The March of Civilisation
Sri Aurobindo’s direct disciple Nolini Kanta Gupta
has written profusely about evolutionary march of India and the humanity. We
are reproducing here some of the excerpts from his essays.
He said that ‘WE are familiar with the phrase
"Augustan Age": it is in reference to a particular period in a
nation's history when its creative power is at its highest both in respect of
quantity and quality, especially in the domain of art and literature, for it is
here that the soul of a people finds expression most easily and spontaneously.
Indeed, if we look at the panorama that the course of human evolution unfolds,
we see epochs of high light in various countries spread out as towering beacons
or soaring peaks bathed in sunlight dominating the flat plains or darksome
valleys of the usual normal periods. Take the Augustan Age itself which has
given the name: it is a very crucial and one of the earlier outflowerings of
the human genius on a considerable scale. We know of the appearance of
individuals on the stage of life each with a special mission and role in
various ages and various countries. They are great men of action, great men of
thought, creative artists or spiritual and religious teachers. In India we call
them Vibhutis (we can include the Avataras—Divine Incarnations—also in the
category). Even so, there is a collective manifestation too, an upsurge in
which a whole race or nation takes part and is carried and raised to a higher
level of living and achievement. There is a tide in the affairs not only of
men, but of peoples also: and masses, large collectivities live on the crest of
their consciousness, feeling and thinking deeply and nobly, acting and creating
powerfully, with breadth of vision and intensity of aspiration, spreading all
around something that is new and not too common, a happy guest come from
else-where.
Ancient Greece, the fountainhead of European
civilisation —of the world culture reigning today, one can almost say—(Nolini
Kanta : Page 95) found itself epitomised in the Periclean Age. The light—
grace, harmony, sweet reasonableness—that was Greece, reached its highest and
largest, its most characteristic growth in that period. Earlier, at the very
beginning of her life cycle, there came indeed Homer and no later creation
reached a higher or even as high a status of creative power: but it was a
solitary peak, it was perhaps an announcement, not the realisation of the
national glory. Pericles stood as the guardian, the representative, the emblem
and nucleus of a nation-wide efflorescence. Not to speak of the great names
associated with the age, even the common people—more than what was normally so
characteristic of Greece—felt the tide that was moving high and shared in that
elevated sweep of life, of thought and creative activity. Greece withdrew. The
stage was made clear for Rome. Julius Caesar carried the Roman genius to its
sublimest summit: hut it remained for his great nephew to consolidate and give
expression to that genius in its most characteristic manner and lent his name
to a characteristic high-water mark of human civilisation.
Greece and Rome may be taken to represent two types
of culture. And accordingly we can distinguish two types of elevation or crest-formation
of human consciousness—one of light, the other of power. In certain movements
one feels the intrusion, the expression of light, that is to say, the play of
intelligence, understanding, knowledge, a fresh outlook and consideration of
the world and things, a revaluation in other terms and categories of a new
consciousness. The greatest, at least, the most representative movement of this
kind is that of the Renaissance. It was really a New Illumination: a flood of
light poured upon the mind and intellect and understanding of the period. There
was a brightness, a brilliance, a happy agility and keenness in the movements
of the brain. A largeness of vision, a curious sensibility, a wide and alert
consciousness: these are some of the fundamental characteristics of this
remarkable New Birth. It is the birth of what has been known as the scientific
outlook, in the broadest sense: it is the threshold of the modern epoch of
humanity. All the modern European languages leaped into maturity, as it were,
each attaining its definitive form and full-blooded individuality. Art and
literature flooded in their magnificent creativeness all nations
(Ibid Page 96) and peoples of the whole continent.
The Romantic Revival, starting somewhere about the beginning of the nineteenth
century, is another outstanding example of a similar phenomenon, of the descent
of light into human consciousness. The light that descended into human
consciousness at the time of the Renaissance captured the higher mind and
intelligence— the Ray touched as it were the frontal lobe of the brain; the
later descent touched the heart, the feelings and emotive sensibility, it
evoked more vibrant, living and powerful perceptions, created varied and
dynamic sense-complexes, new idealisms and aspirations. The manifestation of
Power, the descent or inrush of force—mighty and terrible—has been well
recognised and experienced in the great French Revolution. A violence came out
from somewhere and seized man and society: man was thrown out of his gear, society
broken to pieces. There came a change in the very character and even nature of
man: and society had to be built upon other foundations. The past was
gone. Divasa gatah. Something very similar has happened again
more recently, in Russia. The French Revolution brought in the bourgeois
culture, the Russian Revolution has rung in the Proletariate.
