Individually, Indian are the most wonderful people in the world: full of hospitality, gentleness, innate spirituality. But whatever happened to the collective consciousness of the nation ? The gap between the very rich and the extremely poor is constantly widening nowadays, thanks in part to the economic liberalisation. If only the very fortunate would care for their less flourishing brethren.
But it needs Mother Theresas' and books like the City of Joy to remind us that the dirty work in India cannot be done by its own people. This widening gap, this sickening unconcern about the other, was most evident during the plague of 94. This plague was actually a boon, a divine warning; because what did it show us ? That in the Malabar Hill district in Bombay, which has become the most expensive Real Estate property per square foot in the world (yes, even before Tokyo), people were still dumping their garbage on the street, without a second thought. That next to Malabar, there lies one of the worst slums of Bombay and that none of privileged who live in Malabar had a thought for them during the plague.
That in Surat, one of the richest cities of India, thanks to the diamond trade, its citizens let the most filthiest filth accumulate, without thinking twice what it will do to those who live near it. That India is a vast dump of garbage. Not because it is too poor to process it and store it properly, BUT BECAUSE IT DOES NOT CARE, BECAUSE THE TAMAS IN THIS COUNTRY IS SO VAST, SO DEEPLY INGRAINED IN THE COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS, THAT NOBODY GIVES A DAMN FOR THE OTHER.
When an Israeli, who said that everything happens in his country with guts, asked his Indian counterpart how it was done in India, he was told: with luck ! And it is true that there is some divine grace in India, borne out of the centuries of tapasaya o its yogis, to reach safely on its roads from one point to an other.
And the bus driver who overtakes in the curve, must be unconsciously knowing it... Look also how Indians are in the habit of pushing other people, whether it is to enter a plane, or exit a cinema. Or how they so innocently ignore those who have been queuing for hours at some railway counter, by jumping at the head of the queue. And it is not only the poor, but also the rich, who have this habit, witness the checking in at airports. Dishonesty is also a lack of collective discipline. Glimpse how the Indian man is often cheating, whether it is the cement which is mixed with ashes, the change not tendered exactly, or the rich man who swindles the Income tax, by keeping lakhs of black money, gold and jewels in his house, when he could very well afford to pay a little more taxes and put his money in his bank? It is said like this that one third of India's wealth is in the black.
For make no mistakes, India is a wealthy country. The poverty is only there because of the mismanagement, the dishonesty, the tamas and the inheritance of wrong structures. For Indians must be with the Jews the best savers in the world. And they don't save in abstract concepts: they go in for solid gold, land, cash - and that from the little shopkeeper to the business magnate. Where is all this money going? Again lack of discipline, lack of concern for the nation, disregard for what one's egoism will do to the country.
India is going to overcome its colossal indiscipline, her people will rise, her politicians will change; she will also last through all internal and external threats. Thus, whatever foreigners and India's own "secular" Indians say, the land of Bharat, the cradle of the mighty Vedas, the Mother of so many saints, poets, great artists, philosophers, revolutionaries, will survive. After all, it has already come through the unspeakable barbarism of countless Muslim invaders, the soul-stifling British colonial rule -and 40 years of "secular" socialism.
But then what? For what? By the middle of next century there will be no more forests cover left in India. Its population will have long crossed the billion mark and will overflow everywhere, stifling any progress, annihilating all efforts. India's cities will be so polluted by their millions of cars that it will be impossible to breathe any more. India's rivers will be so poisoned by industries, that all living life will long have disappeared from it. There will be no drinking water left, except imported mineral water.
Fortunately, there is a growing ecological awareness in India, and movements led by Medha Patkar, Shri Baghuna, or the lawyer Mehta, who are doing wonderful work. But they often stand alone, because as long as the people of India will not be educated, their work is doom. But ultimately, is it fair to blame the Congress, or even the British (who nevertheless started the massive deforestation for their railways and killed hundreds of thousands of tigers)? Is there not something else in the Indian psyche that is to blame? Where is the root of this massive unconcern for one's environment; this total disregard for beauty, whether it is the terrible ugliness of the cities in Punjab, or the appalling filthiness in Tamil Nadu ?... And, maybe, for once, the Hindus are to blame.
The Ganges seems to be the perfect illustration of a religion which enjoins a thousand purification rites and yet has allowed her own Mother earth to be defiled. Here is a river that Hindus have held most sacred for centuries, nay millenniums; to bathe in it is to purify oneself of all bad karma; to die here is to be reborn in Light. Yet what do all Hindus do with their sacred Ganges? They defecate in it; they throw in all their refuse; they let their dead float down the mighty river, AS IF THEY THOUGHT THAT THE SPIRITUAL PURITY OF THE WATER CAN NEVER BE OBLITERATED BY MATERIAL DIRTINESS.
Why this contradiction? Why this immense paradox which may be indeed at the root of India's sure slide towards ecological catastrophe? Not the politicians, nor the British, but an apparent flaw in the Hindus' mentality?
Sri Aurobindo believed that at some time in their history, the absolute, intense aspiration of the Hindus for the beyond, their eternal quest of God, got so one-sided, that they started neglecting Matter.
India's sages began thus withdrawing more and more in their lofty caves in the Himalayas, her yogis slowly lost track of the physical envelope, this earthly body, which after all holds the soul and is the sacred house where we live and has to be kept clean and healthy -and neglected this earth, which gave us so much beauty and hence has to be preserved and protected as the symbol of gratitude from our soul... ...And gradually, an immense inertia, a terrible indifference, a great tamas overtook India.
It is this great Tamas, this tremendous spiritual negligence for the Material, that allowed successive hordes of Muslims to sweep over India. It is this disinterest to the worldly that permitted the British to submit her for two centuries. It is this apathy to the physical, that tolerates today India's rape and plunder by those politicians, who are messing up Her future and jeopardising Her very existence.
But Sri Aurobindo also tells us that it was not always so. the Rishis of the Vedas cared both about the worldly and the other-worldly. They has been farther than any seer in ancient history, yet catered to the material:: "O son of the body, O Fire, thou art the Son of heaven by the body of the Earth (Rig-Veda III.25.1.). Thus once, India was a land of beauty and abundance; its inhabitants had respect for its trees, its animals, its water, because they believed that everything was God.
Her forefathers had devised spiritual guidelines for all aspects of life, from the highest to the lowest: the great art of Hata-yoga which has come down to us throughout the ages, or the ancient medicine of Ayurveda, are symbols of that ancient all-encompassing divinity in life.
But this India of old is not dead. Sri Aurobindo asserted that India's dharma is still alive and that a great spiritual Renaissance is bound to take place. When, this renaissance materialises, when Indians wake-up and open their eyes to their great destiny, when the Spirit of the land of Bharat will look again at Matter, then will India's environment be redeemed, as if by magic. For the circle will have been completed and the Great Seers' prophecy will have come through: " "He is the child of the waters, the child of the forests, the child of things that move. Even in the stone he is there."
But this India of old is not dead. Sri Aurobindo asserted that India's dharma is still alive and that a great spiritual Renaissance is bound to take place. When, this renaissance materialises, when Indians wake-up and open their eyes to their great destiny, when the Spirit of the land of Bharat will look again at Matter, then will India's environment be redeemed, as if by magic. For the circle will have been completed and the Great Seers' prophecy will have come through: " "He is the child of the waters, the child of the forests, the child of things that move. Even in the stone he is there."
