india and her future

FU U E

Complied from the writings ofSRI AUROBINDO and THE MOTHER:with sketches of their life and work

AU OBINDO SOCIETYPO otcH R Y-2

I N D I AAND HER FUTURE

Compiled from the writings ofSRI AUROBINDO and THE MOTHER:with sketches of their life and work

SRI AUROBINDO SOCIETYPONDICHERRY - 2

Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1971

August 15, 1971

Published by Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry-2Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry

PRINTED IN INDIA

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. The Mother, Sri Aurobindo2. Kandarya Mahadeva Temple, Khajuraho.

3. The Great Temple, Tanjore.4. Mahabodhi Temple, Bodh Gaya.5. Lingaraj Temple, Bhuvaneshwar.

6. Mahishasuramardini, Mahabalipuram.7. Trimurti, Elephanta Caves.

8. The Buddha delivering the First Sermonat Sarnath.

9. Siva Nataraja, Bronze, Chola period.10. Flying Musicians, Ajanta Cave 17.

11. Bodhisattava Padmapani, Ajanta Cave 1.12. The Buddha in Kapilavastu, Mother

and Child, Ajanta Cave 17.

COMPILER'S NOTE

Because of the vast range of his writings, nocompilation from Sri Aurobindo can claim to becomprehensive in every way. The present, however,is a cross-section of the words of Sri Aurobindo andthe Mother that have a direct bearin~ on India'spast', present, and, more than anything else, on herincalculably glorious Future - a Future with whichis indissolubly bound up the Future of the wholeworld, of all humanity.

The extracts have not been given their dates ofpublication as they are immortal truths of peren-nial value, and apply today as they did when theyfirst came out from the Seer-vision of the Motherand the Master. Today, in this 'Hour of God', India,especially her growing youths, need them more thanever before. In fact, some of the extracts are ad-dressed right to the youths of India.

The extracts, collected from various sources, havebeen grouped under proper titles in order to ensuresome coherence among their basic ideas. Besides,this may help the reader to have an over-all per-ception of what the contents of the compilationsuggest towards the reconstruction of India's natio-nal life for its larger fulfilments in the future.

The works used in the compilation and in thesketches are: Sri Aurobindo--Bhavani Mandir, Col-lected Poems and Plays, On Education, On Nationa-

lism, On Yoga, Savitri, Speeches, The Foundationsof Indian Culture, The Hour of God, The HumanCycle, The Ideal of the Karmayogin, The LifeDivine, The Messages of Sri Aurobindo and theMother, The Mother, The National Value of Art,The Renaissance in India, Yoga and its Objects,Bande Mataram (Daily and Weekly), Mother India(Monthly), Sri Aurobindo Pathamandir Annual,The Standard Bearer (Weekly), Bulletin of SriAurobindo International Centre of Education(Quarterly), Prayers and Meditations of the Mother,Words of the Mother. Sisirkumar Mitra's Evolutionof India, Resurgent India, The Liberator - SriAurobindo, India and the World.

The first two sections of Part Two, on SriAurobindo and the Mother, are by the compiler.

The pictures in the compilation are as examplesof Sri Aurobindo's revealing exposition of Indian artincluded in it. Grateful acknowledgements are dueto Archaeological Survey of India; Department ofArchaeology, Government of Tamil Nadu; Depart-ment of Tourism, Government of West Bengal;Institut Francais d'Indologie, Pondicherry; ShrimatiAnjani Dayanand, Chief Secretary, Government ofPondicherry; Ashram Photographers; for providingphotographic prints for reproduction.

The compiler is happy that this book is comingout just a year before the First Birth Centenary ofSri Aurobindo on 15 August 1972, and for this heis grateful to Shri Navajata, General Secretary, Sri

Aurobindo Society and Auroville, who asked himto do this service to the Mother.

Sri Aurobindo AshramPondicherry-2 Sisirkumar Mitra

CONTENTSPART ONE

Sri Aurobindo on India and Her Future

Mother India 3Her Spirituality and Many-sided Greatness 7Her Conception of Life, Religion and Culture 12Her Art 17Her All-round Achievements 27What Indians should do 33India and the World 45The Young and the Future 49Indian Renaissance 54Independence Day Declaration 56Problems of Free India 61Sri Aurobindo's Vision of the Future 63

PART Two

Sri AurobindoThe Mother, India and the WorldThe Mother on IndiaThe Mother on Auroville

69829397

PART ONE

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA ANDHER FUTURE

MOTHER INDIA

Mother India is not a piece of earth; she is aPower, a Godhead, for all nations have such aDevi supporting their separate existence and keep-ing it in being. Such beings are as real and morepermanently real than the men they influence, butthey belong to a higher plane, are part of the cos-mic consciousness and being and act here on earthby shaping the human consciousness on which theyexercise their influence.

*

Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolvingspirit in humanity and lives by the principle whichit embodies. India is the Bharata Shakti, the livingenergy of a great spiritual conception, and fidelityto it is the very principle of her existence. For byits virtue alone she has been one of the immortalnations; this alone has been the secret of heramazing persistence and perpetual force of survivaland revival.

*

God always keeps for himself a chosen countryin which the higher knowledge is through all chancesand dangers, by the few or the many, continually

4 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIApreserved, and for the present, in this Chaturyugaat least, that country is India.

*

There are many who, lamenting the bygoneglories of this great and ancient nation, speak as ifthe Rishis of old, the inspired creators of thoughtand civilisation, were a miracle of our heroic age,not to be repeated among degenerate men and inour distressful present. This is an error and thricean error. Ours is the eternal land, the eternalpeople, the eternal religion, whose strength, great-ness, holiness may be overclouded but never, evenfor a moment, utterly cease. The hero, the Rishi,the saint, are the natural fruits of our Indian soil;and there has been no age in which they have notbeen born.

*

Weare no ordinary race. Weare a people ancientas our hills and rivers and we have behind us ahistory of manifold greatness, not surpassed by anyother race, we are the descendants of those whoperformed Tapasya and underwent unheard-of aus-terities for the sake of spiritual gain and of theirown will submitted to all the suffering of whichhumanity is capable. We are a people to whom suf-fering is welcome and who have a spiritual strength

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 5within them, greater than any physical force, we area people in whom God has chosen to manifest him-self more than any other at many great momentsof our history. It is because God has chosen tomanifest himself and has entered into the hearts ofhis people that we are rising again as a nation.

*

India's nature, her mission, the work that she hasto do, her part in the earth's destiny, the peculiarpower for which she stands is written there in herpast history and is the secret purpose behind herpresent sufferings and ordeals. A reshaping of theforms of our spirit will have to take place; but it isthe spirit itself behind past forms that we have todisengage and preserve and to give to it new andpowerful thought-significances, culture values, a newinstrumentation, greater figures. And so long as werecognise these essential things and are faithful to theirspirit, it will not hurt us to make even the mostdrastic mental or physical adaptations and the mostextreme cultural and social changes. But these chan-ges themselves must be cast in the spirit and mouldof India and not in any other, not in the spirit ofAmerica or Europe, not in the mould of Japan orRussia. We must recognise the great gulf betweenwhat we are and what we may and ought tostrive to be. But this we must do not in any spiritof discouragement or denial of ourselves and the

2

6 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAtruth of our spirit, but in order to measure theadvance we have to make. For we have to find itstrue lines and to find in ourselves the aspirationand inspiration, the fire and the force to conceivethem and to execute.

HER SPIRITUALITY AND MANY-SIDEDGREATNESS

Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indianmind; the sense of the infinite is native to it. Indiasaw from the beginning,- and, even in her agesof reason and her age of increasing ignorance, shenever lost hold of the insight,- that life cannot berightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectlylived in the sole power of its externalities. Shewas alive to the greatness of material laws andforces; she had a keen eye for the importance ofthe physical sciences; she knew how to organisethe arts of ordinary life. But she saw that thephysical does not get its full sense until it standsin right relation to the supraphysical; she saw thatthe complexity of the universe could not be ex-plained in the present terms of man or seen byhis superficial sight, that there were other powersbehind, other powers within man himself of whichhe is normally unaware, that he is conscious onlyof a small part of himself, that the invisible alwayssurrounds the visible, the suprasensible the sensible,even as infinity always surrounds the finite. Shesaw too that man has the power of exceedinghimself, of becoming himself more entirely andprofoundly than he is,- truths which have onlyrecently begun to be seen in Europe and seem evennow too great for its common intelligence. She saw

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA

the myriad gods beyond man, God beyond the gods,and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; shesaw that there were ranges of life beyond our life,ranges of mind beyond our present mind andabove these she saw the splendours of the spirit.Then with that calm audacity of her intuitionwhich knew no fear or littleness and shrank fromno act whether of spiritual or intellectual, ethical orvital courage, she declared that there was none ofthese things which man could not attain if hetrained his will and knowledge; he could conquerthese ranges of mind, become the spirit, become agod, become one with God, become the ineffableBrahman. And with the logical practicality andsense of science and organised method which dis-tinguished her mentality, she set forth immediatelyto find out the way. Hence from long ages of thisinsight and practice there was ingrained in herspirituality, her powerful psychic tendency, her greatyearning to grapple with the infinite and pos-sess it, her ineradicable religious sense , her idea-lism, her Yoga, the constant turn of her art andher philosophy.

