(1515,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>37 vedic.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><i>A Vedic Story</i></b> </p>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n		<p align=center style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">(RlGVEDA-X.51.) .</font>\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\">THE gods are in a great fix. Where is Agni ? How is it that the\r\ncomrade has disappeared all on a sudden ? The Sacrifice—the\r\ngreat work has to be undertaken. And he is to be the leader, for he\r\nalone can take up the burden. There is no time to be lost, everything is ready for the ceremony to start and just at the moment\r\nthe one needed most is nowhere. So the gods organise a search\r\nparty to find out the whereabouts of the runaway god.</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 search party consists of Varuna, Mitra and Yama. We\r\nshall presently understand the sense of the selection. They look\r\nabout here and there—in ten directions, it is mentioned—and\r\nat last spot the defaulting god hiding within a huge thick strong\r\ncloak or caul. They hail him and ask him to come out and take\r\nup his charge. Agni refuses: he says he is not competent to undertake the \r\nburden; indeed that is why he ran away and they must not force him. The gods \r\nexplain, entreat, encourage Agni. They say and assure him that no harm will come to him,\r\nrather he will flourish and prosper and become immortal.<b> \r\n</b>He is mighty and he will become almighty as he takes up his work\r\nand proceeds with it. Agni accepts in the end and marches out\r\nwith the gods.</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 does this parable mean? First of all then we must\r\nknow what Sacrifice—a Vedic sacrifice—is. Sacrifice symbolises the cosmic labour, the march of the universe towards its\r\ngoal, the conquest of Light over Darkness, the ascent of man-hood to godhead, the flaming rise and progress of consciousness\r\nto its supreme expression and embodiment. It is the release out\r\nof Inconscience and Unconsciousness to consciousness and\r\nfinally into the superconsciousness.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 330<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; Sacrifice consists essentially in lighting the fire and pouring\r\nfuel—offerings—into it so that it may burn always and brighter\r\nand brighter. It calls the gods, also, it is said, ascends to them,\r\nbrings them down here to live among men, in men. It lifts men\r\nfrom the ordinary life and consciousness, takes them to the\r\nabode of the gods. In other words its function is to bring down\r\nand infuse into the human vessel the godly consciousness and\r\ndelight and power. Its purpose is to divinise human life.<br>\r\n. Through the sacrifice man offers his present possessions, his\r\nbody and life and mind to the Deity and deities and by this\r\nsurrender and submission constant and unfailing <i>(namas)</i> he\r\nawakens the Divine in him—the Agni that is to lead him to the\r\ndivine consummation.</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; Fire then is the energy of consciousness secreted in the heart\r\nof things. It is that which moves the creation upward, produces\r\nthe unfolding evolution that is history, both individual and\r\ncollective. It is kindled, it increases in volume and strength\r\nand purity and effectiveness, as and when a lower element is\r\noffered and submitted to a higher reality and this higher reality impinges upon \r\nthe lower one (which is what the rubbing of the <i>arani</i> or the pressing of the <i>soma</i> symbolises); the\r\nlimitation is broken, the small enters into and becomes the\r\nvast, the crooked is straightened and lengthened out, what\r\nwas hidden becomes manifest. This is described as the\r\nprogression of the sacrifice <i>(adhvara—</i>advance on the path).\r\nThat is also the victorious battle waged against the dark&nbsp;\r\nforces of Ignorance. The goal, the purpose is the descent\r\nand manifestation of the gods here upon earth in human\r\nvehicles.</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 Fire is not normally available. It is lost, imbedded\r\nin the thick petrified folds of unconsciousness and inconscience.\r\nMan\'s soul is not an apparent reality. It has to be found out, called forth, \r\nbrought to the front. Even so, in the normal consciousness, the soul, the divine fire is a flickering, twinkling,\r\nhesitating spark; it is not sure of itself, not certain of its destiny.Yet when the time is ripe and the call comes, the gods, the\r\nluminous forces from above descend with all their insistence<br>\r\nand meet the hidden godhead: Agni is reminded of his work\r\nand destiny which nothing can frustrate or cancel. He has to\r\nconsent and undertake his sacrificial labour.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 331<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;&nbsp; Agni feared and tried to escape from the burden of his responsibility. He wrapped himself in a thick and vast cloak and\r\nhid in the depths of far waters. That is the parable way of\r\ndescribing the difficulty, the apparent impossibility of the\r\nundertaking Agni has to shoulder. Curiously however he has\r\ntaken shelter just in the spot which seemed safest to him, from\r\nwhere begins his work, whose nature and substance he has to\r\ntransform, that is to say, the nether regions of inconscience<br>\r\nwhich is to be raised and transfigured into the solar region of\r\nthe supraconsciousness.</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 interesting point in the story is the choice of the gods\r\nwho formed the search party. They were Mitra, Varuna and\r\nYama. Varuna is the god of the vast consciousness (Brihat),\r\nthe wide universal, the Infinite. His eye naturally penetrates\r\neverywhere and nothing can escape his notice. Mitra is harmony and rhythm of the infinity. Every individual element he\r\nembraces and he holds them all together in loving union—his\r\nis the friendly tie of comradeship with all. Finally Yama is the\r\nmaster of the lower regions, the underworld of physical and\r\nmaterial consciousness, where precisely Agni has taken refuge.&nbsp;\r\nAgni is within the jurisdiction of this trinity and it devolves\r\nupon them to tackle the truant god.</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 another point which requires clarification. As a\r\nreason for his nervousness and flight he alleges that greater\r\npeople who preceded him had attempted the work, but\r\nevidently failed in the attempt; so how\' can he, a younger\r\nnovice, dare to go the same way? Putting the imagery back to\r\nits psychological bearing, one may explain that the predecessors\r\nrefer to the deities of the physical, vital and mental consciousness who ruled the earth before the emergence of the psychic\r\nor soul consciousness. It is precisely because of the failure or\r\ninsufficiency of these anterior—in the evolutionary movement\r\n—and inferior gods that Agni\'s service is being requisitioned.\r\nMythologically also a parallelism is found in the Greek legends where it is said \r\nthat the Olympian gods—Zeus and his company—were a younger generation that replaced, after of\r\ncourse a bloody warfare, their ancestors, the more ancient race\r\nof Kronos, the Titans. Titans were the Asuras and Rakshasas\r\nwho reigned upon earth before the advent of the <i>mental—\r\n</i>sattwic—human being, Manu, as referred here.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 332<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, here I give you the original text in translation:</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<font face=\"Times New Roman\">THE COLLOQUY OF AGNI AND THE GODS</font>\r\n\r\n		<p align=center style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n&nbsp;<p align=center style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">(Rigveda-X.51.)</font><p align=center style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><br>\r\nThe gods</font>\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;1&nbsp; Huge and firm was that covering with which you shrouded</font>&nbsp;\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">yourself and entered into the waters.</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">0 Agni! You are conscious from your very birth.</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">The One God saw you in all your multiple universal</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">body.</font>\r\n\r\n<p align=center style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\nAgni\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;2&nbsp; Who saw me? Which of the gods saw my multiple body\r\nall around? 0 Mitra! 0 Varuna! Tell me, where do they\r\ndwell—all the blazing fuel that&nbsp; move to&nbsp; the gods ?</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\">The gods</font>\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;3 0 Agni! god self-conscient, we seek you, you who have\r\nentered variably into the waters and into the growths of\r\nthe earth. You shine richly. Yama has seen you as you\r\nflame out of your ten seats.</font>\r\n\r\n<p align=center style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\nAgni\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;4&nbsp; 0 Varuna! I fled because I was afraid of the work of the\r\npriest. The gods must not yoke me to that work.\r\nThat was why I imbedded my body variably so that I as\r\nAgni may not know of that pathway.</font>\r\n\r\n<p align=center style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\nThe gods\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;5&nbsp; Come, 0 Agni! Man, the mental being, desires to do\r\nthe sacrifice, he has made everything ready, and you\r\ndwell in obscurity!</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\">Make easy-going the path that leads to the gods, with a\r\nhappy mind carry the offering.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 333<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nAgni\r\n\r\n		<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;6&nbsp; There were elders before Agni who covered the same path,</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">even<b> </b> as charioteers do their way.\r\nThat is why, 0 Varuna! out of fear I have come away so</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">far, even as an animal shrinks and shivers at a shooting</font>\r\n\r\n		<p align=center style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\nThe Gods<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\">.7&nbsp; We shall make your life undecaying, 0 Agni! so that no</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">harm comes to you when engaged in the work.\r\nSo, carry to the gods their share of the offering; a happy</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">birth you have, a happy mind you must carry.</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><br>\r\nAgni</font>\r\n\r\n		<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\">8. Then bring to me my share of the mighty offerings, those\r\nthat are given before, those that are given after and those</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">that are simply given.<br>\r\n0 gods! Long life to the being shining in the waters, to</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Agni himself lying in the growths of the earth.</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=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;The gods</font>\r\n\r\n		<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\">9. The offerings that precede, the offerings that follow,\r\nofferings pure and simple—all forceful, may you enjoy.\r\nMay this sacrifice be yours entirely. The four quarters</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">bow down to you, 0 Agni!</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 334<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</html>','-48_A Vedic Story','','publish','closed','open','','48_a-vedic-story','','','2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/48_a-vedic-story/',0,'post','',0),(1516,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>18 the basis.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 Basis of Social Reconstruction</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\">ANY real reconstruction of society, any permanent reformation\r\nof the world presupposes a real reconstruction, a permanent\r\nreformation of human nature. Otherwise any amount of casting\r\nand recasting the mere machineries would not bring about any\r\nappreciable result, but leave the thing as it is-. Change the laws\r\nas much as you like, but if you do not change the nature of\r\nman, the world will not change. For it is man that makes laws\r\nand not laws that make man. Laws express at best the demand\r\nwhich man feels within himself. A truth must realise itself in\r\nhuman nature before it can be codified. You may certainly\r\nlegalise an ideal, but that does not necessarily mean realising it.\r\nThe realisation must come first in nature and character, then\r\nit is naturally translated into laws and institutions. A man\r\nlives the laws of his soul and being and not the law given him\r\nby the <i>shastras.</i> He violates the <i>shastras,</i> modifies them, utilises\r\nthem according to the greater imperative of his <i>Swabhava.</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 French Revolution wanted to remould human society\r\nand its ideal was liberty, equality and fraternity. It pulled\r\ndown the old machinery and set up a new one in its stead. And the result? &quot;Liberty, Equality, Fraternity&quot; remained\r\nalways in effect a cry in the wilderness. Another wave of\r\nidealism is now running over the earth and the Bolshevists are\r\nits most fiercely practical exponents. Instead of dealing merely\r\nwith the political machinery, the Socialistic Revolution tries to\r\nbreak and remake, above all, the social machinery. But\r\njudged from the results as yet attained and the tendencies at\r\nwork, few are the reasons to hope but many to fear the worst.\r\nEven education does not seem to promise us anything better.\r\nWhich nation was better educated—in the sense we understood\r\nand still commonly understand the word—than Germany?</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 148<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 yet we have no hesitation today to call them Huns and\r\nBarbarians. That education is not giving us the right thing is\r\nproved further by the fact that we are constantly changing\r\nour programmes and curriculums, everyday remodelling old\r\ninstitutions and founding new ones. Even a revolution in the\r\neducational system will not bring about the desired millennium, so long as we lay so much stress upon the system and not\r\nupon man himself. And finally, look to all the religions of the\r\nworld—we have enough of creeds and dogmas, of sermons and\r\nmantras, of churches and temples—and yet human life and\r\nsociety do not seem to be any the more worthy for 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; Are we then to say that human nature is irrevocably vitiated\r\nby an original sin and that all our efforts at reformation and\r\nregeneration are, as the Indian saying goes, like trying to\r\nstraighten out the crooked tail of a dog ?</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 this persuasion which has led many spiritual souls,\r\nsiddhas, to declare that theirs is not the kingdom upon this\r\nearth, but that the kingdom of Heaven is within. And it is\r\nwhy great lovers of humanity have sought not to eradicate\r\nbut only to mitigate, as far as possible, the ills of life. Earth and\r\nlife, it is said, contain in their last analysis certain ugly and\r\nloathsome realities which are an inevitable and inexorable part\r\nof their substance and to eliminate one means to annihilate\r\nthe other. What can be done is to throw a veil over the nether\r\nregions in human nature, to put a ban on their urges and velleities and to create opportunities to make social arrangements so that the higher impulses only find free play while the\r\nlower impulses, for want of scope and indulgence, may fall\r\ndown to a harmless level. This is what the Reformists hope and\r\nwant and no more. Life is based upon animality, the soul is\r\nencased in an earth-sheath—man needs must procreate, man\r\nneeds must seek food. But what human effort can achieve is\r\nto set up barriers and limitations and form channels and\r\nopenings, which will restrain these impulses, allow them a\r\nnecessary modicum of play and which for the greater part will\r\nserve to encourage and enhance the nobler urges in man. Of\r\ncourse, there will remain always the possibility of the whole\r\nscaffolding coming down with a crash and the aboriginal in\r\nman running riot in his nudity. But we have to accept the\r\nchance and make the best of what materials we have in hand.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 149<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\">No doubt this is a most dismal kind of pessimism. But it is\r\nthe logical conclusion of all optimism that bases itself upon a\r\nparticular view of human nature. If we question that pessimism,\r\nwe have to question the very grounds of our optimism also. As a\r\nmatter of fact, all our idealism has been so long infructuous\r\nand will be so in the future, if we do not shift our foundation\r\nand start from a different Intuition—<i>Weltanschauung.</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; Our ideals have been mental constructions, rather than\r\nspiritual realities—realities of the deepest and highest being.\r\nAnd the power by which we sought to realise those ideals was\r\nmainly the insistence of our emotional urges, rather than\r\nNature\'s Truth-Power. For this must be understood that the\r\nmental, the vital and the physical form a nexus of reality which\r\nworks in its own inexorable law and so long as we are within\r\nthem we cannot but obey the laws that guide them. Of these\r\nthree strata which form the human <i>adhara,</i> it is the vital which\r\nholds the key to man\'s nature. It is the executive power, the\r\nforce that fashions the realities on the physical plane; it is what\r\ncreates the character. The power of thought and sentiment is\r\noften much too exaggerated, even so the power of the body,\r\nthat of physical and external rules and regulations. The mental\r\nor the physical or both together can mould the vital only to a\r\nlimited extent, to the extent which is allowed by the inherent\r\nlaw of the vital. If the demands of the mental and the physical\r\nare stretched too far and are not suffered by the vital, a crash\r\nand catastrophe is bound to come in the end.</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; This is the meaning of the Reformist\'s pessimism. So long as\r\nwe remain within the domain of the triple nexus, we must\r\nalways take account of an original sin, an aboriginal irredeemability in human nature. And it is this fact which a too hasty\r\noptimistic idealism is apt to ignore. The point, however, is that\r\nman need not be necessarily bound to this triple chord of life.\r\nHe can go beyond, transcend himself and find a reality which\r\nis the basis of even this lower poise of the mental and vital and\r\nphysical. Only in order to get into that higher poise we must\r\nreally transcend the lower, that is to say, we must not be\r\nsatisfied with experiencing or envisaging it through the mind\r\nand heart but must directly commune with it, be it. There is a\r\nhigher law that rules there, a power that is the truth-substance\r\nof even the vital and hence can remould it with a sovereign</font>&nbsp;\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 150<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\">inevitability, according to a pattern which may not and is not\r\nthe pattern of mental and emotional idealism, but the pattern\r\nof a supreme spiritual 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; What then is required is a complete spiritual regeneration\r\nin man, a new structure of his soul and substance—not merely\r\nthe realisation of the highest and supreme Truth in mental\r\nand emotional consciousness, but the translation and application of the law of that truth in the power of the vital. It is here\r\nthat failed all the great spiritual or rather religious movements\r\nof the past. They were content with evoking the divine in the\r\nmental being, but left the vital becoming to be governed by the\r\nhabitual un-divine or at the most to be just illumined by a\r\ndistant and faint glow which served, however, more to distort\r\nthan express 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; The Divine Nature only can permanently reform the vital\r\nnature that is ours. Neither laws and institutions, which are the\r\nresults of that vital nature, nor ideas and ideals which are\r\noften a mere revolt from and more often an auxiliary to it, can\r\ncommand the power to regenerate society. If it is thought\r\nimprobable for any group of men to attain to that God Nature,\r\nthen there is hardly any hope for mankind. But improbable\r\nor probable, that is the only way which man has to try and\r\ntest, and there is none other.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 151<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>','-20_The Basis of Social Reconstruction','','publish','closed','open','','20_the-basis-of-social-reconstruction','','','2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/20_the-basis-of-social-reconstruction/',0,'post','',0),(1517,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','<html>\r\n\r\n<head>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=windows-1252\">\r\n<title>New Page 1</title>\r\n</head>\r\n\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<div align=\"center\">\r\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"60%\">\r\n		<tr>\r\n			<td>\r\n			<p align=\"center\">\r\n<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=3>Publishers\' Note</font><font face=\"Times New Roman\">\r\n</font></b>\r\n\r\n<p align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">This selection of essays, drawn from the\r\nmanifold writings of Nolini Kanta Gupta, is\r\ndedicated to the youth of India, to those\r\namong her children who cherish in some\r\npart of their being an aspiration, a living\r\nflame of light that yearns towards an ever-growing perfection, a truth of being and\r\nbecoming as yet vaguely surmised or only\r\npartially revealed.</font>\r\n\r\n<p align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Throughout the many and varied domains\r\nof the human adventure, seen here in the\r\nlight of Sri Aurobindo\'s vision of the future,\r\nthere emerges the one eternal question and\r\ndominant theme of our seeking: man past\r\nand present, man individual and collective,\r\nbut always and above all, the ultimate\r\nflowering of his life upon earth.</font>\r\n\r\n<p align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">We have pleasure in stating that the\r\nGovernment of India have given to our\r\nCentre of Education a grant to meet the\r\ncost of publishing this Volume.</font>\r\n\r\n			<p 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</div>\r\n\r\n</body>\r\n\r\n</html>\r\n','-02_Publisher\'s Note','','publish','closed','open','','02_publishers-note','','','2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/02_publishers-note/',0,'post','',0),(1518,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>13 spi.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 align=center style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">II</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>INDIA AND HER <i>SWADHARMA</i></font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n&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 align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<b>\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>The Spiritual Genius of India</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\">WHAT is it that we precisely mean when we say that <i>India\r\nis spiritual? For,</i> that is how we are accustomed to express\r\nIndia\'s special genius-—her backbone, as Vivekananda puts\r\nit—the fundamental note of her culture and nature, which\r\ndistinguishes her from the rest of the world. What then are the\r\ndistinguishing marks of spirituality? How does a spiritual\r\ncollectivity live and move—<i>kim asita vrqjeta kim?</i> And do we\r\nfind its characteristic gait and feature exclusively or even<br>\r\nchiefly in India?</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; Was not Europe also in her theocratic and mediaeval ages as .\r\nlargely spiritual and as fundamentally religious as India?\r\nChurches and cathedrals and monasteries grew like mushrooms\r\nin every nook and corner, in all the countries of Europe; it\r\nwas the clergy who, with their almost unbounded influence\r\nand power, moulded and guided the life and aspiration of the\r\npeople; devotion to God and love of prayer and pilgrimage\r\nwere as much in the nature of the average European of those\r\ntimes as they are in any Indian of today; every family considered it a duty and an honour to rear up one child at least to\r\nbe consecrated to the service of God and the Church. The\r\ninternal as well as the external life of the men of mediaeval\r\nEurope was steeped through and through in a religious\r\natmosphere.</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 whole world, in fact, was more or less religious in the\r\nearly stages of its evolution; for it is characteristic of the\r\nprimitive nature of man to be god-fearing and addicted to\r\nreligious rite and ceremony. And Europe too, when she entered\r\non a new cycle of life and began to reconstruct herself after\r\nthe ruin of the Graeco-Latin culture, started with the religion\r\nof the Christ and experimented with it during a long period of</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 115<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\">time. But that is what was—<i>Troja fuit.</i> Europe has outgrown\r\nher nonage and for a century and a half, since the mighty\r\nupheaval of the French Revolution, she has been rapidly\r\nshaking off the last vestiges of her mediaevalism. Today she\r\nstands clean shorn of all superstition, which she only euphemistically calls religion or spirituality. Not Theology but\r\nScience, not Revelation but Reason, not Magic but Logic, not\r\nFiction but Fact, governs her thoughts and guides her activities.\r\nOnly India, in part under the stress of her own conservative\r\nnature, in part under compelling circumstances, still clings\r\nto her things of the past, darknesses that have been discarded\r\nby the modern illumination. Indian spirituality is nothing\r\nbut consolidated mediaevalism; it has its companion shibboleth\r\nin the cry, &quot;Back to the village&quot; or &quot;Back to the bullock-cart&quot;!\r\nOne of the main reasons, if not the one reason why India has\r\ntoday no place in the comity of nations, why she is not in\r\nthe vanguard of civilisation, is precisely this obstinate atavism,\r\nthis persistent survival of a spirit subversive of all that is modern\r\nand progressive.</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 not my purpose here to take up the cause of spirituality\r\nand defend it against materialism. Taking it for granted that\r\nreal spirituality embodies a truth and power by far higher and\r\nmightier than anything materialism can offer, and that man\'s\r\nsupreme ideal lies there, let us throw a comparing glance on\r\nthe two types of spirituality,—the one that India knows and\r\nthe other that Europe knew in the Middle Ages.</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; To say that Europe was once as religious and spiritual as\r\nIndia herself is not precisely incorrect, but it is to view the\r\nmatter from too general a stand-point, almost, we may say, <i>grosso modo.</i> In order to arrive at an accurate and precise estimation, and to find out the most significant truths, we have to\r\nlook a, little more closely, observe differences in shade and\r\nstress, make certain distinctions. For the things that the\r\nordinary mind indiscriminately designates as religion, spirituality<br>\r\nand the like, do not always fall in the same category.\r\nThese names are often applied to distinct realities, each with\r\nits particular <i>dharma,</i> norm and form, wide apart from each\r\nother, although to the common eye they may appear to be\r\nof the same mould and substance.</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 Religion and Spirituality, two fundamental categories</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 116<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 form one realm when held up in opposition to Materialism,\r\nare, when considered by themselves, really very different things\r\nand may be even contradictory to and destructive of each\r\nother. What then is Religion? and what, on the other hand,\r\nis Spirituality? Religion starts from and usually ends with a\r\nmental and emotional approach to realities beyond the mind;</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\">Spirituality goes straight forward to direct vision \r\nand communion with the Beyond. Religion labours to experience and\r\nexpress the world of Spirit in and through a turn, often a twist,\r\ngiven by the mental being—<i>manu—</i>in man; it bases itself upon the demands \r\nof the mental, the vital and the physical complex—the triple nexus that forms the ordinary human personality and seeks to satisfy them under a holier garb. Spirituality\r\nknows the demands of the Spirit alone; it lives in a realm where<br>\r\nthe body, the life and the mind stand uplifted and transmuted\r\ninto their utter realities. Religion is the human way of approaching and enjoying the Divine; Spirituality is the divine\r\nway of meeting the Divine. Religion, as it is usually practised,\r\nis a special art, one—the highest it may be, still only one— among many other \r\npursuits that man looks to for his enjoyment and fulfilment; but spirituality is nothing if it does not\r\nswallow up the entire man, take in his each and every preoccupation and new-create it into an inevitable expression of\r\nits own master truth. Religion gives us a moral discipline for\r\nthe internal consciousness, and for the external life, a code of\r\nconduct based upon a system of rules and rites and ceremonies;</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">spirituality aims at a revolution in the consciousness and in the\r\nbeing.</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; Keeping this difference in view, we may at once point out\r\nthat Europe, when she is non-materialist, is primarily religious\r\nand only secondarily spiritual, but India is always primarily\r\nspiritual and only secondarily religious. The vein of real\r\nspirituality in European culture runs underground and follows\r\nnarrow and circuitous by-paths; rarely does it appear on the\r\ntop in sudden and momentary flashes and even then only\r\nto dive back again into its subterranean hiding-place; upon\r\nthe collective life and culture it acts more as an indirect\r\ninfluence, an auxiliary leaven than as a direct and dynamic\r\nForce. In India there is an abundance, a superfluity even, of\r\nreligious paraphernalia, but it is the note of spirituality that</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 117<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>rings clear and high above all lesser tones and wields a power\r\nvivid and manifest. We could say in terms of modern Biology\r\nthat spirituality tends to be a <i>recessive</i> character in European\r\nculture, while in India, it is <i>dominant.</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; But when we say that India is spiritual, we do not mean\r\nthat all or most Indians, or even a very large minority among\r\nthem, are adepts in spirituality, or that the attachment to life,\r\nthe passion for earthly possessions, the sway of the six <i>ripus\r\n</i>are in any way less prevalent in the Indian character. On the\r\ncontrary, it may well seem to the casual onlooker whose eyes\r\nare occupied with the surface actualities of the situation, that\r\nthe Indian nature, as it is today, shut out from this world\'s\r\nlarger spaces, cut off from its deeper channels and movements\r\nof greater magnitude, has been&nbsp; given over more and more to\r\npetty worldlinesses that hardly fill the same space even in the\r\nlife of peoples who are notorious for their worldly and unspiritual temperament.</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 not so much a question of concrete realisation, \r\nof attainment and achievement arrived at by the Indian people in their\r\nwork-a-day life, but primarily and above all a question of\r\nultimate valuation, of what they hold as the supreme ideal, of\r\nwhat they cherish in their heart of hearts, and of the extent to\r\nwhich that standard has obtained general currency among\r\nthem. It is not <i>a fact</i> with which we are concerned, but the <i>force</i> behind the fact, and the special nature, and purpose of\r\nthat force. It is the power that we discover in the general\r\natmosphere, or that emerges in the stress and rhythm of the\r\ncultural life of the people, in the level of its inner consciousness,\r\nin the expression of its highest and most wide-spread aspirations, in the particular stamp of its soul.</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 psychological atmosphere in India is of a luminous\r\ntenuity. Here, it appears, the veil between this world and the\r\nother has so thinned away that the two meet and interpenetrate\r\neasily and freely; immersed in one, you can at the same time\r\nbathe in the other. Owing to the cumulative effect of the <i>sddhana</i> of her saints and sages who appeared in countless\r\nnumber down countless ages, or, perhaps, owing to the grace\r\nof a descent into her consciousness, or some immanence there,\r\nof the breath and light of a Superior World, India has developed and possesses, already prepared, a magnetic field, a</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 118<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\">luminous zone of spiritual consciousness; and to enter into it the\r\nIndian has only to turn aside, to go round a corner, to take one\r\nstep forward. However thick and hard the crust of the Ignorance may lie upon the Indian soul, once that soul awakes and\r\nis upon the path, it finds itself on a familiar ground; it is in a -\r\ndomain which it has the impression of having frequented often\r\nand anon and for long.</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 Europe the \r\ndivision between this world and the other, in the inner consciousness of the \r\npeople, is more rigorous, a thick wall divides the two and to pass from the one \r\nto the other demands a violent break, a total revolution; and even when the \r\nRubicon is crossed, one feels oneself in unfamiliar surroundings, moving in a shadowy world, and with the uncertain and\r\nfaltering steps of a child.</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 average European has a strong basis of the earth-nature\r\nin him; he is heavily enclosed in his physical sheath and firmly\r\nplaced upon the material world. Therefore he keeps a very\r\nstable terrestrial equilibrium and is not easily ousted from his\r\nearthly footing; his is not a nature easily upset from its poise,<br>\r\nor disturbed by the currents and forces that play about him.\r\nBut the Indian, both physically, and psychically, has a more\r\ndelicate frame and\' his footing upon earth is less secure. The\r\nbalance in his consciousness between the different forces—\r\nespecially between those of this world and the other—is\r\ndelicately held; and the adjustment that obtains at a given\r\nmoment is liable to be disturbed by the least change, either\r\nin the inner consciousness, or in the outer conditions.</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, when we speak of the spirituality of the\r\nIndian people, it is to the <i>disposition</i> of their psychic elements\r\nthat we refer, to the tone and temper of the soul they possess\r\nand to a constant nearness of latent spiritual possibilities: that\r\nmay at any time materialise, and the consequent possibilities\r\nof a spiritual impulse, that may at any time awaken.</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; Other peoples have other and more concrete virtues to be\r\nproud of; but the Indian has his soul as his most characteristic\r\npossession.</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 not to say that other peoples of the world are soulless,\r\nand that India alone may claim to possess the treasure. But no\r\nother people has lived so much in and from the soul, none other\r\nhas sacrificed so much for the sake of this one thing needful. The</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 119<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>soul-consciousness in other nations lies ve ed behind the more\r\npressing activities and immediate occupations of the external\r\nnature; at the most, what is characteristic in them is the soul, /\r\nnot in its pure and fundamental <i>being,</i> but expressed, and therefore encased and limited, within some particular mode of\r\n<i>becoming.</i> In India, on the other hand, the external activities\r\nand operations have never altogether swamped or clouded\r\nthis soul-consciousness; they have been either subjugated to it\r\nas minor auxiliaries or totally sacrificed as obstacles. The\r\nIndian\'s soul is not imbedded in some far-off region of his\r\nunconscious nature; he has succeeded in raising it up and\r\nbringing it forward to the level of his waking consciousness,—\r\nas the gold-tusked Divine Boar lifted the Earth out of the dark\r\ndepths of the primeval deluge to the light of the Day.</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 French, for example, have developed as a people a\r\nspecial characteristic and mental turn that has set its pervading\r\nimpress upon their culture and civilisation, upon their creations ~\r\nand activities; that which distinguishes them is a fine, clear and\r\nsubtle, rational, logical, artistic and literary mind. France, it\r\nhas often been said, is the head of modern Europe. The Indians\r\nare not in the same way a predominantly intellectual race, in\r\nspite of the mighty giants of intellect India has always produced,\r\nand still produces. Nor are they a literary race, although a\r\nrich and grandiose literature, unrivalled in its own great\r\nqualities, is their patrimony. It was the few, a small minority,\r\nalmost a closed circle, that formed in India the <i>elite</i> whose\r\ninterest and achievement lay in this field; the characteristic\r\npower, the main life-current of the nation, did not flow this\r\nway, but followed a different channel. Among the ancients\r\nthe Greeks, and among the moderns the French alone, can\r\nrightfully claim as their special genius, as the hallmark of their\r\ncorporate life, a high intellectual and literary culture. It is<b> \r\n</b>to<b> \r\n</b>this treasure,—a serene and yet vigorous and organized rational\r\nmind, coupled with a wonderful felicity of expression in speech,\r\n—that one turns when one thinks of the special gift that\r\nmodern France and ancient Greece have brought to the\r\nheritage of mankind.</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 Japanese, as a people, have developed to a consummate degree the sense of beauty, especially as applied<b> \r\n</b>to<b> \r\n</b>life and living. No other people, not even the old-world Greeks,</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 120<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\">possessed almost to a man, as do these children of the Rising\r\nSun, so fine and infallible an aesthetic sensibility,—not static\r\nor abstract, but of the dynamic kind,—uniformly, successful\r\nin making out of their work-a-day, life, even to its smallest\r\naccessories, a flawless object of art. It is a wonder to see in\r\nJapan how, even an unlettered peasant, away in his rustic\r\nenvironment, chooses with unerring taste the site of his house,\r\nbuilds it to the best advantage, arranges everything about it in\r\na faultless rhythm. The whole motion of the life of a Japanese\r\nis almost Art incarnate.</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; Or take again the example of the British people. The\r\npractical, successful life instinct, one might even call it the\r\nbusiness instinct, of the Anglo-Saxon races is, in its general\r\ndiffusion, something that borders on the miraculous. Even\r\ntheir Shakespeare is reputed to have been very largely endowed\r\nwith this national virtue. It is a faculty which has very little to\r\ndo with calculation, or with much or close thinking, or with\r\nany laborious or subtle mental operation,—a quick or active\r\nmind is perhaps the last thing with which the British people\r\ncan be accredited; this instinct of theirs is something spontaneous, almost aboriginal, moving with the sureness, the ruthless-\r\nness of nature\'s unconscious movements,—it is a <i>tact,</i> native\r\nto the force that is life. It is this attribute which the English-\r\nman draws from the collective genius of his race that marks\r\nhim out from among all others; this is <i>his forte,</i> it is this which\r\nhas created his nation and made it great and strong.</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 other nations have this one, or that other, line of self-\r\nexpression, special to each; but it is India\'s characteristic not\r\nto have had any such single and definite <i>modus vivendi—</i>what\r\nwas single and definite in her case was a mode not of <i>living\r\n</i>but of being. India looked above all to the very self in things,\r\nand in all her life-expression it was the soul <i>per se</i> which\r\nmattered to her,—even as the great Yajnavalkya said to his\r\nwife Maitreyi, <i>atmanastu kamaya sarvam priyam bhavati.</i> The\r\nexpressions of the self had no intrinsic value of their own and\r\nmattered only so far as they symbolised or embodied or pointed\r\nto the secret reality of the Atman. And perhaps it was on this\r\naccount that India\'s creative activities, even in external life,\r\nwere once upon a time so rich and varied, so stupendous and\r\nfull of marvel. Because she was attached and limited to no one</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 121<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\">dominating power of life, she could create infinite forms, so\r\nmany channels of power for the soul whose realisation was her\r\nend and aim.</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 was no department of life or culture in which it \r\ncould be said of India that she was not great, or even, in a way,\r\nsupreme. From hard practical politics touching our earth, to\r\nthe nebulous regions of abstract metaphysics, everywhere India\r\nexpressed the power of her genius equally well. And yet none\r\nof these, neither severally nor collectively, constituted her\r\nspecific genius; none showed the full height to which she\r\nCould raise herself, none compassed the veritable amplitude of\r\nher innermost reality. It is when we come to the domain of the\r\nSpirit, of God-realisation that we find the real nature and\r\nstature and genius of the Indian people; it is here that India\r\nlives and moves as in her own home of Truth. The greatest and\r\nthe most popular names in Indian history are not names of\r\nwarriors or statesmen, nor of poets who were only poets, nor\r\nof mere intellectual philosophers, however great they might\r\nbe, but of Rishis, who saw and lived the Truth and communed with the gods, of Avataras who brought down and\r\nincarnated here below something of the supreme realities\r\nbeyond.</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 most significant fact in the history of India is the unbroken continuity of the line of her spiritual masters who never\r\nceased to appear even in the midst of her most dark and distressing ages. Even in a decadent and fast disintegrating India,\r\nwhen the whole of her external life was a mass of ruins, when\r\nher political and economical and even her cultural life was\r\nbrought to stagnation and very near to decomposition, this\r\nundying Fire in her secret heart was ever alight and called in\r\nthe inevitable rebirth and rejuvenation. Ramakrishna, with\r\nVivekananda as his emanation in life dynamic and material,\r\nsymbolises this great secret of India\'s evolution. The promise\r\nthat the Divine held out in the <i>Gita</i> to Bharata\'s descendant\r\nfinds a ready fulfilment in India, in Bharata\'s land, more\r\nperhaps than anywhere else in the world; for in India has the\r\nDivine taken birth over and over again to save the pure in\r\nheart, to destroy the evil-doer and to establish the Right Law\r\nof 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; Other peoples may be the arms and the feet and the head of</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 122<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\">Humanity, but India is its heart, its soul—for she cherishes\r\nalways within her the Truth that lives for ever, the flaming\r\nGod-head, the Immortal awake in mortality, as say the Vedas, <i>amrto martyesu rtava.                                      </i></font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 123<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</body>\r\n</html>','-15_The Spiritual Genius of India','','publish','closed','open','','15_the-spiritual-genius-of-india','','','2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/15_the-spiritual-genius-of-india/',0,'post','',0),(1519,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>7 the intu.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 style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>The Intuition of the Age</i> </font>\r\n		</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\">ALL movements—whether of thought or of life, whether in the\r\nindividual or in the mass—proceed from a fundamental intuition which lies in the background as the logical presupposition,\r\nthe psychological motive and the spiritual force. A certain\r\nattitude of the soul, a certain angle of vision is what is posited\r\nfirst; all other things—all thoughts and feelings and activities\r\nare but necessary attempts to express, to demonstrate, to realise\r\non the conscious and dynamic levels, in the outer world, the\r\ntruth which has thus already been seized in some secret core\r\nof our being. The intuition may not, of course, be present to\r\nthe conscious mind, it may not be ostensibly sought for, one\r\nmay even deny the existence of such a preconceived notion and\r\nproceed to establish truth on a tabula rasa; none the less it is\r\nthis hidden bias that judges, this secret consciousness that\r\nformulates, this unknown power that fashions. </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, what is the intuition that lies behind the movements of\r\nthe new age ? What is the intimate realisation, the underlying\r\nviewpoint which is guiding and modelling all our efforts and\r\nachievements—our science and art, our poetry and philosophy,\r\nour religion and society? For, there is such a common and\r\nfundamental note which is being voiced forth by the human\r\nspirit through all the multitude of its present day 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; A new impulse is there, no one can deny, and it has vast\r\npossibilities before it, that also one need not hesitate to accept.\r\nBut in order that we may best fructuate what has been spontaneously sown, we must first recognise it, be luminously\r\nconscious of it and develop it along its proper line of .growth.\r\nFor, also certain it is that this new impulse or intuition, however true and strong in itself, is still groping and erring and&nbsp;\r\nmiscarrying; it is still wasting much of its energy in tentative </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 69<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\">things, in mere experiments, in even clear failures. The fact\r\nis that the intuition has not yet become an enlightened one,\r\nit is still moving, as we shall presently explain, in the dark vital\r\nregions of man. And vitalism is naturally and closely affianced\r\nto pragmatism, that is to say, the mere vital impulse seeks immediately to execute itself, it looks for external effects, for\r\nchanges in the form, in the machinery only. Thus it is that we\r\nsee in art and literature discussions centred upon the scheme of\r\ncomposition, as whether the new poetry should be lyrical or\r\ndramatic, popular or aristocratic, metrical or free of metre,\r\nand in practical life we talk of remodelling the state by new\r\nmethods of representation and governance, of purging society\r\nby bills and legislation, of reforming humanity by a business\r\npact. </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 may be good and \r\nnecessary, but there is the danger of leaving altogether out of account the one \r\nthing needful. We must then pause and turn back, look behind the apparent \r\nimpulsion that effectuates to the Will that drives, behind the ideas and ideals \r\nof the mind to the soul that informs and inspires; we must carry ourselves up \r\nthe stream and concentrate upon the original source, the creative intuition that\r\nlies hidden somewhere. And then only all the new stirrings\r\n.that we feel in our heart—our urges and ideals and visions\r\nwill attain an effective clarity, an unshaken purpose and an\r\ninevitable achievement. </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 to say, the change has been in the &quot;soul of man himself, the being has veered round and taken a new orientation. It is this which one must envisage, recognise and consciously\r\npossess, in order that one may best fulfil the call of the age. But\r\nwhat we are doing instead is to observe the mere external\r\nsigns and symbols and symptoms, to fix upon the distant\r\nquiverings, the echoes on the outermost rim, which are not\r\nalways faithful representations, but very often distorted images\r\nof the truth and life at the centre and source and matrix. We\r\nmust know that if there has been going on a redistribution and\r\nnew marshalling of forces, it is because the fiat has come from\r\nthe Etat Major. </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, in order to understand the new orientation of the spirit\r\nof the present age, we may profitably ask what was the inspiration of the past age, the characteristic note which has failed<b> </b> 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 70</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\">satisfy us and which we are endeavouring to transform. We\r\nknow that that age was the Scientific age or the age of Reason.\r\nIts great prophets were Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists or if\r\nyou mount further up in time, we may begin from Bacon and\r\nthe humanists. Its motto was first, &quot;The proper study of mankind is man&quot; and secondly, Reason is the supreme organon of\r\nknowledge, the highest deity in man—<i>la Deesse Raison.</i> And\r\nit is precisely against these two basic principles that the new,\r\nage has entered its protest. In face of Humanism, Nietzsche\r\nhas posited the Superman and in face of Reason; Bergson has\r\nposited Intuition. </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 worship of man as something essentially and exclusively\r\nhuman necessitates as a corollary, the other doctrine, <i>viz.</i> the\r\ndeification of Reason; and vice versa. Humanism and Scientism\r\ngo together and the whole spirit and mentality of the age that\r\nis passing may be summed up in those two words. So Nietzsche\r\nsays, &quot;All our modern world is captured in the net of the\r\nAlexandrine culture and has, for its ideal, the theoretical man,\r\narmed with the most powerful instruments of knowledge, toiling in the service of science and whose prototype and original\r\nancestor is Socrates.&quot; Indeed, it may be generally asserted that\r\nthe nation whose prophet and sage claimed to have brought\r\ndown Philosophia from heaven to dwell upon earth among\r\nmen was precisely the nation, endowed with a clear and\r\nlogical intellect, that was the very embodiment of rationality\r\nand reasonableness. As a matter of fact, it would not be far\r\nwrong to say that it is the Hellenic culture which has been\r\nmoulding humanity for ages; at least, it is this which has been\r\nthe predominating factor, the vital and dynamic element in\r\nman\'s nature. Greece when it died was reborn in Rome; Rome, in its return, found new life in France; and France\r\nmeans Europe. What Europe has been and still is for the world\r\nand humanity one knows only too much. And yet, the Hellenic\r\ngenius has not been the sole motive power and constituent element; there has \r\nbeen another leaven which worked constantly within, if intermittently without. If Europe represented\r\nmind and man and this side of existence, Asia always reflected\r\nthat which transcends the mind—the spirit, the Gods and the\r\nBeyonds. </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, we are concerned more with the immediate past, </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 71</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 mentality that laid its supreme stress upon the human\r\nrationality. What that epoch did not understand was that\r\nReason could be overstepped, that there was something higher,\r\nsomething greater than Reason; Reason being the sovereign\r\nfaculty, it was thought there could be nothing beyond, unless\r\nit were <i>deraison.</i> The human attribute par excellence is Reason.\r\nExactly so. But the fact is that man is not bound by his\r\nhumanity and that reason can be transformed and sublimated\r\ninto other more powerful faculties.&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; Now, the question is, what is the insufficiency of Reason?\r\nHow does it limit man ? And what is the Superman into which\r\nman is asked or is being impelled to grow ? </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; Reason is insufficient and unsatisfactory because, as Bergson\r\nexplains, it does not and cannot embrace life as a whole, seize\r\nman and the world in an integral realisation/The greater part\r\nof the vast mystery of existence escapes its <i>envergure.</i> Reason is\r\nthat faculty which is for analysing, defining, classifying and\r\nfixing things. It is a power that has grown in man in order that\r\nhe may best manipulate the things of the world. It is utilitarian,\r\npractical in its nature and outlook. And as practical dealing\r\nrequires that things should be stable and separate entities,\r\ntherefore Reason cannot but see things in solid and in the fragments of a solid. It cuts up existence into distinct parts and\r\ndiverse elements; and these again it seeks to relate and aggregate, in accordance with what it calls &quot;laws&quot;. Such a process\r\nhas been necessary for man in conducting life and action\r\nsuccessfully. Originally a bye-product of active life. Reason\r\ngradually separated itself and came finally to have an independent status and function, became or sought to become the\r\ninstrument of knowledge, of Truth. </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 although Reason has been and is useful for the practical,\r\nwe may say almost, the manual aspect of life, life itself it leaves\r\nunexplained and uncomprehended. For life is mobility, a\r\ncontinuous flow that has nowhere any gap or stop and things\r\nhave in reality no isolated or separate existence, they merge\r\nand mingle into one another and form an indissoluble whole.