In modern India, the movement that led her up to
Independence was at a crucial moment a mighty evocation of both Light and
Power. It had not perhaps initially the magnitude, the manifest scope or scale
of either the Renaissance or the Great Revolutions we mention. But it carried a
deeper import, its echo far-reaching into the future of humanity. For it meant
nothing less than the spiritual awakening of India and therefore the spiritual
regeneration of the whole world: it is the harbinger of the new epoch in human
civilisation.
These larger human movements are in a sense
anonymous. They are not essentially the creation of a single man as are some of
the well-known religious movements. They throw up great aspiring souls, strong
men of action, indeed, but as part of themselves, in their various aspects,
facets, centres of expression, lines of expansion. An Augustus, a Pericles, a
Leo X, a Louis XIV, or a Vikramaditya are not more than
nuclei, as I have already said, centres of reference round which their
respective epoch crystallises as a peak culture unit. They are not creators or
originators; they are rather organisers. A Buddha, a Christ or a Mohammed or
even a Napoleon or Caesar or Alexander are truly creators: they
bring with them something—some truth, some dynamic revelation—that was not
there before. They realise and embody each a particular principle of being, a
unique mode of consciousness—a new 'gift to earth and mankind. Movements truly
anonymous, however, have no single nucleus or centre of reference: they are
multinucleur. The names that adorn the Renaissance are
many, it had no single head; the men through whom the great French Revolution
unrolled itself were many in number, that is to say, the chiefs, who
represented each a face or phase of the surging movement.
The cosmic spirit works itself out in the world and
in human affairs in either of these forms : (1) as embodied in a single
personality and (2) as an impersonal movement, sometimes through many
personalities, sometimes through a few outstanding personalities and sometimes
even quite anonymously as a maps movement. Either mode has each its own special
purpose, its function in the cosmic labour, its contribution to the growth and
unfoldment of the human consciousness upon earth as a whole. Generally, we may
say, when it is an intensive work, when it is a new truth that has to be
disclosed and set in man's heart and consciousness, then the individual is called
up and undertakes the work: when, however, the truth already somehow found or
near at hand is to be spread wide and made familiar to men and established upon
earth, then the larger anonymous movements are born and have sway.
Indeed, these movements, the appearance of great
souls upon earth and the manifestation of larger collective surges in human
society, are not isolated happenings, having no reference or point of contact
with one another. On the contrary, they are two limbs of a global evolutionary
process. In and through them across countries and centuries the spirit of
humanity moves towards greater and greater fulfilment. Evolution means the
growth of consciousness. In man in his.collective existence the growth
continues: it lies in two directions. First of all, in extension. A
sufficiently large physical body is needed to house the growing life and
consciousness: therefore the unicellular organism has developed into the
multicellular. In the same way, in the earliest stages of human (Page 98) society,
the light and power of consciousness, characteristic of that age, found
expression among a few only: it was the age of representative individuals,
leaders—Rishi, Magi, Patriarch, Judge, King. Next a stage came when the
cultural consciousness widened and, instead of scattered individuals or some
families, we have a large group, a whole class or section of society who become
the guardian of the light: thus arose the Brahmin, the elite, the
cultured class, the aristocracy of talents. The light and culture filters down
further and embraces larger masses of people who take living interest and share
in the creative activities of man, in the higher preoccupations of mind and
thought; this is the age of enlightened bourgeoisie. In comparatively recent
times what is familiarly known as the "middle class" was the
repository and purveyor of human culture.
The light sinks further down and extends still more
its scope seeking to penetrate and encircle the whole of humanity. The general
mass of mankind, the lowest strata of society have to be taken in, elevated and
illumined. That must be the natural and inevitable consummation of all progress
and evolution. And that is the secret sense and justification of the
Proletarian Revolution of today. Although, the many names and forms given to it
by its violent partisans do not bring out or sufficiently honour the soul and
spirit that informs it.
