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<span style="font-weight:700"><font size="4">The Eternal East and West</font></span></p>
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<FONT SIZE=3>I</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>THE East and the West are two recognised wings of
humanity. Only the relation between them is somewhat in dispute.
According to one view the two are quite separate and irreconcilable
entities, because they embody two outlooks that are contradictory to
each other. The other view is that they are not contradictory,
however distinct they may be; they are complementary or supplementary
to each other. The interaction between the two across the centuries
recorded in history has been admitted and studied; it considerably
influenced the growth and development of each in its line. Only the
influence exerted some view with favour, others with disfavour. For
some consider the mixture of influence, like that of blood, as a
necessary condition of progress and creativity: others again are keen
on maintaining, the purity of stock, the particular type of culture
to which each is attached and any intrusion of a foreign vein they
consider as a lowering, a degeneration of the type.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>We all know the great difference between the East and
the West that has been pointed out and accepted generally as true is
that of the spiritual East and the worldly or materialist West.
Crudely and categorically formulated the truth remains no longer
true. There is a very large amount of worldliness in the East, on the
one hand, and on the other, mystics and spiritual seekers or leaders
are not a rare phenomenon in the West. However, it can be said and
admitted as a fact that there is in the East an atmosphere that is
predominantly spiritual and one can more easily come in contact with
it; whereas in the West it is the mental and material culture that
predominates </FONT>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 224</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>and the approach to it is nearer and closer to
man. The science of the Spirit has received greater attention in the
East; it has been studied, experimented, organised, almost
consummated there in a supreme manner. Even as the science of Matter
has reached its apotheosis in the West.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Recognising the difference, the momentous question
confronting us is what should be our next move: must we accept the
one and reject the other for the sake of human progress and
fulfilment, or that a harmony and synthesis is possible and is
demanded ?</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>For it is not unoften asserted that the so-called
spiritual outlook of the East is only a mediaeval outlook. All people
in the world, including even the West, were once upon a time
predominantly religious and spiritual; that was a certain stage in
man's evolution. Europe has passed that stage of myth and
imagination, has brought upon the earth and is living the higher
illumination that Science reveals. The East did not or could not
march with Time and continues the old world 'with its backward
glance; it stands arrested in its growth.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>This view finds its justification because of a
particular outlook on spirituality and non-spirituality. If the
Spirit and things spiritual are taken to mean something transcending
and rejecting the world and the things of the world, something
exclusive of life and its fulfilment here on earth, if on the other
hand, the world and its life are given only their face value emptying
them of their deeper and transcendent contents – in the manner of
the great Laplace who could find no place for God in his map of the
world which seemed to be quite complete in itself, if this trenchant
division is made in the very definition of the terms, in our primary
axioms and postulates, then, of course, we cannot avoid a scission
and an eternal struggle. If you consider the Spirit as only pure
spirit, an absolute without any relation, as, an ever-fixed and
static entity and if we view Matter as purely material and the law of
mechanics as supreme and inviolable, then there cannot be a
reconciliation or even a meeting between the two. There are some who
have a great goodwill, who wish to avoid clash and quarrel and are
for concord and harmony. They have tried the reconciliation, but
failed. The two positions being fundamentally </FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 225</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>exclusive of each other can, at best, be
juxtaposed, but not unified or fused together.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>And yet mankind has always sought for an integral, an
all comprehending fulfilment, a truth and a realisation that would go
round his entire existence. Man has always aspired, in the midst of
the transience and imperfection that the world is, for something
stable and perfect, in the heart of disharmony for some core of
perfect harmony. He termed it God, Atman, Summum Bonum and he sought
it sometimes, as he thought necessary, even at the cost of the world
and the life, if it is to be found elsewhere. Man aspired also always
to find this habitation of his made somewhat better. Dissatisfied
with his present state, he sought to mould it, remake it, put into it
something which his aspiration and inspiration called the True, the
Beautiful, the Good. There was always this double aspiration in man,
one of ascent and the other of descent, one vertical and the other
horizontal, one leading up and beyond – totally beyond, in its
extreme urge – the other probing into the mystery locked up there
below, releasing the power to reform or recreate the world, although
he was not always sure whether it was a power of mind or of matter.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>This double aspiration has found its expression and
symbol in the East and the West, each concentrating on one line,
some&shy;times even to the neglect or denial of the other. But this
division or incompatibility need not be there and must not be there.
