Much has been thought and written on the nature of history, and the debate whether it is linear or cyclical in development has never been resolved. It may also be asked whether the linear progress is just the course between two supposed milestones of the historical cycle i.e., the beginning and the end which are one and the same. The thought about the cyclic nature of universal phenomena in general and historical movement, in particular, originated from the very time when man began to speculate over them. The credit of developing the earliest idea regarding the cyclical theory, as generally believed, goes to Anaximander of Greece, who said that everything must return again to the primal mass whence it sprang only to be produced anew.1Anaximander (610-540 BC), the Student of Thales was the doyen of the pre-sophist school of thought. He believed that the universe in its beginning was an undifferentiated mass. Everything, he held, arose from this mass due to the separation of opposites. Though separated, things would, at last, come to a union. Everything must return finally to the primordial substance, completing the cycle of recurrence.2 According to his doctrine of cyclical recurrence, innumerable worlds presumably succeed one another in time.3 The creation of things is, according to him, injustice in the sense that by becoming what they are, they rob the infinite, and justice demands their return to the infinite.4 There is thus an eternal cyclical recurrence of the process of separation from and return to the primordial substance. The interpretation of human history in these cyclic terms evidently fascinated Plato and the same doctrine reappeared in one of the most famous passages in Virgil who perhaps used it to adorn the paean of optimism inspired by the Augustan pacification of the Hellenic world.5 The question regarding the reappearance of the bygone things which Virgil did not face was answered centuries after by Shelley when he asked to the ‘West Wind’: “If winter comes can spring be far behind”? In the last chorus of his Hellas he began with a Virgilian reminiscence:
The world’s great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The Earth doth like a snake renew. . . .6
The cyclic theory had been the core of Indian thought. The Vedas, Upanishads and all the related literature hint at the cyclic nature of things and happenings.7India has long been the land believing in the idea of universal cyclicals.Lore refers to the Universal being sprouting itself into many forms expressing its kinetic nature. Upanishads are vocal on the infinite being taking the finite forms. Purana refers to Vishnu with its vishalibhava i.e. the expanding nature taking its multitudinous universal form, its infinite incarnations and withdrawal to its potent static stage once again to express its potentials acquired through the cycles of manifestations and withdrawals. Even one comes across a lot of artistic expressions that bring forth this idea of manifestation and withdrawal.
According to Hindu thought, the universe is without beginning or end. It never believed that the universe has a date of birth as given by the Big-Bang exponents. What is seen is only the infinite stretch of manifestation and withdrawal taking place simultaneously and continuously. Within the seeming destruction, there is creation which again holds in it the former. Creation and destruction are thus mutually embedded in each other. What one sees is the great cosmic dance wherein creation and destruction, birth and death, pleasure and pain – all merge together in an unbearable ecstasy. This philosophy is seen at its best in the image of Nataraja, the cosmic dancer or Siva, the auspicious. Thus writes an admirer of Indian philosophy and art:
Whether he be surrounded or not by the flaming aureole of the tiruvasi (prabhamandala) – the circle of the world which he both fills and oversteps – the King of Dance is all rhythm and exaltation. The tambourine which he sounds with one of his right hands draws all creatures into this rhythmic motion and they dance in his company. The conventionalized locks of his flying hair and the blown scarfs tell of the speed of this universal movement, which crystallizes matter and reduces it to power in turn. One of his left hands holds the fire which animates and devours the world in this cosmic whirl. One of the god’s feet is crushing a Titan, for “this dance is danced upon the bodies of the dead”, yet one of the right hands is making the gesture of reassurance (abhayamudra), so true it is that, seen from the cosmic point of view and sub specie aeternitatis, the very cruelty of this universal determinism is kindly, as the generative principle of the future. And … the King of the Dance wears a broad smile. He smiles at death and at life, at pain and at joy alike … his smile is both death and life, both joy and pain. … From this lofty point of view, in fact, all things fall into their place, finding their explanation and logical compulsion. … The very multiplicity of arms, puzzling as it may seem at first sight, is subject in turn to an inward law, each pair remaining a model of elegance in itself, so that the whole being of the Nataraja thrills with a magnificent harmony in his terrible joy. And as though to stress the point that the dance of the divine actor is indeed a sport (lila) – the sport of life and death, the sport of creation and destruction, at once infinite and purposeless – the first of the left hands hangs limply from the arm in the careless gesture of the gajahasta (hands as the elephant’s trunk). And lastly as we look at the back view of the statue, are not the steadiness of these shoulders which uphold the world, and the majesty of this Jove-like torso, as it were a symbol of stability and immutability of substance, while the gyrations of the legs in its dizzy speed would seem to symbolize the vortex of phenomena?8
Modern science, too, accepts the cyclic idea of manifestation and withdrawal. According to it behind the observable world is a depth of mystery. To quote Paul Davies:
… it is possible to imagine a supermind … encompassing all the fundamental fields of nature … a directing, controlling, universal mind pervading the cosmos … Our own minds could then be viewed as localized ‘islands’ of consciousness in a sea of mind, an idea that is reminiscent of the Oriental conception of mysticism, where God is then regarded as the unifying consciousness of all things into which the human mind will be absorbed, losing its individual identity, when it achieves an appropriate level of spiritual advancement.9
Many are the examples in Indian lore that speak about the cyclic nature of the universe and its objects.
Sri Aurobindo’sidea regarding the cyclical nature of history was influenced to a great extent by his Indian background deriving from the Vedas and allied literature. True he has indebted a good deal to the German theorist Karl Lamprecht whose cyclic idea of history he used as a background to embellish with his Indian background and outlook. While theorising on the philosophy of history and its developments Aurobindo was not satisfied with merely the question of how and when a thing happened, but in answering why it happened too. He was more concerned with the factors that necessitated the happenings and thereby with the theory of causation which addresses the very question of cosmology. Here his thought was influenced by the ancient Indian postulation of Satkaryavada, the rational philosophy that points to the existence of a cause behind all effects or which says that no existence can be born of nonexistence. It is interesting to notice that discarding the unscientific notion of creation out of nothing Kapila, the teacher of Sankhya gets on with the idea of evolution or parinama. Evolution according to Kapila is a cyclical process with the Prakruti as the beginning and the end. What is seen outward is the manifestation of the unseen. Sri Aurobindo points out, “we have therefore two fundamental facts… a fact of being, a fact of becoming. To deny one or the other is easy, but to find out their relation is the true and fruitful wisdom”.10 Behind all this, the teacher of Sankhya says, is the Buddhi or Mahat which, in simple terms is the cosmic principle – the wisdom that conceives the order and principle of things. It is the primordial and ultimate wisdom or the universal spirit which expresses itself as well as withdraws.11 It is this wisdom that determined to manifest itself into the manifoldness.