\r\nTherefore the forms and categories that Reason imposes upon\r\nexistence are more or less arbitrary; they are shackles that seek\r\nto bind up and limit life, but are often rent asunder in the very\r\neffort. So the civilisation that has its origin in Reason 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 72</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\">progresses with discoveries and inventions—devices for artfully\r\nmanipulating nature—has been essentially and preeminently\r\nmechanical in its structure and outlook. It has become more\r\nand more efficient perhaps, but less and less soul-inspired, less\r\nand less endowed with the free-flowing sap of organic growth\r\nand vitality. </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 instead of the rational principle, the new age wants the\r\nprinciple of Nature or Life. Even as regards knowledge Reason\r\nis not the only, nor the best instrument. For animals have\r\nproperly no reason; the nature-principle of knowledge in the\r\nanimal is Instinct—the faculty that acts so faultlessly, so\r\nmarvellously where Reason can only pause and be perplexed. This is not to say \r\nthat man is to or can go back to this primitive and animal function; but \r\ncertainly he can replace it by something akin which is as natural and yet purified and self\r\nconscious—illumined instinct, we may say or Intuition, as\r\nBergson terms it. And Nietzsche\'s definition of the Superman&nbsp;\r\nhas also a similar orientation and significance; for, according\r\nto him, the Superman is man who has outgrown his Reason,\r\nwho is not bound by the standards and the conventions determined by Reason for a special purpose. The Superman is one\r\nwho has gone beyond &quot;good and evil,&quot; who has shaken off from\r\nhis nature and character elements that are &quot;human, all too\r\nhuman&quot;—who is the embodiment of life-force in its absolute\r\npurity and strength and freedom. </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 then is the <i>mantra</i> of the new age—Life \r\nwith Intuition\r\nas its guide and not Reason and mechanical efficiency, not\r\nMan but Superman. The right <i>mantra</i> has been found, the\r\nprinciple itself is irreproachable. But the interpretation, the\r\napplication, does not seem to have been always happy. For,\r\nNietzsche\'s conception of the Superman is full of obvious\r\nlacunae. If we have so long been adoring the intellectual man,\r\nNietzsche asks us, on the other hand, to deify the vital man.\r\nAccording to him the superman is he who has (1) the supreme\r\nsense of the ego, (2) the sovereign will to power and (3) who <i>lives dangerously.</i> \r\nAll this means an Asura, that is to say, one who has, it may be, dominion over \r\nhis animal and vital impulsions in order, of course, that he may best gratify \r\nthem—but who has not purified them. Purification does not necessarily mean \r\nannihilation but it does mean sublimation and trans </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 73</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\">formation. So if you have to transcend man, you have to\r\ntranscend egoism also. For a conscious egoism is the very\r\ncharacteristic of man and by increasing your sense of egoism\r\nyou do not supersede man but simply aggrandise your\r\nhumanity, fashion it on a larger, a titanic scale. And then the\r\nwill to power is not the only will that requires fulfilment, there\r\nis also the will to knowledge and the will to love. In man these\r\nthree fundamental constitutive elements coexist, although they\r\ndo it, more often than not, at the expense of each other and\r\nin a state of continual disharmony. The superman, if he is to be\r\nthe man &quot;who has surmounted himself&quot;, must embody a poise\r\nof being in which all the three find a fusion and harmony—a\r\nperfect synthesis. Again, to live dangerously may be heroic, but\r\nit is not divine. To live dangerously means to have eternal\r\nopponents, that is to say, to live ever on the same level with the\r\nforces you want to dominate. To have the sense that one has to\r\nfight and control means that one is not as yet the sovereign lord,\r\nfor one has to strive and strain and attain. The supreme lord\r\nis he who is perfectly equanimous with himself and with the\r\nworld. He has not to batter things into a shape in order to\r\ncreate. He creates means, he manifests. He wills and he\r\nachieves—<i>&quot;God said \'let there be light\' and there was light.\'\'</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; As a matter of fact, the superman is not, as Nietzsche thinks\r\nhim to be, the highest embodiment of the biological force of\r\nNature, not even as modified and refined by the aesthetic and\r\naristocratic virtues of which the higher reaches of humanity\r\nseem capable. For that is after all humanity only accentuated\r\nin certain other fundamentally human modes of existence. It\r\ndoes not carry far enough the process of surmounting. In reality\r\nit is not a surmounting but a new channelling. Instead of the\r\nethical and intellectual man, we get the vital and aesthetic\r\nman. It may be a change but not a transfiguration. </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 the faculty of Intuition said to be the characteristic of\r\nthe New Man does not mean all that it should, if we confine\r\nourselves to Bergson\'s definition of it. Bergson says that Intuition is a sort of <i>sympathy,</i> a community of feeling or sensibility\r\nwith the urge of the life-reality. The difference between the\r\nsympathy of Instinct and the sympathy of Intuition being\r\nthat while the former is an unconscious or semiconscious\r\npower, the latter is illumined and self-conscious. Now this view </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 7 4&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\r\n</font>\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\"><b>&nbsp;</b>emphasises only the feeling-tone of Intuition, the vital sensibility \r\nthat attends the direct communion with the life movement. But Intuition is not only purified feeling and sensibility,\r\nit is also purified vision and knowledge. It unites us not only\r\nwith the movement of life, but also opens out to our sight the\r\nTruths, the fundamental realities behind that movement. Bergson does not, of course, point to any existence behind the\r\ncontinuous flux of life-power—the elan vital. He seems to deny&nbsp;\r\nany static truth or truths to be seen and seized in any scheme\r\nof knowledge. To him the dynamic flow—the Heraclitian <i>panta reei</i> is the ultimate reality. It is precisely to this view of\r\nthings that Bergson owes his conception of Intuition. Since\r\nexistence is a continuum of Mind-Energy, the only way to know\r\nit is to be in harmony or unison with it, to move along its\r\ncurrent. The conception of knowledge as a fixing and delimiting\r\nof things is necessarily an anomaly in this scheme. But the\r\nquestion is, is matter the only static and separative reality? Is the flux of vital Mind-Energy the ultimate truth ? </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; Matter forms the lowest level of reality. Above it is the elan\r\nvital. Above the elan vital there is yet the domain of the Spirit.\r\nAnd the Spirit is a static substance and at the same a dynamic\r\ncreative power. It is Being (<i>Sat</i>) that realises or expresses itself\r\nthrough certain typal nuclei or nodi of consciousness <i>(chit)\r\n</i>in a continuous becoming, in a flow of creative activity (<i>ananda).\r\n</i>The dynamism of the vital energy is only a refraction or precipitation of the dynamism of the spirit; and so also static\r\nmatter is only the substance of the spirit concretised and\r\nsolidified. It is in an uplift both of matter and vital force to their\r\nprototypes—<i>swarupa</i> and <i>swabhava—</i>in the Spirit that lies the\r\nreal transformation and transfiguration of the humanity 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; This is the truth that is trying to dawn upon the new age.\r\nNot matter but that which forms the substance of matter, not\r\nintellect but a vaster consciousness that informs the intellect,\r\nnot man as he is, an aberration in the cosmic order, but as he\r\nmay and shall be the embodiment and fulfilment of that order—\r\nthis is the secret Intuition which, as yet dimly envisaged,\r\nnevertheless secretly inspires all the human activities of today.\r\nOnly, the truth is being interpreted, as we have said, in terms<br>\r\nof vital life. The intellectual and physical man gave us one\r\naspect of the reality, but neither is the vital and psychical man </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 75</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 complete reality. The one acquisition of this shifting of the\r\nviewpoint has been that we are now in touch with the natural\r\nand deeper movement of humanity and not as before merely\r\nwith its artificial scaffolding. The Alexandrine civilisation of\r\nhumanity, in Nietzsche\'s phrase, was a sort of divagation from\r\nnature, it was following a loop away from the direct path of\r\nnatural evolution. And the new Renaissance of today has\r\nprecisely corrected this aberration of humanity and brought<br>\r\nit again in a line with the natural cosmic order. </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; Certainly this does not go far enough into the motive of the\r\nchange. The cosmic order does not mean mentalised vitalism\r\nwhich is also in its turn a section of the integral reality. It means\r\nthe order of the spirit, it means the transfiguration of the\r\nphysical, the vital and the intellectual into the supernal Substance, Power and Light of that Spirit. The real transcendence\r\nof humanity is not the transcendence of one or other of its\r\nlevels but the total transcendence to an altogether different<br>\r\nstatus and the transmutation of humanity in the mould of that\r\nstatus—not a Nietzschean Titan nor a Bergsonian Dionysus\r\nbut the tranquil vision and delight and dynamism of the\r\nSpirit—the incarnation of a godhead.&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 76</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;<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>','-09_The Intuition of the Age','','publish','closed','open','','09_the-intuition-of-the-age','','','2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/09_the-intuition-of-the-age/',0,'post','',0),(1520,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>19.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 style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<b><font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>The Moral and the Spiritual</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\">Is there anything essentially wrong, evil in its very being\r\nand nature? Some religious traditions say, there is: Satan is\r\nsuch a thing, Ahriman is such a thing, and what else is <i>maya</i></font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">or <i>mard?</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; However that may be, the sense of something essentially\r\nwrong is the fount and origin of the moral sense. The moral\r\nsense stems from and lives on the sense of sin and guilt.</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 sense of sin is the fundamental inspiration behind some\r\nreligious disciplines, even the sense of something irrevocably\r\nbad or something irreparable; for that gives a stronger impetus, a more dynamic urge to the spur of the religious consciousness. The sense of something irreparable, a final doom,\r\nhas before it the vision of an eternal hell, the Lord of hell and\r\nhis hosts and his captives. Upon this basic picture of Hell has\r\nloomed out Dante\'s vision of Paradise.</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 Indian consciousness did not consider anything essentially evil, anything irrevocably and eternally condemned to\r\nperdition. Even the Asura, the anti-Divine is viewed, in the\r\nlast analysis of things, also as an aspect, a formation of the\r\nDivine himself. Did and Aditi are sisters, twin aspects of the\r\nsame Supreme Being. All the legends in narrating the life-history of the Asura describe his end as a submission to the\r\nDivine Will and a merging in Him. An entire life of bitter\r\nhostility culminates in the same degree of love for the Divine.The process of enmity seems to have a deeper occult meaning\r\nconducive to the more perfect union with the Divine. We know\r\nin <i>Savitri</i> how Sri Aurobindo speaks of Death as only a mask of\r\nImmortality.</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, evil, as we usually know it, as human mind construes\r\nit, is only a misplacement of a thing, a thing not in its place—\r\na thing need not be essentially wrong, it is wrong because it</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 152<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 not in its right place. Even things considered reprehensible\r\nby the moral sense<b> </b> are not so when they are viewed from\r\nanother standpoint.</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 moral consciousness seeks to rescue man from the\r\nanimal consciousness. Its effort is to be delivered from the\r\ninferior vital instincts and rise to something higher, genuinely\r\nhuman. It does that or tries to do that by cultivating a feeling\r\nof repulsion, even of horror towards things that are sought to\r\nbe rejected, cast out. The feeling of repulsion, of revulsion and\r\nhorror, is indispensable to the growth and maintenance of the\r\nmoral feeling.</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 Indian discipline, on the other hand, teaches that to\r\nrise to a higher state of consciousness one need not have, one\r\nmust not have, any feeling of revulsion or hatred. There is no\r\nsuch thing as saintly hatred. One must be free from attachment to the movements \r\nof inferior nature, one must cultivate detachment from them, but not necessarily through hatred or horror.\r\nThe spiritual discipline bases itself upon a sense of perfect\r\nequality.                          </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; When you have hatred or horror for a thing it means you\r\nare on the same plane with it, your consciousness is level\r\nwith the consciousness of the opposite feelings. You have to\r\nrise above the status of the lower nature and this can be done\r\nonly by a calm detachment, a quiet withdrawal. One need not\r\nentertain repulsion or hatred for animal life in order to rise\r\nsuperior to it, one automatically rises superior to it when one\r\nlinks oneself to the higher status, when one is imbued with the\r\nsuperior consciousness. The animal consciousness is not a\r\nwrong consciousness in itself, it is a life of the animal; the\r\nhuman consciousness may regard it as such and may still\r\ndiscover a superior consciousness looking at the movements of\r\nthe lower world dispassionately, indifferently, or even appreciatively, for a thing of beauty is there even in the animal\r\nlife, for the Divine is everywhere.</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 moral impulse is towards a self-exceeding but this\r\nself-exceeding, I have said, is to be done in perfect equanimity,\r\nin absolute detachment and indifference. To rise in consciousness, from the physical and animal to the divine, means, of\r\ncourse, abandoning the inferior, reaching the higher: but\r\n\'inferior\' does not mean something low, something to be</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 153<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\">despised and reviled, but simply something to be passed over,\r\ntranscended. And the ideal would be not only to surpass but\r\nto find out a secret parallelism between the two, discover the\r\nseed of the higher embedded even in the lower. The Indian\r\ndiscipline, including the school that advocates total rejection\r\nof the lower and enjoins simple detachment and separation, does not approve of any feeling of contempt or disgust.</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 states of being or consciousness from the animal, or\r\ndown from Matter itself up to the Supreme—<i>abrahmastamba—\r\n</i>constitute what is called a hierarchy. Hierarchy means a\r\nstructure rising upward tier upon tier, step by step: it is a\r\nscale, as it were, of increasing values, only the values are not\r\nmoral, they indicate only a measure, a neutral measure respecting position or a kind of mass content. As in a building\r\nwhere brick is laid upon brick, or stone upon stone, the one\r\nlaid above is not superior to the one laid below; the terms\r\ninferior and superior indicate only the simple position of the\r\nobjects. Even the system of the four social orders in ancient\r\nIndia was originally such a hierarchy. The higher and lower\r\norders did not carry any moral appreciation or depreciation.\r\nThe four orders placed one above the other schematically\r\ndenote only the respective social functions classified according\r\nto the. nature of each, even as the human body represents such\r\na hierarchy, rising from the feet at the bottom towards the\r\nhead at the top. This is to say all objects and movements in\r\nnature are <i>right</i> when they are confined each to its own domain,\r\nfollowing its own dharma of that domain. Thus one can be\r\nperfectly calm and at ease witnessing the catastrophies and\r\ncataclysms in nature, for one knows it is the dharma of\r\nmaterial nature. Man terms them disasters for he judges them\r\naccording to his own convenience. Even so, one should not be\r\nperturbed at the wild behaviour—man calls it wild—of wild\r\nanimals. Likewise the gods in their sovereign tranquillity smile\r\nat the crudeness and stupidities of human beings. One has to\r\nlift oneself up, withdraw and stand high above all that one\r\nwishes to surpass and look at it, with a benign godly smile.</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 a gradation of developing consciousness, of\r\ngrowing states or status of being. There is a higher and lower\r\nlevel in point of the measure of consciousness but that involves\r\nno moral judgement: the moral judgement is man\'s; it is</font>&nbsp;\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 154<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\">man\'s, one might almost say, idiosyncracy, that is to say, a\r\nnotion that is a prop to help him mount the ladder. Though\r\nit might be necessary at a certain stage, in certain circumstances, it is not a universal or ineluctable law, not even in his\r\npersonal domain. The growing consciousness is like the growing\r\ntree rising upward first into a trunk, then spreading out into\r\nbranches, into twigs and tendrils, then in flowers and finally,<b> \r\n</b>in<b> \r\n</b>fruits. These are mounting grades of growth, but the growth above\r\nis not <i>superior</i> to the growth below. It is a one unified whole\r\nand each portion has its own absolute value, beauty and utility.</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 modern mind has forgotten this lesson. It is terribly\r\nmoral—I say moral, not immoral—its immorality has found\r\nplay, has almost been cultured so that its moral sense may\r\nremain intact. Its dislike and even abhorrence for things it\r\nchooses to call immoral is the ransom it pays for rescuing its\r\nsense of morality, and paradoxically this very abhorrence for\r\nunholy things has pushed it all the more into their grasp. This\r\nis the characteristic turn or twist of the modern consciousness,\r\nthe perversity unknown to the ancient \'sinners\'. Perversity\r\nmeans, you yield, not only yield, but take delight in the thing\r\nyou dislike, detest or abhor even. In the vein of St. Augustine\r\nwho said &quot;I believe because it is impossible&quot;,1 the modern\r\nconsciousness says: I love because I hate.</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 strange fascination for the forbidden fruit has gripped the\r\nmodern mentality and the most significant part of the thing\r\nis that the forbidding comes from within oneself, not from any\r\nauthority outside—it is self-forbidden. We are reminded here\r\nof the Kantian moral absolute—the categorical imperative.\r\nThis is a gospel based upon the Christian and Semitic tradition,\r\npolished by the Greek (that is, Socratic) touch, quickened and\r\nsharpened v by the intellectual and social stress of European\r\nCulture. India admitted no such moral absolute or mental\r\ncategorical imperative. The urge of her spiritual consciousness was always to go \r\nbeyond, beyond the dualities, beyond the trinities (the three <i>gunas)—</i>all mental or scriptural rules and\r\nregulations. For her there is only one absolute—the transcendent, the Supreme Divine himself—the Brahman, nothing</font>&nbsp;\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">else, <i>netaram.</i></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\" size=\"2\"><sup>1</sup> <i>Credo quia impossibile</i> is actually a phrase of Tertullian vide his <i>De Came\r\nChristi, V—</i>though often ascribed to St. Augustine</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 155<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; The Indian spiritual consciousness considers the secular\r\ndistinction of good and evil as otiose: both are maya, there\r\nmust neither be attachment to the Good, nor repulsion from\r\nEvil, the two, <i>dwandwas,</i> belong to the same category of\r\nrelativity, that is, unreality.</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; Indian artists and poets were steeped in that \r\ntradition, wholly inspired by that spirit. Orthodox morality often wonders, is \r\neven shocked at the frankness, the daring nonchalance in Indian art creations,—a familiar prudery would\r\ncall it shamelessness and even vulgarity, but to the Indian\r\nview, \'the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant\' are of\r\nequal value and merit. The movement conventional morality\r\ncalls \'libidinous\' has a nobler name in Indian tradition: it is <i>adirasa,</i> the first or primary delight of existence. As I have said,\r\nthe modern consciousness finds it a horror and is therefore all\r\nthe more fascinated by it and dives into it head foremost.</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 cure the modern malady we have to go back again to something of the ancient mentality. We have to cultivate a\r\nconsciousness, now forgotten and alienated but once natural\r\nto the human mind, the consciousness and status of a transcendence built with the sense of absolute calm, an equality,\r\nall serene and all englobing, that is God\'s consciousness.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 156</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\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-21_The Moral and the Spiritual','','publish','closed','open','','21_the-moral-and-the-spiritual','','','2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/21_the-moral-and-the-spiritual/',0,'post','',0),(1521,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','<html>\r\n\r\n<head>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=windows-1252\">\r\n<title>Education as the Growth of Consc</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>Education as the Growth of Consciousness</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\">ALL knowledge is within you. Information you get from outside,\r\nbut the understanding of it ? It is from within. The information\r\nfrom outside gives you dead matter. What puts life into it,\r\nlight into it is your own inner 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; All education, all culture means drawing this inner light\r\nto the front. Indeed the word \'education\' literally means, \'to\r\nbring out.\' Plato also pointed to the same truth when he said\r\nthat education is remembrance. You remember what is imbedded or secreted within, you bring to the light, the light of\r\nyour physical mind, what you have within, what you already\r\npossess in your being and inner consciousness. Acquisition is not\r\neducation. Indeed a miser is not a rich man, rich is he who<br>\r\nknows how to utilise his wealth, even so a possessor of much\r\ninformation is only a carrier of loads.</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; True education is growth of consciousness. It is consciousness\r\nthat carries the light and the power of the light. We are born\r\nupon earth with this consciousness at the centre of our being.\r\nAnd a growing child is nothing but a growing consciousness.\r\nGrowth of consciousness means an increasing intensity and an\r\nincreasing amplitude or wideness of the light. Unfortunately,\r\nplaced as we are under the circumstances of life as it is, this\r\nlight of consciousness is not allowed to grow in its natural arid\r\nnormal way. The external demands of life and the world put a\r\npressure upon it which turns it away from its straight path.\r\nThings are demanded of this light or consciousness which do\r\nnot belong to its nature, which are not an expression of its\r\nnature. As though it is twisted, tortured or smothered under\r\nutilitarian necessities.</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 brain should be a flowering of this consciousness, a\r\ndeveloping vehicle for the expression of the increasing consciousness. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 197<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\">For that a guidance is needed so that one may always\r\nturn within and look for that consciousness, feel it growing, and\r\nwith one\'s will and thought and act help its growth and development. A brain is not developed by the mass of information\r\nthat may be pressed into it. Informations are necessary but\r\nthey should be presented in such a way that they serve as fuel,\r\nhelpful fuel to the mounting fire; they must not be merely\r\npiled up upon and around the fire or be as so many wet faggots\r\ncrushing it down with their weight. A true learner is one who\r\nseeks sincerely this inner consciousness which is one\'s own; the\r\ntrue teacher is one who knows how to lead the learner towards\r\nthis inner light.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 198<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','-32_Education as the Growth of Consciousness','','publish','closed','open','','32_education-as-the-growth-of-consciousness','','','2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/32_education-as-the-growth-of-consciousness/',0,'post','',0),(1522,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>36 hymn.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>Hymn to Darkness</i> </font>\r\n\r\n		</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\">HERE is a modern poem in Bengali. It is characteristically\r\nmodern, though perhaps not quite modernist. It is an invocation to Darkness:</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-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">That darkness is no more,</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">The darkness in which my heart plunged when you came,</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">It is no more there.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Many are the lights now around the heart</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Arrayed as in a festive illumination.</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Ceaseless now</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">There is the earth\'s merry-go-round all the time.</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">But beyond still,</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Outside Time, the mind, even this mind stands</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">And sends its call to Thee alone.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Yes, the Darkness is there no longer;</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">And yet stretching out both the arms<br>\r\nMy mind yearns to reach the Darkness<br>\r\nAnd itself becomes the Darkness.</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; Invocation to Darkness has, it appears, become quite\r\nfashionable among a certain group of modern poets. It is a\r\nfavourite theme on which many a poet, many a good poet\r\nhas played each in his way, a characteristic variation. Curiously\r\nenough, I came across about the same time the work of another\r\npoet, a French poet, also modern and almost modernist and,\r\ncuriouser still, in the same manner, a worshipper of Darkness. He is Yves Bonnefoy, originally belonging to the school of<br>\r\nJouve, an earlier modern. He speaks of two kinds of Night, one\r\ndarker than the other—the less dark one is our common day\r\nwith its grey light. The other is on the other shore:</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 325<hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i>Vers l\'autre rive encore plus nocturne<sup>1</sup></i><sup> </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\">This darker night on the other shore is not illuminated by\r\nany light, but there is fire there, fire and its flame and the\r\ntransparency of that flame: here is his description of how\r\nthey stand to each other, that Night and our familiar day:</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-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Une torche est portee dans le jour gris,<br>\r\nLe feu dechire Ie jour.<br>\r\nII y a que la transparence<b> </b> de la flamme<br>\r\nAmerement nie Ie jour.<sup>2</sup></i><sup> </sup></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\">But why bitterly? Perhaps the day (the common day) tasted<br>\r\nbitter in the mouth of the poet.</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 has not perhaps the spiritual sense as we in India\r\nunderstand it. He speaks in effect of a dark goddess, he calls her</font>\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>Douve profonde et noire<sup>3</sup></i><sup> </sup>\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; He names her <i>Douve,</i> perhaps in memory of his first master\r\nJouve, and addresses her as <i>Sombre Lumiere</i> (Dark Light).\r\nHe evidently means his poetic inspiration; his vision of the\r\nother shore is that of the world of his poetic experiences and\r\nrealisations. But the nature of the contents of that world is\r\nvery characteristic. They are apparently qualities and objects\r\nfundamentally spiritual—transparent fire and even motionless silence. Yes, that world is of wind and fire (compare our\r\nworld of Tapas) and yet calm and tranquil. So the poet sings:</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-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i>Douve sera ton nom au loin parmi les pierres,</i>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i>Douve profonde et noire,</i>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i>Eau basse irreductible<b> </b>ou, I\'effort se perdra.*</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\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i><font size=\"2\">1</font></i><font size=\"2\"> &quot;Towards the other bank in a still darker night.&quot;</font></font><font size=\"2\">\r\n</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">2 &quot;A torch is held up in the day\'s<b> \r\n</b>grey,<b> \r\n</b>The fire tears rifts in the day.<br>\r\nThere\'s this: the flame\'s transparence<br>\r\nBitterly denies the day.&quot;</font><font size=\"2\"> </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">3 &quot;Douve dark and black.&quot;</font><font size=\"2\">\r\n</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">4 &quot;Douve shall be your name far off among the stones,<br>\r\nDouve dark and black,<br>\r\nIrreducible low water where effort shall spend itself.&quot;</font><font size=\"2\">\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 326<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\">Inspiration, according to the poet, is not the high swell<b> \r\n</b>of<b> \r\n</b>garrulousness and anxious effort. It is the solid bedrock underground when all the surface effusions have ebbed away—a\r\nshadowy dark strong tranquil repose.</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 modern English poet—Robert Graves—worships a White\r\nGoddess. But from the description he gives of the lady, she\r\nwould appear to be more black than white; for she seems to be\r\nintimately connected with the affairs—that is to say—the\r\nmysteries—of Hades and Hecate, underground worlds and\r\nmidnight rites. She incarnates as the sow, although a white\r\nsow, she flows as the sap within plants and rises as passion and\r\nlust in 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; We in India have a dark god and a dark goddess—Krishna\r\nand Kali. Krishna is dark, his is the deep blue of the sky. Kali\r\nis dark, hers is the blackness of the earthly night. The Vaishnava\r\npoet and saint sang:</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-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Oh, I love black,</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">For black is the tamal tree, black is Krishna,</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Oh<b>,</b> how I love black.</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; Ramprasad the Bhakta thus speaks of Kali, his dark Mother: the poem itself is very dark, that is to say, the meaning is dark,\r\nand the style, the phrasing is darker still. A literal translation\r\nis out of question. A very free rendering is only possible:</font>&nbsp;\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<font face=\"Times New Roman\">I have brooded over it and I am utterly confused;</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">She in whose name one defies dark time,\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">She at whose feet lies low the Supreme in his pure whiteness </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Why should she herself be black ?<br>\r\nMany are the forms of blackness,\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">But here is a very marvel of blackness.\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">If you hold it in your heart,</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; the lotus there shall bloom and burn bright—<br>\r\nOh, she is dark and her name is Mother Darkness:</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">She is blacker than blackness.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">But one who has seen that beauty is lost for good,</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">He will have no eye for any other beauty.</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\">Are the moderns on the same track as these older mystics ?</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 327<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>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But why this panegyric in worship of darkness? Whence\r\nthis fascination for blackness ?</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; Our ancient Rishis speak of the supreme Light of lights,\r\nthe Source of all the lights that burn here, the Light that is\r\nbeyond darkness, on the other shore. Darkness is this world,\r\nthe world of ignorance, our earthly consciousness; this is a\r\nperception easily understandable. But in the mystic consciousness of a kind, darkness and light seem to be interchangeable. Darkness seems to be a form of light, nay even of a greater\r\nlight.</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; It is said, the occultists say, that between the light of the\r\nday, that is to say, the light of the ordinary consciousness and\r\nthe higher spiritual light, there is an interim world, an inter-mediate zone of consciousness. When one leaves the earthly\r\nday, the normal consciousness and goes within and to the\r\nheights, towards the other Light, one enters at first into a dark\r\nregion (the <i>selva oscura</i> of Dante). Physically also, the scientists say today that when you leave the earth\'s atmosphere,\r\nfrom a certain height you no longer see the earthly light but\r\nyou dive into a darkness where the sun does not shine in its\r\nglory as on earth. You see and feel the sunlight again when you\r\napproach the sun and are about to be consumed in its fires. In\r\nthe same way, we are told that on the spiritual path too, the path of inner \r\nconsciousness, when you leave the ordinary consciousness, when you lose that normal light and yet have not\r\narrived at the other higher light you grope in an intermediary\r\nregion of darkness. You have lost the lower knowledge and\r\nhave not yet gained the higher knowledge, then you are in\r\nthat uncertain world of greyness or darkness. Or it happens\r\nalso that while in the comparatively faint light of the ordinary\r\nconsciousness, you are suddenly confronted with the Superior\r\nLight—through some grace perhaps—you cannot stand the\r\nlight and get blinded and see sheer darkness. Again, the infinite sky in its fathomless depth appears to the naked eye blue,\r\ndeep blue, blue-black. Light concentrated, solidified, materialised becomes a speck of darkness to the human eye. Do we not\r\nsay today that a particle of matter (consolidated darkness) is\r\nonly a quantum of concentrated light-energy ?</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; Something of these supraphysical experiences must have\r\nentered into the consciousness of the modern poets who have</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 328<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\">also fallen in love with darkness and blackness—have become\r\nadorers, although they do not know, of <i>Shyama</i> and <i>Shyama.</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; Here, for example, is a hymn from the Rig Veda, a whole\r\nhymn addressed by Rishi Kushika to Night. Listen how the\r\nRishi invokes his black goddess: Night and Light are unified—almost one—in his consciousness. The Vedic Rishis considered\r\nNight as only another form or function of Day—<i>naktosasa\r\nsamanasa virupe—</i>Night and Dawn have the same mind although\r\nthe forms are different.</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=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">ODE TO DARKNESS</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><br>\r\n(Rigveda—X. 127.)</font>\r\n\r\n		<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\">NIGHT spreads wide, she comes everywhere, a Goddess with\r\nshining eyes—she looms over these glories as their overlord. (1)</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\">The Immortal Goddess fills up the Vast, above and below.</font>&nbsp;\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">She compels the darkness with her light.</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Arial\">(2)</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\">The Goddess comes and veils her sister, the Dawn and glows\r\nthrough the blackness.                                (3)</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\">She is now that to us wherein we shall rest even as birds do on\r\na tree.                                                 (4)</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\">In her repose all habitations, all the footed and winged creatures, even the fast racing eagle.                          (5)</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\">0 Ocean-born Goddess! Smite the wolf, he or she, smite the\r\nrobber! Carry us safely through.                        (6)</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\">Black darkness clings to me all around; it stands here firm.\r\n0 Dawn! clear it even as you do my debts.             (7)</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\">Daughter of Heaven! A Herd of light is this hymn of victory\r\nthat moves towards you. I have made it for your sake. Do thou\r\naccept it, 0 Night.                                   (8)</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 329</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</body>\r\n</html>','-47_Hymn to Darkness','','publish','closed','open','','47_hymn-to-darkness','','','2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/47_hymn-to-darkness/',0,'post','',0),(1523,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','<html>\r\n\r\n<head>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=windows-1252\">\r\n<title>New Page 1</title>\r\n</head>\r\n\r\n<body>\r\n\r\n<div align=\"center\">\r\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"60%\" bordercolor=\"#111111\">\r\n		<tr>\r\n			<td>\r\n			<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n			<p align=\"center\">\r\n			<img border=\"0\" src=\"/Nolini/Evolution and the Earthly Destiny/_images/Bgn%201.jpg\" width=\"350\" height=\"551\"></p>\r\n			<hr>\r\n			<p align=\"center\">\r\n			<img border=\"0\" src=\"/Nolini/Evolution and the Earthly Destiny/_images/Bgn%202.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"526\"></p>\r\n			<hr>\r\n			<p align=\"center\">\r\n			<img border=\"0\" src=\"/Nolini/Evolution and the Earthly Destiny/_images/Bgn%203.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"112\"></p>\r\n			<p align=\"center\"><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</div>\r\n\r\n</body>\r\n\r\n</html>\r\n','evolution-and-the-earthly-destiny-01_Pre Content','','publish','closed','open','','evolution-and-the-earthly-destiny-01_pre-content','','','2021-11-23 17:21:39','2021-11-23 17:21:39','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/evolution-and-the-earthly-destiny-01_pre-content/',0,'post','',0),(1524,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>23.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>Humanism and Humanism</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\">A GOOD many European scholars and philosophers have found\r\nIndian spirituality and Indian culture, at bottom, lacking in\r\nwhat is called &quot;humanism.&quot;1 So our scholars and philosophers\r\non their side have been at pains to rebut the charge and\r\ndemonstrate the humanistic element in our tradition. It may be\r\nasked however, if such a vindication is at all necessary, or if it\r\nis proper to apply a European standard of excellence to things\r\nIndian, India may have other measures, other terms of valuation. Even if it is proved that humanism as denned and under-\r\nstood in the West is an unknown thing in India, yet that need\r\nnot necessarily be taken as a sign of inferiority or deficiency.</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; But first of all we must know what exactly is meant by\r\nhumanism. It is, of course, not a doctrine or dogma; it is an\r\nattitude, an outlook—the attitude, the outlook that views and\r\nweighs the worth of man as man. The essential formula was\r\nsuccinctly given by the Latin poet when he said that nothing\r\nhuman he considered foreign to him.2 It is the characteristic of\r\nhumanism to be interested in man as man and in all things\r\nthat interest man as man. To this however an important\r\ncorollary is to be added, that it does not concern itself with\r\nthings that do not concern man\'s humanity. The original father\r\nof humanism was perhaps Socrates whose mission it was, as he\r\nsaid, to bring down philosophy from heaven to live among men.\r\nMore precisely, the genesis should be ascribed rather to the\r\nAristotelian tradition of Socratic teaching.</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; Humanism proper was born—or reborn—with the Renaissance. \r\nIt was as strongly and vehemently negative and protestant in its nature as it was positive and affirmative. For its</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<b>.</b> Only the other day I found a critic in <i>The Manchester Guardian</i> referring to <i>The\r\nGita as</i> something frigid (and confused)!<br>\r\n2 <i>Humoni nihil</i> a <i>me alienum puto.—</i>Terence.</font><font size=\"2\">\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 160<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\">fundamental character—that which gave it its very name—-was\r\na protest against, a turning away from whatever concerned\r\nitself with the supra-human, with God or Self, with heaven or\r\nother worlds, with abstract or transcendental realities. The\r\nmovement was humanistic precisely because it stood against\r\nthe theological and theocratical mediaeval 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; The Graeco-Latin culture was essentially and predominantly\r\nhumanistic. Even so, the mediaeval culture also, in spite of its\r\ntheological stress, had a strong basis in humanism. For the\r\nreligion itself, as has been pointed out, is deeply humanistic,\r\nin the sense that it brought salvation and heaven close to the\r\nlevel of human frailty—through the miracle of Grace and the\r\nhumanity of Christ—and that it-envisaged a kingdom of heaven\r\nor city of God—the body of Christ—formed of the brotherhood\r\nof the human race in its solidarity.</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 Indian outlook, it is said, is at a double remove from this\r\ntype of humanism. It has not the pagan Graeco-Roman\r\nhumanism, nor has it the religious humanism of Christianity.\r\nIts spirit can be rendered in the vigorous imagery of Blake:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">it surrounds itself with cold floods of abstraction and the forests\r\nof solitude.</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 religious or Christian humanism of the West is in its\r\nessential nature the pagan and profane humanism itself, at\r\nleast an extension of the same. The sympathy that a St. Francis\r\nfeels for his leprous brother is, after all, a human feeling, a\r\nfeeling that man has for man; and even his love for the bird,\r\nor an inanimate object is also a very human feeling, transferred\r\nto another receptacle and flowing in another direction. It\r\nis a play of the human heart, only refined and widened; there\r\nis no change in 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; It goes without saying that in the East too there is no lack\r\nof such sympathy or fellow-feeling either in the saint or in the\r\nman of the world. Still there is a difference. And the critics\r\nhave felt it, if not understood it rightly. The Indian <i>bhutadaya\r\n</i>and Christian charity do not spring from the same source—I\r\ndo not speak of the actual popular thing but of the ideal—even\r\nwhen their manner of expression is similar or the same, the\r\nspirit and the significance are different. In the East the\r\nliberated man or the man aiming at liberation may work for\r\nthe good and welfare of the world or he may not; and when he</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 161</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\">does work, the spirit is not that of benevolence or philanthropy.</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 Indian sage is not and cannot be human in the human\r\nway. For the end of his whole spiritual effort is to transcend\r\nthe human way and establish himself in the divine way, in the\r\nway of the Spirit. The feeling he has towards his fellow beings—\r\nmen. and animals, the sentient or the insentient, the entire\r\ncreation in fact—is one of identity in the One Self. And there-fore he does not need to embrace physically his brother, like\r\nthe Christian saint, to express or justify the perfect inner union\r\nor unity. The basis of his relation with the world and its objects\r\nis not the human heart, however purified and widened, but\r\nsomething behind it and hidden by it, the secret soul and self.\r\nIt was Vivekananda who very often stressed the point that the\r\ndistinctive characteristic of the Vedantist was that he did not\r\nlook upon created beings as his brethren but as himself, as the\r\none and the same self. The profound teaching of the Upanishadic Rishi is—what may appear very egoistic and inadmissible to the Christian saint—that one loves the wife or the\r\nson or anybody or anything in the world not for the sake of the\r\nwife or the son or that body or thing but for the sake of the self,\r\nfor the sake of oneself that is in the object which one seems to\r\nlove.</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 pragmatic man requires an outward gesture, an external\r\nemotion to express and demonstrate his kinship with creation.\r\nIndeed the more concrete and tangible the expression the more\r\nhuman it is considered to be and all the more worthy for it.\r\nThere are not a few who think that giving alms to the poor is\r\nmore nobly human than, say, the abstract feeling of a wide\r\ncommonalty, experienced solely in imagination or contemplation in the Wordsworthian way.</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 indeed a gradation in the humanistic attitude that\r\nrises from grosser and more concrete forms to those that are\r\nless and less so. At the lowest rung and the most obvious in\r\nform and nature is what is called <i>altruism,</i> or <i>philanthrope,</i> that\r\nis to say, doing good to others, some good that is tangible and\r\napparent, that is esteemed and valued by the world generally.\r\nIn altruism refined and sublimated, when it is no longer a\r\nmatter chiefly of doing but of feeling, from a more or Less\r\nphysical and material give and take we rise into a vital and\r\npsychological sympathy and intercommunion, we have what is</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 162<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\">humanism proper. Humanism is transfigured into something\r\nstill higher and finer when from the domain of personal or\r\nindividual feeling and sympathy we ascend to cosmic feeling,\r\nto self-identification with the All, the One that is Many. This\r\nis the experience that seems to be behind the Buddhistic compassion, <i>karuna.</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; And yet there can be a status even beyond. For beyond the\r\ncosmic reality, lies the transcendent reality. It is the Absolute, <i>neti, neti,</i> into which individual and cosmos, all disappear and\r\nVanish. In compassion, the cosmic communion, there is a trace\r\nand an echo of humanism—it is perhaps one of the reasons why\r\nEuropeans generally are attracted to Buddhism and find it\r\nmore congenial than Hinduism with its dizzy Vedantic heights;</font>&nbsp;\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">but in the status of the transcendent Selfhood humanism is\r\ntotally transcended and transmuted, one dwells then in the\r\nBliss that passeth all feeling.</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 Upanishadic summit is not suffused with humanism or\r\ntouched by it, because it is supra-human, not because there is\r\na lack or want or deficiency in the <i>human</i> feeling, but because\r\nthere is a heightening and a transcendence in the consciousness\r\nand being. To man, to human valuation, the Boddhisattwa\r\nmay appear to be greater than the Buddha; even so to the\r\nsick a physician or a nurse may seem to be a diviner angel than\r\nany saint or sage or perhaps God Himself—but that is an\r\ninferior viewpoint, that of particular or local 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; It is sometimes said that to turn away from the things of\r\nhuman concern, to seek liberation and annihilation in the\r\nSelf and the Beyond is selfishness, egoism; on the contrary, to\r\nsacrifice the personal delight of losing oneself in the Impersonal\r\nso that one may live and even suffer in the company of ordinary\r\nhumanity in order to succour and serve it is the nobler aim.\r\nBut we may ask if it is egoism and selfishness to seek delight in\r\none\'s own salvation beyond, would it be less selfish and egoistic\r\nto enjoy the pleasure of living on a level with humanity with\r\nthe idea of aiding and uplifting it ? Indeed, in either case, the\r\ntruth discovered by Yajnavalkya, to which we have already\r\nreferred, stands always justified, that it is not for the sake of\r\nthis or that that one loves this or that but for the sake of the\r\nself that one loves this or that.</font>&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <font face=\"Times New Roman\">The fact of the matter is that here we enter a domain in</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 163<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>which the notion of egoism or selfishness has no <i>raison d\'etre.\r\n</i>It is only when one has transcended not only selfishness but\r\negoism and sense of individuality that one becomes ready to\r\nenter the glory and beatitude of the Self, or Brahman or\r\nShunyam. One may actually and irrevocably pass beyond, or\r\none-may return from there (or from the brink of it) to work in\r\nand on the world—out of compassion or in obedience to a\r\nspecial call or a higher Will or because of some other thing;</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">but this second course does not mean that one has attained a\r\nhigher status of being. We may consider it more human, but\r\nit is not necessarily a superior realisation. It is a matter of\r\nchoice of vocation only, to use a mundane phraseology. The\r\nPersonal and the Impersonal are two co-ordinates of the same\r\nsupreme Reality—some choose (or are chosen by) the one and\r\nothers choose (or are chosen by) the other, perhaps as the\r\nintegral Play or the inscrutable Plan demands and determines,\r\nbut neither is intrinsically superior to the other—although, as\r\nI have already said, from an interested human standpoint, one\r\nmay seem more immediately profitable or nearer than the\r\nother; but from that standpoint there may be other truths\r\nthat are still more practically useful, still closer to the earthly\r\ntexture of 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; The humanism, known to Europe generally, both in its\r\nprofane and religious aspects, is all &quot;human—too human&quot; as Nietzsche \r\npronounced it; it was for this reason that the Promethean prophet conjured man to transcend his humanity\r\nanyhow, and rise to a superior status of culture and civilisation, of being and consciousness as we would say.</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; Indian spirituality precisely envisages such a transcendence.\r\nAccording to it, the liberated soul, one who lives in and with\r\nthe Brahman or the Supreme Divine is he who has discarded\r\nthe inferior human nature and has taken up the superior divine\r\nnature.<b> </b> He has conquered the evil of the lower nature, certainly;</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">but also he has gone beyond the good of that nature. The\r\nliberated man is seated above the play of the three Gunas that\r\nconstitute the <i>apara prakrti.</i> Human intelligence, human feeling,\r\nhuman sentiment, human motive do not move him. Humanism\r\ngenerally has no meaning for him. He is no longer human, but\r\nsupra-human; his being and becoming are the spontaneous\r\nexpression of a universal and transcendent consciousness. He</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 164<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\">does not always live and move externally in the non-human\r\nway; but even when he appears human in his life and action, his motives are not humanistic, his consciousness lies anchored\r\nsomewhere else, in the Divine Will that makes him be and do\r\nwhatever it chooses, human or not.</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, however, a type of humanism that is specially\r\nknown in India—it is not human humanism, but, as it is called, divine humanism. \r\nThat is to say, the human formula is maintained, but a new significance, a transcendent connotation is\r\nput into it. The general contour of the instrumentation is\r\npreserved, but the substance is transmuted. The brain, the\r\nheart and the physical consciousness not only change their\r\ndirection, but their very nature and character. And the Divine\r\nhimself is conceived of as such a Human Person—for the norm\r\nof the human personality is an eternal verity in the divine\r\nconsciousness.