{"id":2569,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:29","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2569"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:29","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:29","slug":"13-hinduism-and-the-mission-of-india-vol-12-essays-divine-and-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/12-essays-divine-and-human\/13-hinduism-and-the-mission-of-india-vol-12-essays-divine-and-human","title":{"rendered":"-13_Hinduism and the Mission of India.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hinduism and the Mission of India <\/b>
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[…..] [That] which is permanent in the Hindu religion, must
\nform the basis on which the world will increasingly take its stand in dealing with spiritual experience and religious truth.
\nHinduism, in my sense of the word, is not modern Brahmanism. Modern Brahmanism developed into existence at a definite period in history. It is now developing out of existence; its mission is done, its capacities exhausted, the Truth which, like other
\nreligions, it defended, honoured, preserved, cherished, misused and disfigured, is about to take to itself new forms and dispense
\nwith all other screens or defender than its own immortal beauty, grandeur, truth and effectiveness. It is this unchanging undying
\nTruth which has to be discovered and placed in its native light before humanity. Tad etat satyam.
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There are many defenders and discoverers of truth now active among us. They are all busy defending, modifying, attacking, sapping or bolstering current Hinduism. I am not eager to disparage but neither do I find myself satisfied with any of
\nthem. If I were, there would be no need for any speculation of my own. There are the orthodox who are busy recovering and
\napplying old texts or any interpretations, new or old, of these texts, which will support the existing order,\u2014and ignoring all
\nthat go against it. Their learning is praiseworthy and useful; it brings to notice many great and helpful things which were in
\ndanger of being misprized, lost or flung away as worthless; but they do not seem to me to go to the heart of the matter. There
\nare the heterodox who are busy giving new interpretations to old texts and institutions in order to get rid of all such features
\nas the modern world finds it hard to assimilate. Their brainwork can hardly be too highly praised; it is bringing to light or to a
\nhalf light many luminous realities and possibilities which, if they cannot all be accepted, yet invigorate and sharpen the habit of
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original thinking and help to remove that blind adherence to
\ntraditions which is truth’s greatest obstacle. Still they too do not seem to me to have the right grasp and discernment. Then
\nthere are the ascetics mystical or rationalistic who call men to disgust with the world and point to the temple, the monastery
\nor the mountaintop as the best, if not the only place for finding God, and most of whom, in order to honour the Maker slight
\nand denounce His works. Their position and temperament is so lofty and noble and their solvent force on the gross impurities
\nof a materialised humanity has been so invaluable that it is with some reluctance one finds oneself obliged to put them on one
\nside and pass onward. But it seems to me that we must pass onward if we would know and possess God in His entirety and
\nnot merely in a side or aspect. There is a story in the Jewish Scriptures which relates that when God wished to show himself
\nto Moses, he could only, owing to the spiritual imperfections of the Jewish prophet, reveal safely to him His hinder parts.
\nMoses would have died if he had seen the front of God; he had not the dharanam, the soul-power to support that tremendous
\nvision. The story well illuminates the character of materialism generally and to its aggressive modern form, European thought
\n& civilisation, it applies with a quite overwhelming appositeness. But it seems to me that the average Vedantist, too, has only
\nseen, for his part, the crown of the Lord’s head and the average bhakta only the Kaustubh-stone over His heart or the Srivatsa
\nmark upon it. On the other hand, there are those rationalists who are by no means ascetical in their views or temperament
\nand their name is legion; they insist on our putting religion and God aside or keeping Him only for ornamental uses in spare
\nmoments, leave that, they say, & devote yourselves to practical work for mankind. That rationalism is necessary too if only
\nto balance the error of the ascetics who would make of God’s world a mistake and of its Maker an Almighty blunderer or an
\ninscrutable eccentric or an indefinable Something inhabiting a chaos or a mirage. Nevertheless, from materialism least of all,
\nhowever philanthropic or patriotic, can our future salvation be expected. Finally, there are the mystics who are not ascetics,\u2014  
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the Theosophists. From one point of view I cannot find praise
\nwarm enough to do justice to the work of Theosophy; from another I cannot find condemnation strong enough to denounce
\nit. It has forced on the notice of an unwilling world truths to which orthodoxy is blind and of which heterodoxy is afraid or