According to Vedanta the real basis of the cosmic existence is Brahman or the undifferentiated consciousness (akhandabodh/asatta) which is the supreme light (chaitanya) of the ultimate Beauty. This Consciousness, splitting itself, expresses as many. On the eve of creation, which is an eternal phenomenon, the scriptures say that the universal or cosmic intelligence decides to divide itself into the many so that manifoldness of the world appears.
sokamayata. bahusyamprajayeyeti.
sotapotapyata. satapastapatvamidamsarvamasrujata
yadidamkimcha tat srushtvatadevanupravisat.
The universal soul desired to be born into the many. It sank into a long meditation. Out of the energy thus acquired it created everything and entered into all creations pervading them with itself.12
This idea is further underscored by Aitareyopanishad which says:
omatmavaidamekaevagraasid,
nanyatkinchanamishatsai+kshatalokannu sruja iti.
Before the creation of the cosmos truly there was only one soul
There was nothing as either active or inactive.
That cosmic soul decided, “I may create the worlds”.13
The unity thus expressed itself into the verity. Unity and diversity are thus one and the same like cause and effect which are inextricably intertwined. The cause is born for the effect just as the effect is within the cause. Everything is predetermined and things happen as are due. True, theory of causation gains significance in ordinary human contexts but this too is just a medium in the hands of destiny so that what are already in store must have their terrestrial expression. Causes are just factors that bring about an incident and it is for the happening of an incident the cause surfaces. What is already in store must happen either due to one cause or the other. Before an intuitive and penetrating analysis, even the theory of causation itself gets relegated to secondary importance, the cause being just a means to serve the divine end or, being inextricably intertwined, both are one and the same.
Thus to Aurobindo behind all the worldly phenomena, there is a cause or the supreme spirit which works out the cosmic web. He says: “… the material object becomes something different from what we see, not a separate object on the background, or in the environment of the rest of nature but an indivisible part and even in a subtle way an expression of the unity of all that we see.”
It is this unity everything proceeds from and recedes to.14It is this ever-expanding entity which manifests into many. Thus to Aurobindo from the being, there is the becoming. From a fathomless zero which occupied the world “a power of fallen boundless self-awake”.15 Here Aurobindo thinks in line with the Vedic view of creation, i.e., the manifestation of the primordial energy through matter. “The sages searching in their hearts with wisdom found out the bond of being and non-being . . . creative force there was, and fertile power, below was energy, above impulse”.16This was the intellectual urge of an ancient culture to have an enquiry into the primordial substance in cosmology, to seek the primary and ultimate truth
But this religious truth faced many problems with the advent of the conventional age when the followers of different creeds tried to interpret it in conformity with their physical and material requirements. That the truth discovering natural science was long imprisoned in the dark cells of the European Church is well known to history. The miserable plight of Socrates, and later Copernicus whose only crime was inquisitiveness were indeed the dark junctions of history when the cultural advancement stood arrested. But in India conventionalism confined itself to the social realms. It never penetrated to the realm of intellect, science or metaphysics which were still on with their enquiry unmarred by any imposition or suppression. What maintained the vitality of Indian culture through centuries was its inquisitiveness, objectivity and boldness to accept and proclaim the truth. As Sardar K. M. Panikkar observes, “… of all major religions of the world, Hinduism has been the least affected by the advance of science. Many observant Europeans have noticed how the basic doctrines of Hindu religion fit in with the most advanced concepts of modern science. The greatest scientific controversies which shook Christian dogma to its foundations, like the Copernican system and the theory of evolution, do not seem to touch Hinduism, which in its higher spheres contradicts no scientific belief”.17 For instance, the validity of Indian reading about the truth of the cosmic oneness is at present supported by the modern discoveries in science. Although modern science still lags behind in reaching the realms known to the eastern mystics and is totally ineffective in imbibing the highly intuitive vision through the laboratorial apparatus, there is still apparent parallelism between the views of physics and eastern world view; both envision a basic unity. The Eastern literature often refers to the indivisible reality of which all things are mere parts as illustrated in Milindapanho and in the teaching of Aswaghosha. According to Aswaghosha “What is meant by the soul as such, is the oneness of the totality of all things, the great all including the whole”.18 Modern Physics also seems to sound the same. According to Niels Bohr, “Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems”.19To Albert Einstein “what is important is the force of this superpersonal content and the depth of the conviction concerning its overpowering meaningfulness”.20 The Quantum Theory forces us to see the universe not as a collection of physical objects, but rather as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of a unified whole.21 The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole.22 Modern Science has even come to a position of negating the very difference between matter and energy. In the words of Capra:
one of the strongest parallels to eastern mysticism (found in modern physics) has been the realization that the constituents of matter and the basic phenomena involving them are all interconnected; that they cannot be understood as isolated entities but only as integral parts of a unified whole.23
Thus there is a basic unity upon which the whole world is structured, by which all the phenomena are worked out. There are the visible and the invisible of which the former is an expression and in finding out the relation between the two lies the real wisdom.24
Thus from the being emerges the becoming. It was controversial among both the metaphysicists and physicists whether the being is mutable or immutable or whether it is both. We hear of Sankara’s exposition of the Nirguna Brahman (The Supreme Being without attributes) and Madhava’s Saguna theory, and also of the condominium between the two.25 Science also speaks on the kinetic and potential forms of energy. Energy though immutable is also subjected to mutation, for there is nothing as dead matter, but the only movement. Therefore in Sanskrit, we have the term Jagath (ever moving) to denote the world. There is a permanence coincided with change, a harmonious blend of creation and destruction or what are called opposites. Here Aurobindo’s thought is influenced by the teachings of the Gita and his readings in Heraclitus, both being the exponents of world beyond the opposites, where the opposites bring out a union, a poise and rhythm, where the opposites cease to exist.26 The primary unity itself is in constant motion and change, its creation is destruction, its destruction, creation. The universal process is a transition from one condition to its opposites, and in this sense, everything unites opposites within itself.27 War, said Heraclitus, is the father of all things, War is the King of all; and the saying, like most of the apophthegms of the Greek thinker, suggests a profound truth, says Aurobindo. From a clash of material or other forces, everything in this world seems to be born. By a struggle of forces, tendencies and principles, the beings, proceed in progressive cycles, creating the new and destroying the old. To substantiate this point
Aurobindo quotes the Gita:
Thou shalt not conquer except by battle with thy fellows and thy surroundings; thou shall not even live except by battle and struggle and by absorbing into thyself other life. The first law of this world that I have made is creation and preservation by destruction.28
Creation, preservation and destruction are thus the three aspects of the being set together in an unending line, in a cyclical process. Again there is the Vedantic idea of the eternal cycles of manifestation and the withdrawal from manifestation. We hear of the Supreme Being immersed its cosmic sleep during each interval so as to manifest with all its potent force. The theory of the universal cycles is thus established by both physics and metaphysics. This is the basis of Aurobindo’s cyclical theory.29
As there are universal cycles, so also there are historical cycles. Aurobindo accepts the theory of the cyclical movement in human history instead of the linear theory of human progress. Many scholars and philosophers of History in modern times upheld the rhythmic theory though some criticized the constant motion and held that progress often brings us back to the starting point. This reminds one of the French adage “The more it changes the more it looks the same”.The concept of social cycles can be seen in the Hegelian dialectics with its clockwise three stages characterized by catastrophic movements and retrogressions.30Similar was the view of Nietzsche who revived the theory of eternal recurrence and asked:
What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!31
In his exposition of the cyclical theory, Aurobindo has been profoundly influenced by the German historian Karl-Lamprecht just as by the concept of the Vedic cycles.32Aurobindo says:
