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The problem of
universal religion has been not only urgent but
inevitable, especially with the development of
science. Spiritualism or spiritual life that
previously delighted in rejecting the material
world, and renouncing all that savoured of the
materialistic and sensate, had to come to terms
with matter. This is the modern phenomenon. It
is likely that in some form it had occurred in
the past. The achievement of a balance between
the spiritual extreme and the materialistic
extreme is the goal of all religious process,
and that it is struck by their oppositional
integration is a fact of evolution. This is the
logic of the conflict or adjustment of
environment with heredity in the field of
psychology.
Comparitive studies in Indian culture by Westerners in the early decades
of this century have high-lighted the
differences between the Indian (Eastern) and the
western (European) approaches to reality and
life. Swami Vivekananda undoubtedly realised the
basic stress in the two hemispheres. He states
the basic stress in France as the “political
independence of that country.” Britain has
always’ a give and take policy’, whereas the
Hindu has always the goal of spiritual
independence in the forefront of his aims.
“This is the
national purpose : whether you take the Vaidika,
the Jaina or the Bauddha, the advaita,
visistadvaita, or the dvaita - they are all of
one mind. Leave that point untouched and do
whatever you like, the Hindu is unconcerned and
keeps silence: but if you run foul of him there,
beware you court your ruin.” (Vol. V. p.45B)
Further, Svami
Vivekananda refers to the kind of advice given
to the West, and compares it with that given to
the East :
“Jesus Christ, the God
of the Europeans has taught
‘Have no enemy,
bless them that curse you. Whosoever shall smite
Thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other
also. Stop all your work and be ready for the
next world; the end of the world is near at
hand.”
Our Lord in the Gita
says :
“Always work with
great enthusiasm. Destroy your enemies and enjoy
the world”. (Vol. V. p.453 ff)
This appears to be
ironical but it reveals that what the West needs
is the renunciation of action and realisation of
the Next or Higher world, whereas India requires
the dedication to this world. Hence the advices
are different. This recalls the Upanisadic seer
who told the devas, the asuras and the manavas
to practise dama, dana and daya by uttering the
multi-meaninged imperative ‘Da’. To each
according to his need - this is the advice of
the knowing teacher.
Buddha, said Svami
Vivekananda, ruined us by teaching the
renunciation whereas Christ ruined Greece and
Rome by teaching them the same way. (Vol. V.
p.454). However both these doctrines are
controverted by the modern spirit of utilitarian
materialism that is pervading the entire globe.
It is necessary to
recognize that good qualities are not the
privileged monopoly of any one race or nation or
religion. Both the East and the West have their
own goals. With India the prominent idea is
mukti or liberation from all bonds : with the
Westerners it is dharma - that which makes for
happiness in this world and in the next
according to rules established. “This moksa path
is only in India and nowhere else.”
(Vol.V.p.446)
The broad distinctions
between the eastern, or Hindu, ideal and the
western ideal are given by Svami Vivekananda.
Sri Aurobindo is more
explicit and full in his appraisal of the
distinctions between the Eastern and Western
Spirit. In the remarkable essays in reply to
Mr.W. Archer who asked the question whether
India was civilized, Sri Aurobindo in a most
trenchent form lists why India is civilized and
why the West cannot be civilized at all.
Continuing the same topic in his essays on the
Defence of Indian Culture he eloquently and
fully explains the spiritual value of Indian
Culture.
Perhaps the
super-journalist is right in exclaiming that
“East is East, West
is West And never the twain shall meet”
(Rudyard Kipling)
Sri Aurobindo clearly contrasts the spirit
of the East with the West.
The Graeco-Roman
culture is predominantly mental and
intellectual, and the modern European culture is
predominantly materialistic, whereas India
continues to manifest her spiritual tendency.
And India in essence or quint-essence expresses
the Asiatic way of life. Perhaps we have
yet to be able to explain how China today is
seeking to express the spiritual, for in fact
she is now out-Russianising the Russian way of
revolution, a dialectical materialism, with its
militant crudeness. Whilst the West tries always
to impose her pattern of life by force of arms
and by other ways less honourable even in her
conversion through religion, India’s method has
always been an infiltration of the world with
her ideas. This was a fact even during the
period of her being conquered by the West. There
is an increasing infiltration of India’s
spiritual thought into Europe and America. The
testimony of three entirely different minds of
the greatest power in this field, Emerson,
Schopenheur and Nietzsche, shows how deeply they
have been influenced by Indian thought.
Critics of Indian
religion and philosophy from the West have not
been able to judge except from their own
standards, or rather from their levels. Indian
thought had symbolically and significantly
explored the possibilities of these levels, and
the standards for each level have been
established clearly. Thus, religion too falls
into groups or levels: there is a natural
religion suitable to men or cultures which is
based on the appreciation of the transcendent
in Nature - for such, annam or rayi is the
Brahman. For those to whom the life-principle or
breathing principle is important the highest
religious or spiritual principle is prana -
prana is Brahman. For the mentalistic groups,
mind is brahman, and for the intuitive minds or
groups, vijnana is Brahman. But for the
highest group Ananda is Brahman. Religion of
the last group goes beyond all the earlier ones,
and it is for this that all the other religions
make one yearn. The Upanisad has clearly
shown how these levels of contact with reality
happen, and how men have different levels.
As are men so are their religions or their
apprehension of God.
“The tendency of the
normal western mind is to live from below upward
and from out inward” says Sri Aurobindo. (p. 23
F.I.C.)