Auroville, the International city near Pondichery founded by the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1968, and where a 1000 people from 25 countries live together, has shown how fast the earth can be redeemed, even when the task looks hopeless. When the first settlers arrived, Auroville was a barren plateau of red earth, with no trees left, except a few palms and one or two banyans. Yet old temples still showed records of a once abundant land with forests and wildlife. But indiscriminate tree cutting and heavy monsoons, washed away all the good topsoil in the sea, creating huge canyons and the water table had gone extremely low.
The early Aurovillians first stopped the rain water from washing into the sea by erecting earth bunds wherever they could. Thus the water table slowly went up again. Then, they proceeded to plant a million trees, protecting them with thorns from goats and cows, which are a mortal danger to India's ecology. When these trees started growing up, they shed their leaves, which with the help of rain water, started rotting on the ground, recreating in a few seasons a fertile topsoil.
Today Auroville is a vast forest, animal life has come back, the canyons are slowly filling up, and villagers have so much firewood, that they do not cut trees any more. Yet these same villagers still keep on planting cashewnut crops, a harmful tree, which has to be sprayed many times with deadly pesticides and whose only value is its international market price. India is slowly killing its most precious possession, as no Muslim invader or European coloniser, ever managed to do. Without its land, India will be like a great soul without a body, unable to manifest itself.
INDIA, SPIRITUAL LEADER OF THE WORLD
Has Western civilisation reached the end of the road ? Each culture has its own uniqueness: the Greeks were great thinkers, the Indians unsurpassed spiritualists, the Egyptians superb occultists. The West's genius is undoubtedly materialism, its immense capacity to achieve material perfection and its great vitality. But materialism has its shortcomings and ultimately, because it blanked out spirituality, except in a superficial and ritual manner, it may bring in the decline of Western civilisation.
The first signs of its weaknesses are already there for everyone to see: the collapse of communism, the erosion of capitalism with recession and unemployment and the raging wars in Yugoslavia and the ex-USSR republics; these wars are bound to spill-over in mainstream Europe, even if it is in an indirect manner by an influx of refugees. That the United States still survives as a superpower, should not deceive anybody: often the core is weakened, even if the giant stills carries on with a few steps before collapsing to the ground. History does not happen in a few years. Materialism is doomed.
"For my part, wrote Sri Aurobindo in 1910, I see failure written large over all the splendid and ostentatious achievements of Europe. Her costliest experiments, her greatest expenditure of intellectual and moral force have led to the swiftest exhaustion of creative activity, the complete bankruptcy of moral elevation and discouragement of man's once infinite hope...System, organisation, machinery, have attained their perfection. Bondage has been carried to its highest expression, and from a passion to organising external liberty Europe is slaying her spiritual freedom. When the inner freedom is gone, the external liberty will follow it, and a social tyranny more terrible, more inquisitorial, and relentless than any that caste ever organised in India, will take its place. The process has already begun. The shell of external liberty remains, the core is already eaten away. Because he is still free to gratify his senses and enjoy himself, the European thinks himself free. He does not know what teeth are gnawing in to the heart of his liberty"!
The other reason for the failing civilisation of the West, is that it greatly misused the mastery it had achieved over technology and the material. Instead of putting this mastery to the service of truth, instead of turning it towards the spirit of evolution, it used it for domination and the satisfaction of the Western man's senses.
What about Asia then ? In Japan, only codified, externalised forms of the past greatness of Shintoism and Zen Buddhism survive, although it must be said that Japan preserves in its women something of the old spirit. It is hoped that its success as the most powerful industrial nation today will not totally blank whatever remains of old inner genius of Japan (minus the cruelty).
But look at China: communism has killed most forms of Buddhism and Confucianism, making of the Chinese one of the most materialistic nations in the world. And behold what the Chinese did to Tibet, eradicating a 2000 year old tradition of tantric Buddhism in a few decades. This is a karma which China will have to repay one day.
And what of India? During all the dangers, threats, aggressions, pitfalls, perils, mistakes, that the land of Bharata went through in the aftermath of the glorious Vedic epoch. From the disdaining of Matter and the physical by her yogis, which triggered the great Tamas; the stiffening of the caste system; the fossilisation of its society; and the first foreign incursion by Alexander. To the successive Muslim invasions, which would have wiped out any culture, any civilisation in 10 centuries of furious onslaughts.
Yet India's spirituality survived, it was preserved by its people in their hearts, when their temples were destroyed, in their flesh when it was burnt, in their souls, when they were killed. And they were reborn again and again, to fight for the continuation of true Hinduism.
India also survived the immense threat of European colonialism, which has annihilated the souls of so many countries, some more powerful than India. The British came, conquered... understood nothing... left nothing... and India's spirituality remained. It survived the cruel partition of its ancient land, tearing its limbs into Pakistan and Bangladesh; any other nation might never have recovered from such a maiming.
It survived the road to socialism charted by Nehru, the stifling oppression of state bureaucracy and corruption. It survived the dangerous politics of non violence, which Mahatma Gandhi propounded for so long and which activated not only the division of India along Hindu-Muslim lines, but also sowed the seeds of inter-caste fighting. It survived the Mahatma's sterile policies of Charkha, Brahmacharya and Khadi. It survived the Chinese onslaught in 1962.
It survives today the Hindu-bashing of its westernised elite, which is all set to wipe out whatever is left of Hinduism, to replace it with prototypes that have already shown the world over their total failure. It is also hoped that it is going to survive economic liberalisation, the onslaught of modernity and the egotism of becoming a powerful nation.
And finally that it will also survive the ecological holocaust that is taking place in this country. And if it survives all these dangers, as it survived other dangers for 7000 years, then India will enter the 21st century not only as a world power, industrially, socially and militarily, but also as the only nation in the world where true spirituality will still be alive.
For we have lost the truth. we have lost the great sense, the meaning of our evolution, the meaning of why so much suffering, why dying, why getting born, why this earth, who are we, what is the soul, what is reincarnation, where is the ultimate truth about the world, the universe... But India has kept this truth. India has preserved it through seven millennium of pitfalls, of genocides and attempts at killing her santanam dharma.
And this will be India's gift to this planet during the next century: to restore to the world its true sense. to recharge humanity with the real meaning and spirit of life. India will become the spiritual leader of the world : "It is this religion that I am raising-up before the world, it is this that I have perfected and developed through the Rishis, saints, and Avatars, and now it is going forth to do my work among the nations. I am raising forth this nation to send forth my word...When therefore it is said that India shall rise, it is the Santana Dharma that shall rise, it is the Santana Dharma that shall be great. When it is said that India shall expand and extend herself, it is the Santana Dharma that shall expand and extend itself over the world. It is for the Dharma and by the Dharma that India exists".
Rise up, O India of the Vedic ages. Thou livest in the hearts of all thy people. Rise up O Westernised "secular" India, because thou art also the true India. Realise in your hearts the genius of the country which is yours. Stop comparing it to a civilisation, which is crumbling and cease equating it with parameters that are not hers. Wake up to the greatness of thy country. Not only the past greatness, which thou seekest to repossess in its music or in its temples, but the greatness that IS, there, waiting to be grasped again, waiting to be brought down concretely. Rise up O India, to the greatness that IS in you. Rise up O true India.