</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; Esoteric Christianity also has given us the conception of the\r\nHuman Divine; but it is somewhat different from the Vaishnava revelation which has found rather the Divine Human.\r\nIn other words, as I have already said, one has brought down\r\nthe divinity nearer to the human appreciation and has humanised it; in the other the human has been uplifted and made\r\ninto an archetypal reality where the human terms have been\r\nmore or less symbols and figures having not merely human\r\nbut a supra-human significance. The entire Vaishnava Lila\r\npasses not on this earth at all, but eternally in the eternal world\r\nof consciousness—<i>cinmaya—</i>behind all earthly (and human)\r\nmanifestation and expression.</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 cult of the Divine Human which enunciates the\r\nv mystic truth that <i>man</i> is greater than all and surpasses the\r\nVedic Law (which aims usually at the impersonal Absolute).\r\nBut Man here is to be understood as the Divine Person in his\r\nhuman norm, not at all the human man, as modern humanists\r\nof our country would like&quot; to have. It does not mean the glorification of man\'s human attributes and movements, even if\r\nthey be most sattwic and idealistic; it refers rather to the\r\ndivinised type, the archetype that is eternal in the super consciousness. And when such a Man lives and acts upon earth he\r\ndoes so in manner and measure that do not belong to this plane.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 165</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>','-23_Humanism and Humanism','','publish','closed','open','','23_humanism-and-humanism','','','2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/23_humanism-and-humanism/',0,'post','',0),(1525,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>24 the nat.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 Nature of Perfection</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\">PERFECTION is often understood to mean the highest or the\r\nutmost possible development, even if it be in one particular\r\nline or direction. That, however, can better be called success\r\nor achievement. True perfection is not an extreme growth,\r\nhowever great or commendable it may be: it is the harmony\r\nof an all-round growth, the expression of the unified total\r\nbeing. And yet this does not involve a stultification of any\r\nlimb or a forced diminution of any capacity. Perfection does\r\nnot consist either in the harmonisation of the utmost possible\r\ndevelopment of each and every capacity, attribute or power\r\nof being. First of all, it is not a possible ideal, given the conditions of existence and manifestation. Secondly, it is not necessary: perfection can be realised even otherwise.</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; How is the harmony to be brought about in the human\r\nsystem composed of so many different and discordant factors,\r\nforms and forces of consciousness? It is not possible if one\r\ntries to make them accommodate each other, tone down the\r\nindividual acuities and angularities, blunt or cut out the\r\nextreme expressions and effect some sort of a compromise or\r\na pact of goodwill. It is not the Greek ideal of the golden\r\nmean nor is it akin to the modern democratic ideal which\r\nlays down that each element is free—to grow and possess—\r\nto the extent that it allows the same freedom to every other\r\nelement. No, for true harmony one has to go behind and\r\nbeyond the apparent divergences to a secret being or status of consciousness, \r\nthe bed-rock of existence where all divergences are resolved and find their inherent and inalienable\r\nunity, their single origin and basis. If one gets there and takes\r\none\'s stand upon that absolute oneness, then and then only\r\nthe perfect harmony of all the diversities that naturally rise</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 182<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\">out of it as its self-expression becomes possible, not only\r\npossible but inevitable.</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 bed-rock is one\'s inmost spiritual being, the divine\r\nConsciousness which is at once an individual centre, a cosmic\r\nor universal field of existence and a transcendent truth and\r\nreality. With that as the nucleus and around it the whole\r\nsystem has to be arranged and organised: according to the\r\ndemand of the will and vision composing that consciousness,\r\nlife has to manifest itself and play out its appointed role. Its\r\nconfiguration or disposition will be wholly determined by the\r\nDivine Purpose working in and through it; its fullness will\r\nbe the fullness of the Divine Presence and intention. The\r\nmind will be wholly illumined, the vital with it will become\r\nthe pure energy of Consciousness and the physical body will\r\nbe made out of the substance of the divine being: our humanity\r\nwill be the home and sanctuary of the Divine.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 183<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>','-26_The Nature of Perfection','','publish','closed','open','','26_the-nature-of-perfection','','','2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/26_the-nature-of-perfection/',0,'post','',0),(1526,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>34 mystic.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>Mystic Poetry</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 WOULD like to make a distinction between mystic \r\npoetry and spiritual poetry. To equate mysticism and spirituality is not always \r\nhappy or even correct. Thus, when Tagore sings: </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; Who comes along singing \r\nand steering his boat? </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 seems a face familiar. </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; He goes in full sail, \r\nturns nor right nor left; </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 waves break helplessly \r\nat the sides!<br>\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; His face looks familiar....<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\"><i>it is</i> mysticism, mysticism <i>in excelsis.</i> \r\nEven A.E.\'s </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-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\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;&nbsp;&nbsp; \r\nI turn<br>\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To Thee, invisible, unrumoured, still: </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; \r\nWhite for Thy whiteness all desires bum.\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; Ah, with what \r\nlonging once again I turn!<sup>2 </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\">is just on the borderland: it has succeeded in \r\nleaving behind the mystic domain, but has not yet entered the city of the\r\nSpirit—at the most, it has turned the corner and approached the gate. Listen \r\nnow, </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-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My soul \r\nunhorizoned widens to measureless sight,<br>\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My body is \r\nGod\'s happy living tool,<br>\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \r\nMy spirit a vast sun of deathless light.<sup>3 </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\">&nbsp;or the more occult yet luminously vibrant \r\nlines: </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 &quot;The Golden Boat.&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\" size=\"2\">2&nbsp; A.E.: &quot;Desire.&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\" size=\"2\">3&nbsp; Sri Aurobindo: &quot;Transformation.&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 292</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;&nbsp; He stood upon a threshold \r\nserpent-watched, </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 peered into gleaming \r\nendless corridors,</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; Silent and listening in the \r\nsilent heart </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 the coming of the new \r\nand the unknown. </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; He gazed across the empty \r\nstillness</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; And heard the footsteps of the \r\nundreamed<b> </b>Idea </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 far avenues \r\nof the Beyond. </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\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He heard the secret Voice, \r\nthe Word that knows, </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 saw the secret face \r\nthat is our own.<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; Is there not a fundamental \r\ndifference, difference not merely with regard to the poetic personality, but \r\nwith regard to the very\r\nstuff of consciousness ? There is direct vision here, the fullness of light, the \r\nnative rhythm and substance of revelation, as if </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;&nbsp; In the dead wall \r\nclosing from a wider self,</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; Parting a door to \r\nthings unseized by earth-sense,</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; It lifted the heavy \r\ncurtain of the flesh.<sup>2. </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; When the Spirit speaks its \r\nown language in its own name, we have spiritual poetry. If, however, the Spirit \r\nspeaks— from choice or necessity—an alien language and manner, e.g., that of a \r\nprofane consciousness, or of the consciousness of another domain, idealistic or \r\nphilosophical or even occult, puts on or imitates spirit\'s language and manner, \r\nwe have what we propose to call mystic poetry proper. When Samain sings of the \r\nbody of the dancer: </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\"><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Et Pannyre \r\ndevient fleur,flamme, papillon!...</i></font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Comme au travers d\'une \r\neau soyeuse et continue;</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\"><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Dans un divin eclair, \r\nmontre Pannyre nue.<sup>3</sup></i><sup>&nbsp; </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; text-indent:25px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"2\"><i>1</i> Sri Aurobindo: <i>Switri,</i> \r\nBook<b> </b> I, Canto<b> </b>III. </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\"><font size=\"2\">2 Ibid.</font><br>\r\n<font size=\"2\">Later version: </font></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\" size=\"2\">In the dead wall closing us from wider \r\nself,<b> \r\n</b>Into a secrecy of apparent sleep, The mystic tract beyond our waking \r\nthoughts,<br>\r\nA door parted, built in by Matter\'s force, Releasing things unseized by earthly \r\nsense: </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\"><font size=\"2\">3 Albert Samain: &quot;Pannyre aux talons \r\nd\'or&quot;—<i>Awe Flams du Vass. </i>And Pannyre became flower, flame, butterfly....<br>\r\nAs though through a silky continuity of<b> </b> water In a divine flash showed \r\nPannyre<b> </b>naked.</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 293</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;or when Mallarme describes the laurel flower: </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\"><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Vermeil comme Ie pur \r\norteil du seraphin </i></font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i><font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </font></i>\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Que rougit la pudeur des aurores foulees,<sup>1</sup></i><sup>\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\">both so idealise, etherealize, almost spiritualise \r\nthe earth and the flesh that they seem ostensibly only a vesture of something \r\nelse behind, something mysterious and other-worldly, something other than, even \r\njust opposite to what they actually are or appear to be. That is the <i>mystique</i> \r\nof the senses which is a very characteristic feature of some of the best poetic \r\ninspirations of France. Baudelaire too, the Satanic poet, by the sheer intensity \r\nof sympathy and sincerity, pierces as it were into the soul of things and makes \r\nthe ugly, the unclean, the diseased, the sordid throb and glow with an almost \r\ncelestial light. Here is the Baudelairean manner: </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\"><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \r\nTout casses</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\"><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Qu\'ils sont. ILs ont des yeux per fonts comme line vrille, </i></font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i><font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </font></i>\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Luisant comme ces trous ou I\'eau dort dans la \r\nnuit;</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\"><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ils ont les yeux \r\ndivins de la petite fille.<sup>2</sup>...</i> </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; text-indent:25px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">It is not merely by addressing the beloved as your \r\ngoddess that you can attain this mysticism; the Elizabethan did that in merry \r\nabundance, <i>ad nauseam.</i> A finer temper, a more delicate touch, a more \r\nsubtle sensitiveness and a kind of artistic wizardry are necessary to tune the \r\nbody into a rhythm of the spirit. The other line of mysticism is common enough, \r\nviz., to express the spirit in terms and rhythms of the flesh. Tagore did that \r\nliberally, the Vaishnava poets did nothing but that,\r\nthe Song of Solomon is an exquisite example of that procedure. There is here, \r\nhowever, a difference in degrees which is an interesting feature worth noting. \r\nThus in Tagore the reference to the spirit is evident, that is the major or \r\ncentral chord; the earthly and the sensuous are meant as the name </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; text-indent:25px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; text-indent:25px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"2\">1 Mallarme: &quot;Les Fleurs&quot;.<br>\r\n&quot;Vermilion like the pure toe of the seraph<br>\r\nReddened by the blush of dawns it trampled through.&quot; </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\" size=\"2\">* &quot;Quite broken they are, yet they have \r\neyes that<b> </b> pierce like a drill, shine like<b>\r\n</b>those holes in which the water sleeps at night: they<b> </b>have the divine \r\neyes of a little<b>\r\n</b>girl.<b>&quot;</b>—Baudelaire, &quot;Les petites vieilles&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 294</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\">and form, as the body to render concrete, living \r\nand vibrant, near and intimate what otherwise would perhaps be vague and \r\nabstract, afar, aloof. But this mundane or human appearance has a value in so \r\nfar as it is a support, a pointer or symbol of the spiritual import. And the \r\nmysticism lies precisely in the play of the two, a hide-and-seek between them. \r\nOn the other hand, as I said, the greater portion of Vaishnava poetry, like a \r\nprecious and beautiful casket, no doubt, hides the spirituai import: not the \r\npure significance but the sign and symbol are luxuriously elaborated, they are \r\nplaced in the foreground in all magnificence: as if it was their very purpose to \r\nconceal the real meaning. When the Vaishnava poet says, </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; 0 love, what more shall I, \r\nshall Radha speak, </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; \r\nSince mortal words are weak ? In life, in 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;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \r\nIn being and in breath\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; No other lord but thee can \r\nRadha seek.<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; there is nothing in the \r\nmatter or manner which can indicate, to the uninitiated, any reference to the \r\nSpirit or the Divine. Or this again, </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; I have gazed upon beauty \r\nfrom my very birth </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; \r\nand yet my eyes are not satiated; I have rested bosom upon bosom </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; \r\nfor thousands\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; of aeons and yet my heart \r\nis not soothed.... </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\">they all give a very beautiful, a very poignant \r\nexperience of . love, but one does not know if it is love human or divine, if it\r\nis soul\'s love or mere bodily love. </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 famous Song of Solomon \r\ntoo is not on a different footing, when the poet cries: </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-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thou hast \r\nravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; </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; \r\nthou hast </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\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \r\nravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with<br>\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; one chain of thy neck....</font><p align=justify style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><br>\r\n<font size=\"2\">Sri Aurobindo: &quot;Radha\'s Appeal&quot; in <i>Songs to Myriilhh</i>\r\n</font></font>\r\n		<p align=center style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 295</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\">one can explain that it is the Christ calling the \r\nChurch or God appealing to the human soul or one can simply find in it nothing \r\nmore than a man pining for his woman. Anyhow I would not call it spiritual \r\npoetry or even mystic poetry. For in itself it does not carry any double or \r\noblique meaning, there is no suggestion that it is applicable to other fields or \r\ndomains of consciousness: it is, as it were, monovalent. An allegory is never \r\nmysticism. There is more mysticism in Wordsworth,\r\neven in Shelley and Keats, than in Spenser, for example, who stands in this \r\nrespect on the same ground as Bunyan in his <i>The Pilgrim\'s Progress.</i> Take \r\nWordsworth as a Nature-worshipper, </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; Breaking the silence of \r\nthe seas Among the farthest Hebrides.<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\">or Wordsworth the Pagan, </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; Have sight of Proteus \r\nrising from the sea; </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; Or hear old Triton blow \r\nhis wreathed horn.<sup>2 </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\">I do not know if this is not mysticism, what else \r\nis. Neither is religious poetry true mysticism (or true spirituality). I find \r\nmore mysticism in </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; \r\nCome, let us run\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; And give the world a \r\ngirdle with the sun !<sup>3 </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\">than in this pious morning hymn, </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; Heaven is, dear Lord! \r\nwhere\'er Thou art,\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; 0 never then from me \r\ndepart !<sup>4 </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; text-indent:25px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">I am anticipating however, I shall come to the \r\npoint presently again. I was speaking of spiritual poetry. Listen once more to \r\nthese simple, transparent, yet vibrant lines: </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; text-indent:25px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; text-indent:25px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">But how shall body not seem a hollow space When the \r\nsoul bears eternity\'s embrace?<sup>5 </sup></font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; text-indent:25px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; text-indent:25px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"2\">1 &quot;The Solitary Reaper&quot;.<br>\r\n2.&quot;The World is too much<b> </b>with Us<b>&quot;...</b> </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\" size=\"2\">3*John Hall: &quot;To his Tutor&quot;. </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\" size=\"2\">4<b>*</b>Ken: &quot;A Morning Hymn&quot;. </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\" size=\"2\">5 K. D. Sethna: &quot;Deluge&quot; in <i>The Secret \r\nSplendour.</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 296</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 these again equally fraught with an intense \r\nexperience— a quiet in-gathered luminous consciousness: </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; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">I held my breath and from a world of din&nbsp; </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Solitarily I sat apart </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">And felt the being vistaed \r\ninto fire </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of truth which did acquire </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Rhythm in the heart, </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">When lo, I knew the worlds \r\nwithout as worlds </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; within.<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\">But first let us go to the<i> fons et origo,</i> be \r\nacquainted with the very genuine article in its purity and perfection, in its \r\nessential simplicity. I do not know of any other ideal exemplar than the \r\nUpanishad. Thus, </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">There the sun shines not and the moon has no </font>\r\n		<p style=\"margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">splendour and the stars are blind; there these </font>\r\n		<p style=\"margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">lightnings flash not, nor any earthly fire. For all </font>\r\n		<p style=\"margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">that is bright is but the shadow of His brightness </font>\r\n		<p style=\"margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">and by His shining all this shineth.<sup>2 </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\">Or this one equally deep, luminous and revealing: </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; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Even as one Fire hath entered into the world but </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">it shapeth itself to the form it meeteth, so there </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">is one Spirit within all creatures but it shapeth </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:100px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">itself to form and form; it is likewise outside \r\nthese.<sup>3 </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\">This is spiritual matter and spiritual manner that \r\ncan never be improved upon. This is spiritual poetry in its quintessence. I am \r\nreferring naturally here to the original and not to the translation which can \r\nnever do full justice, even at its very best, to the poetic value in question. \r\nFor apart from the individual genius of the poet, the greatness of the language, \r\nthe instrument used by the poet, is also involved. It may well be what is \r\ncomparatively easy and natural in the language of the </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; text-indent:25px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"2\">1 Harindranath Chattopadhyaya: &quot;Blue \r\nProfound&quot; in <i>Strange Journey.</i> </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\" size=\"2\">2 <i>Katha Upanishad.<br>\r\n</i>8 Ibid. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 297</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\">gods <i>(devabhasha)</i> would mean a <i>tour \r\nde force,</i> if not altogether an impossibility, in a human language. The \r\nSanskrit language was moulded and fashioned in the hands of the Rishis, that is \r\nto say, those who lived and moved and had their being in the spiritual \r\nconsciousness. The Hebrew or even the Zend does not seem to have reached that \r\npeak, that absoluteness of the\' spiritual tone which seems inherent in the \r\nIndian tongue, although those too breathed and grew in a spiritual atmosphere. \r\nThe later languages, however, Greek or Latin or their modern descendants, have \r\ngone still farther from the source, they are much nearer to the earth and are \r\nsuffused with the smell and effluvia of this vale of tears. </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; Among the ancients, \r\nstrictly speaking, the later classical Lucretius was a remarkable phenomenon. By \r\nnature he was a poet, but his mental interest lay in metaphysical speculation, \r\nin philosophy, and unpoetical business. He turned away from arms and heroes, \r\nwrath and love and, like Seneca and Aurelius,\r\ngave himself up to moralising and philosophising, delving into the mystery, the \r\nwhy and the how and the whither of it all. He chose a dangerous subject for his \r\npoetic inspiration and yet it cannot be said that his attempt was a failure. \r\nLucretius was not a religious or spiritual poet; he was rather Marxian,—\r\natheistic, materialistic. The dialectical materialism of today could find in him \r\na lot of nourishment and support. But whatever the content, the manner has made \r\na whole difference. There was an idealism, a clarity of vision and an intensity \r\nof perception; which however scientific apparently, gave his creation a note, an \r\naccent, an atmosphere high, tense, aloof, ascetic, at times bordering on the \r\nsuprasensual. It was a high light, a force of consciousness that at its highest \r\npitch had the\r\nring and vibration of something almost spiritual. For the basic principle of \r\nLucretius\' inspiration is a large thought-force, a tense perception, a taut \r\nnervous reaction—it is not, of course, the identity in being with the inner \r\nrealities which is the hallmark of a spiritual conciousness, yet it is \r\nsomething on the way<br>\r\ntowards that. </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 have been other \r\nphilosophical poets, a good number of them since then—not merely rationally \r\nphilosophical, a s was the vogue in the eighteenth century, but metaphysically \r\nphilosophical, that is<b> </b> to say, inquiring not merely into 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 298</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\">phenomenal but also into the labyrinths of the \r\nnoumenal, investigating not only what meets the senses, but also things that are \r\nbehind or beyond. Amidst the earlier efflorescence of this movement the most \r\noutstanding philosopher poet is of course Dante, the Dante of <i>Paradiso,</i> a \r\nphilosopher in the mediaeval manner and to the extent a lesser poet, according \r\nto some. Goethe is another, almost in the grand modern manner. Wordsworth is \r\nfull of metaphysics from the crown of his head to the tip of his toe although \r\nhis poetry, perhaps the major portion of it, had to undergo some kind of \r\nmartyrdom because of it. And Shelley, the supremely lyric singer, has had a very \r\nrich undertone of thought-content genuinely meta-physical. And Browning and \r\nArnold and Hardy—indeed, if we come to the more moderns, we have to cite the \r\nwhole host of them, none can be excepted. We left out the Metaphysicals, for \r\nthey can be grouped<b> </b> as a set apart. They are not so much metaphysical as \r\ntheological, religious. They have a brain-content stirring with theological \r\nproblems and speculations, replete with scintillating conceits , and intricate fancies. Perhaps it is because of \r\nthis philosophical burden, this intellectual bias that the Metaphysicals went \r\ninto obscurity for about two centuries and it is precisely because<b> </b>of \' \r\nthat that they are slowly coming out to the forefront and assuming a special \r\nvalue with the moderns. For the modern mind is characteristically thoughtful, \r\nintrospective—&quot;introvert&quot; —and philosophical; even the exact physical sciences \r\nof today are rounded off in the end with metaphysics. </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 growth of a \r\nphilosophical thought-content in poetry has been inevitable. For man\'s \r\nconsciousness in its evolutionary march is driving towards a consummation which \r\nincludes and presupposes a development along that line. The <i>mot d\'ordre</i> \r\nin old-world poetry was &quot;fancy&quot;, imagination—remember the famous lines of \r\nShakespeare characterising a poet;&nbsp; in modern times it is Thought, even or \r\nperhaps particularly abstract metaphysical thought. Perceptions, experiences, \r\nrealisations—of whatever order or world they may be—expressed in sensitive and \r\naesthetic terms and figures, that is poetry known and appreciated familiarly. \r\nBut a new turn has been coming on with an increasing insistence—a definite time \r\nhas been given to that, since the Renaissance, it is said: it is </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 299</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 growing importance of Thought or brain-power as \r\na medium or atmosphere in which poetic experiences find a sober and clear \r\narticulation, a definite and strong formulation. Rationalisation of all \r\nexperiences and realisations is the key-note of the modern mentality. Even when \r\nit is said that reason and rationality are not ultimate or final or significant \r\nrealities, that the irrational or the submental plays a greater role in our \r\nconsciousness and that art and poetry likewise should be the\r\nexpression of such a mentality, even then, all this is said and done in and \r\nthrough a strong rational and intellectual stress and frame the like of which \r\ncannot be found in the old-world frankly non-intellectual creations. </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 religious, the mystic \r\nor the spiritual man was, in the past, more or less methodically and absolutely \r\nnon-intellectual and anti-intellectual: but the modem age, the age of scientific \r\nculture, is tending to make him as strongly intellectual: he has to explain, not \r\nonly present the object but show up its mechanism also—explain to himself so \r\nthat he may have a total understanding and a firmer grasp of the thing which he \r\npresents and explains to others as well who demand a similar<br>\r\napproach. He feels the necessity of explaining, giving the rationality—the \r\nrationale—the science, of his art; for without that, it appears to him, a solid \r\nground is not given to the structure of his experience: analytic power, \r\npreoccupation with methodology seems inherent in the modern creative \r\nconsciousness. </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 philosophical trend in \r\npoetry has an interesting history with a significant role: it has acted as a \r\nforce of purification, of sublimation, of katharsis. As man has risen from his \r\nexclusively or predominantly vital nature into an increasing mental poise, in \r\nthe same way his creative activities too have taken this new\r\nturn and status. In the earlier stages of evolution the mental life is \r\nsecondary, subordinate to the physico-vital life; it is only subsequently that \r\nthe mental finds an independent and self-sufficient reality. A similar movement \r\nis reflected in poetic and artistic creation too: the thinker, the philosopher \r\nremains in the background at the outset, he looks out; peers through chinks and \r\nholes from time to time; later he comes to the forefront, assumes a major<b> \r\n</b> role in man\'s<b> \r\n</b>creative<b> \r\n</b>activity. </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\'s consciousness is \r\nfurther to rise from the mental 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 300</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\">over-mental regions. Accordingly, his life and \r\nactivities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new \r\ntone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. For this transition, the \r\nhigher mental—which is normally the field of philosophical and idealistic \r\nactivities—serves as the Paraclete,\r\nthe Intercessor; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which \r\nare intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and \r\nenlarging, a wider frame, a more luminous pattern, a more subtly articulated \r\nform for the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to \r\nexpress and manifest. In the old-world spiritual and mystic poets, this \r\nintervening medium was overlooked—for evident reasons, for human reason or even \r\nintelligence is a\r\ndouble-edged instrument, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most \r\noften and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, \r\nsome kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between \r\nthe normal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure \r\nspiritual poetry, on the one hand, as m the Upanishads, or, on the other, \r\nreligious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual \r\nbut in the terms and in the manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured \r\nand dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, \r\nas is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not \r\nthe pioneer, to forge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar \r\nof the\r\nmanner is the Gita. Valmiki\'s represented a more ancient and primary \r\ninspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the \r\nbasis of Homer\'s genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of \r\nspeculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to \r\nfind expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were \r\nvery simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and \r\ntotalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or \r\nsubordinate or contributing factor, must itself give its norm and form, its own \r\nsubstance and manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day 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; The earliest preoccupation \r\nof man was religious; even when he concerned himself with the world and worldly \r\nthings, he </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 301</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\">referred all that to the other world, thought of \r\ngods and goddesses, of after-death and otherwhere. That also will be his last \r\nand ultimate preoccupation though in a somewhat different way; when he has \r\npassed through a process of purification and growth, a &quot;sea-change&quot;. For \r\nalthough religion is an aspiration towards the truth and reality beyond or \r\nbehind the world, it is married too much to man\'s actual worldly nature and \r\ncarries always with it the shadow of profanity.&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; The religious poet seeks \r\nto tone down or cover up the mundane taint, since he does not know how to \r\ntranscend it totally, in two ways: (1) by a strong thought-element, the \r\nmetaphysical way, as it may be called and (2) by a strong symbolism, the occult \r\nway. Donne takes to the first course, Blake the second. And it is the alchemy \r\nbrought to bear in either of these processes that transforms the merely \r\nreligious into the mystic poet. The truly spiritual, as I have said, is still\r\na higher grade of consciousness: what I call Spirit\'s own poetry has its own \r\nmatter and manner—<i>swabhava</i> and <i>swadharma.\r\n</i>A nearest approach to it is echoed in those famous lines<b> \r\n</b>of<b> \r\n</b>Blake: </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;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To see a World in a grain \r\nof Sand,\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; And a Heaven in a Wild \r\nFlower,\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; Hold Infinity in the palm \r\nof your hand,\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; And Eternity in an hour.<sup>1</sup></font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">And a considerable impact of it is vibrant and \r\naglow in these lines of a contemporary Indian poet: </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; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Sky-lucent Bliss untouched by earthiness!<br>\r\n............lean down from above, </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Temper the unborn light no thought<b> \r\n</b>can trace,<b><br>\r\n</b>Suffuse my mood with a familiar glow.<br>\r\nFor \'tis with mouth of clay I supplicate: </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Speak to me heart to heart words intimate,<br>\r\nAnd all Thy formless glory turn to love<br>\r\nAnd mould Thy love into a human face.<sup>2 </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\" size=\"2\">Auguries of Innocence&quot;.<br>\r\nK. D. Sethna: &quot;This Errant Life&quot; in <i>The Semt Splendour.</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 302</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\">Something of the fullness of spiritual matter and \r\nmanner<br>\r\noverflows in these epic 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; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">His spirit mingles with eternity\'s heart<br>\r\nAnd bears the silence of the Infinite. </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">In a divine retreat from mortal thought,<br>\r\nIn a prodigious gesture of soul-sight,<br>\r\nHis being towered into pathless heights,<br>\r\nNaked of its vesture of humanity.<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\">or this simple single line pregnant no less with \r\nthe self-same<br>\r\nfullness: </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;&nbsp;&nbsp; An eye awake in voiceless \r\nheights of trance,<sup>2</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; This, I say, is something different from the \r\nreligious and\r\neven from the mystic. It is away from the merely religious,\r\nbecause it is naked of the vesture of humanity (in spite of a\r\nhuman face that masks it at times); it is something more than\r\nthe merely mystic, for it does not stop being a signpost or an\r\nindication to the Beyond, but is itself the presence and embodiment of the Beyond. The mystic gives us, we can say, the\r\nmagic of the Infinite; what I term the spiritual, the spiritual\r\nproper, gives in addition the logic of the Infinite. At least this\r\nis what distinguishes modern spiritual consciousness from the\r\nancient, that is, Upanishadic spiritual consciousness. The\r\nUpanishad gives expression to the spiritual consciousness in\r\nits original and pristine purity and perfection, in its essential\r\nsimplicity. It did not buttress itself with any logic. It is the\r\nrecord of fundamental experiences and there was no question\r\nof any logical exposition. But, as I have said, the modern\r\nmind requires and demands a logical element in its perceptions\r\nand presentations. Also it must needs be a different kind of\r\nlogic that can satisfy and satisfy wholly the deeper and subtler\r\nmovements of a modern consciousness. For the philosophical\r\npoet of an earlier age, when he had recourse to logic, it was\r\nthe logic of the finite that always gave him the frame, unless </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><font size=\"2\">Sri Aurobindo: <i>Savitri,</i> Book I, \r\nCanto V.<br>\r\n&nbsp;Ibid., Book I, Canto III. </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 303</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 threw the whole thing overboard and leaped \r\nstraight into the occult, the illogical and the a logical, like Blake, for \r\ninstance. Let me illustrate and compare a little. When the older poet explains <i>\r\nindriyani hqyan ahuh,</i> it is an allegory he resorts to, it is the logic of \r\nthe finite he marshals to point to the infinite and the beyond. The stress of \r\nreason is apparent and effective too, but the pattern is what we are normally \r\nfamiliar with— the movement, we can say, is almost Aristotelian in its rigour. \r\nNow let us turn to the following: </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; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.<br>\r\nThe great World-Mother by her sacrifice<br>\r\nHas made her soul the body of our state; </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Divinity\'s \r\nlapse from its own splendours wove </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">The many-patterned ground of all we are.<br>\r\nAn idol of self is our mortality.<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\">or this chiselled bit of diamond, </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;&nbsp;&nbsp; An inconscient Power \r\ngroped towards consciousness,\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; Matter smitten by Matter \r\nglimmered to sense,<sup>2</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\">Here we have a pattern of thought-movement that \r\ndoes not seem to follow the lineaments of the normal brain-mind consciousness, \r\nalthough it too has a basis there: our customary line of reasoning receives a \r\nsudden shock, as it were, and then is shaken; moved, lifted up, \r\ntransported—gradually or suddenly, according to the temperament of the listener. \r\nBesides, we have here the peculiar <i>modern</i> tone, which, for want of a \r\nbetter term, may be described as <i>scientific.</i> The impress—<br>\r\n<i>imprimatur—</i>of Science is its rational coherence, justifying or justified \r\nby sense data, by physical experience, which gives us the pattern or model of an \r\ninexorable natural law. Here too we feel we are in the domain of such natural \r\nlaw but lifted on to a higher level. </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 what I was trying \r\nto make out as the distinguishing trait of the real spiritual consciousness that \r\nseems to be developing </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 Sri Aurobindo: <i>Sasitri,</i> Book II, Canto 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\" size=\"2\">2 Ibid., Book II, Canto IV. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 304</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\">in the poetic creation of tomorrow, e.g., it \r\nhas the same rationality, clarity, concreteness of perception as the scientific \r\nspirit ha s in its own domain and still it is rounded off with a halo of magic \r\nand miracle. That is the nature of the logic of the infinite proper to the \r\nspiritual consciousness. We can have a Science of the Spirit as well as a \r\nScience of Matter. This is the Thought element or what corresponds to it, of \r\nwhich I was speaking, the philosophical factor, that which gives form\r\nto the formless or definition to that which is vague, a nearness and familiarity \r\nto that which is far and alien. The fullness of the spiritual consciousness \r\nmeans such a thing, the presentation of a divine name and form. And this \r\ndistinguishes it from the mystic consciousness which is not the supreme solar \r\nconscious-ness but the nearest approach to it. Or, perhaps, the mystic dwells in \r\nthe domain of the Divine, he may even be suffused with a sense of unity but \r\nwould not like to acquire the Divine\'s nature and function. Normally and \r\ngenerally he embodies all the aspiration and yearning moved by intimations and \r\nsuggestions belonging to the human mentality, the divine urge retaining still \r\nthe human flavour. We can say also, using a Vedantic terminology, that the \r\nmystic consciousness gives us the <i>tatastha\r\nlakshana,</i> the nearest approximative attribute of the attributeless; or \r\notherwise, it is the <i>hiranyagarbha</i> consciousness which englobes the \r\nmultiple play, the coruscated possibilities of the Reality: while the spiritual \r\nproper may be considered as <i>prajnaghana,</i> the solid mass, the essential \r\nlineaments of revelatory\r\nknowledge, the typal &quot;wave-particles&quot; of the Reality. In the former there is a \r\nplay of imagination, even of fancy, a decorative aesthesis, while in the latter \r\nit is vision pure and simple. If the spiritual poetry is <i>solar</i> in its \r\nnature, we can say, by extending the analogy, that mystic poetry is \r\ncharacteristically\r\n<i>lunar—</i>Moon representing the delight and the magic that Mind and mental \r\nimagination, suffused, no doubt, with a light or a reflection of some light from \r\nbeyond, is capable of\r\n(the Upanishad speaks of the Moon being born of the Mind). </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 sum up and \r\nrecapitulate. The evolution of the poetic expression in man has ever been an \r\nattempt at a return and a progressive approach to the spiritual source of poetic \r\ninspiration, which was also the original, though somewhat veiled, source from \r\nthe very beginning. The movement has followed </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 305</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\">devious ways—strongly negative at times—even like \r\nman\'s life and consciousness in general of which it is an organic member; but \r\nthe ultimate end and drift seems to have been always that ideal and principle \r\neven when fallen on evil days and evil tongues. The poet\'s ideal in the dawn of \r\nthe world was, as the Vedic Rishi sang, to raise things of beauty in heaven by \r\nhis poetic power, <i>kavih kavitvd divi rupam asajat.\r\n</i>Even a Satanic poet, the inaugurator, in a way, of modernism\r\nand modernistic consciousness, Charles Baudelaire, thus admonishes his spirit: </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; &quot;Fly away, far from these \r\nmorbid miasmas, go and purify yourself in the higher air and drink, like a pure \r\nand divine liquor, the clear fire that fills the limpid&nbsp; spaces.&quot;<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; That angelic poets should \r\nbe inspired by the same ideal is, of course, quite natural: for they sing: </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; Not a senseless, tranced \r\nthing,<br>\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But divine melodious truth; </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; Philosophic numbers \r\nsmooth; </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\">since they </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; Have ye souls in heaven \r\ntoo,<br>\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Double-lived in. regions new?<sup>2 </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\">Poetry, actually however, has been, by and large, a \r\nprofane and mundane affair: for it expresses the normal man\'s perceptions and \r\nfeelings and experiences, human loves and hates and desires and ambitions. True. \r\nAnd yet there has also always been an attempt, a tendency to deal with them in \r\nsuch a way as can bring calm and purity—<i>katharsis—</i>not trouble and \r\nconfusion. That has been the purpose of all Art from the ancient </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 Envole-tol bien loin de ces miasmes morbides; </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\" size=\"2\">Va te purifier dans 1\'air superieur, </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\" size=\"2\">Et bois, comme une pure et divine liqueur, </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\" size=\"2\">Le feu clair qui remplit les espaces limpides. </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\" size=\"2\">&quot;Elevation&quot;—<i>Spleen et Ideal.<br>\r\n</i>\' Keats: &quot;Ode on the Poets&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 306</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\">days. Besides, there has been a growth and \r\ndevelopment in the historic process of this katharsis. As by the sublimation of \r\nhis bodily and vital instincts and impulses man is gradually growing into the \r\nmental, moral and finally spiritual consciousness, even so the artistic \r\nexpression of his creative activity has followed a similar line of \r\ntransformation. The first and original transformation happened with religious \r\npoetry. The religious, one may say, is the profane inside out; that is to say,\r\nthe religious man has almost the same tone and temper, the same urges and \r\npassions, only turned Godward. Religious poetry too marks a new turn and \r\ndevelopment of human speech, in taking the name of God human tongue acquires a \r\nnew plasticity and flavour that transform or give a new modulation even to \r\nthings profane and mundane it speaks of. Religious means at bottom the colouring \r\nof mental and moral idealism. A parallel process of katharsis is found in \r\nanother\r\nclass of poetic creation, viz., the allegory. Allegory or parable is the stage \r\nwhen the higher and inner realities are expressed wholly in the modes and \r\nmanner, in the form and character of the normal and external, when moral, \r\nreligious or spiritual truths are expressed in the terms and figures of the \r\nprofane life. The higher or the inner ideal is like a loose clothing upon the \r\nordinary consciousness, it does not fit closely or fuse. In the religious, \r\nhowever, the first step is taken for a mingling\r\nand fusion. The mystic is the beginning of a real fusion and a considerable \r\nascension of the lower into the higher. The philosopher poet follows another \r\nline for the same katharsis— instead of uplifting emotions and sensibility, he \r\nproceeds by thought-power, by the ideas and principles that lie behind all \r\nmovements and give a pattern to all things existing. The mystic can be of either \r\ntype, the religious mystic or the philosopher mystic, although often the two are \r\nwelded together and cannot be very well separated. Let us illustrate a little: </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; The spacious firmament on \r\nhigh,\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; With all the blue ethereal \r\nsky,\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; And spangled heavens, a \r\nshining frame,</font><p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Their great Original proclaim.<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; This is religious poetry, \r\npure and simple, expressing man\'s </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\"><font size=\"2\">1Addison: &quot;Hymn&quot;</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 307</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\">earliest and most elementary feeling, marked by a \r\nbroad candour, a rather shallow monotone. But that feeling is raised to a pitch \r\nof fervour and scintillating sensibility in Vaughan\'s </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; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">They are all gone into the world of light </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">And I alone sit lingering here,...<br>\r\n0 Father of eternal life, and all </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Created glories under Thee,<br>\r\nResume Thy spirit from this world of thrall </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Into true liberty.<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\">The same religious spirit seems to climb a little \r\nhigher still,\r\nstretching towards the mystic vein in Donne, </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; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">My heart is by dejection, clay, </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">And by selfe-murder, red.<br>\r\nFrom this red earth, 0 Father, purge away<br>\r\nAll vicious tinctures, that new fashioned<br>\r\nI may rise up from death, before I\'am dead.<sup>2 </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\">The allegorical element too finds here cleverly \r\nwoven into the\r\nmystically religious -texture. Here is another example of the\r\nmystically religious temper from Donne: </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; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">For though through many streights, and. lands I \r\nroame,<br>\r\nI launch at paradise, and saile towards home,<sup>3 </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\">The same poet is at once religious and mystic and \r\nphilosophical\r\nin these lines, for example: </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; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">That All, which always is All every where,<br>\r\nWhich cannot sinne, and yet all sinnes must beare,<br>\r\nWhich cannot die, yet cannot chuse but die,<br>\r\nLoe, faithfull Virgin,.... </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Whom thou conceiv\'st, conceiv\'d; yea thou art now<br>\r\nThy Maker\'s maker, and thy Father\'s mother; </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 &quot;They Are All Gone&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\" size=\"2\">* &quot;The Litanie&quot;—Divine <i>Poems.</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\" size=\"2\">* <i>The Progress of the Soule,</i> VI. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 308</font><hr>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Thou\'hast light in darke; and shutst in little \r\nroome, </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Immensity cloystered in thy deare wombe.<sup>1</sup></i><sup>\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\">Blake\'s powerfully pregnant lines are mystically \r\nphilosophic; </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; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,<br>\r\nAnd Eternity in an hour.<sup>2 </sup> </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Blake had this wonderful gift of transmuting the \r\nbaser metal<br>\r\nof mundane experience into the gold of a deep mystic and<br>\r\nspiritual experience: </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Bring me my bow of burning gold! </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Bring me my arrows of desire!<br>\r\nBring me my spear! 0 clouds, unfold! </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Bring me my chariot of fire !<sup>3 </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\">An allegorical structure has been transfused into a \r\nliving and burning symbolism of an<b> </b> inner 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; But all that is \r\nleft far behind, when we hear a new voice announcing an altogether new manner, \r\nrevelatory<b> </b> of the truly and supremely spiritual consciousness, not \r\nsimply mystic or religious but magically occult and carved out of the highest if \r\nrecondite <i>philosophia:</i> </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; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">A finite movement of the Infinite<br>\r\nGame winging its way through a wide air of Time; </font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:30px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">A march of Knowledge moved in Nescience<br>\r\nAnd guarded in the form a separate soul.