… in pre-war Germany, the metropolis of rationalism and materialism but the home …of new thought and original tendencies … a first psychological theory of history was conceived and presented by an original intelligence …the German historian, originator of this theory, seized on a luminous idea …its basic idea formulated a suggestive and illuminating truth, and it is worthwhile following up some of the suggestions it opens out in the light especially of eastern thought and experience.33
Lamprecht divided German history into various successive stages.34First, there was the symbolic age, the age of fancy and imagination when the man had no separate legal personality. Second, there was the ‘typal’ age when types or different systems were either systematically or inadvertently developed. The types or systems in the course of time put human society into grooves of customs and unchangeable traditions. The later middle ages thus witnessed the advent of the conventional age characterized by the territorial basis of political rule and the emergence of urban centres. With the Renaissance and Reformation started the fourth stage, the stage of individualism which culminated in the rational philosophies. The Romantic Movement with the reaction of feelings against too much of rationality ushered in the fifth or subjective age. The twentieth century, according to Lamprecht, was one of nervous tension with no dominant ideal. Different societies undergo theses cycles at different times in accordance with the psychic developments they attain. If this historical evolution is to be understood in the light of psychological analysis and “deduced in a purely psychological manner” one finds corresponding times and “the same course of history in the various civilizations of the world.35Though Lamprecht’s theory of these cycles is structured on the basis of German history he thought that it could be given a generalization, for every society or nation has these various psychic and historical stages to get through. But it may not be understood that Lamprecht’s was purely a psychological interpretation. Influenced by Marx, he, to a good extent, believed in the economic influence on the social and psychic life.36
Although Aurobindo was much influenced by Lamprecht, he points out some of the defects in the conceptual scheme of the German historian. It lacks a logical sequence since Lamprecht makes a mechanical jump from one stage to another. The theory of psychological cycles does not tell us anything about the inner meaning of the successive phases or the necessity of their succession.37 He does not discover the ultimate teleology towards which the historical process is moving. 38 The concept of a spiritual ultimate reality which, according to Aurobindo, manifests itself in history and imparts an immanent meaning and a final teleology to historic development is thus missing in Lamprecht. Lastly, the role of the creative intellectuals in history is not given the due recognition and the economic factors are over-emphasized perhaps of Lamprecht’s being influenced by the materialistic thought. Aurobindo speaks low of the historians who deny or put aside as of very subsidiary importance the working of the idea and influence of the thinker in the development of the human institutions.
The French Revolution, it is thought, would have happened just as it did and when it did, by economic necessity, even if Rousseau and Voltaire had never written and the eighteenth-century philosophic movement in the world of thought had never worked out its bold and radical speculations.39
However, Aurobindo says, the suggestions Lamprecht has offered us if their intrinsic sense and value are examined, may yet give some insight into the secret of historic evolution. It is the line on which, Aurobindo held, it would be most useful to investigate.40 Therefore without discarding Lamprecht Aurobindo tries to analyse the various stages the nations and societies passed through.
According to Aurobindo every society had its maiden step to the age of symbolism when the societies tried to express the wordless, invisible, intangible and transcendental realities with the help of symbols, when intuition, mysticism and imagination predominated. Even man’s language, in any civilization, was first put to script with the use of symbols. He opines that in Indian history the age of symbolism was represented by the Vedic age. During this period India’s poet-seers inlaid the knowledge of their mystic experience in the flower-bed of poetic imagery. For, while interpreting the Vedas he refuted the modern occidental readings in Indian history. A Europe with its materialistic approach and its intellect which failed to cut across the superficialities could hardly understand the wisdom of India couched in symbolic expressions.41 For instance, the various Vedic gods were the symbolic representations of the many-sided aspects of the one supreme reality. “One existent, sages speak of many ways, as Indra, as Yama, as Matariswan, as Agni”.42 Aurobindo says, the Vedic rishis ought surely to have known something about their own religion, more than Roth or Max Muller.43 It seems that Aurobindo’s thought here is further influenced by Dayananda’s Yogic interpretation of the Vedic lore. Aurobindo opines, the Vedic texts are neither ritualistic and mythological as interpreted by Sayana nor merely material and naturalistic as found in European interpretations.44 “We have instead a real scripture, one of the world’s sacred books and the divine word of a lofty and noble religion”.45But the modern generation, he says, failed to understand this, because it reads always its own mentality into that of the ancient forefathers. Therefore, an unthinking onlooker finds in them only a group of imaginative barbarians.46 To us poetry is a revel of intellect and fancy and imagination a caterer to our amusements, entertainer of man’s ordinary psychic feelings. But to the men of old, Aurobindo says, the poet was a seer, a revealer of the hidden truths to whom imagination was no dancing courtesan but a priestess in the god’s house commissioned not to spin fiction but to image difficult and hidden truths.47 For instance, the meaning of the universe, the be-all and end-all of all lives is the progressive revelation of a great transcendental and luminous reality, an ever-broadening emergence towards the ultimate. “That luminous emergence is the dawn (Ushas) which the Aryan forefathers worshipped”.48 It will be more convincing if one takes for example, the Purusha Sukta hymn of the Rik Ve`da which speaks of the sacrifice of the Purusha or Brahman and the emergence of the four-fold division of society, from the mouth, the arms, the navel and the feet of the god respectively–brahmanosyamukhamasidbahurajranyakrithauruthadasyayadvaisyampadbhyamsudro ajayatha.49 To us this is merely a poetical image with the sense that the Brahmins were the men of knowledge, the Kshatriyas the men of power, the Vaisyas the producers and support of the society, the Sudras its servants. To Aurobindo this is a symbolic expression of the idea that truth manifests in different ways, that the god has different faces–the Divine as knowledge in man, the Divine as power, the Divine as material prosperity, the Divine as service.50 Gita too says that god is the satisfier of those desirous of having knowledge, wealth, etc., and that god even condescends to the level of a servant before a devotee.51 Moreover, Aurobindo says, these divisions answer to four cosmic principles, “the wisdom that conceives the order and principle of things, the power that sanctions, upholds and enforces it, the harmony that creates arrangement of its parts, the work that carries out what the rest direct”.52 Likewise, the Gita presents the picture of Arjuna as a man subject to the action of the Nature-Force. Travelling in the celestial chariot led by the divine guide, he is fighting against the forces of unrighteousness. With the help of divine light he surmounts all the difficulties across his path. In the Vedas also we have this image of the human soul and the Divine, riding in one chariot through a great battle to the goal of a high aspiring effort.53The Divine is there Indra, the lord of the world of light and immortality, the power of the divine knowledge which descends to the aid of the human seeker battling with falsehood, darkness, limitation and mortality; the goal is that plane resplendent with the light of the supreme truth with Indra as its master. The human soul is Kutsa who constantly seeks the seer knowledge, as his name implies. The son of Arjuna or Arjuni, the white one, the child of Switra, the white mother, he is the enlightened soul open to the bliss of the divine knowledge.54 A similar interpretation Aurobindo gives to the stories of Mahabharata, especially the tale of Sathyavan and Savitri which is recited as a story of conjugal love conquering death.55 To him, this legend is, as shown by many features of the human tale, one of the many symbolic myths of the Vedic cycle.56 Sathyavan is the symbol of the soul carrying the divine truth of the being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance. “Savitri is the divine word, the daughter of the sun, the goddess of the supreme truth” who comes down and is born to save all the fallen ones from the grip of mortality.57 Aurobindo has it that this symbolism can be seen not only in Vedic India but also in the Biblical Genesis wherein one sees Adam and Eve, eating the forbidden fruit, had fallen to the earth, a symbolic representation of the soul who, being attached to the worldliness (represented by the fruit of delusion) fall from the celestial heights to the world of ignorance and mortality.