From annam or matter it
proceeds slowly and gradually towards the
spirit, if necessary, by a series of negations,
as to the nature of the Ultimate Reality. It
arrives in the spiritual in the lives of some of
its most profound thinkers. But in most, it
stands at different levels. We can discover by a
study of the Western mystics and philosophers
how the different schools represent different
conceptions of the Ultimate. Materialism,
Vitalism, mental ism, transcendentalism
(super-mentalism), are but many ways or levels
of defining the Ultimate; which however is all
these and something ‘more’ and beyond. This
India discovered in the very dawn of her
history. Her aim has been to find a basis of
living in the higher spiritual truth, and live
from the inner spirit outwards; to exceed the
present way of mind, life and body; to command
and dictate to external nature. As the old Vedic
seers put it “their divine foundation was above
even while they stood below, let its rays be
settled deep within us. nicinah sthur upari
budhna esam asme antar nihitah ketavah syuh.
(p. 2k F.I.C.)
The Indian concept of civilization and
attainment are broadly
“More
high- reaching, subtle, many sided, curious and
profound than the Greek,
More
noble and humane than the Roman,
More
large and spiritual than the old egyptian,
More
vast and original than any other Asiatic
civilization
More intellectual than the European
prior to the 18th century possessing all these
and more it was the most powerful,
self-possessed stimulating and wide in influence
of all past human cultures.” (p. 50 F.I.C.)
Sri Aurobindo does not
think that with such a radically different type
of being and development of culture-attitude,
East and West could meet from two opposite sides
and merge in each other and found, in the life
of a unified humanity, a common world culture!
Though this has been fondly hoped for by the
early workers in the field of comparitive
religion, philosophy and culture such as for
instance the theosophists.* But the problem is
not so easy and not so harmoniously simple.
Further the cult of secularism has begun to take
shape as a solution to the problems of justice
in the context of conflicts and differences of
religion, caste, class, race and so on.
Compare this with
what was the attitude of theosophists towards
Svami Vivekananda. cf. Collected works Vol. 111.
p. 208 ff .
And “the tendency to secularism is a necessary consequence of the cult of
life and reason divorced from their inherent
inlook” (p. 95 FIC). ‘Western civilization is
proud of its successful modernism’ and “it
labours to establish unity by accommodation of
conflicting interests and the force of
mechanical institutions, but so attempted it
will either not be founded at all or will be
founded on sand.” (p. 46 FIC). It is being
currently realised that, as Sri Aurobindo put
it, the purely intellectual or heavily material
culture of the kind Europe now favours bears in
its heart the seed of death, (p. 8). And today,
the life of the West is still chiefly governed
by the rationalistic ideas and a materialistic
preoccupation, (p. 19 FIC).
* Sri Aurobindo p. 19
“Theosophy with its comprehensive combination of old and new
beliefs, and its appeal to ancient spiritual and
psychic systems, has everywhere exercised its
influence far beyond the circle of its professed
adherents. Opposed for a long time with obloquy
and ridicule, it has done much to spread the
belief in karma, reincarnation, other planes of
existence, evolution of the embodied soul
through intellect and psyche to spirit; ideas
which once accepted must change the whole
attitude towards life.”
It is one of the claims
of modern writers that we should make spiritual
truths intelligible, that is to say, put them in
the language of the common man or address them
to the common intellect. And old criticism of
any writer was that he did not put everything in
the logical form of alternatives where one of
them was right the other was wrong. This of
course is most fruitful for debate and helpful
also in fixing meanings for and against.
However, our spiritual life does not seem to
accept this logic of debate or dichotomy or
dillemma, except in the field of rational
dialectic. There have been many who have
approved the systems of thought on the basis of
their conforming to their logical demands of
self-consistency and non-contradiction.
One of the contentions
of western writers on religion was that India
has no religion in the sense in which the west
has; secondly, since God has only a second
place in Vedanta (Advaita), God is not really
God. What perhaps may be conceded is that India
has spirituality, not religion. No one
aspires for realization of God except as a means
to liberation. God is not the goal but only a
means to the ultimate and which is liberation
from all samsara, the cycle of rebirths, from
all karma. The attainment of God is of course
equated by some vedantas with the attainment of
liberation also. Though one might attain the
luminosity and other resplendent attributes, and
one possesses all godly attributes with the
exception of the creation-sustention-destruction
of the world (jagad-vyapara-varjam), one is
promised that once one attains that condition
there is no return to the condition of bondage -
no return, no return says the Veda
(anavrttisabdat). This is to emphasize that once
one realises the ultimate condition or divine
status, one does not fall into the lower, nor is
there any possibility of such a fall.
Religion as the union
with god attained through worship, prayer,
surrender, dedication and discrimination,
service and self-offering in all one’s parts, is
personalistic. God is conceived as a supreme
Personality, the Uttama Purusa who is different
from the individual and from Nature; who is
beyond the lower personal and the higher
impersonal. The western concept of God could
hardly conceive of the Divine as Impersonal, and
it is not strange. The attempt of Islam to
conceive of God as an impersonal being, or one
who cannot be contained in any form whatsoever,
could hardly lead one to the devotion that is
characterised by personal service to the Divine.
A religion without worship but only with mere
surrender or prayer involves quite a strain on
the human imagination and vision. It may be true
that for the really enlightened and advanced
types, the Impersonal as a freedom from all
personal and individual or private relations
spells a great experience of limitless bliss.