But this was not and could not be her wholementality, her entire spirit; spirituality itself does notflourish on earth in the void, even as our mountaintops do not rise like those of an enchantment ofdream out of the clouds without a base. When welook at the past of India, what strikes us next isher stupendous vitality, her inexhaustible power of

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 9life and joy of life, her almost unimaginably prolificcreativeness. For three thousand years at least,- itis indeed much longer, - she has been creatingabundantly and incessantly, lavishly, with an inexhaus-tible many-sidedness, republics and kingdoms andempires, philosophies and cosmogonies and sciencesand creeds and arts and poems and all kinds ofmonuments, palaces and temples and public works,communities and societies and religious orders, lawsand codes and rituals, physical sciences, psychicsciences, systems of Yoga, systems of politics andadministration , arts spiritual, arts worldly, trades,industries, fine crafts,- the list is endless and in eachitem there is almost a plethora of activity. She cre-ates and creates and is not satisfied and is not tired;she will not have an end of it, seems hardly to needa space for rest, a time for inertia and lying fallow.She expands too outside her borders; her ships crossthe ocean and the fine superfluity of her wealthbrims over to Judea and Egypt and Rome; hercolonies spread her arts and epics and creeds in theArchipelago; her traces are found in the sands ofMesopotamia; her religions conquer China and Japanand spread westward as far as Palestine and Alex-andria and the figures of the Upanishads and thesayings of the Buddhists are re-echoed on the lipsof Christ. Everywhere, as on her soil, so in herworks there is the teeming of a superabundant energyof life. European critics complain that in her ancientarchitecture, sculpture and art there is no reticence,

10 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAno holding back of riches, no blank spaces, thatshe labours to fill every rift with ore, occupy everyinch with plenty. Well, but defect or no, that is thenecessity of her superabundance of life, of the teemingof the infinite within her. She lavishes her richesbecause she must, as the Infinite fills every inch ofspace with the stirring of life and energy becauseit is the Infinite.

But this supreme spirituality and this prolificabundance of the energy and joy of life and crea-tion do not make all that the spirit of India hasbeen in its past. It is not a confused splendour oftropical vegetation under heavens of a pure sapphireinfinity. It is only to eyes unaccustomed to suchwealth that there seems to be a confusion in itscrowding of space with rich forms of life, a luxu-rious disorder of excess or a wanton lack of measure,clear balance and design. For the third power ofthe ancient Indian spirit was a strong intellectuality,at once austere and rich, robust and minute, power-ful and delicate, massive in principle and curiousin detail. Its chief impulse was that of order andarrangement, but an order founded upon a seekingfor the inner law and truth of things and havingin view always the possibility of conscientiouspractice.

*

To have put a high value on philosophy,

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 11

sought by it the highest secrets of our being,turned an effective philosophic thought on life andcalled in the thinkers, the men of profoundestspiritual experience, highest ideas, largest availableknowledge to govern and shape society, to havesubjected creed and dogma to the test of the philoso-phic mind and founded religious belief upon spiri-tual intuition, philosophical thought and psycholo-gical experience, are... marks of the highest possibletype of civilisation.

HER CONCEPTION OF LIFE, RELIGIONAND CULTURE

The Indian conception of life starts from a deepercentre and moves on less external lines to a verydifferent objective. The peculiarity of the Indian eyeof thought is that it looks through the form, lookseven through the force, and searches for the spiritin things everywhere. The peculiarity of the Indianwill in life is that it feels itself to be unfulfilled, notin touch with perfection, not permanently justifiedin any intermediate satisfaction if it has not foundand does not live in the truth of the spirit. TheIndian idea of the world, of Nature and of existenceis not physical, but psychological and spiritual. Spirit,soul, consciousness are not only greater than inertmatter and inconscient force, but they precedeand originate these lesser things. All force is power,or means of a secret spirit; the force that sustainsthe world is a conscious Will, and Nature is itsmachinery of executive power. Matter is the bodyor field of a consciousness hidden within it, thematerial universe a form and movement of theSpirit. Man himself is not a life and mind born ofMatter and eternally subject to physical Nature, buta spirit that uses life and body. It is an under-standing faith in this conception of existence, it isthe attempt to live it out, it is the science andpractice of this high endeavour, and it is the as-

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 13piration to break out in the end from this mindbound to life and matter into a greater spiritual con-sciousness, that is the innermost sense of Indianculture.

The fundamental idea of all Indian religion isone common to the highest human thinking every-where. The supreme truth of all that is, is a Beingor an existence beyond the mental and physical ap-pearances we contact here. Beyond mind, life andbody there is a Spirit and Self containing all that isfinite and infinite, surpassing all that is relative, asupreme Absolute, originating and supporting all thatis transient, a one Eternal. A one transcendent, uni-versal, original and sempiternal Divinity or divineEssence, Consciousness, Force and Bliss is the fountand continent and inhabitant of things. Soul, nature,life are only a manifestation or partial phenomenonof this self-aware Eternity and this conscious Eternal.But this Truth of being was not seized by the Indianmind only as a philosophical speculation, a theolo-gical dogma, an abstraction contemplated by the in-telligence. It was not an idea to be indulged by thethinker in his study, but otherwise void of practicalbearing on life. It was not a mystic sublimationwhich could be ignored in the dealings of man withthe world and Nature. It was a living spiritual Truth,an Eternity, a Power, a Presence that could be soughtby all according to their degree of capacity andseized in a thousand ways through life and beyondlife. This Truth was to be lived and even to be

14 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA

made the governing idea of thought and life andaction. This recognition and pursuit of something orsomeone Supreme behind all forms is the one uni-versal credo of Indian religion, and if it has takena hundred shapes, it was precisely because it was somuch alive. The Infinite alone justifies the existenceof the finite and the finite by itself has no entirelyseparate value or independent existence. Life, if itis not an illusion, is a divine Play, a manifestationof the glory of the Infinite. Or it is a means by whichthe soul growing in Nature through countless formsand many lives can approach, touch, feel and uniteitself through love and knowledge and faith andadoration and a Godward will in works with thistranscendent Being and this infinite Existence. ThisSelf or this self-existent Being is the one supremereality, and all things else are either only appearan-ces or only true by dependence upon it. It followsthat self-realisation and God-realisation are thegreat business of the living and thinking humanbeing. All life and thought are in the end a meansof progress towards self-realisation and God-realisa-tion.

*

Indian culture recognises the spirit as the truthof our being and our life as a growth and evolutionof the spirit. It sees the Eternal, the Infinite, theSupreme, the All; it sees this as the secret highest

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 15Self of all, this is what it calls God, the Permanent,the Real, and it sees man as a soul and power ofthis being of God in Nature. The progressive growthof the finite consciousness of man towards this Self,towards God, towards the universal, the eternal, theinfinite, in a word, his growth into spiritualconsciousness by the development of his ordinaryignorant natural being into an illumined divine nature,this is for Indian thinking the significance of lifeand the aim of human existence.... Always to Indiathis ideal inspiration or rather this spiritual visionof Self, God, Spirit, this nearness to a cosmic con-sciousness, a cosmic sense and feeling, a cosmicidea, will, love, delight into which we can releasethe limited, ignorant suffering ego, this drive towardsthe transcendental, eternal and infinite, and themoulding of man into a conscious soul and powerof that greater Existence have been the engrossingmotive of her philosophy, the sustaining force ofher religion, the fundamental idea of her civilisationand culture.

*

And the first thing we see is that the principle,the essential intention of Indian culture was extra-ordinarily high, ambitious, and noble, the highestindeed that the human spirit can conceive. Forwhat can be a greater idea of life than that whichmakes it a development of the spirit in man to its

16 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAmost vast secret and high possibilities, - a culturethat conceives of life as a movement of the Eternalin time, of the universal in the individual, of theinfinite in the finite, of the Divine in man, or holdsthat man can become not only conscious of theeternal and the infinite, but live in its power anduniversalise, spiritualise and divinise himself by self-knowledge? What greater aims can be for the lifeof man than to grow by an inner and outer ex-perience till he can live in God, realise his spirit,become divine in knowledge, in will and in the joyof his highest existence? And that is the wholesense of the striving of Indian culture.