Ah, we are coming back again full circle to the wonder that WAS India, the India of the Vedas and the Upanishad, which our dear friend A.L. Basham criticised as being militant and politically disunited. But the truth was that they were united in their diversity, that it was much more democratic and allowed much more freeplay and freedom, individually and collectively, than the India of today allows. Let us again reread history, let us look at India, not through the Western prism, but with the ancient wisdom that She has bestowed upon us.
For indeed, this is one of the most amazing paradoxes of today's world: here you have a country, India, which rates today as one of the poorest on this planet, which is disregarded by most Western nations (and many of its own people), as irrelevant, backward, too bureaucratic - and lately, as a hotbed of Hindu fundamentalism.
Yet, India holds the key to the world's future. For India is the only nation which still preserves in the darkness of Her Himalayan caves, on the luminous ghats of Benares, in the hearts of her countless yogis, or even in the minds of her ordinary folk, the key to the planetary evolution, its future and its hope. This knowledge which once roamed the shores of the world from Egypt to China, is today lost everywhere. Europe has now entered a turbulent Age; it will take a long time before it unites in spite of the near uniformity of its races and religions. The West, in its thirst for materialism, does not know anymore where it stands and has lost this precious knowledge, which India still holds, alone in the world.
The 21st century then, will be the era of the East; this is where the sun is going to rise again, after centuries of decadence and submission to Western colonialism; this is where the focus of the world is going to shift.
And as when India used to shine and send forth Her Dharma all over the Orient: Japan, Thailand, China, Burma, or Cambodia and influence their civilisations and religions for centuries to come, once more She will emit Her light and radiate, Queen among nations: "India of the ages is not dead nor has She spoken Her last creative word; She lives and has still something to do for Herself and the human peoples. And that which She must seek now to awake, is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the Occident's success and failure, but still the ancient immemorial Shakti recovering Her deepest self, lifting Her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and vaster form of Her Dharma. (Sri Aurobindo)
The political problems which India has faced since Independence are either intense regionalist cravings in her different states; or covert - and sometimes open separatisms. This is due to a too strong centralised and heavy-handed Government at the Centre, who not only wants to know everything, control everything, but whose bureaucracy is so pervasive, so omnipresent everywhere, that it stifles all attempts at trying something new, fresh, out of the old patterns.
The political problems which India has faced since Independence are either intense regionalist cravings in her different states; or covert - and sometimes open separatisms. This is due to a too strong centralised and heavy-handed Government at the Centre, who not only wants to know everything, control everything, but whose bureaucracy is so pervasive, so omnipresent everywhere, that it stifles all attempts at trying something new, fresh, out of the old patterns.
Today, nothing is decided without the Prime Minister, no major decision such as the naming of a Congress Chief Minister, is made except by him, the result of which is that everything comes to a standstill, because nobody dares to take any initiative and everyone always refers to one's immediate superior and so on till it reaches the top. The Prime Minister also often holds too many portfolios; and one wonders how he has time to rule the country. This old Congress policy of centralising everything in its hands has to go.
One has to trust the Indian people, their courage and spirit of initiative. It may be because of this constant heavy-hand since independence, that so many separatisms have sprung-up. Let Punjab manage its own affairs alone, it is truly the granary of this country and it deserves the right to utilise the funds it generates for the welfare of its own people. Let Tamil Nadu give a free rein to its Dravidian culture; why should Delhi decide that Hindi be the language spoken in Tamil Nadu? And the Congress' opportunistic alliances with regional parties in Tamil Nadu, once the DMK, next the ADMK, does not make sense; it just breeds small dictators who exploit the people's natural gentleness and their tendency to worship. Let Assam assert its own traditions, even if it looks like drifting away from India.
The key to India's oneness is DIVERSITY and the unifying element is found in its ancient Hindu culture -'Indu'- culture which has influence so much all Indians, be they Hindu, Christians, or even Muslims, witness Bangladesh and Pakistan who have women heads of state.
India's Dharma is not Hinduism, it is the knowledge preserved throughout the ages of a Higher plane than surface life, of states of being which superimpose our ordinary mind and lead like a pyramid, towards the highest Reality, Sat-Chit, Truth- Existence. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: "A wider spiritual culture must recognise that the Spirit is not only the highest and inmost thing, but all is manifestation and creation of the Spirit. Its aim must be not only to raise to inaccessible heights a few elect, but to draw all man and all life and the whole human being upward, to spiritual life and in the end to deify human nature".
But you have to give breathing spaces to the vast mosaic which is India. Let Indian Muslims rule their own communities, as long as they recognise India's sovereignty and keep within the framework of the Constitution. Let the Christians worship in peace in their cathedrals, so long as they do not try to go on converting more Hindus.
Once again let us listen to the wisdom of Sri Aurobindo: "India, shut into a separate existence by the Himalayas and the ocean, has always been the home of a peculiar people with characteristics of its own, with its own distinct civilisation, way of life, way of the spirit, a separate culture, arts, building of society. it has absorbed all that has entered into it, put upon all the Indian stamp, welded the most diverse elements into its fundamental unity. but it has also been throughout, a congeries of diverse people, lands, kingdoms and in earlier times republics also, diverse races, sub-nations, with a marked character of their own, developing different brands or forms of civilisation and culture...India's history throughout has been marked by a tendency, a constant effort to unite all this diversity of elements into a single political whole under a central imperial rule, so that India might be politically as well as culturally one... the ancient diversities of the country carried in them great advantages as well as drawbacks. by these differences the country was made the home of many living and pulsating centres of life, culture, a richly and brilliantly coloured diversity in unity; all was not drawn up into a few provincial capitals, or an imperial metropolis, other towns and regions remaining subordinated and indistinct or even culturally asleep. the whole nation lived with a full life in its many parts and this increased enormously the creative energy of the whole. there is no possibility any longer that this diversity will endanger or diminish the unity of India. Those vast spaces which kept her people from closeness and a full interplay have been abolished in their separating effect by the march of science and the swiftness of the means of communication. the idea of a federation and a complete machinery for its perfect working have been discovered and will be at full work. above all, the spirit of patriotic unity has been too firmly established in the people to be easily effaced or diminished and it would be more endangered by refusing to allow the natural play of life of the sub-nations than by satisfying their natural aspirations... India's national life will then be founded on her natural strength and the principle of unity in diversity which has always been normal to her and its fulfilment the fundamental course of her being and its very nature the many in one would place her on the sure foundation of her swabhava and swadharma...a union of states and regional people would again be the form of a united India"
And what is true democracy for India, but the law of Dharma. It is this law that has to be revived, it is this law that must be the foundation of a true democratic India: "It has been said that democracy is based on the rights of man; it has been replied that it should rather take its stand on the duties of man; but both rights and duties are European ideas. Dharma is the Indian conception in which rights and duties lose the artificial antagonism created by a view of the world which makes selfishness the root of action and regain their deep and eternal unity. Dharma is the basis of democracy which Asia must recognise, for in this lies the distinction between the soul of Asia and the soul of Europe."
And the most wonderful thing is that, practically, we have in India the seed of a new form of democracy. One should begin with the old Panchayat system in the villages and then work up to the top. The Panchayat system and the guilds are more representative and they have a living contact with the people; they are part of the people's ideas.
