremely artistic. The logical intellect has worked here\r\nexactly like a chisel or a brush in the hands of the artist. It\r\ndid not care for truth <i>per se,</i> its prime preoccupation was\r\narrangement, disposition; the problem it set before itself was\r\nhow best to present a consistent and unified, that is to say, a\r\nbeautiful whole.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But the philosopher\'s stone is not, after all, a myth, as is\r\nbeing proved by modern science. Even so, the philosopher\'s\r\ntruth—the truth, that is to say, in the noumenal sense, to\r\nwhich he aspires in his heart of hearts—is also existent. There\r\nis a reality apart from and beyond all relativities and contingencies: truth is not mere self-consistence, it is self-existence.\r\nArt and philosophy as an art may not comprehend it, but\r\nthey circuit round it and even have glimpses of it and touch\r\nit, though the vision they have more often aberrates, distorting\r\na rope into a snake.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It is a grain of this truth that is the substance and the core\r\nof all true art and philosophy. Philosophy works upon this\r\nsecret strand by its logic, art by imagination—although logic\r\nand imagination may not be so incommensurable as they\r\nare commonly thought to be; even so, both art and philosophy\r\narrive at the same result, viz., the building of a beautiful\r\nsuperstructure.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This golden core of truth comes from elsewhere—it is beyond the <i>mayic</i> circle of art and philosophy. To have access\r\nto it, a lid overhead is to be broken through—rather, as it\r\nis said, it is that that breaks through of its own accord and\r\nreveals its identity.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Plato would not tolerate the poets in his ideal society since\r\nthey care too much for beauty and very little for the true and\r\ngood. He wanted it all to be a kingdom of philosophers. I\r\nam afraid Plato\'s philosopher is not true to type, the type\r\nset up by his great disciple. Plato\'s philosopher is<b> </b> no longer</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 253<hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">an artist, he has become a mystic—a Rishi in our language.</font>&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">For we must remember that Plato himself was really more\r\nof a poet than a philosopher. Very few among the great\r\nrepresentative souls of humanity surpassed him in the true\r\npoetic afflatus. The poet and the mystic—Kavi and Rishi—are the same in our ancient lore. However these two, Plato\r\nand Aristotle, the mystic and the philosopher, the master and\r\nthe disciple, combine to form one of these dual personalities\r\nwhich Nature seems to like and throws up from time to time\r\nin her evolutionary march—not as a mere study in contrast,\r\na token of her dialectical process, but rather as a movement\r\nof polarity making for a greater comprehensiveness and richer\r\nvalues. They may be taken as the symbol of a great synthesis\r\nthat humanity needs and is preparing. The role of the mystic\r\nis to envisage and unveil the truth, the supernal reality which\r\nthe mind cannot grasp nor all the critical apparatus of human\r\nreason demonstrate and to bring it down and present it to\r\nthe understanding and apprehending consciousness. The\r\nphilosopher comes at this stage: he receives and gathers all\r\nthat is given to him, arranges and systematises, puts the whole\r\nthing in a frame as it were.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The poet-philosopher or the philosopher-poet, whichever\r\nway we may put it, is a new formation of the human consciousness that is coming upon us. A wide and rationalising (not\r\nrationalistic) intelligence deploying and marshalling out a\r\ndeep intuitive and direct Knowledge—that is the pattern<b> \r\n</b>of<b> \r\n</b>human mind developing in the new age. Bergson\'s was a\r\nharbinger, a definite landmark on the way. Sri Aurobindo\'s <i>The Life Divine</i> \r\narrives and opens the very portals of the marvellous temple city of a dynamic integral knowledge.</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 254</p>\r\n		<hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n</body>\r\n\r\n</html>\r\n','-41_The Philosopher as an Artist','','publish','closed','open','','41_the-philosopher-as-an-artist','','','2021-11-23 17:21:35','2021-11-23 17:21:35','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/41_the-philosopher-as-an-artist/',0,'post','',0),(1491,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>16 .htm</title>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html;charset=windows-1252\">\r\n</head>\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<b>\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Towards a New Ideology</i> </font>\r\n\r\n		</b>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">INDIA must evolve her own political and social ideology; she\r\nmust discover and establish in this domain also, as in<b> \r\n</b>all<b> \r\n</b>others that concern her collective life, her own genius and\r\nrule. This is what Swaraj really means and demands.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Russia has her Sovietic Communism, Germany, for the\r\npresent at least, her Nazidom, Italy her totalitarian Fascism, old England her \r\nParliamentarianism and France her Bureau\r\ncratism; each nation finds the norm and scheme of self-rule\r\nthat suits its temperament and character and changes and\r\nmodifies that also in its own characteristic manner. Even so\r\nIndia must find her own scheme of Swarajya. If she is to live\r\nand be great and contribute something to the enrichment\r\nand glory of human civilisation, she must look to herself,\r\nenter into herself and know and bring out what lies there\r\nburied. It is a grievous blunder to try to transplant a Mussolinian or Leninian or a Hitlerian gospel on an Indian soil\'.\r\nIt is not desirable nor is it truly possible.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If, however, we take a right about turn and look away\r\nfrom the West to the Far East, we already see in Japan a\r\ndifferent type of national self-government. It is based on an\r\naltogether different basis which may appear even novel to\r\nthe modern and rationalistic European mentality. I am referring to the conception of duty which moulds and upholds\r\nthe Japanese body politic and body social, as opposed to the\r\nconception of right obtaining royal rule in the Occident.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The distinction between the attitudes that underlie these\r\ntwo conceptions was once upon a time greatly stressed by\r\nVivekananda, who was the first to strike two or three major\r\nchords that were needed to create the grand symphony of\r\nthe Indian Renaissance. It is true Europe too had her Mazzini</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 136<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">whose scheme of a new humanity was based on the conception of the <i>duties</i> of man. But his was a voice in the wilderness\r\nand he was not honoured in his own country.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The malady of the modern age springs precisely from this\r\npoisonous source, viz., it views man as a bundle of rights and\r\nits problem of social organisation is the problem of safeguarding\r\nand, if possible, even of increasing individual and collective\r\nrights. Thus came into being the competitive society—a society\r\nnecessarily red in tooth and claw like Nature.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Vivekananda pointed .out that one should rather think of\r\none\'s duties, how best to accomplish them and leave the&nbsp;\r\nrights to take care of themselves. Such an attitude would give a man the correct \r\noutlook, the correct poise, the correct inspiration in living the collective life. Instead of each one\r\ndemanding and claiming what one regards as one\'s dues and\r\nconsequently scrambling and fighting for them (and most\r\noften not getting them or getting at a ruinous expense—what<br>\r\nmade Arjuna cry, &quot;What shall I do with the kingdom and all\r\nif in gaining it I lose everything that makes it worth having?&quot;)\r\nif one were content with knowing one\'s duty and doing it\r\nwith a single mind, not only would there be peace and amity\r\non earth, but also none would be deprived of anything that\r\nis really due to him.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It may be answered that there does not seem to be any\r\nspecial virtue in the word &quot;duty&quot;; for, the crimes committed\r\nunder that ensign are not less numerous or violent than those\r\ninspired by the ideal of Rights. It was once considered in\r\nsome religions to be the duty of the faithful to kill or coerce\r\nor convert as many as possible of another faith; it was the\r\nbounden duty of the good shepherd to burn and flay -the\r\nheretic. And in recent times the ceremony of &quot;purge&quot; bespeaks of the same compulsion of the sense of duty in the\r\nconsciousness of modern Messiahs. But the true name of the&nbsp;\r\nthing in all these cases is not duty, <i>but fanaticism.</i></font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For fanaticism may be defined as duty running away with\r\nitself; but duty proper, the genuine form of it is something\r\ngive than to demand, it is less easily provoked to aggression\r\nand battle. Even so, it may be claimed on behalf of Right\r\nthat the right hand of Right is not likely to do harm, for it</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 137<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">is then another name for liberty, it means the freedom<b> \r\n</b>to<b> \r\n</b>live one\'s life unhampered without infringing on an equal\r\nfacility for others to do the same. But the whole difficulty</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">comes in precisely with regard to the frontier of each other\'s\r\nsphere of rights. It is easy to declare the principle, but to\r\ntarry it out in life and action is a different matter. The line</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">of demarcation between one\'s own rights and the rights of \r\nanother is always indeterminate and indefinable. In establishing and maintaining one\'s rights there is always the possibility,\r\neven the certainty of &quot;frontier incidents&quot;, of encroaching upon</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">other\'s rights. Liberty, alone and by itself, is not a safe guide</font>&nbsp;<font face=\"Times New Roman\">therefore so much stress is being laid nowadays upon\' discipline and obedience in modern ideologies.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But perhaps the real truth of the matter here is that all \r\nthese terms—liberty or right or even duty—are mental conceptions. They are indeed ideals, that is to say, made of\r\nthe stuff of ideas and do not always coincide with the deeper\r\nrealities of life and hence are not able to produce the perfect\r\nand durable harmony among warring members whether in\r\nthe individual or in the collective life.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We had in India a fairer word than &quot;duty&quot;, a deeper and\r\nmore luminous mantra: it is <i>dharma.</i> The expression has certainly\r\n\'&quot;fallen on evil days and on evil tongues&quot;; it smells today of\r\nmediaevalism and obscurantism and whatever is not &quot;forward&quot;\r\nand &quot;radical&quot;. Still we hark back to it: it is high time that\r\nwe should resuscitate the old word mantra—in spite of its\r\nmusty covering, it carries the purest nugget of gold.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Indeed, Right, Duty and Dharma are three terms that\r\nrepresent the three stages of an ascending consciousness in\r\nits play of forces. At the base and beginning the original and\r\nprimary state of consciousness is dominated by the mode of\r\ninertia <i>(tamos),</i> in that state things are an inchoate mass and\r\nare simply jumbled together; they are moved and acted upon\r\nhelplessly by forces that are outside them. A rise in the scale of\r\ngrowth and evolution occurs when things begin to be\r\norganised, that is to say, differentiated and coordinated. And\r\nthis means at the outset the self-assertion of each and every\r\nunit, the claim and the right of the individual to be itself first\r\nand foremost. It is a necessary development, for it signifies\r\nthe growth of self-conscious units out of a general, unconsciousness. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 138<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">It is the appearance of <i>rajas,</i> the mode of life and\r\nactivity. Right belongs to this field and level: it is the lever\r\nthat serves to bring out the individual nuclei from a general\r\nformlessness, it is the force that crystallises and organises the\r\nseparative centres for separate fulfilment in life. And naturally\r\nit is the field also of competition and conflict. This is a stage and\r\nhas to be transcended, from the domain of differentiation and\r\ncontrariety one has to rise to the domain of co-ordination and\r\nco-operation. Here comes in the concept of duty which seeks to remedy the ills of the modus of rights in two ways, first, by\r\nreplacing the movement of taking by that of giving, orienting\r\nthe consciousness from the sense of self-sufficiency and self-\r\nimportance towards that of submission and humbleness;</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">secondly, by the recognition of the just rights of others also\r\nagainst one\'s own. Duty represents the mode of sattwa in action.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But the conception of duty too has its limitations. Even apart\r\nfrom the misuses of the ideal to which we have already referred,\r\nthe ideal itself, is of the mental plane; it is more or less an act\r\nof mental will that seeks to impose a rule of co-operation upon the mutually excluding and conflicting entities. The result is\r\nbound to be imperfect and precarious. For mind force, although\r\nit can exercise some kind of control over the life forces, cannot\r\naltogether master them, and eradicate even the very seeds of\r\nconflict that breed naturally in that field. The sense of duty\r\nraises the consciousness to the mode of <i>sattwa; sattwa</i> holds <i>rajas</i> in check, but is unable to eliminate wholly the propensities and impulses of aberration ingrained in <i>rajas,</i> cannot\r\nradically purify or transfigure it.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We have to rise above <i>rajas</i> and <i>sattwa</i> to enter a domain\r\nwhere one meets the source of inevitable harmony, where the\r\nunits without losing their true self and nature and returning\r\nto the undifferentiated primordial mass, fulfil themselves and\r\nare yet held together in a rich and faultless symphony. This is\r\nDharma, that which holds together. Dharma means the law\r\nof one\'s soul. And when each soul follows its own law and line\r\nof life, there cannot be any conflict; for the essence and sub-<br>\r\nstance of the soul is made of unity and harmony. The souls\r\nmove like the planetary bodies, each in its own orbit, and,\r\nbecause they do not collide or clash, all together creating the\r\nsilent music of the spheres.