However, for the individual who experiences this
Impersonal it may reveal a cosmic greatness and
largeness, or brihatva, that is exciting
consciousness relieved from all sensate and
mental limitations. The experience of the Void,
sunya, and Vast is Impersonal. It is not an
abstraction but something which our mind and
sense cannot grasp. The Divine has been again
and again declared to be beyond the reach of the
senses and the mind and breath, though it is by
its power that one senses, mentates and breaths.
Beyond both, there is the experience of the
Uttama Purusa, which is the experience of God as
He is in Himself, and not for us.
The experience of the
Gita is undoubtedly very important, and its
unequivocal utterance about the divine
personality or God-head which includes all the
perfect qualities (vibhavas or Divya gunas), and
excludes all that savours of imperfection, and
which is truly universal and omnipervasive and
omniscient, grants the spiritual aspirant’s
religious experience a richness that is
unmatched. It is because the impersonal of the
rationalist excludes those imperfections that
ensue out of a sense of partiality and
discrimination even in the interests of truth,
goodness, and purity in the affairs of men that
one delights in the impersonal. But it is not
either religious or spirituality, being but an
abstract quality worship at best. In this it is
clear also that the individual soul does not
really seek the impersonal status, albeit
without any name and form in the sense we give
to the things of our experience, though this has
been proposed by distinguished scholars and
mystics too. The Nirvana of Buddhism is
different indeed from the brahma-nirvana, for it
is the richness of the Brahman that one gains,
and one’s individual private nature is
transfigured into that of the Brahman’s
supracosmic nature.
The Absolute is
Godhead, and none other. This Absolute has
several statusses. His supreme triplicity of
Sat, Cit and Ananda are available in all
manifestations or projections of the One Divine.
There is therefore the possible experience of
Brahman in all, and as All. The manyness is
present all through, and its play with the
oneness is the eternal emergence and immergenee
in time and in space. All these many are in the
one as even the one is in all the many. The
discovery of the One in the many is as important
a part of philosophy as the discovery of the
many in the One. Religion and spirituality are
definitely engaged in this process of discovery
even as in a lesser way science and philosophy
are doing in the fields of Nature and
Psychology.
Sri Aurobindo reveals
that the general attitude of rationalism or
intellectualism will not help solve the problems
of religion or spirituality. It cannot help even
the understanding of cultures based on the
intuitional approaches of religion and
spirituality, “The whole root of difference
between Indian and European culture springs from
the spiritual aim of Indian civilization.” It
has, as compared and contrasted with other
cultures, ‘a striking originality and solitary
greatness! ... “Not only did it make
spirituality its highest aim of life, but it
even tried, as far as that could be done in the
past conditions of the human race, to turn the
whole of life towards spirituality.” (p. 139
FIC).
Distinguishing between
religion and spirituality, Sri Aurobindo points
out that “religion is in the human mind the
first native, if imperfect, form of the
spiritual impulse.., Spirituality indeed moves
in a free and wide air far above the lower stage
of seeking which is governed by religious form
and dogma ... it lives in an experience
which, to the formal religious mind, is
unintelligible.” (p.140 FIC).
The western mind deems
a fixed intellectual belief to be all important
part of a cult. It considers falsely that an
intellectual truth is the highest verity and
even that there is no other. However, the
highest verities for Indian thought are truths
of the spirit. Intellectual truth is only one of
the many doors to the Infinite. It is many-sided
and not narrow one. Most varying intellectual
beliefs can be equally true because they mirror
different facets of the Infinite - they form
many side-entrances which admit the mind to some
faint ray of the supreme Light ! “There
are no true or false religions, but rather all
religions are true in their own way and
degree. Each is one of the thousand paths
to the One Eternal.” (p.142 F1C) In this
conception Sri Aurobindo echoes the discovery of
Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and that of Svami
Vivekananda.
Sri Aurobindo analyses
that Indian religion affirmed four necessities
for a full religious life; firstly a belief in
a highest consciousness or state of existence,
universal and transcendent of the universe, from
which all comes, in which all lives and moves
without knowing it, and of which all must one
day grow aware, returning towards which is
perfect, eternal and infinite.
Secondly, every
individual must prepare himself to become or
grow conscious of this; thirdly, it provided
a course of many-branching discipline, and
lastly, for those not yet ready for these higher
steps it provided an organization of the
individual and collective life, a framework of
personal and social discipline and conduct. “The
first three of these elements are the most
essential to any religion, but Hinduism has
always attached to the last also a great
importance; it has left out no part of life as a
thing secular and foreign to the religious and
spiritual life.” Further the core of
Hinduism is a spiritual, not a social
discipline.
Again he emphasizes
that the funadamental idea of all Indian
religion is one common to the highest human
thinking anywhere. ‘This Truth of being was not
seized by the Indian mind only as a
philosophical speculation, a theological dogma,
an abstraction contemplated by the intelligence.
It was not an idea to be indulged by the thinker
in his study, but otherwise void of practical
bearing on life. It was not a mystic sublimation
which could be ignored in the dealings of man
with the world and Nature. It was a living
spiritual Truth, an Entity, a Power, a Presence
that could be sought by all according to their
degree of capacity, and seized in a thousand
ways through life and beyond life.’ (FIC p.144)
Again he is emphatic that “the Infinite alone
justifies the existence of the finite, and the
finite by itself has no entirely separate value
or independent existence. Life, if it not an
illusion, is a divine play, a manifestation of
the glory of the Infinite.”