HER ART

The theory of ancient Indian art at its greatest-and the greatest gives its character to the rest andthrows on it something of its stamp and influence- is of another kind. Its highest business is to dis-close something of the Self, the Infinite, the Divineto the regard of the soul, the Self through itsexpressions, the Infinite through its living finitesymbols, the Divine through his powers. Or theGodheads are to be revealed, luminously interpre-ted or in some way suggested to the soul's under-standing or to its devotion or at the very least toa spiritually or religiously aesthetic emotion. Whenthis hieratic art comes down from these altitudesto the intermediate worlds behind ours, to the lessergodheads or genii, it still carries into them somepower or some hint from above. And when itcomes quite down to the material world and thelife of man and the things of external Nature, itdoes not altogether get rid of the greater vision,the hieratic stamp, the spiritual seeing, and in mostgood work - except in moments of relaxation and ahumorous or vivid play with the obvious - there isalways something more in which the seeing presenta-tion of life floats as in an immaterial atmosphere.Life is seen in the self or in some suggestion ofthe infinite or of something beyond or there is atleast a touch and influence of these which helps


to shape the presentation. It is not that all Indianwork realises this ideal; there is plenty no doubtthat falls short, is lowered, ineffective or even de-based, but it is the best and the most characteris-tic influence and execution which gives its tone toan art and by which we must judge. Indian artin fact is identical in its spiritual aim and principlewith the rest of Indian culture.

*

A seeing in the self accordingly becomes thecharacteristic method of the Indian artist and it isdirectly enjoined on him by the canon. He has tosee first in his spiritual being the truth of the thinghe must express and to create its form in his in-tuitive mind; he is not bound to look out first onoutward life and Nature for his model, his autho-rity, his rule, his teacher or his fountain of sug-gestions. Why should he when it is something quiteinward he has to bring out into expression? It isnot an idea in the intellect, a mental imagination,an outward emotion on which he has to dependfor his stimulants, but an idea, image emotion ofthe spirit, and the mental equivalents are subordi-nate things for help in the transmission and giveonly a part of the colouring and the shape. Amaterial form, colour, line and design are his phy-sical means of the expression, but in using them heis not bound to an imitation of Nature, but has

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 19to make the form and all else significant of his vi-sion, and if that can only be done or can best bedone by some modification, some pose, some touchor symbolic variation which is not found in phy-sical Nature, he is at perfect liberty to use it, sincetruth to his vision, the unity of the thing he is see-ing and expressing is his only business. The line,colour and the rest are not his first, but his lastpreoccupation, because they have to carry on thema world of things which have already taken spiri-tual form in his mind. He has not for instance tore-create for us the human face and body of theBuddha or some one passion or incident of his life,but to reveal the calm of Nirvana through a figureof the Buddha, and every detail and accessory mustbe turned into a means or an aid of his purpose.And even when it is some human passion or inci-dent he had to portray, it is not usually that alonebut also or more something else in the soul towhich it points or from which it starts or somepower behind the action that has to enter into thespirit of his design and is often really the mainthing. And through the eye that looks on his workhe has to appeal not merely to an excitement ofthe outward soul, but to the inner self, antariitman.One may well say that beyond the ordinary culti-vation of the aesthetic instinct necessary to all ar-tistic appreciation there is a spiritual insight orculture needed if we are to enter into the wholemeaning of Indian artistic creation, otherwise we

20 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAget only at the surface external things or at themost at things only just below the surface. It is anintuitive and spiritual art and must be seen withthe intuitive and spiritual eye. This is the distinc-tive character 'Of Indian art....

*

Indian sacred architecture of whatever date, styleor dedication goes back to something timelessly an-cient and now outside India almost wholly lost,something which belongs to the past, and yet itgoes forward too, though this the rationalistic mindwill not easily admit, to something which will re-turn upon us and is already beginning to return,something which belongs to the future. An Indiantemple, to whatever godhead it may be built, is inits inmost reality an altar raised to the divine Self,a house of the Cosmic Spirit, an appeal and aspi-ration to the Infinite. As that and in the light ofthat seeing and conception it must in the first placebe understood, and everything else must be seen inthat setting and that light, and then only can therebe any real understanding.

*

The more ancient sculptural art of India embo-dies in visible form what the Upanishads threw outinto inspired thought and the Mahabharata and

..

3. The Great Temple, Tanjore.

4. Mahabodhi Temple, Bodh Gaya.

8 . The Buddha delivering the First Sermon at Sarnath.

9. Siva Nataraja, Bronze, Chola period.

..,:>00;:

U

II. Bodhisattava Padmapani , Ajanta Cave I.

12.The Buddha in Kapi-lavastu, Mother andChild, Ajanta Cave 17.


Ramayana portrayed by the word in life. Thissculpture like the architecture springs from spiritualrealisation, and what it creates and expresses at itsgreatest is the spirit in form, the soul in body, thisor that living soul power in the divine or the hu-man, the universal and cosmic individualised insuggestion but not lost in individuality, the imper-sonal supporting a not too insistent play of perso-nality, the abiding moments of the eternal, the pre-sence, the idea, the power, the calm or potentdelight of the spirit in its actions and creations.And over all the art something of this intentionbroods and persists and is suggested even where itdoes not dominate the mind of the sculptor. Andtherefore as in the architecture so in the sculpture,we have to bring a different mind to this work, adifferent capacity of vision and response, we haveto go deeper into ourselves to see than in the moreoutwardly imaginative art of Europe.

*

The figure of the Buddha achieves the expressionof the infinite in a finite image... to embody theillimitable calm of Nirvana in a human form andvisage.... Or what of the marvellous genius and skillin the treatment of the cosmic movement and de-light of Shiva, the success with which the postureof every limb is made to bring out the rhythm ofthe significance, the rapturous intensity and aban-

3

22 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAdon of the movement itself and yet the just res-traint in the intensity of the motion, the subtle varia-tion of each element of the single theme in theseizing idea of these master sculptors?

This is the motive of the Natarajan, the DancingShiva, which seems to us to strike the dominantnote of this art; the self-absorbed concentration, themotionless peace and joy are within, outside is thewhole mad bliss of the cosmic movement....Theaim of a renascent Indian Art must be to recoverthe essence of these great motives and to add thefreedom and variety of the soul's self-expression inthe coming age when man's search after the Infi-nite need no longer be restricted to given types orled along one or two great paths, but may at lastbe suffered to answer with a joyous flexibility themany-sided call of the secret Mystery behind Lifeto its children.

*

The spirit and motive of Indian painting are IIItheir centre of conception and shaping force ofsight identical with the inspiring vision of Indiansculpture. All Indian art is a throwing out of acertain profound self-vision formed by a goingwithin to find out the secret significance of form

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 23and appearance, a discovery of the subject in one'sdeeper self, the giving of soul-form to that visionand a remoulding of the material and natural shapeto express the psychic truth of it with the greatestpossible purity and power of outline and the grea-test possible concentrated rhythmic unity of signifi-cance in all the parts of an indivisible artisticwhole. Take whatever masterpiece of Indian pain-ting and we shall find these conditions aimed atand brought out into a triumphant beauty of sug-gestion and execution. The only difference from theother arts comes from the turn natural and inevi-table to its own kind of aesthesis, from the movedand indulgent dwelling on what one might call themobilities of the soul rather than on its static eter-nities, on the casting out of self into the graceand movement of psychic and vital life (subjectalways to the reserve and restraint necessary to allart) rather than on the holding back of life in thestabilities of the self and its eternal qualities andprinciples, guna and tattva.

*

If we look long, for an example, at the adora-tion group of the mother and child before theBuddha, one of the most profound, tender andnoble of the Ajanta masterpieces, we shall findthat the impression of intense religious feeling ofadoration there is only the most outward general


touch in the ensemble of the emotion. That whichit deepens to is the turning of the soul of humanityin love to the benignant and calm Ineffable whichhas made itself sensible and human to us in theuniversal compassion of the Buddha, and the motiveof the soul moment the painting interprets is thededication of the awakening mind of the child, thecoming younger humanity, to that in which alreadythe soul of the mother has learned to find and fixits spiritual joy. The eyes, brows, lips, face, poiseof the head of the woman are filled with this spiri-tual emotion which is a continued memory and pos-session of the psychical release, the steady settledcalm of the heart's experience filled with an inef-fable tenderness, the familiar depths which are yetmoved with the wonder and always farther appealof something that is infinite, the body and otherlimbs are grave masses of this emotion and in theirpoise a basic embodiment of it , while the handsprolong it in the dedicative putting forward of herchild to meet the Eternal. This contact of the hu-man and eternal is repeated in the smaller figurewith a subtly and strongly indicated variation, theglad and childlike smile of awakening which promisesbut not yet possesses the depths that are to come,the hands disposed to receive and keep, the bodyin its looser curves and waves harmonising with thatsignificance. The two have forgotten them selves andseem almost to forget or confound each other inthat which they adore and contemplate, and yet the

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 25dedicating hands unite mother and child in the com-mon act and feeling by their simultaneous gestureof maternal possession and spiritual giving. The twofigures have at each point the same rhythm, butwith a significant difference. The simplicity in thegreatness and power, the fullness of expressiongained by reserve and suppression and concentrationwhich we find here is the perfect method of theclassical art of India. And by this perfection Bud-dhist art became not merely an illustration of thereligion and an expression of its thought and itsreligious feeling, history and legend, but a revealinginterpretation of the spiritual sense of Buddhism andits profounder meaning to the soul of India.