On the contrary, the parliamentary system with local bodies- the municipal councils- is not workable: these councils have no living contacts with the people. " We had a spontaneous and a free growth of communities developing on their own lines...Each such communal form of life -the village, the town, etc., which formed the unit of national life, was left free in its own internal management. The central authority never interfered with it... because its function was not so much to legislate as to harmonise and see that everything was going all right. The Judiciary would have to be revised also. It would be absurd to put back the Manu law into practice; but certainly the law of Dharma, of Truth, should be translated into a new Judicial system. Not to judge according to Western standards, its secular values, which have no relevance to India. "
The work of the legislators attempted to take up the ordinary life of man and of the community and the life of human desire and aim and interest and ordered rule and custom and to interpret and formulate it in the same complete and decisive manner and at the same time to throw the whole in to an ordered relation to the ruling ideas of the national culture and frame and perpetuate a social system and perpetuate a social system intelligently fashioned so as to provide a basis, a structure, a gradation by which there could be a secure evolution of the life from the vita and mental, to the spiritual motive. "
There is another problem which India has faced since independence, which is that of a unified language. The Central Government has tried to impose Hindi upon the rest the country, which is typical of the arrogance of too centralised a power. Why should they seek to impose on the whole of India a language which is spoken neither in the East, nor in the West, nor in the South ? But then, what could be the unifying language of India, bare English, which is spoken only by a tiny minority, as it has no roots here?
The answer is here, so simple and luminous: "Sanskrit ought still to have a future as the language of the learned and it will not be a good day for India when the ancient tongues cease entirely to be written or spoken", admonishes Sri Aurobindo . Yes, Sanskrit! Sanskrit the Mother of all tongues, one of the richest languages in the world. A dead language, you say! Impossible to revive? But that's what they argued about Hebrew. And did not the Jewish people, when they got back their land in 1948, revive their "dead" language, so that it is spoken today by ALL Jewish people and has become alive again?... The same thing ought to be done with Sanskrit, but as Sri Aurobindo points out: "it must get rid of the curse of the heavy pedantic style contracted by it in its decline, with the lumbering impossible compounds and the overweight of hair-splitting erudition".
Let the scholars begin now to revive and modernise the Sanskrit language, it would be a sure sign of the dawning of the Renaissance of India. In a few years it should be taught as the second language in schools throughout the country, with the regional language as the first and English as the third. Then will India again have its own unifying language.
Education of course has to be totally revamped. The kind of Westernised education which is standard in India, does have its place, because India wants to be on par with the rest of the world, and Indian youth should be able to deal confidently with the West: do business, talk, and relate to a universal world culture. But nevertheless, the first thing that Indian children should be taught is the greatness of their own culture.
They should learn to revere the Vedas, they should be taught the greatness of the Mahabharata and the Ramanayana; they should be told that in this country everything has been done, that it was an unsurpassed civilisation, when the West was still mumbling its first words, that Indian civilisation reached dizzying heights, which have been since unsurpassed. But overall they should be taught early that India's greatness is her spirituality her world-wide wisdom.
INDIA'S NEW EDUCATION HAS TO BE SPIRITUALISED IT HAS TO BE AN INNER EDUCATION WHICH TEACHES TO LOOK AT THINGS FROM THE INNER PRISM, NOT THROUGH THE WESTERN ARTIFICIAL LOOKING GLASS.
India's Dharma, her eternal quest for truth should be drilled in the child from an early age. And from this firm base, everything then can be taught -from the most modern forms of mathematics, to the latest technologies. "National education...may be described as the education which starting with the past and making full use of the present, builds up a great nation. Whoever wishes to cut of the nation from its past, is no friend of our national growth. Whoever fails to take advantage of the present, is losing us the battle of life. We must therefore save for India all that she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble thoughts in her immemorial past. We must acquire for her the best knowledge that Europe can give her and assimilate it to her own peculiar type of national temperament. We must introduce the best methods of teaching humanity has developed, whether modern or ancient. And all these we must harmonise into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit of self-reliance, so as to build up men and not machines".
It should also be made clear that Indian history will have to be rewritten. Certainly if not only the Jews, but also the whole world is constantly drilled into the history of the holocaust, so as to remember and not repeat the same mistakes, definitely Indian children should be taught about the rape of their country by successive Muslim invaders and the incredible harm done to India.
They should know the truth about Aurangzeb, Babar and Mahmud of Ghazni, instead of the present semi-glorifying of the great Mughal culture and period.
They should not be taught to hate of their fellow Muslims in India, but to only know them in their real historical perspective.
The Independence story should be also rewritten and true nationalists given their right place. The Congress should be granted its just share of the movement, but not sanctified as it is now. All Marxist denigration of India should also be banned from the books.
Indian students should be taught to look at the world through the Indian prism and see historical events, such as the rape of the Third World by Spanish conquistadors or the colonising and impoverishment of Africa, in their factual colours.
Another symbol of the emergence of a new India will be the universal acceptance of Vande Mataram as the national anthem.
In 1939, a disciple had said to Sri Aurobindo that: "there are some people who object to the singing of Vande Mataram as a national song; Sri Aurobindo had replied: "in that case Hindus should give up their culture". But the disciple had continued: "the argument is that the song speaks of Hindu gods, like Durga and that it is offensive to Muslims".
Said Sri Aurobindo: "but it is not a religious song, it is a national song and the Durga spoken of is India as the Mother. Why should not the Muslims accept it? In the Indian concept of nationality, the Hindu view should be naturally there. if it cannot find a place, the Hindus may as well be asked to give-up their culture. The Hindus don't object to "Allah-Ho-Akbar".
On a national level, there should be a revival of authentic Indian traditional forms of genius, such as ancient medical systems, like Ayurveda, or Siddha, instead of the total dependence on Western antibiotics and their terrible proliferation. Today, these alleopathic medecines are found even in India's remotest villages, making people dependant on harmful drugs which are expensive and only serve to enrich the big foreign multinationals.
It takes a Deepak Chopra, an Indian doctor exiled in the United States, to remind the world that Ayurveda is one of the greatest medical systems ever devised; that 5000 years ago, when the rest of the planet lived in total medical ignorance, Indian doctors were already performing plastic surgery, knew that the origin of many diseases were psychosomatic, had found in Mother nature the cure for most of man's ailments and realised that the five natural elements have to be made balanced in the human body for a perfect harmonious life.
Not only that, but Indian doctors were also yogis. They perceived that beyond the human body was another divine reality, of which the soul was the vehicle on earth.
Today, Western doctors (and many Indian ones) are totally ignorant of the different planes of consciousness which superimpose our terrestrial life. Hence these doctors and the psychiatrists of the West are, as Sri Aurobindo pointed out, " searching with a torch light in the dark caverns of man's Unconscious ".
India is also full of marvellous indigenous arts which are ignored by the officialdom, but actually are at the source of many of the world's wonders. Such is Kerala's kalaripayat, the most extraordinary martial art on this earth, not only because it is the ancestor of all great Asian martial arts, such as judo or karate, because it was taken by Buddhist monks and the famous Boddidharma (founder of Zen Buddhism) to China and Japan, but also because it is the only martial art in the world which regroups all kinds of fighting techniques under one umbrella: sword, knife, spears, bare handed techniques, flexible swords.
It is also a great medical knowledge, its masters are yogis and practise a unique form of massage. Unfortunately it is dying because India ignores that she possesses such a wonderful art.
And what about Indian yogic sciences ? Pranayama for instance is the most exacting, precise, mathematical, powerful breathing discipline one can dream of. Its effects and results have been observed and categorised by Indian yogis for millenniums. This extraordinary knowledge, brings in very quickly wonderful results in both the well being of the body and the quietude of the mind. Pushed to its extreme, it gives to the disciple deep spiritual experiences and a true inner perception of the world.