Sri Aurobindo, writing
on the life-breath of Hindu Ethics, says:
“The universal
embracing dharma in the Indian idea is a law of
ideal perfection for the developing mind and
soul of man; it compels him to grow in the power
and force of certain high and large universal
qualities which in their harmony build a high
type of manhood. In Indian thought and life this
was the ideal of the best, the law of the good
or noble man, the discipline laid down for the
self-perfecting individual - arya, srestha,
sajjana, sadhu. This ideal was not a purely
moral or ethical conception, although that
element might predominate: it was also
intellectual, religious, social, aesthetic, the
flowering of the whole ideal man, the perfection
of the total human nature. The most varied
qualities meet in the Indian conception of the
best, srestha, the good and noble man, arya. In
the heart, benevolence, beneficence, love,
compassion, altruism, long-suffering,
liberality, kindliness, patience; In the
character, courage, heroism, energy, loyalty,
continence, truth, honour, Justice, faith,
obedience, and reverence where these were due,
but power too to govern and direct; a fine
modesty and yet a strong independence and noble
pride; in the mind, wisdom and intelligence and
love of learning, knowledge of all the best
thought, and openness to poetry, art and beauty,
an educated capacity and skill in works; in the
inner being a strong religious sense, piety,
love of God, seeking after the Highest, the
spiritual turn; in the social relations and
conduct a strict observance of all the social
dharmas, as father, son, husband, brother,
kinsman, friend ruler or subject, master or
servant, priest, or warrior or worker, king or
sage, member of clan or caste:”
“This was total ideal
of the Arya, the man of high upbringing and
noble nature. The ideal is clearly portrayed in
the written records of ancient India during two
millenniums and it is the very life-breath of
Hindu Ethics. It was the creation of an at once
ideal and rational mind, spirit-wise and
wordly-wise, deeply religious, nobly ethical,
firmly yet flexibly intellectual, scientific and
aesthetic, patient and tolerant of life’s
difficulties and human weaknesses, but arduous
in self-discipline.”
“But even this was only
a foundation and preparations for another bigger
thing which by its presence exalts human life
beyond itself into something spiritual and
divine. ... Law and its observance are neither
the beginning nor the end of man ....
immortality, freedom and divinity are within his
reach.”
(Foundations of
Indian culture: a rationalistic critic of Indian
Culture: pp.120-1)
The basic tradition of
Indian religious epistomology was that it never
considered intellectual or theological
conceptions about the supreme Truth to be the
thing of central importance. “To pursue that
Truth under whatever conception or whatever
form, to attain to it by inner experience, to
live in that consciousness, this was held to be
the sole thing needful.” (p.145). Thus among the
basic approaches it is necessary to develop
adhyatma-yoga, inner experience, which alone can
give knowledge of anything, terrestrial,
celestial, psychological or transcendental, as
they are in Truth in their Reality, what they
are in themselves - tathatathya, yathartha.
Referring to Advaita,
Visistadvaita and Dvaita as three modes of
religion rather than of philosophy,
Sri Aurobindo points out that “The Spirit,
Universal Nature, (whether called Maya, Prakrti,
or Shakti) and the soul in living beings, Jiva,
are the three truths which are universally
admitted by all the many sects and conflicting
religious philosophies of India. Universal also
is the admission that the discovery of the inner
spiritual self in man, the divine soul in him,
and some kind of living and uniting contact or
absolute unity of the soul in man with God or
supreme Self or eternal Brahman, is the
condition of spiritual perfection,.... and the
one important truth of spiritual experience is
that He is in the heart and centre of all
existence...” (ibid).
As he remarks “the
truth announced is not peculiar to Indian
thinking; it has been seen and followed by the
highest minds and souls everywhere". The one
basic achievement of India has been this; where
other religions had failed to stamp their
culture and existence with this spiritual
quality and foundation, India has succeeded in
stamping religion with the essential ideal of a
real spirituality. It brought some living
reflection of the very highest spiritual truth,
and some breath of its influence, into every
part of the religious field. “The ideas of Maya,
Lila, divine Immanence are as familiar to the
man in the street and the worshipper in the
temple as to the philosopher in his seclusion,
the monk in his monastery, and the saint in his
hermitage.” (p.147)
The West has cherished
the aggressive, and quite illogical, idea of a
single religion for all mankind, a religion
universal by the very force of its narrowness,
one set of dogma, one cult, one system of
ecclesiastical ordinances. Sri Aurobindo calls
this a narrow absurdity, this grotesque creation
of human unreason; this vast attainment of the
spiritual consciousness, the consciousness of
the real nature of spiritual experience to be of
the Infinite which embraces all variety of
spiritual experiences and knowledge, even as
Svami Vivekananda held. (p.148)
Man lives at different
levels, conscious of some of them but
unconscious of some others. The majority of
mankind lives on the surface. “Even the choice
spirits raised from the grossness of the common
vital and physical mould by the stress of
thought and culture do not usually get farther
than a strong dwelling on the things of the
mind. The highest flight they reach - and it is
this that the West persistently mistakes for
spirituality - is a preference for living in the
mind and emotions more than in the gross outward
life, or else an attempt to subject this
rebellious life-stuff to the law of intellectual
truth or ethical reason and will, or aesthetic
beauty, or to all three together.”
Further “ a mere
intellectual, ethical and aesthetic culture does
not go back to the inmost truth of the spirit:
it is still an Ignorance, an incomplete, outward
and superficial knowledge”. It lacks clearly the
power to transform the outer in the light of the
inner of which it is ignorant. However, the
several religions reveal their inability to
arrive at the transformation of their outer by
the light and power of the spiritual. “The
Christian discipline was not only to despise the
physical and vital way of living, but to
disparage and imprison the intellectual, and
distrust and discourage the aesthetic thirsts of
our nature. It emphasized against them a limited
spiritual emotionalism.”