<sup>4 </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; text-indent:25px\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"2\">1 &quot;Annvnciation&quot;—<i>Divine Poems.</i> </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\" size=\"2\">2 &quot;Auguries of Innocence&quot;. </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\" size=\"2\">3 &quot;Jerusalem&quot;. </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\" size=\"2\">4 Sri Aurobindo: <i>Switri,</i><b> </b>\r\nBook II, Canto IV. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n		<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Page 309</font></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<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;\r\n</font>\r\n</body>\r\n</html>','-45_Mystic Poetry','','publish','closed','open','','45_mystic-poetry','','','2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/45_mystic-poetry/',0,'post','',0),(1527,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','<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<i>Rabindranath Tagore:</i>&nbsp;\r\n<i>A Great Poet, A Great Man</i> </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\">TAGORE is a great poet: he will be remembered as one of the</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">greatest world-poets. But humanity owes him another—perhaps a greater—debt of gratitude: his name has a higher\r\nvalue, a more significant potency for the future.</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 an age when Reason was considered as the highest light\r\ngiven to man, Tagore pointed to the Vision of the mystics as\r\nalways the still greater light; when man was elated with un-\r\ndreamt-of worldly success; puffed up with incomparable\r\nmaterial possessions and powers, Tagore\'s voice rang clear\r\nand emphatic in tune with the cry of the ancients: &quot;What\r\nshall I do with all this mass of things, if I am not made immortal by that?&quot; When men, in their individual as well as\r\ncollective egoism, were scrambling for earthly gains and hoards,\r\nhe held before them vaster and cleaner horizons, higher and\r\ndeeper ways of being and living, maintained the sacred sense\r\nof human solidarity, the living consciousness of the Divine,\r\none and indivisible. When the Gospel of Power had all but\r\nhypnotised men\'s minds, and Superman or God-man came to\r\nbe equated with the Titan, Tagore saw through the falsehood\r\nand placed in front and above all the old-world eternal verities\r\nof love and self-giving, harmony and mutuality, sweetness and\r\nlight. When pessimism, cynicism, agnosticism struck the\r\nmajor chord of human temperament, and grief and frustration\r\nand death and decay were taken as a matter of course to be the\r\ninevitable order of earthly life—<i>bhasmantam idam shariram—\r\n</i>he continued to sing the song of the Rishis that Ananda and\r\nImmortality are the breath of things, the birthright of human\r\nbeings. When Modernism declared with a certitude never to</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 369<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\">be contested that Matter is Brahman, Tagore<b> \r\n</b>said with the<b> \r\n</b>voice of one who knows that Spirit is Brahman.</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; Tagore is in direct line with those bards who have sung of\r\nthe Spirit; who always soared high above the falsehoods and\r\nuglinesses of a merely mundane life and lived in the undecaying-delights and beauties of a diviner consciousness. Spiritual\r\nreality was the central theme of his poetic creation: only and\r\nnaturally he viewed it in a special way and endowed it with a\r\nspecial grace. We know of another God-intoxicated man, the\r\nJewish philosopher Spinoza, who saw things <i>sub specie aeternitatis,</i> under the figure or mode of eternity. Well, Tagore can\r\nbe said to see things, in their essential spiritual reality, under\r\nthe figure or mode of beauty. Keats indeed spoke of truth\r\nbeing beauty and beauty truth. But there is a great difference\r\nin the outlook and inner experience. A worshipper of beauty,\r\nunless he rises to the Upanishadic norm, is prone to become\r\nsensuous and pagan. Keats was that, Kalidasa was that, even\r\nShelley was not far different. The spiritual vein in all these\r\npoets remains secondary. In the old Indian master, it is part\r\nof his intellectual equipment, no doubt, but nothing much\r\nmore than that. In the other two it comes in as strange flashes\r\nfrom an unknown country, as a sort of irruption or on the peak\r\nof the poetic afflatus or <i>enthousiasmos.</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 world being nothing but Spirit made visible is, \r\naccording to Tagore, fundamentally a thing of beauty. The scars and\r\nspots that are on the surface have to be removed and mankind\r\nhas to repossess and clothe itself with that mantle of beauty.\r\nThe world is beautiful, because it is the image of the Beautiful,\r\nbecause it harbours, expresses and embodies the Divine who\r\nis Beauty supreme. Now by a strange alchemy, a wonderful\r\neffect of polarisation, the very spiritual element in Tagore\r\nhas made him almost a pagan and even a profane. For what\r\nare these glories of Nature and the still more exquisite glories\r\nthat the human body has captured? They are but vibrations\r\nand modulations of beauty—the delightful names and forms\r\nof the supreme Lover and Beloved.</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; Socrates is said to have brought down Philosophy from\r\nHeaven to live among men upon earth. A similar exploit can\r\nbe ascribed to Tagore. The Spirit, the bare transcendental\r\nReality contemplated by the orthodox Vedantins, has been</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 370<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\">brought nearer to our planet, close to human consciousness in\r\nTagore\'s vision, being clothed in earth and flesh and blood,\r\nmade vivid with the colours and contours of the physical existence. The Spirit, yes and by all means, but not necessarily\r\nasceticism and monasticism. So Tagore boldly declared in\r\nthose famous lines of his:</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; Mine is not the deliverance achieved through mere\r\nrenunciation. Mine rather the freedom that tastes itself\r\nin a thousand associations.<sup>1</sup></font><sup> </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\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The spirit of the age demands this new gospel. Mankind\r\nneeds and awaits a fresh revelation. The world and life are\r\nnot an illusion or a lesser reality: they are, if taken rightly, as real as the \r\npure Spirit itself. Indeed, Spirit and Flesh, Consciousness and Matter are not antinomies; to consider them as\r\nsuch is itself an illusion. In fact, they are only two poles or\r\nmodes or aspects of the same reality. To separate or divide\r\nthem is a one-sided concentration or abstraction on the part of\r\nthe human mind. The fulfilment of the Spirit is in its expression\r\nthrough Matter; human life too reaches its highest term, its <i>summum bonum,</i> in embodying the spiritual consciousness here\r\non earth and not dissolving itself in the Transcendence. That\r\nis the new Dispensation which answers to the deepest aspiration in man and towards which he has been travelling through\r\nthe ages in the course of the evolution of his consciousness.\r\nMany, however, are the prophets and sages who have set this .\r\nideal before humanity and more and more insistently and\r\nclearly as we come nearer to the age we live in. But none or .\r\nvery few have expressed it with such beauty and charm and\r\ncompelling persuasion. It would be carping criticism to point\r\nout—as some, purists one may call them, have done—that in\r\npoetising and aesthetising the spiritual truth and reality, in\r\ntrying to make it human and terrestrial, he has diminished\r\nand diluted the original substance, in endeavouring to render\r\nthe diamond iridescent, he has turned it into a baser alloy.\r\nTagore\'s is a poetic soul, it must be admitted; and it is not\r\nnecessary that one should find in his ideas and experiences\r\nand utterances the cent per cent accuracy and inevitability of</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\">1Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom<br>\r\nin a thousand bonds of delight.&quot; —<i>Gitanjali,</i> 73.</font><font size=\"2\">\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 371<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\">a Yogic consciousness. Still&nbsp; his major perceptions, those that \r\ncount, stand and are borne out by the highest spiritual realisation.</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; Tagore is no inventor or innovator when he posits Spirit as\r\nBeauty, the spiritual consciousness as the ardent rhythm of\r\necstasy. This experience is the very core of Vaishnavism and\r\nfor which Tagore is sometimes called a Neo-Vaishnava. The\r\nVaishnava sees the world pulsating in glamorous beauty as\r\nthe Lila (Play) of the Lord, and the Lord, God himself, is\r\nnothing but Love and Beauty. Still Tagore is not all Vaishnava\r\nor merely a Vaishnava; he is in addition a modern (the carping <br>\r\nvoice will say, there comes the dilution and adulteration)\r\n—in the sense that problems exist for him—social, political,\r\neconomic, national, humanitarian—which have to be faced\r\nand solved: these are not merely mundane,\' but woven into\r\nthe texture of the fundamental problem of human destiny, of\r\nSoul and Spirit and God. A Vaishnava was, in spite of his\r\nacceptance of the world, an <i>introvert,</i> to use a modern psychological phrase, not necessarily in the pejorative sense, but in\r\nthe neutral scientific sense. He looks upon the universe and\r\nhuman life as the play of the Lord, as an actuality and not\r\nmere illusion indeed; but he does not participate or even take\r\ninterest in the dynamic working out of the world process,\r\nhe does not care to know, has no need of knowing that there\r\nis a terrestrial purpose and a diviner fulfilment of the mortal\r\nlife upon earth. The Vaishnava dwells more or less absorbed\r\nin the Vaikuntha of his inner consciousness; the outer world,\r\nalthough real, is only a symbolic shadow-play to which he can\r\nbut be a witness—real, is only a nothing more.</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 modern idealist of the type of a reformer would not be\r\nsatisfied with that role. If he is merely a moralist reformer, he\r\nwill revolt against the &quot;witness business&quot;, calling it a <i>laissez-\r\nfaire</i> mentality of bygone days. A spiritual reformer would\r\nask for more—a dynamic union with the Divine Will and\r\nConsciousness, not merely a passive enjoyment in the Bliss, so\r\nthat he may be a luminous power or agent for the expression\r\nof divine values in things mundane.</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 the acceptance of the world as it is, not even a joyous\r\nacceptance, viewing it as an inexplicable and mysterious and\r\nmagic play of God, but the aspiration and endeavour to</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 372<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\">change it, mould it in the pattern of its inner divine realities—for there are such realities which seek expression and embodiment in earthly life—that is the great mission and labour of\r\nhumanity and that is all the meaning of man\'s existence here\r\nbelow. And Tagore is one of the great prophets and labourers\r\nwho had the vision of the shape of things to come and worked\r\nfor it. Only it must be noted, as I have already said, that un-like mere moral reformists or scientific planners, Tagore\r\ngrounded himself upon the eternal ancient truths that &quot;age\r\ncannot wither nor custom stale&quot;—the divine truths 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; Tagore was a poet; this poetic power of his he put in the\r\nservice of the great cause for the divine uplift of humanity.\r\nNaturally, it goes without saying, his poetry did not preach\r\nor propagandize the truths for which he stood—he had a fine\r\nand powerful weapon in his prose to do the work, even then in\r\na poetic way—but to sing them. And he sang them not in\r\ntheir philosophical bareness, like a Lucretius, or in their sheer\r\ntranscendental austerity like some of the Upanishadic Rishis,<br>\r\nbut in and through human values and earthly norms. The\r\nespecial aroma of Tagore\'s poetry lies exactly here, as he\r\nhimself says, in the note of unboundedness in things bounded\r\nthat it describes. A mundane; profane sensuousness, Kalidasian\r\nin richness and sweetness, is matched or counterpointed by a\r\nsimple haunting note imbedded or trailing somewhere behind,\r\na lyric cry persevering into eternity, the nostalgic cry of the\r\nstill small voice.1</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, on the one hand, the Eternity, the Infinity, the Spirit</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&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Tagore the poet reminds one often and anon of Kalidasa. He was so much in\r\nlove, had such kinship with the great old master that many of his poems, many\r\npassages and lines are reminiscences, echoes, modulations or a paraphrase of the\r\noriginal classic. Tagore himself refers in his memoirs to one Kalidasian line that\r\nhaunted his juvenile brain beacuse of its exquisite music and enchanting imagery:</font><font size=\"2\">\r\n</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-top:0; margin-bottom:0\">\r\n<i><font size=\"2\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Mandakini nirjhar asikar an am vodha muhuh-kampita-deva-daruh</font></i><font size=\"2\">&nbsp;\r\n</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 size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Winds carrying spray from the falls of Mandakini, making\r\ndeodars all astir.</font><font size=\"2\"> </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 size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">Both the poets were worshippers, idolaters, of beauty, especially of natural physical\r\nbeauty, of beauty heaped on beauty, of beauty gathered, like honey from all\r\nplaces and stored and ranged and stalled with the utmost decorative skill. Yet the\r\ndifference between the two is not less pronounced. A philosopher is reminded of&nbsp;\r\nBergson, the great exponent of movement as reality, in connection with certain\r\naspects of Tagore. Indeed, Beauty in Tagore is something moving, flowing, danc-\r\ning, rippling; it is especially the beauty which music embodies and expresses. A\r\nKalidasian beauty, on the contrary, is statuesque and plastic, it is to be appreciated <i>in situ.</i> This is, however, by the way.</font><font size=\"2\">\r\n</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 373<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 brought nearer home to us in its embodied symbols and\r\nliving vehicles and vivid formulations, it becomes easily available to mortals, even like the father to his son, to use a Vedic\r\nphrase; on the other hand, earthly things, mere humanities\r\nare uplifted and suffused with a &quot;light that never was, on sea\r\nor land.&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;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Another great poet of the spirit says also, almost like Tagore:</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\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Cold are the rivers of peace and their banks are leafless\r\nand lonely.<sup>1</sup></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\">and sends up this prayer:</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-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Earth-souls needing the touch of the heaven\'s peace<br>\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\r\nto recapture,</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Heaven needing earth\'s passion to .quiver its peace<br>\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\r\ninto rapture.</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Marry, 0 lightning eternal, the passion of a moment-<br>\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\r\nborn fire!</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-left:30px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Out of thy greatness draw close to the breast of our<br>\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\r\nmortal desire!</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\">This also is Tagore\'s soul-prayer, his deepest aspiration.</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\" size=\"2\">1 Sri Aurobindo: &quot;Ahana&quot;, <i>Collected Poems &amp; Plays,</i> Vol. 2</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 374<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','-52_Rabindranath Tagore','','publish','closed','open','','52_rabindranath-tagore','','','2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/52_rabindranath-tagore/',0,'post','',0),(1528,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','<html>\r\n\r\n<head>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=windows-1252\">\r\n<title>The Spirit of Tapasya</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 Spirit of Tapasya</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\">TAPASYA (Asceticism) is usually understood to mean the\r\ncapacity to undergo physical discomfort and suffering. We\r\nare familiar with various types of Tapasya: sitting in summer\r\nwith blazing fire all around and the fiery noonday sun over-\r\nhead (Panchagnivrata), exposing one\'s bare limbs to the cold\r\nbiting blasts among the eternal snows, lying down on a bed of\r\nsharp nails, betaking oneself to sack-cloth and ashes, fasting\r\neven to the point of death: there is no end to the variety of\r\nways and means which man\'s ingenuity has invented to torture\r\nhimself. Somehow the feeling has grown among spiritual,\r\nreligious and even moral aspirants as well that the body is the\r\ndevil that has to be curbed and controlled with bit and bridle\r\nand whip. Indeed the popular view measures the greatness of\r\na saint by the amount of his physical privations.</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 seems not to know that the devil cannot be so easily\r\ncheckmated or beguiled. For, indeed, it is easy for the body to\r\ntake punishment, to submit to all kinds of rigours, yet feel as\r\nif it was making ample amends and atonement in that way\r\nrather than really give up its aboriginal instincts and impulses.\r\nOften one deceives oneself, succeeds in hiding, in secretly\r\npreserving one\'s unsaintliness behind a smoke-screen of the\r\nutmost physical tapasya.</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; Real Tapasya, however, is not in relation to the body and\r\nits comforts and discomforts; it is in relation to the inner\r\nbeing, the consciousness and its directives and movements.\r\nTapasya, austerity, consists in reacting to the downward pull\r\nof the ordinary consciousness, turning and attuning it to the\r\nrhythm of higher levels. To oppose the force of gravitation,\r\nto move ceaselessly towards purer and luminous heights of\r\nbeing and consciousness, that is Tapasya, Askesis, true asceticism. </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 191<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\">Virgil, the great poet-of a diviner order in human life,\r\nexpressed the idea most beautifully and aptly in those well-\r\nknown lines, one of the characteristic passages showing his\r\ngenius at its best:</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=\"Arial Narrow\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</font><font face=\"Times New Roman\">&nbsp; ... </font>\r\n<i>\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">superasque evadere ad auras,</font><font face=\"Arial Narrow\"> </font>\r\n</i>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n<i><font face=\"Arial Narrow\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</font><font face=\"Times New Roman\"> </font></i>\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Hoc opus, hie labor est.<sup>1</sup></i></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; . . .to move out into the higher spaces,\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; This is work, here is labour.</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; Heroism consists in this untiring march upward to more \r\nand more rarefied heights. That means the growth of consciousness, its uplifting and expansion, freeing it from the\r\nlimitations of the ignorant egoistic movements, pressing it\r\nforward to the domains of higher illuminations, towards\r\nspiritual consciousness and soul-knowledge, towards communion with the Divine, the cosmic and the transcendent Reality.\r\nThat is the real work and labour. Bodily suffering is nothing:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">it is neither a sign nor a test of the ardours of consciousness\r\nthus seeking to uplift itself. Indeed, Tapas, the word from\r\nwhich tapasya is derived, means energy of consciousness, and\r\nTapasya is the exercise, the utilisation of that energy for the\r\nascent and expansion of the consciousness. It is this inner\r\nathleticism that is the thing needful, not its vain physical\r\nsimulacrum—not the one which is commonly worshipped.</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&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<font size=\"2\"> 1<font face=\"Arial\">Virgil: </font>\r\n\r\n		<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Aeneid<i>,</i></font><i><font face=\"Arial\"> </font>\r\n\r\n		<font face=\"Times New Roman\">VI.</font></i><font face=\"Times New Roman\"> 128 </font>\r\n\r\n		</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 192<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','-30_The Spirit of Tapasya','','publish','closed','open','','30_the-spirit-of-tapasya','','','2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/30_the-spirit-of-tapasya/',0,'post','',0),(1529,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>30 dar.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>Darshana and Philosophy</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\">THERE is a mental approach to spiritual truths and there is a\r\ndirect and immediate approach or rather contact. The mind sees as though through a mist, a darkling glass, a more or less\r\nopaque veil, and the thing envisaged presents a blurred and\r\nnot unoften a deformed appearance. The mind has its own predispositions—its own categories and terms, its own forms and\r\nfigures—which it has to use when it seeks to express that which\r\nis beyond it. Naturally the object, the truth as it is, it cannot\r\napprehend or represent; it gives as it were the reverse side of\r\nan embroidery work. It goes round about the thing, has to take\r\nrecourse to all kinds of contortions and gymnastics and\r\ngrimaces to ape the natural gesture of the truth. But mind acts\r\nin this way, as a veil rather than a medium, when one is\r\nstationed in it or below it and strains to look at what is above\r\nand beyond. On the other hand, if the consciousness is stationed\r\nabove the mind, that is to say, if it has direct access or contact\r\nwith the truth, the spiritual reality, in that case, mind need\r\nnot act as a veil, it too can be made transparent, and suffused\r\nwith the higher light, it too can translate faithfully, present\r\nand embody the reality beyond somewhat as it acutally is, in\r\nits native rhythm and figure and not diffracted and diffused<br>\r\nthrough a hazy 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; European thought, European philosophy particularly, moves\r\nunder the aegis of the Mind. It takes its stand within the Mind\r\nand from there tries to reach out to truths and realities; and\r\ntherefore, however far it goes, its highest flights of perception,\r\nits most intimate contacts with spirit-truths are \'sicklied o\'er\r\nwith the pale cast of thought\'. The Indian standpoint, on the\r\ncontrary, is first to contact the truth by a direct realisation—through meditation, concentration, an uplifting and a deepening </font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 246<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 consciousness, through Yoga, spiritual discipline,\r\nand then endeavour to express the truth thus realised, directly\r\nintuited or revealed, through mental terms, to make it familiar\r\nand communicable to the normal intelligence. Mind, so\r\nsubordinated and keyed to a new rhythm, becomes, as far as\r\nit is possible for it, a channel, a vehicle and not a veil. All the\r\nmain systems of Indian philosophy have this characteristic as\r\ntheir background. Each stands on a definite experience, a\r\nspiritual realisation, a direct contact with an aspect of truth\r\nand in and through that seeks to give a world-view, building\r\nup an intellectual system, marshalling rational conclusions that\r\nare natural to it or derive inevitably from it. In the Upanishads, which preceded the Darshanas, the spiritual realisations were not yet mentally systematised or logically buttressed:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">truths were delivered there as self-evident statements, as\r\ncertitudes luminous in their own authenticity. We accept them\r\nwithout question and take them into our consciousness as\r\nforming its fundamental norms, structuring its most intimate\r\ninscape. This is <i>darsana,</i> seeing, as philosophy is named in\r\nIndia. One sees the truth or reality and describes it as it is\r\nseen, its limbs and gestures, its constituents and functions.\r\nPhilosophy here is fundamentally a recording of one\'s vision\r\nand a translation or presentation of it in mental terms.</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 procedure of European philosophy is different. There\r\nthe reason or the mental light is the starting-point. That light\r\nis cast about: one collects facts, one observes things and\r\nhappenings and then proceeds to find out a general truth—a\r\nlaw, a hypothesis—justified by such observations. But as a\r\nmatter of fact this is the ostensible method: it is only a make-\r\nbelieve. For mind and reason are not normally so neutral and\r\nimpersonal, a <i>tabula rasa.</i> The observer already comes into the\r\nfield with a definite observational angle, and a settled viewpoint.\r\nThe precise sciences of today have almost foundered on this\r\nquestion of the observer entering inextricably into his observations and vitiating them. So in philosophy too as it is practised\r\nin Europe, on a closer observation, if the observer is carefully\r\nobserved, one finds not unoften a core of suppositions, major\r\npremises taken for granted hidden behind the logical apparatus. In other words, even a hardened philosopher cherishes\r\nat the back of his mind a <i>priori</i> judgments and his whole</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 247<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;philosophy is only a rationalisation of an inner prejudgment,\r\nalmost a window-dressing of a perception that came to him\r\ndirect and in other secret ways. That was what Kant meant\r\nwhen he made the famous distinction between the Pure and\r\nthe Practical Reason and their categories. Only the direct\r\nperceptions, the spiritual realisations are so much imbedded\r\nbehind, covered so much with the mist of mind\'s struggle and\r\ntension and imaginative construction that it is not always easy\r\nto disengage the pure metal from the ore.</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 shall take the case of one such philosopher and try to\r\nillustrate our point. We are thinking of Whitehead. The\r\ncharacter of European philosophical mind is well exemplified\r\nin this remarkable modern philosopher. The anxiety to put\r\nthe inferences into a strict logical frame makes a naturally\r\nabstruse and abstract procedure more abstruse and abstract.\r\nThe .effort to present suprarational truths in terms of reason\r\nand syllogism clouds the issues more than it clarifies them. The<br>\r\nfundamental perception, the living intuition that is behind his\r\nentire philosophy and world outlook\' is that of an Immanent\r\nGod, a dynamic evolving Power working out the growth and\r\nredemption of mankind and the world (the apotheosis of the\r\nWorld, as he puts it). It is the theme which comes last in the\r\ndevelopment of his system, as the culminating conclusion of his\r\nphilosophy, but it is the basic presupposition, the first principle\r\nthat inspires his whole outlook, all the rest is woven and<br>\r\nextended around this central nucleus. The other perception\r\nintimate to this basic original perception and inseparable from\r\nit is a synthetic view in which things that are usually supposed\r\nto be contraries find their harmony and union, <i>viz;</i> God and\r\nthe World, Permanence and Flux, Unity and Multiplicity, the&nbsp;\r\nUniversal and the Individual. The equal reality of the two\r\npoles of an integral truth is characteristic of many of the modern\r\nphilosophical systems. In this respect Whitehead echoes a<br>\r\nfundamental conclusion of Sri Aurobindo.</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 another concept in Whitehead which seems to be\r\nmoulded after a parallel concept in Sri Aurobindo: it is with\r\nregard to the working out of the process of creation, the\r\nmechanism of its dynamism. It is almost a glimpse into the\r\noccult functioning of the world forces. Whitehead speaks of</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 248<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\">two principles that guide the world process, first, the principle\r\nof limitation, and second, the principle of <i>ingress.</i> The first\r\none Sri Aurobindo calls the principle of concentration (and\r\nof exclusive concentration) by which the infinite and the\r\neternal limits himself, makes himself finite and temporal and\r\ninfinitesimal, the universal transforms itself into the individual\r\nand the particular. The second is the principle of descent,\r\nwhich is almost the corner-stone in Sri Aurobindo\'s system. </font>\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\">There are layers of reality: the higher forces and formulations\r\nenter into the lower, work upon it and bring about a change\r\nand transformation, purification and redemption. All progress\r\nand evolution is due to this influx of the higher, the deeper into\r\nthe lower and superficial plane of existence.</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 one concept in Whitehead which seems rather\r\nstrange to us; it is surely a product of the brain-mind. God,\r\naccording to him, is not the creator: he is only the Redeemer,\r\nhe is a shaper but not the source and origin of things. That is\r\nbecause he thinks that if God is made the creator of the world,\r\nhe would be held responsible for the evil there. This difficulty\r\ncomes when one thinks of God too much in the popular anthropomorphic way, like someone seated above the world and\r\npassing judgment upon a world which is not his doing. God\r\nis perhaps a lover of the world, but not its Master—a certain\r\nChristian outlook says. According to Sri Aurobindo, God is a\r\ntriple reality in his transcendental, cosmic and individual\r\naspect. In creating the world, God creates, that is to say,\r\nmanifests himself. And. Evil is an evolute in the process of\r\nGod\'s self-creation through self-limitation: it proceeds to self-annihilation and even self-transmutation in a farther process\r\nof God\'s self-unfoldment in world and Nature.</font><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\">To return to our main theme, we should point out, however, that in Europe too at one time (during the whole Middle\r\nAge, the Age of Scholasticism) philosophy was considered\r\nonly as a handmaid of Religion, it had to echo and amplify\r\nand reason out the dogmas (which were sometimes real\r\nspiritual experiences or revelations); but the New Illumination\r\ncame and philosophy declared her autonomy, only that\r\nautonomy did not last long. For today in Europe, Philosophy\r\nhas become the handmaid of Science. It was natural, since</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 249<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;Reason is not a self-sufficient faculty, it is mediatory and must\r\nbe ancillary either to something above it or something below\r\nit—either to Revelation or to sense-perception.</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 250<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>','-40_Darshana and Philosophy','','publish','closed','open','','40_darshana-and-philosophy','','','2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/40_darshana-and-philosophy/',0,'post','',0),(1530,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','<html>\r\n\r\n<head>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=windows-1252\">\r\n<title>Education is Organisation</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>Education is Organisation</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\">EDUCATION is organisation. Mind\'s education means organisation of mental faculties. Organisation naturally involves\r\ndevelopment. The faculties in the normal and natural state\r\nare an undeveloped disorganised lot, a confused mass,—unformed, ill-formed ideas, notions, thoughts, form a jumble.\r\nThey have no purpose, no direction, no common impulse or\r\nend, each runs in its own way. The mind\'s faculties such for\r\nexample as attention, memory, discrimination, reasoning,\r\ncogent thinking have to be clear and efficient and learn how\r\nto work harmoniously for a common objective. In the process\r\nand for that purpose they have to be developed, that is to say\r\neach of them has to be strong, able, ample, concentrated. They\r\nhave to present a united front and function towards an ever-increasing consciousness and knowledge.</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 for the mental faculties so for the faculties of the vital.\r\nThe normal vital being in man is in a greater and perhaps\r\nmore dangerous chaos. The impulsions, emotions, upsurges\r\nthat belong to this domain have not so much to be developed\r\nor increased as to be purified, made conscious, yoked together\r\nin a common drive towards a harmonious dynamic realisation\r\nin life and life\'s achievements. And lastly the organisation in\r\nthe physical body. The limbs of the body have not even growth,\r\nthey do not move together in a balanced and rhythmic way.\r\nSome are unhealthy, some do not work, some others are\r\noverworked. These too have to be co-ordinated, each set in\r\nits place and made to function in unison with others. That is\r\nphysical education and that too means perfect 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; We have said that organisation means working for a \r\ncommon end and common purpose. That comes from an opening\r\ninto a deeper and higher level of being. We name it the soul.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 189<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>The soul\'s purpose, the soul\'s destiny has to be achieved and<b> \r\n</b>fulfilled. An organised and educated mind and life and<b> \r\n</b>body<b> \r\n</b>means to be the best and the most perfect vehicle for the expression upon earth of the soul\'s consciousness.</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 190</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\r\n</body>\r\n\r\n</html>\r\n','-29_Education is Organisation','','publish','closed','open','','29_education-is-organisation','','','2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/29_education-is-organisation/',0,'post','',0),(1531,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>10 human des.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><font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i>Human Destiny</i></font></b><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\">ANTHROPOLOGISTS<sup>1</sup> speak of a very interesting, if not strange\r\nbiological phenomenon. A baby monkey\'s face, it seems, is\r\nmuch nearer to the adult human face than to its own form\r\nwhen adult and grown-up. Also the characteristic accentuations that mark out the grown-up ape come in its case too\r\nsoon, but the human being continues, generally and on the\r\nwhole, the stamp of his early, i.e., immature animality through-out his life. The rough and gold blotches, the rude and crude\r\nstructures that make up the adult simian face, meaning all\r\nthe specialisation of its character are not inherited by man;</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">man retains always something of the fragility and effeminacy\r\nof the child. Reference is made to the fore cranium proportion,\r\ndelicate jaws corresponding smaller teeth, shortened cranial\r\nbase, expanding brain, bulging forehead, face retracted neatly\r\nbeneath the brow which are characteristics of the simian\r\nbaby. There is a lack of a certain forceful\' hard masculinity\r\nthat becomes so dominant in the ultimate phase.</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 phenomenon is akin and may be linked to the other\r\none also pointed out by anthropologists. A new species, it is\r\nsaid, grows not out of a mature, fully developed, that is to\r\nsay, specialised type, but out of an earlier, somewhat immature,\r\nundeveloped, non-specialised type. The new shoot of the genealogical tree branches out not from the topmost, the latest\r\nstem, but from one just below it, an earlier stock. The latest\r\nmeans the most developed, that is to say, the most specialised,\r\nand that means fossilised—barren; nothing new can be produced out of that; it can repeat only what was before so long\r\nas it does not die out and perish.</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 aboriginal types that have survived&nbsp; today are, it has</font>&nbsp;\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;<font size=\"2\">&nbsp;&nbsp; <font face=\"Times New Roman\"><i><sup>1</sup>The Immense Journey,</i> by Loren Eiseley.</font>\r\n\r\n		</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 90<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\">also been pointed out, a growth towards decline and deterioration, owing to a stereotyped functioning and a consequent\r\ncoarsening and hardening of traits, both psychological and\r\nphysical, a loss of plasticity, loss of the &quot;early innocence.&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; The continuance and maintenance of an innocent baby\r\nanimality in man shown in his physical features has been\r\ntermed reversion to type or fœtalisation. Some declare that\r\nfor man at least it is a sign of weakness, a possible incapacity\r\nto face squarely the blows of life and nature. This is due to\r\nculture and refinement that makes one sensitive but weak.\r\nThere have been races in the past that attained cultural\r\neffeminacy—the Egyptians for example—and could not last,\r\nlast long enough to withstand the impact of less cultured,\r\nless refined, but more vigorous races. The Graeco-Roman succeeded the Egyptian, \r\nbut they too in their turn were overwhelmed by the onslaught of ruder races, the \r\nNordic barbarians, and gave way and perished. And once more, in the\r\nmodern age, do we not see the repetition of a similar drama ?\r\nThe more cultured, the more refined, the older races seem to\r\nhave paid heavily for their culture and refinement by being\r\nmore and more delicate and weak and thus being slowly\r\npushed to the wall by newer races built with heavier and\r\ncoarser grain.</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 that perhaps is not the real truth of the matter. It may\r\nbe considered in a somewhat different perspective. We say\r\ncultures, races, species die not because they become too refined,\r\ndelicate, effeminate, but rather because they develop on a\r\nsingle track; they become lop-sided, specialised, rigid, fossilised, as we have \r\nalready said. Circumstances change, the environment brings up new conditions and if the previous form\r\ncontinues in its groove and does not know how to react adequately to the demand, is petrified and unchanging, then it\r\nbreaks and is thrown away as a thing of the dead past.</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 certain plasticity, a good deal of it, a little less finality&nbsp;&nbsp; it regard to structure and function, youthfulness, in one\r\nword, is the basic condition of life and life\'s progress. Hence\r\neven an immaturity, a certain slowness in pubescence, a longer\r\nadolescence signifies a more enduring plasticity, that is to say,\r\nthe capacity for change and progress. A quick leap into old\r\nage and fixity, as is the rule with the lower animals, means</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 91&nbsp;<br clear=all>\r\n\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\">arrest of all growth and sooner or later decay and dissolution.\r\nEven if such a life-form continues to exist, the existence is\r\nonly death in life; a fossil exists for millions of years: it is not\r\na significant existence.</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 man has maintained a longer and greater youthfulness\r\nthan his animal forbears, it means he has greater possibilities\r\nand through longer vistas of time. But leaving aside the animal\r\ncreation, if we consider man himself and his prospect, certain\r\nconclusions forcibly present themselves which we shall try to clarify.</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 a comparatively shorter view of the human evolution\r\nwe observe as, for example, Spengler has shown, a serial or\r\nserials of the rise and fall of races and nations and cultures.\r\nIs that a mere repetition, more or less of the same or very\r\nsimilar facts of life, or is there a running thread that points\r\nto a growth, at least a movement towards some goal or purpose to attain and fulfil? The present cycle of humanity,\r\nwhich we may call and is usually called the historic age, dates\r\nfrom the early Egyptians and, in India, from the ancestral\r\nVedic sages <i>(purve pitrah).</i> On a longer outlook, what has been\r\nthe nature of man\'s curve of life since then to the present\r\nday? Races and cultures have risen and have perished, but\r\nthey have been pursuing one line, moving towards one direction—the growth of<i> homo fabricus—</i>the term coined by Nietzsche\r\n—Man the artisan. Man has become man through the discovery and use of tools—from tools of stone to tools of iron,\r\nthat marks his growth from primitiveness to civilisation. And\r\nthe degree of civilisation, the distance he has travelled from\r\nhis origins is measured precisely by the development of his\r\ntools in respect of precision, variety, efficiency, serviceability.\r\nViewed from that standpoint the modern man has travelled\r\nindeed very far and has civilised himself consummately. For\r\nthe tools have become the whole man; man has lost his\r\nhuman element and almost become a machine. A machine\r\ncannot run indefinitely, it has got to stop when life is not\r\nthere. So it is often prognosticated now that man is at the\r\nend of his career. He is soon going to be a thing of the past,\r\nan extinct race—like one of the prehistoric species that died\r\nout because they could not change with the circumstances of\r\nlife, because they became unchanging, hard and brittle, so</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 92<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 say, and fell to pieces, or otherwise they continued to exist\r\nbut in a degraded, a mere vegetative form.</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\">But, as we have said, man seems to have yet retained his \r\nyouthfulness. He always just falls short of the perfect perfection, that is to say, in any single form or expression of life-Life did become stereotyped, mechanised, and therefore fossilised, more or less, in Egypt of the later Dynasties; in India\r\ntoo life did not become less inert and vegetative during two-long periods, once just preceding the advent of the Buddha,\r\nand a second time just preceding the Moslem advent—and\r\na third time perhaps just preceding the British advent. And&nbsp;&nbsp; yet man \r\nhas survived all falls and has been reborn and rejuvenated every time he seems to be off the stage.</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 very lack of perfection and fixity in \r\nthe human consciousness leaves a kind of plasticity in his nature and there-fore an opening towards further life and progress. However\r\nperfect man\'s sten-gun is, it is not as sure and efficient as the\r\nbee\'s sting. Man outlives, because he progresses through\r\napparent regressions. The cycles of human life upon earth\r\nare not mere repetitions of the same pattern as some have\r\nsupposed, they indicate a growth and development. We have\r\nreferred to the growth and development in the matter of tools,\r\nbut that is only a sign and expression of another growth and\r\ndevelopment—development in mind and consciousness. In the\r\nearlier races of mankind there was a vital, a kind of instinctive\r\nand intuitive—Bergsonian—light of consciousness; that slowly\r\nhas grown into a rich intellectual consciousness, and significantly and characteristically, into a more and more self-conscious consciousness. That points to man\'s characteristic\r\nprogressive march through all the changes in his life-pattern..</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 danger in the growth and progress of the consciousness\r\nis that it progresses along a definite line or lines, cuts out a\r\ngroove and in the end lands into a blind alley or <i>cul-de-sac.\r\n</i>This, as I have said, is perhaps the original or secret cause\r\nof decline and fall of many individual races and nations. But\r\non the whole mankind steps back, it seems, just at, the danger\r\npoint and escapes the final catastrophe. A new vein of consciousness awakes in man and gives him a new power of self-adjustment. From Imperial Egypt to, say, modern France or\r\nRussia is a far cry; the two ends give very different connotations</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 93<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 human consciousness, although there are many things\r\ncommon in certain life-instincts and some broad mental\r\nimpulsions. And there is not only progress, that is to say,\r\nadvancement on the same plane, but there is a kind of ascension on a somewhat different plane. Yajnavalkya represented a type of <i>elite</i> which is far away and far other than\r\nthat of Vivekananda, for example, 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; We have described man, especially, modern man as <i>homo\r\nfabricus;</i> but that is a particular aspect of application of <i>homo\r\nintellectualis.</i> And it is a sign and warning that he must step\r\nback and look for a new connotation of his consciousness in\r\norder to go forward and continue to exist. If, as we have said\r\nin the beginning, man is capable of a durable youthfulness,\r\nby his very nature, it means he has a resiliency that will enable\r\nhim to leap into new conditions and adapt \' himself to them\r\nmore easily and without much delay.</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; Mankind has to enter and is entering into new conditions\r\nof life, it has to adopt a new mode of living; and for that a\r\nnew mode of consciousness is imperative and imminent.</font>&nbsp;<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"justify\">\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">Human history has shown that man is capable of facing\r\ncatastrophic changes and himself undergoing such changes.\r\nAt this critical turn of human history where we stand today,\r\nman has to choose his destiny—either the Capitol or the\r\nTarpeian Rock, as in the classical phrase. Either he becomes\r\na new man with a new consciousness or he goes down into\r\ninconscience and is no more man.</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 94<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>','-12_Human Destiny','','publish','closed','open','','12_human-destiny','','','2021-11-23 17:21:40','2021-11-23 17:21:40','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/12_human-destiny/',0,'post','',0),(1532,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN\">\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<title>17 a stain.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><font face=\"Times New Roman\">\r\n		<i>A Stainless Steel Frame</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\">CORRUPTION is the order of the day. In all walks of life,\r\nwherever we have to live and move, we come across the\r\nmonster; we cannot pass him by, we have to accost him (even\r\nin the Shakespearean sense, that is) welcome him, woo him.\r\nIt is like one of the demons of the Greek legends that come\r\nout of the unknown, the sea or the sky, to prey upon a help-\r\nless land and its people until a deliverer comes.</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; Corruption appears today with a twofold face, Janus like:</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">violence and falsehood. In private life, in the political field,\r\nin the business world, in social dealings, it is now an established\r\npractice, it has gained almost the force of a law of nature that\r\nsuccess can be achieved only with these two comrades on your\r\neither side. A gentle, honest, peace-loving man is inevitably\r\npushed back, he has to go to the wall; a straightforward\r\ntruthful candid soul will get no hearing and make no living.\r\nFrom high diplomacy on the international level to village pettifoggery, from the blast of the atom bomb to the thrust\r\nof the dagger, we have all the degrees of the two cardinal\r\nvirtues that make up the warp and woof of modern 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; In the old world—not so old however, for the landslide\r\nstarted in fact with the First World War—evil there was and\r\nabundantly in man and in man\'s society, but it was not\r\naccepted as virtue or even as an acceptable or inevitable thing.\r\nIt was tolerated, suffered, and generally with a heavy heart.\r\nIndeed the heart was sound, it was the flesh only that was\r\nweak. There was an idealism, an aspiration and although one\r\ncould not always live up to it, yet one did not deny it or spurn\r\nit; one endeavoured as best one could, even though in leisure\r\nhours, in the inner mind and consciousness at least, to obey\r\nand follow its dictates. It is the Nazi theory of life that brought</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 144<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 very forefront and installed in the consciousness of\r\nman Evil as Good, Falsehood as Truth. That is pragmatism\r\nwith a vengeance. Whatever leads to success, to worldly\r\nsuccess, that is to say, brings you wealth, prosperity, power to\r\nrule over men and things, enriches you in your possession— <i>vittena,</i> as the Upanishad terms it—that is Good, that is Truth.\r\nAll the rest are mental conceptions, notions, abstractions, day-\r\ndreams meant to delude you, take you away from the road to\r\nyour fulfilment and achievement. That is how we have listened\r\nto the voice of Mephistopheles and sold away our soul.</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 government of a country is, as we know, the steel frame\r\nthat holds together the life of its people: it is that that gives\r\nthe primary stability and security, scope and free play to all\r\nits activities. In India it was the pride of the British that they\r\nbuilt up such a frame; and although that frame sometimes\r\nsee med almost to throttle the nation in its firm and rigid grip\r\nstill today we are constrained to recognise that it was indeed.\r\na great achievement: <i>Pax Britannica</i> was in fact a very efficient\r\nreality. The withdrawal of the power that was behind us has-left the frame very shaky; and our national government is-\r\ntrying hard to set it up again, strengthening, reinforcing,.\r\nriveting wherever and however necessary. But the misfortune\r\nis that the steel has got rusted and worn out from inside.</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, a diminution of public morality and collective honesty has set in, an ebbing of the individual consciousness too that made for rectitude and justice and equity and\r\nfair dealing. Men who are limbs of that frame, who by their\r\nposition ensure the strength of that frame—the bolts and nuts,\r\nscrews and hinges—have, on a large scale, allowed themselves\r\nto be uncertain and loose in their moral make-up. Along with\r\nthe outer check, the inner check too has given way: hence the\r\ncolossal disintegration, the general debacle in the life of the\r\nbody politic and the body social.</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; How to stop this rot that is gaining ground every day, how\r\nto react against the inexorable chain reaction that is leading\r\nto a final explosion? It is not merely the laymen but the\r\nmembers of the very supporting frame itself, as I have said,\r\nthat have fallen and gone over to the enemy. And the fact is\r\ntrue not only of the political frame, but the social frame too\r\nmade up of the <i>elite,</i> the intelligentsia. The remedy that easily</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 145<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\">suggests itself and is being attempted and applied is something\r\nCatonian, that is to say, a greater stringency of external rules\r\nand regulations, enforcement of punishment, even of heavy\r\npunishment as a deterrent of crime.</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 institution of punishment is no longer respected<b> \r\n</b>or<b> \r\n</b>appreciated in modern times to the same extent as in the past,\r\neven a century ago. When character goes awry, .punishment\r\nis of no avail. Punishment does not cure or redeem the criminal;</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">it often hardens, fixes the trait that is sought to be eradicated.