And what about Hata-yoga, also a 5000 year old technique, which has inspired today all kind of aerobic, of so-called yoga techniques and gymnastic drills around the world ? Practised properly it brings health, strength and endurance to the body. It is the secret of Indian Yogis' incredible longevity. It may be too, a help to a once and future immortality.
And like in Pranayama, its exercises, results and particularities are so well categorised that there is a solution for each problem of the human body, an application for each part of the human anatomy. And what about meditation, queen of all the yogic sciences ? That which is above everything, that without which any yogic discipline is impossible. That which interiorizes us, carries us within ourselves, to the discovery of our true soul and nature. There are hundreds of different mediation techniques, simple, cartesian, easy to experience, which have been devised by Indian sages since the dawn of Bharat. Each one has its own characteristics, each one gives particular results, which has been experienced by the billions of aspirants who have practised them since the dawn of Vedic times.
But are all these yogic sciences dead, disappeared from India, gone for ever from the earth consciousness ? Not at all. India is full of ashrams, of yogis, of masters, who are still keeping alive all those wonderful sciences. From the tip of cape Comorin to Kashmir, you cannot go to a place in this country without finding some spiritual place, some sadhu practising a particular tapasaya, some course in meditation for householders. You have just to step out of the big cities, its five star hotels, its mad traffic, its hurried businessmen with their ties and briefcases and enter India's country side, and you step again in India's immortal Dharma, you can still feel the line of continuity of 7000 years of sages. This is the Wonder that IS India.
And what do you think would happen if these ancient arts still alive in India were officially recognised by the Indian Government, by Indian themselves and UTILISED in every day life. What do you think would happen for instance if pranayama was systematically taught to sportsmen from the beginning of their training ? It would produce supermen; it would be difficult to beat Indian athletes, because through this marvellous technique they would have achieved perfect concentration. What would happen if Indian businessmen used too Pranayama ?
It would double their capacity of work and endow them with enthusiasm for their task. Or if school children were taught at a very early age the combined techniques of pranayama, hata-yoga, meditation and Ayurveda ? It would maybe produce the next human species of our era, a race which is spiritualised in both mind and body. Unfortunately, for the moment, not only the Indian government does not recognise the Wonder that Was India, but it constantly denigrates these great techniques which are part of India's heritage; the Christian and Muslim minorities reject them outright as part of the Hindu culture.
And also modern Indians, whether businessmen, intellectuals, or bureaucrats, disdain this golden treasure of India.
But fortunately for the planetary evolution, India's yogis, gurus, teachers are going all around the world to spread this wonderful knowledge. Some are genuine ones, some are semi-fakes, some are total fakes. But it does not matter, because almost all of them carry abroad the message of yoga. Among these messengers of truth, one could mention the remarkable Vipassana mediation technique of Shri Goenka, which has centres all around the world.
Or the prayanama, courses of the Art Of Living of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, which is fast spreading around the world. Or Krishna Iyengars' wonderful hata-yoga techniques. All these yogis are propagating India's eternal dharma around the world slowly but surely and thanks to them, there are more and more people in the West who are interested in Indian sciences (*), who practise pranayama, hata-yoga, or meditation. It maybe even that India will have to realise its Wonder when the West will point its finger at it, as happened in a lesser way in Japan with its martial art techniques, Zen Buddhism, rock gardens and Bonzai art, when America took hold of them. Let us hope though, that the true India will emerge soon.
For the India of tomorrow, the spiritual leader of the world, Mother India, Durga: " is not a piece of earth; she is a Power, a Godhead, for all nations have such a Devi supporting this separate existence and keeping it in being..." (Sri Aurobindo, India's Rebirth) "Mother Durga ! Rider on the lion, giver of all strength, we are seated in thy temple. Listen, O Mother, descend upon earth, make thyself manifest in this land of India".
The West often labels as " sects ", whatever spiritual movements they cannot understand and which do not belong to the family of Christianity. This hostility to everything which has a Hindu flavour, stems both from an ignorance of what exists beyond the small reality of their own culture and religion and from an unconscious asuric antagonism to what they dimly perceive as a threat to their secure, walled-up world of certitudes.
The best example of this phenomenon is the assault on Rajneesh by the West, (which was also unfortunately taken-up by Indian intellectuals and " secularists "), a man who, whichever were his faults and the excesses of his followers, was an exceptional human being. Europe always treats Indian spiritual movements such as Hare Krishna, (again whatever its excesses and negative sides) or the Transcendental Meditation of Shri Maharishi, as sectarian, non-Cartesian movements.
Pakistan today appears (*) to be the first dilemma which is always confronting India outside. The major challenge she is facing at her borders stems mainly from Pakistan, constantly repeat Indian leaders. Pakistan's hand appears to be everywhere: in Kashmir, of course, although they denied it for years; but also Punjab; in the separatist movements in the East, as in Assam; in Bangladesh today; or in Bombay, where the bombings were Pakistan's answer to what they perceived as an outrage on Islam. And even if Pakistan's hand is not there, Indian political leaders always find the shadow of their enemy.
Pakistan seems also sometimes to be winning the propaganda battle which projects India as an oppressor, a nation which tramples on Human Rights, whether in Kashmir or Punjab. But the greatest shadow over South Asia is the threat of a nuclear holocaust, which would probably be started by Pakistan, as they know they cannot beat India in a conventional war.
And this, it is hoped will remind us of Sri Aurobindo's warning in 1947, which we quote again, because of its total relevance today: "India is free, but she has not achieved unity, only a fissured and broken freedom...The whole communal division into Hindu and Muslim seems to have hardened into a figure of a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that the Congress and the Nation will not accept the settled fact as for ever settled, or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled; civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. The partition of the country must go.For without it the destiny of India might be seriously impaired and frustrated. That must not be." (Message of Sri Aurobindo on the 15th of August 1947).
And if you look closely at India's woes since 1947, many of them seem to have sprung from that partition, from the shame of that division, from the cowardly assent to the terrible maiming of Mother India, which most Indian political leaders have accepted as a permanent 'fait accompli'. But, are not Pakistan and India part of the same soul?
Are not Pakistanis and Indians of the same colour, culture, ethnic stock? Have they not the same food habits, the same customs in many ways? In truth, you cannot really differentiate one Punjabi from the other Punjabi, or one Sindhi from the other Sindhi, except for his religion. So what if they worship two different Gods, which are but two names for the same Infinite Reality.
This is what marks out 120 million Muslims from their 500 million Hindu brothers; yet they have to learn to live together and they WILL cohabit together in the future. Why should Indian and Pakistan, two developing countries, go on spending billions and billions of dollars on getting ready to fight each other, killing each other, they the brothers that lived together through seven millenniums of one of the greatest civilisations of this earth?
For are not Pakistanis as much as Indians part of the same 'Indu' soil, which was the land of Bharat, before the Muslims came and forcibly converted so many- who today call themselves Pakistanis, or Indian Muslims?