The most notable characteristic of this age was the spiritual outlook leading to a tendency to make everything in society a sacrament, religious and sacrosanct.58 But it is to be noticed that it was not rigidly binding on social life. Society was free of all religious rigidities and religion then was not a letter to human progress. It aimed at helping the individual and his soul transcend the sensual and worldly barriers and imparted to him a free and ever broadening space for his individual development. But Aurobindo says, this tendency to make everything a sacrament had its profound influence on the society in the long run, for the ethical ideology deriving from spirituality acted as the cause to a new change.59 There came in society a tendency to give everything an ethical and moral basis when the abstract spirituality and the higher truth once expressed through symbols began to recede to the background. An age of highest moral type, more psychical than spiritual thus began to crystallize. It was the dawn of the typal age.
The second .stage, the typal, is predominantly psychological and ethical. Religion here acts as the sanctifier of the social dealings and activities; it becomes a mystic sanction for the ethical motive and discipline, i.e. the Dharma.60Its time old duty of expressing the Divine Being or Cosmic principle in man ceases. Therefore Aurobindo says, there developed a firm but not yet rigid social order based primarily upon temperament and psychic type with a corresponding ethical discipline and secondarily, upon the social and economic function.61 But the social and economic forces were not the primary or sole factors; instead, the function was determined by its suitability to the type and its helpfulness to the discipline. The evolution of the theory of Varna in ancient India, during the early phase of the post-Vedic period, is an instance in point. It began to be defined on the basis of taste, character and function (Guna and Karma) and not on birth as could be seen in later periods; it was based on the idea of the honour of personal merit.62The Gita says that the four Varnas were created according to the differences in attitudes and actions of men63 The duties of the four sections were clearly defined according to the dispositions born of their own nature.64 It is the idea of social honour: the honour of Brahmin which rests on his piety and reverence for things of the mind and spirit, the honour of Kshatriya based on courage, chivalry, strength and nobility of character; the honour of Vaisya which maintains itself by rectitude of dealing, mercantile fidelity, order, liberality and philanthropy; the honour of Sudra which gives itself in obedience, subordination, faithful service, a disinterested attachment perhaps coincided with a dignity of labour.65 Likewise, the theories of Asrama and Purushardhas had their origin during this age, aiming at perfecting and ordering the life of a householder. In the Asrama system the life of Brahmin or any man who follows the Brhaminic practices is divided into four stages – the stage of Brahmachari when one spends his early life for education either in own house or in the house of the teacher, the stage of Grahastha when one, after leaving the teacher’s house, enters household life; the stage of Vana Prasthin when he, seeing his children educated and well placed, retires to the forest in renunciation, the stage of sanyasi or the seeker of the ultimate truth, the divine. Purushardhas are four in number – Dharma, Ardha, Kama and Moksha. Dharma is the religion or morality or the guiding principle of life that makes man adhere strictly to such principles like truth, justice, charity, piety, etc., in his worldly dealing. Basing on Dharma, one is directed by the Dharmasasthras or scriptures to have his economic dealings (or Ardha) so that they may not be in line with the utilitarian practices of greed and the resulting exploitation. The Ithihasa says that one who hoards more than what he actually requires needs punishment. The third element, Kama(desire) denotes any kind of desire one has in life. But the fulfilment of desires also, the Dharmasasthras say, should be done without side-tracking from the principles of Dharma. The Purushardhas thus emphasize both the right aims and right means. Such a life would lead man towards Moksha, the deliverance from the meshes of delusion, and helps him attain the divine, the ultimate peace. A blend of materialism and spiritualism, it was believed, would bridle life with principles.66 The early Christian principles of chastity, poverty and obedience offer a parallel, though at a lesser degree, to the Hindu life tenets. But as time passed, the types “ceased to have a living root in the clear psychological idea or to spring naturally out of the inner life of man”.67 The types were getting conventionalized though in a noblest way and in the end they became just superficial traditions than a reality of life.68 Thus from the very typal age the seed cause for the appearance of a new age comes; the types naturally give way to conventions.