\r\nFear of punishment does not always prevent one from doing\r\nwrong things. Often danger has an irresistible fascination for\r\n, a certain type of temperament, especially danger of the wrong\r\nkind—indeed the greater the wrong, the greater the danger\r\nand the greater the fascination. &quot;To live dangerously&quot; is the\r\nmotto of the heroic soul, as well as of the lost soul. A strong penal system, a \r\nrigorous policing is of help no doubt to maintain &quot;peace and order&quot; of some kind in a society; but that is\r\nan external pressure which cannot last very long or be effective\r\nin the 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; So the ideal proposed is that of moral regeneration. But\r\nwhat is the kind of moral regeneration and how is it to be\r\neffected ? All depends upon that. If you issue some moral rules\r\nand regulations, inscribe them on pillars, print them in pamphlets, preach them from the platform and the pulpit, these\r\nthings have been done in the past and for ages, the result is\r\nnot assured and the world goes its way as ever. Something\r\nmore than mental and moral rules has to be discovered: some\r\ndynamic and irresistible element in man has to be touched,\r\nevoked and brought put, something that challenges the whole\r\nworld and maintains its truth and the fiat of its truth. That\r\nis the inmost soul in man, the real being behind all the apparent\r\nforms of his personality, the divine element, the very Divine\r\nin him. It is the outer man, the marginal man, man in his\r\ninferior nature that lives and moves in normal circumstances;</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">instead, the central man, man in his higher and highest nature\r\nhas to come out and take his place in 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; What is needed then is an army of souls: individuals, either\r\nseparately or in groups, who have contacted their inmost\r\nreality, their divinity, in some way or other—men with a new\r\nconsciousness and aspiration, a new life and realisation. They</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 146<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\">will live in the midst of the general degeneration and disintegration, not aloof and immured in their privacy of purity,\r\nbut take part \'in the normal activities of everyday life, still\r\nacting from the height and depth of the pure consciousness\r\nprove by their very living that one can be in the world and\r\nyet not of it, doing what is necessary for the maintenance and\r\nenhancement of life and yet not stooping to the questionable\r\nways that are supposed to be necessary and inevitable. In\r\nother words, they will disprove that safety and success and\r\nprosperity in life can be had only if one follows the lead of\r\nEvil, if one sells one\'s soul. On the contrary, by living out\r\none\'s divine essence one will have conquered the world— <i>ihaiva tairjitam.</i> At every moment, in all circumstances one\r\nfollows the voice of the highest in oneself. If it is that and no\r\nother inferior echo, then one becomes fearless and immortal\r\nand all-conquering.</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 souls living and moving among men with little faith\r\nand in circumstances adverse and obscure will forge precisely\r\nthe new steel frame, the stainless steel frame upon which the\r\nnew society will be securely based.</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 147<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>','-19_A Stainless Steel Frame','','publish','closed','open','','19_a-stainless-steel-frame','','','2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/19_a-stainless-steel-frame/',0,'post','',0),(1533,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','<html>\r\n\r\n<head>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=windows-1252\">\r\n<title>The Mystery of the Five Senses</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 Mystery of the Five Senses</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\">THE senses are the doors opening out on the external world\r\nfor the consciousness to act and range abroad. That is the usual outward \r\nmovement which is generally so much condemned by spiritual seekers. The doors and windows of the\r\nsenses, whatever they are, all openings should be closed, shut\r\nup, hermetically sealed. One should then return within\r\naway from them, if one is to come into contact with the true\r\nconsciousness, the true reality. Even the Gita says, the conscious\r\nbeing is seated in tranquillity within, closing all the nine\r\ngates of the city, himself doing nothing nor causing anything\r\nto be done.</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, that is one way of procedure in dealing with the senses.\r\nWhen you consider that the senses always pull you out, they\r\nalways entice you to run after the sweet perishable goods of\r\nthe world, invite you to the enjoyment of pleasure and pain,\r\nto all the dualities of a life of ignorance normally lived upon\r\nearth, then indeed the senses become terribly suspect. But\r\nthis need not be so. The senses instead of being tempters leading\r\nyou out into the ignorance may verily be inspirers calling you,\r\nguiding you inward. Instead of opening out on the world of\r\nmaya they may open out on the world of light and truth. .</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; How can that happen? The \r\nclue is given in one of the Upanishads. The Kena Upanishad says: This eye does not\r\nreally see, there is an eye behind that sees, and so on with the\r\nother senses. Even this mind does not know, there is a mind of the mind that knows. That is the crucial point. With the\r\neye of the eye one must see, with the hearing of an inner ear\r\none must hear, and one must know by the mind of the mind.\r\nInstead of opening these windows and doors outward they\r\nshould be opened inward, turned round about as it were like</font>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\n&nbsp;Page 225<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 flare of a lighthouse. Then instead of being instruments of\r\nillusory knowledge or maya as now, they become instruments\r\nof real knowledge, receptacles or transmitters of the truth and\r\nreality behind and above.</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 we say habitually, when speaking of spiritual realisation, that one <i>sees</i> the truth, one has to <i>see</i> the truth: to know\r\nthe truth, to know the reality is taken to mean to see the truth,\r\nto see the reality, and what does this signify? It signifies what\r\none sees is the light, the light that emanates from truth, the\r\nform that the Truth takes, the radiant substance that is the\r\nTruth. This then is the special character or gift of this organ,\r\nthe organ of sight, the eye. One sees the physical light, of<br>\r\ncourse, but one sees also the supraphysical light. It is, as the\r\nUpanishad says, the eye of the eye, the third eye in the language\r\nof the occultists. What we say about the eye may be equally\r\nsaid in respect of the other sense-organs. Take hearing, for example. By the ear \r\nwe hear the noises of the world, its deafening cries and no doubt at times also some earthly music. But\r\nwhen the ear is turned inward, we listen to unearthly things.\r\nIndeed we know how stone-deaf Beethoven heard some of\r\nthose harmonies of supreme beauty that are now the cherished\r\npossessions of humanity. This inner ear is able to take you by a\r\nprocess of regression to the very source of all sound and\r\nutterance, from where springs the <i>anahata vak,</i> the <i>undictated\r\n</i>voice, the <i>nada-brahman</i>, the original sound-seed, the primary\r\nvibration. So the ear gives that hearing which reveals to you\r\na special aspect of the Divine; the vibratory rhythm of the\r\nbeing, that matrix of all utterance, of all speech that mark the\r\nmaterial expression of consciousness. Next we come to the\r\nthird sense, that of smell. Well, the nose is not a despicable\r\norgan, in any way; it is as important as any other more aristocratic sense-organ, as the eye or the ear. It is the gate to the\r\nperfumed atmosphere of the reality: Even like a flower, as a\r\nlotus for example, the truth is colourful, beautiful, shapely,\r\nradiant to the eye; to the nostrils it is exhilarating perfume, it\r\ndistils all around a divine scent that sanctifies, elevates the\r\nwhole being. After the third sense we come to the fourth, the\r\ntongue. The mouth gives you the taste of the truth and you\r\nfind that the Truth is sweetness, the delicious nectar of the\r\ngods: for the truth is also soma, the surpreme <i>rasa, amrta,</i></font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 226<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\">immortality itself. Here is Aswapathy\'s experience of the\r\nthing in <i>Savitri:</i></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; In the nostrils quivered celestial fragrances,\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; On the tongue lingered the honey of paradise.<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;&nbsp; Finally we come to the sense of touch. It is the last. But\r\nin another way, it is the first and the foremost—psychologically\r\nand chronologically—it is the most primary and primitive\r\namong the senses, as the eye comes last as the final stage in the\r\ncourse of the sensory evolution. The eye is the manifestation of\r\na developed consciousness; perfectly developed eyes as in man\r\nrepresent a perfectly developed consciousness. But touch is the\r\norgan with which an organism starts its life-course. It is the only\r\norgan a living cell is given when it begins its forward journey.\r\nPlants are endowed with that organ and faculty and that only.\r\nIt is the most generalised, the least specific, and the most\r\nsensitive of the organs. Touch gives a closer, more intimate,\r\neven more direct perception of the object, it is contact, it<br>\r\nmeans identification, it means becoming and being. And it is\r\nthrough the touch, the sublimated and most intense physical\r\ncontact, that you have the direct contact with the substance of\r\nthe Supreme, his very body. For what is Sat up there is Annam\r\nhere, both are the same identical thing in a dual aspect.</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; Continuing farther, if we go beyond the five senses, we have\r\nstill another sense, it is mind, the sixth sense as the orthodox\r\nIndian view states. In this field too the same law we have\r\nbeen expounding holds good. Mind here is the chief instrument\r\nof knowledge: it is in and through the mind that man has\r\nknowledge; it is in and through the mind that the other five\r\nsenses distil their perceptions allowing a co-ordinated picture of\r\nthe sense-experiences. Now, to attain, to realise, to possess the\r\nTruth means, first of all, to know the Truth: for, knowing as\r\nwe know, is the function of the mind. It is said, however, that\r\nthe mind knows only the outward form of things, its knowledge\r\nis the knowledge of an outside world, elements of which are\r\nsupplied by the senses. It is a Knowledge of or in Ignorance.<br>\r\nThe true knowledge is not attained by the mind or through\r\nthe mind. For the true knowledge, it is delcared, the mind is to\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\">&nbsp;&nbsp;<font size=\"2\">&nbsp; 1 Sri Aurobindo: <i>Savitri,</i> Book 1, Canto III</font></font><font size=\"2\">\r\n</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 227<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\">be expunged altogether or silenced at least. One must get\r\naway, one must withdraw from that play of activity and be\r\nfar from it. True knowledge comes through revelations. It\r\ndescends from above, it does not enter by a level side-door and\r\nit comes only when the mind is not there. But this also, as in the other cases, \r\nas in respect of the other senses, is an extreme view. Like the other senses the mind too can be turned\r\ninward or upward, made a receptive organ or instrument. </font>\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\">When turned round, when it is the Mind of the mind, then\r\nthere begins to appear the true knowledge. Then even this\r\nphysical mind remains no more ignorant or obscure, it be-\r\ncomes transparent and luminous: it is able to bring its own\r\ngift, it can serve with its own contribution to the real knowledge; for it is the mind that gives a form and shape, a local\r\nhabitation and a name to the higher truth, to the real light,\r\nto the true knowledge. It is the <i>surupa</i> (beautiful and perfect\r\nform) chanted by the Vedic Rishis that the purified mind\r\nmodels for the Gods to inhabit—it is what the poets and\r\nprophets always aspire for in their creative 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; But these separate senses with their separate qualities are not\r\nreally separate. In the final account of things, the account\r\nheld in the Supreme Consciousness, at the highest height,\r\nthese diverse elements or movements are diverse but not\r\nexclusive of one another. When they find themselves in the\r\nsupreme consciousness, they do not, like the rivers of which the\r\nUpanishads speak, move and merge into the sea giving up\r\ntheir separate individual name and function. These senses do\r\nmaintain their identity, each its own, even when they together are all of them part and parcel of the Supreme Universal\r\nConsciousness. Only, they become supple and malleable, they\r\nintertwine, mix together, even one doing another\'s work. Also,\r\nas things exist at present, modern knowledge has found out\r\nthat a blind man can see, literally see, through some part of his\r\nbody; the sense of hearing is capable of bringing to you the\r\nvision of colours. And the olfactory organ can reveal to you\r\nthe taste of things. Indeed it has been found that not only at the\r\nsight of good food, but in contemplating an extraordinarily\r\nbeautiful secenery or while listening to an exquisite piece of\r\nmusic, the mouth waters. It is curious to note that Indra, the\r\nLord of the gods, the Vedic lord of the mind and the senses, is</font>\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">\r\nPage 228<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\">said to have transformed the pores of his skin into so many eyes,\r\nso that he could see all things around at once, globally: it is\r\nwhy he was called Sahasralochana or Sahasraksha, one with a\r\nthousand eyes. The truth is that all the different senses are only\r\nextensions of one unitary sensibility and the variation depends\r\non a particular mode or stress on the generalised sensibility.</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 what the Rishis meant when they named and\r\nrepresented even the senses as gods. The gods are many, each has his own attribute and function, but they form one indivisible\r\nunity.</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 senses therefore are not merely externalisers but they\r\nare also <i>internalisers.</i> They are modes and movements that work\r\nseparately and conjointly and present aspects of the Supreme\r\nReality. These aspects are there in the very essence and the\r\nconstitution of the One Truth, also they are projected outwards\r\nto manifest and embody those very elements in the material\r\nmanifestation and incarnation of the Supreme 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; A magical accord quickened and attuned\r\nTo ethereal symphonies the old earthy strings; ...</font>\r\n\r\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">... it made<br>\r\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\r\nThe body\'s means the spirit\'s acolytes.<sup>2</sup></font><sup> </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 size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">2 Sri Aurobindo: <i>Savitri,</i> Book 1, Canto III</font><font size=\"2\">\r\n</font>\r\n\r\n		<p style=\"line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0\" align=\"center\">Page 229</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\r\n</html>\r\n','-37_The Mystery of the Five Senses','','publish','closed','open','','37_the-mystery-of-the-five-senses','','','2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/37_the-mystery-of-the-five-senses/',0,'post','',0),(1534,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','<!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>-004_Two Sonnets of Shakespeare.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>TWO SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOn the occasion of the 400th birth anniversary of Shakespeare, I present to you \ntoday two of the great Shakespearean sonnets. The sonnets, as you know, are all \nabout love. They are however characterised by an incredible intensity and \nperhaps an equally incredible complexity, for the Shakespearean feeling is of \nthat category.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nShakespeare has treated love in a novel way; he has given a new figure to that \ncommon familiar sentiment. And incidentally he has given a new sense and bearing \nto Death. From a human carnal base there is a struggle, an effort here to rise \ninto something extracorporeal; that is, something outside and independent of the \nbody and impersonal. The sense of the first sonnet is this: the body decays and \ndies, even as bleak winter seizes upon the beauties of Nature or black Night \nswallows up the light of the day. But love lingers still—as the song of sweet \nbirds—and the dying cadence of love curiously invokes and evokes a resurgent \nlove in the beloved. The second sonnet hymns the soul\'s conquest over Death. The \nsoul is that which is sinless in the sinful, it is the pure, the unsullied—the \nimmortal love—in this filth and dirt of a mortal body with its crude passions. \nDeath eats away the body, but in this way the soul grows and eats away Death. \nThis is the final epiphany, the death of Death and the resurgence of the soul \ndivine in its love divine.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-28</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b><i>Sonnet 73</i>\n</b>\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	That time of year thou mayst in me behold \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Bare ruin\'d choirs where late the sweet birds sang. \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	In me thou see\'st the twilight of such day \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	As after sunset fadeth in the west, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Which by and by black night doth take away, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Death\'s second self, that seals up all in rest. \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	In me thou see\'st the glowing of such fire, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	As the deathbed whereon it must expire,\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Consum\'d with that which it was nourish\'d by. \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	This thou perceiv\'st, which makes thy love more\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	strong,\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b><i>Sonnet 146</i>\n</b>\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	[Fool\'d by] these rebel powers that thee array, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Why so large cost, having so short a lease, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Eat up thy charge? is this thy body\'s end? \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant\'s loss,</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-29</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	And let that pine to aggravate thy store;\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Within be fed, without be rich no more:\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	And Death once dead, there\'s no more dying then.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe Shakespearean conclusion \'And Death once dead, there\'s no more dying then\' \nresounds in our ears like an echo of the famous lines of Sri Aurobindo in <i>\nSavitri—</i>\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Even there shall come as a high crown of all\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	The end of Death, the death of Ignorance.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe words are perilously parallel. I say perilously because one might just think \nthat Shakespeare was trying to be a disciple of Sri Aurobindo!\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-30</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-004_Two Sonnets of Shakespeare','','publish','closed','open','','004_two-sonnets-of-shakespeare','','','2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/004_two-sonnets-of-shakespeare/',0,'post','',0),(1535,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','<!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_George Seferis.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>GEORGE SEFERIS </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<i>Poet and essayist in modem Greek. Translated poems of the English poet, \nGeorge Eliot, into modern Greek; was in diplomatic service, now retired and \nsettled in Athens. Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1963. An Elder, ma</i>î<i>tre, \nnow in the literary world of modem Greece.</i>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<i>References: &quot;Poetry&quot; (Chicago); Greek Number, June 1951; &quot;Poetry&quot;, Greek \nNumber, October 1964; \'&quot;Poems&quot; translated by Rex Warner (the Bodley Head. \nLondon)</i>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSeferis is a poet of sighs. I do not know the cadence, the breath of the \noriginal Greek rhythm. But if something of that tone and temper has been carried \nover into English, what can be more like a heave of sign than—\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	&quot;Bend if you can to the dark sea forgetting </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	The flute\'s sound on naked feet </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	That trod upon sleep in the other, the sunk life.&quot; </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIt is the Virgilian &quot;tears of things&quot;—<i>Lacrymaererum—</i> the same that moved \nthe muse of the ancient Roman poet, moves the modern Greek poet.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSeferis\' poetry sobs—explicit or muffled—muttering or murmuring like a refrain—a \nmantra:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	\'Oh the pity of it all!\' </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWhat else is it, I repeat, but sobbing:\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-47</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	I look for my old house, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	The house with the torn windows </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	Darkened by the ivy, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	And for that ancient column </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	The landmark of the sailor. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	How can I get into this hutch? </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWe are reminded of Jeanne d\'Arc, the little maid who melted with great pity <i>(grande \npitié) </i>at the sight of the \nmisery stalking all around, ravaging her sweet France like a pest and which \ndrove her in the end to a more than classical tragic end: Seferis too in the \nsame manner wails</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	&quot;Great pain had fallen on Greece.&quot; </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nGreat pain, ruin everywhere...Greece is but a sign, a symbol of the whole earth, \nthe whole humanity. All around ancient—sempiternal—ruins...\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	&quot;Walls, streets and houses stood out </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Fossilised muscles of Cyclopian giants, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Spent power in its anatomy...&quot; </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAs if these were not sufficient, we must add new ones, fresh and bleeding—and \nnot only material but moral ruins also—the dreadful results of our inhuman \ncruelties of war:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	&quot;When you look around and you find </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">All \n	about you swathes of feet </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-48</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">All \n	about you dead hands </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">All \n	about you darkened eyes; </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	When there is no longer any choice </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Of \n	the death you wanted as your own, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Listening to a great cry, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Even to a wolf that yells...&quot; </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIndeed a great cry shoots out of your heart; an indescribable pity, the upsurge \nof a divine <i>Pieta, </i>seizes \nupon your being and you are another person, you become a poet, a prophet, a \nGod\'s warrior. Seferis too became in this way a poet and something of a prophet.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHis poetry fulfils perfectly the function of the tragic drama, in the \nAristotelian way—purification by evoking terror and pity—evoking terror, for \nexample in these lines:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">On \n	our left the south-wind blows and drives us mad, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">The \n	wind that bares bones, stripipng off the flesh,... </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOr the whole story of diabolical cruelty, the three Mules, with these tremendous \nlines:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	...those jolting breasts </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	Ripe as pomegranates with murder...<sup>1</sup> \n	(P.108) </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\n <sup>1</sup> I quote here the whole passage in \na little different translation: \n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	The glorious animal of Queen Eleanor. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Against her belly those eperons of gold, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	On her saddle those insatiable loins, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	In her amble tottering those breasts.</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Bursting like pomegranates with murder. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<i>(Contd. on P. 50)</i> </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-49</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">This \nis terror, in excelsis. As for pity—his lines on Greece:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	Great pain had fallen on Greece </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	So many bodies thrown </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	To jaws of the sea, to jaws of the earth, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	So many souls </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	Given up to millstones to be crushed like com. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	And the muddy beds of the rivers sweated with blood. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	(Pp.115-116) </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nor</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nO Nightingale, Nightingale, </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWhat is God? What is not God? What is in between? </p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">Or this \ntruly pitiful invocation:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nBut they have eyes all white without eyelashes</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAnd their arms are thin as reeds. </p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nLord, not with these. I have known </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThe voice of children at dawn </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nRunning on green hill-sides </p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	And when Neapolitans, Genoese and Lombards \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Brought to the royal table on a silver tray \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	The shirt all bloody of the murdered king </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	And made away with his pitiable brother </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	I can imagine how she neighed that night,— \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Something beyond the impassivity of her race— \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Like the howling of a dog. </p>\n</blockquote>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-50</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Happily coloured, like the bees</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">And like the butterflies. \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Lord, not with these, \ntheir voice </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Cannot even leave their mouths, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">It stays there glued on yellow \nteeth. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n(P.78)\n</p>\n</blockquote>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nBut as I have said terror and pity are invoked not for themselves but for the \nsake of purification. They serve to wash and cleanse the troubled sentiments and \nbring in a purer clearer atmosphere. When we have passed through those heavy and \ncruel feelings, we arrive at a kindlier note. Thus,\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Then I heard footsteps upon the pebbles; \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">I saw no faces. They had gone when I \nturned my head. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Still that voice heavy upon me like the treading of cattle\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Stayed in the pulses of the sky and the seas rolled\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Over upon the shingle again \nand again. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n(P.110)\n</p>\n</blockquote>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOr this superb picture of the Holy Ascension:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Suddenly I was walking and not walking. \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">I looked at the flying birds; they had \nturned to stone. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">I looked at the shining sky; there was amazement in the air.\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">I looked at the struggling bodies; they stood still. \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">And in their midst was a \nface ascending into the Light. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Over the neck the black hair flowed, the eyebrows\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Had the beat of a swallow\'s wing, the nostrils\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Curved back over the lips, and \nnow the body </p>\n</blockquote>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-51</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Was rising out of the labour, naked, with the unripe breasts\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Of a virgin, Leader of Ways;\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">A dancing but no movement. (Pp.120-121)\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIndeed, this is beauty cleansed and translucent, a beauty of the eternal Ionian \nsky. How limpid and serene, yet pulsating with a coursing life is this pastoral:</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">In the sky the clouds were ringlets; here and there\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">A trumpet of gold and rose: \nthe approaching dusk. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">In the scanty grass and among the thorns there roamed\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Thin \nbreaths that follow the rain; it must have been raining </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Over there at the edge of the hills that now took on colour. (P. 120)\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nYet was he a Christian in mood or feeling or faith in the wake of his friend and \ncomrade, kindred in spirit and in manner, the English poet T. S. Eliot ? There \nwas a difference between the two and Seferis himself gave expression to it. The \nEnglish poet after all was an escapist: he escaped, that is to say, in his \nconsciousness, into the monastery, the religious or spiritual sedative—opium? \nSeferis speaks approvingly of a poet of his country, alike in spirit, who \ndeclared that he was no reformer in this sad world,<sup>1</sup> he let things \nhappen, he was satisfied with being a\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> <sup>1</sup> This is what exactly Seferis says about this &quot;old man&quot; of \nGreece. &quot;He has no inclination to reform. On the contrary, he has an \n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-52</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">witness, seeing nature unroll her inexhaustible beauty. Eliot\'s was more or less \na moral revulsion whereas the Greek poet was moved rather by an aesthetic \nrepulsion from the uglinesses of life. It was almost a physical reaction.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThis reaction led him not to escape the reality but to detach himself and rise \nto heights from where he could see a clearer beauty in earthly things. He says:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nJust a little more </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nAnd we shall see the almond trees in blossom </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> The marbles shining in the sun\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nThe sea, the curling waves. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nJust a little more </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> Let us rise just a little higher.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nNor was he, we may now observe, a pagan, a secular aesthete. He has himself \nrisen enough to glimpse and name his soul. It was not perhaps as clear a sight \nas that of Eliot that had a touch of the Upanishadic assurance. Still the sense \nof an immortal thing unrepressed by mortalities came to him, in an authentic \nmanner. For such is his final vision:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">And those bodies\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Created from a land unknown to them\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Have their own souls.\n</p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nobvious loathing for any reformer. He writes as though he were telling us: if \nmen are such as they are, let them go where they deserve to be. It is not my \nbusiness to correct them.&quot; \n</p>\n<p class=\"pararight\">\n—Poetry (Chicago), Oct., 1964<b>.</b>\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-53</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">Now they assemble tools to change these souls. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">It will not be possible. They \nwill only undo them. </p>\n<p class=\"para\">If souls can be undone.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \n(P. III) </p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nNeither wholly an earthbound poet nor clearly an otherworldly prophet his \nquestion still remains:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nWhat is God? What is not God? What is in between?\n</p>\n</blockquote>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSeferis is a being of this in-between world, his consciousness a golden seam \njoining two hemispheres.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-54</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-007_George Seferis','','publish','closed','open','','007_george-seferis','','','2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/007_george-seferis/',0,'post','',0),(1536,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','<!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>-011_Hymn to Darkness.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>HYMN TO DARKNESS </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHere is a modem poem in Bengali. It is characteristically modern, though perhaps \nnot quite modernist. It is an invocation to Darkness:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">That darkness is not more,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">The darkness in which my heart plunged when you came,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">It is no more there.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Many are the lights now around the heart\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Arrayed as in a festive illumination. \nCeaseless now </p>\n<p class=\"para\">There is the earth\'s merry-go-round all the time. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">But beyond still,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Outside Time, the mind, even this mind stands\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">And sends its call to Thee alone. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Yes, the Darkness is there no longer; \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">And yet stretching out both the arms\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">My \nmind yearns to reach the Darkness </p>\n<p class=\"para\">And itself becomes the Darkness.\n</p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nInvocation to Darkness has, it appears, become quite fashionable among a certain \ngroup of modern poets. It is a favourite theme on which many a poet, many a good \npoet has played each in his way, a characteristic variation. Curiously enough, I \ncame across about the same time the work of another poet, a French poet, also \nmodern and almost modernist and, curiouser still, in the same manner,\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-75</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">a worshipper of Darkness. He is Yves Bonnefoy, originally belonging to the \nschool of Jouve, an earlier modem. He speaks of two kinds of Night, one darker \nthan the other—the less dark one is our common day with its grey light. The \nother is on the other shore:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Vers l\'autre rive encore plus nocturne<sup>1</sup>\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThis darker night on the other shore is not illuminated by any light, but there \nis fire there, fire and its flame and the transparency of that flame: here is \nhis description of how they stand to each other, that Night and our familiar \nday:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Une torche est portée dans le jour gris, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Le feu déchire le jour. \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Il y a que la \ntransparence de la flame </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Amèrement nie le jour.<sup>2</sup>\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nBut why bitterly? Perhaps the day (the common day) tasted bitter in the mouth of \nthe poet.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe poet has not perhaps the spiritual sense as we in India understand it. He \nspeaks in effect of a dark goddess, he calls her\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<sup>1</sup> &quot;Towards the other bank in a still darker night.&quot;\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<sup>2</sup> \n&quot;A torch is held up in the day\'s grey. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThe fire tears rifts in the day. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThere\'s this: the flame\'s transparence \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nBitterly denies the day.&quot; \n</p><p class=\"para\">\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-76</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>Douve profonde et noire<sup>1</sup>\n</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHe names her Douve, perhaps in memory of his first master Jouve, and addresses \nher as Sombre Lumière (Dark Light). He evidentiy means his poetic inspiration; \nhis vision of the other shore is that of the world of his poetic experiences and \nrealisations. But the nature of the contents of that world is very \ncharacteristic. They are apparendy qualities and objects fundamentally \nspiritual— transparent fire and even motionless silence. Yes, that world is of \nwind and fire (compare our world of Tapas) and yet calm and tranquil. So the \npoet sings:\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nDouve sera ton nom au loin parmi les pierres,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nDouve profonde et noire,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nEau basse irréductible où l\'effort se perdra.<sup>2</sup>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nInspiration, according to the poet, is not the high swell of garrulousness and \nanxious effort. It is the solid bedrock underground when all the surface \neffusions have ebbed away—a shadowy dark strong tranquil repose.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nA modern English poet—Robert Graves—worships a White Goddess. But from the \ndescription he gives of the lady, she would appear to be more black than white; \nfor she seems to be intimately connected with the affairs— that is to say—the \nmysteries—of Hades and Hecate,\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<sup>1</sup>&quot;Douve dark and black.&quot; \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<sup>2</sup>&quot;Douve shall be your name far off among the stones, Douve dark \nand black, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIrreducible low water where effort shall spend itself.&quot; \n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-77</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">underground worlds and midnight rites. She incarnates as the sow, although a white \nsow, she flows as the sap within plants and rises as passion and lust in man.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWe in India have a dark god and a dark goddess— Krishna and Kali. Krishna is \ndark, his is the deep blue of the sky. Kali is dark, hers is the blackness of \nthe earthly night. The Vaishnava poet and saint sang:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Oh, I love black,\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">For black is the tamal tree, black is Krishna, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Oh, how I love black.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nRamprasad the Bhakta thus speaks of Kali, his dark Mother: the poem itself is \nvery dark, that is to say, the meaning is dark, and the style, the phrasing is \ndarker still. A literal translation is out of question. A very free rendering is \nonly possible:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">I have brooded over it and I am utterly confused;\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">She in whose name one defies \ndark time, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">She at whose feet lies low the Supreme in his pure \nwhiteness </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Why should she herself be black?\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Many are the forms of blackness,\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">But here is a \nvery marvel of blackness. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">If you hold it in your heart,\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nthe lotus there shall bloom and burn bright— </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Oh, she is dark and her name is \nMother Darkness: </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">She is blacker than blackness.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-78</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">But one who has seen that beauty is lost for good, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">He will have no eye for any \nother beauty. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAre the moderns on the same track as these older mystics?\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nBut why this panegyric in worship of darkness ? Whence this fascination for \nblackness?\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOur ancient Rishis speak of the supreme Light of lights, the Source of all the \nlights that bum here, the Light that is beyond darkness, on the other shore. \nDarkness is this world, the world of ignorance, our earthly consciousness; this \nis a perception easily understandable. But in the mystic consciousness of a \nkind, darkness and light seem to be interchangeable. Darkness seems to be a form \nof light, nay even of a greater light.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIt is said, the occultists say, that between the light of the day, that is to \nsay, the light, of the ordinary consciousness and the higher spiritual light, \nthere is an interim world, an intermediate zone of consciousness. When one \nleaves the earthly day, the normal consciousness and goes within and to the \nheights, towards the other Light, one enters at first into a dark region (cf. \nthe <i>selva oscura </i>of \nDante). Physically also, the scientists say today that when you leave the \nearth\'s atmosphere, from\na certain height you no \nlonger see \nthe earthly light but you dive \ninto a darkness where the sun does not shine in its glory as on earth. You see \nand feel the sunlight again when you approach the sun and are about to be \nconsumed in its fires. In the same way, we are told that on the spiritual path \ntoo, the path of the inner consciousness, when you leave the ordinary</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-79</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">consciousness, when you lose that normal light and yet have not arrived at the \nother higher light you grope in an intermediary region of darkness. You have \nlost the lower knowledge and have not yet gained the higher knowledge, then you \nare in that uncertain world of greyness or darkness. Or it happens also that \nwhile in the comparatively faint light of the ordinary consciousness, you are \nsuddenly confronted with the Superior Light—through some grace perhaps—you \ncannot stand the light and get blinded and see sheer darkness. Again, the \ninfinite sky in its fathomless depth appears to the naked eye blue, deep blue, \nblue-black. Light concentrated, solidified, materialised becomes a speck of \ndarkness to the human eye. Do we not say today that a particle of matter \n(consolidated darkness) is only a quantum of concentrated light-energy?\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSomething of these supraphysical experiences must have entered into the \nconsciousness of the modem poets who have also fallen in love with darkness and \nblackness—have become adorers, although they do not know, of <i>Shy&#257;m&#257;</i> \nand <i>Shy&#257;m&#257;.</i></p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHere, for example, is a hymn from the Rig Veda, a whole hymn addressed by Rishi \nKushika to Night. Listen how the Rishi invokes his black goddess: Night and \nLight are unified—almost one—in his consciousness. The Vedic Rishis considered \nNight as only another form or function of Day—<i>nakto&#7779;asa saman&#257;s&#257; vir&#363;pe</i> — \nNight and Dawn have the same mind although the forms are different.</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-80</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>Ode to Darkness </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>Rigveda: X. 127 </b>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Night spreads wide, she comes everywhere, a Goddess with shining eyes—she looms \nover these glories as their overlord.(1) </p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">The Immortal Goddess fills up the Vast, above and below. She compels the \ndarkness with her light.(2) </p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">The Goddess comes and veils her sister, the Dawn and glows through the \nblackness.(3) </p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">She is now that to us wherein we shall rest even as birds do on a tree.(4)\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">In her repose all habitations, all the footed and winged creatures, even the \nfast racing eagle.(5) </p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">O Ocean-born Goddess! Smite the wolf, he or she, smite the robber! Garry us \nsafely through.(6) </p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Black darkness clings to me all around; it stands here firm. O Dawn! clear it \neven as you do my debts. (7) </p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nDaughter of Heaven! A Herd of light is this hymn of victory that moves towards \nyou. I have made it for your sake. Do thou accept it, O Night.(8) </p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-81</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-011_Hymn to Darkness','','publish','closed','open','','011_hymn-to-darkness','','','2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/011_hymn-to-darkness/',0,'post','',0),(1537,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','<!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_Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>RABINDRANATH AND SRI AUROBINDO </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \n&quot;Tagore has been a wayfarer towards the same goal as ours in his own way.&quot; Sri Aurobindo wrote these words in the thirties and their full significance can be \ngrasped only when it is understood that the two master-souls were at one in the \ncentral purpose of their lives. Also there is a further bond of natural affinity \nbetween them centring round the fact that both were poets, in a deeper sense, \nseer poets—Rabindranath the Poet of the Dawn, Sri Aurobindo the Poet and Prophet \nof the Eternal Day, a new Dawn and Day for the human race.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAnd both had the vision of a greater Tomorrow for their Motherland and that was \nwhy both regarded her freedom as the basic necessity for the recovery of her \ngreatness. How the inspired songs and speeches of Rabindranath and the flaming \nutterances of Sri Aurobindo created a psychological revolution almost overnight \nin the mind and heart of the people during the Swadeshi days forms a glorious \nchapter in the history of India\'s freedom movement. Profoundly touched by Sri Aurobindo\'s soul-stirring lead to the country, Rabindranath wrote a memorable \npoem, addressing Sri Aurobindo, which is still enshrined in the hearts of his \ncountrymen. Rabindranath himself called on Sri Aurobmdo and read out to him his \nheart\'s homage. We remember with thrill the majestic opening lines:\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-89</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee!\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">O friend, my country\'s friend, O voice incarnate, free,\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Of India\'s soul!\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSri Aurobindo retired from the outer political world to devote himself more \nintensively to the discovery and conquest of a new consciousness and force, \nglimpses of which he was having at the time and which alone could save mankind \nand recreate it. From 1910 to 1914 he was, he said, silendy developing this new \npower in seclusion and in 1914 he began to give to the world the result of his \nrealisations through his monthly review <i>Arya. </i>\nIn five major sequences \npublished month after month through several years, he envisaged, in the \nmain, \nthe progressive march of man \ntowards a divine life on \nearth, \ntowards the unity of mankind and a perfect social order. One of these serials \nwas called the Future Poetry in which he traced the growth and development that \nworld poetry is undergoing towards its future form that would voice the dawn of \na New Age of the Spirit. Sri Aurobindo hailed those who feel and foresee this \ndistant dawn \nbehind the horizon as the \nForerunners of the new Spirit, among whom he included Rabindranath, because he \nsaw in Tagore\'s the first beginnings, &quot;a glint of the greater era of man\'s \nliving&quot;, something that &quot;seems to be in promise&quot;. &quot;The poetry of Tagore,&quot; Sri \nAurobindo says, &quot;owes its sudden and universal success to this advantage that he \ngives us more of this discovery and fusion for which the mind of our age is in \nquest than \nany other creative writer of \nthe time. His work is a constant music of the overpassing of</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-90</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">the borders, a chant-filled realm in which the subde sounds and lights of the \ntruth of the spirit give new meanings to the finer subdeties of life.&quot;\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nCharacterising Tagore\'s poetry, in reference to a particular poem, Sri Aurobindo \nonce wrote: &quot;But the poignant sweetness, passion and spiritual depth and mystery \nof a poem like this, the haunting cadences subde with a sub-dety which is not of \ntechnique but of the soul, and the honey-laden felicity of the expression, these \nare the essential Rabindranath and cannot be imitated because they are things of \nthe spirit and one must have the same sweetness and depth of soul before one can \nhope to catch any of these desirable qualities.&quot; Furthermore: &quot;One of the most \nremarkable peculiarities of Rabindra Babu\'s genius is the happiness and \noriginality with which he has absorbed the whole spirit of Vaishnava poetry and \nturned it into something essentially the same and yet new and modem. He has \ngiven the old sweet spirit of emotional and passionate religion an expression of \nmore delicate and complex richness voiceful of subder and more penetratingly \nspiritual shades of feeling than the deep-hearted but simple early age of Bengal \ncould know.&quot;\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nCertain coincidences and correspondences in their lives may be noticed here. The \nyear 1905 and those that immediately followed found them together on the crest \nwave of India\'s first nationalist resurgence. Again both saw in the year 1914 a \nmomentous period marked by events of epochal importance, one of which was the \nFirst World War. For Tagore it was <i>&quot;yuga-sandhi, </i>\nthe dying of the old age of Night to the dawning of a new with its</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-91</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">blood-red sunrise emerging through the travail of death, sorrow and pain&quot;. For \nSri Aurobindo it was a cataclysm intended by Nature to effect a first break in \nthe old order to usher in the new. The significant year 1914 was also the period \nwhen Rabindranath expressed in the magnificent series of poems of the <i>Balaka </i>\nhis visions and experiences of \nthe forces at work on earth, and Sri Aurobindo began revealing through the pages \nof the Arya\nthe truths of the \nsupramental infinities that were then pouring down into \nhim \nand through him into the \nearth\'s atmosphere.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSo it was natural and almost inevitable—written among the stars—that both should \nmeet once more on this physical earth. Sri Aurobindo had been in complete \nretirement seeing none except, of course, his attendants. He was coming out only \nfour times in the year to give silent darshan to his devotees and a few others \nwho sought for it. It was in the year 1928. Tagore was then on a tour to the \nSouth. He expressed to Sri Aurobindo by letter his desire for a personal \nmeeting. Sri Aurobindo naturally agreed to receive him. Tagore reached \nPondicherry by steamer, and I had the privilege to see him on board the ship and \nescort him to the Ashram. The Mother welcomed him at the door of Sri Aurobindo\'s \napartments and led him to Sri Aurobindo. Tagore already knew the Mother, for \nboth were together in Japan and stayed in the same house and she attended some \nof his lectures in that country. It may be interesting to mention here that \nTagore requested the Mother to take charge of the Visva Bharati, for evidently \nhe felt that the future of his dear institution would be in sure hands. But the \nMother could\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-92</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">not but decline since it was her destiny to be at another place and another \nwork.