All right, you cannot change history. Pakistan has evolved its own identity and it stands on his own as a nation, with its particular ethos. YET IT SHOULD BECOME CLEAR TO ALL, THAT NOT ONLY THE ONLY LASTING SOLUTION TO PEACE IN THE SUBCONTINENT, THE ONLY WAY TO AVOID A NUCLEAR CONFLICT IN SOUTH ASIA, WHICH COULD EVEN DRAG THE WORLD IN ITS HORROR, IS THE REUNION OF INDIA AND PAKISTAN. BUT ALSO, EVEN MORE, THAT THE ONLY WAY INDIA IS GOING TO REGAIN HER GREATNESS THAT WAS, THE ONLY MANNER SHE CAN ENTER THE 21ST CENTURY AS THE LAND OF DHARMA, AS THE SPIRITUAL LEADER OF THE WORLD, IS FOR HER AND PAKISTAN TO REUNITE.
The question is: how? It certainly cannot be done in a day and it cannot be accomplished in a hurried and artificial manner. First there has to be an understanding among both the people, an acceptance of that possibility, which up to now has not even been thought off seriously. Once the idea has started to work among people, the process may begin - at the heart of the matter, where things are most difficult between India and Pakistan: in Kashmir, for instance.
For Kashmir represents the perfect impossibility, the absolute dead-end, and symbolises the irrevocable enmity between Pakistan and India. India will not surrender Kashmir, because she considers rightly that it has been part of her territory for 5000 years. Pakistan will not surrender its claim on the Valley, because it estimates rightly that the Kashmir vale is 95% Muslim and that under the (mad) logic of partition, it should have reverted to Islamabad. And both countries are trying by force, the one openly, the other covertly, to stake their claims on Kashmir.
Thus, there is no issue, except war, a nuclear conflict maybe - and everyone will be the loser: who will have Kashmir then if there is nothing left of India and Pakistan?
If the absurdity of the whole Kashmir business is seen in that light, then India and Pakistan might agree to sit down and hammer out, not an idiotic splitting in two of Kashmir, as they have already done of India, which will solve nothing and only postpone a later confrontation, but a just reunion. LET BOTH INDIA AND PAKISTAN ADMINISTER KASHMIR, (*) . which would retain its identity and culture as a member of a greater India confederation. It can start in a gradual way by military observers of both the countries being posted to watch over the peace process. Eventually it can lead to a joint government of Kashmir.
Then there could be a tentative reunification of both the Kashmirs, which would be a prelude to an eventual reunification of India and Pakistan in a loose confederation of which the Kashmir joint experiment would be the model and the guinea pig, because we have no illusion that this will be an easy process.
There can be no peace in the subcontinent until India and Pakistan are reunited. For they are part of the same soul, the same body, even if it has different names and boasts of two religions diametrically opposed to each other, Hinduism and Islam, the latter thrown into India by the twist of fate and invasions.
But as long as the two countries do not understand the urgency of reunification, there will be wars, a nuclear war maybe, and Ayodhyas and bomb blasts, and separatist movements in both India and Pakistan, fuelled by each other, and bloated military budgets heavily taxing the economy. But the beautiful thing is that Kashmir, although it looks like the perfect dead-end, is there to show the way to the Light.
But the reunification of India and Pakistan will be only the first step, because ultimately the goal is the reunification of ALL that was once the Greater India and which is today only small fragmented countries with no real soul, no direction, no sense.
Bangladesh is the exemplary instance of that meaninglessness. Here is a country full of marvellous people, with immense possibilities at all levels, but which on its own, has very little resources, except jute. A country which is constantly invaded by floods, which is at the mercy of dictators, or semi-dictators, like Ershad, who embarked upon an islamization programs which has harmed the spontaneous tendencies of the Bengalis.
A nation which is near totally dependant on Foreign Aid agencies, with their luxurious houses, their Japanese 4 wheel drive cars, and their money, which ultimately does not solve much, as each natural catastrophe repeats the same story of helplessness.
The same can be said for Sri Lanka, a nation which has shown little foresight since independence, whose Tamil-Sinhalese feud cannot be resolved by reason, for it is the consequence of an old hatred and centuries of Sinhalese discrimination against the Tamil minority. A nation which produces hardly anything, is dependant on tea and tourism and yet is full of infinite possibilities, with its vast mosaique of people, races, religions, its natural beauty and ideal climate.
And what of Nepal, one of the poorest countries of the world, with its rapidly depleting forest cover. Nepal is the only Hindu kingdom of the world and should have then naturally a harmonious fruitful relation with India -which is not the case at all, as the king and the communists, have always played the Chinese card against India. Nepal should have nothing to fear from India, as the two countries have so much in common.
If Europe has done it, why not the South Asian countries ? For the ultimate solution to all the problems in South Asia, whether an Indo-Pakistan nuclear conflict, or the Chakma problem, or the Tamil separatist dilemma, is FEDERALISM, a united common Government, under whichever form, which will allow each South Asian country to retain its own individuality, to practice in peace its own religion, to manage even its own affairs, but under the political umbrella of a benevolent, spiritualized, non-violent, but nevertheless powerful India, which will protect them, solve their problems and help them.
Not the Soviet type of United Republics, whose totalitarianism showed its ultimate failure, but a spiritualized federalism which would be on the lines of ancient India, when all the republics were allowed free play, while recognising the same unifying principle of Dharma.
This Federal union of states would comprise India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma, Nepal, the Maldives.
What we see today in the reunification of the two Germanys, of the two Vietnams, of the two Koreas eventually, is a sign of an evolutionary trend which is trying to manifest itself at present. "...The unification of the human world is under way; there is an imperfect initiation organised but struggling against tremendous difficulties. But the momentum is there and it must inevitably increase and conquer.
HERE TOO INDIA HAS BEGUN TO PLAY A PROMINENT PART AND IF SHE CAN DEVELOP THAT LARGER STATESMANSHIP WHICH IS NOT LIMITED BY THE PRESENT FACTS AND IMMEDIATE POSSIBILITIES, BUT LOOKS INTO THE FUTURE AND BRINGS IT NEARER, HER PRESENCE MAY MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SLOW AND TIMID AND A BOLD AND SWIFT DEVELOPMENT.
A catastrophe may intervene and interrupt or destroy what is being done, but even then the final result is sure. For unification is a necessity of Nature, an inevitable movement. Its necessity for the nations is also clear, for without it the freedom of the nations may be at any moment in peril and the life even of the large and powerful nations insecure. The unification is therefore to the interest of all and only human imbecility and stupid selfishness can prevent it; but these cannot stand for ever against the necessity of Nature and the Divine Will. Sri Aurobindo's message on Independence 15.8.47 The partition of India must go and the Greater India, the land of the 'Indus', Bharat, be born again
"The final dream was a step in evolution which would raise man to a higher and larger consciousness and begin the solutions of the problems which have perplexed and vexed him since he first began to think and dream of individual perfection and a perfect society. The difficulties in the way are more formidable than in any other field of endeavour, but difficulties were made to be overcome and if the Supreme Will is there, they will be overcome.
Here too, if this evolution is to take place, since it must proceed through a growth of the spirit and the inner consciousness, THE INITIATIVE CAN COME FROM INDIA and, although the scope must be universal, the central movement may be hers." (Sri Aurobindo's message on 15.8.47)
What is that 'final dream' of which Sri Aurobindo talked about and in which he saw a preponderant part of India, the India of the last chapter, a true India, organized into a federation of free states with a central enlightened Government, a unified language and policy; a leader of the world in ideas and wisdom, which again would manifest the Santanam Dharma, Bharat born again.