The development of the
spiritual, or its evolution so to speak in
humanity, moves in different channels. Whilst
the Indian dynamism registered the spiritual
attainment and its application to the varied
levels of human behaviour, the other movements
had proceeded on the lines of the intellect, and
the vital and physical. But as man is not merely
spiritual but also intellectual, vital and
physical, there intervene periods of obscuration
or decay of each one of these, in order to make
up for the final integration. This danger is, if
it is a danger, something that has occurred
everywhere. Spiritual illuminations gathered
from the past tend to be obscured and stifled by
the lower levels of the intellect which claim to
be self-sufficient of course for its limited
work. This has happened even in Greece and the
other western countries.
“The old knowledge
was prolonged in a less inspired, less dynamic
and more intellectual form by the Pythogoreans,
by the Stoics, by Plato and the Neo-Platonists;
but still in spite of them and in spite of the
only half-illumined spiritual wave which swept
over Europe from Asia in an ill-understood
Christianity, the whole real trend of Western
Civilization has been intellectual, rational,
secular, and even materialistic, and it keeps
this character to the present day.” ( p. 169 )
Sri Aurobindo points out that what hurt
Buddhism and determined its rejection in the end
was not its denial of a Vedic origin or
authority, but the exclusive trenchency of its
intellectual, ethical and spiritual positions.”
(p. 172)
The aim of religion is
the most important single factor in the
evaluation of its workings. The one
question is whether it is consistently
developing the spiritual, in the context of
man’s life on earth. In so far as this
spiritualising of life on earth and the
liberation of man are available in any
religion, to that extent that religion may be
said to have met the needs of man.
Sri Aurobindo considers
that religion is not open for all kinds of men.
In this there is the recognition of the
differences between stage and stage. In India,
according to him, two complete external stages
have taken place. “The early Vedic was the first
stage: religion then took its outward formal
stand on the natural approach of the physical
mind of man to the Godhead in the universe, but
the initiates guarded the sacrificial fire of a
greater spiritual truth behind the form.
The Puranic-Tantric was the second stage: then
religion took its outward formal stand on the
first deeper approaches of man’s inner mind and
life to the Divine in the Universe, but a
greater initiation opened the way to a far more
intimate truth and pushed towards an inner
living of the spiritual life in all its
profundity, and in all the infinite
possibilities of an uttermost sublime
experience.” There has been a preparation for
the third stage which belongs to the future.
(p.180)
The grand scheme of
Indian spirituality is presented by Sri
Aurobindo with imaginative insight and with
authentic understanding. “No Indian religion is
complete without its outward form of preparatory
practice, its supporting philosophy and its Yoga
or system of inward action, or the art of
spiritual living.” (p. 191) And “the business of
the ancient Rishi was not only to know God, but
to know the world and life, and to reduce it by
knowledge to a thing well understood and
mastered with which the reason and will of man
could deal on assured lines, and on a safe basis
of wise method and order.” (p. 190) The ripe
result of this effort was the shastra.
Sri Aurobindo is
convinced that mankind is still no more than
semi-civilised, and that it was never anything
else in the recorded history of the present
cycle. He recalls that each civilization has
contributed to the development of man: “Greece
developed to a high degree the intellectual
reason and the sense of form and harmonious
beauty; Rome founded firmly strength and power
and patriotism and law and order; modern Europe
has raised to enormous proportions practical
reason, science and efficiency and economic
capacity; India developed the spiritual mind
working on the other powers of man and exceeding
them, the intuitive reason, the philosophical
harmony of the Dharma informed by the religious
spirit, the sense of the eternal and the
infinite.” (p.202)
The spiritual force
always tried to go beyond religion, and religion
constantly tries to effectuate the spiritual
aspiration.
Man has to pass beyond
religion itself, which is at present just what
his own intellectual reason is able to deem as
the spiritual and Ultimate. There is a truth
which goes beyond all reason and its
constructions, and it is to this eternal that
the inward spirituality awakens and moves.
Indian religion is spiritual religion.
It can be seen that Sri
Aurobindo, in his exposition of the nature of
religion vis a vis spirituality, clearly
propounds that religions are of an imperfect
order trying to mediate between the highest
spiritual condition and the intellect, reason,
instinct and physical ways of human
understanding. Man’s emotion creates certain
needs, even as his will and intellect have their
own thirsts to quench. Religions, like so many
others, demand not merely the satisfaction of
one part of man but the whole man. It is one of
the greatest drawbacks of certain thinkers and
psychologists to omit or play down the
importance of certain facets of man’s unified or
unifying nature. Indeed in a dynamic
conception of man there is a constant interplay
of the triple modes of man’s nature, his
emotion, will and thought, which in terms of
Samkhyan guna psychology could be equated with
the tamas, rajas and sattva. Their interplay and
integration or to adopt the modern term
“homeostasis”, is one of profound significance
in all the areas of human conduct. Religion is
no exception to this. Sri Aurobindo, following
the ancient clues, has most luminously expounded
the ideal and purpose of the quartets -
caturvarga, caturvarna, caturadhikara of Indian
religious and spiritual formulations. He has
shown how they answer to the fourfold nature of
man as a physical, vital, mental and supramental
being, leading up to the spiritual existence
that is the transcendent goal. Considered
in the light of the exposition, almost all the
problems of religions seem to fall into their
respective places. In a way the archetypal forms
or patterns of religious behaviour have been
exhibited in the light of revelational vision,
and human intellects all over the world have
drawn their light and reflections in themselves
according to their need and circumstances.