*

In India the revival of a truly national Art isalready an accomplished fact and the masterpiecesof the school can already challenge comparisonwith the best work of the other countries. Undersuch circumstances it is unpardonable that thecrude formal teaching of English schools and thevulgar commercial aims and methods of the Westshould subsist in our midst. The country has yet toevolve a system of education which shall be reallynational. The taint of Occidental ideals and alienand unsuitable methods has to be purged out of ourminds, and nowhere more than in the teachingwhich should be the foundation of intellectual and

26 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAaesthetic renovation. The spirit of old Indian Artmust be revived. the inspiration and directness ofvision which even now subsists among the posses-sors of the ancient traditions, the inborn skill andtaste of the race, the dexterity of the Indian handand the intuitive gaze of the Indian eye must berecovered and the whole nation lifted again to thehigh level of the ancient culture - and higher.

*

.. .if Art is to reach towards the highest, the Indiantendency must dominate. The spirit is that in whichall the rest of the human being reposes, towardswhich it returns and the final self-revelation of whichis the goal of humanity. Man becomes God, andall human activity reaches its highest and noblestwhen it 'succeeds in bringing body, heart and mindinto touch with spirit. Art can express eternal truth,it is not limited to the expression of form and ap-pearance. So wonderfully has God made the worldthat a man using a simple combination of lines, anunpretentious harmony of colours, can raise thisapparently insignificant medium to suggest absoluteand profound truths with a perfection which lang-uage labours with difficulty to reach. What Natureis, what God is, what man is can be triumphantlyrevealed in stone or on canvas.

HER ALL-ROUND ACHIEVEMENTS

In what field indeed has not India attempted, achie-ved, created, and in all on a large scale and yetwith much attention to completeness of detail? Ofher spiritual and philosophic achievement there canbe no real question. They stand there as the Hima-layas stand upon the earth in the phrase of Kali-dasa, prthivyii iva miinadandah, "as if earth's mea-suring rod", mediating still between earth andheaven, measuring the finite, casting their plummetfar into the infinite, plunging their extremities intothe upper and lower seas of the superconscient andthe subliminal, the spiritual and the natural being.But if her philosophies, her religious disciplines, herlong list of great spiritual personalities, thinkers,founders, saints are her greatest glory, as wasnatural to her temperament and governing idea,they are by no means her sole glories, nor are theothers dwarfed by their eminence. It is now provedthat in science she went farther than any countrybefore the modern era, and even Europe owes thebeginning of her physical science to India as muchas to Greece, although not directly but through themedium of the Arabs. And, even if she had onlygone as far, that would have been sufficient proofof a strong intellectual life in an ancient culture.Especially in mathematics, astronomy and chemis-try, the chief elements of ancient science, she dis-covered and formulated much and well and anti-

28 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAcipated by force of reasoning or experiment someof the scientific ideas and discoveries which Europefirst arrived at much later, but was able to basemore firmly by her new and completer method.She was well-equipped in surgery and her system ofmedicine survives to this day and has still itsvalue, though it declined intermediately in knowledgeand is only now recovering its vitality.

In literature, in the life of the mind, she livedand built greatly. Not only has she the Vedas,Upanishads and G'it a, not to speak of less supremebut still powerful or beautiful work in that field,unequalled monuments of religious and philoso-phic poetry, a kind in which Europe has never beenable to do anything much of any great value, butthat vast national structure, the Mahabharata, gather-ing into its cycle the poetic literature and expres-sing so completely the life of a long formative age,that it is said of it in a popular saying which hasthe justice if also the exaggeration of a too aptepigram, "What is not in this Bharata, is not inBharatavarsha (India)," and the Ramayana, thegreatest and most remarkable poem of its kind,that most sublime and beautiful epic of ethical idea-lism and a heroic semi-divine human life, and themarvellous richness, fullness and colour of the poetryand romance of highly cultured thought, sensuousenjoyment, imagination, action and adventure whichmakes up the romantic literature of her classicalepoch. Nor did this long continuous vigour of

SRI A UROBINDO ON INDIA 29creation cease with the loss of vitality by theSanskrit tongue, but was paralleled and carried onin a mass of great or of beautiful work in herother languages, in Pali first and Prakrit, much un-fortunately lost, * and Tamil, afterwards in Hindi,Bengali, Marathi and other tongues. The long tradi-tion of her architecture, sculpture and paintingspeaks for itself, even in what survives after all theruin of stormy centuries: whatever judgment maybe formed of it by the narrower school of westernaesthetics, - and at least its fineness of executionand workmanship cannot be denied, nor the powerwith which it renders the Indian mind, - it testifiesat least to a continuous creative activity. And crea-tion is proof of life and great creation of greatnessof life.

But these things are, it may be said, the thingsof the mind, and the intellect, imagination and aes-thetic mind of India may have been creatively active,but yet her outward life depressed, dull, poor, glo-omy with the hues asceticism, void of will-powerand personality, ineffective, null. That would be ahard proposition to swallow; for literature, art andscience do not flourish in a void of life. But heretoo what are the facts? India has not only had thelong roll of her great saints, sages, thinkers, religiousfounders, poets, creators, scientists, scholars, legists;she has had her great rulers, administrators, soldiers,

* E. g., the once famous work in Paisachi of which theKathdsaritsdgara is an inferior version.


conquerors, heroes, men with the strong active will ,the mind that plans and the seeing force that builds.She has warred and ruled, traded and colonisedand spread her civilisation, built polities and orga-nised communities and societies, done all that makesthe outward activity of great peoples. A nationtends to throw out its most vivid types in that lineof action which is most congenial to its tempera-ment and expressive of its leading idea, and it isthe great saints and religious personalities that standat the head in India and present the most strikingand continuous roll-call of greatness, just as Romelived most in her warriors and statesmen and rulers.The Rishi in ancient India was the outstandingfigure with the hero just behind, while in latertimes the most striking feature is the long uninterrup-ted chain from Buddha and Mahavira to Ramanuja,Chaitanya, Nanak, Ramdas and Tukaram and be-yond them to Ramakrishna and Vivekananda andDayananda. But there have been also the remar-kable achievements of statesmen and rulers, fromthe first dawn of ascertainable history which comesin with the striking figures of Chandragupta, Cha-nakya, Asoka, the Gupta emperors and goes downthrough the multitude of famous Hindu and Maho-medan figures of the middle age to quite mo-dern times. In ancient India there was the lifeof republics, oligarchies, democracies, small kingdomsof which no detail of history now survives, after-wards the long effort at empire-building, the coloni-


sation of Ceylon and the Archipelago, the vividstruggles that attended the rise and decline of thePathan and Moghul dynasties, the Hindu struggle forsurvival in the south, the wonderful record of Raj-put heroism and the great upheaval of national lifein Maharashtra penetrating to the lowest strata ofsociety, the remarkable episode of the Sikh Khalsa.An adequate picture of that outward life still re-mains to be given; once given it would be the endof many fictions. All this mass of action was notaccomplished by men without mind and will andvital force, by pale shadows of humanity in whomthe vigorous manhood had been crushed out underthe burden of a gloomy and all-effacing asceticism,nor does it look like the sign of a metaphysicallyminded people of dreamers averse to life and ac-tion. It was not men of straw or lifeless and will-less dummies or thin-blooded dreamers who thusacted, planned, conquered, built great systems ofadministration, founded kingdoms and empires, fi-gured as great patrons of poetry and art and archi-tecture or, later, resisted heroically imperial powerand fought for the freedom of clan or people. Norwas it a nation devoid of life which maintained itsexistence and culture and still lived on and brokeout constantly into new revivals under the ever in-creasing stress of continuously adverse circumstan-ces. The modern Indian revival, religious, cultural,political, called now sometimes a renaissance, whichso troubles and grieves the minds of her critics, is


only a repetition under altered circumstances, in anadapted form, in a greater though as yet less vividmass of movement, of a phenomenon which hasconstantly repeated itself throughout a millenniumof Indian history.

WHAT INDIANS SHOULD DO

Our first necessity, if India is to survive and doher appointed work in the world, is that the youthof India should learn to think,- to think on allsubjects, to think independently, fruitfully, going to theheart of things, not stopped by their surface, freeof prejudgments, shearing sophism and prejudice as-under as with a sharp sword, smiting down obscu-rantism of all kinds as with the mace of Bhima.Let our brains no longer, like European infants, beswathed with swaddling clothes; let them recoverthe free and unbound motion of the gods; let ithave not only the minuteness but the wide mas-tery and sovereignty natural to the intellect ofBharata and easily recoverable by it if it once ac-customs itself to feel its own power and be con-vinced of its own worth.

If it cannot entirely shake off past shackles, letit at least arise like the infant Krishna bound tothe wain, and move forward dragging with it wainand all and shattering in its progress the twin trees,the twin obstacles to self-fulfilment, blind medi-aeval prejudice and arrogant modern dogmatism.The old fixed fountains have been broken up, weare tossing in the waters of a great upheaval andchange. It is no use clinging to the old ice-floesof the past, they will soon melt and leave theirrefugees struggling in perilous waters. It is no use

34 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAlanding ourselves in the infirm bog, neither sea norgood dry land, of a second-hand Europeanism. Weshall only die there a miserable and unclean death.No, we must learn to swim and use that power toreach the good vessel of unchanging truth; we mustland again on the eternal rock of ages.