Man is the visible result of a long evolutionary process of which apes, were the previous link: "The appearance of a human possibility in a material and animal world was the first glint of some coming divine Light, the first far-off promise of a godhead to be born out of Matter", writes Sri Aurobindo in the Hour of God.
Sri Aurobindo believed that man was not the last link in human evolution and that there would be ANOTHER rung in the ladder towards Divine Perfection: "Man is a transitional being; he is not final. For in man and high beyond him ascend the radiant degrees that climb to a divine supermanhood. There lies our destiny and the liberating key to our aspiring but troubled and limited mundane existence."
Sri Aurobindo went on to explain that what he meant by man, "was the mind imprisoned in the body", and he emphasized that mind was not the highest possible form of consciousness, because mind is incapable of attaining truth; he is only at best "an ignorant seeker of truth". Beyond mind, he continued, is a "supramental or gnostic power of consciousness", which is in eternal possession of truth.
Supermanhood is the next approaching achievement in earth's evolution and "it is inevitable because it is in the logic of Nature's process". But warned Sri Aurobindo: "Supermanhood is not man climbed to his own natural zenith, not a superior degree of human greatness, knowledge, power, intelligence, will, character, genius, dynamic force, saintliness, love, purity, or perfection.
Supermind is something beyond mental man and his limits; it is a greater consciousness than the highest consciousness proper to human nature".
Today the Western world utterly shows the limits of mind carried to its extreme. Idealisms were the highest goals of Europe. And they were all tried: communism, socialism, liberalism, conservatism, socratism, materialism, pragmatism, atheism, existentialism...you name it... But they have all proved failures. In their name, man tried everything to control man: laws, rules, taxes, penalties, interdictions, bureaucratic hurdles. Or some gave him licence to indulge in his instincts, to go to the limits of his vital and sensual appetites. But nobody was able to bridle man.
Nevertheless, it can be said that the greatest achievement of the West is that it has succeeded in a certain control over the physical, the material; and each day brings new discoveries, whether in science, medicine, technology, or that most marvelous of sciences, the computers, which come nearest to the intricacies of man's brain. But for what purpose? Man is more and more unhappy, as he is getting cut off from his divine reality; the two cars, cable TV, satellite phone and instant computerization, are not taking him nearer to his soul.
As Sri Aurobindo emphasizes: "Mind is the highest form in man. But mind is an ignorant, clouded and struggling power. And even when most luminous it is possessed only of a thin, reflected and pallid light... Man is himself little more that an ambitious nothing. He is a littleness that reaches to a wideness and a grandeur that are beyond him, a dwarf enamored of the heights. His mind is a dark ray in the splendors of the Universal Mind. His life is a striving, exulting, suffering and eager passion-tossed and sorrow-stricken, or a blindly and dumbly longing petty moment of he Universal Life. His body is a labouring perishable speck in the material universe".
Can this be the end of evolutionary nature, this frail body and bumbling mind? Is this why the universe started billion of years ago, right from the big Bang where nothing was, to the first forms of life in the protoplasms? From the crawling, to the flying, and the standing? From the millions of apes who tried thinking, before one of them had the first crude idea in his mind and fashioned a stone into a weapon - to today's Discoverer spacecrafts and supercomputers?
But in truth, man is indeed special: "An immortal soul is somewhere within him and gives out some sparks of its presence...Man's greatness is not in what he is, but in what he makes possible. His glory is that he is the closed place and the secret workshop of a living labour in which supermanhood is being made ready by a divine craftsman. But his conscious assent, his consecrated will and participation are needed that into his body may descend the glory that will replace him."
This is why we get those "soul moments" in our lives, when suddenly everything seems possible, when for a few seconds, we become All Harmony, All Joy. "Above, an eternal spirit overshadows him and upholds the soul continuity of his nature". This is the divine presence in us, above us, around us, the all pervading immanence of the Infinite. That to which man has always aspired throughout his History, that which he instinctively feels in himself, although the primitive man came closer to Nature and his heart may have been more receptive than the modern homo sapiens of today, immersed in the ego of his achievements. And this is the endless cycle of our human evolution: we are born, our soul grows from each life, drawing from each experiences it needs for its evolution -and then we die... and the soul is reborn again after some time and so son, and so on.
Mind was the greatest achievement of man when he took over from the animal, but today mind has become the OBSTACLE, the impediment to the next evolutionary change, because Mind thinks it is the ultimate realization in the world, not realizing that "it is only a clumsy interlude between Nature's vast and precise subconscient action, and the vaster infallible superconscient action of the Godhead."
What is the step for receiving that next possibility? What is the best attitude for feeling the Godhead at work? "There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind's immobility and thought-free stillness. When mind is still, then Truth gets a chance to be heard in the purity of the silence... For Truth cannot be attained by the mind's thought, but only by identity and silent vision. Truth lives in the calm, wordless Light of the eternal spaces; she does not intervene in the noise and cackle of logical debate".
Good-bye O ye lofty philosophers, great thinkers and wise sociologists, ye who think that you can dissect the world and predict its future, ye who today still propound obscure, superficial and negative theories on the future of humanity. Hello our Indian yogis and sages, ye, who dwell in your caves, in your ashrams or in the quiet silence of your hearts!
Hello you million of fellow meditators, who each day give a little of your time to the quietness of your mind, you are all participating in the elaboration of the next world. "O thou seeker of Truth, and traveller on the roads to the next step of humanity's relentless march to evolution and perfection: Be free in thyself and therefore free in thy mind, free in thy life and thy body, for the Spirit is freedom. Be one with God and all beings; live in thyself and not thy little ego.
For the Spirit is Unity. Be thyself immortal, and put not thy faith in death; for death is not of thyself, but of thy body. For the spirit is immortality. To be immortal is to be infinite in being and consciousness and bliss; for the spirit is infinite and that which is finite lives only by this infinity.."
"Be thyself immortal and put not thy faith in death"... DEATH, this is the fateful word. For what are all our human achievements, our loves, as lofty they can be, our creations, our hopes, our realizations, when death annihilates everything, when oblivion puts back the clock once more. And again we have to be reborn to start all over, to learn all over again what took us a life of patience to master. Is death the ultimate goal then? Is death the only end to our struggle and our endeavors?.
No says Sri Aurobindo: "The Supramental is nothing less than the descent of the Supreme Truth and Power INTO MATTER, THE SUPRAMENTAL ESTABLISHED IN THE MATERIAL PLANE AND CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE MATERIAL WORLD AND AN INTEGRAL TRANSFORMATION DOWN TO THE VERY PRINCIPLE OF MATTER.
This is what makes Sri Aurobindo's yoga different from other yogas and that is why he called it "integral yoga": not only the transformation of the mind and the vital, but also of the physical, the ultimate descent of what he called "the supermind", the next step in evolution, what is above mind, as mind was above the inanimate, into the most material planes of our existence, OUR BODY. And this immortality, is not a fancy resurrection or a miraculous glorified body in which we can live for ever our desires and fixations, but a body where truth descends and which is transformed into truth, for the ultimate truth in the ultimate material IS immortality.
This is an uncharted path, this is the next step in our evolution: this descent of the supermind in our body. Sri Aurobindo had started the work and spoke at length of "the golden light that was invading his body". When he passed away on the 5th December 1950, his spiritual companion of 35 years, whom he called the Mother and about whom He said: "The one whom we adore as the Mother is the Divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible, even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates".