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWhat transpired between them is not for me to say, the meeting being a private \none. But I may quote here what Tagore himself wrote about it subsequently <i>\n(The Modem Review, </i>July 1928):</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \n&quot;For a long time I had a strong desire to meet Aurobindo. It has just been \nfulfilled... At the very first sight I could realise that he had been seeking \nfor the soul and had gained it, and through this long process of realisation had \naccumulated within him a silent power of inspiration. His face was radiant with \nan inner light... I felt that the utterance of the ancient Rishi spoke from him \nof that equanimity which gives the human soul its freedom of entrance into the \nAll. I said to him, \'You have the Word and we are waiting to accept it from you. \nIndia will speak through your voice to the world, \'Hearken to me\'\'.... Years ago \nI saw Aurobindo in the atmosphere of his earlier heroic youth and I sang to him:\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAurobindo, accept the salutation from Rabindranath. Today I saw him in a deeper \natmosphere of a reticent richness of wisdom and again sang to him in silence:\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAurobindo, accept the salutation from Rabindranath.&quot;\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nVibhutis, emanations and embodiments of the higher destiny of mankind appear \nupon earth from time to time to lead and guide the race on the upward way. And \nwe are fortunate that we are born in an age that has been blessed by two such \nShining Ones.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-93</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-013_Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo','','publish','closed','open','','013_rabindranath-and-sri-aurobindo','','','2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/013_rabindranath-and-sri-aurobindo/',0,'post','',0),(1538,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','<!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_The Shakespearean Word.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>THE SHAKESPEAREAN WORD </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe Vedic rishi, says the poet, by his poetic power, brings out forms, beautiful \nforms in the high heaven.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIn this respect, Shakespeare is incomparable. He has through his words painted \npictures, glowing living pictures of undying beauty.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIndeed all poets do this, each in his own way. To create beautiful concrete \nimages that stand vivid before the mind\'s eye is the natural genius of a poet. \nHere is a familiar picture, simple and effective, of a material vision:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	Cold blows the blast across the moor\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	The sleet drives hissing in the wind, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Yon toilsome mountain lies before, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	A dreary treeless waste behind.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOr we may take a pictorial presentation of a gorgeous kind from Milton:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	High on a Throne of Royal State, which far\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Outshone the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Showers on her Kings Barbaric Pearl and Gold, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Satan exalted sat by merit raised \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	To that bad eminence...\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOr take this image drawn by a more delicate and subtle hand—it is Wordsworth—\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-16</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	I wandered lonely as a cloud </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	That floats on high o\'er vales and hills,\n</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	When all at once I saw a crowd,\n</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	A host, of golden daffodils;\n</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	Beside the lake, beneath the trees,\n</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.\n</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOr that wonder-image magically wrought in those famous unforgettable lines:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWe may turn to an Eastern poet to see how he too has gone the same way although \nin a different tone and temper. Here is a Kalidasian image:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	To climb upon his Bull high and snow-white even like\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	Mount Kailas </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	The great Lord graciously presses his holy feet upon\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	this back of mine; </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	I am his slave, Kumbhodara by name, Nikumbha\'s\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	comrade.<sup>1</sup> </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOne can go on <i>ad infinitum, </i>\nfor in a sense poetry is \nnothing but images. Still\nI \nam \ntempted to give a last citation \nfrom Dante, the superb Dante, in his grand style simple:</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<i><sup>1</sup> Kail&#257;sagauram v&#7771;&#7779;am&#257;ruruk&#7779;o&#7717;\n</i>\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-17</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	Lo giorno se n\'andava, e l\'aer bruno\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Toglieva gli animai, che sono in terra \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Dalle fatiche loro.<sup>1</sup>\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nCharacteristically of the poet these lines give an image that is bareness \nitself, chiselled in stone or modelled in bronze.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAll these images however, or most of them, belong to one category or genre. They \nare painted pictures, <i>still life, </i>\non the whole, presented in two \ndimensions. Kalidasa himself has described the nature or character of this \nartistic effect. In describing a gesture of \nUma \nhe says, \'she moved not, she \nstopped not\' (na \nyayau na tasthau); it was, \nas it were, a movement suddenly arrested and held up on a canvas. The imagery is \nas though of a petrification. The figures of statuary present themselves to our \neyes in this connection-a violent or intense action held at one point and \nstilled, as for example, in the Laocoon or the Discabolo.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThis is usually what the poets, the great poets have done. They have presented \nliving and moving bodies as fixed, stable entities, as a procession of statues. \nBut Shakespeare\'s are not fixed stable pictures but living and moving beings. \nThey do not appear as pictures, even like moving pictures on a screen, a \ntwo-dimensional representation. Life in Shakespeare appears, as in life, exactly \nlike a three-dimensional phenomenon. You seem to see forms and figures in\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> <sup>\n1</sup> Now was the day departing, and the air, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n Imbrow\'d with shadows, from their toils released \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n All animals on earth. \n<br>\n</p><p class=\"para\">\nPage-18</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">the \nround, not simply in a frontal view. A Shakespearean scene is not only a feast \nfor the eye but is apprehended as though through all the senses.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHowever, we must not forget Michael Angelo in this connection. He is living, he \nis energetic, to a supreme degree. If we seek anywhere intense authentic \nlife-movement, it is there at its maximum perhaps. Even his statues are a paean \nof throbbing pulsating bodies. Still he has planted moving life in immobility \nand stilled rigidity. It is a passing moment stopped as though by magic; a <i>\nmortis rigor </i>\nholds in and controls, as it were, a wild vigour spurting out.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWe know that almost no paraphernalia are really needed to present a \nShakespearean drama on the stage. His magical, all-powerful words are sufficient \nto do the work of the decorative artist. The magic of the articulate word, the \nmere sound depicts, not only depicts but carries you and puts you face to face \nwith the living reality. I will give you three examples to show how Shakespeare \nwields his Prosperian wand. First I take the lines from Macbeth, that present \nbefore you the castle of Duncan, almost physically —perhaps even a little more \nthan physically—with its characteristic setting and atmosphere:\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nDun. This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nNimbly and sweetly recommends itself \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nUnto our gentle senses.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nBan. \nThis guest of summer,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThe temple-haunting martlet, does approve,\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-19</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	By his loved mansionry that the heaven\'s breath \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Smells wooingly here. No jutty, frieze,</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	The air is delicate.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe next scene is the famous episode in King Lear where Gloucester \nattempts—though vainly—comically, to kill himself. Here is the photograph, \nrather the cinematograph that defies, surpasses all cinema-artifice. I present \nit in two parts:\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>(I) </b>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Glo. \nWhen shall I come to th\' top of that same hill? \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Edg. \nYou do climb up it now. Look how we labour. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Glo. \nMethinks the ground is even.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Edg. \nHorrible steep.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHark, do you hear the sea?\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Glo. \nNo, truly.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Edg. \nWhy then your other senses grow imperfect\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nBy your eyes\' anguish.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Glo. \nSo may it be indeed.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nMethinks thy voice is alter\'d, and thou speak\'st\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIn better phrase and matter than thou didst.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Edg. \nYou\'re much deceiv\'d; in nothing am I chang\'d </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nBut in my garments.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-20</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Glo. \nMethinks you\'re better spoken.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Edg. \nCome on, sir, here\'s the place; stand still. How\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nfearful\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAnd dizzy \'tis to cast one\'s eyes so low!\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThe crows and choughs that wing the midway air \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nShow scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nHangs one that gathers samphire—dreadful trade! \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nMethinks he seems no bigger than his head. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThe fishermen that walk upon the beach \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAppear like mice; and yon tall anchoring bark\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nDiminish\'d to her cock; her cock, a buoy \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAlmost too small for sight. The murmuring surge, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThat on th\' unnumbered idle pebble chafes, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nCannot be heard so high. I\'ll look no more, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nLest my brain turn, and the deficient sight \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTopple down headlong.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Glo. \nSet me where you stand.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Edg. \nGive me your hand. You are now within a foot \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nOf th\' extreme verge. For all beneath the moon \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWould I not leap upright.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Glo. \nLet go my hand.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \n.................................</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Edg. \nNow fare ye well, good sir.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Glo. \nWith all my heart.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \n..............</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Glo. \nO you mighty gods!\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThis world I do renounce...\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nNow, fellow, fare thee well.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Edg. \nGone, sir—; farewell.\n<br>\n</p><p class=\"para\">\nPage-21</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>(2) </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\">Edg. \n...Alive or dead?—\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHo, you sir! Friend! Hear you, sir! speak!\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n.............</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWhat are you, sir?\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Glo. \nAway, and let me die.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Edg. \nHadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nSo many fathom down precipitating,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThou\'dst shiver\'d like an egg; but thou dost breathe,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nHast heavy substance, bleed\'st not, speak\'st, art sound.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTen masts at each make not the altitude\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWhich thou hast perpendicularly fell: \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThy life\'s a miracle. Speak yet again.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Glo. \nBut have I fall\'n, or no?\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Edg. \nFrom the dread summit of this chalky bourn.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nLook up a-height; the shrill-gorged lark so far\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nCannot be seen or heard: do but look up.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Glo. \nAlack, I have no eyes.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n.............</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Edg. \nUpon the crown o\' th\' cliff, what thing was that \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWhich parted from you?\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Edg. \nAs I stood below, methought his eyes\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWere two full moons; he had a thousand noses,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nHorns whelked and wav\'d like the enridged sea. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIt was some fiend...\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-22</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Glo. \n\'The fiend, the fiend\': he led me to that place.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe last one is the opening scene of Hamlet, an extraordinary scene familiar to \nthe whole world.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \n(Francisco at his post. Enter to him Barnardo) \n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \nWho\'s there?\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Fran. \nNay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \nLong live the king! Fran. Barnardo? Bar. He.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Fran. \nYou come most carefully upon your hour. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \n\'Tis not struck twelve, get thee to bed, Francisco. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Fran. \nFor this relief much thanks, \'tis bitter cold,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAnd I am sick at heart.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \nHave you had quiet guard?\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Fran. \nNot a mouse stirring.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \nWell, good night.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIf you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThe rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Fran. \nI think I hear them. Stand, ho!\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWho\'s there?\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \n(Enter Horatio and Marcellus)\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Hor. \nFriends to this ground.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mar. \nAnd liegemen to the Dane.</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Fran. \nGive you good night.</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mar. \nO! farewell, honest soldier:\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWho hath reliev\'d you?\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Fran. \nBarnardo hath my place; \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nGive you good night.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-23</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Mar. \nHolla! Barnardo!\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \nSay,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWhat, is Horatio there?\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Hor. \nA piece of him.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \nWelcome, Horatio; welcome, good Marcellus. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mar. \nWhat! has this thing appear\'d again to-night? \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \nI have seen nothing. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mar. \nHoratio says \'tis but our fantasy,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAnd will not let belief take hold of him\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nTouching this dreaded sight twice seen of us;\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nTherefore I have entreated him along \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWith us to watch the minutes of this night, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThat if again this apparition come, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHe may approve our eyes and speak to it.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Hor. \nTush, tush! \'twill not appear.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \nSit down a while,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAnd let us once again assail your ears, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThat are so fortified against our story, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWhat we two nights have seen.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Hor. \nWell, sit we down,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAnd let us hear Barnardo speak of this.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \nLast night of all,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWhen yond same star that\'s westward from the pole\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nHad made his course to illume that part of heaven\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWhere now it bums, Marcellus and myself, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThe bell then beating one,— \n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n(Enter Ghost)\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mar. \nPeace! break thee off, look, where it comes again!\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \nIn the same figure, like the king that\'s dead.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-24</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Mar. \nThou art a scholar; speak to it Horatio.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \nLooks it not like the king? Mark it Horatio.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Hor. \nMost like; it harrows me with fear and wonder.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \nIt would be spoke to.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mar. \nQuestion it, Horatio.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Hor. \nWhat art thou that usurp\'st this time of night, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTogether with that fair and warlike form \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIn which the majesty of buried Denmark \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nDid sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee speak.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mar. \nIt is offended.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \nSee! it stalks away.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Hor. \nStay, speak, speak, I charge thee speak!\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"> \n(Exit Ghost)\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mar. \n\'Tis gone and will not answer.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bar. \nHow now, Horatio? you tremble and look pale?\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIs not this something more than fantasy?\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWhat think you on\'t? \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Hor. \nBefore my God I might not this believe,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWithout the sensible and true avouch\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nOf mine own eyes.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mar. \nIs it not like the king?\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Hor. \nAs thou art to thyself.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSuch was the very armour he had on,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWhen he the ambitious Norway combated;\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSo frown\'d he once, when in an angry parle\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nHe smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n\'Tis strange.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mar. \nThus twice before, and jump at this dead hour, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWith martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-25</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThis is not at all a theatrical representation on a stage where personages are \nacting; there is no make-up, no decor. It is a real incident happening before \nour eyes as it were, that we are invited to attend and contemplate. It is not a \nstory narrated but an event occurring upon earth disclosed to our view.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSuch is the magical creative power in the Shakespearean word. It is the \nevocative force of the articulate sound. In India, we call it <i>mantra. </i>\nMantra means a certain sum of \nsyllables charged with dynamic force, creative consciousness. It is that which \ninduces life into the body of a clay image, it is that which awakens the \nDivinity, establishes Him\nin a dead material form. \nShakespeare has, as it were, instilled his life\'s breath into his words and made \nthem move and live as living creatures, \nphysical beings upon earth.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nBorrowing an analogy from modem knowledge, I may say that the Shakespearean word \nis a particle or wave of life-power. Modem science posits as the basis of the \nmaterial creation, as its ultimate constituents, these energy-particles. Even so \nit seems to me that at the basis of all poetic creation there lie what may be \ncalled word-particles, and each poet has a characteristic quality or energy of \nthe word-unit. The Shakespearean word, I have said, is a life-energy packet; and \ntherefore in his elaboration of the Word, living figures, moving creatures leap \nup to our sight.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nShakespeare himself has said of his hero Romeo, characterising the supreme \nbeauty the hero embodies:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	When he shall die </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Take him and cut him out in little stars,\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-26</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	And he will make the face of heaven so fine \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	That all the world will be in love with Night.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nEven so the whole body of Shakespearean utterances may be described as \nconsisting, in the last analysis, of starry vocables, quanta of articulate \nlife-energy.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nYes, Shakespearean syllables are indeed the glorious members cut out of the body \nas it were of a beautiful vital being transmuted into heavenly luminaries.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIn the world of poetry Dante is a veritable <i>avatar. </i>\nHis language is a supreme magic. \nThe word-unit in him\nis a quantum of highly \nconcentrated perceptive energy, Tapas. In Kalidasa the quantum is that of the \nenergy of the-light in sensuous beauty. And Homer\'s voice is a quantum of the \nluminous music of the spheres.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe word-unit, the language quantum in Sri Aurobindo\'s poetry is a packet of \nconsciousness-force, a concentrated power of Light (instinct with a secret \nDelight)—listen:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nLone in the silence and to the vastness bared, </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAgainst midnight\'s dumb abysses piled in front \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nA columned shaft of fire and light she rose.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nO Word, cry out the immortal litany:\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nBuilt is the golden tower, the flame-child born. </p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-27</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-003_The Shakespearean Word','','publish','closed','open','','003_the-shakespearean-word','','','2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/003_the-shakespearean-word/',0,'post','',0),(1539,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','<!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_Jules Supervielle.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>JULES SUPERVIELLE </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nJules Supervielle is a French poet and a modem French poet. He belongs to this \ncentury and died only a few years ago. Although he wrote in French, he came of a \nSpanish colonist family settled in South America (Montevideo). He came to France \nearly in life and was educated there. He lived in France but maintained his \nrelation with his mother-country.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHis poetry is very characteristic and adds almost a new vein to the spirit and \nmanner of French poetry. He has bypassed the rational and emotional tradition of \nhis adopted country, brought in a mystic way of vision characteristic of the \nEast. This mysticism is not however the normal spiritual way but a kind of \noblique sight into what is hidden behind the appearance. By the oblique way I \nmean the sideway to enter into the secret of things, a passage opening through \nthe side. The mystic vision has different ways of approach—one may look at the \nthing straight, face to face, being level with it with a penetrating gaze, \npiercing a direct entry into the secrets behind. This frontal gaze is also the \nnormal human way of knowing and understanding, the scientific way. It becomes \nmystic when it penetrates sufficiently behind and strikes a secret source of \nanother light and sight, that is, the inner sight of the soul. The normal vision \nwhich I said is the scientist\'s vision, stops short at a certain distance and so \ndoes not possess the key to the secret knowledge. But an aspiring vision can \nstretch itself, drill into the surface obstacle\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-55</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">confronting it, and make its contact with the hidden ray behind. There is also \nanother mystic way, not a gaze inward but a gaze upward. The human intelligence \nand the higher brain consciousness seeks a greater and intenser light, a vaster \nknowledge and leaps upward as it were. There develops a penetrating gaze towards \nheights up and above, to such a vision the mystery of the spirit slowly reveals \nitself. That is Vedantic mysticism. There is a look downward also below the \nlife-formation and one enters into contact with forces and beings and creatures \nof another type, a portion of which is named Hell or Hades in Europe, and in \nIndia<i> p&#257;t&#257;l </i>and\n<i>ras&#257;</i><i>tal</i>.\nBut here we are speaking of \nanother way, not a frontal or straight movement, but as I said, splitting the \nside and entering into it, something like opening the shell of mother of pearl \nand finding the pearl inside. There is a descriptive mystic: the suprasensuous \nexperience is presented in images and feeling forms. That is the romantic way. \nThere is an explanatory mysticism: the suprasensuous is ,set in intellectual or \nmental terms, making it somewhat clear to the normal understanding. That is I \nsuppose classical mysticism. All these are more or less direct ways, straight \napproaches to the mystic reality. But the oblique is different- it is a seeking \nof the mind and an apprehension of the senses that are allusive, indirect, that \nmove through contraries and negations, that point to a different direction in \norder just to suggest the objective aimed at. The Vedantic (and the Scientific \ntoo) is the straight, direct, rectilinear gaze-the Vedantin says, \' May I look \nat the Sun with a transfixed gaze\' -whether he looks upward or</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-56</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">inward or downward. But the modem mystic is of a different mould. He has not \nthat clear absolute vision, he has the apprehension of an aspiring \nconsciousness. His is not religious poetry for that matter, but it is an \naspiration and a yearning to perceive and seize truth and reality that eludes \nthe senses, but seems to be still there. We shall understand better by taking a \npoem of his as example. Thus:\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>Alter Ego </b>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Une souris s\'échappe\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">(Ce n\'en était pas une) \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Une femme s\'éveille\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">(Comment le \nsavez-vous?) </p>\n<p class=\"para\">Et la porte qui grince\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">(On l\'huila ce matin) \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Près du mur de clôture\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">(Le mur n\'existe plus) \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Ah! je ne puis rien dire \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">(Eh bien, vous vous tairez!) \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Je \nne puis pas bouger </p>\n<p class=\"para\">(Vous marchez sur la route) \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Où allons nous ainsi? \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">(C\'est moi \nqui le demande) </p>\n<p class=\"para\">Je suis seul sur la Terre \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n(Je suis là près de vous) </p>\n<p class=\"para\">Peut-on être \nsi seul </p>\n<p class=\"para\">(Je le suis plus que vous, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Je vois votre visage, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Nul ne m\'a jamais vu).\n</p><br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-57</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIt is a colloquy between &quot;I&quot; and the other-I. The apparent self sees things that \nappear so concrete and real but in the other, they vanish and become airy \nnothings. Still, if things have any reality it is there in that other self.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOr again, take this:\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"><b> Lui seul\n</b>\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSi vous touchez sa main c\'est bien sans le savoir, </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nVous vous le rappelez mais sous un autre nom, </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAu milieu de la nuit au plus fort du sommeil, </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nVous dites son vrai nom et le faites asseoir. </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nUn jour on frappe et je devine que c\'est lui </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nQui s\'en vient près de nous à n\'importe quelle heure </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nEt vous le regardez avec un tel oubli </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nQu\'il s\'en retourne au loin mais en laissant derrière </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nUne porte vivante et pale comme lui. </p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe Reality is so real that it is always there, and it is not always altogether \nintangible, invisible. You touch it often enough but you do not know that it was \nthe reality. You give it another name: perhaps imagination, illusion, \nhallucination. Yes, at the dead of night when you have forgotten yourself, \nforgotten the world, nothing exists, you call out his true name and set him in \nfront—O my soul, O my God!\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIn the next poem that I quote, the mystery is explained, that is to say, \ndescribed a little more at length.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-58</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>Saisir </b>\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Saisir, saisir le soir, la pomme et la statue, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Saisir, l\'ombre et le mur et le \nbout de la rue, </p>\n	<br>\n	<p class=\"para\">Saisir le pied, le cou de la femme couchée\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Et puis ouvrir les mains. Combien \nd\'oiseaux lâches, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Combien d\'oiseaux perdus qui deviennent la rue, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">L\'ombre, le \nmur, le soir, la pomme et la statue. </p>\n	<br>\n	<p class=\"para\">Mains, vous vous usurez\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">A ce grave jeu-là, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Il faudra vous couper\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Un jour, vous \ncouper ras. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\n* * \n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Grands yeux dans ce visage, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Qui vous a placés là?\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">De quel vaisseau sans mats \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Etes-vous \n	l\'équipage?</p>\n	<br>\n	<p class=\"para\">Depuis quel abordage\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Attendez-vous ainsi\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Ouverts toute la nuit?\n	</p>\n	<br>\n	<p class=\"para\">Feux noirs d\'un bastingage\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Etonnés mais soumis\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">A la loi des orages.\n	</p>\n	<br>\n	<p class=\"para\">Prisonniers des mirages \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Quand sonnera minuit\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-59</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Baissez un peu les cils\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Pour reprendre courage.\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	* * </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> Saisir quand tout me quitte,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nEt avec quelles mains </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSaisir cette pensée, </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nEt avec quelles mains </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSaisir enfin le jour </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nPar la peau de son cou, </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nLe tenir remuant </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nComme un lièvre vivant? </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nViens, sommeil, aide-moi, </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nTu saisiras pour moi </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nCe que je n\'ai pu prendre, </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSommeil aux mains plus grands. </p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThese hands do not grasp that thing, these eyes do not see that. Try to capture \nthrough the senses that tenuous substance, you find it nowhere. You cannot \nthrottle that reality with your solid fist. Chop off your hands, pluck out your \neyes, then perhaps something will stir in that darkness, something that exists \nnot but wields a sovereign power. The eyes that see are not these winkless wide \neyes, blank, vacant and dry, before which blackness is the only reality. One \nmust have something of the bedewed gentle hesitating human eyes; it is there \nthat the other light condescends to cast its reflection. The poet says, man with \nhis outward regalia seems to have lost all trace of the Divine in him, what is \nstill left of God in him is just the  \n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-60</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">&quot;humidity&quot; of his soul<sup>1</sup>—the \'tears of things\' as a great poet says.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe sense that seizes and captures and makes an object its own is not any robust \nmaterial sense, but something winged and vast and impalpable like your sleep—the \nother consciousness.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe poet speaks obliquely but the language he speaks by itself is straight, \nclear, simple, limpid. No rhetoric is there, no exaggeration, no effort at \neffect; the voice is not raised above the normal speech level. That is indeed \nthe new modem poetic style. For according to the new consciousness prose and \npoetry are not two different orders, the old order created poetry in heaven, the \nnew poetry wants it upon earth; level with earth, the common human speech, the \nspoken tongues give the supreme intrinsic beauty of poetic cadence. The best \npoetry embodies the quintessence of prose-rhythm, its pure spontaneous and easy \nand felicitous movement. In English the hiatus between the poetic speech and \nprose is considerable, in French it is not so great, still the two were kept \nseparate. In England Eliot came to demolish the barrier, in France a whole \ncompany has come up and very significant among them is this foreigner from Spain \nwho is so obliquely simple and whose Muse has a natural yet haunting magic of \ndivine things:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Elle lève les yeux et la brise s\'arrête\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Elle baisse les yeux, la campagne \ns\'étend. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<sup>1</sup> God says to man: &quot;L\'humidité de votre âme, c\'est \nce qui vous reste de moi.&quot; \n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-61</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-008_Jules Supervielle','','publish','closed','open','','008_jules-supervielle','','','2021-11-23 17:21:41','2021-11-23 17:21:41','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/008_jules-supervielle/',0,'post','',0),(1540,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','<!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_Rishi Dirghatma.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>RISHI DIRGHATAMA </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nMany of the Upanishadic rishis are familiar to you. Vedic rishis are perhaps not \nso.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nToday I will speak of one of the Vedic rishis. Some names of great Vedic rishis \nmust have reached your ears —Vashishtha, Vishwamitra, Atri, Parasara, Kanwa (I \ndo not know if it is the same Kanwa of whom Kalidasa speaks in his <i>\nShakuntala), </i>\nMadhuchchanda. \nAll \nof them are seers of mantra, \nhearers of mantra, creators of \nmantra; \nall of them occupy a large place in the Veda. \nEach \none of them has his speciality, \neach one delivers a mantra that is in its tone, temper and style his own \nalthough the subject matter, the substance, the fundamental realisation is \neverywhere the same. For example, Vashishtha is characterised by a happy \nclarity, Vishwamitra has force and energy, Kutsa \nis \nsweetness, Dirghatama is \nwell-known for his oblique utterances, his paradoxical apopthegms.<sup>1</sup></p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nToday precisely it is of Dirghatama that we will speak. Dirghatama does not mean \nas the word would indicate to the layman, one who is very tall—<i>&#347;&#257;lapr&#257;&#7745;&#347;urmah&#257;-bhuja&#7717; </i>\nin Kalidasa\'s phrase. Tama is not \nthe superlative suffix \n(most), \nit is \ntamas, \ndarkness. So, from the name \nitself one may naturally expect that the person was not of</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<sup>1</sup> Sri Aurobindo says: &quot;In the \ndeep and mystic style of the Dirghatamas Auchathya as in the melodious lucidity \nof Medhatithi Kanwa, in the puissant and energetic hymns of Vishwamitra as in Vashishtha\'s even harmonies we have the same firm foundation of knowledge and \nthe same scrupulous adherence to the sacred conventions of the Initiates.&quot;\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-8</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">an \nordinary category. Indeed the amount of stories and legends that have been woven \naround the name is fantastic—queer, odd, unbelievable, impossible in every way. \nI need not open that chapter.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nI shall speak only of what seems to me probable and believable and likely and it \nmust be this that he passed a long time in darkness, engulfed in obscurity. The \nlegend says that he was in his mother\'s womb long past the due time and it seems \nit was of his own will. His mother\'s name was Mamata and his father was \nUchathya. When he came out of the darkness and saw the light, it was a light \nstrangely glimmering with all the vibrations of the long obscurity to which he \nhad been accustomed. It was indeed the Light beyond the confines of all \ndarkness, nescience, and yet carrying a mystic imprint of the mysteries of \ndarkness. So he started his quest with this questioning:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"><i>\n	&quot;</i>I<i> </i>am an innocent babe, my ignorant mind knows nothing, who will \n	tell me of the secret seats of the Godheads?&quot; (Rigveda—I. 164.)\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIndeed the darkness and the blindness seem to have been the Divine\'s grace upon \nhim, for his eyes turned inward to other domains and saw strange truths and \nstranger facts. We remember in this connection another blind old poet who even \nthough fallen on such evil days composed the world famous epic-poem (I am \nreferring obviously to Milton and his <i>Paradise Lost).</i>\nWe remember also here \nthe deaf incomparable master of music Beethoven. Many of the sayings of \nDirghatama have become so current that they\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-9</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">are now \nfamiliar even to the common man. They are mottos and proverbs we all quote at \nall times. &quot;Truth is one, the wise call it in different ways&quot;—the mantra is from \nDirghatama. &quot;Heaven is my father, Earth my mother&quot;— this is also from \nDirghatama. The famous figure of two birds with beautiful wings dwelling on the \nsame tree comes also from Dirghatama. There are a good many sayings of this kind \nthat have become intimate companions to our lips of which the source we do not \nknow. When we read the mantras of Dirghatama we are likely to exclaim even as \nthe villager did when he first saw <i>Hamlet </i>\nplayed in London, &quot;It is full of quotations.&quot;</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nYou must have already noticed that the utterance of Dirghatama carries a \npeculiar turn, even perhaps a twist. In fact his mantras are an enigma, a riddle \nto which it is sometimes difficult to find the fitting key. For example when he \nsays, &quot;What is above is moving downward and what is down is moving upward; yes, \nthey who are below are indeed up above and they who are up are here below,&quot; or \nagain, &quot;He who knows the father below by what is above, and he who knows the \nfather who is above by what is below is called the poet (the seer creator)&quot;, we \nare, to say the least, not a little puzzled.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe old delightful rishi—to use the epithets he gives to his Agni—and blind into \nthe bargain, continues, the substance and manner in the same way paradoxical and \nenigmatic, perhaps deliberately tantalising and confusing:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	&quot;Those who are called feminine are masculine, yes, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	only they who have eyes can see, the blind do not know.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-10</p>\n<hr>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	&quot;The son is the seer-poet, he knows and he </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	alone knows these things who is the father of the father.&quot;\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	(I. 164-16.)\n</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThen again look at this picture almost surrealistic in its boldness:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	&quot;The cow gazing upward holds with her front legs the hind legs of her calf \n	and the calf with its front legs holds the hind legs of its mother.&quot; \n	(I.164-17.)\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nNeedless to say these are signs and symbols and figures of a language seeking to \nexpress truths and realities of an invisible world, spiritual and occult. We are \nreminded of the &quot;twilight&quot; language of the poet-saints <i>(Siddhacharyas) </i>\nof Bengal of much later days.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThere is no end to the problems that face Dirghatama with his almost tormented \nmind. Listen once more to this riddle:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	&quot;Even he who has created this does not know it. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Even to him who has seen it, it remains veiled. One who \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	is shrouded in his mother\'s womb with his many \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	progenies has entered into untruth (I. 164-32).</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHere are some more of his aspirations, the questions that trouble him, the \nriddles whose solution he needs most. He calls upon the world and asks:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	&quot;Tell me where is the end of this earth? Tell me where </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	is the nodus of this universe? Tell me what is the\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-11</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	meaning of the energy-flow from the energetic steed? </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Tell me again what is the word that is in the highest spaces?&quot; (Rik 34.)\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nTo these abstruse questions he himself gives, I am afraid, abstruse answers:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	&quot;This sacrificial altar is the extreme end of the earth, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	this sacrifice is the nodus of the universe, and this nectar of immortality \n	(Soma)</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	is the energy-flow of the the steed and this Brahman is the Word \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	in the supreme heaven.&quot; (Rik 35.)\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAs are the questions so are the answers, equally enigmatic and obscure.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAbout the Word, the mystery which Dirghatama unveils is an extraordinary \nrevelation—so curious, so illuminating. In later times many lines of spiritual \ndiscipline have adopted his scheme and spread it far and wide. Dirghatama \nhimself was an uncommon wizard of words. The truths he saw and clothed in \nmantras have attained, as I have already said, general celebrity. He says: &quot;The \nWord is of four categories. It has four stations or levels or gradations.&quot; The \nRishi continues: &quot;Three of them are unmanifested, unbodied; only the fourth one \nis manifest and bodied, on the tongue of man.&quot; This terminology embodying a \nfundamental principle has had many commentaries and explanations. Of these the \nmost well-known is that given by the Tantras. They have named the fourfold words \nas (1) <i>par&#257;,</i> \nsupreme; (2) <i>pa&#347;yant&#299;</i>, \nthe seeing<br>\n</p><p class=\"para\">\nPage-12</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\none; (3) <i>madhyam&#257;</i>, \nthe middle one or the one within \nand (4) <i>vaikhar</i><i>&#299;</i>,\nthe articulate word. In \nmodem language we may say that the first one is the self-vibration of the \nSupreme Being or Consciousness; the second is the vibration of the higher-mind \nor the pure intelligence; the third is the vibration of the inner heart; and the\nfourth \nthe vibration of physical sound, of \nvoice. In philosophical terms of current English we may name these as \n( 1) \nrevelatory, (2) intuitive, (3) \ninspirational and (4) vocal.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nNow in conclusion I will just speak of the fundamental vision of the rishi. His \nentire realisation, the whole Veda of his life, he has, it appears, pressed into \none single &#7771;k. \nWe have heard it said that the entire range of all scriptures is epitomised in \nthe Gita and the Gita itself is epitomised in one sloka<i> \n- sarv</i><i>adharm</i><i>&#257;</i><i>n\n</i><i>parityajya</i>\n. . . Even so we may say \nthat Rishi Dirghatama has summarised his experience, at least the fundamental \nbasic one, and put it into a \nsutra. \nIt is the famous \n&#7771;k\nwith which he opens his long \nhymn to Surya:</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	&quot;Lo, this delightful ancient Priest and Summoner; he has a second </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	brother who is the devourer. There is a third brother with a \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	dazzling luminous facet—there I saw the Master of the \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	worlds along with his seven sons.&quot;\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThis is again a sphinx puzzle indeed. But what is the meaning? The universe, the \ncreation has its fundamental truth in a Trinity: Agni (the Fire-god) upon earth, \nVayu (the Wind-god) in the middle regions and in heaven the\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\nPage-13</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Sun. In \nother words, breaking up the symbolism We may say that the creation is a triple \nreality, three principles constitute its nature. Matter, Life and Consciousness \nor status, motion and Light. This triplicity however does not exhaust the whole \nof the mystery. For the ultimate mystery is imbedded within the heart of the \nthird brother, for our rishis saw there the Universal Divine Being and his seven \nsons. In our familiar language we may say it is the Supreme Being, God himself \n(Purushottama) and his seven lines of self-manifestation. We have often heard of \nthe seven worlds or levels of being and consciousness, the seven chords of the \nDivine Music. In more familiar terms we say that body and life and mind form the \nlower half of the cosmic reality and its upper half consists of Sat-Chit-Ananda \n(or Satya-Tapas-Jana)</p>\n<p class=\"para\">And the \nlink, the nodus that joins the two spheres is the fourth principle (Turya), the \nSupermind, Vijnana. Such is the vision of Rishi Dirghatama, its fundamental \ntruth in a nutshell. To know this mystery is the whole knowledge and knowing \nthis, one need know nothing else.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nA word is perhaps necessary to complete the sense of the commentary. Agni has \nbeen called old and ancient <i>(palita), </i>\nbut why? \nAgni \nis \nthe first among the gods. He has \ncome down upon earth, entered into matter with the very creation of the material \nexistence. He is the secret energy hidden in the atom which is attracting, \ninvoking all \nthe other gods to manifest themselves. It is he who drives the material \nconsciousness in its evolutionary re-course upward towards the radiant fullness \nin the solar Supra Consciousness at the ·summit. He is \n.however \nnot only</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<br>\n</p><p class=\"para\">\nPage-14</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">energy, \nhe is also delight <i>(v&#257;ma). </i>\nFor he is the Soma, the \nnectarous flow, occult \nin the Earth\'s body. For \nEarth is the storehouse of the sap of Life, the source of the delightful growths \nof Life here below.