The conventional age begins when ideas recede to the background and finally cease to exist, leaving behind mere forms and superficialities.69 The conventional age begins with a tendency
to fix, to arrange firmly, formalise, erect a system of rigid grades and hierarchies, to stereotype religion, to bind education and training to a traditional and unchangeable form, to subject thought to infallible authorities tocast stamp of finality . . . 70
Perhaps in its beginning, it has its golden age when the spirit and thought that inspired its forms were, though confined, yet living, not yet stifled to death by the growing hardness of the structure they were cased in.71 And looked from a long distance of time posterity may see in it something good and noble. For instance, a modern European who would look back to the medieval Europe may find something delightful in its distant appearance of poetry, nobility and spirituality and fail to notice the folly, inequity, cruelty, oppression and all dark aspects of those harsh ages.72 So too is the Hindu orthodox idealist who sees in it a society perfectly ordered in line with the regulations of the ethical codes.73 Aurobindo agrees, in this early conventional age there is much indeed really fine and sound that helps humanity progress. But it is just like a light which gives vision but due to the growing intensity dazzles and makes one blind. For, it is not the trueSathya Yuga (age of truth) but “an age of duplicity, age of an alloyed metal or of a hard burnished copper with a thin gold leaf covering it”.74 It is only an age of dim light extinguishing into the darkness of death and decrepitude when society falls more and more into the satanic grip of moral bankruptcy and the blasphemous ghosts of the retreated ideas. This tendency is more vivid in the evolution of caste where the outward supports of the ethical fourfold order begin to exaggerate enormously their proportions. Though in the early age birth does not have much importance in the social order due to the prevalence of faculty and capacity, it changes as education and tradition become naturally fixed in a hereditary groove. Birth and tradition gain an upper hand, and the highly ethical social outlook silently withdraws or becomes an ‘ornamental fiction’. Finally, even the economic basis begins to disintegrate. In the economic period of caste the priest and pundit masquerade under the name of the Brahmin, the aristocrat and feudal baron under the name of Kshatriya, the trader and money getter under the name of Vaisya, the half-fed labourer and economic serf under the name of Sudra.75 But when the economic period ceases to exist, privileges based on birth and family come to occupy the field.76 Mere conventions which dominated the pre-Buddhist India or pre-renaissance Europe come in. True, there may come movements and institutions to reform the system. But being isolated, they often fail to find out the old truth of symbolism, they were not intense in their attack on conventions. Naturally, in a generation or two, conventionalism would apply its iron grip on the new movement and annex the names of its founders.77This can well be illustrated in the light of the post-Vedic India when Buddhism took its birth. When Vedic religion stagnated and drifted towards conventions Buddha appeared on the scene. Born to reform the Vedic society by standing against ceremonials, caste system and exclusive priesthood, Buddha took up the old theory of Karma or the unattached (Nisanga) work that helps one attain the ultimate beauty differently called Kaivalya, Nirvana, etc. For, both Buddhism and Brahminism envision the ultimate salvation, the transcendental reality attainable to all irrespective of any distinction. The path both laid down was also the ‘Middle path’ (MadhyamikaMarga) or the path between attachment and detachmenti.e.the pure unattachment (Vairagyaor Nisanga). But it proved an irony that as time passed Buddhism became a separate creed with its own conventions and subdivisions (i.e. the Mahayana and Hinayana), making Buddha himself more an object of worship than one whose teaching, if practised, would lead to higher realities. Buddha, taken to the fold of the Brahminic divinities, began to be worshipped as one of the many incarnations of Vishnu. Brahminic ritualism thus annexed the name of the Buddha. This grip of conventionalism continues to exist until there comes a period when the “gulf between convention and truth becomes intolerable”, when the men of intellectual power strike at the bastilles of conventions and seek by their individual reason the truth society has long lost. As a result an age of Protestantism is brought in along with a sense of freedom from the prison house of conventions.78 However, it is not a desirable form of freedom, for, Aurobindo says, it is only a partial freedom and it is entirely superficial which is sought by destroying the walls of conventions and not a freedom or an eternal liberation that comes from the discovery of the ultimate truth. However he says, it is a necessary prelude to the understanding of that creative truth.Individualism never touched off the oriental life as it did in Europe. Indeed the Western dominated East neverexperienced it. During the period when individualism was raging in Europe the eastern conventional principles of society were struggling against the western-imported individualism. Aurobindo opposes the opinion of those who held that Europeanism would instil among the Orientals the feeling of individualism. To him it would be totally improbable. But Aurobindo holds, if such a thing would occur the East would follow its own bent and evolve a new social order that would be “rather in the direction of subjectivism and practical spirituality so as to help the world enquire into the very core of its being or its original nature. One may also see for instance the Spenglerian view that the non-European nations would inwardly abhor the modern destructive mechanism, be they “Indian or Japanese, Russian or Arabian”. Arthur Helps points out that the Gandhian Philosophy proves this view to some extent. But Spengler is no optimist and therefore, he doubts whether India, in the long run, could hold out against Industrialism, the idea of wealth, war and violence. But Aurobindo’s optimism cuts across all doubts.79
The age of individualism comes when it is convinced that truth is lost in the soul and practice of humanity and that the conventions are merely nonsensical and unintelligent. Now man, in spite of the natural conservatism of the social mind, at last, perceives that truth is dead and that he is living by a lie. In this individualistic age, he attempts to get back from the customary belief and practice to some sort of real and tangible truth. By this individual reason, intuition, idealism, desire and a claim upon the life he moves towards that desirable form of truth. He tends to remould religion, society, ethics, political institutions, social relations and dealings in a more vital form.80 Aurobindo says it was in Europe that individualism has taken its birth and exercised its full sway. There it began with a revolt of reason, culminating in triumphal progress of physical science. At the threshold of the individual age, the practices become mere blasphemy. The individual finds everywhere a religion which does not rest upon an ever-verifiable truth, but upon the dictum of a pope, an obsolete social code or the tradition of a church. Even in politics he finds divine rights, established privileges and sanctified tyrannies armed with oppressive powers giving a self-justification, and usurping by foul means a claim or title to exist. Society gets divided by narrow domestic walls, fixed disabilities and privileges. Adherence to truth and justice become a thing of past, and the sanctimonious divinity appears. Therefore the individual has to rise in revolt and to turn the eye of a resolute inquisition against every claim of authority. Convinced of the utter disregard of truth and the emptiness of the puffed up superficialities, he flings off the social yoke and declares the truth as he sees.81 As a means to expose the truth he strikes inevitably at the root of every practice, momentarily perhaps even the moral order of the society, it is based on the authority he condemns and the conventions he is out to uproot. He is determined to “destroy the falsehood and lay bare a new foundation of truth”. This was what we saw in the reformation movement. A personal illumination supported by theological reasoning touched off the age of individualism in Europe. A crude primitive perception of natural rights and justice resulting from the general oppression, blind faith and injustice, makes the individual think. This has its reverberation first in the religious field, the political and social fields getting stirred afterwards.82 It questions the conventional forms of religion, the mediation of the priesthood between soul and god and substitution of priestly authority for scriptural authority. This has coincided with another development, the Renaissance which in fact did more good than the Reformation. For, here we saw the vigorous return of the ancient Greco-Roman mentality, “the free curiosity of the Greek mind, its eager search for the first principles and rational laws and the high intellectuality, and the Roman’s large practicality and his sense of harmonizing life with a robust utility and just principle of things”.83 These were the factors which inspired Europe to seek the principles of order and control which all human societies call for. But there are reverts and reverses, for always this new intellectual individualism may not necessarily lead humanity to the discovery of his lost truth. In most cases, it remains a perilous experiment for the imperfect human race. Due to this the social justice, through its stark assertion, leads to the continuation of struggle and revolution, ending in an exaggerated assertion of will. For, there are absent the two supreme necessities, a general standard of truth to which all must voluntarily subscribe and some principles of a social order founded on the universally recognizable truth of things.84 The truth Europe sought through the newly discovered scientific theories, though for the time being seemed to provide it, actually led humanity to another typal age. The new orders which were the by-products of individualism again put the individual in chains. If there was once the religious lawmaker to regulate the social activities of a man now there appears the scientific, administrative and economic expert. Instead of the religio-ethical sanction, there is the scientific and rational or naturalistic motive and rule.85 For instance, Aurobindo says, we already saw a violent through the incomplete beginning of this line of social evolution in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Communist Russia where individualism was subjected to elastic collectivism, where individuals became an organized set of robots. If to quote the Hegelian or the Marxian view synthesis gives way to the thesis which expresses itself quite differently as time and place vary. Individual slavery again comes into being.86 Individualism, however, establishes the human dignity in two ways. Firstly, it now gets universally accepted that every individual as part of the society has all rights to the full life and full development of which he is individually capable.In the Fascist or Communist view, the individual is nothing but only an atom of the social body. Aurobindo quotes the proclamation of a German exponent: “We have destroyed the false view that men are individual beings; there is no liberty of individuals. There is only liberty of nations or races”.87It thereby uprooted the aristocratic norms which so far had ruled the society with the Fafnir-like horror. This conception has been accepted in full by all progressive nations and is the basis of the present socialistic tendency of the world88 Secondly, there is the deeper truth which individualism has discovered, the truth that man is the part of society he is to contribute creatively too. He finds individualism in collectivism. He is something in himself as well as a part of the collective existence. Thus it helps man play his assigned role for his fellow beings and search for more truths into his own being.89 Individualism thus leads to subjectivism. The course of the world is thus set adrift on the way to subjectivism aimed at rediscovering the substantial truths of life, thought and action which have been long lost or overlaid by the falsehood of conventional standard. The age of subjectivism sets the world on the threshold of something unknown and supra-sensual which Europe thought would be found with the help of modern physical sciences.