This then is the pattern of cultural development as
it proceeds in extension and largeness. It moves in ever- widening concentric
circles. Individuals, small centres few and far between, then larger groups and
sections, finally vast masses are touched and moved (and will be moulded one
day) by the infiltrating light. That is how in modern times all movements are
practically world-wide, encompassing all nations and peoples: there seems to be
nothing left that is merely local or parochial. It is a single wave, as it
were, that heaves up the whole of humanity. Political, social, economic and
even spiritual movements, although not exactly of the same type or pattern, all
are interrelated, interlocked, inspired by a common breath and move from one
end of the earth to the other. They seem to be but modulations of the same
world- theme. A pulse-beat in Korea or Japan is felt across the Pacific in
America and across that continent, traversing again (Page 99) the Atlantic it
reaches England, sways the old continent in 1 its turn and once more leaps
forward through the Asiatic vastnesses back again to its place of origin. The
wheel comes , indeed full circle: it is one movement girdling
the earth. What one thinks or acts in one corner of the globe is thought and
acted simultaneously by others at the farthest corner. Very evidently it is the
age of radiography and electronics.
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To sum up then. Man progresses through cycles of
crest page 106 movements. They mark an ever-widening circle of the descent of
Light, the growth of consciousness. Thus there is at first a small circle
of elite, a few chosen people at the top, then gradually the
limited aristocracy is widened out into a larger and larger democracy. One
may describe the phenomenon in the Indian terms of the Four Orders. In the
beginning there is the Brahminic culture, culture confined only to the
highest and the fewest possible select representatives. Then came the wave of
Kshatriya culture which found a broader scope among a larger community. In
India, after the age of the Veda and the Upanishad, came the age of the
Ramayana and the Mahabharata which was pre-eminently an age of
Kshatriya-hood. In Europe too it was the bards and minstrels, sages and
soothsayers who originally created, preserved and propagated the cultural
movement: next came the epoch of the Arthurian legends, the age of chivalry,
of knights and templars with their heroic code of conduct and high living. In
the epoch that followed, culture was still further broad-based and spread to
the Vaishya order. It is the culture of the bourgeoisie: it was brought
about, developed and maintained by that class in society preoccupied with the
production or earning of wealth. The economic bias of the literature of the
period has often been pointed out. Lastly the fourth dimension of culture has
made its appearance today when it seeks to be coterminous with the
proletariate. With the arrival of the Sudra, culture has extended to the very
base of the social pyramid in its widest commonalty. This movement of extension, looked at from the
standpoint of intensiveness, is also a movement of devolution, of
reclamation. The Brahminic stage represents culture that is knowledge; it
touches the mind, it is the brain that is the recipient and instrument of the
Light. The Kshatriya comes into the field when the light, the vibration of
awakening, from the mind comes down into the vital energies, from the brain
to the heart region. The Vaishya spirit has taken up man still at a lower
region, the lower vital: the economic man that has his gaze fixed upon his
stomach and entrails. Lastly, the final stage is reached when physical work,
bodily labour, material service have attained supreme importance and are
considered almost as the only values worth the name for a human being. To
walk (Page 107) and work firmly upon Earth the Light needs a strong pair of
feet. Therefore, the Veda says, Padbhyam sudro ajayata, out
of the feet of the Cosmic Godhead the Sudra was born. That is how man has become and is becoming
integrally conscious—conscious in and of all parts of his being. He is
awakening and opening to the light that descends from above: indeed the true
light, the light of truth is something transcendent and it is that that comes
down and slowly inhabits the world and possesses humanity. Its progress marks
the steps of evolution. It means the gradual enlightening and illumining of
the various layers of our being, the different strands of consciousness from
the higher to the lower, from the less dense to the more dense, from mind to
the body. It means also in the same process a canalisation, materialisation
and fixing upon earth and in the physical being of the increasing powers of
the Light. The Light as
it descends from its own home above to the lower levels of our being
expresses itself no doubt in one way, but also gets diminished, modified,
even deformed in another respect. The work of purification certainly goes on
and until that is complete and there comes the fullest expression, it will
continue. The action of light on the physical plane, for example, on the body
of the Cosmic Being is so blurred and confusing apparently that it looks
almost like the action of Darkness. And yet the Dark Night of the soul is not
simply the obscurity of Ignorance. It is only the mud that lay' diffused or
settled in the being which has come up in its gathered mass in the process of
churning and cleaning and appears like an obscure screen. In his essay ‘The Soul of a Nation’ Nolini
Kanta Gupta says, ‘A Nation
is a living personality; it has a soul, even like a human individual. The
soul of a nation is also a psychic being, that is to say, a conscious being,
a formation out of the Divine Consciousness and in direct contact with it, a
power and aspect of Mahashakti. A nation is not merely the sum total of the
individuals that compose it, but a collective personality of which the
individuals are as it were cells, like the cells of a living and conscious
organism. The psychic being or soul of a nation is indeed conscious; it knows
its raison d'être, its life purpose, its destiny, the role it has to play in
the divine scheme as the divine instrument. And its will - for it has a will,
the expression of its consciousness, the Divine's impulse in and through it -
is inevitable, sooner or later it will fulfil itself. Even like the soul of a
man, the nation's soul is behind all the movements that form its external
life, supporting, building, guiding its political, economic, social or
cultural make up. The individual can know of and come in contact with the
nation's soul in and through his own soul. When one becomes conscious of his
psychic being then only one is in a condition to be conscious of the psychic
being of the collective person of his nation or the nation with which he has
inner affinity. India is offering a spectacle of another
tragedy. What is happening here is the attack of a disease that is convulsing
the body politic: it seems to be a cancerous disease, the limbs seeking to
grow independently at the expense of each other. The patient is passing
through a very critical period and it is indeed a question of life and death.