She is the universal Mother, Mother India, whom since Vedic times, Indians have worshiped under all her mighty forms: Durga, Kali, Parvati, Sita, Laxmi, Mahasaraswati, Maheswari. "O Mother of radiances, you have dawned in the narrow horizons of my mind. Out of the depthless rigidities, in the midst of the walled-up spaces you have created a heart-like something that will live its eternal life. You have revealed to me a chamber alive and warm within the mind's substance-less polar regions and there I can safely retire and find in you my refuge"
At long last, we are coming back full circle to the Vedic seers who had gone down deep in the cavern of the body and had cried: "He discovered the Truth, the ultimate Sun who dwells in the deepest obscurity" (Rig Veda, III.39.5)
But India lost the secret, its yogis and sages drifted farther and farther away from the material, away from the body, which houses the soul of light and withdrew in their ashrams, their caves, their mountains, to dwell on the Infinite. The body was laid to waste, India opened herself to infinite tamas, to the raping of her soil by numerous barbarians and to the neglecting of beauty.
Then also came Buddhism, with its nefarious emphasis on escaping from the pain, illusion and misery of this world, into marvellous Nirvana. And Nirvana is indeed marvelous, and Gautama the Bouddha was indeed a great soul, but then what? Is all that suffering from these billion of years, of death and oblivion, just to go back to Nirvana? We might never have left all that wonderful bliss.
And the eternal question of WHY DEATH has haunted us and still haunts us.
"Death is an illusion, illness is an illusion, ignorance is an illusion! it has no reality, no existence...Only Love and Love and Love-immense, prodigious, and the thing is DONE".
"Death is an illusion, illness is an illusion, ignorance is an illusion! it has no reality, no existence...Only Love and Love and Love-immense, prodigious, and the thing is DONE".
Comments Satprem in his beautiful book "the Mind of the Cells": "the passage to next species is done. When the first bird flew among the reptiles, it was the sure sign that others will inevitably follow and fly too. And the capital point is that death and illness disappear materially in this other state, it is an experience of the body, of the cells, and not the nirvanic experience of the mystical summits.
It is not the illusion of the world as mystics preached, it is the illusion of our physical perception of the world and of the lie which springs out of that perception: death and illness. If the cellular perception changes, sickness and death vanish in 'something else'. "
Satprem was born in 1923 in Paris. He spent his childhood in Bretagne, where his love for the sea and sailing was his only escape from an otherwise bleak world where he felt imprisoned in the rigid frames of the Western mould. When he was 20, he enrolled in the French resistance to fight against the German occupation army, was arrested by the dreaded Gestapo and taken to the terrible Buchenwald concentration camp, where so many Jews Gypsies, communists and resistants like him, were murdered by the Nazis in the gas chambers.
Satprem survived, but this experience would forever shape his burning desire to go beyond the appearances. As he recalls: "I found myself there naked, vandalized, as in the Beginning of Times or may be at the End". After the war, Satprem, in a rage of confronting life, wanders around the world: "Just out of Hell, I took life on my knees and I told her: now you are going to tell me your secret, not of the books, but the secret that beats in my naked heart."
After many adventures, he lands up in Pondichery, as deputy to the last French Governor, François Baron. There he meets the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, and the experience of the one about whom he says was "immobile as the Himalayas", will last him all his life. He goes again wandering around the world; but his heart is really with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. And in 1954 he comes back for good to Pondichery and becomes the Mother's confidant, jotting down Her Agenda.
On the 17th November 1973, the Mother after having explored the cellular consciousness of her own body, departs. Was the earth not ready? She was struggling to be understood even by some of her own close disciples. Did she complete her work and then depart ? Who has the vision to say...But the way was traced and had not Sri Aurobindo decreed: "the Supramental manifestation is inevitable..." The path is however still long and Satprem, her confidant, took up the work, withdrew from all activity and in the secret of some Himalayan retreat, went on, alone, exploring the the yoga of the cells. And maybe are there others individuals like him, who quietly, anonymously, somewhere in this earth, are working on their own bodies towards the materialisation of the next species of our human evolution.
Globally, it is India which holds the key to the destiny of the world; it is India which can show the way of supramentalization of man and society. India of whom the Mother said: " India must be saved for the good of the world since India alone can lead the world to peace and a new world order"
We have known of the fact that the Greatness that WAS India is not something of the past, that India's Santanam Dharma, Her boundless reserves of spirituality are intact, ready to manifest themselves again. India has to wake-up to Her destiny, recoup her spiritualized outlook, stop looking at Herself and at the World through the Western prism of understanding, which is an artificial view, out of touch with the inner reality and which has been imposed to India by its colonizers for three centuries.
For this purpose, India must first unite from within, allow its own States, which represent the vast mosaic of her diversity, their freedom of expression, under a federalized setup, whatever its structure. the South Asian countries should also regroup under India's leadership in another system of confederation, which would leave them too the freedom to express their religion and culture in the creative bosom of India's Santanam Dharma.
This South Asian block would become a major world power and could compete with China and the European Common Market. Then only, can India send Her light shining forth and show the way to the earth towards a return towards true spirituality. Then only can India tell the world : "look this is how things happen; this is the way of the soul, this is the history of evolution, this is our next step in our march towards a divine Reality. Thus India will not only become the land of Bharat again, the cradle of Indu civilization, but the great Vedic sages' prediction will also have been fulfilled: "Our fathers by their words broke the strong and stubborn places... shattered the great mountain rock with their cry; they made in us a path to the great Heaven, they discovered the Day and the Sun-World... They found the treasure of Heaven hidden in the secret cavern...The well of honey covered by the rock".. (Rig-Veda I.71.2-1.130.3-II.24.4) and India will lead the world onto the way to supramentalization, man after man, that which is above mind. LONG LIVE THE WONDER THAT IS INDIA.
For most historians, whether Foreigners or Indians, India's greatness -if there is a Greatness at all- lies in its past, in the golden period of pre-Muslim conquests. Such for instance, is the theory of A.L. Basham's classic: 'the Wonder that was India'.
But even that greatness, they often limit to a cultural or else a spiritual grandeur. There also have been throughout the centuries, conscious attempts, particularly by some Christian missionaries, and later by a few of India's own westernised elite, at propagating false theories on India's history, such as the famed Aryan invasion and its imposition on the "good" Dravidians of the hateful brahmanic class system.
Or the devious inference of a benevolent Muslim rule in India, which negates the immense Holocaust which the Arabs wrecked on the peninsula from the 7th century onwards. And most unfortunate, many of these theories have resulted in a wave -pre and post-independence- of denigration of the greatness which is Hinduism and a conscious attempt at stamping it out from Indian life today.
India was great in all respects, spiritually, socially, culturally and even politically, but also that this Greatness IS still there today, waiting to be manifested, waiting for India to awake to Her true destiny. However, India today is facing grave dangers, both from within and without. And it is only after recovered her true soul, recouped her Dharma, that she will become united again, the Greater India that she was centuries ago, and fulfil Her destiny as the spiritual leader of the world.
For as Sri Aurobindo, India's great yogi, philosopher and revolutionary said:
"It is in India, the chosen land that Truth is preserved; in the soul of India it sleeps expectant on that soul's awakening, the soul of India leonine, luminous, locked in the closed petals of the ancient lotus of love, strength and wisdom, not in her weak, soiled, transient and miserable externals. India alone can build the future of mankind."