The materialism of the nineteenth century gave way to the new philosophies like Nietzsche’s theory of Will-to-Power.90Will-to-Power was Nietzsche’s search for the inherent spiritual power latent in man. In some circumstances, it may appear that the whole aim of humanity is a Will-to-Live. But this is not so. What man desires or should desire is not the mere preservation, but an enhancement of his state of being i.e. the greater power. Nietzsche says the triumph in the competition which was a prominent element in Greek education and culture, the artistic creation, the philosopher’s intellectual conquest of the cosmos or the ascetic’s self-conquest are the manifestations of the Will-to-Power. “The noble human being, honours in himself the man of power, also the man who has power over himself, who understands how to speak and how to keep silent, who enjoys practising severity and harshness upon himself and feels reverence for all that is severe and harsh”.91 Such men are people of master morality who are different from those having morality of slave who is “suspicious of the virtues of the powerful”. Man of the slave morality is sceptical and mistrustful of everything good. “Slave morality is essentiality the morality of utility”.92 According to Nietzsche “Man is something that ought to be overcome” because he is “like a river of filth” and he must be like “an ocean to be able to receive a river of filth without being contaminated by it”.93 Nietzsche is all adoration of “him who squanders his soul, who asks for no thanks and accepts nothing in return”, the man who “always gives and does not preserve for himself”.94 “Only where there is life is there also a will: but not a will to life – rather: will to power”. “Out of themselves”, Nietzsche says, people “must overcome themselves”.95 Man is not a seeker of the mere worldly pleasures which are fraught with sadness, for each worldly enjoyment is a death, it being fatal to the spiritual purification. There is the eternal happiness derivative of the vision of ‘beauty’. The pursuit of this happiness involves a high degree of self-discipline, for men lack great power so long as they are dominated by animal passions. Man should sublimate his impulses, employ them creatively and raise himself high. Those who attain this state are, according to Nietzsche, called Ubermenschen (supermen). Man must have an intuitive acknowledgement of his intrinsic superiority.96
The characteristic note of this subjective tendency may again be seen in the new idea about education and upbringing of the child which became current in the pre-world war era. In the medieval period, it was customary to educate according to the norms of the conventional virtue, or by the individual interest or the ideals of the teacher. But the pre-war era brought about a change. Education went a step ahead to believe that each human being is a self-developing soul and that the business of both parent and the teacher is to enable and help the child to educate himself, “to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capabilities and to grow freely as an organic being” rather than to be coaxed and pressured into any form like an inert plastic material. It was nearly a road towards searching out of the inner being of man i.e. the divine, to make education the manifestation of perfection, to have self-knowledge and many inherent potentials. “That was the knowledge which the ancients sought to express through religious and social symbolism, and subjectivism is a road of return to the lost knowledge”, says Aurobindo. Bergson’s emphasis of intuition above intellect or the latest human philosophical tendency to accept a suprarational faculty and a suprarational order of truths, Aurobindo says, are also the best examples.97Bergson, the philosopher-scientist pointed to a “reality which would be … a reservoir of possibilities”. According to Bergson “one cannot extract something from what contains nothing, nor consequently, yield something other than the perception itself”. He pointed to “a fundamental unity” concealed by the diversity, “a unity of substance which is, in reality, only the word existence hypothesised” and spoke of the “divine intentions” behind this plane of groups of objects and perceptions.98Aurobindo says, these tendencies of thought were the attempts to read profoundly and live by the life-soul of the universe and tended to be deeply psychological and subjective in their method, although they often assumed superficial and destructive appearances in their application by the lesser minds. Yet another characteristic of the age is the nations’ discovery of their soul or the spiritual and humanitarian missions with which destiny has commissioned them.Nationalism was growing into an irresistible creed, an expression of divinity itself. The sublime patriotism the Italian nationalists like Joseph Mazzini developed was the best example of integrity, at the individual, national and universal levels. Nations to Mazzini were the incarnations of the divine. God, he believed, had written each line on the brow of every nation. According to him Nations are born with a mission, which is inscribed by God “upon the cradle, the past life, the national idiom and physiognomy of each”. Nations”, he said,“do not die before they fulfil their mission” and “You cannot destroy them by denying that mission”. Nationalism was to Mazzini a universal religion soaked in love and truth, an incarnation of the divine which binds everything with the chord of the highest principle. To him “God and the people, the fatherland and humanity, are the two inseparable terms of the device of every people striving to become a nation”. Therefore he exhorted humanity:
Love your country. Your country is the land where your parents sleep, where is spoken that language in which the chosen of your heart blushing whispered the first word of love; it is the home that God has given you, that by striving to perfect yourself therein, you may prepare to ascend to him. Give to it your thoughts, your counsels, your blood. Raise it up, great and beautiful as it was foretold by our great men. And see that you leave it uncontaminated by any trace of falsehood or of servitude; unprofaned by dismemberment. Let it be one as the thought of God.