Sri Aurobindo does not
enter into the field of comparitive religion in
the sense that he does not expound the doctrines
of each religion and appraise the principles of
absolute Religion, if there is to be one, or of
a universal religion as such. He undoubtedly
speaks about the necessity for humanity to
attain significant unity, and propounds the
Ideal of Human Unity. There are two major goals
in religion, firstly it is the individual’s
realisation of his own spiritual nature, and
consequently his freedom, from whatever limits
or circumscribes that nature; secondly, his
association which that realisation brings about
with God, the Universal Absolute Reality and
with His creation or creatures in terms of
spirituality. And nothing that in any sense
abridges this sense of communion in the truly
spiritual and universal sense would be
worthwhile.
Recent studies on
comparitive philosophy between Sri Aurobindo and
western Philosophers* have revealed how, through
independent spiritual intuitions directly
sought and gained, Sri Aurobindo has
reformulated with great advantage some of the
major discoveries in philosophical and spiritual
or mystical fields. His synoptic concern for a
world philosophy or spirituality has made him
present a universal philosophy of the Spirit in
the true sense of that
* S.K. Maitra : Meeting of the East and West in Sri
Aurobindo’s
philosophy. Ed.
Haridas Chaudhuri & Frederic
Spielberg:
Integral Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. 1960.
term, which embraces organismically the
several levels, undoubtedly hierarchical and
real, and dynamically supported by the highest
super-cosmic consciousness itself. While clearly
realising that philosophy must concern itself,
and could concern itself, with that which falls
within the ambit of Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo
pointed out that the consciousness that man
already has and possesses is much less than what
he, in fact, can attain to. The super
consciousness is something that is available to
man, provided he would open out to it, and this
superconsciousness is the only integral
consciousness that can truly grasp reality in
its fullest and real sense. Piecemeal
intellectuality, depending on piecemeal
systematisations, distort our consciousness and
make for illusions of system. Fragmentation of
reality is as much as distortion when one seeks
to act in terms of partial knowledges or
non-universal uniformities or laws.
In one sense
intellectual or empirical philosophies suffer
from this radical defect - they leave out other
states of consciousness except the waking or
sensorial. Religion seeks to make up for this
defect by opening up fields or levels of
consciousness which philosophy has shut out. It
becomes more comprehensive and satisfying. But
even religions do not lead up to the highest
limits of divine gnosis. Therefore we move from
one religion and from one sect to another, in
order to discover higher openings of
consciousness not merely intellectually
satisfying or emotionally soothening, but truly
universal and liberating man from his thraldom
to the limitations of sense, imagination and
sleep or absorption. Spirituality transcends
these, and makes one enter into a true infinity
and eternity. Religions, in varying degrees, are
pointers to transcendence but the price paid for
that is dedication to the Ultimate Reality or
Spirit in love and total self-offering for the
sake of that Experience of God alone.
Sri Aurobindo is
convinced that a rationalistic religion can
never lead to that summit of spirituality which
every individual can attain. If such a
rationalistic religion is framed, as indeed it
has been done, though it really does some good
in so far as it infuses faith in reason, it
otherwise leaves out much that is invaluable.
Reason can help to get rid of religionism with
all its spurious qualities of creed and cult,
ceremony and symbol, its churchianity or ‘false
theocracy’ depending on the ‘Kingdom of the
Pope’, rather than on the Kingdom of God in the
heart. For it is the ‘deepest heart, the inmost
essence of religion’.... is the essence, is ‘the
search for God and the finding of God’ (Human
Cycle p.173 Pondicherry ed.) But reason is
valuable in so far as it mediates between the
supra-rational intuitions and the human mind,
and makes intelligible to man his own higher
capacities of generalisation and inference.
However “the limitations of reason become very
strikingly, very characteristically, very
nakedly apparent when it is confronted with the
great order of psychological truths and
experiences which we have kept in the background
- the religious being of man and religious
life.” (ibid p.170)
An attempt was made to
expound a Religion of Humanity in the West.
“Religion of
Humanity was mind-born in the 18th century - the
manasa putra of the rationalist thinkers who
brought it forward as a substitute for the
formal spiritualism of ecclesiastical
Christianity.” (Ideal of Humanity ch. 34)
“ It tried to
give itself a body in Positivism which was an
attempt to formulate the dogmas of this
religion, but on too heavily and severely
rationalistic a basis for acceptance even by an
Age of Reason. Humanitarianism has been its most
prominent emotional result. Philanthropy, social
service and other kindred activities have been
its outward expression of good works...
Democracy, socialism pacifism are to a great
extent its by-products or at least owe much of
their vigour to its presence..” (ibid)
According to Sri Aurobindo its basic principles
are
I. Mankind is the godhead to be
worshipped and served by man.
II. Respect, service, progress of the
human being and human life are the chief duty
and chief aim of its human spirit.
III. No injunctions of old creeds,
religious, political, social, cultural are valid
when they go against the claims of Humanity.
This religion of
humanity is today holding the field, though
higher light is breaking in. It was a
corrective, even as Science has been a
corrective, to the aberrations of religious
beliefs. It is a basic question however “whether
a purely intellectual and sentimental religion
of humanity will be sufficient to bring about so
great a change in our psychology” (ibid. p.)