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 139<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This then is the basis upon which the new society and\r\nhumanity have to be built up, if we want to have a life on earth\r\nreally worth living. Individuals have to find out their real\r\nbeing and nature and embody that in life. Individuals will\r\nassociate and combine and form groups in response to the urge\r\nand. impetus of a group harmony that seeks expression and\r\nembodiment.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The system of <i>varnas</i> and <i>ashramas</i> of ancient India—even\r\nif it be supposed that it never existed actually in its purest\r\nideal form—serves as a graphic example of how man as a social\r\nbeing should create and organise his existence in order that that existence \r\nmight be rendered as perfect and integrally sound as things can be. That system \r\nwe hold forth as only an illustration; we do not mean that it is a pattern of \r\nlife that should be or could be implanted on our present day social circumstances. These are certainly very different and demand different\r\ngroupings and hierarchies that must naturally grow out of\r\nthem.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;It should be noted that in contemporary life stress is laid\r\nupon one side, one part and one- function of human nature\r\nwhich cover only a superficial—however useful and necessary—\r\narea. Man is not a political animal (even in the Aristotelian\r\nsense); and it is an error to say that he is an economic animal. These notions \r\ndivide man\'s integral being into various sectional views only; they seek to cut out and suppress all other\r\nmembers excepting the favoured one. The politically militant\r\nbourgeois ideal of the Nazi or the Fascist and the economically\r\nmilitant ideal of the proletarian are equally guilty of this lapse.\r\nEven the ideal of man as a rational being does not go far\r\nenough to be able to save man and mankind. All of them evoke\r\nconflict, some deliberately, and the resolution of the conflict\r\nends in suppression, amputation and atrophy.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We have to recognise that man, in his individual as well as in\r\nhis collective being, is a complex entity, not something simple\r\nand one-dimensional. The healthy growth of himself and his\r\nsociety means a simultaneous development on many lines, all\r\nmoving together in concord and harmony. And this movement\r\nof all-harmony can be found only when the movements are\r\ninitiated from the very source of harmony which is the soul.\r\nCertain soul-principles that seek expression in lif)&nbsp; today that</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 140<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">are necessary to the age or to the coming age, have to be\r\nrecognised and each given a field and a scope. That should be\r\nthe basis of social groupings. And a composite variety of group-\r\ning with strands and strata, each expressing a particular mode\r\nof being of the one group-soul—which in its turn is an aspect\r\nof the Vishva Purusha in his play—is the ideal pattern of social\r\norganisation. What exactly the lines of grouping would be\r\nneed not and perhaps cannot be settled now; a certain preliminary growth and change of consciousness in man is necessary\r\nbefore anything definite and precise can be foreseen as to the\r\nform and schema that consciousness will manifest and lay out.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Still some kind of hierarchy seems to be the natural and\r\ninevitable form of collective life. A dead level, however high\r\nthat may possibly be, appears to be rather a condition of <i>malaise</i> and not that of a stable equilibrium. The individual\r\nman cannot with impunity be brains alone—he becomes then\r\nwhat is called &quot;a barren intellectualist&quot;, &quot;an ineffectual angel&quot;;</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">nor can he rest satisfied with being a mere hewer of wood and\r\ndrawer of water—he is no more than a bushman then. Like-\r\nwise a society cannot be made of philosophers alone, nor can\r\nit be a monolithic construction of the proletariat and nothing\r\nbut the proletariat—if the proletariat choose to remain literally\r\nproletarian. As the body individual is composed of limbs that\r\nrise one upon another from the inferior to the superior, even so\r\na healthy body social also should consist of similar hierarchical\r\nranges. Only this distinction should not mean—and it does not\r\nnecessarily mean—a difference in moral values, as it was\r\npointed out long ago by Aesop in his famous fable. The distinction is functional—and spiritual. In the spirit, all differences\r\nand distinctions are based upon and are instinct with an\r\ninviolable and inalienable unity, even identity. Differences\r\nhere do not mean invidious distinction, they are not the sources\r\nof inequality, conflict, strife, but make for a richer harmony, a\r\ngreater organisation.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; However the crucial point arises here—how is the collective\r\nlife, the group existence to be made soul-conscious? One can\r\nunderstand the injunction upon individuals to seek and find\r\ntheir souls; but how can a society be expected to act from its\r\nsoul and according to the impulsions of its soul ? And then, has\r\na collectivity at all a soul ? What is usually spoken of as the</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 141<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">group-houl does not seem to be anything spiritual; it is an\r\neuphemism for herd instinct, the flair of the pack.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The real truth is that a group has the soul—the spiritual\r\nbeing—that is put into it. How can that be done? It is done by the individual, in and through the individual. Not a single\r\nindividual perhaps, but a few, a select body, a small minority\r\nwho by their conscious will and illumined endeavour form the\r\nstrong nucleus that builds up automatically and inevitably the\r\nlarger organisation instinct with its spirit and dharma. In fact\r\nall collective organisations are made in the same way. The form\r\nthat a society takes is given to it by the ideology of one man or\r\nof a few men. All depends upon the truth and reality, the depth\r\nand fecundity of the inspiration and vision, whether it will last\r\na day or be the eternal law of life, whether it will be a curse for\r\nmankind or work for its supreme good. Naturally, the higher\r\nthe aim, the more radical the remedy envisaged, the greater the\r\ndifficulty that has to be surmounted. An aggregate always tends&nbsp; to live and move on a lower level of consciousness than the\r\nindividual\'s. It is easy to organise a society on forces and passions that belong to the lower nature of man—although it can\r\nbe questioned whether such a society will last very long or\r\nconduce to the good or happiness of man.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; On the other hand, although difficult, it may not prove\r\nimpossible to cast the nature, character and reactions of the\r\naggregate into the mould prepared out of spiritual realities by\r\nthose who have realised and lived them. Some theocratic social\r\norganisations, at least for a time, during the period of their\r\napogee illustrate the feasibility of such a consummation. Only,\r\nin the present age, when all foundations seem to be shaking,\r\nwhen all principles on which we stood till now are crumbling\r\ndown, when even fundamentals—those that were considered\r\nas such—can no more give assurance, well, in such a revolutionary age, one has perforce to be radical and revolutionary\r\nto the extreme: we have to go deep down and beyond, beyond\r\nthe shifting sands of more or less surface realities to the un -shaking bed-rock, the rock of ages. And that is nothing but\r\nthe truth of the soul, the realities of the Spirit.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And India is pre-eminently fitted to discover this pattern of\r\nspiritual values and demonstrate how our normal life—individual and collective—can be moulded and built according to</font>&nbsp;\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 142<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">that pattern. It has been India\'s special concern throughout\r\nthe millenaries other history to know and master the one thing\r\nneedful <i>(tamevaikam janatha atmanam anya vaco vimuncatha),</i> knowing which one knows all \r\n<i>(tasmin vijnate sarvam vijnatam).</i> She\r\nhas made countless experiments in that line and has attained\r\ncountless achievements. Her resurgence can be justified and\r\ncan be inevitable only if she secures the poise and position which\r\nwill enable her to impart to the world this master secret of\r\nlife, this art of a supreme <i>savoir vivre.</i> A new India in the old way\r\nof the nations of the world, one more among the already too\r\nmany has neither sense nor necessity. Indeed, it would be the\r\ndenial of what her soul demands and expects to be achieved\r\nand done.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 143</p>\r\n		<hr>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-18_Towards a New Ideology','','publish','closed','open','','18_towards-a-new-ideology','','','2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/18_towards-a-new-ideology/',0,'post','',0),(1492,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','<html>\r\n\r\n<head>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=windows-1252\">\r\n<title>The Beautiful in the Upanishads</title>\r\n</head>\r\n\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<b><i>The Beautiful in the Upanishads</i> </b></p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nWHEN the Rigveda says\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i>idam srestham jyotisam jyotih agat<br>\r\ncitrah praketo ajanista vibhva</i>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nLo! the supreme Light of lights is come, a varied<br>\r\nawakening is born, wide manifest\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i>rusadvasta rusati swetyagat</i>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i>araigu krisna sadananyasyah</i>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nThe white Mother comes reddening with the ruddy\r\nchild; the dark Mother opens wide her chambers,\r\n\r\nthe feeling and the expression of the beautiful raise no\r\nquestioning; they are authentic as well as evident. All will\r\nrecognise at once that we have here beautiful things said in a\r\nbeautiful way. No less authentic however is the sense of the\r\nbeautiful that underlies these Upanishadic lines:\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i>na tatra suryo bhati na candratarakam</i>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i>nema vidyuto bhanti kuto\'yam<b> \r\n</b>agnih<b><br>\r\n</b>tameva bhantam anubhati sarvam</i>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i>tasya bhasa sarvam idam vibhati</i>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nThere the sun shines not, nor the moon, nor the stars; these lightnings too there shine not; how then this fire!\r\nThat shines and therefore all shine in its wake; by the\r\nsheen of That, all this shines.\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nOnly, to some perhaps the beauty may not appear as\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 339<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nevident and apparent. The Spirit of beauty that resides in the\r\nUpanishadic consciousness is more retiring and reticent.<b> \r\n</b>It<b> \r\n</b>dwells in its own privacy, in its own home, as it were, and\r\ntherefore chooses to be bare and austere, simple and sheer.\r\nBeauty means usually the beauty of form, even if it be not\r\nalways the decorative, ornamental and sumptuous form. The\r\nearly Vedas aimed at the perfect form <i>(surupakrtnum},</i> the\r\nfaultless expression, the integral and complete embodiment;&nbsp;\r\nthe gods they envisaged and invoked were gleaming powers\r\ncarved out of harmony and beauty and figured close to\r\nour modes of apprehension <i>(supayanah).</i> But the Upanishads\r\ncame to lay stress upon what is beyond the form, what the\r\neye cannot see nor the vision reflect:\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i>na sandrsi tisthati rupamasya</i>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i>na caksusa pasyati kascanainam</i>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nIts figure does not lie in the field of vision, none can see\r\nit with the eye\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The form of a thing can be beautiful; but the formless too\r\nhas its beauty. Indeed, the beauty of the formless, that is to\r\nsay, the very sum and substance, the ultimate essence, the\r\nsoul of beauty—that is what suffuses, with in-gathered colour\r\nand enthusiasm, the realisation and poetic creation of the\r\nUpanishadic seer. All the forms that are scattered abroad in\r\ntheir myriad manifest beauty hold within themselves a secret\r\nBeauty and are reflected or projected out of it. This veiled\r\nName of Beauty can be compared to nothing on the phenomenal hemisphere of Nature; it has no adequate image or\r\nrepresentation below:\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<i>na tasya pratima asti—</i>\r\n\r\n		<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nit cannot be defined or figured in the terms of the phenomenal\r\nconsciousness. In speaking of it, however, the Upanishads invariably and repeatedly refer to two attributes that characterise\r\nits fundamental nature. These two aspects have made such an\r\nimpression upon the consciousness of the Upanishadic seer\r\nthat his enthusiasm almost wholly plays about them and is\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 340<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\ncentred on them. When he contemplates or communes with\r\nthe Supreme Object, these seem to-him to be the mark of its\r\nauthenticity, the seal of its high status and the reason of all\r\nthe charm and magic it possesses. The first aspect or attribute\r\nis that of light—the brilliance, the solar effulgence—<i>ravitulya-arupah—</i>the bright, clear, shadowless Light of lights—<i>virajam \r\nsubhram jyotisam jyotih.</i> The second aspect is that of delight, the\r\nbliss, the immortality inherent in that wide effulgence—<i>anandarupam amrtam yad vibhati.</i>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And what else is the true character, the soul of beauty than\r\nlight and delight? &quot;A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.&quot; And\r\na thing of joy is a thing of light. Joy is the radiance rippling-\r\nover a thing of beauty. Beauty is always radiant: the charm, the\r\nloveliness of an object is but the glow of light that it emanates.\r\nAnd it would not be a very incorrect mensuration to measure\r\nthe degree of beauty by the degree of light radiated. The\r\ndiamond is not only a thing of value, but a thing of beauty\r\nalso, because of the concentrated and undimmed light that\r\nit enshrines within itself. A dark, dull and dismal thing, devoid of interest \r\nand attraction becomes aesthetically precious and significant as soon as the artist presents it in terms\r\nof the values of light. The entire art of painting is nothing but\r\nthe expression of beauty, in and through the modalities of\r\nlight.