\nincredulous. It has shown a colossal courage in facing ridicule, trampling on prejudice and slander, persisting in faith in spite of
\ndisillusionment, scandal and a continual shifting of knowledge. They have kept the flag of a past & future science flying against
\nenormous difficulties. On the other hand by bringing to the investigation of that science\u2014not its discovery, for to the Hindu
\nYogin it is known already\u2014the traditional European methods, the methods of the market-place and the forum, it has brought
\non the truths themselves much doubt and discredit, and by importing into them the forms, jugglery and jargon of European
\nmystics, their romanticism, their unbridled imagination, their galloping impatience, their haste, bragging and loudness, their
\nsusceptibility to dupery, trickery, obstinate error and greedy self-deception, Theosophists have strengthened doubt and discredit
\nand driven many an earnest seeker to bewilderment, to angry suspicion or to final renunciation of the search for truth. They
\nhave scattered the path of the conscientious investigators, the severe scientists of Yoga who must appear in the future, with
\nthe thorns and sharp flints of a well-justified incredulity and suspicion. I admit the truths that Theosophy seeks to unveil; but
\nI do not think they can be reached if we fall into bondage even to the most inspiring table talk of Mahatmas or to the confused
\nanathemas and vaticinations hurled from their platform tripods by modern Pythonesses of the type of Mrs Annie Besant, that
\n.. great, capacious but bewildered and darkened intellect, now
\nstumbling with a loud and confident blindness through those worlds of twilight and glamour, of distorted inspirations, perverted communications and misunderstood or half-understood perceptions which are so painfully familiar to the student and
\nseeker. <\/span> <\/p>\n

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If these things do not satisfy me, what then do I seek? I seek
\na light that shall be new, yet old, the oldest indeed of all lights.   
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I seek an authority that accepting, illuminating and reconciling
\nall human truth, shall yet reject and get rid of by explaining it all mere human error. I seek a text and a Shastra that is not subject
\nto interpolation, modification and replacement, that moth and white ant cannot destroy, that the earth cannot bury nor Time
\nmutilate. I seek an asceticism that shall give me purity and deliverance from self and from ignorance without stultifying God and
\nHis universe. I seek a scepticism that shall question everything but shall have the patience to deny nothing that may possibly
\nbe true. I seek a rationalism not proceeding on the untenable supposition that all the centuries of man’s history except the
\nnineteenth were centuries of folly and superstition, but bent on discovering truth instead of limiting inquiry by a new dogmatism, obscurantism and furious intolerance which it chooses to call common sense and enlightenment; I seek a materialism that
\nshall recognise matter and use it without being its slave. I seek an occultism that shall bring out all its processes and proofs
\ninto the light of day, without mystery, without jugglery, without the old stupid call to humanity, “Be blind, O man, and see!” In
\nshort, I seek not science, not religion, not Theosophy, but Veda\u2014the truth about Brahman, not only about His essentiality,
\nbut about His manifestation, not a lamp on the way to the forest, but a light and a guide to joy and action in the world, the
\ntruth which is beyond opinion, the knowledge which all thought strives after\u2014yasmin vijnate sarvam vijnatam. I believe that
\nVeda to be the foundation of the Sanatan Dharma; I believe it to be the concealed divinity within Hinduism,\u2014but a veil has
\nto be drawn aside, a curtain has to be lifted. I believe it to be knowable and discoverable. I believe the future of India and the
\nworld to depend on its discovery and on its application, not to the renunciation of life, but to life in the world and among men.
\nIn these articles I shall not try to announce truth, but merely to inquire what are those things in Hinduism by following which
\nwe may arrive at the truth. I shall try to indicate some of my reasons\u2014as far as within these limits it can be done\u2014for my
\nfaith in my guides and the manner in which I think they should be followed. I am impelled to this labour by the necessity of turning
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the mind of young India to our true riches, our real source of
\npower, purification and hope for the future and of safeguarding it in the course of its search both from false lights and from the
\nraucous challenges and confident discouragements cast at us by the frail modern spirit of denial. I write, not for the orthodox,
\nnor for those who have discovered a new orthodoxy, Samaj or Panth, nor for the unbeliever; I write for those who acknowledge
\nreason but do not identify reason with Western materialism; who are sceptics but not unbelievers; who, admitting the claims
\nof modern thought, still believe in India, her mission and her gospel, her immortal life and her eternal rebirth.
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