{"id":2573,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:31","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2573"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:31","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:31","slug":"10-on-original-thinking-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\/10-on-original-thinking-vol-12-essays-divine-and-human","title":{"rendered":"-10_On Original Thinking.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On Original Thinking <\/b><\/span><\/font>
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The attitude of mankind towards originality of opinion is
\nmarked by a natural hesitation and inconsistency. Admired for its rarity, brilliancy and potency, yet in practice and for the same
\nqualities it is more generally dreaded, ridiculed or feared. There is no doubt that it tends to disturb what is established. Therefore tamasic men and tamasic states of society take especial pains to discourage independence of opinion. Their watchword is
\nauthority. Few societies have been so tamasic, so full of inertia and contentment in increasing narrowness as Indian society in
\nlater times; few have been so eager to preserve themselves in inertia. Few therefore have attached so great an importance
\nto authority. Every detail of our life has been fixed for us by Shastra and custom, every detail of our thought by Scripture
\nand its commentators,\u2014but much oftener by the commentators than by Scripture. Only in one field, that of individual spiritual
\nexperience, have we cherished the ancient freedom and originality out of which our past greatness sprang; it is from some new
\nmovement in this inexhaustible source that every fresh impulse and rejuvenated strength has arisen. Otherwise we should long
\nago have been in the grave where dead nations lie, with Greece and Rome of the Caesars, with Esarhaddon and the Chosroes.
\nYou will often hear it said that it was the forms of Hinduism which have given us so much national vitality. I think rather it
\nwas its spirit. I am inclined to give more credit for the secular miracle of our national survival to Shankara, Ramanuja, Nanak
\n& Kabir, Guru Govind, Chaitanya, Ramdas & Tukaram than to Raghunandan and the Pandits of Nadiya & Bhatpara.
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The result of this well-meaning bondage has been an increasing impoverishment of the Indian intellect, once the most
\ngigantic and original in the world. Hence a certain incapacity, atrophy, impotence have marked our later activities even
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at their best. The most striking instance is our continued helplessness in the face of the new conditions and new knowledge imposed on us by recent European contact. We have tried to
\nassimilate, we have tried to reject, we have tried to select; but we have not been able to do any of these things successfully.
\nSuccessful assimilation depends on mastery; but we have not mastered European conditions and knowledge, rather we have
\nbeen seized, subjected and enslaved by them. Successful rejection is possible only if we have intelligent possession of that
\nwhich we wish to keep. Our rejection too must be an intelligent rejection; we must reject because we have understood,
\nnot because we have failed to understand. But our Hinduism, our old culture are precisely the possessions we have cherished
\nwith the least intelligence; throughout the whole range of our life we do things without knowing why we do them, we believe things without knowing why we believe them, we assert things without knowing what right we have to assert them,\u2014or, at most, it is because some book or some Brahmin enjoins it, because Shankara thinks it, or because someone has
\nso interpreted something that he asserts to be a fundamental Scripture of our religion. Nothing is our own, nothing native
\nto our intelligence, all is derived. As little have we understood the new knowledge; we have only understood what the Europeans want us to think about themselves and their modern civilisation. Our English culture\u2014if culture it can be called\u2014has increased tenfold the evil of our dependence instead of remedying it.
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More even than the other two processes successful selection requires the independent play of intellect. If we merely receive
\nnew ideas and institutions in the light in which they are presented to us, we shall, instead of selecting, imitate\u2014blindly,
\nfoolishly and inappropriately. If we receive them in the light given by our previous knowledge, which was on so many points
\nnil, we shall as blindly and foolishly reject. Selection demands that we should see things not as the foreigner sees them or as
\nthe orthodox Pandit sees them, but as they are in themselves. But we have selected at random, we have rejected at random, we
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have not known how to assimilate or choose. In the upshot we
\nhave merely suffered the European impact, overborne at points, crassly resisting at others, and, altogether, miserable, enslaved
\nby our environments, able neither to perish nor to survive. We preserve indeed a certain ingenuity and subtlety; we can imitate
\nwith an appearance of brightness; we can play plausibly, even brilliantly with the minutiae of a subject; but we fail to think
\nusefully, we fail to master the life and heart of things. Yet it is only by mastering the life and heart of things that we can hope,
\nas a nation, to survive.