\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And where there is light, there is cheer and joy. <i>Rasamaya\r\n</i>and <i>jyotirmaya</i> are thus the two conjoint characteristics fundamental to the nature of the ultimate reality. Sometimes these\r\ntwo are named as the solar and the lunar aspect. The solar\r\naspect refers obviously to the Light, that is to say, to the\r\nTruth; the lunar aspect refers to the <i>rasa</i> (Soma), to Immortality, to Beauty proper,—\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<i>yatte susamam hrdayam adhi candramasi sritam<br>\r\ntenamrtatvasyesena</i>\r\n\r\n		<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n0 Lord of Immortality! Thy heart<b> </b> of beauty that is\r\nsheltered in the moon—\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nor, as the Prasna Upanishad has it,\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i>rayireva candramah.. .murtireva rayih</i>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 341<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nThe Moon means Delight... and Delight means the created form.\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The perception of beauty in the Upanishadic consciousness\r\nis something elemental—of concentrated essence. It silhouettes\r\nthe main contour, outlines the primordial gestures. Pregnant\r\nand pulsating with the burden of beauty, the <i>mantra</i> here\r\nreduces its external expression to a minimum. The body is\r\nbare and unadorned, and even in its nakedness, it has not the\r\nemphatic and vehement musculature of an athlete; rather it\r\ntends to be slim and slender and yet vibrant with the inner\r\nnervous vigour and glow. What can be more bare and brief\r\nand full to the brim of a self-gathered luminous energy than,\r\nfor example:\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<i>yat pranena na praniti yena pranah<br>\r\npraniyate tadeva brahma—</i>\r\n\r\n		<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nThat which lives not by Life, but which makes Life live—<br>\r\nThat is Brahman.\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nor<b>,</b>    <i>&nbsp;&nbsp; nalpe sukhamasti bhumaiva sukham.. .yo vai</i>\r\n\r\n<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; bhuma tadamrtam atha yadalpam tanmartyam—</i><p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nIn the Little there lies no happiness, the Vast alone\r\nis the Happiness. The Vast is the Immortality, the Little\r\nis the Mortality.\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The rich and sensuous beauty luxuriating in high colour\r\nand ample decoration that one meets often in the creation of\r\nthe earlier Vedic seers returned again, in a more chiselled and\r\npolished and stylised manner, in the classical poets. The\r\nUpanishads in this respect have a certain kinship with the\r\nearly poets of the intervening age—Vyasa and Valmiki. <i>Upama Kdliddsasya—</i>Kalidasa revels in figures and images;\r\nthey are profusely heaped on one another and usually possess\r\na complex and composite texture. Valmiki\'s images are simple\r\nand elemental, brief and instinct with a vast resonance, spar\r\nand full of power. The same brevity and simplicity, vibrant\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 342<hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nwith an extraordinary power of evocation, are also characteristic of the Upanishadic <i>mantra.</i> With Valmiki\'s\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; akasamiva dusparam—</i><p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<i><br>\r\n</i>\r\nlike the sky<b> </b>hard to cross over,\r\n\r\n		<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nor<b>,</b>      <i>&nbsp;gatarcisamivanalam—</i>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\nlike a fire whose light of flame is<b> </b>      gone,<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<b><br>\r\n</b>      or<b>,</b>      <i>&nbsp;tejasadityasamkasah ksamaya prthivisamah—</i>\r\n\r\n		<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nfiery as the burning sun, full of forbearance like the\r\nearth,\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\ncan be compared, in respect of vivid and graphic terseness and<br>\r\npointedness and suggestive reverberation, the Upanishadic\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; vrksa iva stabdho divi tisthatyekah—</i>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nThe One stands alone in the heaven motionless, like a<br>\r\ntree against the sky,\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nor<b>,</b>      <i>&nbsp;Saravat tanmayo bhavet—</i>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\nBe wholly fixed on That, like an arrow on its target,\r\n\r\n		<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nor again, <i>&nbsp;yathema nadyah syandamanah samudrayanah—<br>\r\n</i>&nbsp;<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\nlike these rivers that flowing journey towards the sea.\r\n\r\n		<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Art at its highest tends to become also the simplest and the\r\nmost unconventional; and it is then the highest art, precisely\r\nbecause it does not aim at being artistic. The aesthetic motive\r\nis totally absent in the Upanishads; the sense of beauty is\r\nthere, but it is attendant upon and involved in a deeper\r\nstrand of consciousness. That consciousness seeks consciousness\r\nitself, the fullness of consciousness, the awareness and possession\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 343<hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\nof the Truth and Reality,—the one thing which, if known,\r\ngives the knowledge of all else. And this consciousness of the\r\nTruth is also Delight, the perfect Bliss, the Immortality where\r\nthe whole universe resolves itself into its original state of <i>rasa,\r\n</i>that is to say, of essential and inalienable harmony and\r\nbeauty.\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 344<hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n</body>\r\n\r\n</html>\r\n','-50_The Beautiful in the Upanishads','','publish','closed','open','','50_the-beautiful-in-the-upanishads','','','2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/50_the-beautiful-in-the-upanishads/',0,'post','',0),(1493,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>9 the human.htm</title>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html;charset=windows-1252\">\r\n</head>\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<b>\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Human Progress</i> </font>\r\n\r\n		</b>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">CREATION has evolved. That is to say, there has been a growth\r\nand unfoldment and progress. From nebulae to humanity the\r\nmarch cannot but be called an advance, a progress, in more\r\nsenses than one. But the question is about man. Has man\r\nadvanced, progressed since his advent upon earth ? If so, in\r\nwhat manner, to what extent ? Man has been upon earth for\r\nthe last two million years, they say. From what has happened\r\nbefore him in the course of Nature\'s evolution, it is legitimate\r\nto infer that man too, in his turn, has moved forward in the\r\nline towards growth and development. In fact, if we admit\r\nthat man started life as a savage or jungle-man or ape-man,\r\nand look at him as he is today, we have perforce to acknowledge that he has not merely changed but progressed too. The<br>\r\nquestion to be answered is in what sense this progress has been\r\nmade.&nbsp; </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Modern knowledge has taught us that what marks the\r\ngrowth of man is his use of tools. An animal has nothing else\r\nthan its own limbs as its all-serving tool. Man emerged as\r\nman the day he knew how to use tools as an extension of his\r\nlimbs. And the cycles of human growth have, in consequence,\r\nbeen marked off by the type of tools used. As we all know,\r\nanthropologists tell us, there have been four such cycles or\r\nages: (1) the Old Stone Age, (2) the New Stone Age, (3) the<br>\r\nBronze Age and (4) the Iron Age. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the first age, which is by far the longest period, a period\r\nof slow and difficult preparation, man had his first lessons in a\r\nconscious and victorious dealing with Nature. The day when\r\nhe first started chipping a stone was a red-letter day for him;&nbsp; for, by that very gesture be began shredding his purely animal\r\nvesture. And when he not only chipped but succeeded in </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 80</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">grinding and polishing a piece of stone, he moved up one step\r\nfurther and acquired definitely his humanity. Again, ages\r\nafterwards when his hand could-wield and manipulate as it\r\nliked not only a stone but a metal, his skill and dexterity\r\nshowed a development unique in its kind, establishing and\r\nfixing man\'s manhood as a new emergent factor. In this phase\r\nalso there was a first period of training and experiment, the\r\nperiod of craftsmanship in bronze; with the age of iron, man\'s\r\narms and fingers attained a special deftness and a conscious\r\ncontrol directed from a cranium centre which has become by now a model of rich \r\ngrowth and complex structure and marvellous organisation. The impetus towards more and more efficiency in the making and handling of tools has not ceased: the craftsmanship in iron soon led to the discovery of steel and\r\nsteel industry. The temper and structure of steel are symbolic\r\nand symptomatic of the temper and structure of the brain\r\nthat commands the weapon—strong, supple, resistant, resilient, capable of \r\nfineness and sharpness and trenchancy to an extraordinary degree. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This growing fineness and efficiency of the tool has served\r\nnaturally to develop and enrich man\'s external possession and\r\ndominion. But this increasing power and dominion over\r\nNature is not the most important consequence involved; it is\r\nonly indicative of still greater values, something momentous,\r\nsomething subjective, pregnant with far-reaching possibilities.\r\nFor the physical change is nothing compared with the psychological change, the change in the consciousness. In taking up<br>\r\nhis tool to chip a stone man has started hewing out and moulding entire Nature: he has become endowed with the sense of\r\nindependence and agency. An animal is a part and parcel of Nature, has no life \r\nand movement apart from the life and movement of Nature—even like Wordsworth\'s child of Nature— </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:100px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Rolled round in earth\'s diurnal course,<br>\r\nWith rocks, and stones, and trees.<sup>1 </sup> </font>\r\n		<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">An animal does not separate itself from Nature, exteriorise it\r\nand then seek to fashion it as he wants, try to make it yield\r\nthings he requires. Man is precisely man because he has just\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"2\">&nbsp;1&quot;A slumber did my spirit seal&quot;, <i>Miscellaneous Poems</i> </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 81</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">this sense of self and of not-self and his whole life is the conquest of the not-self by the self: this is the whole story of his\r\nevolution. In the early stages his sense of agency and selfhood\r\nis at its minimum. The rough-hewn flint instruments are\r\nsymbolic of the first attempts of the brain to set its impress,\r\nupon crude and brute nature. The history of man\'s artisanship, which is the history of his civilisation, is also the history\r\nof his growing self-consciousness. The consciousness in its\r\nattempt to react upon nature separated itself from Nature,\r\nand at first stood over against it and then sought to stand over\r\nand above it. In this process of extricating itself from the\r\nsheath in which it was involved and fused, it came back upon\r\nitself, became more and more aware of its freedom and individual identity and agency. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The question is now asked how far this self-consciousness—given to man by his progress from stone to steel—has advanced\r\nand what is its future. The crucial problem is whether man\r\nhas progressed in historical times. Granted that man with an\r\niron tool is a more advanced type of humanity than man with\r\na chipped stone tool, it may still be enquired whether he has\r\nmade any real advance since the day he learnt to manipulate metal. If by advance \r\nor -progress we mean efficiency and multiplication of tools, then surely there can be no doubt that\r\nGermany of today (perhaps now we have to say Germany of\r\nyesterday and America of today) is the most advanced type\r\nof humanity—indeed they do make the claim in that country. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So it is argued that man may have built up more and more\r\nefficient organisation in his outer life, he may have learnt<b> \r\n</b>to<b> \r\n</b>wield a greater variety and wealth of tools and instruments in\r\nan increasing degree of refinement and power; but this, does\r\nnot mean that his character, his nature or even the broad\r\nmould of his intelligence has changed or progressed. The\r\nrecords and remains of Predynastic Egypt or of Proto-Aryan\r\nIndus valley go to show that those were creations of civilised&nbsp;\r\nmen, as civilised as any modern people. The mind that produced the Rig Veda or the Book of the Dead or conceived the\r\nfirst pyramid is, in essential power of intelligence, no whit\r\ninferior to any modern scientific brain. Hence a distinction is\r\nsometimes made between culture and civilisation; what the\r\nmoderns have achieved is progress with regard to civilisation, </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 82</font><hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">that is to say, the outer paraphernalia; but as regards culture\r\na Plato, a Lao-tse, a Yajnavalkya are names to which we still\r\nbow down. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; One can answer, however, that even if in the last eight or\r\nten thousand years which, they say, is the extent of the present\r\ncycle, the civilised or cultural life of humanity has not changed\r\nmuch, this does not mean that it cannot, will not change. The\r\npaleolithic age, it appears, covered a period of thirty to forty\r\nthousand years; the neolithic age also must have lasted some\r\nfifteen thousand years. The metal age is now not more than ten\r\nthousand years. So it does not seem to be too late; perhaps it\r\nis just time for another radical and crucial change to come as\r\nthe chronological scheme would seem to demand. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We propose, however, to reopen the question and enquire\r\nif there has not been some kind of radical change or progress\r\nin the make-up of human nature and civilisation even within\r\nthe span of historical times. This reminds us of the remarkable\r\nconclusion or discovery made by the much maligned and\r\nmuch adulated Psycho-analysts. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Jung speaks of two kinds or grades of thinking: (1) the\r\ndirected thinking and (2) the wishful thinking; one conscious\r\nand objective, the other automatic and subjective. The first\r\nis the modern or scientific thinking, the second the old-world\r\nmythoposic thinking. These two lines of mental movement\r\nmark off two definite stages in the cultural history of man.