Nowhere was the nation soul having more an outward expression than in India where the Bengal resurgence of the early 20thcentury spearheaded the whole national movement. For it was more subjective, a return to the spirit latent in the bosom of India. It was, of course, aggressive, but it got the sublime touch of spirituality, a poetic imagination, inspiring pacifism and above all, as true to Indian tradition, a broadminded national message.99 To India the national movement was more defensive than offensive; it never took to imperialist aggression like that of the post-unification Germany. More or less the same was the nature of the Irish movement.100 But Germany did err in this matter. Just seeing the mirage or the unreal German spirit she made a leap in the dark.101Nietzsche’s will-to-power was mistaken as an exhortation for aggression and imperialism, and Germany was on the verge of a destructive and premature adventure102 Aurobindo argues, had Germany fully understood the real purpose of the will-to-power she would have been on the path to discover her real nation soul or the subjective force of which the lamp was lit by her great philosophers like Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Nietzsche, by her a great thinker and poet Goethe, by her great musicians like Beethoven and Wagner and all the German soul and temperament which they represented.103
But this real spirit was not fully recognized by Kaiser William I1 or Bismarck whose appearance was in many respects rather a misfortune for growing Germany. Because Aurobindo says, Bismarck’s “rude and powerful hand precipitated its subjectivity into form and action at too early a stage”.104 Bismarck could not understand the real Germany or her spiritual strength. Instead, he took it for cruelty and aggression and failed to translate the vision of the German philosophers to a proper outward expression. He could not bridge the gulf between idea and imagination and the world of facts or between vision and force.105 Here Aurobindo is much ahead of Spengler, the German philosopher-historian. Spengler believed that the doom of Germany resulted from the discontinuity of’ the Bismarckian tradition or from Bismarck’s failure to train a political elite competent to deal with foreign affairs. He cites the training of the medieval page, cloister education, the training of the Prussian officers’ corps, the English Public Schools and University Training for the Indian Civil Service and the Training for the Roman Catholic Priesthood. But Bismarck had started nothing like, to train a class of political elite to carry on his foreign policy. But the question that what would have happened even if there would have been a continuity of the Bismarckian tradition in German foreign policy is left unanswered. As is well known Bismarck was a clever ‘juggler’ who operated his foreign policy characterized by double dealings. He put the whole of Europe in a political melting pot with his destructive tactics.
Even if Bismarck had trained a School of ‘Jugglers’ it would not have any way prevented the world war or have placed Germany in good relation with foreign States. Perhaps it would have artfully delayed the World War, but would not have avoided its possibility. For, the evil cause would certainly lead only to destructive results. Thus compared to Spengler Aurobindo is more a visionary than a politician, to whom the translation of an ideal vision into a proper work alone is the panacea for the worldly ills. Bismarck failed to have a desirable transmission of the real German vision into a national work. Germany thus took her demonic appearance, lost her sublime potential and missed the real goal. And she was dragged, as time passed, to the vortex of the two world collisions. Because, according to Aurobindo, two world wars resulted from an undesirable meeting together of, or a “confused half struggle” or a “half effort at accommodation” between “old intellectual and materialistic and the new still superficial subjective and vitalistic impulses of the West”.106The wars, according to Aurobindo resulted from the formidable combination of a falsely enlightened vitalistic motive-power with a great force of an accomplished materialistic science.107 The war, however, was a blessing in disguise to some extent, because it by a salutary ruin cleared the way of all the checks to a truer development towards a higher goal. It had given a clear warning to abandon the path of arms race and aggression, war and violence and emphasized the relevance and probability of the safer ways. Aurobindo, therefore, urges all to give outward expression to the more subjective will-to-power and look beyond the red mist of the blood of war.108 Aurobindo says the soul of a nation is something great and divine. It should not be mistaken or shut up in an Armour plated social body. For, it can only stifle the growth of the inner reality and end in decay or the extinction of all that is ‘unplastict’ and ‘unadaptable’.109 According to Aurobindo there is an ideal subjectivism which is the only ideal law for social development. This, he says, is in nothing other than the searching of one’s own inner being i.e. the cosmic unity of which all are the expression. Aurobindo sublimates this theory of universal oneness or integral humanism with the touch of spirituality.110 The ideal law is that all things are one in their being, origin, their general law of existence, their inter-dependence and the universal pattern of their relations. In the course of realization of this basic unity each individual, social group or nation has its own chosen way. For, though subject to differences they adhere to one particular pattern; one must work with the diversity to work out a unity. Man has the infinite potential to do this, because he is distinguished from nature’s less developed creatures by a greater power of individuality. Being the embodiment of such a power, something divine or celestial, he is to channel it for himself and for the world he lives in. The theory of universal brotherhood has been an oft-emphasized one. Both religious philosophers and modern Universalists, have been in agreement regarding this point. The Vedic apothegm ‘Let the whole world be happy’ or Christ’s saying ‘Do unto others as you do unto you’ or the Universal brotherhood as preached by Gautama the Buddha and his principle of Dharma or piety have the same connotation. But the modern world organizations, though established to save the future generation from the perils, lack a sublime religious touch. The love and mutual co-operation they preach seem to be more to save one nation from the attack of other nations or suppress a Fafnir who may ruin the world peace than to perpetuate a kingdom of peace and divine love in the world of mortals. For instance we have got a U.N. peace force. This tells us that even after centuries of experience man has not learnt that what is ultimatelyneeded is the ‘force of peace’ rather than a ‘peace of force’ though the latter is temporarily required till the former comes to be established. Aurobindo seems to favour the view that man, whatever religion he may belong to, must go back to his own principles of Dharma so as to use them for the good of himself and others. For the religious principles are the same save for their outer shell. Man must, therefore, become an individual soul and find and manifest himself in each human being. He must think for himself and others, for a lonely salvation is not his complete ideal.One may look to the many poetic and artistic symbols of ancient India. The ideal was to help others first and oneself the last. This is what Vyasa tells through his story of Akshaya Patra, the vessel given by the sun god which held a never failing supply of food from which Draupati took her share only after serving every one, since after her share the vessel would become empty for the day. She wanted to feed all others before she fed herself. This is more expressed in the Buddhist image of the ‘Bodhisatwa’, the statue of a saint who prays for the opening of the world of salvation for all before he enters it. Because to salvage oneself, leaving others behind is not in conformity with the Buddhist theory of ‘non-ego’. The purpose which the ancient Indian scriptures offer us as the true object of all human actions is Loka Samgraha or the holding together of the human race. But while translating this vision into reality, society should guard itself against slipping once more into the state of totalitarianism that quells individualism. Both society and individual must grow side by side, aiding and being aided by each other, for no state or legislator, no church or priest can “cut him rigorously into a perfect pattern” or give him a “mechanical salvation”.“Always he is the traveller of the cycles and his road is forward”.111 Besides, only the growing individuals can help their nations grow, and to close them up in the armour-plated socialbody is to chain society’s own feet. Freedom and harmony should be compatible. True, the individual belongs to the race-type or the nation. But if by a part of himself he belongs to the nation, by another he exceeds it and belongs to humanity. Therefore the community or the nation must stand as a “mid-term and intermediary value between the individual and humanity”. As the individual grows so also the nation must. It is the sum total of its individual aspirations to grow along with other nations, helping them to grow and imbibing their values. But in the universal progress of the nations, they have, like the individuals, the right to be themselves, their just claim, as against any attempt at domination by other nations.112 They must assert this right not only for their own sake but for the interest of humanity as well. The nations must thus help each other and progress on the path of giving and take. As the individuals live by the lives of other individuals, so must the nations by the lives of other nations, subjecting the materials getting from each other to the laws of one’s own nature. For, the means may not be the same though the end is. As the individuals grow from within “the free development of the community or nation from within is the best condition for the growth and perfection of mankind”. Therefore the ideal law of all nations should be to bring their life in harmony with the human aggregate and contribute their share for the growth and perfection of beauty. The nations must help their men transcend the human limitations of the society, race andnation and to find themselves as the parts of humanity at large which they lead.113 Freedom in harmony is thus the only law of human progress.