</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-15</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-002_Rishi Dirghatama','','publish','closed','open','','002_rishi-dirghatama','','','2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/002_rishi-dirghatama/',0,'post','',0),(1541,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','<!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>-001_A Vedic Story.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>A VEDIC STORY </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>(RlGVEDA - X. 51.)\n</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe gods are in a great fix. Where is Agni? How is it that the comrade has \ndisappeared all on a sudden? The Sacrifice—the great work has to be undertaken. \nAnd he is to be the leader, for he alone can take up the burden. There is no \ntime to be lost, everything is ready for the ceremony to start and just at the \nmoment the one needed most is nowhere. So the gods organise a search party to \nfind out the Whereabouts of the runaway god.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe search party consists of Varuna, Mitra and Yama. We shall presently \nunderstand the sense of the selection. They look about here and there—in ten \ndirections, it is mentioned—and at last spot the defaulting god hiding within a \nhuge thick strong cloak or caul. They hail him and ask him to come out and take \nup his charge. Agni refuses: he says he is not competent to undertake the burden; \nindeed that is why he ran away and they must not force him. The gods explain, \nentreat, encourage Agni. They say and assure him that no harm will come to him, \nrather he will flourish and prosper and become immortal. He is mighty and he \nwill become almighty as he takes up his work and proceeds with it. Agni accepts \nin the end and marches out with the gods.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWhat does this parable mean? First of all then we must know what Sacrifice—a \nVedic sacrifice—is. Sacrifice symbolises the cosmic labour, the march of the\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-1</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nuniverse towards its goal, the conquest of Light over Darkness, the ascent of \nmanhood to godhead, the flaming rise and progress of consciousness to its \nsupreme expression and embodiment. It is the release out of Inconscience and \nUnconsciousness to consciousness and finally into the superconsciousness.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSacrifice consists essentially in lighting the fire and pouring fuel—offerings—into \nit so that it may bum always and brighter and brighter. It calls the gods, also, \nit is said, ascends to them, brings them down here to live among men, in men. It \nlifts men from the ordinary life and consciousness, takes them to the abode of \nthe gods. In other words its function is to bring down and infuse into the human \nvessel the godly consciousness and delight and power. Its purpose is to divinise \nhuman life. Through the sacrifice man offers his present possessions, his body \nand life and mind to the Deity and deities and by this surrender and submission \nconstant and unfailing <i>(namas) </i>\nhe awakens the Divine in him-the \nAgni that is \nto lead him to the divine \nconsummation.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nFire then is the energy of consciousness secreted in the heart of things. It is \nthat which moves the creation upward, produces the unfolding evolution that is \nhistory, both individual and collective. It is kindled, it increases in volume \nand strength and purity and effectiveness, as&quot; and when a lower element is \noffered and submitted to a higher reality and this higher reality impinges upon \nthe lower one (which is what the rubbing of the<i> ara&#7751;i \n</i>or the pressing of the <i>soma</i> symbolises); the limitation is broken,</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-2</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nthe small enters into and becomes the vast, the crooked is straightened and \nlengthened out, what was hidden becomes manifest. This is described as the \nprogression of the sacrifice <i>(adhvara -</i>\nadvance on the path). \nThat is also the \nvictorious battle waged against \nthe \ndark forces of Ignorance. The \ngoal, the purpose is\nthe descent and \nmanifestation \nof the gods here upon \nearth in human vehicles.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nBut this Fire is not normally available. It is lost, imbedded in the thick \npetrified folds of unconsciousness and inconscience. Man\'s soul is not an \napparent reality. It has to be found out, called forth, brought to the front. \nEven so, in the normal consciousness, the soul, the divine fire is a flickering, \ntwinkling, hesitating spark; it is not sure of itself, not certain of its \ndestiny. Yet when the time is ripe and the call comes, the gods, the luminous \nforces from above descend with all their insistence and meet the hidden godhead: \nAgni is reminded of his work and destiny which nothing can frustrate or cancel. \nHe has to consent and undertake his sacrificial labour.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAgni feared and tried to escape from the burden of bis responsibility. He \nwrapped himself in a thick and vast cloak and hid in the depths of far waters. \nThat is the parable way of describing the difficulty, the apparent impossibility \nof the undertaking Agni has to shoulder. Curiously however he has taken shelter \njust in the spot which seemed safest to him, from where begins bis work, whose \nnature and substance he has to transform, that is to say, the nether regions of \ninconscience which is to be raised and transfigured into the solar region of the \nsupra-consdousness.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-3</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOne interesting point in the story is the choice of the gods who formed the \nsearch party. They were Mitra, Varuna and Yama. Varuna is the god of the vast \nconsciousness (Brihat), the wide universal, the Infinite. His eye naturally \npenetrates everywhere and nothing can escape his notice. Mitra is harmony and \nrhythm of the infinity. Every individual element he embraces and he holds them \nall together in loving union—his is the friendly tie of comradeship with all. \nFinally Yama is the master of the lower regions, the underworld of physical and \nmaterial consciousness, where precisely Agni has taken refuge. Agni is within \nthe jurisdiction of this trinity and it devolves upon them to tackle the truant \ngod.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThere is another point which requires clarification. As a reason for his \nnervousness and flight he alleges that greater people who preceded him had \nattempted the work, but evidently failed in the attempt; so how can he, a \nyounger novice, dare to go the same way? Putting the imagery back to its \npsychological bearing, one may explain that the predecessors refer to the \ndeities of the physical, vital and mental consciousness who ruled the earth \nbefore the emergence of the psychic or soul consciousness. It is precisely \nbecause of the failure or insufficiency of these anterior—in the evolutionary \nmovement—and inferior gods that Agni\'s service is being requisitioned. \nMytho-logically also a parallelism is found in the Greek legends where it is \nsaid that the Olympian gods—Zeus and his company—were a younger generation that \nreplaced, after of course a bloody warfare, their ancestors, the more ancient \nrace of Kronos, the Titans. Titans were the\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-4</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Asuras \nand Rakshasas who reigned upon earth before the advent of the \nmental—sattwic—human being, Manu, as referred here. Now, here I give you the \noriginal text in translation:\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>The Colloquy of Agni and the Gods </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>(Rigveda-X. 51.) </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>The gods </b></p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	1.Huge and firm was that covering with which you shrouded yourself and \n	entered into the waters. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	O Agni! You are conscious from your very birth. The One God saw you in all \n	your multiple universal body. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>\nAgni </b>\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	2.Who saw me? Which of the gods saw my multiple body all around? </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	O Mitra! O Varuna! Tell me, where do they dwell—all the blazing fuel that \n	move to the gods?\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>The gods\n</b>\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	3.O Agni! god self-conscient, we seek you, you who have entered variably \n	into the waters and into the growths of the earth. \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	You shine richly. Yama has seen you as you flame out of your ten seats.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-5</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>Agni </b>\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	4.O Varana! I fled because I was afraid of the work of the priest. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	The gods must not yoke me to that work. \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	That was why I embedded my body variably so that \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	I as Agni may not know of that pathway.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>The gods </b>\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	5.Come, O Agni! Man, the mental being, desires to do the sacrifice, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	he has made everything ready, and you dwell in obscurity!\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Make easy-going the path that leads to the gods, with\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	a happy mind carry the offering.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>Agni </b>\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	6.There were elders before Agni who covered the same path, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	even as charioteers do their way.\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	That is why, O Varuna! out of fear I have come away so far, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	even as an animal shrinks and shivers at a shooting arrow.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>The gods </b>\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	7.We shall make your life undecaying, O Agni! so that no harm </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	comes to you when engaged in the work. \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	So, carry to the gods their share of the offering; \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	a happy birth you have, a happy mind you must carry.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-6</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>Agni </b>\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	8.Then bring to me my share of the mighty offerings, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	those that are given before, those that are given \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	after and those that are simply given.\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	O gods! Long life to the being shining in the waters,\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	to Agni himself lying in the growths of the earth.\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n	<p class=\"paracenter\">\n	<b>The gods</b></p>\n	<br>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	9.The offerings that precede, the offerings that follow,\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	offerings pure and simple—all forceful, may you enjoy.\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	May this sacrifice be yours entirely. The four quarters\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	bow down to you, O Agni!\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-7</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-001_A Vedic Story','','publish','closed','open','','001_a-vedic-story','','','2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/001_a-vedic-story/',0,'post','',0),(1542,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','<!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>-012_Mysticism in Bengali Poetry.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>MYSTICISM IN BENGALI POETRY </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nBengali poetry was born some tune towards the end of an era of decline in the \nIndian consciousness, almost towards the close of what is called the Buddhist \nperiod, but it was born with a veritable crown on its head. For it was sheer \nmystic poetry, mystic in substance, mystic in manner and expression. The poets \nwere themselves mystics, that is to say spiritual seekers, sadhaks—they were \ncalled siddhas or siddhacharyas. They told of their spiritual, rather occult \nexperiences in an occult or oblique manner, the very manner of the ancient Vedic Rishis, in figures and symbols and similes. It was a form of beauty, not merely \nof truth— of abstract metaphysical truth—that rose all on a sudden, as it were, \nout of an enveloping darkness. It shone for a time and then faded slowly, \nperhaps spread itself out in the common consciousness of the people and \ncontinued to exist as a backwash in popular songs and fables and proverbs. But \nit was there and came up again a few centuries later and the crest is seen once \nmore in a more elevated, polished and dignified form with a content of mental \nillumination. I am referring to Chandidasa, who was also a sadhak poet and is \nusually known as the father of Bengali poetry, being the creator of modem \nBengali poetry. He flourished somewhere in the fourteenth century. That wave too \nsubsided and retired into the background, leaving an interregnum again of a \ncentury or more till it showed itself once more in another volume of mystic \npoetry in the hands of a new type of spiritual practitioners. They</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-82</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">were the Yogis and Fakirs, and although of a popular type, yet possessing \nnuggets of gold in their utterances, and they formed a large family. This almost synchronised with the establishment and consolidation of the Western Power, with \nits intellectual and rational enlightenment, in India. The cultivation and \nsuperimposition of this Western or secular light forced the native vein of \nmysticism underground; it was necessary and useful, for it added an element \nwhich was missing before; a new synthesis came up in a crest with Tagore. It was \na neo-mysticism, intellectual, philosophical, broad-based, self-conscious. Recendy however we have been going on the downward slope, and many, if not the \nmajority among us, have been pointing at mysticism and shouting: &quot;Out, damned \nspot!&quot; But perhaps we have struck the rock-bottom and are wheeling round.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nFor in the present epoch we are rising on a new crest and everywhere, in all \nliteratures, signs are not lacking of a supremely significant spiritual poetry \nbeing born among us.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIn order to give you a taste of what this poetry is and how it evolved I shall \ncite samples of the various waves at their crest as they rose from epoch to \nepoch till today.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe earliest Siddhacharya says:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">That comes not down, nor does that go up;\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">That has no second to its self, that \nhas attained \nabsolute fixity. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Kanhu says where the mind never cracks, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> where the winds are \nstilled, there dwells the mistress </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nof the house.&quot;\n</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-83</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">or again\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">This is the seed of Time out of which the Lotus has bloomed,\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">O heroic enjoyer, \neven like a bee, take in with every </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">breath of yours the honeyed fragrance.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThis is mysticism in excelsis and beautiful mysticism.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWe dive down the centuries and when we come up we find Chandidas thus greeting \nus:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nThere is a shore poised on a shore,\n</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Upon that a wave,\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Waves dwell upon waves—\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nBut a few only know. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nor again\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">It is the lover that knows the sweetness of love;\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">And who is it that pours out \nthis sweetness? </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Who is it that has abandoned all and become the Two \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">and dwells \nin the Home of Delight? </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nFrom sheer symbolism we rise into some kind of mental apprehension of the \nsymbolistic experience. That mental element further gains ground and seeks even \nan intellectual illumination in the songs of the Bauls and Fakirs that form, the \nnext stage of the evolution. Lalan the Fakir says:\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-84</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">It is within this man that the other man dwells; \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">It is Him that saints and sages \nthrough the ages </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nhad sought and pursued. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">As the moon is seen in the water \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">But flees the touch of \nyour fingers, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Even so ever he dwells\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nApart and aloof.\n</p>\n	<br>\n	<p class=\"para\">In the lotus beyond is his abode,\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">In the lotus with twin petals he is out and \nastir; </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">One sees all this easily, only when one has ascertained \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">the petals of his \nlotus. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nNow, coming at last to the modern age, in Tagore we have the full-fledged \nintellectual mysticism. Here is the modern seer and prophet:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Within the finite, O Infinite, thou playest thy notes, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">That is why so sweet is \nthy manifestation in me. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">or again\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">The incense yearns to melt into the perfume,\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">And the perfume yearns to embrace \nthe incense; </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">The sound seeks to be caught in the rhythm \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">And the rhythm hastening \nruns into the sound. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">or \nthese lines\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-85</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">I dived into the ocean of forms\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nseeking the pearl of the formless— </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Oh, I shall no more wander from port to port\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nplying my worn out bark—\n</p>\n	<br>\n	<p class=\"para\">There where rises eternally the song\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nthat ears do not hear </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Shall I go with the harp of my heart\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \ninto the royal court in fathomless depths.\n</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThat is not the end or the <i>ne plus ultra</i>\nultra-nothing \nbeyond— \nfor there is a beyond and Sri Aurobindo has shown and taught what it can be \nlike. Here is one daring poet:</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThy firm galaxies\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAre tracing their script on our forehead.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThis day, O Mother, all the terrestrial illuminations </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWeave a garland of lights that come from beyond.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nor this one, more mystically mystic:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">The Bard wheels onward in his sweeping march:\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">He gathers in perfect the soul\'s obeisances, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Urges secreted in the heart of the sun-flower, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Hymns limned in her petalled gold!\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nor these almost surrealistic lines:\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe Dark One has put on a golden garland,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAnd on her delicate forehead burns the flame of\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-86</p>\n<hr>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> red sandal—\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">She, the Eternal Memory, from the forgetfulness of\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nearth\'s depths </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Kindles the first spark of the word born of the\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nchurning—\n</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOne great characteristic of these mystics, particularly the older ones, is the \nconception of the spiritual or divine being as a human being—the soul, &quot;the man \nthere within this man here,&quot; is a human person and the human form has a \nsignificant charm which none other possesses The Spirit, the Divine individualised and concretised in an earth-made man is a blazing experience with \nthe Siddhacharyas and the experience continues down to our days. The Siddhacharyas themselves have added a peculiar, rather strange form to the \nconception. The soul, the inmost divine being is a woman whom one loves and \nseeks: she is an outcaste maid who dwells beyond the walls of the city; one, \nthat is to say, the conscient being in us, loves her all the more passionately \nbecause she is so. The city means this normally flourishing confine of outer \nconsciousness where we dwell usually; the Divine is kept outside the pale of \nthis inferior nature. To our consciousness that which is beyond it is an \nobscure, valueless, worthless, miserable non-entity; but to the consciousness of \nthe sage-poet, that is the only thing valuable and adorable. These mystics \nfurther say that the true person, the divinity that lies neglected and even \ndespised in our secular life is truly the idol of all worship and when she is \naccepted, when she puts off her beggarly<b> </b>\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-87</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">robes, the obscurities of our mind and heart and senses, then she becomes the \nmistress of the house, the queen whom none thenceforth can disobey—all the limbs \nbecome her willing servitors and adorers. The divine Law rules even the external personality.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe significance of the human personality, the role of the finite in the play of \nthe infinite and universal, the sanctity of the material form as an expression \nand objectification of the transcendent, the body as a function of Consciousness-Force-Delight are some of the very cardinal and supreme \nexperiences in Bengal mysticism from its origin down to the present day.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nA mysticism that evokes the soul\'s delights and experiences in a language that \nhas so transformed itself as to become the soul\'s native utterance is the new endeavour of the poet\'s Muse.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-88</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-012_Mysticism in Bengali Poetry','','publish','closed','open','','012_mysticism-in-bengali-poetry','','','2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/012_mysticism-in-bengali-poetry/',0,'post','',0),(1543,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','<!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>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"><b>Seer Poets</b></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"><b>Contents</b></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"><b><a href=\"seer-poets-000_Pre_Content\">Pre-Content</a></b></p>\n<br>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"50%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-001_A-Vedic-Story\">A Vedic Story</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-002_Rishi-Dirghatma\">Rishi Dirghatma</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-003_The-Shakespearean-Word\">The Shakespearean Word\n	</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-004_Two-Sonnets-of-Shakespeare\">Two Sonnets of Shakespeare</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-005_Robert-Graves\">Robert Graves</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-006_Boris-Pasternak\">Boris Pasternak</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-007_George-Seferis\">George Seferis</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-008_Jules-Supervielle\">Jules Supervielle</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-009_Two-Mystic-Poems-in-Modern-French\">Two Mystic Poems in Modern French</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-010_Two-Mystic-Poems-in-Modern-Bengali\">Two Mystic Poems in Modern Bengali</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-011_Hymn-to-Darkness\">Hymn to Darkness</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-012_Mysticism-in-Bengali-Poetry\">Mysticism in Bengali Poetry</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-013_Rabindranath-and-Sri-Aurobindo\">Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo\n	</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<b><i>Appendix</i></b></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-014_Wordsworth\">Wordsworth</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n	<td>\n	<p class=\"para\"></td>\n	<td width=\"452\">\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<a href=\"-015_Index\">Index</a></td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n<br>\n<br>\n</html>\n','seer-poets-00_Contents','','publish','closed','open','','seer-poets-00_contents','','','2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/seer-poets-00_contents/',0,'post','',0),(1544,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','<!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_Two Mystic Poems in Modern Bengali.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b> TWO MYSTIC POEMS IN MODERN BENGALI\n</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHere is the first one as I translate it:\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nBaritone<sup>1</sup>\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Let us all move together, one and all, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Together into the cavern of the ribs, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Raise there a song of discordant sounds— \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Red and blue and white, kin or alien.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<img alt=\"1-79%20-%200074-1.png\" border=\"0\" src=\"/Nolini/Seer Poets/_images/1-79%20-%200074-1.png\" width=\"473\" height=\"466\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\nPage-70</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nListen, the groan plays on: </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nDreams as if possessed </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSwing, like bats on branches; </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIs now the time for the dance? </p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nCome, let us all move together, one and all. </p>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Let the streams meet in the body, one and all, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Yes, let the bones brighten up \nstill more; </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Let us all go around the fire\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">And scrape and eat of the very Liver, the Muse\'s self-</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Let us go, let us go, one \nand all. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nDipak Majumdar\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nCan you make any sense out of it ? This seems to be surrealistic with a \nvengeance. Anyhow there is no doubt that it is a puzzle, a veritable Chinese \npuzzle. The puzzle however appeared to me interesting. I felt that the poet, \nthrough this cryptic—<i>mantric</i>\n—collocation of words and images, \nattempted to give expression to an uncommon experience. It was as though I \nentered into a Tantric experience-but of the left-handed path <i>\n(v&#257;m&#257;c&#257;</i><i>ra)</i>.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThere is a Tantric discipline which speaks of the \nbodyfulfilment\n<i>(k&#257;y&#257;</i><i>siddhi)</i>,\na spiritual consummation in \nand through the body; the body-consciousness, according to this view, is the \ngreatest reality. And whatever is achieved must have its final and definitive \nexpression and manifestation there, in that concrete reality. </p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThe body, the body-consciousness, \nour poet says here, is to be a confluence, where \nall \nthe streams of consciousness,</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-71</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">all the movements of the being, flow in: movements of life-force, \nmovements of the mind, secret urges of the subliminal physical \nconsciousness—pure and impure, things foreign to its nature, things that are its \nown, elements friendly and unfriendly, all assemble in a marketplace, as it \nwere, the result being a huge horrid discordant music, a groaning, a bellowing \nof a queer orchestra—the bass, the lowest note of the system that the human \nvehicle is.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThere is a call for all the parts of the being to precipitate to the very \nfoundation of the being, coalesce and evoke a wild and weird, doleful and \ndiscordant symphony—a painful cry. Unrealised dreams, that had faded into \noblivion, are now like possessed beings and hang like bats on darkling branches: \nthey are about to begin their phantom dance. Even so, the body, the material \nprecipitate into which they gather, gives them a basic unity. These elements \nwith their ardour and zeal kindle a common Fire. There is a divine Flame, Agni, \nburning within the flesh, burning brighter and brighter, making the bones whiter \nand whiter, as it were—the purificatory Flame, <i>p</i>&#257;<i>vaka, </i>\nof which the Vedic Rishis spoke, \nMaster of the House, <i>\ng&#7771;</i><i>hapati</i>,\ndwelling in the inner heart \nof the human being, impelling it to rise to purer and larger Truth. But here our \nmodem poet replaces the Heart by the Liver and makes of this organ the central \naltar of human aspiration and inspiration. We may remember in this connection \nthat the French poet Baudelaire gave a similar high position and —function—to \nthe other collateral organ, the spleen. The modem Bengali poet considers that \nman\'s</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-72</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">consciousness, even his poetic inspiration, is soaked in the secretion of that \nbilious organ. For man\'s destiny here upon earth is not delight but grief, not \nsweetness but gall and bitterness; there is no consolation, no satisfaction \nhere; there is only thirst, no generosity but narrowness, no consideration for \nothers, but a huge sinister egoism.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe cry of our poet is a cry literally <i>de profundis, </i>\na deep cavernous voice surging, \nspectral and yet sirenlike, out of the unfathomed underground abysses.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe cry has nothing in it, very evidently, like the thrill of a skylark\'s \nthroat.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSomething of the purer atmosphere of the heights and heavens we breathe in our \nsecond poem. We move no more here in the darker left-handed labyrinthine path, \nbut swim in a lighter clearer air through which passes the right-handed path. \nHere it is in its serene simplicity:\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>I Embark<sup>1</sup>\n</b>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">Trampling my own shadow\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">on a long, long path I came\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">And saw a river of gladness. \n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">I pushed the bank with my left foot\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">And with my \nright landed in the boat.\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<img alt=\"seer1-108as%20-%200077-1.png\" border=\"0\" src=\"/Nolini/Seer Poets/_images/seer1-108as%20-%200077-1.png\" width=\"546\" height=\"144\" align=\"left\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-73</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Here a straw canopy over the head, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">A wooden floor to sit upon, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">A sure helm and \nan oar within reach </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">And a sail to unfurl in the sky: \n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">All were there—\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">A whole lungful of breath\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Grew into a flight of white pigeons\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">That found the \nsky. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">Purnendu Prasad\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<i>Kasmai dev</i>&#257;<i>ya kavi</i>&#7779;&#257;<i> vidhema? </i>To which god then shall we \ndedicate our offering?\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<img alt=\"1-79 - 0078-1.png\" src=\"/Nolini/Seer Poets/_images/1-79 - 0078-1.png\" style=\" width:543px; height:328px;\"\n<br></p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-74</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-010_Two Mystic Poems in Modern Bengali','','publish','closed','open','','010_two-mystic-poems-in-modern-bengali','','','2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/010_two-mystic-poems-in-modern-bengali/',0,'post','',0),(1545,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','<!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_Boris Pasternak.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>BORIS PASTERNAK </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe portrait of the late poet (for he is more of a poet than a novelist, as has \nbeen pointed out) on the cover of the British edition of his novel <i>Dr. \nZhivago</i></p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nseems to be the very image of the tragic hero. Indeed he reminds one of Hamlet \nas he stood on the ramparts of the castle of Elsinor. Curiously, the very first \npoem in the collection at the end of that book is entitled &quot;Hamlet&quot; and the \nsignificant cry rings out of it:</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAbba, Father, if it be possible </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nLet this cup pass from me. </p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHere is a sensitive soul thrown into a world where one has to draw one\'s breath \nin pain. Even like the Son of Man, the exemplar and prototype, he has to share \nin the sufferings and errors of an ignorant humanity. He cannot escape and \nperhaps should not. It will not do like Hamlet again, to say\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThe time is out of joint. O cursed sprite </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThat ever I was born to set it right. </p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nNo, the son of man and every man has to bear his cross heroically and \ntriumphantly. Life is a calvary and the Kingdom of Heaven can be reached only by \ntraversing Gethsemane. There is no short cut.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-38</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHowever, let us begin from the beginning. For Pasternak has a well-pronounced \nview of things and it is characteristic of his consciousness.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe first article of his faith then—it is not merely a faith but a deep and \nconcrete perception—is that the world is one. Creation forms a global unity and \nthere is one pulsation, one throb running through all life. In this regard he is \na <i>unanimist </i>of \nthe school of Jules Romains. Life\'s single pulsation, however, he feels most in \nthe plant world; the global \nunity \nthere moves in a \nwonderfully perfect rhythm and harmony. Mankind in its natural, unsophisticated \nstate shares in that rhythm and harmony and forms part of it. That is perhaps \nthe stage of happy innocence of which many of the first great Romantics dreamed, \ne.g., Rousseau and Wordsworth. Viewed as such, placed as a natural phenomenon in \nthe midst of Nature, in its totality, mankind still appears as a harmonious \nentity fitting into a harmonious whole. But that is a global bird\'s-eye view. \nThere is a near view that isolates the human\nphenomenon; and \nthen a different picture emerges. That is the second article of Pasternak\'s \nfaith. Life is a rhythmic whole, but it is not static, it is a dynamic movement, \nit is a movement forward-toward growth and progress. It is not merely the \nmovement of recurrence; life does not consist in pulsation only, a perpetual \nrepetition. As I say, it means growing, advancing, progressing, as well. That \nis, in other words, the inevitable urge of evolution. Ay, and there\'s the rub. \nFor it is that which brings in conflict and strife: together with creation comes \ndestruction.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nNature in her sovereign scheme of harmony accepts destraction,\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-39</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">it is \ntrue, and has woven that element too in her rhythmic pattern and it seems quite \nwell and good. She is creating, destroying and re-creating eternally. She \ndenudes herself in winter, puts on a garb of bare, dismal aridity and is again \nall lush, verdant beauty in spring. Pain and suffering, cruelty and battle are \nall there. And all indeed is one harmonious whole, a symphony of celestial \nmusic.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAnd yet pain is pain and evil evil. There are tears in mortal things that touch \nus to the core. In mankind the drive for evolution brings in revolution. Not \nonly strife and suffering but uglier elements take birth; cruelty, inhumanity, \nyes, and also perversity, falsehood, all moral turpitudes, a general inner \ndeterioration and bankruptcy of values. In the human scheme of things nothing \ncan remain on a lofty status, there comes inevitably a general decline and \ndegradation. As Zhivago says &quot;A thing which has been conceived in a lofty ideal \nmanner becomes coarse and material.&quot;\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAn element of the human tragedy—the very central core perhaps—is the calvary of \nthe individual. Pasternak\'s third article of faith is human freedom, the freedom \nof the individual. Indeed if evolution is to mean progress and growth it must \nbase itself upon that one needful thing. And here is the gist of the problem \nthat faces Pasternak (as Zhivago) in his own inner consciousness and in his \nouter social life. The problem—Man versus Society, the individual and the \ncollective—the private and the public sector in modem jargon—is not of today. It \nis as old as Sophocles, as old as Valmiki. Antigone upheld the honour of the \nindividual against the law of the State and sacrificed\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-40</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">herself \nfor that ideal. Sri Rama on the contrary sacrificed his personal individual \nclaims to the demand of his people, the collective godhead.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nPasternak\'s tragedy runs on the same line. Progress and welfare of the group, of \nhumanity at large is an imperative necessity and the collective personality does \nmove in that direction. But it moves over the sufferings, over the corpses of \nindividuals composing the collectivity. The individuals, in one sense, are \nindeed the foci, the conscious centres that direct and impel the onward march, \nbut they have something in them which is over and above the dynamism of physical \nrevolution. There is an inner aspiration and preoccupation whose object is other \nthan outer or general progress and welfare. There is a more intimate quest. The \nconflict is there. The human individual, in one part of his being, is \nindependent and separate from the society in which he lives and in another he is \nin solidarity with the rest.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe freedom of the individual is a double-edged sword —it is a help to progress, \nit is also a bar. Individuals, great individuals, are the spearhead of \nprogressive movements. They initiate new and advanced beginnings. But if freedom \nmeans whims and caprices, too great a stress on personal likes and dislikes, \nthen that brings about a deviation in the straight path, or rather, obstacles in \nthe forward march. And the advancing time-spirit or world-spirit has to push \nthem and cast away. There is also the other side of the shield. Collectivity, \nlike the individual, may also be a help as well as a bar. It means the \nenlargement and diffusion of the individual\'s gain, a sharing in wide com-\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-41</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">monalty, \nan element or asset of human progress; it may also hamstring, for it is normally \nconservative and averse to movement and progress.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nZhivago at almost every step shows how the individual is thwarted in his inner \nand personal fulfilment—even in those matters that concern his higher and nobler \ninch-nations and pursuits, not merely his affairs of selfish interest. The \ndemands of the collective urge, the progress that society needs and exacts is \noften a millstone that slowly grinds the individual down to personal frustration \nand failure. That is, I suppose, the central lesson of Pasternak\'s \nautobiography.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThat is why even when Pasternak speaks of social progress, a better humanity, we \nare not sure. For what matters is the present. A brave new world in the offing, \nyes. But how to take life in the meanwhile? Evidently, it is the life of the \ncross, you have to choose that or it is imposed upon you. The Kingdom of Heaven \nis within you and in spite of what the world and life are, you can create within \nyou, possess in your inner consciousness something of the divine element, the \npeace that passeth understanding, the purity and freedom and harmony with \noneself and with the entire creation, including even one\'s neighbours.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nInner divinity does not save you from an outer calvary. But you know how to \naccept it and go through it, not only patiently but gladly, for thereby you take \nupon yourself the burden of sorrow that is humanity\'s share in the life here \nbelow. I referred at the beginning to the tragedy of a sensitive soul; I may \nturn the phrase and speak of the\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-42</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nsensitivity of a tragic soul. There are souls that are tragic in the very \ngrain—it is that which gives an unearthly beauty, nobility—indeed the martyr\'s \naureole. It is not only that our sweetest songs arise out of our saddest \nthought, but that, as our poet says,\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThe whole existence awaits its warmth </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nFrom just a little suffering.<sup>1</sup> </p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nPasternak\'s poetry is characterized by this tragic sensitivity, a nostalgia \nwoven into the fabric of the utterance, its rhythm and imagery, its thought and \nphrasing. &quot;The eternal note of sadness&quot; which Arnold heard and felt in the lines \nof Sophocles, we hear in the verses of Pasternak as well. Almost echoing the \npsalmist\'s cry of Vanity of vanities, Pasternak sings:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	But who are we, where do we come from </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	When of all those years </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	Nothing but idle is life </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	And we are nowhere in the world! </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHere in this world, upon this earth we move as in a dream—I, you, everything, \nliving or non-living, all together forming together one indivisible flow passing \neternally to eternity!\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	<sup>1</sup> Rendered from the French \n	version: </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	C\'est que toute existence attend </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Sa chaleur d\'un peu de souffrance. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-43</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nBut their hearts are beating, </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nNow he, now she Struggles to awake, </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nFalls back to sleep. </p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\nEyes closed. </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nHills. Clouds. </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nRivers. Fords. </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nYears. Centuries. </p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nA beautiful picture in the Chinese style—a few significant strokes, simple and \nclear, evoking a whole landscape, brimful of yearning and resignation and \ntearful quietness in which the whole creation is embalmed.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nPasternak\'s snowscapes are beautiful, they are particularly expressive of this \nnostalgia that pervades his whole consciousness like a perfume as it were. Here, \nfor example, is a haunting scene:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	The driven snow drew circles and arrows </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	On the window pane. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	The candle on the table burned. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	The candle burned. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOr again\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">The frosty night was like a fairy \ntale, </p>\n<p class=\"para\">Invisible beings kept stepping down\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">From the snowdrifts into the crowd.\n</p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-44</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">But the \ncardinal point is in the final settling of accounts.\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	In all the world </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	Are there so many souls? </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	So many lives? </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	So many villages and woods? </p>\n	<br>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	These three days will pass </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	But they will push me down into such emptiness </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	That in the frightening interval </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n	I shall grow up to the Resurrection... </p>\n</blockquote>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThis is one world, one and indivisible, and it moves, whole and entire, through \na kind of wintry blizzard, bearing its heavy cross, moves yet to a new life, a \nmiracle that shall happen—for such is the lesson of the life that the lord of \nlife, the Son of Man lived and showed. Even like his master and guide, Pasternak \nsays, to himself, above all\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	Surely it is my calling </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">To \n	see that the distances should not lose heart </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">And \n	that beyond the limits of the town </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">The \n	earth should not feel lonely. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nFor the miracle does happen and man is waiting for that in spite of all the \ntragic interlude:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">If \n	the leaves, branches, roots, trunk </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Had \n	been granted a manual of freedom, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">The \n	laws of nature would have intervened. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-45</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">But \n	a miracle is a miracle, a miracle is God. </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	When we are all confusion, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n	That instant it finds us out. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nYes, the captive tree rooted to the soil for eternity is as much of a miracle as \nthe free wide-winging bird in the infinitude, even as Death too is a miracle, \nthe passage to Immortality, only its mask perhaps.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-46</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-006_Boris Pasternak','','publish','closed','open','','006_boris-pasternak','','','2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/006_boris-pasternak/',0,'post','',0),(1546,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','<!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>-005_Robert Graves.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>ROBERT GRAVES </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nRobert Graves is not a major poet, and certainly not a great poet. He is a minor \npoet. But in spite of his minor rank he is a good poet: here he presents us a \njewel, a beautiful poem both in form and substance. He has indeed succeeded, as \nwe shall see, in removing the veil, the mystic golden lid, partially at least \nand revealed to our mortal vision a glimpse of light and beauty and truth, made \nthem delightfully sink into and seep through our aesthetic sense.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nLike the poet his idol also is of a lower rank or of a plebeian status. He keeps \naway from such high gods as Indra and Agni and Varuna and Mitra: great poets \nwill sing their praises. He will take care of the lesser ones, those who are \nmoving in the shadow of the great ones and are hardly noticed. Even in these \nmodem days, goddess Shitala, the healing goddess of epidemics, lives side by \nside with Durga.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nBut really it does not matter if the deity is small. For, if the worship is \nsincere and the offering pure, they ultimately reach the Divine. Did not Sri \nKrishna say in the Gita that whomsoever you may worship and in whatever way, \nthat in the end reaches him? The importance and significance of worship do not \ndepend upon their size and scale: a little water, a leaf, a flower may more than \ndo.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe small gods are small, but do not slight them— they are powerful. They are \npowerful because they are\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-31</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">deities \nof the earth. In fact, like gods and goddesses in heaven, there are gods and \ngoddesses on earth also. The gods in heaven are high and far away, but these \nunobtrusive deities are near to our hearth and home. The Greeks referred to the \nOlympian gods, of high caste and rank as it were,—like Jupiter and Apollo—and to \nthose others who dwelt on the lowly earth and embraced its water and land, its \nrivers and trees and fields—the nymph, the satyr, and Pan and dryad and naiad. \nWhat are the powers and functions of these unearthly beings? They on their part \nare guarding the gate to heaven, questioning the pilgrim of their divine \ndestination. Well, the sentinels have to be appeased first, satisfied and \nconvinced. Surely the sands bum hotter than the sun!\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWe may ask in this connection which deity does our poet invoke here, to whom \ndoes he raise his offerings, to whom—<i>kasmai dev&#257;ya? </i>\nOne need not be startled at the answer: it is \nthe toadstool. But the mushroom growth assumes a respectable figure in the guise \nof its Sanskrit name,<i> </i><i>\nchatraka</i>. Kalidasa did one better. \nHis magic touch gave the insignificant flora a luminous robe- <i>\n&#347;il&#299;</i><i>ndhra</i>, a charming name. \nThe great poet tells us that the earth is not barren or sterile -<i> kartum yat\n</i><i>ca</i> <i>mah</i><i>&#299;mucchil&#299;ndhr&#257;mabandhy&#257;</i><i>m</i>. \nThe next pertinent question is: why does the poet worship a toadstool ? What is \nhis purpose? Does a toadstool possess any special power? This leads us to a</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nhidden world, to the \'mysteries\' spoken of by the poet himself.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIn ancient days and in some spiritual practice and discipline this fungus had a \nspecial use for a definite purpose.