\r\nDown to the Middle Ages man\'s mental life was moved and\r\ncoloured by his <i>libido—</i>desire soul; it is with the Renascence\r\nthat he began to free his mind from the libido and transfer and transform the \r\nlibido into non-egoistic and realistic thinking. In simpler psychological terms we can say that man\'s\r\nmentality was coloured and modulated by his biological\r\nmake-up out of which it had emerged; the age of modernism\r\nand scientism began with the development of a rigorous\r\nrationalism which means a severance and transcendence of\r\nthe biological antecedent.&nbsp; </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In other words, it can be said that the older humanity was \r\nintuitive and instinctive, while modern humanity is rationalistic. Now it has been questioned whether this change or reorientation is a sign of progress, whether it has not been at the\r\nmost a mixed blessing. Many idealists and reformers frankly </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 83</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><b>&nbsp;</b>view the metamorphosis with anxiety. Gerald Heard vehemently declares that the rationalism of the modern age is a \r\nnarrowing down of the consciousness to a superficial movement, a foreshortening, and a top-heavy specialisation which\r\nmeans stagnation, decay and death. He would rather release\r\nthe tension in the strangulation of consciousness, even if<b> \r\n</b>it<b> \r\n</b>means a slight coming down to the anterior level of instinct\r\nand intuition, but of more plasticity and less specialisation:&nbsp; it is, he says, only in conditions of suppleness and variability,\r\nof life organised yet sufficiently free that the forces of evolution\r\ncan act fruitfully. It has also been pointed out that <i>homo\r\nsapiens</i> is not a direct descendant of <i>homo neanderthalis</i> who was\r\nalready a far too specialised being, but of a stock anterior<b> \r\n</b>to<b> \r\n</b>it which was still uncertain, wavering, groping towards a\r\ndefinite emergence. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, these two positions—of Jung and of Heard—offer \r\nus\r\na good basis upon which we can try to estimate the nature of\r\nman\'s progress in historical times. Both refer to a crucial\r\nchange in human consciousness, a far-reaching change having\r\nno parallel since it invented the metal tool. The change means\r\nthe appearance of pure intelligence in man, a change, as we\r\nmay say, in modern terms, in the system of reference, from\r\nbiological co-ordinates to those of pure reason. Only Jung<br>\r\nthinks that the reorganisation of the human consciousness is\r\nto happen precisely round the focus of pure reason, while\r\nGerald Heard is doubtful about the efficacy of this faculty—\r\nof &quot;directive thinking&quot;, as Jung puts it—if it is to lead to\r\noverspecialisation, which means the swelling of one member\r\nand atrophy of the rest; a greater and supreme direction he\r\nseeks elsewhere in a transcendence of intelligence and reason\r\nwhich, besides, is bound to happen ,in the course of evolution. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We characterise the change as a special degree or order of\r\nself-consciousness. Self-consciousness, we have seen, is the <i>sine qua non</i> of humanity. It is the faculty or power by and with\r\nwhich man appears on earth and maintains himself as such,\r\nas a distinct species. Thanks to this faculty man has become\r\nthe tool-making animal, the artisan—<i>homo faber.</i> But on emerging from the original mythopœic to the scientific status man\r\nhas become doubly self-conscious. Self-consciousness means to\r\nbe aware of oneself as standing separate from and against the </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 84</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">environment and the world and acting upon it as a free agent,\r\nexercising one\'s deliberate will. Now the first degree of self-consciousness displayed itself in a creative activity by which\r\nconsciousness remained no-longer a suffering organon, but\r\nbecame a growing and directing, a reacting and new-creating\r\nagent. Man gained the power to shape the order of Nature\r\naccording to the order of his inner will and consciousness.\r\nThis creative activity, the activity of the artisan, developed\r\nalong two lines: first, artisanship with regard to one\'s own\r\nself, one\'s inner nature and character, and secondly, with\r\nregard to the external nature, the not-self. The former gave\r\nrise to mysticism and Yoga and was especially cultivated\r\nin India, while the second has led us to Science, man\'s physical\r\nmastery, which is the especial field of European culture. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Now the second degree of self-consciousness to which we\r\nreferred is the scientific consciousness <i>par excellence.</i> It can be described also as the spirit and power of experimentation,\r\nor more precisely, of scientific experimentation: it involves\r\ngenerically the process with which we are familiar in the domain\r\nof industry and is termed &quot;synthetic&quot;, that is to say, it means\r\nthe skill and capacity to create the conditions under which a\r\ngiven phenomenon can be repeated at will. Hence it means a\r\nperfect knowledge of the process of things—which again is a\r\ndual knowledge: (1) the knowledge of the steps gradually\r\nleading to the result and (2) the knowledge that has the\r\npower to resolve the result into its antecedent conditions. Thus\r\nthe knowledge of the <i>mechanism,</i> the detailed working of things,\r\nis scientific knowledge, and therefore scientific knowledge\r\ncan be truly said to be mechanistic knowledge, in the best\r\nsense of the term. Now the knowledge of the ends and the\r\nknowledge of the means (to use a phrase of Aldous Huxley)\r\nand the conscious control over either have given humanity a\r\nnew degree of self-consciousness. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It can be mentioned here that there can be a knowledge<b> \r\n</b>of<b> \r\n</b>ends without a corresponding knowledge of means, even there\r\ncan be a control over ends without a preliminary control over\r\nmeans—perhaps not to perfection, but to a sufficient degree\r\nof practical utility. Much of the knowledge—especially\r\nsecular and scientific—in ancient times was of this order; what we mean to say is that the knowledge was more instinctive </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 85</font><hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">or intuitive than rational or intellectual. In that knowledge the result only, the end that it to say, was the chief aim\r\nand concern, the means for attaining the end was, one cannot\r\nperhaps say, ignored, but slurred or slipped over as it were: the process was thus involved or understood, not expressed or\r\ndetailed out. Thus we know of some mathematical problems\r\nto which correct solutions were given of which the process is\r\nnot extant or lost as some say. Our suggestion is that there\r\nwas in fact very little of the process as we know it now—the\r\nsolution was reached <i>per saltum,</i> that is to say, somehow, in the\r\nsame manner as we find it happening even today in child\r\nprodigies. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; One can point out however that even before the modern\r\nscientific age, there was an epoch of pure intellectual activity,\r\nas represented, for example, by scholasticism. The formal\r\nintellectualism which was the gift of the Greek sophists or the\r\nMimansakas and grammarians in ancient India has to be recognised as a pure mental movement, freed from all life value\r\nor biological bias. What then is the difference? What is the\r\nnew characteristic element brought in by the modern scientific\r\nintellectualism ? </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The old intellectualism generally and on the whole, was\r\ntruly formal and even to a great extent verbal. In other words,\r\nit sought to find norms and categories in the mind itself and\r\nimpose them upon objects, objects of experience, external or\r\ninternal. The first discovery of the pure mind, the joy of\r\nindulging in its own free formations led to an abstraction that\r\nbrought about a cleavage between mind and nature, and\r\nwhen a harmony was again attempted between the two, it\r\nmeant an imposition of one (the Mind) upon another (Matter),\r\na subsumption of the latter under the former. Such scholastic\r\nformalism, although it has the appearance of a movement\r\nof pure intellect, free from the influence of instinctive or\r\nemotive reactions, cannot but be, at bottom, a mythopoeic\r\noperation, in the Jungian phraseology; it is not truly objective\r\nin the scientific sense. The scientific procedure is to find\r\nNature\'s own categories—the constants, as they are called.\r\n—and link up mind and intellect with that- reality. This is the\r\nCopernican revolution that Science brought about in the\r\nmodern outlook. Philosophers like Kant or Berkeley may say </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 86</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">another thing and even science itself just nowadays may\r\nappear hesitant in its bearings. But that is another story which\r\nit is not our purpose to consider here and which does not\r\nchange the fundamental position. We say then that the objectivity of the scientific outlook, as distinguished from the\r\nabstract formalism of old-world intellectualism, has given a\r\nnew degree of mental growth and is the basis of the &quot;mechanistic&quot; methodology of which we have been speaking.&nbsp;</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Indeed, what we lay stress upon is the methodology of\r\nmodern scientific knowledge—the apparatus of criticism and\r\nexperimentation. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We have said that this &quot;methodologism&quot;—the knowledge\r\nof means and the consequent control over means—the hall-\r\nmark of modern scientific knowledge—is a new degree of\r\nself-consciousness which is the special characteristic of the\r\nhuman consciousness. Put philosophically, we can say that\r\nthe discovery of the <i>subject</i> and its growing affirmation as an\r\nindependent factor in a subject-object relation marks the\r\nevolutionary course of the human consciousness. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A still further unveiling seems to be in progress now. The\r\nsubject has discovered itself as separate from the observed object and still \r\nembracing it: but a given subject-object relationship in its turn again is being viewed as itself an object\r\nto another subject consciousness, a super-subject. That way\r\nlie the ever widening horizons of consciousness opened up by\r\nYoga and spiritual discipline. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In other words, the self-consciousness which marks off man\r\nas the highest of living beings as yet evolved by Nature is still not her \r\nhighest possible instrumentation. As has been experienced and foreseen by Yogins in all ages and climes and\r\nas it is being borne in upon the modern mind more and more\r\nimperatively, this self-consciousness has -to be consciously\r\ntranscended, lifted, transmuted—worked out into the super-consciousness. Such is Nature\'s evolutionary <i>nisus</i> and such\r\nis the truth and fact man is being driven to face in his inner\r\nindividual consciousness as well as outer collective life. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We can thus note, broadly speaking, three stages in the\r\nhuman cycle of Nature\'s evolution. The first was the period of\r\nemergence of self-consciousness and the trials and experiments\r\nit went through to establish and confirm itself. The ancient </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 87</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">civilisations represented this character of the human spirit. The subject freeing itself more and more from its environmental tegument, still living and moving within it and dynamically reacting upon it—this was the character we speak of.\r\nNext came the period when the free and dynamic subject\r\nfeeling itself no more tied down to its natural objective sphere\r\nsought lines of development and adventure on its own account. This was the age of speculation and of scholasticism in philosophy and intellectual inquiry and of alchemy in natural\r\nscience—a period roughly equated with the Middle Ages. The\r\nScientific Age coming last seeks to re-establish a junction and\r\nco-ordination between the free and dynamic self-consciousness\r\nand the mode and pattern of its objective field, involving a\r\ngreater enrichment on one side—the subjective consciousness&nbsp; <b>—</b>and on \r\nthe other, the objective environment, a corresponding change and effective reorganisation. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The present age which ushers a fourth stage—significantly\r\ncalled <i>tunya</i> or the transcendent, in Indian terminology—is\r\npregnant with a fateful crisis. The stage of self-consciousness\r\nto which scientific development has arrived seems to land in a cul-de-sac, a \r\nblind alley: Science also is faced, almost helplessly, with the antinomies of reason that Kant discovered\r\nlong ago in the domain of speculative philosophy. The way\r\nout, for a further growth and development and evolution, lies\r\nin a supersession of the self-consciousness, an elevation into a\r\nsuperconsciousness—as already envisaged by Yogis and Mystics\r\neverywhere—which will give a new potential and harmony\r\nto the human consciousness. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This super consciousness is based upon a double movement\r\nof sublimation and integration which are precisely the two\r\nthings basically aimed at by present-day psychology to meet\r\nthe demands of new facts of consciousness. The rationalisation,\r\nspecialisation or foreshortening of consciousness, mentioned\r\nabove, is really an attempt at sublimation of the consciousness,\r\nits purification and ascension from baser—animal and vegetal&nbsp; —confines: only, ascension does not mean alienation, it must\r\nmean a gathering up of the lower elements also into their\r\nhigher modes. Integration thus involves a descent, but it has\r\nto be pointed out, not merely or exclusively that, as Jung and\r\nhis school seem to say. Certainly one has to see and recognise </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 88</font><hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">the aboriginal, the infra-rational elements imbedded in our\r\nnature and consciousness, the roots and foundations that lie\r\nburied under the super-structure that Evolution has erected.