Let us not, either, select at random, makea nameless hotchpotch and then triumphantly callit the assimilation of East and West. We mustbegin by accepting nothing on trust from anysource whatsoever, by questioning everything andforming our own conclusions. We need not fearthat we shall by that process cease to be Indiansor fall into the danger of abandoning Hinduism.India can never cease to be India or Hinduism tobe Hinduism, if we really think for ourselves. It isonly if we allow Europe to think for us thatIndia is in danger of becoming an ill-executed andfoolish copy of Europe....

*

To recover Indian thought, Indian character,Indian perceptions, Indian energy, Indian greatness,and to solve the problems that perplex the worldin an Indian spirit and from the Indian standpoint,this, in our view, is the mission of Nationalism....We have to return to the fountainheads of ourancient religion, philosophy, art and literature andpour the revivifying influences of our immemorial

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 35Aryan spmt and ideals into our political and eco-nomic development.

The debasement of our mind, character andtastes by a grossly commercial, materialistic andinsufficient European education is ~ fact on whichthe young Nationalism has always insisted. Thepractical destruction of our artistic perceptions andthe plastic skill and fineness of eye and hand whichonce gave our productions pre-eminence, distinctionand mastery of the European markets, is also athing accomplished. Most vital of all, the spiritualand intellectual divorce from the past which thepresent schools and universities have effected, hasbeggared the nation of the originality, high aspira-tion and forceful energy which can alone make anation free and great. To reverse the process andrecover what we have lost, is undoubtedly the firstobject to which we ought to devote ourselves. Andas the loss of originality, aspiration, and energy wasthe most vital of all these losses, so their recoveryshould be our first and most important objective....

*

To raise the mind, character and tastes of thepeople, to recover the ancient nobility of temper,the strong Aryan character and the high Aryanoutlook, the perceptions which made earthly lifebeautiful and wonderful, and the magnificent spi-rit ual experiences, realisations and aspirations which

36 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAmade us the deepest-hearted, deepest-thoughted andmost delicately profound in life of all the peoplesof the earth, is the task next in importance and ur-gency....

*

We have to treasure jealously everything in oursocial structure, institutions, which is of permanentvalue, essential to our spirit or helpful to the fu-ture; but we must not cabin the expanding and ag-gressive spirit of India in temporary forms whichare the creation of the last few hundred years.That would be a vain and disastrous endeavour.The mould is broken; we must remould in largeroutlines and with a richer content....

*

We have to learn and use the democratic prin-ciple and methods of Europe, in order that here-after we may build up something more suited toour past and to the future of humanity. We have tothrowaway the individualism and materialism andkeep the democracy. We have to solve for the hu-man race the problem of harmonising and spirit-ualising its impulses towards liberty, equality andfraternity....

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 37We cannot arrest our development of industry

and commerce while waiting for a new commercialsystem to develop or for beauty and art to recon-quer the world. As in politics so in commerce, wemust learn and master the European methods inorder that we may eventually rise above them.... Anation need not be luxuriously wealthy in order tobe profoundly artistic, but it must have a certainamount of well-being, a national culture and aboveall, hope and ardour, if it is to maintain a nationalart based on a wide-spread development of artisticperception and faculty. Moreover, aesthetic arts andcrafts cannot live against the onrush of cheap andvulgar manufactures under the conditions of themodern social structure. Industry can only be-come again beautful if poverty and the struggle forlife are eliminated from society and the co-opera-tive State and commune organised as the fruit ofa great moral and spiritual uplifting of humanity.We hold such an uplifting and reorganisation aspart of India's mission. Therefore the economic pre-occupation has been added to the political.

We perceive the salvation of the country not inparting with either of these, but in adding to thema religious and moral preoccupation. On the basisof that religious and moral awakening the preoccu-pation of art and fine culture will be added andfirmly based. There are many who perceive thenecessity of the religious and moral regeneration,who are inclined to turn from the prosaic details

4

38 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAof politics and commerce and regret that anyguide and teacher of the nation should stoop tomingle in them. That is a grievous error. The menwho would lead India must be catholic and many-sided.

When the Avatar comes, we like to believe thathe will be not only the religious guide, but the po-litical leader, the great educationist, the regenera-tor of society, the captain of co-operative industry,with the soul of the poet, scholar and artist. Hewill be in short the summary and grand type ofthe future Indian nation which is rising to reshapeand lead the world....

No department of our life can escape this greatregenerating and reconstructing force. There is notthe slightest doubt that our society will have to un-dergo a reconstruction which may amount to revo-lution, but it will not be for Europeanisation as theaverage reformer blindly hopes, but for a greaterand more perfect realisation of the national spiritin society. Not individual selfishness and mutuallyconsuming struggle but love and the binding of in-dividuals into a single inseparable life is the natio-nal impulse. It sought to fulfil itself in the past bythe bond of blood in the joint family, by the bondof a partial communism in the village system, bythe bond of birth and a corporate sense of honourin the. caste. It may seek a more perfect and spiri-tual bond in the future. In commerce also so longas we follow the European spirit and European

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 39model, the individual competitive selfishness, thebond of mere interest in the joint-stock companyor that worst and most dangerous development ofco-operative Capitalism, the giant octopus-I Trustand Syndicate, we shall never succeed in rebuild-ing a healthy industrial life. It is not these bondswhich can weld Indians together. India moves toa deeper and greater life than the world has yetimagined possible and it is when she has found thesecret of expressing herself in those various acti-vities that her industrial and social life will becomestrong and expansive.

*

Socialism is not an European idea, it is essen-tially Asiatic and especially Indian. What is calledSocialism in Europe, is the old Asiatic attempt toeffect a permanent solution of the economic prob-lem of society which will give man leisure andpeace to develop undisturbed his higher self. With-out Socialism democracy would remain a tendencythat never reached its fulfilment, a rule of themasses by a small aristocratic or monied class withthe consent and votes of the artisan classes overthe rest. Socialistic democracy is the only truedemocracy, for without it we cannot get the equa-lised and harmonised distribution of functions, eachpart of the community existing for the good of alland not struggling for its own separate interests,

40 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAwhich will give humanity as a whole the necessaryconditions in which it can turn its best energies toits higher development. To realise those conditionsis als e aim of Hindu civilisation and the originalintention of caste. The fulfilment of Hinduism isthe fulfilment of the highest tendencies of humancivilisation and it must include in its sweep themost vital impulses of modern life. It will includeDemocracy and Socialism also, purifying them, rais-ing them above the excessive stress on the economicadjustments which are the means, and teaching themto fix their eyes more constantly and clearly on themoral, intellectual and spiritual perfection of man-kind which is the end.

Politics, society, economy are in the first form ofhuman life simply an arrangement by which mencollectively can live, produce, satisfy their desires,enjoy, progress in bodily, vital and mental efficiency;but the spiritual aim makes them much more thanthis, first, a framework of life within which mancan seek for and grow into his real self and divi-nity, secondly, an increasing embodiment of thedivine law of being in life, thirdly, a collectiveadvance towards the light, power, peace, unity,harmony of the diviner nature of humanity whichthe race is trying to evolve. This and nothing morebut nothing less, this in all its potentialities, is what


we mean by a spiritual culture and the applicationof spirituality to life.

:;:

Her (India's) mISSIon is to point back humanityto the true source of human liberty, human equa-lity, human brotherhood. When man is free in spirit,all other freedom is at his command; for the Freeis the Lord who cannot be bound. When he isliberated from delusion, he perceives the divine equa-lity of the world which fulfils itself through loveand justice, and this perception transfuses itself intothe law of government and society. When he hasperceived this divine equality, he is brother to thewhole world, and in whatever position he is placedhe serves all men as his brothers by the law oflove, by the law of justice. When this perceptionbecomes the basis of religion, of philosophy, ofsocial speculation and political aspiration, then willliberty, equality and fraternity take their place inthe structure of society and the satya yuga return.This is the Asiatic reading of democracy whichIndia must rediscover for herself before she cangive it to the world.