But we hope - we are sure -that the soul of this ancient nation will assert
itself and through whatever vicissitudes reestablish health and harmony: for
that soul's mission is yet to be done. Like the individual a nation too dies.
Ancient Greece and Rome, Egypt and Babylon and Chaldea are no more. What has
happened to their souls, is may be asked. Well, what happens to the soul of the
individual when the body falls away? The soul returns to the
soul-world. Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness EVEN the Vedic Rishis used to refer to the ancients,
more ancient than they themselves. "The ancients", they said,
"worshipped Agni, we too the moderns in our turn worship the same
godhead". Or again, "Thus spoke our forefathers";
or, "So have we heard from those who have gone before us" and so
on. Indeed, the tradition in the domain of spiritual
discipline seems to have been always to realise once again what has already
been realised by others, to rediscover what has already been discovered, to
re-establish ancient truths. Others have gone before on the Path, we have
only to follow. The teaching, the realisation is handed down uninterruptedly
through millenniums from Master to disciple. In other words, the idea is that
the fundamental spiritual realisation remains the 'same always and
everywhere: the name and the form only . vary according to the age and the
surroundings. The one reality is called variously, says the Veda. Who can say
when was the first dawn! The present dawn has followed the track of the
infinite series that has gone by and is the first of the infinite series that
is to come. So sings Rishi Kanwa. For the core of spiritual realisation is to
possess the consciousness, attain the status of the Spirit. This Spirit may
be called God by the theist or Nihil by the Negativist or Brahman (the One)
by the Positivist (spiritual). But the essential experience of a cosmic and
transcendental reality does not differ very much. So it is declared that
there is only one goal and aim, and there are, at the most, certain broad
principles, clear pathways which one has to follow if one is to move in the
right direction, advance smoothly and attain infallibly: but these have been
well marked out, surveyed and charted and do not admit of (Page 54) serious
alterations and deviations. The spiritual aspiration is a very definite and
unitary movement and its fulfilment is also a definite and invariable status
of the consciousness. The spiritual is a typal domain, one may say, there is
no room here for sudden unforeseen variation or growth or evolution. Is it so in fact ? For, if one admits and accepts the
evolutionary character of human nature and consciousness, the outlook becomes
somewhat different. According to this view, human civilisation is seen as
moving through progressive stages: man at the outset was centrally lodged in
and occupied with his body consciousness, he was an annamaya purusa; then
he raised himself and centred in the vital consciousness and so became
fundamentally a pranamaya purusa; next he climbed into the
mental consciousness and became a manomaya purusa; from that
level again he has been attempting to go further beyond. On each plane the
normal life is planned according to the central character, the law—dharma—of
that plane. One can have the religious or spiritual experience on each of
these planes, representing various degrees of growth and evolution according
to the plane to which it is attached. It is therefore that the Tantra refers
to three gradations of spiritual seekers and accordingly three types or lines
of spiritual discipline: the animal (pasu bhava), the
heroic (vira bhava) and the godly or divine {deva
bhava). The classification is not merely typal but also hierarchical
and evolutionary in character. The Divine or the spiritual consciousness, instead of
being a simple unitary entity, is a vast, complex, stratified reality.