\r\nBut that recognition must be accompanied by an upward\r\nlook and sense: indeed it is healthy and fruitful only on condition that it occurs in a consciousness open to an infiltration of\r\nlight coming from summits not only of the mind but above\r\nthe mind. If we go back, it must be with a light that is ahead\r\nof us: that is the sense of evolution. </font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 89</p>\r\n		<hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></p></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">\r\n\r\n<br><br>\r\n&nbsp;<br clear=all>\r\n\r\n</font>\r\n\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-11_Human Progress','','publish','closed','open','','11_human-progress','','','2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/11_human-progress/',0,'post','',0),(1494,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>20 the world.htm</title>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html;charset=windows-1252\">\r\n</head>\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>The World is One</i> </font></b></p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">WE say not only that India is one and indivisible (and for that\r\nmatter, Bengal too is one and indivisible, since we have to\r\nrepeat axiomatic truths that have fallen on evil days and on\r\nevil tongues) but that also the whole world is one and indivisible. They who seek to drive in a wedge anywhere, who are\r\nbusy laying some kind of <i>cordon sanitaire</i> across countries and\r\nnations or cultures and civilisations, in the name of a bigoted\r\nideology, are, to say the least, doing a disservice to humanity,\r\nindeed they are inviting a disaster and catastrophe to the world\r\nand equally to themselves. For that is an attempt to stem the\r\nhigh tide of Nature\'s swell towards a global unity that shall\r\nbrook no resistance.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The distinctions and differences that held good in other\r\ntimes and climes can have no sense or value in the world of\r\ntoday. Race or religion can divide man no longer; even nation-hood has lost much of its original force and meaning. It is\r\nstrange—perhaps it is inevitable in the secret process of Nature\'s\r\nworking—that when everything in conditions and circumstances obviously demands and points to an obliteration of all\r\nfrontiers of division and separation—economically and politically too—and all drives towards a closer co-operation and\r\nintermingling, it is precisely then that the contrary spirit and\r\nimpulse raises its head and seems even to gather added strength\r\nand violence. The fact may have two explanations. First of all,\r\nit may mean a defence gesture in Nature, that is to say, certain\r\nforces or formations have a permanent place in Nature\'s\r\neconomy and when they apprehend that they are being ousted\r\nand neglected, when there is a one-pointed drive for their\r\nexclusion, naturally they surge up and demand recognition\r\nwith a vengeance: for things forgotten or left aside that form</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 157<hr>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<font face=\"Times New Roman\">indissolubly part of Nature\'s fabric and pattern, one has to<b> \r\n</b>retrace one\'s steps in order to pick them up again. But also the\r\nphenomenon may mean a simple case of atavism: for we must\r\nknow that there are certain old-world aboriginal habits and\r\nmovements that have to go and have no place in the higher\r\nscheme of Nature and these too come up off and on, especially\r\nwhen the demand is there for their final liquidation. They have\r\nto be recognised as such and treated as such. Radical and .\r\nreligious (including ideological) egoisms seem to us to belong\r\nto this category.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the higher scheme of Nature, the next evolutionary status\r\nthat is being forged, it is unity, harmony that is insisted upon,\r\nfor that is the very basis of the new creation: whatever militates\r\nagainst that, whatever creates division and disruption must\r\nbe banned and ruthlessly eschewed. In the reality of things, in\r\nthe actual life that man lives, it will be found that on the whole,\r\nthings that separate are less numerous and insistent than those\r\nwhich unite, man and man and nation and nation, if each one\r\nsimply lives and lets live: on the contrary, it is the points of\r\nConcordance and mutuality that abound. A certain knot or\r\ntwist in the mind makes all the difference: it brings in the\r\nignorance, selfishness, blind passion—a possession by the dark\r\nf9rces of atavism that makes the mischief.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We ask for freedom, liberty of the \r\nindividual, self-determination—well and good. But that does not mean the licence\r\nto do as one pleases, impelled by one\'s irrational idiosyncrasies.\r\nThe individual must be truly individual, not a fractional being, the self must \r\nbe the real self, not a shadow or surface formulation in order to have the full right to unfettered movement.\r\nLiberty, yes; but that means liberty for all which means again\r\nthe other two terms of the great trinity, equality and fraternity.\r\nIndividuality, yes; that means every individuality, in other\r\nwords, solidarity. The two sides of the equation must be given\r\nequal value and equal emphasis. If the stress upon one leads to\r\nNazism, Fascism or Stalinism, steam-rollered uniformity or\r\nstreamlined regimentation, the death of the individual, the\r\nother emphasis leads to disintegration and disruption, to the\r\nsame end in a different way. But in the world of today, after\r\nthe victory in the last war over the Nazi conception of humanity, it seems as though the spirit of disruption has gone</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 158<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">abroad, human consciousness has been atom-bombed into\r\nflying fragments; so we have the spectacle of all manner of\r\nparochialism pullulating on the earth, \'regional and ideological\r\n—imperial blocs, nations, groups, parties have chequered <i>ad infinitum,</i> have balkanised human commonalty.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We badly needed a United Nations Organisation, but we\r\nare facing the utmost possible disunity. The lesson is that\r\npolitics alone will not save us, nor even economics. The word,\r\nhas gone forth: what is required is a <i>change of heart.</i> The leaders\r\nof humanity must have a new heart grafted in place of the old.\r\nThat is the surgical operation imperative at the moment. That\r\nheart will declare in its beats that the cosmos is not atomic but\r\none and indivisible, <i>ekam sat, neha nanasti kincana.</i></font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 159<hr>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-22_The World is One','','publish','closed','open','','22_the-world-is-one','','','2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/22_the-world-is-one/',0,'post','',0),(1495,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>5.htm</title>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html;charset=windows-1252\">\r\n</head>\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n		<b>\r\n		<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness</i> </font>\r\n		</b>\r\n		<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n		&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">EVEN the Vedic Rishis used to refer to the ancients, more\r\nancient than they themselves. &quot;The ancients&quot;, they said,\r\n&quot;worshipped Agni, we too the moderns in our turn worship\r\nthe same godhead&quot;.<b> </b> Or again, &quot;Thus spoke our forefathers&quot;;&nbsp; or, &quot;So have we heard from those who have gone before us&quot;\r\nand so on. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Indeed, the tradition in the domain of spiritual discipline\r\nseems to have been always to realise once again what has\r\nalready been realised by others, to rediscover what has already\r\nbeen discovered, to re-establish ancient truths. Others have\r\ngone before on the Path, we have only to follow. The teaching,\r\nthe realisation is handed down uninterruptedly through\r\nmillenniums from Master to disciple. In other words, the\r\nidea is that the fundamental spiritual realisation remains the\r\n\'same always and everywhere: the name and the form only\r\n. vary according to the age and the surroundings. The one\r\nreality is called variously, says the Veda. Who can say when\r\nwas the first dawn! The present dawn has followed the track\r\nof the infinite series that has gone by and is the first of the\r\ninfinite series that is to come. So sings Rishi Kanwa. For the\r\ncore of spiritual realisation is to possess the consciousness,\r\nattain the status of the Spirit. This Spirit may be called God\r\nby the theist or Nihil by the Negativist or Brahman (the One)\r\nby the Positivist (spiritual). But the essential experience of a&nbsp;\r\ncosmic and transcendental reality does not differ very much.\r\nSo it is declared that there is only one goal and aim, and there\r\nare, at the most, certain broad principles, clear pathways\r\nwhich one has to follow if one is to move in the right direction,\r\nadvance smoothly and attain infallibly: but these have been\r\nwell marked out, surveyed and charted and do not admit of </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 54</font><hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">serious alterations and deviations. The spiritual aspiration is\r\na very definite and unitary movement and its fulfilment is\r\nalso a definite and invariable status of the consciousness. The\r\nspiritual is a typal domain, one may say, there is no room here\r\nfor sudden unforeseen variation or growth or evolution. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Is it so in fact ? For, if one admits and accepts the evolutionary character of human nature and consciousness, the\r\noutlook becomes somewhat different. According to this view,\r\nhuman civilisation is seen as moving through progressive\r\nstages: man at the outset was centrally lodged in and occupied\r\nwith his body consciousness, he was an <i>annamaya purusa;</i> then\r\nhe raised himself and centred in the vital consciousness and\r\nso became fundamentally a <i>pranamaya purusa;</i> next he climbed\r\ninto the mental consciousness and became a <i>manomaya purusa;</i> from that level again he has been attempting to go further\r\nbeyond. On each plane the normal life is planned according\r\nto the central character, the law—dharma—of that plane. One can have the religious or spiritual experience on each of\r\nthese planes, representing various degrees of growth and\r\nevolution according to the plane to which it is attached. It is\r\ntherefore that the Tantra refers to three gradations of spiritual\r\nseekers and accordingly three types or lines of spiritual discipline: the animal \r\n(<i>pasu bhava),</i> the heroic <i>(vira bhava)</i> and\r\nthe godly or divine <i>{deva bhava).</i> The classification is not\r\nmerely typal but also hierarchical and evolutionary in\r\ncharacter. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Divine or the spiritual consciousness, instead of being\r\na simple unitary entity, is a vast, complex, stratified reality.\r\n&quot;There are many chambers in my Father\'s mansion&quot;, says\r\nthe Bible: many chambers on many stories, one may add.\r\nAlso there are different levels or approaches that serve different\r\nseekers each with his own starting-point, his <i>point de repaire.\r\n</i>When one speaks of union with the Divine or of entering into\r\nthe spiritual consciousness, one does not refer to the same<br>\r\nidentical truth or reality as any other. There is a physical\r\nDivine, a vital Divine, a mental Divine; and beyond the mind\r\n, —from where one may consider that the region of true spirit\r\nbegins—there are other innumerable modes, aspects, manifestations of the Divine. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As we say, there are not only aspects of the Divine, but </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 55</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">there are also levels in him. The spiritual consciousness rises\r\ntier upon tier and each spur has its own view and outlook,\r\nrhythm and character. Now, as long as man was chiefly\r\npreoccupied with his physico-vital or mentalised physico-vital activities, as long as the burden of his body and life and\r\neven mind lay heavy on him and their gravitational pull was\r\nnormally very strong, almost irresistible, the spiritual impulse\r\nin him acted generally and fundamentally as a movement of\r\nescape from them into <i>some</i> thing beyond. It was a negative\r\nmovement on the whole and it was enough to dissociate,&nbsp;\r\nreject, sublimate the lower status and somehow rise into\r\nsomething which is not that <i>(neti):</i> the question was not\r\nimportant at that stage of the human consciousness about a&nbsp;\r\nscientific scrutiny of the Beyond, its precise constitution and\r\ncomposition. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But once there is the possibility gained of a more normalised,\r\nfamiliar and wider reconnaissance of the Beyond, when the\r\nhuman being has been mentalised to a degree and in a manner\r\nthat makes it inevitable for him to overpass to a higher status\r\nand live there habitually, then it becomes an urgent matter of\r\nconcern to know and find out where one goes exactly, on\r\nwhich level and in what domain, once one is beyond. The\r\nquestion, it is true, engaged the attention of the ancients too; but it was more or less an interesting inquiry, a good part \r\nspeculative and theoretical; it had not the reality and insistence of the need of the hour. We have today chalked out\r\nan almost exhaustive science of the inferior consciousness,\r\nof the lower hemisphere—of course, so far as it is possible for\r\nsuch a science to be exhaustive moving in the light of the\r\npartial and inferior consciousness. In the same way we need at\r\nthe present hour a complete and precise science of the Divine<br>\r\nConsciousness. As there is a logic of the finite, there is also a\r\nlogic of the infinite, not merely its magic, and that too has to\r\nbe discovered and laid out. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thus, the highest and most comprehensive description of\r\nthe Divine is perhaps the formula Sat-chit-ananda. But even\r\nso, it is a very general and, after all, an inadequate description.\r\nIt has to be filled in and supplemented by other categories\r\nas well, if one may say so. For Sat-chit-ananda presents to us\r\nthe Sat Brahman. There is also the Asat Brahman. And again </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 56</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">we must accept a reality which is neither Sat nor Asat—<i>nasadasinno sadasit,</i> says the Veda. And as for the filling up of\r\nthe details in an otherwise almost blank and featureless\r\ninfinity, Sri Aurobindo\'s charting of that vast unknown—with\r\nthe categories of the Supermind and its various levels, of the\r\nOvermind and its levels too, all forming the Divine Status and \r\nConsciousness—is a new, almost a revolutionary revelation, just the required science which the present world\r\nneeds and demands and for which it has been prepared through\r\nall the cycles of evolution. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This means to say that with the knowledge that is given us\r\ntoday, one can determine more or less definitely the altitudes\r\nto which the various spiritual realisations of the past rose\r\nand one can see also the degrees or graded stages of the\r\nevolution of the spiritual consciousness. A broad landmark\r\ncan be noted here which concerns us at the present moment.\r\nThe spiritual consciousness has been rising to higher and\r\nhigher peaks and possessing them one after another. At the\r\npresent moment we are at a crisis, at a crucial crossing. The\r\nspiritual consciousness attained till now and securely held in\r\nhuman possession (in man\'s inner nature) is confined to the\r\nhighest level of the mind with some infiltration from the Over-mind and through that, as a springing board, a leap into an\r\nindefinite, almost a blank Beyond. Now the time is come and\r\nthe conditions are ready for the spiritual consciousness in\r\nhumanity to arrive at the status above the Overmind to the\r\nSupermind, and make that a living reality and build in and\r\nthrough that its normal consciousness. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A progressive revelation of higher .and higher and more\r\nintegral states of the spiritual consciousness in and through\r\nthe realisations of mystics and sages and seers—divine men—\r\n—of all ages, such is the process of evolution that marks the\r\nlife of man upon earth. This spiritual evolution, however, may\r\nnot be obviously visible in the external life and character of\r\nman: it has been a phenomenon more in his inner being and\r\nconsciousness, an occult phenomenon. Hence there has\r\nintervened a veil, wall of separation between the two. The\r\nveil has not been rent precisely because the very highest\r\nspiritual potential has not been reached and brought into\r\nplay. The call of the present age is just to do away with this </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 57</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">veil, make of human nature a unified, a streamlined entity,\r\na complete incarnation of the spiritual consciousness in the\r\nfullness of its own nature at its source and origin.&nbsp; </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 58<hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></p></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-07_Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness','','publish','closed','open','','07_evolution-of-the-spiritual-consciousness','','','2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/07_evolution-of-the-spiritual-consciousness/',0,'post','',0),(1496,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','<html>\r\n\r\n<head>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=windows-1252\">\r\n<title>Kabindranath Tagore</title>\r\n</head>\r\n\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<b>\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo</i> </font>\r\n\r\n		</b>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&quot;TAGORE has been a wayfarer towards the same goal as ours\r\nin his own way.&quot; Sri Aurobindo wrote these words in the\r\nthirties and their full significance can be grasped only when it\r\nis understood that the two master-souls were at one in the\r\ncentral purpose of their lives. Also there is a further bond of\r\nnatural affinity between them centring round the fact that\r\nboth were poets, in a deeper sense, seer poets—Rabindranath\r\nthe Poet of the Dawn, Sri Aurobindo the Poet and Prophet of\r\nthe Eternal Day, a new Dawn and Day for the human race. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And both had the vision of a greater Tomorrow for their\r\nMotherland and that was why both regarded her freedom as\r\nthe basic necessity for the recovery of her greatness. How the\r\ninspired songs and speeches of Rabindranath and the flaming \'\r\nutterances of Sri Aurobindo created a psychological revolution\r\nalmost overnight in the mind and heart of the people during\r\nthe Swadeshi days forms a glorious chapter in the history of\r\nIndia\'s freedom movement. Profoundly touched by Sri\r\nAurobindo\'s soul-stirring lead to the country, Rabindranath\r\nwrote a memorable poem, addressing Sri Aurobindo, which is\r\nstill enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen. Rabindranath\r\nhimself called on Sri Aurobindo and read out to him his heart\'s\r\nhomage. We remember with thrill the majestic opening lines: </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Rabindranath, 0 Aurobindo, bows to thee! </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">0 friend, my country\'s friend, 0 voice incarnate, free, </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Of India\'s soul !<sup>1</sup></font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sri Aurobindo retired from the outer political world to\r\ndevote himself more intensively to the discovery and conquest</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><br>\r\n<font size=\"2\">1 &quot;Salutation&quot;</font>&nbsp; </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 375</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">of a new consciousness and force, glimpses of which he was\r\nhaving at the time and which alone could save mankind and recreate it. From 1910 \r\nto 1914 he was, he said, silently developing this new power in seclusion and in 1914 he began to give\r\nto the world the result of his realisations through his monthly\r\nreview <i>Arya.</i> In five major sequences published month after\r\nmonth through several years, he envisaged, in the main, the\r\nprogressive march of man towards a divine life on earth,\r\ntowards the unity of mankind and a perfect social order. One\r\nof these serials was called <i>The Future Poetry</i> in which he traced\r\nthe growth and development that world poetry is undergoing\r\ntowards its future form that would voice the dawn of a New\r\nAge of the Spirit. Sri Aurobindo hailed those who feel and foresee this distant \r\ndawn behind the horizon as the Forerunners of the new Spirit, among whom he included Rabindranath, because he saw in Tagore\'s the first beginnings, &quot;a glint\r\nof the greater era of man\'s living&quot;, something that &quot;seems to\r\nbe in promise.&quot; &quot;The poetry of Tagore,&quot; Sri Aurobindo says,\r\n&quot;owes its sudden and universal success to this advantage that\r\nhe gives us more of this discovery and fusion for which the\r\nmind of our age is in quest than any other creative writer of\r\nthe time. His work is a constant music of the overpassing of\r\nthe borders, a chant-filled realm in which the subtle sounds\r\nand lights of the truth of the spirit give new meanings to the\r\nfiner subtleties of life.&quot; </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Characterising Tagore\'s poetry, in reference to a particular\r\npoem, Sri Aurobindo once wrote: &quot;But the poignant sweetness,\r\npassion and spiritual depth and mystery of a poem like this,\r\nthe haunting cadences subtle with a subtlety which is not of\r\ntechnique but of the soul, and the honey-laden felicity of the\r\nexpression, these are the essential Rabindranath and cannot be\r\nimitated because they are things of the spirit and one must\r\nhave the same sweetness and depth of soul before one can hope\r\nto catch any of these desirable qualities.&quot; Furthermore: &quot;One\r\nof the most remarkable peculiarities of Rabindra Babu\'s\r\ngenius is the happiness and originality with which he has absorbed the whole spirit of Vaishnava poetry and turned it into\r\nsomething essentially the same and yet new and modern. He\r\nhas given the old sweet spirit of emotional and passionate\r\nreligion an expression of more delicate and complex richness </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 376</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">voiceful of subtler and more penetratingly spiritual shades of\r\nfeeling than the deep-hearted but simple early age of Bengal\r\ncould know.&quot; </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Certain coincidences and correspondences in their lives may\r\nbe noticed here. The year 1905 and those that immediately\r\nfollowed found them together on the crest wave of India\'s\r\nfirst nationalist resurgence. Again both saw in the year 1914 a\r\nmomentous period marked by events of epochal importance,\r\none of which was the First World War. For Tagore it was <i>&quot;yuga-sandhi,</i> the dying of the old age of Night to the dawning\r\nof a new with its blood-red sunrise emerging through the travail\r\nof death, sorrow and pain&quot;. For Sri Aurobindo it was a cataclysm intended by Nature to effect a first break in the old\r\norder to usher in the new. The significant year 1914 was also\r\nthe period when Rabindranath expressed in the magnificent\r\nseries of poems of the <i>Balaka</i> his visions and experiences of the\r\nforces at work on earth, and Sri Aurobindo began revealing\r\nthrough the pages of the <i>Arya</i> the truths of the supramental infinities that were then pouring down into him and through him\r\ninto the earth\'s atmosphere. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So it was natural and almost inevitable—written among the\r\nstars—that both should meet once more on this physical earth.\r\nSri Aurobindo had been in complete retirement seeing none\r\nexcept, of course, his attendants. He was coming out only four\r\ntimes in the year to give silent <i>darshan</i> to his devotees and a\r\nfew others who sought for it. It was in the year 1928. Tagore\r\nwas then on a tour to the South. He expressed to Sri Aurobindo\r\nby letter his desire for a personal meeting. Sri Aurobindo\r\nnaturally agreed to receive him. Tagore reached Pondicherry\r\nby steamer, and I had the privilege to see him on board the\r\nship and escort him to the Ashram. The Mother welcomed\r\nhim at the door of Sri Aurobindo\'s apartments and led him to\r\nSri Aurobindo. Tagore already knew the Mother, for both\r\nwere together in Japan and stayed in the same house and she attended some of his \r\nlectures in that country. It may be interesting to mention here that Tagore requested the Mother to take\r\ncharge of the Visva Bharati, for evidently he felt that the\r\nfuture of his dear institution would be in sure hands. But the\r\nMother could not but decline since it was her destiny to be at\r\nanother place and another work. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 377</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What transpired between them is not for me to say, the\r\nmeeting being a private one. But I may quote here what\r\nTagore himself wrote about it subsequently: </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For a long time I had a strong desire to meet Aurobindo.\r\nIt has just been fulfilled... At the very first sight I could\r\nrealise that he had been seeking for the soul and had gained it,\r\nand through this long process of realisation had accumulated\r\nwithin him a silent power of inspiration. His face was radiant\r\nwith an inner light... I felt that the utterance of the ancient\r\nRishi spoke from him of that equanimity which gives the\r\nhuman soul its freedom of entrance into the All. I said to him,\r\n\'You have the Word and we are waiting to accept it from you.\r\nIndia will speak through your voice to the world, \'Hearken\r\nto me\'... Years ago I saw Aurobindo in the atmosphere of\r\nhis earlier heroic youth and I sang to him: </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \'Aurobindo, accept the salutation from Rabindranath.\'\r\nToday I saw him in a deeper atmosphere of a reticent richness\r\nof wisdom and again sang to him in silence: </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \'Aurobindo, accept the salutation from Rabindranath.\'<sup>1\r\n</sup> </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Vibhutis, emanations and embodiments of the higher\r\ndestiny of mankind appear upon earth from time to time<b> \r\n</b>to<b> \r\n</b>lead and guide the race on the upward way. And we are fortunate that we are born in an age that has been blessed by\r\ntwo such Shining Ones. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"2\">1 <i>The Modern Review,</i> July 1928. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 378</font><hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n\r\n</body>\r\n\r\n</html>\r\n','-53_Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo','','publish','closed','open','','53_rabindranath-and-sri-aurobindo','','','2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/53_rabindranath-and-sri-aurobindo/',0,'post','',0),(1497,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','<html>\r\n\r\n<head>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=windows-1252\">\r\n<title>Brahmacharya</title>\r\n</head>\r\n\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Brahmacharya</i> </font></b></p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">BRAHMACHARYA means the storage of energy in the body and\r\nits sublimation. The energy in view is mainly physico-vital\r\nenergy, the vital energy based upon and imbedded in the\r\nphysical body. Brahmacharya naturally meant a strict observance of certain rules and regulations involving a strenuous\r\ndiscipline.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Brahmacharya was the very basis of education in ancient\r\nIndia: indeed, it was the basic education upon which Indian&nbsp;\r\nculture, Indian civilization, Indian life was based and built\r\nup. Without it there was no entry into the business of life.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Modern education means storage of information, knowledge\r\nof things—as much knowledge of as many things as it is\r\npossible for the brain to contain. The older ideal, however, was not so much \r\nknowledge, that is to say, packet of knowings, but capacity, first capacity in a general way, and then\r\nas its application, the capacity of knowledge. The problem\r\nwas to locate, that is to say, find out the source of energy\r\nthen master it, increase it, harness it and utilise it. The\r\nphysico-vital energy is the most elementary and elemental\r\nenergy that is nearest to us and most easily available. It is\r\nthe basic energy; man starts his life with that, a child possesses\r\nit abundantly. The first problem is how to store it; evidently\r\nit is most liable to be thrown or frittered away. The first form\r\nof the discipline in the preparatory stage of early life is regularity in habits, methodical physical exercises; even a fixed\r\nroutine sometimes helps much. Next comes self-control, continence,\r\nphysical purity. This is Brahmacharya proper. It means\r\nthe exercise of conscious will.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We do not speak of Brahmacharya in relation to a child.\r\nThe discipline can be taken up only when the body and the</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 193</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">consciousness have attained a certain degree of growth and\r\ndevelopment. A child grows in the full free play of its life\r\nmovements: the care or attention of others should weigh\r\nupon it as lightly as possible, maintaining only an atmosphere\r\nof happy influence and protection. The transition from the\r\nstage of free play to conscious control is marked in Indian\r\nsociety by the ceremony of <i>upanayana,</i> the first approach or\r\ninitiation: it is the beginning of the life of Brahmacharya.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It must be understood that this discipline is not merely for\r\nthose who wish to follow a religious or spiritual life, but for\r\nall without exception. Brahmacharya is the first ashrama, order\r\nor stage of life with which one begins one\'s organisation of\r\nlife; one has to pass through it to others leading to greater\r\nand higher degrees of fulfilment. It forms the foundation,\r\nprepares the necessary ground upon which the life structure\r\ncan safely be raised and maintained. It is the secret fund of\r\nstrength, the source of pure energies that vitalises life, enhances\r\nits values, makes it worth living.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The energy that one stores by continence, regular habits\r\nand self-discipline increases also in that way. Sometimes\r\nspecial methods—kriya—are adopted to help the process,\r\nAsana or Pranayama, for example. But an inner and a more\r\npsychological procedure is needed, a concentration of will\r\nand consciousness—a kind of dhyana, in other words—in\r\norder to be able to take the next step in discipline. For after\r\nthe storage and increase of energy comes the sublimation of\r\nenergy, that is to say, the physico-vital energy transmuted\r\ninto the energy of mental substance, <i>medha.