India has seen always in man the individual asoul, a portion of the Divinity enwrapped in mind

42 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAand body, a conscious manifestation in Nature ofthe universal self and spirit. Always she has dis-tinguished and cultivated in him a mental, an in-tellectual, an ethical, dynamic and practical, anaesthetic and hedonistic, a vital and physical being,but all these have been seen as powers of a soulthat manifests through them and grows with theirgrowth, and yet they . are not all the soul, becauseat the summit of its ascent it arises to somethinggreater than them all, into a spiritual being, and itis in this that she has found the supreme manifes-tation of the soul of man and his ultimate divinemanhood, his paramiirtha and highest purusiirtha.And similarly India has not understood by thenation or people any organised State or an armedand efficient community well prepared for the strug-gle of life and putting all at the service of thenational ego, - that is only the disguise of iron ar-mour which masks and encumbers the nationalPurusha,- but a great communal soul and life thathas appeared in the whole and has manifested anature of its own and a law of that nature, a Swa-bhava and Swadharma, and embodied it in its in-tellectual, aesthetic, ethical, dynamic, social andpolitical forms and culture. And equally then ourcultural conception of humanity must be in/ accor-dance with her ancient vision of the universal mani-festing in the human race, evolving through lifeand mind but with a high ultimate spiritual aim,-it must be the idea of the spirit, the soul of


humanity advancing through struggle and concert to-wards oneness, increasing its experience and main-taining a needed diversity through the varied cultureand life motives of its many peoples, searching for per-fection through the development of the powers of theindividual and his progress towards a diviner beingand life, but feeling out too though more slowlyafter a similar perfectibility in the life of therace.... The only true education will be that whichwill be an instrument for this real working of thesp iri t in the mind and body of the individual andthe nation. That is the principle on which we mustbuild, that the central motive and the guiding ideal.It must be an education that for the individual willmake its one central object the growth of the souland its powers and possibilities, for the nation willkeep first in view the preservation, strengtheningand enrichment of the nation-soul and its dharmaand raise both into powers of the life and ascen-ding mind and soul of humanity. And at no timewill it lose sight of man's highest object, the awake-ning and development of his spiritual being.

*

The right remedy is, not to belittle still fartherthe agelong ideal of India, but to return to its oldamplitude and give it a still wider scope, to makein very truth all the life of the nation a religion inthis high spiritual sense.... India has the key to the

44 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAknowledge and conscious application of the ideal ;what was dark to her before in its application, shecan now, with a new light, illumine; what was wrongand wry in her old methods she can now rectify ;the fences which she created to protect the outergrowth of the spiritual ideal and which afterwardsbecame barriers to its expansion and farther appli-cation, she can now break down and give herspirit a freer field and an ampler flight: she can,if she will, give a new and decisive turn to theproblems over which all mankind is labouring andstumbling, for the clue to their solutions is therein her ancient knowledge.

INDIA AND THE WORLD

India of the ages is not dead nor has she spokenher last creative word; she lives and has still some-thing to do for herself and the human peoples.

And that which must seek now to awake is notan Anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of theWest and doomed to repeat the cycle of the occi-dent's success and failure, but still the ancient im-memorable Shakti recovering her deeper self, lift-ing her head towards the supreme source of lightand strength and turning to discover the completemeaning and vaster form of her Dharma.

:;:

Mankind upon earth is one foremost self-expres-sion of the universal Being in His cosmic self-unfolding; he expresses, under the conditions of theterrestrial world he inhabits, the mental power ofthe universal existence. All mankind is one in itsnature, physical, vital, emotional, mental and everhas been in spite of all differences of intellectualdevelopment ranging from the poverty of the Bush-man and negroid to the rich cultures of Asia andEurope, and the whole race has, as the human to-tality, one destiny which it seeks and increasinglyapproaches in the cycles of progression and retro-gression it describes through the countless millen-

46 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAniums of its history. Nothing which any individualrace or nation can triumphantly realise, no victoryof their self-aggrandisement, illumination, intellec-tual achievement or mastery over the environmenthas any permanent meaning or value except in sofar as it adds something or recovers something orpreserves something for this human march. Thepurpose which the ancient Indian scripture offersto us as the true object of all human action , loka-samgraha, the holding together of the race in itscyclic evolution, is the constant sense, whether weknow oJ: know it not, of the sum of our activities.

*

... among all the divisions of mankind it is to Indiathat is reserved the highest and the most splendiddestiny, the most essential to the future of the hu-man race. It is she who must send forth from her-self the future religion of the entire world, theEternal religion which is to harmonise all religion,science and philosophies and make mankind onesoul.

*

....for the golden ageIn Kali comes, the iron lined with gold,The Yoga shall be given back to men,The sects shall cease, the grim debates die out


And atheism perish from the earth,Blasted with knowledge, love and brotherhoodAnd wisdom repossess Sri Krishna's world.

*

India preserves the Knowledge that preserves theworld.

*

The time has come when India can no longerkeep her light to herself but must pour it 01.!t uponthe world. Yoga must be revealed to mankind be-cause without it mankind cannot take the nextstep in the human evolution.

*

By this Yoga we not only seek the Infinite, butwe call upon the Infinite to unfold himself in hu-man life.

*

Of all the proud nations of the West there is anend determined. When their limited special workfor mankind is done they must decay and disap-pear. But the function of India is to supply theworld with a perennial source of light and reno-vation. Whenever the first play of energy is exhaus-


ted and earth grows old and weary, full ofmaterialism, racked with problems she cannot solve,the function of India is to restore the youth ofmankind and assure it of immortality. She sendsforth a light from her bosom which floods the earthand the heavens, and mankind bathes in it like St.George in the well of life and recovers strength,hope and vitality for its long pilgrimage. Such atime is now at hand. The world needs India....

*

The world waits for the rising of India to receivethe divine flood in its fulness.

THE YOUNG AND THE FUTURE

The future belongs to the young. It is a young andnew world which is now under process of develop-ment and it is the young who must create it. But itis also a world of truth, courage, justice, lofty aspi-ration and straightforward fulfilment which we seekto create. For the coward, for the self-seeker, forthe talker who goes forward at the beginning andafterwards leaves his fellows in the lurch there is noplace in the future.... A brave, frank, clear-hearted,courageous and aspiring youth is the only founda-tion on which the future nation can be built.... Goddoes not want falterers and flinchers for his work,nor does he want unstable enthusiasts who cannotmaintain the energy of their first movements.

Secondly, let them not only stand by their choicebut stand by their comrades. Unless they developthe corporate spirit and the sense of honour whichrefuses to save oneself by the sacrifice of one'scomrades in action when that sacrifice can be aver-ted by standing together, they will not be fit for thework they will have to do when they are a littleolder. Whatever they do let them do as a body,whatever they suffer let them suffer as a body,leaving out the coward and the falterer but, oncethey are compact, never losing or allowing anythingto break that compactness.

If they can act in this spirit, heeding no unpat-

50 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAriotic counsels from whatever source they came,then let them follow their duty and their conscience,but let them do nothing in a light even if fervententhusiasm, moving forward without due considera-tion and then showing a weakness unworthy of thenation to which they belong and the work to whichthey have been called.

*

If we are to live at all, we must resume India'sgreat interrupted endeavour; we must take up boldlyand execute thoroughly in the individual and inthe society, in the spiritual and in the mundane life,in philosophy and religion, in art and literature, inthought, in political and economic and social for-mulation, the full and unlimited sense of herhighest spirit and knowledge. And if we do that,we shall find that the best of what comes to usdraped in Occidental forms, is already implied inour own ancient wisdom and has there a greaterspirit behind it, a profounder truth and self-know-ledge and the capacity of a will to nobler and moreideal formations. Only we need to work out tho-roughly in life what we have always known in sp irit.There and nowhere else lies the secret of the neededharmony between the essential meaning of our pastculture and the environmental requirements of ourfuture.

*

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 51Our ideal is a new birth of humanity into the

spirit; our life must be a spiritually inspired effortto create a body of action for that great new birthand creation. A spiritual ideal has always been thecharacteristic idea and aspiration of India. But theprogress of Time and the need of humanity demanda new orientation and another form of that ideal.The old forms and methods are no longer sufficientfor the purpose of the Time-Spirit.... Our ideal isnot the spirituality that withdraws from life but theconquest of life by the power of the spirit. It isto accept the world as an effort of manifestation ofthe Divine, but also to transform humanity by agreater effort of manifestation than has yet been ac-complished, one in which the veil between manand God shall be removed, the divine manhood ofwhich we are capable shall come to birth and ourlife shall be remoulded in the truth and light andpO,wer of the spirit....

The West has made the growth of the intellec-tual, emotional, vital and material being of man itsideal, but it has left aside the greater possibilitiesof his spiritual existence.... The West has put itsfaith in its science and machinery and it is - beingdestroyed by its science and crushed under itsmechanical burden. It has not understood that aspiritual change is necessary for the accomplishmentof its ideals. The East has the secret of that spiri-tual change but it has too long turned its eyesaway from the earth. The time has now come to

52 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAheal the division and to unite life and spmt.

This secret too has been possessed but not suffi-ciently practised by India. It is summarised in therule of the Gita, yogasthalt kuru karmani. Its prin-ciple is to do all actions in Yoga, in union withGod, on the foundation of the highest self andthrough the rule of all our members by the powerof the Spirit. And this we believe to be not onlypossible for man but the true solution of all hi sproblems and difficulties. This then is the messagewe shall constantly utter and this the ideal that weshall put before the young and rising India, a sp ir i-tual life that shall take up all human activities andavail to transfigure the world for the great age thatis coming. India, she that has carried in herselffrom of old the secret, can alone lead the way inthis great transformation of which the present san-dhya of the old yuga is the fore-runner. This mustbe her mission and service to humanity, - as shediscovered the inner spiritual life of the individual,so now to discover for the race its integral collec-tive expression and found for mankind its new spi-ritual and communal order....