END NOTES
- Frank Thilly, A History of Philosophy, Allahabad, 1984, p. 25.
- Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy New York, 1961, p. 63.
- The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Paul Edwerds (Ed), NewYork, 1967, Vol – l, pp. 117-118.
- Ibid, p. 118.
- Arnold Toynbee, A study of History (Abridged by Somervell, London, 1962, pp. 251-252.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley,Hellas: Chorus
- Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Calcutta, 1968, Vol-l, p.7.
- Grousset, (Tran. C. A. Phillip), India (‘The Civilization of the East’ Series), London, 1932, pp. 252-3.
- Paul Davis, God and New Physics, New York, 1983, p.210.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Pondicherry, 1982, p. 78.
- Sri Aurobindo Library Centenary Edition, Vol – 15, p. 6.
- Taittiriya Upanishad. 6.
- Aitare`ya Upanishad. I. 1.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Pondicherry, 1984, p.667.
- Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Pondicherry, 1984, p.1.
- Radhakrishnan and Moore, Tradition of Indian Philosophy, London, 1967, pp. 23-24.
- M. Panikkar, Hindu Society at Cross Roads, Delhi, 2018, pp. 106-107.
- Aswaghosha, The Awakening of Faith, D.T. Suzuki (Trans), Chicago, 1900, p.55.
- Niels Bohr, Atomic Physics and Description of Nature, New York, 1958, p.57.
- Albert Einstein, Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, published by the conference of Science,Philosophy and Religion in their relation to the Democraticways of life, New York, 1941.
- Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, Colorad0, 1976, p.124
- Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, New York, 1958, p.107.
- Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, Colorad0, 1976, p.299.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Pondicherry, 1982, 78.
- Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, London, l971, Vol- I, pp.512-513.Also see B .N.K. Sarma, Sri Madhva’s Teachings in His own Words, Bombay, 1979, pp. 144-45.
- Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Pondicherry,l987, pp. 37, 201.
- Frank Thilly, cit, p.33.
- Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Pondicherry, 1987, p.37.
- P. Verma, The Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, Pondicherry, 1989, p.35.
- The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy, J. O. Urmson (Ed), London. 1967, p. 160.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Selected Writings, New Delhi, 1995, p. 205.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle-The Ideal of Human Unity- War and Self-Determination, Pondicherry, 1985, p.2.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle-The Ideal of Human Unity- War and Self-Determination, Pondicherry, 1985, pp. 1-3.
- Karl Lamprecht, What is History? Five Lectures on the Modern Science of History, London, 1905.
- Ibid, p. 6.
- Aurobindo Library Centenary Edition, Pondicherry, 1970, Vol-15, p.2.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle-The Ideal of Human Unity-War and Self-Determination, p. 1.
- Sri Aurobindo Library Centenary Edition, Vol-15, p. 2.
- Sri Aurobindo, Benkim-Tilak-Dayananda, Pondicherry, 1970, p.9.
- Ibid39.
- Ibid.
- Ibid, p. 40.
- Ibid.
- Sri Aurobindo Library Centenary Edition, Pondicherry, 1970, Vol. 15, p. 5.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle-The Ideal of Human Unity-War and Self-Determination, p. 5.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p.42.
- Purushasuktha–
- Sri Aurobindo Library Centenary Edition, Vol-15, p.6.
- Gita 16.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle-The Ideal of Human unity-War and Self-Determination, p.6.
- Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, p.18.
- Ibid.
- Sri Aurobindo’s preface to his Savitri.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Sri Aurobindo Library Centenary Edition, Vol-15, p.6.
- Ibid.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle – The Ideal of Human Unity – War and self-Determination, p.
- Sri Aurobindo Library Centenary Edition, Vol-15, p. 6.
- Ibid, p.7.
- Gita. IV-13.
- Gita. XVIII – 41, 42, 43, 44.
- Sri Aurobindo Library Centenary Edition, Vol. – 15, p.7.
- Manu, 11. 2, 13. Kamathmatanaprasasta 2. To act solely from desire for reward is not laudable. Ardhakameshwasaktanamdharmajnanamvidhiyathe 11. 13. The knowledge of the Dharma is prescribed only for those not given to desire and acquisition of wealth. Also see Apasthambha, I. 6.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle-The Ideal of Human Unity-War and Self Determination, 7.
- Sri Aurobindo Library Centenary Edition, Vol-15, p.7.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle-The Ideal of Human Unity-War and Self-Determination, p.8.
- Ibid.
- Sri Aurobindo Library Centenary Edition, Vol-15, p.9.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid, 8.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle-The Ideal of Human Unity-War and Self Determination, p. 10.
- Sri Aurobindo Library Centenary Edition, Vol-15, p.11.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle – The Ideal of Human Unity-War and Self-Determination, p. 10.
- Arthur Helps introduction to the abridged edition of Spengler’s The Decline of the West, New York, 1932.
- Sri Aurobindo Library Centenary Edition, Vol – 15, p. 12.
- Ibid, p. 14.
- Ibid, p. 15.
- Ibid.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle-The Ideal of Human Unity-War and Self-Determination, p.20.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle-The Ideal of Human Unity-War and self Determination, p. 20.
- Sri Aurobindo Library Centenary Edition, Vol-1.5, p.20.
- Ibid.
- Ibid, pp. 18-19.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Translated by R. J. Hollingdale, London, 2003, p. 196.
- Ibid, p. 197.
- Nietzsche: Selected Writings, New Delhi, 2001, p.88.
- Ibid. p. 89.
- Ibid. p. 99.
- Thilly, Op.Cit, p. 504.
- Sri Aurobindo Library Centenary edition, Vol-15, pp.18-19.
- Henry Bergson, Philosophical Intuition (Lecture given at the Philosophical Congress in Bolonga, April 10th Henry Bergson – Key Writings, (Keith Ansell Pearson and John Mullarkey Ed.), New Delhi, 2014, pp. 285-302.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Sri Aurobindo Library Centenary Edition, Vol-15, pp. 34-35.
- Ibid, p. 34.
- Ibid, p. 35.
- Ibid34.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle-The Ideal of Human Unity-War and Self- Determination, pp.35-36.
- Sri Aurobindo Centenary Edition, Vol. 15, pp. 26-27.
- Ibid.
- Ibid, p. 36.
- Ibid.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 497.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle – The Ideal of Human Unity – War and-self-Determination, p .60.
- Ibid, p.63.
- Ibid, p. 64.
Discussion about this post