</i> Sublimation means\r\nalso the increase of brain-power, an enhancement in the\r\ndegree and quality of its capacity. This has nothing to do with\r\nthe volume of knowledge enclosed (the mass of information\r\nto which we referred before) the growth is with regard to\r\nthe very stuff of the mind from within, the natural strength\r\nof intelligence that can be applied to any field of knowledge\r\nwith equal success and felicity.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The basis and the immediate aim of education according\r\nto the ancient system was to develop this fundamental mental\r\ncapacity: the brain\'s power to think clearly, consistently\r\nand deeply, to undergo labour without tiring easily and also\r\na general strength and steadiness in the nerves. The transference </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 194<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">of nervous energy into brain energy is also a secret\r\nof the process of sublimation. It is precisely this aspect of\r\neducation that has been most neglected in modern times.\r\nWe give no thought to this fundamental: we leave the brain\r\nto develop as it may (or may not), it is made to grow under\r\npressure—more to inflate than to grow—by forcing into it\r\nmasses of information. The result at best is that it is sharpened,\r\nmade acute superficially or is overgrown in a certain portion\r\nof it in respect of a narrow and very specialised function,\r\nlosing thereby a healthy harmony and homogeneity in the\r\ntotal movement. The intellectual\'s nervous instability is a\r\nvery common phenomenon among us.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In recent times, however, we have begun to view children\'s\r\neducation in a different light. It is being more and more\r\nrealised that things are not to be instilled into the child from\r\noutside, but that the child should be allowed to grow and\r\nimbibe naturally. The teacher is only a companion and a\r\nguide: he is to let the child move according to its own inclinations, follow its own line of curiosity; he can open up and\r\npresent new vistas of curiosity, seek to evoke new interests.\r\nSympathy and encouragement on his side giving scope to\r\nfreedom and autonomous development for the child—this is\r\nthe watchword and motto for the ideal teacher.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This new approach has rectified much of the wrong handling of the problem of education to which we have been accustomed. Even this new orientation, however, is not sufficient:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">along with freedom and autonomy, the element of discipline\r\nand order has also to be brought in, if not quite in the old\r\nway at least in a new manner. It will not do to say simply\r\nthat it must be self-discipline and self-order, but the question\r\nis how it is to be practically carried out. In ancient times\r\nit was done by living the life of an aspirant, not merely by\r\nstudying and going to school, being only a student—but\r\nliving in the hours of the teacher, in the atmosphere of his\r\ndirect presence and influence: the teacher too was not a\r\nmachine issuing mechanical instruction, but a Person who\r\nloved and whom one loved, a warm embodiment of the ideal.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In our days there has been this unhappy division between\r\nthe student and the aspirant. In the student life, life and study\r\nare things apart.<b> </b> One may be a good student, study very</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 195<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">seriously and attain considerable eminence in intellectual\r\nachievement, and yet in life one may remain quite the ordinary\r\nman with very normal reactions. Along with the brain we do\r\nnot endeavour to educate the\' life instincts and body impulses.\r\nThis portion of our nature we leave all alone and do not\r\ndare or care to handle it consciously. Sometimes we call that\r\nfreedom; but it is more slavery than freedom, slavery to our\r\ncommonplace animal nature. Because one follows one\'s\r\nimpulses and instincts freely, without let or hindrance one\r\nfeels as if he were free. Far from it.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This hiatus in our nature, the separation between intellectual\r\nculture and life movement has to be healed up; human\r\npersonality must be made a unified whole. The training given\r\nunder Brahmacharya will be of immense help in that direction.\r\nThe deeper purpose, however, of this discipline is not merely\r\na unification of the personality, but a heightening also, lifting\r\nit to a level of consciousness from where it can envisage its\r\nspiritual destiny and seek to realise it.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 196<hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n</body>\r\n\r\n</html>\r\n','-31_Brahmacharya','','publish','closed','open','','31_brahmacharya','','','2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/31_brahmacharya/',0,'post','',0),(1498,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>28 the quest.htm</title>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html;charset=windows-1252\">\r\n</head>\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=3>IV</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=3>SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;</td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	<tr>\r\n		<td>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>In Quest of \r\n		Reality</i></font></b></p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">THIS is, they say, the age of Positivism—no mystic obfuscation,\r\nbut clear light in the open sun. Let us enquire a little into the\r\nnature of this modern illumination.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Positivists are those who swear by facts. Facts to them mean\r\nnaturally facts attested in the end by sense-experience. To a\r\npositivist the only question that matters and that needs to be\r\nanswered and can be answered is whether a thing <i>is</i> or <i>is not\r\n</i>physically: other questions are otiose, irrelevant, misleading. So problems \r\nof the Good, of the Beautiful, of God are meaningless. When one says this is good, that is bad, well, it is a\r\nproposition that cannot be related to any fact, it is a subjective\r\npersonal valuation. In the objective world a thing simply is\r\nor is not, one cannot say it is good or it is bad. The thing called\r\ngood by one is called bad by another, the same thing that\r\nis good to you now will appear bad at another time. This is a\r\nregion absolutely of personal and variable idiosyncrasy. The\r\nsame with regard to the concept of beauty. That a thing is\r\nbeautiful or ugly is a subjective judgment; it is not and cannot\r\nbe an objective statement. Beauty is a formula in your mind\r\nand imagination, it is a changing mode of your apprehension.The concept of God too fares no better. God exists: it is a judgment based upon no fact or facts of sense-experience. However\r\nwe may analyse it, it is found to have no direct or even indirect\r\nbut inevitable <i>rapport</i> with the field of actual reality. There is\r\nbetween the two an unbridgeable hiatus. This is a position\r\nrestated in a modern style, familiar to the Kantian Critique\r\nof Pure Reason.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There are two ways effacing the problem. First, the Kantian\r\nway which cuts the Gordian knot. We say here that there are\r\ntwo realms in which man lives, but they are incommensurables: </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 207<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">the truths and categories of one cannot be judged and\r\ntested&nbsp; by those of the other. Each is <i>sui generis,</i> each is valid in\r\nits own right, in its own dominion. God, Soul, Immortality—\r\nthese are realities belonging to one section of our nature,\r\nseizable by a faculty other than the Pure Reason, <i>viz.,</i> the\r\nPractical Reason; while the realities given by the senses and\r\nthe judgments of the logical mind are of another section. It\r\nmay be said one is physical, the other metaphysical. The\r\npositivists limit their field of enquiry and knowledge to the\r\nphysical: they seek to keep the other domain quite apart as\r\nsomething imaginary, illusory, often unnecessary and not\r\nunoften harmful to true human interest.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To a more detached and impartial view this may appear very\r\nmuch like the ostrich-policy. If a thing really exists, one cannot negate it by simply closing one\'s eyes. This involves a\r\ndichotomy which the logical mind may like to impose and\r\nlive by, but man cannot be thus artificially segmented. And\r\nif both the worlds are found in him both have to be accepted\r\nand if they are found together, there must be some sort of\r\ncommensurability between the two.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Indeed the second way of approach to the problem is the\r\npositivist\'s own way. That is to say, let us take our stand on the <i>terra firma</i> of the physical and probe into it and find out whether\r\nthere are facts there which open the way or point to the other\r\nside of nature, whether there are signs, hints, intimations,\r\nfactors involved there that lead to conclusions, if not inevitable,\r\nat least conformable to supraphysical truths. It is usually\r\nasserted, for example, that the scientist—the positivist <i>par\r\nexcellence—</i>follows a rigid process of ratiocination, of observation, analysis and judgment. He collects facts and a sufficient\r\nnumber of them made to yield a general law—the probability\r\nof a generic fact—which is tested or exemplified by other correlate facts. This \r\nis however an ideal, a theoretical programme not borne out by actual practice, it is a rationalisation\r\nof a somewhat different actuality. The scientist, even the most\r\nhard-headed among them, the mathematician, finds his laws\r\noften and perhaps usually not by a long process of observation\r\nand induction or deduction, but all on a sudden, in a flash of\r\nillumination. The famous story of Newton and the falling\r\napple, Kepler\'s happy guess of the elliptical orbit of the</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 208<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">planets—and a host of examples can be cited as rather the rule\r\nthan the exception for the methodology of scientific discovery.\r\nProf. Hadamard, the great French mathematician,—the\r\nFrench are well-known for their intransigent, logical and\r\nrational attitude in Science,—has been compelled to admit\r\nthe supreme role of an intuitive faculty in scientific enquiry.\r\nIf it is argued that the so-called sudden intuition is nothing but\r\nthe final outburst, the cumulative resultant of a long strenuous\r\ntravail of thinking and reasoning and arguing, Prof. Hadamard says, in reply, that it does not often seem to be so, for the\r\nanswer or solution that is suddenly found does not lie in the\r\ndirection of or in conformity with the conscious rational\r\nresearch but goes against it and its implications.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This faculty of direct knowledge, however, is not such a rare\r\nthing as it may appear to be. Indeed if we step outside the\r\ncircumscribed limits of pure science instances crowd upon us,\r\neven in our normal life, which would compel one to conclude\r\nthat the rational and sensory process is only a fringe and a very\r\nsmall part of a much greater and wider form of knowing. Poets\r\nand artists, we all know, are familiar only with that form:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">without intuition and inspiration they are nothing. Apart\r\nfrom that, modern inquiries and observations have established\r\nbeyond doubt certain facts of extra-sensory, suprarational\r\nperception—of clairvoyance and clairaudience, of prophecy,\r\nof vision into the future as well as into the past. Not only these\r\nunorthodox faculties of knowledge, but dynamic powers that\r\nalmost negate or flout the usual laws of science have been\r\ndemonstrated to exist and can be and are used by man. The\r\nIndian yogic discipline speaks of the eight <i>siddhis,</i> super-natural power? attained by the Yogi when he learns to control\r\nnature by the force of his consciousness. Once upon a time\r\nthese facts were challenged as facts in the scientific world, but\r\nit is too late now in the day to deny them their right of existence:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Only Science, to maintain its scientific prestige, usually tries\r\nto explain such phenomena in the material way, but with no\r\ngreat success. In the end she seems to say, these freaks do not\r\ncome within her purview and she is not concerned with them.\r\nHowever, that is not for us also the subject for discussion for\r\nthe moment.                  </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The first point then we seek to make out is that even from a</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 209</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">rigid positivist stand a form of knowledge that is not strictly\r\npositivist has to be accepted. Next, if we come to the content\r\nof the knowledge that is being gained, it is found one is being\r\nslowly and inevitably led into a world which is also hardly\r\npositivistic. We have in our study of the physical world come in\r\nclose contact with -two disconcerting facts or two ends of one\r\nfact—the infinitely small and the infinitely large. They have\r\ndisturbed considerably the normal view of things, the view\r\nthat dominated Science till yesterday. The laws that hold good\r\nfor the ordinary sensible magnitudes fail totally in the case of\r\nthe infinite magnitudes (whether big or small). In the infinite\r\nwe begin squaring the circle.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Take for instance, the romantic story of the <i>mass of</i> a body.\r\nMass, at one time, was considered as one of the fundamental\r\nconstants of nature: it meant a fixed quantity of substance\r\ninherent in a body, it was an absolute quality. Now we have\r\ndiscovered that this is not so; the mass of a body varies with its\r\nspeed and an object with infinite speed has an infinite mass—\r\ntheoretically at least it should be so. A particle of matter moving\r\nwith the, speed of light must be terribly massive. But—<i>mirabile\r\ndictu! —</i>a photon has no mass (practically none). In other\r\nwords, a material particle when it is to be most material—\r\nexactly at the critical temperature, as it were—is dematerialised. How does the miracle happen?</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In fact, we are forced to the conclusion that<b> \r\n</b>the picture of<b> \r\n</b>a solid massive material nature is only a mask of the reality;</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">the reality is that matter is a charge of electricity and the charge\r\nof electricity is potentially a mode of light. The ancient distinction between matter and energy is no longer valid. In fact\r\nenergy is the sole reality, matter is only an appearance that\r\nenergy puts on under a certain condition. And this energy too\r\nis not mechanical (and Newtonian) but radiant and <i>ethereal.