*

Our call is to young India. It is the young whomust be the builders of the new world... the youngwho are free in mind and heart to accept a com-pleter truth and labour for a greater ideal. They

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 53must be men who will dedicate themselves not tothe past or the present but to the future. They willneed to consecrate their lives to an exceeding oftheir lower self, to the realisation of God in them-selves and in all human beings and to a whole-minded and indefatigable labour for the nation andfor humanity. This ideal can be as yet only a littleseed and the life that embodies it a small nucleus,but it is our fixed hope that the seed will grow intoa tree and the nucleus be the heart of an ever-extending formation. It is with a confident trust inthe spirit that inspires us that we take our placeamong the standard-bearers of the new huma-nity that is struggling to be born amid the chaosof a world in dissolution, and of the future India,the greater India of the rebirth that is to rejuve-nate the mighty body of the ancient Mother.

5

INDIAN RENAISSANCE

The Renaissance of India is as inevitable as therising of tomorrow's sun, and the Renaissance of agreat nation of three hundred millions with so pecu-liar a temperament, such unique traditions andideas of life, so powerful an intelligence andso great a mass of potential energies cannot but beone of the most formidable phenomena of the mo-dern world....

This Renaissance, this new birth in India, mustbecome a thing of immense importance both toherself and the world, to herself because of all thatis meant for her in the recovery or the change of hertime-old spirit and national ideals, to the world be-cause of the possibilities involved in the rearisingof a force that is in many respects unlike any otherand its genius very different from the mentality andspirit that have hitherto governed the modern ideain mankind, although not so far away perhapsfrom that which is preparing to govern the future....

*

They (Indians) must have the firm faith that In-dia must rise and be great and that everything that

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 55happened, every difficulty, every reverse must helpand further their end. The trend was upward andthe time of decline was over. The morning was athand and once the light had shown itself, it couldnever be night again. The dawn would soon becomplete and the sun rise over the horizon. Thesun of India's destiny would rise and fill all Indiawith its light and overflow India and overflowAsia and overflow the world.':' Every hour, everymoment could only bring them nearer to the bright-ness of the day that God had decreed.

*

For this thing is written in the book of God andnothing can prevent it, that the national life of In-dia shall meet and possess its divine and mightydestiny.

*

The power of the universal Time-Spirit has begunto move in our midst for the creation of a newand greater India.

*

There is a great Power at work to help India.There is a Divinity that has been shaping her ends.

* Italics are ours.

INDEPENDENCE DAY DECLARATION

August 15th, 1947 is the birthday of free India. Itmarks for her the end of an old era, the beginningof a new age. But we can also make it by our lifeand acts as a free nation an important date in anew age opening for the whole world, for the poli-tical, social, cultural and spiritual future of huma-nity.

August 15th is my own birthday and it is natu-rally gratifying to me that it should have assumedthis vast significance. I take this coincidence, notas a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction andseal of the Divine Force that guides my steps onthe work with which I began life, the beginning ofits full fruition. Indeed, on this day I can watch al-most all the world-movements which I hoped to seefulfilled in my lifetime, though then they lookedlike impracticable dreams, arriving at fruition oron their way to achievement. In all these move-ments free India may well play a large part andtake a leading position.

The first of these dreams was a revolution-ary movement which would create a free and unitedIndia. India today is free but she has not ach ievedunity. At one moment it almost seemed as if inthe very act of liberation she would fall back intothe chaos of separate States which preceded theBritish conquest. But fortunately it now seems pro-

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 57bable that this danger will be averted and a largeand powerful, though not yet a complete union willbe established. Also, the wisely drastic policy of theConstituent Assembly has made it probable thatthe problem of the depressed classes will be solvedwithout schism or fissure. But the old communaldivision into Hindus and Muslims seems nowto have hardened into a permanent political divi-sion of the country. It is to be hoped that this set-tled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever oras anything more than a temporary expedient. Forif it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, evencrippled: civil strife may remain always possible,possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest.India's internal development and prosperity may beimpeded, her position among the nations weakened,her destiny impaired or even frustrated. This mustnot be; the partition must go. Let us hope that thatmay come about naturally, by an increasing recog-nition of the necessity not only of peace and con-cord but of common action, by the practice ofcommon action and the creation of means for thatpurpose. In this way unity may finally come aboutunder whatever form - the exact form may havea pragmatic but not a fundamental importance. Butby whatever means, in whatever way, the divisionmust go; unity must and will be achieved, for it isnecessary for the greatness of India's future.

Another dream was for the resurgence and libera-tion of the peoples of Asia and her return to her

58 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAgreat role in the progress of human civilisation. Asiahas risen; large parts are now quite free and are atthis moment being liberated: its other still subjector partly subject parts are moving through whateverstruggles towards freedom. Only a little has to bedone today or tomorrow. There India has her partto play and has begun to play it with an energy andability which already indicate the measure of herpossibilities and the place she can take in the coun-cil of nations.

The third dream was a world-union forming theouter basis of a fairer, brighter and nobler life of

. all mankind. That unification of the human worldis under way; there is an imperfect imitation orga-nised but struggling against tremendous difficulties.But the momentum is there and it must inevitablyincrease and conquer. Here too India has begun toplay a prominent part and, if she can develop thatlarger statesmanship which is not limited by thepresent facts and immediate possibilities but looksinto the future and brings it nearer, her presencemay make all the difference between a slow andtimid and a bold and swift development. A catas-trophe may intervene and interrupt or destroy whatis being done, but even then the final result is sure.For unification is a necessity of Nature, an inevi-table movement. Its necessity for the nations is alsoclear, for without it the freedom of the small na-tions may be at any moment in peril and the lifeeven of the large and powerful nations insecure.

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 59The unification is therefore to the interests of all,and only human imbecility and stupid selfishness canprevent it; but these cannot stand for ever againstthe necessity of Nature and the Divine Will. Butan outward basis is not enough; there must growup an international spirit and outlook, internationalforms and institutions must appear, perhaps suchdevelopments as dual or multilateral citizenship,willed interchange or voluntary fusion of cultures.Nationalism will have fulfilled itself and lost itsmilitancy and would no longer find these things in-compatible with self-preservation and the integralityof its outlook. A new spirit of oneness will take holdof the human race.

Another dream, the spiritual gift of India to theworld has already begun. India's spirituality is enter-ing Europe and America in an ever increasing mea-sure. That movement will grow; amid the disastersof the time more and more eyes are turningtowards her with hope and there is even an increas-ing resort not only to her teachings, but to her psy-chic and spiritual practice.

The final dream was a step in evolution whichwould raise man to a higher and larger conscious-ness and begin the solution of the problems whichhave perplexed and vexed him since he first beganto think and to dream of individual perfection anda perfect society. This is still a personal hope andan idea, an ideal which has begun to take holdboth in India and in the West on forward-looking

60 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAminds. The difficulties in the way are more form-idable than in any other field of endeavour, butdifficulties were made to be overcome and if theSupreme Will is there, they will be overcome. Heretoo, if this evolution is to take place, since it mustproceed through a growth of the spirit and the innerconsciousness, the initiative can come from Indiaand, although the scope must be universal, the cen-tral movement may be hers.

Such is the content which I put into this dateof India's liberation; whether or how far this hopewill be justified depends upon the new and freeIndia.

PROBLEMS OF FREE INDIA

There are deeper issues for India herself, since byfollowing certain tempting directions she may con-ceivably become a nation like many others evolvingan opulent industry and commerce, a powerfulorganisation of social and political life, an immensemilitary strength, practising power-politics with ahigher degree of success, guarding and extendingzealously her gains and her interests, dominatingeven a large part of the world, but in this ap-parently magnificent progression forfeiting its Swa-dharma, losing its soul. Then ancient India and herspirit might disappear altogether and we wouldhave only one more nation like the others and "thatwould be a real gain neither to the world nor tous. There is a question whether she may prospermore harmlessly in the outward life yet lose al-together her richly massed and firmly held spiri-tual experience and knowledge. It would be a tragicirony of fate if India were to throwaway herspiritual heritage at the very moment when in therest of the world there is more and more a turningtowards her for spiritual help and a saving Light.This must not and will surely not happen; but itcannot be said that the danger is not there. Thereare indeed other numerous and difficult problemsthat face this country or will very soon face it. Nodoubt we will win through, but we must not dis-

62 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAguise from ourselves the fact that after these longyears of subjection and its cramping and impairingeffects a great inner as well as outer liberation andchange, a vast inner and outer progress is neededif we are to fulfil India's true destiny.