A new conception of the Spirit and a new conception of Matter are
gaining ground more and more, moving towards a true synthesis of the
two, making for the creation of a new world and a new human type.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The East is no longer the traditional East of the poet
who viewed it as eternally static and meditative, drowned in an
&quot;eyeless muse&quot; away and aloof from earth and world. Even if
it had and has still in its essential nature a nostalgia for the
transcendence, yet it seeks today more and more for a hold upon the
physical realities: it seems to remember again what the Upanishadic
Rishi sought – the Rishi being asked whether he came for the
mundane wealth of a thousand heads of cattle, with golden rings round
their horns, or for the knowledge of the Transcendent Reality,
replied that he had come for both. And the hidebound materialist
West, the positivist scientific</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 226</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>West, finds this day many fissures and loopholes in the
solid Laplacian scheme; as it dives down and enters into the
secrecies of even the most material things, curious mysteries surge
up and its eyes demand another look and another vision than those to
which the mere senses have accustomed them. Physical Scientists
bending towards or being compelled to bend towards metaphysics and
even mysticism are no longer an anomaly in the scientific world.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The Spirit is not the static transcendent absolute
entity only. It is dynamic Force, creative conscious Energy. The
spiritual is not mere silence and status it is expression and
movement also. Any silence and any status are not the silence and the
status of the Spirit – the silence and status of death, for
example; so too any expression and movement are not of the Spirit
either – but this does not mean that the Spirit cannot have its own
expression and movement. God too likewise is not a mere supracosmic
being – a somewhat aggrandised human being – treating and
dominating man and the world as something foreign and essentially
antagonistic to his nature. God himself has made himself all
creatures and all worlds. He is That and He is This fundamentally and
integrally. Again, at the other end, Matter is not mere dead
mechanical matter. It is vibrant energy, but energy that conceals
within it life and consciousness. Besides, the whirl and motion of
energies is not all, something inherently static looms large behind:
you call it ether, field, space or substratum – it is being, one
would like to say, infused with a secret consciousness and will.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>We say then, symbolically at least, if not literally,
that the West is looking to the East for this revelation towards
which it is groping or moving in its own way: the secret
spirit-consciousness that is alive in and through the material
cosmos, that alone gives its total sense and significance. And the
secret spirit must embody itself here below in material life, the
status must be made supremely dynamic – the transcendent
consciousness, even while maintaining its transcendence, has to
deploy its immanence in things of the earth and earthly existence.
That is what the West brings to the East; that is what the Scientific
and materialist look and labour offer to be integrated into the
aspiration and realisation of the East.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>So then we say that the East starts from the summit and</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 227</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>surveys reality from above downwards, while the West
starts from below and works upward. The two complementary movements
can be described in several other graphic terms, Instead of a
movement from the summit to the base and of another from the base to
the apex, that is to say, a movement: of ascent and of descent, we
can speak of a movement from within outward and of that from outside
inward, that is to say, from the centre to the periphery and from the
periphery to the centre; we can speak also of a movement of
contraction, withdrawal or concentration and a movement of expansion;
and expression and diffusion. Again, we can refer to a vertical
movement and a horizontal movement. All however express the same
truth. We postulate one reality, take our stand upon that and work
our way towards the other; the two together form the total reality
and together can they give the integral life fulfilment.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>As I have said, the history of mankind, as a matter of
fact, the whole history of creation gives a graphic picture of the
interaction of this double movement. There are ages and countries in
which one or the other of the two takes precedence and special or
exclusive emphasis. But the inner story is always a converging
movement.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Parallel lines meet at infinity, each overpasses its own
limit and touches and coalesces with the other. </FONT>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The marriage of Heaven and Earth, of even Heaven and
Hell, is a very ancient dream. It is an aspiration ingrained in
existence. It is a prophecy that shall be fulfilled and is being
worked out every moment.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3><B>II</B></FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>For an integral vision of human achievement and
perfection we may consider another interesting contrast between the
East and the West. We usually attach the word &quot;freedom&quot; or
&quot;liberty&quot; to Western culture and civilisation as expressing
its essential character: similarly it is bondage, submission,
suppression of the individual and individuality that come up in our
mind when we think of Eastern culture and civilisation. The judgment
is not without truth, so far as it goes; but looked at </FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 228</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>from a different angle, a deeper standpoint, the true
judgment should be, curious to say, just the contrary.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The East does not consider the individual in his social
behaviour in terms of freedom and liberty but of service and
obligation, not in terms of rights but of duties. The Indian term for
right and duty is the <I>same – adhikar<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">Ä</FONT></I>
The word originally and usually meant duty, one's sphere of work or
service, capacity: the meaning of &quot;right&quot; was secondary and
only latterly, probably as a result of the impact from the West, has
gained predominance. The West measures human progress by the amount
of rights gained for the individual or for the group. It does not
seem to have any other standard: submission, obedience, any
diminution of the sense of separate individuality meant slavery and
loss of human value and dignity. It was the Greek perhaps, with
Socrates as the great pioneer, who first declared the supremacy of
the individual reason (although he himself obeyed in all things his
guardian angel, the Daemon). In<B> </B>India, generally in the East,
the value of the individual is estimated in another way. So long as
he is in the society, the individual is bound by its demands: he has
to serve it according to his best capacity. That is the <I>dharma –
the </I>Law – that one has to observe conscientiously. But if he
chooses, he can break the bonds forthwith, come out, come out of the
society altogether and be free absolutely – that is the only
meaning of freedom. In the West the individual is taught to remain in
the world and with the society, maintain his individuality and
independence and gradually enlarge them in and through the natural
fetters and bondages that a collective life and efficient
organisation demands and inevitably imposes. The East, on the
contrary, asks the individual never to protest and assert his
individuality, which is in their view only another name for Ignorant
egoism, but to know his position in the social scheme and fulfil the
duties and obligations of that position. But the individual has the
freedom not to enter into the social frame at all. If he chooses
freedom as his ideal, it is the supreme freedom that he must choose,
out of the chain of a terrestrial life. He can become the spiritual
&quot;outlaw&quot;, the <I>sany<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">Ä</FONT>si<FONT FACE="Times New Roman Baltic, serif">,
</FONT></I>the word means one who has abandoned everything totally
and absolutely.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The contrast points to a synthesis parallel to or an
extension </FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 229</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>of the one we spoke of earlier. The first thing to
note is that the individual is the source of all progress; the
individual has the right, as it is also his duty to maintain himself
and fulfil himself, grow to his largest and highest dimensions!