However, it is to be noted that we are even
today under the impact of the religion of
humanity, now known as humanism. It is also a
religious attitude that seems to have had a
great fascination for Swami Vivekananda and his
followers. Undoubtedly based on” a sort of
primal intuition” as Sri Aurobindo puts it, its
aim was, and still is, to recreate human society
in the image of three kindred ideas, liberty,
equality and fraternity, (ibid) *
However, a religion of
humanity having these triple ideals which are
indeed mystic in origin cannot really be
successful unless fraternity becomes the
unifying principle. “It is the real key to the
triple gospel of the idea of humanity.
Fraternity cannot merely rest on belief or
analogy, but on something more abiding and more
thoroughly rooted in a spiritual experience of
the ‘fatherhood or motherhood of God’”. Though
freedom, equality and unity, according to Sri
Aurobindo, are the very nature of the soul,
unity cannot be equated with fraternity except
by the intuition of the ‘fatherhood’ of God.
Thus the concept of a religion of humanity
demands the acceptance of the ‘fatherhood of
God’ for its very success. Svami Vivekananda’s
and Mahatma Gandhi’s clearest bases for service
of the Daridra Narayana or humanism requires a
spiritual basis which rationalism has been
unable to grant. **
* Dr K.C. Varadachari’s Radio Talk on Sri
Aurobindo Paper on Talk on
Svami Vivekananda.
** Age of Reason
: Thomas Paine
Rights of Kan
: -do-
Therefore “Reason is an
insufficient, often an inefficient, even a
stumbling and at its best a very partially
enlightened, guide for humanity in that great
endeavour which is the real heart of human
progress and the inner justification of our
existence as souls, minds, and bodies upon the
earth.“ ( p.163 Collected works. Human
Cycle Ch. xiii ).
One of the moat
distressing phenomenon of the present day is the
misunderstanding of the very nature of
Spirituality. Dr B.G. Tiwari, in his book on
Secularism & Materialism in Modern India,
complains that almost all the thinkers of the
Renaissance are secularising because of their
love for activity, and that true spirituality
lies in inactivity or passivity. It is a
complete misstaternent of the spiritual
position. One has to distinguish between
spiritual and secular activities, the one
leading to the inner and central reality of
one’s being and the other leading outward to
surface reality. The former leads to the
permanent whereas the latter leads to the
impermanent. The achievement of the
sthita-prajna state or aksara condition is
midway towards the Ultimate. There is a state of
Brahman which is that of the Supreme Purusa or
Person, as stated by Sri Krsna, whose activities
are of divine nature. The Samkhyan purusa is of
the nature of aksara, but not of the status of
the Supreme Person. Therefore, to say that all
activity is secular is a misnomer. Secondly, the
vyavaharic activities of dharma are not also
secular when they are done as kartavyam karma
acts which ought to be done. Ethical activities
which are determined by one’s svadharma and
svabhava can either lead one towards spiritual
or secular life. By no kind of argument can it
be claimed that one can pursue both at the same
time - live and act secularly as also live
spiritually and remain a passive (saksi)
witness. However, for one who pleads that the
whole universe is illusion and that all activity
is mithyacara, there is obviously no relevance
for dharma-performance, even as a purificatory
measure for removing the illusion.
What the renaissance
thinkers had attempted was to deepen the
spiritual activity to embrace the secular
activities as well. It is to reveal that all is
Spirit, and activity also is spiritual.
Such spiritual activity differs undoubtedly from
the activities governed by, or motivated by, the
desires and attachments (artha-kama) and. by
egoism (ahamkara). But when spirit begins to
descend into one’s being, all activities are
taken over by the Spirit and there takes place a
gradual sublimation of the quality of action,
and man realises freedom of his nature or rather
resumes his role as a spiritual being in a
material world plastic to the stress of the
divine nature and action. The secular begins to
be absorbed in the spiritual. Therefore the
activity of matter and egoism which advaita
chastises as absolutely contradictory to the
spiritual is mistaken for the divine activity
that the Gita pleads for. It is clear that
Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, and Bal Gangadhar
Tilak had taken their lead from the Gita in
pleading for divine action rather than accept
the self-stultifying inactivity suffers from its
gunas, the God’s activity is absolutely free
from guna-activities.
While it is to be
conceded that in a natural world, a world which
has not a ray of divine presence, the rule of
the three gunas would be absolute, and all
activity would be deemed to be of the nature of
rajas, yet when the divine activity or presence
is assumed or brought down or descends, all
activities including those of rajas would get
transformed, or annulled, or sublimated. It is
therefore not possible to accept the view that
all activity is secular and taboo. As it was
pointed out by Sri Krsna, no one can cease to do
or act, for that is not merely the nature of
Nature but of the Spiritual itself. Sri
Aurobindo points out that the Spirit has two
poises, the poise of Non-activity which supports
the Activity, as well as the poise of Activity
which cannot be totally severed. Spiritual
activity embraces the secular, whereas secular
activity inhibits the spiritual, because of its
seeking to be particularised.
The divine life is
therefore a spiritual inactivity, but is
spiritual activity based on supreme peace. It is
then that all activity exudes the peace that
pervades all existence. In any case, if a divine
humanity should be the goal of existence, then
it becomes clear that we should divinise all
activities or at least aim at it. If we concede
that all is Spirit, that all is divine, even
then it behoves us to remove all that obstructs
that divine. If it is something that cannot be
dissipated by mere textual knowledge, then it
follows that this reverse activity or
removal-activity should be cultivated. Sadhana
becomes absolute condition, and sadhana is
activity that uplifts.