SRI AUROBINDO'S VISION OF THE FUTURE

Not the blind round of the material existence aloneand not a retreat from the difficulty of life in theworld into the silence of the ineffable, but thebringing down of the peace and light and powerof a greater divine Truth and consciousness to trans-form Life is the endeavour today of the greatestspiritual seekers in India. Here in the heart of suchan endeavour pursued through many years with asingle-hearted purpose, living constantly in that all-founding peace and feeling the near and greateningdescent of that light and power, the way becomesincreasingly clear. One sees the soul of India readyto enter into the fullness of the heritage and thehour of an unparalleled greatness approaching wherefrom her soil shall go forth the call and the leadingto the highest destinies of the race.

*

Slowly the light grows greater in the East,Slowly the world progresses on God's road.His seal is on my task, it cannot fail:I shall hear the silver swing of heaven's gatesWhen God comes out to meet the soul of the

world.

'"


To know, possess and be the divine being in ananimal and egoistic consciousness, to convert ourtwilit or obscure physical mentality into the plen-ary supramental illumination, to build peace and aself-existent bliss where there is only a stress oftransitory satisfactions beseiged by physical painand emotional suffering, to establish an infinite free-dom in a world which presents itself as a groupof mechanical necessities, to discover and realisethe immortal life in a body subjected to death andconstant mutation, - this is offered to us as themanifestation of God in Matter and the goal ofNature in her terrestrial evolution.

*

As there has been established on earth a mentalConsciousness and Power which shapes a race ofmental beings and takes up into itself all of earthlynature that is ready for the change, so now therewill be established on earth a gnostic Consciousnessand Power which will shape a race of gnostic spi-ritual beings and take up into itself all of earth-nature that is ready for this new transformation.

*

Man is a transitional being; he is not final. Forin man and high beyond him ascend the radiantdegrees that climb to a divine supermanhood.

SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIA 65There lies our destiny and the liberating key to ouraspiring but troubled and mundane existence.

*

The supramental change IS a thing decreed andinevitable in the evolution of the earth conscious-ness; for its upward ascent is not ended and manis not its last summit. But that the change mayarrive, take form and endure, there is needed thecall from below with a will to recognise and notdeny the Light when it comes, and there is neededthe sanction of the Supreme from above. Thepower that mediates between the sanction and thecall is the presence and power of the DivineMother. The Mother's power and not any humanendeavour and tapasya can alone rend the lid andtear the covering and shape the vessel and bringdown into this world of obscurity and falsehoodand death and suffering Truth and Light and Lifedivine and the immortal's Ananda.

*

A mightier race shall inhabit themortal's world....

On Nature's luminous tops, on theSpirit's ground....

Even there shall come as a high crown of allThe end of Death, the death of Ignorance....

66 SRI AUROBINDO ON INDIAThe Spirit shall look out through Matter's gazeAnd Matter shall reveal the Spirit's face....More and more souls shall enter into light,Mind's lit, inspired, the occult summoner hearAnd lives blaze with a sudden inner flame....The Spirit shall take up the human play,The earthly life become the life divine.

PART TWO

SRI AUROBINDO

" ....It matters not if there are hundreds of beingsplunged in the densest ignorance. He whom we sawyesterday is on earth. His presence is enough toprove that a day will come when darkness shall betransformed into Light, when Thy reign shall beindeed established upon earth .... "

THE MOTHER, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondi-cherry, on her first meeting with Sri Aurobindoon 29th March 1914.

" ... .long after this turmoil, this agitation will haveceased... he will be looked upon as the poet ofpatriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and loverof humanity... his words will be echoed and re-echoed not only in India but across distant seas andlands.... ,"

C.R. DAS, Counsel for Sri Aurobindo in theAlipore Conspiracy Case, in concluding hisdefence address in April 1909.

" .... you have the Word and we are waiting toreceive it from you. India will speak through yourvoice, 'Hearken unto me'."

RABINDRANATH T AGORE on his VISIt to SriAurobindo on 16 February 1928.

6

70 SRI AUROBINDOSri Aurobindo's great life stands a living truth of

these previsions.The nineteenth century was a century of world-

wide upsurge. In Europe it witnessed the birth offree nations and great leaders of thought, and in Asia,particularly in India, it witnessed the birth of anumber of mighty souls through whose concertedlives and works came about the resurgence of hersoul. More than thirty of these historic figures wereborn during the significant period 1856-1872.

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15August 1872. His father Krishnadhone Ghose (1845-1893) came of the wellknown Ghose family ofKonnagar, a township in the district of Hooghly,West Bengal, the historic birthplace of quite a fewleaders of Indian renaissance. Krishnadhone marriedSwarnalata, the eldest daughter of Rajnarayan Basu,a pioneer of Indian nationalism. He took his M.D.at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and servedas C.M.O. at many places in Bengal. He was aman of great ability and lavish munificence. He de-veloped an almost exclusive love for everythingWestern and wanted to give his three sons 'an en-tirely European upbringing'. Consequently, SriAurobindo, when only seven, and his two elderbrothers - Binoybhusan and Monmohan - were ta-ken by him to England.

Sri Aurobindo had his early education in anEnglish family. When he joined the St. Paul'sSchool in London as a scholar, he had already

SRI AUROBINDO 71

learned Latin, and read, by himself, even as aschool boy, Shakespeare and the romantic poets. Hepassed the Indian Civil Service examination, obtain-ing record marks in Greek and Latin, and also theClassical Tripos (Part I) of the University of Cam-bridge, with a high first class and all ClassicsPrizes. He learnt also French and German, Italianand Spanish in order to read Goethe, Dante andCalderon in the original. When only eleven, hestarted writing poetry in Greek, Latin and English.Later he took up literary Bengali too.

In his eleventh year and then in his fourteenthhe had mystic intimations of his personal role ingreat events and world movements of the future.In response to these divine calls and as a reactionto the humiliations and injustices meted out to hiscountrymen by the alien rulers, he resolved to givehimself to the cause of India's liberation. As Secre-tary to the Indian MajIis, Cambridge, he made re-volutionary speeches, hinting at armed rebellion asa way to it. Naturally, therefore, he dismissed allidea of joining the I.C.S. and returned to India, in1893, with an appointment in the Baroda StateService.

As he stepped on Indian soil at Apollo Bunder,Bombay, he experienced the descent on him of aninfinite" calm which abided with him for weeks.

During his Baroda Service, first in the admini-strative and then in the secretariat work for theMaharaja, he became lecturer in French and

72 SRI AUROBINDO

Professor of English, afterwards, Vice-Principal,then Officiating Principal of the State College. ThePrincipal, an Englishman, observed 'a mystic fire andlight in his eyes'. He said: 'T hey penetrated into thebeyond. If Joan of Arc heard heavenly voices,Aurobindo probably sees heavenly visions.' SriAurobindo's thirteen years at Baroda were years ofpreparation for his future work. He learned Sanskrit,Marathi, Gujrati and spoken Bengali; studied theEpics, the Upanishads and Sanskrit plays; wrotepoetry, plays and essays in English.

Sri Aurobindo's political activity in India began,informally, with his articles in the lndu Prakash ofBombay, in 1893, exposing the futility of the thenCongress aims and methods. The new and chal-lenging ideas were much too bearable for theBritish government and also for the then Congressleaders. A well-known one of them requested SriAurobindo not to publish such articles any more.Thereafter he drew up a plan of revolutionary workand took part in its organisation in Bombay Pre-sidency and Bengal. Sister Nivedita, who had beenasked by Vivekananda to work for India's freedom,joined Sri Aurobindo in this work. She was on theCouncil of the first Calcutta organisation started in1902 under Sri Aurobindo's direction.

In 1901, Sri Aurobindo married, according tostrict Hindu rites, Mrinalini Devi (1888-1918) , daugh-ter of Bhupalchandra Basu. In a letter to his wife in1905, Sri Aurobindo expressed a little of what he

SRI AUROBINDO 73felt his life was meant for - the liberation of hiscountry by the power of the spirit, Brahmatej, foundedin Jnana (Knowledge), which he felt he had in him.He also said: 'God has sent me to earth to do thiswork the seed of which first germinated when I wasfourteen and it took deep root in me when I waseighteen.' After Sri Aurobindo had left Bengal forPondicherry, Mrinalini passed her days in religiouspersuits in devoted remembrance of Sri Aurobindo.

The Partition of Bengal in 1905 brought SriAurobindo out into the open as a leader with themantric power of the Word in his voice and pen.He came over to Calcutta as Principal of the newlyset up National College, now Jadavpur University.

Now when the national feeling against the Parti-tion flared up to a white heat, Sri Aurobindo directedthe revolutionary workers to utilise the situation andexpand and strengthen their activities; guided the Na-tionalists in the Banaras Congress in formulating theirpolicy and organising their work; started the Yugan-tar, a Bengali daily, and joined the Bande Mataram,the English daily of Bipinchandra Pal. These twoNationalist organs carried his lofty ideas of love ofcountry and its freedom, of a flaming zeal for serviceand sacrifice, of quiet courage and confidence,into the hearts of his countrymen, particularly theyouths. He published in the Bande Mataram his se-quence on The Doctrine of Passive Resistancecharting out a nece

india and her future

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