Secondly, the individual has to take cognisance of the others, the
whole humanity, in fact, even for the sake of his own progress. The
individual is not an isolated entity, a freak product in Nature, but
is integrated into it, a part and parcel of its texture and
composition. Indeed the individual has a double role to perform,
first to increase himself and secondly to increase others. Using the
terms which the Sartrian view of existence has put into vogue, we can
say, the individual <I>en soi </I>(in himself) is the individual in
commonalty with others, living and moving in and through every other
person; and then there is the individual <I>pour soi </I>(for
himself), that is to say, existing for himself, apart and away from
others, in his own inner absolute autonomy. The individual is
individualised, <I>i.e. </I>raises and lifts himself and then becomes
the spearhead breaking through the level where Nature stands fixed,
leading others to follow and raise themselves. The individual is the
power of organised self-consciousness; the growth of the individual
means the growth of this power of organised consciousness. And growth
means ascension or evolution from level to level. The individual
starts from the organic cell, that is the lower end, it progresses
through various gradations of the vital and mental worlds till he
reaches the culmination of its growth in the Spirit as <I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman Baltic, serif">Ätman.
</FONT></I>But this vertical growth must be reflected in a horizontal
growth too. There is a solidarity among the individuals forming the
collective humanity so that the progress of one means the progress of
others in the same direction, at least a chance and possibility
opened for an advance. On the other hand, it may be noted that unless
the collectivity rises to a certain level the individual too cannot
go very far from it. A higher lift in the individual presupposes a
corresponding or some minimum lift in others. There cannot or should
not be too great a rift between the individual and the collective:</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>As I said, the East usually ignores this correspondence
and posits an exclusive <I>either-or </I>relation between the two
terms. The individual, according to it, can reach its true
individuality</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 230</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>by only dissolving it – in the Infinite. Of course, I
am refer&shy;ring to an extreme position which is general in the East
and symptomatic of its fundamental character. The West does not
concern itself with these higher lines of individual growth and
fulfilment, it limits the individual within the social frame and his
mundane or profane life; but what we learn from this outlook is the
necessity of the collective growth through which only can the
individual thrive and grow. It is however a growth in extension,
rather than in intensity <I>i.e. </I>depth and height. This outlook
errs in the limitation put upon indivi&shy;duality, precisely
identifying it more or less with the &quot;egoism&quot; to which the
spirituality of the East objects. This normal individual in its
normal development cannot go very far, nor can he lead the others,
the society or humanity, to a perfect and supreme fulfilment. The
ego-bound normal individuality must transcend itself – exactly the
thing that the East teaches; only this transcendence need not mean an
abolition of all individuality, but a transformation, a higher
integration in a spiritualised, a universalised and divinised
individuality.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Such an individual will not be like the blind leading
the blind, one ego, .in its half-light, with its small narrow mental
formation imposing its ignorant and ineffective will upon others in
the same state of consciousness, but, as I have said, a universalised
individual, who has identified himself with all and everyone in his
being and consciousness, who has also at the same time transcended
himself and others and attained a supreme unitary consciousness and
being. It is such a person who is called the leader of human or
terrestrial evolution and they who are of the same make are the
pioneers who shall build heaven upon earth.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Towards that consummation, these two great world
currents, East and West, are moving carrying each its own truth and
contributing to the realisation of the integral truth that is to take
body here below.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 231</FONT></P>
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