"There are many chambers in my Father's mansion", says the Bible:
many chambers on many stories, one may add. Also there are different levels
or approaches that serve different seekers each with his own starting-point,
his point de repaire.When one speaks of union with the Divine or
of entering into the spiritual consciousness, one does not refer to the same identical
truth or reality as any other. There is a physical Divine, a vital Divine, a
mental Divine; and beyond the mind, —from where one may consider that the
region of true spirit begins—there are other innumerable modes, aspects,
manifestations of the Divine. As we say, there are not only aspects of the Divine,
but (Page 55) there are also levels in him. The spiritual consciousness rises
tier upon tier and each spur has its own view and outlook, rhythm and
character. Now, as long as man was chiefly preoccupied with his physico-vital
or mentalised physico-vital activities, as long as the burden of his body and
life and even mind lay heavy on him and their gravitational pull was normally
very strong, almost irresistible, the spiritual impulse in him acted
generally and fundamentally as a movement of escape from them into some thing
beyond. It was a negative movement on the whole and it was enough to
dissociate, reject, sublimate the lower status and somehow rise into
something which is not that (neti): the question was not
important at that stage of the human consciousness about a scientific
scrutiny of the Beyond, its precise constitution and composition. But once there is the possibility gained of a more
normalised, familiar and wider reconnaissance of the Beyond, when the human
being has been mentalised to a degree and in a manner that makes it
inevitable for him to overpass to a higher status and live there habitually,
then it becomes an urgent matter of concern to know and find out where one
goes exactly, on which level and in what domain, once one is beyond. The
question, it is true, engaged the attention of the ancients too; but it was
more or less an interesting inquiry, a good part speculative and theoretical;
it had not the reality and insistence of the need of the hour. We have today
chalked out an almost exhaustive science of the inferior consciousness, of
the lower hemisphere—of course, so far as it is possible for such a science to
be exhaustive moving in the light of the partial and inferior consciousness.
In the same way we need at the present hour a complete and precise science of
the Divine Consciousness. As there is a logic of the finite, there is also a
logic of the infinite, not merely its magic, and that too has to be
discovered and laid out. Part 3 : The Renaissance in India To understand this further we are studying Sri
Aurobindo’s thoughts on the Renaissance in India. Here are some important
points from his essays. Sri Aurobindo said, ‘It is unlike others, has
genius of a different nature and not like the mentality which has governed
the modern idea in mankind. Although not so far from that which is preparing
to govern the future. (p1) The resemblance is to Celtic movement in Ireland
recovering Celtic culture from English influence. In India, the turn was
after the 1905 outburst. The whole is a confused chaos at the present with
few lighthouses and torchlights as pioneers. A giant Shakti reawakening,
finds herself in shackles, and bonds both self-woven and imposed. Whether the
word renaissance actually applies to India is a doubt for spirituality was
always there and it kept the soul alive even in decline. But for the children
of her who are still suffering from the ill effects which came in 18th
and 19th century when creative spirit in Science, Arts, Philosophy
reduced to only scholastic punditism. ‘India will certainly keep her
essential spirit, will keep her characteristic soul, but there is likely to
be great change of body (p4) Forms not contradictory to the age old spirit
but expressive of those truths, restated, cured of defects, completed.
European writers wrote about metaphysical thinking of India saying that she
was great in it but failed in all other fields. But this one sided praise was
false. Like they mistook Germany’s soul and then got a brutal shock, so will
they get, not brutal, but definitely a startling shock when they will know
India’s real power. Spirituality is indeed the master key of Indian
mind, the sense of infinite is native to it. India saw from the beginning and
throughout her long history she never lost hold of the insight that life
cannot be lived only in its externalities. Material laws, physical forces and
physical science were known to her and they were used well for organizing
physical life. But she saw that physical cannot get her full sense
unless it stands in the right relation to the supra physical. The complexity
of the universe cannot be understood by the present superficial sight. That there are other powers within man himself
and he is unaware of them. Invisible surrounds physical, supra sensible
surrounds sensible and infinite engulfs finite. That there are myriads of
gods, beyond them the god and beyond is his own ineffable eternity. Then she
could see that the present life, mind and spirit is only fragment of the
ranges of life, ranges of mind and ranges of spirit which exceed and are
beyond. And then with that calm audacity of her intuition which knew no
fear and littleness and shrank from no act whether of spiritual or
intellectual, ethical and vital courage, she declared that there are none of
these things which man could not attain if he trained his will and
knowledge. So, since ages this insight
was ingrained in her spirituality – this constant yearning after the infinite