It is of greatest
interest to find that Sri Aurobindo was deeply
concerned with the problem of Indian Vedic
Religion as the most universal religion from
which all religions, by a process of
diversification and particularisation or
localisation, had come into being. Each one
of them has emphasized one aspect, and by that
fact had ceased to be capable of remaining
universal, though the emphasis was for some time
at any rate put forward as a universal truth.
They can be universal truths without being at
the same time comprehensive Truth. It is the
ambiguity in the word universal that has lead to
the deep misunderstanding. Universal means that
which is for every one; universal also means
that which comprehends all or includes all. This
is what Svami Vivekananda also emphasized in
respect of all religions other than the Vedanta
which is parent of all; But no one has really
presented fully this aspect.*
Sri Aurobindo has
further expounded the nature of evolution of the
Spiritual Man in his Life Divine. Man evolves
from the lowest to the highest via religion. The
studies in comparitive religion work out
themselves on the lines of social organisation
from the tribal, communal, clan, national and
then individual. Organized religions have this
unit-character of sectarianisms. Tribal gods vie
with each other to become national gods. But the
truly intuitive and mystical experiences of the
individuals constantly tend to liberate man from
his boundaries. The religions remained private
possessions, permitting no entry of new or alien
members. However, the proselytizing religions
had tended to embrace all mankind. This
undoubtedly helped the concept of One God and
one Humanity. Each human being therefore was
given the chance to lose his private nature or
merge himself in humanity. This was undoubtedly
a great advance. But its basic defect was its
emotional appeal rather than a rational appeal.
The age of reason
induced this attempt at a universaling of
religion by denuding it of its emotionalism.
However the tendency has been to take an oblique
turn towards approaching the heart of man
through service of man, rather than liberating
the understanding which has not become even to a
little extent rational, appealing to the head or
logic. Rationalistic religions which had
intervened have provided certain basic lines of
universal understanding of the problems of
religion. But these have not succeeded beyond a
certain limit. Man has begun to be alienated
from both his heart and head. The ascent to a
higher form of universalism than reason had
become necessary. Neither emotionalism nor
humanitarianism, neither reasoning logistically
nor scientifically, could satisfy the soul of
man. A deeper level, or a higher truth, had to
be found. This is the Spiritual level or the
life of Spirit which transcends the levels of
religion that we have known so far. This
was what was mooted by the Upanisadic seers as
the Brahman or Absolute Spirit from whom alone
mankind can receive its highest benediction.
This is the Universal Godhead who is the meaning
of all existence, intelligence - consciousness,
and all delight.
* Idea of God : K.C. Varadachari.
Visistadvaita : (Travancore
University lectures II).
This is the spiritual
principle which every individual must arrive at
in his spiritual progress or evolution for such
a person perceives all as One Spirit. As Sri
Aurobindo puts it “ A diversity in oneness is
the law of the manifestation, the supramental
unification and integration must harmonize the
diversities, but to abolish them is not the
intention of the Spirit in Nature. (Life Divine
p. 790 Am. ed.)
The study of the
Aurobindonian approach to religion and
spirituality reveals how the evolution of
spirituality proceeds through several stages,
and as it ascends, more and more of the truly
spiritual gets manifested. Religions are
institutions founded by great seers for the
promotion of the orderly and harmonious
development of man towards his highest destiny.
It is of course a fact of great importance to
realise that in a world of multiplicity, variety
develops, and this itself imposes inequalities
that tend to develop barriers or walls of
separation which lead to conflicts of all sorts.
The only solution to this problem, the only way
to make these separative walls less opaque and
movable or removable, is to develop the inward
life, not of religion but of spirituality.
Hinduism claims this universal quality that
belongs to the spirit. It makes meaningful the
social organisation and the hierarchy of values
for the gradual evolution of the divine type of
man. The higher we go, the clearer becomes the
vision that reveals the meaningful ness of
progress, and the unity of the Spirit through
all the diversity. Sri Aurobindo sees in all
religions the impulse to move higher; but
untouched by the ever descending spirit into
lower formations, these religions tend to either
break up or deteriorate into fanatical creeds to
be sustained and supported by lower nature or
emotion. That mystical religion is about the
best which leads to an openness to the higher
descent*.
In the main lines of
his thought Sri Aurobindo agrees with Svami
Vivekananda. He agrees that at the present
moment in the world’s history not only India
needs the verification of its spiritual
activity, which unfortunately was neglected by
denial of all activity as inconducive to
spiritual realisation, but demands the descent
of the spiritual transcendent force. It would be
wrong to introduce rajas, the material element
into the body spiritual of India, but it is
necessary to bring down the truly spiritual
force - the supermind - or vijnana - which in
one sense is the spiritual aspect of the
original of the prakrtic rajas. It is the only
force that can tame the rajas of the West and
the tamas of the East, and uplift both to the
transcendent state beyond even the sattva of
prakrti.
*
Sri Aurobindo has made references to
Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroaster, Chinese books
in the life Divine and to Islam in the Ideal of
Human Unity. But there is no attempt to present
their systems as a whole, as modern writers or
theosophists have tended to do.
Practical guide to Integral Yoga -
2nd ed, 1965.
p. 384 - “The Indian systems did not
distinguish between two quite different powers
and levels of Consciousness, one which • we call
the Overmind and the other the true Supermind or
Divine Gnosis. That is the reason why they got
confused about Maya and took it for the Supreme
Creative power.” |