\r\n</i>We can no longer regret with the poet:</font>\r\n\r\n<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">They have gone into the world of light</font>\r\n\r\n		<p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">for, we all are come into a world of light and we ourselves, the\r\nelements of our physical frame are made of the very texture of\r\nlight.</font>&nbsp;\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <font face=\"Times New Roman\">So far so good. But it is evidently not far enough, for one</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n210<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">can answer that all this falls within the dominion of Matter and\r\nthe material. The conception of Matter has changed, to be\r\nsure: Matter and energy are identified, as we have said, and\r\nthe energy in its essential and significant form is light (which,\r\nwe may say, is electricity at its highest potential). But this\r\ndoes not make any fundamental change in the metaphysical\r\nview of the reality. We have to declare in the famous French\r\nphrase <i>plus a change, plus ca reste Ie meme</i> (the more it changes\r\nthe more it remains the same). The reality remains material:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">for light, physical light is not something spiritual or even\r\nimmaterial.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Well, let us proceed a little further. Admitted the universe\r\nis a physical substance (although essentially of the nature of\r\nlight—admitted light is a physical substance, obeying&nbsp; the law\r\nof gravitation, as Einstein has demonstrated). Does it then\r\nmean that the physical universe is after all a dead inert\r\ninsentient thing, that whatever the vagaries of the ultimate\r\nparticles composing the universe, their structure, their disposition is more or less strictly geometrical (that is to say,\r\nmechanical) and their erratic movement is only the errantry\r\nof a throw of dice—a play of possibilities ? There is nothing\r\neven remotely conscious or purposive in this field.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Let us leave the domain, the domain of inorganic matter for\r\na while and turn to another set of facts, those of organic matter,\r\nof life and its manifestation. The biological domain is a freak\r\nin the midst of what appears to be a rigidly mechanistic material\r\nuniverse. The laws of life are not the laws of matter, very often\r\none contravenes the other. The two converging lenses of the\r\ntwo eyes do not make the image twice brighter than the one\r\nproduced by a single lens. What is this alchemy that forms the\r\nequation l<sup> 2&nbsp; = </sup>l (we might as well put it as 1+1 ==1)? Again,\r\na living whole—a cell—fissured and divided tends to live and\r\ngrow <i>wholly</i> in each fragment. In life we have thus another\r\nstrange equation: part=whole (although in the mathematics\r\nof infinity such an equation is a normal phenomenon). The\r\nbody (of a warm-blooded animal) maintaining a constant\r\ntemperature whether it is at the Pole or at the Equator is a\r\nstanding miracle which baffles mere physics and chemistry.\r\nThirdly, life is immortal—the law of entropy (of irrevocably\r\ndiminishing energy) -that governs the fate of matter does not</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 211<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">seem to hold good here. The original life-cells are \r\ncarried over physically from generation to generation and there is no end to the \r\ncontinuity of the series, if allowed to run its normal course. Material energy \r\nalso, it is said, is indestructible; it is never destroyed, but changes form \r\nonly. But the scientific conception of material energy puts a limit to its \r\ncourse, it proceeds, if we are to believe thermodynamics, towards a dead \r\nequilibrium—there is no such thing as &quot;perpetual movement&quot; in the field of matter.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Again the very characteristic of life is its diversity, its infinite\r\nvariety of norms and forms and movements. The content and\r\nmovement of material nature is calculable to a great extent.\r\nA few mathematical equations or formulae can after all be\r\nmade to cover all or most facts concerning it. But the laws of\r\nlife refuse systematisation. A few laws purporting to govern\r\nthe physical bases of life claim recognition, but they stand on\r\nprecarious grounds. The laws of natural selection, of heredity\r\nor genetics are applicable within a very restricted frame of\r\nfacts. The variety of material substances revolves upon the\r\ngamut of 92 elements based upon 4 or 5 ultimate types of\r\nelectric unit—and that is sufficient to make us wonder. But\r\nthe variety in life-play is simply incalculable—from the\r\namoeba or virus cell to man, what a bewildering kaleidoscope\r\nand each individual in each group is unique in its way! The\r\nfew chromosomes that seem to be the basis of all diversity do\r\nnot explain the mystery—the mystery becomes doubly\r\nmysterious: how does a tiny seed contain the thing that is to\r\nbecome a banyan tree, how does a speck of plasma bring forth\r\nfrom within an object of Hamletian dimensions! What then is\r\nthis energy or substance of life welling out irrepressively into\r\nmultitudinous forms and modes ? The chemical elements composing an organic body do not wholly exhaust its composition;</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">there is something else besides. At least in one field, the life\r\nelement has received recognition and been given an independent name and existence. I am obviously referring to the\r\nlife element in food-stuff which has been called <i>vitamin.</i></font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Life looks out of matter as a green sprout in the midst of a\r\ndesert expanse. But is matter really so very different and\r\ndistinct from life? Does Matter mean no Life? Certain facts\r\nand experiments have thrown great doubt upon that assumption. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 212<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">An Indian, a scientist of the first order in the European\r\nand modern sense, has adduced proofs that obliterate the\r\nhard and fast line of demarcation between the living and the\r\nnon-living. He has demonstrated the parallelism, if not the\r\nidentity, of the responses of those two domains: we use the\r\nterm fatigue in respect of living organisms only, but Jagadis-chandra Bose says and shows, that matter too, a piece of metal\r\nfor instance, undergoes fatigue. Not only so, the graph, the\r\nperiodicity of the reactions as shown by a living body under a\r\nheightened or diminished stimulus or the influence of poison\r\nor drug is repeated very closely by the so-called dead matter\r\nunder the same treatment.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It will not be far from the truth, if it is asserted that matter\r\nis instinct with a secret life. And because there was life secreted&nbsp;\r\nwithin matter, therefore life could come out of matter; there is\r\nhere no spontaneous generation, no arbitrary fiat nor a fortuitous chance. The whole creation is a mighty stir of life. That\r\nis how the ancient Rishi of the Upanishad puts it: Life stirred\r\nand all came out.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, let us advance another step forward. Beyond matter\r\nthere lies life and beyond life—consciousness. Is consciousness\r\ntoo a mere epiphenomenon as life was once thought to be in the\r\nempire of matter ? Or can it not be that consciousness is an\r\nextension—an evolute—of life, even as life is an extension, an\r\nevolute of matter ? In other words consciousness is not a freak,\r\neven as life was not; it is inherent in life, life itself is a rudimentary movement of consciousness. The amoeba feeling or\r\npre-sensing its way towards its food, the twig bending towards\r\nthe direction in which it has the chance of getting more light,\r\nthe sudden appearance of organs or elements in an organism\r\nthat will be useful only in the future are indisputable examples\r\nof a purposiveness, a forward reference in the scheme of Nature.\r\nIn the domain of life-play <i>teleology</i> is a fact which only the\r\ngrossest brand of obfuscation can deny. And teleology means—\r\ndoes it not?—the stress of an idea, the pattern of a consciousness.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Consciousness or thought in man, we know, is linked with\r\nthe brain: and sentience which is the first step towards thought\'\r\nand consciousness is linked with the nervous system (of which\r\nthe brain is an extension). Now the same Indian wizard who\r\nfirst, scientifically speaking, linked up the .non-living with the</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 213<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">living, has also demonstrated, if not absolutely, at least to a\r\nhigh degree of plausibility, that the plant also possesses a kind\r\nof rudimentary nervous system (although we accept more\r\neasily a respiratory system there). All this, however, one has to\r\nadmit, is still a far cry from any intimation of consciousness in\r\nMatter. Yet if life is admitted to be involved in matter and\r\nconsciousness is found to be involved in life, then the unavoidable conclusion is that Matter too must contain involved in it a\r\nform of consciousness. The real difficulty in the way of attributing \r\nconsciousness to Matter is our conception of consciousness which we usually identify with articulate thought,\r\nintelligence or reason. But these are various formations of\r\nconsciousness, which in itself is something else and can exist\r\nin many other forms and formulations. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; One remarkable thing in the material world that has\r\nalways attracted and captivated man\'s attention, since al-\r\n, most the very dawn of his consciousness, is the existence\r\nof a pattern, of an artistic layout in the composition and\r\nmovement of material things. When the Vedic Rishi sings\r\nout: &quot;These countless stars that appear glistening night after\r\nnight, where do they vanish during the day?&quot; he is awed by\r\nthe inviolable rhythm of the Universe, which other sages in\r\nother climes sang as the music of the spheres. The presence of\r\nDesign in Nature has been in the eyes of Believers an incontrovertible proof of the existence of a Designer. What we want   *\r\nto say is not that a watch (if we regard the universe as a watch)\r\npresupposes the existence of a watch-maker: we say the pattern\r\nitself is the expression of an idea, it involves a conception not\r\nimposed or projected from outside but inherent in itself. The\r\nGreek view of the artist\'s mode of operation is very illuminating\r\n\' in this connection. The artist, according to this view, when he\r\ncarves out a statue for example, does not impose upon the\r\nstone a figure that he has only in his mind, but that the stone\r\nitself contains the figure, the artist has the vision to see it, his\r\nchisel follows the lines he sees imbedded in the stone. It is why\r\nwe say that the geometry in the structure of a crystal or an\r\natom or an astronomical system, the balance and harmony,\r\nthe symmetry and polarity that govern the composition of\r\nobjects and their relations, the blend of colour schemes, the\r\nmarshalling of lines and the building of volumes, in a word,</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<font face=\"Times New Roman\">page 214</font></p>\r\n		<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">the artistic make-up, perfect in detail and in the ensemble that\r\ncharacterise all nature\'s body and limbs and finally the\r\nmathematical laws that embrace and picture as it were Nature\'s\r\nmovements, all point to the existence of a truth, a reality whose characteristic \r\nmarks are or are very much like those of consciousness and Idea-Force. We fight \r\nshy of the \'word—consciousness—for it brings in a whole association of anthropomorphism and pathetic fallacy. But in our anxiety to avoid\r\na ditch let us not fall over a precipice. If it is blindness to see\r\nnothing but the spirit, it is not vision to see nothing but Matter. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A hypothesis, however revolutionary or unorthodox it may\r\nseem for the moment, has to be tested by its effective application, in its successful working out. All scientific discoveries\r\nin the beginning appear as inconveniences that upset the\r\nknown and accepted order. Copernicus, Newton, Galileo,\r\nKepler, Maxwell or Einstein in our day enunciated principles\r\nthat were not obvious sense-given axioms. These are at the\r\noutset more or less postulates that have to be judged by their\r\napplicability. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Creation as a movement or expression of consciousness need\r\nnot be dubbed a metaphysical jargon; it can be assumed as\r\na scientific working hypothesis and seen how it affects our\r\nview, meets our problems and difficulties, whether it can\r\ngive a satisfactory clue to some of the riddles of physical and\r\npsychical phenomena. A scientific supposition (or intuition)\r\nis held to be true if it can be applied \'invariably to facts of\r\nlife and experience and if it can open up to our vision and\r\nperception new facts. The trend of scientific discoveries today\r\nis towards the positing of a background reality in Nature of\r\nwhich energy (radiant and electrical) is the first and overt\r\nform. We discarded <i>ether,</i> only to replace it by <i>field</i> and <i>disposition.</i> We have arrived at a point where the question is\r\nwhether we cannot take courage in both hands and declare,\r\nas some have already done, that the substratum in Nature\r\nis consciousness-energy and on that hypothesis better explain\r\ncertain movements of Matter and Life and Mind in a global\r\nunity. Orthodox and die-hard views will always protest and\r\ncry that it is a <i>mesalliance,</i> a misjoinder to couple together\r\nMatter and Consciousness or even Life and Consciousness.\r\nBut since the light has touched the higher mind even among </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">page 215</font><hr>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">a few of the positivist type, the few may .very well be the\r\nprecursor of the order of the day.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; text-indent:25px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">After all, only one bold step is needed: to affirm unequivocally what is being suggested and implied and pointed to\r\nin a thousand indirect ways. And Science will be transformed.\r\nThe scientist too, like the famous Saltimbanque (clown) of\r\na French poet, may one day in turning a somersault, suddenly\r\nleap up and find himself rolling into the bosom of the stars.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 216<hr>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"right\"><b><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"-00_Contents\">\r\n			<span style=\"text-decoration: none\">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>\r\n	</tr>\r\n	</table>\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-35_In Quest of Reality','','publish','closed','open','','35_in-quest-of-reality','','','2021-11-23 17:21:36','2021-11-23 17:21:36','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/35_in-quest-of-reality/',0,'post','',0);