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-32</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Its use \nproduces on one a drowsy effect, perhaps a strong and poisonous intoxicating \neffect. What is the final result of this drugging? We know that in our country \namong the sadhus and some sects practising occult science, taking of certain \nherbal drugs is recommended, even obligatory. Today Aldous Huxley has taken up \nthe cue, in the most modem fashion indeed, and prescribed mescalin in the \nprocess of Yoga and spiritual practice. Did the Vedic Rishis see in the same way \na usefulness of Soma, the proverbial creeper secreting the immortal drink of \ndelight? However, the Tantrik sadhaks hold that particular soporofics possess \nthe virtue of quieting the external senses and dulling and deadening the sense \norgans, and thereby freeing the inner and subtler consciousness in its play and \nmanifestation.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOur poet too is saying something in the same line. He is appealing to the \ntoadstool god to give him the right vision, to take him to the other shore, to \nlead him to the presence of the gods in heaven. Because he is the divine food, \nits self, the ambrosia. Not only that: by taking this ambrosia one enjoys, even \nwhile in the physical body, existence in heaven, <i>ihaiva tairjitam, </i>\nas the Upanishad said.</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThat he may pass me through when my star falls\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWho have ambrosia eaten, and yet live.\n</p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nLife extinguishes when the star falls, yet the truer and another life awaits to \nbe lived.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHow does Graves invoke his god? Let us have a complete view of his <i>mantra.</i>\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-33</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHe begins by speaking of the birth of the gods. Well, a small truth needs to be \nrevealed at this point. We have spoken of the lesser and smaller gods. These \nsmall gods are shielded and supported, in fact, by the big gods. This Shilindhra \nor toadstool has behind him Dionysus, the delight and loveliness and enjoyment \nand youth—a veritable symbol of ecstasy, of earthly ecstasy. That which is \nnectar in heaven is presented on earth in drugs and herbal juices. Shilindhra \nand ambrosia pertain to the same class.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe birth of Shilindhra resembles the birth of Dionysus. When King Zeus took the \nform of thunder and lightning and entered the womb of Semele, Dionysus was bom. \nSimilar is the story of the appearance of the toadstool, in the midst of rain \nand thunder and lightning and on the lap of mother earth. We have already said \nthat there are two categories of gods or two types of them—one belongs to heaven \nand the other to earth. The Vedic Rishis announced that heaven was our father \nand earth the mother— <i>daurme pit&#257; m&#257;t&#257; p&#7771;thvimah&#299;yam. </i>\nThe Vedantins usuallyand mainly \nworship the father, and Tantriks, the mother. Svarga, Dyaus, is the world of \nlight, and earth or \nbhu\nis that of delight and enjoyment. We have already said that high above, up there, \ndwell Apollo and Zeus and Juno, and below here on earth, Dionysus and Bacchus \nand Semele and Aphrodite.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHowever the poet says that as the toadstool is born in the midst of thunder and \nlightning, his strength and capacity are of the nature of thunder—enduring and \nhard and powerful. Bom thus it spreads everywhere and lasts\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-34</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">through \nall time. From the beginning of creation this god has sprouted up everywhere, as \ngiver of pleasure and ecstasy and intoxication. To worship him is to worship \nearth, to worship Dionysus himself. But one needs to worship this god in the \nright way, to give oneself away wholly to him. Once upon a time the demons for \nsome selfish interest wanted to capture and imprison him. The result was \ndisastrous—he thought of depriving them of their power of movement and drowning \nthem into the ocean. On the contrary, to the devoted which world does he reveal, \nwhich delight bring? Let us listen to the poet:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nLead us with your song, Queen of the Earth! </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTwinned to the god, I follow comradely </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThrough his first rainbow-limbo, webbed in white, </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThrough chill Tyrrhenian grottoes, under water, </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWhere dolphins weave among marble rocks. </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThrough sword-bright jungles, tangles of conjecture,</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThrough halls of fear ceilinged with incubi, </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThrough blazing treasure-chambers walled with gems, </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTheir domes pillared with naked Caryatides;</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThen mount at last on wings into pure air, </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPeering down with regal eye upon </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nFive-fruited orchards of Elysium. </p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nLet us not be too curious to know the name of the five fruits whose taste brings \nan immortal delight, but do we not relish already a foretaste of its sweetness \nin these lines:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAnd still she drowsily sings: </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTender her voice, the notes come linked together </p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-35</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIn intricate golden chains paid out </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nSlowly across brocaded cramoisy, </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nOr unfold like leaves from the jade-green shoot </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nOf a rising tree whose blossoms are her tears... </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nO, whenever she pauses, my heart quails </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nUntil the sound renews. </p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHere in this connection one is naturally reminded of Sri Aurobindo\'s <i>The \nOther Earths. </i>The poem \nreveals other earths like this earth of ours as reflections or projections or \nprototypes: like the concretely visible earth here, they too are equally \nbeautiful, with million colours and shades. We are bl,ind and cannot see them. \nBut when we learn to see with the eye of our eye there appear clear before us</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nCalm faces of the Gods on background vast </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nBringing the marvel of the infinitudes, </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nThrough glimmering veils of wonder and delight </p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWorld after world bursts on the awakened sight. </p>\n	</blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOf course, in Sri Aurobindo we reach the inner and higher world through a \nluminous path, through worlds of light, ranging one upon another. It is a \njourney through pure air and clear light. Conversely the poet of the toadstool \nleads one by the passage of an acid drunkenness and a half conscious drowse. If \nthe goal here is a delight and a freedom they are arrived at after traversing a \npurgatory or undergoing a troubled purification. But this too leads verily to a \nworld of the gods.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-36</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThis &quot;little slender lad, whose flesh is bitter, lightning engendered, bom from \ndungs of mares&quot; is perhaps a symbol of our human receptacle. We have to carry \nthis mortal frame with its clay feet and make the effort towards \nself-transcendence: the alchemy\'s other name is self-purification and \nself-perfection. This tender shoot is a mysterious chemical storehouse, its \nfermentation and purification and use awaken in us the sleeping divine will, \ngive a clear vision, guide us through the secret worlds and ultimately to the \nhome of Immortality. The Vedic Rishis sang to the Soma creeper or god Soma, <i>\nTatra m&#257;m am&#7771;tam k&#7771;dhi, </i>O \nSomadeva, carry us where thou flowest down and there make us immortal. For there \nabound all delight, all ecstasy, all enjoyment, all lure and the supreme Desire \nof desire – \n<i>&#257;nanda, \nmoda, mud, pramud, \nk&#257;</i><i>ma</i><sup>1</sup>–\nare these not the five \nfruits of heaven the poet of the West mentions?</p>\n<br>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n <i><sup>1</sup> Yatr&#257;nand&#257;&#347;ca \nmod&#257;&#347;ca muda&#7717;\npramuda &#257;sate k&#257;masya yatr&#257;pt&#257;&#7717;\nk&#257;m&#257;&#7717;\n(Rigveda: IX. 113)</i></p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-37</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-005_Robert Graves','','publish','closed','open','','005_robert-graves','','','2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/005_robert-graves/',0,'post','',0),(1547,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','<!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_Pre_Content.htm</title>\n</head>\n<table width=\"100%\"><tr><td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<img alt=\"1-79 - 0001-1.jpg\" src=\"/Nolini/Seer Poets/_images/1-79 - 0001-1.jpg\" style=\" width:270.96pt; height:428.16pt;\"\n<br></p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">SEER POETS\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"><b>NOLINI KANTA GUPTA </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"><b>\nSRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"><b>PONDICHERRY </b>\n<br>\n</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">First Published : 1970\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">June 1970\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">&copy;   Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1970 \n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\nPRINTED IN INDIA\n</p></p>\n</td></tr></table>\n','seer-poets-000_Pre_Content','','publish','closed','open','','seer-poets-000_pre_content','','','2021-11-23 17:21:42','2021-11-23 17:21:42','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/seer-poets-000_pre_content/',0,'post','',0),(1548,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:43','2021-11-23 17:21:43','<!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_Two Mystic Poems in Modern French.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"> \n<b>TWO MYSTIC POEMS IN MODERN FRENCH </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHere is the first poem, I give only the text, followed by an explanatory \nparaphrase.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"><b> \n(I) </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b> \nChanson Des Étages </b>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Il fait jour chez la reine. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">C\'est la nuit près du roi. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Déjà chante la reine. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">A peine dort le roi.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Les ombres qui l\'enchaînent, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Une à une, il les voit. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Le regard de la reine\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Ne \ns\'y attache pas.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Le destin qui les mène, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Dont frissonne le roi, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Ne trouble point la reine. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Brillent la mer au bas, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Et, rythme de ses veines, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Celle qui la brûla, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Sæur de la \nvague même.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Ô minutes sereines, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Vous n\'êtes plus au roi!\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-62</p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"para\">Le souvenir d\'un chêne\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Sur son front de souci \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Pose une tache claire. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">C\'est dans \nune autre vie, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Quand s\'éveillait la reine\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Contre le cæur du roi.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Ah! ferme ton palais\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Ou monte en ses étages, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Timide souverain. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Tu comprendras \npourquoi\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nSur un rocher sauvage\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Le reine appuie son sein.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Tu comprendras pourquoi, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Et t\'en consoleras.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nRENÉ CHAR\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<i>(from POETRY, Volume 104, No. 5, August 1964)</i>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>Explanatory Paraphrase </b>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe queen upstairs is the higher consciousness. The king downstairs is the \negoistic being in the lower consciousness. While it is dawn and daylight with \nthe queen, it is night with the king—he is just entering into sleep. The king \nsees dark shadows closing him in, binding him down —bonds of ignorance \nimprisoning him in the ordinary life and consciousness. The queen, the higher \npower, is free of all that.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-63</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nBoth are being led towards a high divine destiny. But the ego-being is \nfrightened, while the higher consciousness has no worry. And yet the lower \nconsciousness is aflame; for its veins are flowing with a secret fire which its \nown sister has kindled in it. Ignorance harbours within its bosom a secret \nknowledge that is a reflection of the higher consciousness.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThere are tranquil moments in the lower eternity that come from on high, from \nthe queen. They do not belong to the king. At such moments a memory comes of a \ndivine tree, the tree of immortal life, and imprints a white seal upon the \nking\'s tormented brow. The king feels it is another life, feels the queen awake \nby his side.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nTo have the queen always by his side the king must close the doors and windows \nof the lower storey of his palace and climb the stairs upward.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe king must shed all fear. There will be no palace to live in but a bare rock \nupon which he will find the queen lying down.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe king will understand that the higher consciousness must come down and touch \nand kiss the bleak earth-consciousness. The spirit must embrace the cold bare \nearth. Then only the human soul, the king free of his ego, will attain peace and \nfelicity.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHere is the second poem. I follow the same principle— I do not give a \ntranslation but, as I said, an explanatory paraphrase, and I conclude by a short \ncomment.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-64</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>(2) </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>POÈMES</b></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b><i>(Extraits)</i>\n</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\">Tes soleils sont de houx, de gui. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Jamais perdu, jamais saisi\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Qui est en moi, qui \nn\'y est plus! \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">L\'eau va et vient sous les talus.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Je ne vois pas ce que je vois\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">—Ta nuit de tilleul et de noix. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Je vois ce que je \nne vois pas \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">—Tes mains sont dans les résédas!\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Oreille ouverte, oreille close</p>\n<p class=\"para\">J\'entends les lacs aux lauriers-roses: \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Ton nom de \nsilence et de sel.\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mais je n\'entends pas les pétrels!\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n(2)\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Mes lièvres, dans l\'herbe obscure, quelqu\'un les traque. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Un chien frais, un \népervier pur sur ma proie.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">C\'est cache sans abri que ces fourrés, ces cistes. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Des menhirs de verre emmurent \nmes îles.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-65</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Ô lumière aiguë! Je m\'enracile— m\'exile. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Le seul feu que je fuis m\'a déjà \nconsumé.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Mon sang est pris. Mon sang ne se soumet\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Aux signes sur la proie, mais n\'est vivant que mort.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Ne plus tenter de voir, d\'entendre, d\'ouvrir l\'or: \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">La ténèbre d\'enfance est \nmangée de merveilles!\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \n(3)\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Ce sang perdu comme un pas \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">N\'a densité que d\'en bas.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">— Des basses eaux, de la cendre\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Où l\'arme aussi doit descendre.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Les statues marchent, s\'attardent\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Dans une mort tiède et fade.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">J\'ai mon amour ennemi. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Ses sables m\'ont endormi.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Qui charmera d\'un chevreuil\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Les longues salles de deuil?\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Ma bouche bourbeuse, vide \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Crie par morsure d\'acide\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-66</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Sur le silence aggravé. \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Un feu survient du névé.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"pararight\"> \nJean-Claude Renard\n</p>\n<p class=\"pararight\">\n<i>(From POETRY, Volume 104, No. 5, August 1964)</i>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"><b> \nExplanatory Paraphrase </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAll the suns of the higher consciousness are hidden here in the heart of leaves \nand flowers—the tiniest beauties, the floating fragrances of nature. <i>That </i>\nI never lose, yet \nnever catch, it remains within my heart and yet it is not there. The stream \nflows and passes through, under the embankment.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIt is the hidden Reality that plays hide and seek with us.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nI do not see with the outer eye what I see with the inner eye. For the outer eye \nmoves in a darkness made by the wooded growths of the earth. I see with the \ninner eye what I do not see with the outer eye. The luminous hand of the higher \nconsciousness moves about in the midst of the thorns of life.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nWith the inner ear open, with the outer ear closed I hear the tranquil waters, \nbordered with laurels and roses, move somewhere within. That is a sea of silence \nand of salt, but the cry of the wild storm-bird is not there.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIn the dark woodlands of our nature animals rush about. Someone is chasing them. \nA hound of heaven, a falcon of the sky is after its prey. There are hidden \nbushes, grottoes,\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-67</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">secret holes and comers that shelter my favourite animals. But to the secret \nluminous eye the solid walls of the shelter are transparent, are seen through.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nI follow the Light that pierces me. I uproot myself from my home. I seek to fly \nfrom that Fire but I am already burnt up.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nMy blood is now captured. It is the willing prey, the victim of its hunter. It \nis living only because it is dead. There is now no endeavour to seek and to hear, \nto run after the golden treasure, for now it is a child\'s consciousness made of \na darkness, a forgetfulness crowded with marvels.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe earthly blood that loses its way is heavy because it treads here below. Here \nthere are stagnant waters, dead ashes. The arm from on high must extend here \ntoo. Here all forms are walking statues. They delay and delay in a death that is \nyet warm—only lukewarm—but lifeless. The earthly love I bear is my enemy. Its \nfire ends in dust and I go to sleep into the unconsciousness. My home here is a \nmourning hall; how can it be changed into a hall of beauty and living and moving \nshapes? Yes, my mouth is empty and full of dust, yes, it cries bitten by a \ncorrosive acid thrown upon an increasing silence. It is a fire that comes from \nthe chill snowy heights.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>A Note </b>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe relation between the Higher and the Lower, between the other world and this, \nthe interaction between the two is all that mysticism means. The relation is \nspoken\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-68</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">of sometimes as that of enmity and sometimes as that of friendliness. Ordinarily \nthe two are incompatibles, enemies, as is quite natural. At times however, when \nthe individual is ripe for the turnover, the two collaborate. The lower \nconsciousness aspires for the higher and the higher comes down and enters into \nthe lower to purify and change it.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nVarious figures and images depict the nature and relation of the two. The lower \nis darkness and the night, the higher is light and the day. Sometimes it is the \nopposite: the lower is the day (ordinary common light), the higher is dark night \n(because unknown and unfamiliar or because of the very dazzle of its light). The \nlower is imaged at times as a woodland, a shelter for wild growths and roving \nanimals. The higher is the hunter, with his hounds chasing the creatures of the \nlower domain. Also the higher is the serene infinite sky, the lower the raging \nsea below. Otherwise, again, the higher is the vast sea, tranquil or quietly \nrippling above and the lower is the solid material universe. The higher is the \ndelightful sun, the lower is the muddy slimy earth of the bed of stones and \nrocks. The consummation, the <i>dénouement </i>\nis the interlocking between the \ntwo and a final coalescence in which the higher penetrates into the lower and \nthe lower is sublimated into the higher and the two \nform \none integral undivided reality.</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-69</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-009_Two Mystic Poems in Modern French','','publish','closed','open','','009_two-mystic-poems-in-modern-french','','','2021-11-23 17:21:43','2021-11-23 17:21:43','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/009_two-mystic-poems-in-modern-french/',0,'post','',0),(1549,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:43','2021-11-23 17:21:43','<!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_Wordsworth.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>APPENDIX </b>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<br>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>WORDSWORTH</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"paracenter\"></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nI did not come to appreciate the poetry of Wordsworth in my school days, it \nhappened in college, and to a large extent thanks to Professor Manmohan Ghose. \nIn our school days, the mind and heart of Bengali students were saturated with \nthe poetry of Tagore:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">In the bower of my youth the love-bird sings,\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Wake up, O darling, wake; \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Opening \nthy lids lazy with love, </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Wake up, O darling, wake...\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThis poetry belongs to the type once characterised as follows by our humorous \nnovelist Prabhat Mukherji through one of his characters, a <i>s&#257;dhu,</i> \ndescribing the charms of the Divine Name:<i> </i>\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">It has the sweetness and the sugar\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">of\n	<i>sandesh </i>and <i>rasogulla.</i></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIt is needless to say that to young hearts enraptured by such language and \nfeeling, Wordsworth\'s\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray!\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">And when I crossed the wild, \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">I chanced to see at \nbreak of day </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">The solitary child...\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-95</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">would appear rather dull and dreary, tasteless almost.\n</p>\n<br>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nLet me in this connection tell you a story. We were then in college. The \nSwadeshi movement was in full flood, carrying everything before it. We the young \ngeneration of students had been swept off our feet. One day, an elder among us \nwhom I used to consider personally as my friend, philosopher and guide, happened \nto pass a remark which rather made me lose my bearings a little. He was listing \nthe misdeeds of the British in India. &quot;This nation of shopkeepers!&quot; he was \nsaying, &quot;There is no end to their trickeries to cheat us. Take, for instance, \nthis question of education. The system they have set up with the high-sounding \ntitle of &quot;University&quot; and &quot;the advancement of learning&quot; is nothing more than a \nmachine for creating a band of inexpensive clerks and slaves to serve them. They \nhave been throwing dust into our eyes by easily passing off useless Brummagem \nware with the label of the real thing. One such eminently useless stuff is their \npoet Wordsworth, whom they have tried to foist on our young boys to their \nimmense detriment.&quot; This remark was no doubt a testimony to his inordinate love \nof country. But it remains to be seen how far it would bear scrutiny, as being \nbased on truth.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nFor us in India, especially to Bengalis, the first and foremost obstacle to \naccepting Wordsworth as a poet would be his simple, artless and homely manner:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Behold her single in the field\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Yon solitary Highland lass.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-96</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">And, as a classic instance of that famous homely diction, the line that follows:\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nCan anyone tell me what she sings?\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Who would be moved by lines such as these?\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOn the gates of entry to the poetic world of Wordsworth is engraved this motto:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nThe Gods approve </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">The depth and not the tumult of the soul.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIt is as if the hermitage of old, an abode of peace and quiet, <i>\n&#347;&#257;nta-ras&#257;spadam-&#257;&#347;ramam-idam. \n</i>All here is calm and unhurried, simple and natural and transparent, there is \nno muddy current of tempestuous upheavals. That is why the poet feels in his \nheart as if he were</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nquiet as a nun </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Breathless in adoration,\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">or else\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">The winds come to me from the fields of sleep.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHere is an easy, natural, limpid flow, undisturbed in its movement and yet with \na pleasant charm and filled with an underlying sweetness. But perhaps one has to \nlisten intently to get at the sweetness and beauty of such lines. They do not \nstrike the outer ear for they set up no eddies there; the inner hearing is their \nbase.\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-97</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">She was a Phantom of Delight\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">When first she gleamed upon my sight:\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nIs this not a silent opening of the divine gates of vision?\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Ethereal minstrel, pilgrim of the sky.\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nDo not these words bear us far away on some unknown wings?\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nTranquillity and a pleasant sweetness are then the first doors of entry. Through \nthe second doors we come to a wide intimacy, an all-pervading unity, where man \nand nature have fused into one. This unity and universality breathe through and \ninspire such simple yet startling words:\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nI wandered lonely as a cloud\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThat floats on high o\'er vales and hills,\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Or,\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">And beauty born of murmuring sound \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Shall pass into her face;\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOr else, this easy and natural yet deep-serious utterance carrying the burden of \na <i>mantra:</i>\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOnce we cross beyond these second gates we reach an inner region, a secluded \napartment of the soul where\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-98</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">poetry assumes the garb of magic, a transcendent skill leads to words the \nsupernatural beauty and grace of a magician\'s art. How often we have read these \nlines and heard them repeated and yet they have not grown stale:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">A voice so thrilling never was heard...\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Breaking the silence of the seas \n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Among \nthe farthest Hebrides </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">Or,\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd \nhorn. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThis magic has no parallel, except perhaps in Shakespeare\'s\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \nDaffodils,\n</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">That come before the swallow dares, and take\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">The winds of March with beauty; \nviolets, dim </p>\n	<p class=\"para\">(The Winter\'s Tale, Act IV, Scene 4)\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSri Aurobindo has referred to another point of greatness in Wordsworth, where \nthe poetic mind has soared still higher, opening itself not merely to an \nintimacy but to the voice of a highest infinity:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">The marble index of a mind for ever</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, \nalone </p>\n	<p class=\"para\"> \n(Prelude, III. II, 62-63)\n</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPage-99</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Thus, with this poet we gain admittance to the very heart, the innermost \nsanctuary of poetry where we fully realise what our old Indian critics had laid \ndown as their final verdict, namely, that the poetic delight is akin to the \nDelight of Brahman.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nBut even the moon has its spots, and in Wordsworth the spots are of a fairly \nconsiderable magnitude. Manmohan Ghose too had mentioned to us these defects. \nMuch of Wordsworth is didactic and rhetoric, that is, of the nature of \npreaching, hence prosaic and non-poetical although couched in verse. Ghose used \nto say that even the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality which is so \nuniversally admired is mainly didactic and is by and large rhetoric, with very \nlittle real poetry in it. I must confess however that to me personally, some of \nits passages have a particular charm, like\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Our birth is but a sleep and forgetting:\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nThe Soul that rises with us, our life\'s Star,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nHath had elsewhere its setting,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAnd cometh from afar...\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nBut trailing clouds of glory do we come...\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAtul Gupta had seen perhaps only the adverse side of Wordsworth. He had marked \nthe heavy hand of the logician, <i>sth&#363;la-hast&#257;valepa, </i>\nbut omitted to see the delicate workmanship of the artist. But a man\'s true \nquality has to be judged by his best performance, and the best work of \nWordsworth is indeed of a very high order.</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nMatthew Arnold brings out very well the nature of\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-100</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">Wordsworth\'s best work. Wordsworth at his peak, he says, seems to have surpassed \neven Shakespeare. He is then no longer in his own self. Mother Nature herself \nhas taken her seat there and she goes on writing herself through the hands of \nthe poet.\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Breaking the silence of the seas\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Among the farthest Hebrides,\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">or else,\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nOr hear old Triton blow his wrèathed horn\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">are indeed the highest peaks of English poetry.\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSri Aurobindo has said that Vyasa is the most masculine of poets. Echoing his \nwords we may say that Wordsworth is the most masculine of English poets. This \nclassification of poets into &quot;masculine&quot; and &quot;feminine&quot; was made by the poet \nColeridge. &quot;Masculine&quot; means in the first place, shorn of ornament, whereas the \n&quot;feminine&quot; loves ornament. Secondly, the masculine has intellectuality and the \nfeminine emotionalism. Then again, femininity is sweetness and charm, \nmasculinity implies hard restraint; the feminine has movement, like the flow of \na stream, the play of melody, while the masculine has immobility, like the \nstillness of sculpture, the stability of a rock. This is the difference between \nthe Mahabharata and the Ramayana, between the styles of Vyasa and Valmiki. This \ntoo is the difference between Wordsworth and Shelley. The Ramayana has always \nbeen recognised\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-101</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">for its poetic beauty; Valmiki is our first great poet,<i> \n&#257;di-kavi. </i>In \nthe Mahabharata we appreciate not so much the beauty of poetic \nform \nas a treasury of \nknowledge, \non polity and ethics, culture and spirituality. We consider the Gita primarily \nas a work of philosophy, not of poetry. In the same way, Wordsworth has not been \nable to capture the mind and heart of India or Bengal as Shelley has done. In \norder truly to appreciate Wordsworth\'s poetry, one must be something of a \nmeditative ascetic, \n<i>dhy</i><i>&#257;n&#299;, \ntapasv&#299;</i>,\nindeed,</p>\n<blockquote>\n	<p class=\"para\">Quiet as a nun\n	</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">Breathless in adoration...\n	</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<i>(Translated by Sanat K. Banerji from the original Bengali)</i>\n</p>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-102</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-014_Wordsworth','','publish','closed','open','','014_wordsworth','','','2021-11-23 17:21:43','2021-11-23 17:21:43','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/014_wordsworth/',0,'post','',0),(1550,1,'2021-11-23 17:21:43','2021-11-23 17:21:43','<!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_Index.htm</title>\n</head>\n<div align=\"center\">\n	<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n	<td>\n<p class=\"paracenter\">\n<b>INDEX</b></p>\n	<br>\n	<div align=\"center\">\n<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"50%\">\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"50%\">\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b>A </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAgni 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 13, 31, 72</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAldous Huxley 33\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAntigone 40\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAphrodite 34\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nApollo 34\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAristotelian 49\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nArnold 43\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nArya 90, 92\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAshram 92\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nAsuras 5\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAthens 47\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAtri 8\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nAtul Gupta 102 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Auchathya 8 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Avatara 27\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b> B</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nBacchus 34 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Balaka 92 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bamardo 23, 24 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Baudelaire 72 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bauls 84 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Beethoven 9 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bengal \n91, 104 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bengalis 98 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bengal mysticism 88 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bengali Poetry 82 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Bhakta 78\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nBoris Pasternak 38, 39, 40, 41,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n43, 44, 45\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Brahman 12 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Brihat 4 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">British 98 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Brummagem 98 \n</p>\n<br>\n</td>\n<td></td>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"50%\">\n<p class=\"para\">Buddhist Period 82\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b>C</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nCaryatides 35 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nChandidasa 82, 84\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nChinese Puzzle 71\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nColeridge 103\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nCyclopian 48\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"><b> D\n</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nDane 23\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nDante 17, 27, 79\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nDenmark 25\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nDionysus 34, 35\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nDirghatama 8, 10, 11, 13, 14\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nDiscabolo 18\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nDouve 77\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nDr. Zhivago 38, 40, 42 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Dryad 32 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Duncan 19 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Durga 31 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Dyaus 34</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"><b> E\n</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nEliot, T.S. 47, 52, 53, 61\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Elsinor 38 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Elysium 35 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Europe 56\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"><b> F\n</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nFakirs 83, 84 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">France 48 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Francisco 23\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"><b> G</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nGenoese 50\n</p></td>\n	</tr>\n</table>\n	</div>\n<br>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-103</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n	<br>\n	<br>\n	<div align=\"center\">\n<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"50%\">\n	<tr>\n<td width=\"50%\">\n<p class=\"para\"> George Seferis 47, 48, 49, 52, \n54</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> Gethsemane 38 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Gita 3, 13, 104 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Gloucester 20, 21<i> </i>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nGraves, Robert 31, 33, 77</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nGreece 48, 50, 52</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nGreek 32, 47, 53</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nGreek legend 4</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b>H </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nHades 56, 77 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Hamlet 10, 23, 38 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Hebrides 103 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Hecate 77 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Homer 27 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Horatio 23\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b>I </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nInd 92\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nIndia 76, 78, 89, 91, 98, 104 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Indra 31 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Ionian 52\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"><b> J\n</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nJapan 92 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Jeanne d\'Arc 48</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Jules Romains 39 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Jules Supervielle 55 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Juno 34 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Jupiter 32 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Jouve 76, 77\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"><b> K\n</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nKali 78\n</p></td>\n<td></td>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"50%\">\n<p class=\"para\">Kalidasa 17, 18, 27, 32 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Kanhu 83 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Kanwa 8 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">King Lear 20</p>\n<p class=\"para\">King Zeus 34 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Krishna \n31, 78 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Kronos 4 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Kumbhodara 17 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Kutsa 8\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b>L </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nLalan the Fakir 84 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Laocoon 18 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">London 10 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Lombards 50\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"><b> M</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nMacbeth 19 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Madhuchchanda 8 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Madhyama 13 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mahabharata 103, 104 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mamata 9\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nManmohan Ghose, Prof. 92,102 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mantra 25 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Manu 5 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Marcellus 23, 24 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Matthew Arnold \n102 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Medhatithi Kanwa 8</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Michael Angelo 19 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Milton 9, 16 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Mitra \n1, 4, 5, 31</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nMontevideo 55</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nModern Review, the 93</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nMount Kailas 17</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nMuse 61, 88\n</p></td>\n	</tr>\n</table>\n	</div>\n<br>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-104</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<br>\n	<div align=\"center\">\n<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"50%\">\n	<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"50%\">\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b>N </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Naiad 32 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Neapolitans 50 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Nikumbha 17 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Nobel Prize 47 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Norway 25\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b>O </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Olympian 4, 32</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Ormuz 16\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b>P</b></p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nPan 32\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nParadise Lost 9</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Parasara 8 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Polacks 25 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Pondicherry 92\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Prabhat Mukberji 97 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Proteus 17\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Purushottama 14\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b>Q</b></p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nQueen Eleanor 49\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b>R</b></p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nRakshasas 5 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Ramayana 103\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Ramprasad 78 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Rex Warner 47\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Rishi 12\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Rishi, Vedic 8, 16, 33, 34, 37,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n72, 79, 82, 93 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Rishi Kushika 50 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Romeo 25\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Rousseau 39\n</p></td>\n<td></td>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"50%\">\n<p class=\"para\"><b>S</b></p>\n<p class=\"para\"> \nSacrifice, Vedic I\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Sadhu 97 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Sanskrit 32 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Sat-chit-Ananda\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">— (Satya-Tapas-Jnana) 14 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Satan 16\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Semele 34\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nShakespeare 16, 18, 19, 25, 26,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> 27, 101, 103 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Shakuntala 8 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Shelley 104\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Shitala 31 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Shyama 80 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Shyama 80 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Siddhas \n82\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nSiddhacharyas 11, 82, 83, 87\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nSoma 2, 12\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nSomadevata 37\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nSophocles 40, 43\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nSouth America 55\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nSpain 61\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Sri Aurobindo 8, 27, 30, 36,\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\n86, 89, 90, 91, 92. 93. I03 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Sri Rama 41 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Sutra 13\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Svarga 34 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Swadeshi 89 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Swadeshi Movement 98\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b>T</b></p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTagore83, 85, 89, 91, 92, 97\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTantras12\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTantricdiscipline 71\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTannicexperience 71\n</p>\n</td>\n	</tr>\n</table>\n	</div>\n	<br>\n<br><p class=\"para\">\nPage-105</p>\n<hr>\n<br>\n<br>\n	<div align=\"center\">\n<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"50%\">\n	<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"50%\">\n<p class=\"para\">Tantric Sadhakas 33, 34\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTapas 27, 77\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTitans 4\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTrinity 13\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTriton 14, 17, 103\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTurya 14\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nTyrrhenian 35\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b>U </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nUchathya 9\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nUma 18\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nUpanishad 37\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nUpanishadic Assurance 53\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nUpanishadic Rishis 8\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b>V </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nVaishnava Poet 78 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Vaishnava Poetry 91 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Valmiki 13, 40, 103, 104 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Varna 15\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nVaruna 1, 4, 5, 6, 31</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nVashishtha 8</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nVayu 13</p></td>\n<td></td>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"50%\">\n<p class=\"para\">\nVeda 8, 13</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Vedantins 34, 56 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Vedantic mysticism 56</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Vibhutis 93 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Vijnana 14 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Vishwamitra 8 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Vyasa 103\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\">\n<b>W </b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nWestern Powers 83 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">White Goddess 77 \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">Wordsworth 16, 39, 97, 98, 99, \n</p>\n<p class=\"para\"> 101, 102, \n103\n</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"><b> Y\n</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nYama I\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nYoga 33</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nYogis 83</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nYuga-sandhi 91</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nYves Bonnefoy 76</p>\n<br>\n<p class=\"para\"><b> Z\n</b>\n</p>\n<p class=\"para\">\nZeus 4, <i>32</i>\n</p>\n</td>\n	</tr>\n</table>\n	</div>\n	<p class=\"para\">\n</p>\n	<p class=\"para\">\nPage-106</p>\n	</td>\n</tr>\n	</table>\n</div>\n</html>\n','-015_Index','','publish','closed','open','','015_index','','','2021-11-23 17:21:43','2021-11-23 17:21:43','',0,'http://collectedworksofnolinikantagupta.com/index.php/2021/11/23/015_index/',0,'post','',0);