to grapple it, that was the constant turn of her religion, art and
spirituality. But spirituality does not flourish in void. So,
the next to spirituality was her stupendous vitality. love and joy of life
and prolific creativity. She creates and creates inexhaustibly, incessantly,
lavishly- republics and kingdoms, sciences, arts, yoga, psychic sciences,
temples, administrations, trade, commerce, ... and is yet unsatisfied, needs
no rest, has no inertia. There is superabundance of energy – ‘Infinite fills
every inch of space with the stirring of life and energy because it is the
infinite.’ (p7) But this is not a confused splendour of rich
tropical vegetation, for the third power of the ancient Indian spirit is
strong intellectuality-austere, rich, robust, minute, massive in principle
and curious in details. (p8) The order was found on inner law and truth of
the things. The practice of the same was documented as India is a land of
dharma and Shastra. There were successive but mutually inclusive periods of
spirit, dharma and Shastra. From Ashoka to Mohammedan epoch there was massive
creation only a glimpse of which is still surviving. Despite lack of printing
and other means by technology, it transmitted for several centuries only on
memory and vocal recitation. Literature, theology, philosophy, yoga, logic,
languages, politics, science, drama, medicine, arts like painting, dancing,
sculpture, architecture, -all that is ‘useful to life and interesting to mind’
was covered by this ‘opulent, minute, and thorough intellectuality. (p9)
insatiable curiosity and a spirit of organization and order. ‘Thus, an ingrained and dominant spirituality, an
inexhaustible vital creativeness and gust of life and mediating between them
a powerful, penetrating scrupulous intelligence combined of the rational and
aesthetic mind each at a high intensity of action created harmony of the
ancient Indian culture. ‘(p9) The Buddhist and illusionist denial is only one
of philosophic tendencies which assumed exaggerated proportions in the period
of India’s decline. ‘Without a fine excess, we cannot break limits and so
such philosophic tendencies were carried to the extreme. Not just idealism
but even atheism and materialism was treated in this way. Self-assertion and
self-abnegation, opulence and poverty, splendour and ‘satisfied nudity’ -all
are attempted at extreme of pendulum stroke only to come back to the balance
of the ‘middle path.’ Even caste system was originally the idea of
Varnashram dharma in which it was clear that each one is great in his own
place and each one can become god. ‘Yet it is notable that this pursuit of
the most opposite extremes never resulted in disorder and its most hedonistic
period offers nothing that at all resembles the unbridled corruption which a
similar tendency has more than once produced in Europe…for both the rule of
the intellect and the rhythm of beauty are hostile to the spirit of chaos.’ (p12) So India is not monotone of metaphysical
abstraction, rather it is a many phased, many faced multi-coloured endeavour
of spiritual realization with supple adaptability and high pitches. The
first stage was spiritual, with intuitive mind, spiritual experiences and
realizations, passion for truth in physical and psychical. This was the age
of Veda and Upanishads. That stamp is still unforgettable, was never lost by
her even in the decline and was always enriched by fresh spiritual experience
and discovery. The second stage is the stage of intellect, age of dharma.
Then thirdly was the age when the whole lower life was lifted, as in the age
of Purana, Bhakti sampradayas and Tantra. It was the ‘last flower of the
Indian spirit. The decline was in stages- sinking of vital energy, cessation
of old intellectual activity, a slumber of the scientific and critical mind
and creative intuition, and finally spirituality losing its clear synthetic
flame and remaining only as sporadic jets. With great beginning and
development, Indian culture fell short of spiritualising mind and life. The
essence remained same but then it was in smoke of confusing and momentary
helplessness in face of unprecedented conditions. At that moment, Europeans
swept over India and destroyed much of the remnants which had no power to
stand. India’s first reaction was that of awe and blind imitation of the
west, she survived such onslaught only because of the energy of her life. But
this onslaught served a purpose, of reviving intellectuality, rehabilitating
life and creativity, and reviving her spirit, while facing the novel systems
and conditions. Indian renaissance is arriving out of this vision and
impulse. It has following works:
The spirit is a higher infinite of varieties,
life is the lower infinite of possibilities, which seek to grow and fulfil
themselves in the light of the higher. Our intellect, aesthetic being,
ethical being are mediators and reflectors. While the West’s method is to
call down as much as possible to stimulate and embellish life- the east or
Asia /India’s method is to discover the spirit within, to evoke the higher
powers to dominate life, and to make this spirit responsive and expressive of
the spirit. The work of renaissance is to make this spirit,
the higher view of life once again the creative and dominant power in the
world. But at present it is half awakened and most of the action is under the
European impress and because it is foreign to the spirit within so the action
is poor in will, feeble in form and ineffective in results. (p17) The action
must come from the roots with a greater light and be more generalised to make
renaissance possible not only in prospect but also in fact. (p17) |
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