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How shall we recover our lost intellectual freedom and elasticity? By reversing, for a time at least, the process by which we lost it, by liberating our minds in all subjects from the thraldom
\nto authority. That is not what reformers and the Anglicised require of us. They ask us, indeed, to abandon authority, to revolt
\nagainst custom and superstition, to have free and enlightened minds. But they mean by these sounding recommendations that
\nwe should renounce the authority of Sayana for the authority of Max Muller, the Monism of Shankara for the Monism of
\nHaeckel, the written Shastra for the unwritten law of European social opinion, the dogmatism of Brahmin Pandits for the dogmatism of European scientists, thinkers and scholars. Such a foolish exchange of servitude can receive the assent of no
\n\tself-respecting mind. Let us break our chains, venerable as they are, but let it be in order to be free,\u2014in the name of truth, not in the
\nname of Europe. It would be a poor bargain to exchange our old Indian illuminations, however dark they may have grown to us,
\nfor a derivative European enlightenment or replace the superstitions of popular Hinduism by the superstitions of materialistic
\nScience.
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Our first necessity, if India is to survive and do her appointed
\nwork in the world, is that the youth of India should learn to think,\u2014to think on all subjects, to think independently, fruitfully, going to the heart of things, not stopped by their surface, free of prejudgments, shearing sophism and prejudice asunder as
\nwith a sharp sword, smiting down obscurantism of all kinds as with the mace of Bhima. Let our brains no longer, like European
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infants, be swathed with swaddling clothes; let them recover the
\nfree and unbound motion of the gods; let them have not only the minuteness but the wide mastery and sovereignty natural to
\nthe intellect of Bharata and easily recoverable by it if it once accustoms itself to feel its own power and be convinced of its
\nown worth. If it cannot entirely shake off past shackles, let it at least arise like the infant Krishna bound to the wain, and
\nmove forward dragging with it wain and all and shattering in its progress the twin trees, the twin obstacles to self-fulfilment,
\nblind mediaeval prejudice and arrogant modern dogmatism. The old fixed foundations have been broken up, we are tossing in
\nthe waters of a great upheaval and change. It is no use clinging to the old ice-floes of the past, they will soon melt and leave
\ntheir refugees struggling in perilous waters. It is no use landing ourselves in the infirm bog, neither sea nor good dry land, of a
\nsecond-hand Europeanism. We shall only die there a miserable and unclean death. No, we must learn to swim and use that
\npower to reach the good vessel of unchanging truth; we must land again on the eternal rock of ages.
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Let us not, either, select at random, make a nameless hotchpotch and then triumphantly call it the assimilation of East and
\nWest. We must begin by accepting nothing on trust from any source whatsoever, by questioning everything and forming our
\nown conclusions. We need not fear that we shall by that process cease to be Indians or fall into the danger of abandoning
\nHinduism. India can never cease to be India or Hinduism to be Hinduism, if we really think for ourselves. It is only if we
\nallow Europe to think for us that India is in danger of becoming an ill-executed and foolish copy of Europe. We must not begin
\nby becoming partisans but know before we take our line. Our first business as original thinkers will be to accept nothing, to
\nquestion everything. That means to get rid of all unexamined opinions old or new, all mere habitual sanskaras in the mind,
\nto have no preconceived judgments. Anityah sarvasanskarah, said the Buddha. I do not know that I quite agree. There are
\ncertain sanskaras that seem to me as eternal as things can be. What is the Atman itself but an eternal and fundamental way of
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looking at things, the essentiality of all being in itself unknowable, neti, neti. Therefore the later Buddhists declared that the Atman itself did not exist and arrived at ultimate nothingness,
\na barren and foolish conclusion, since Nothingness itself is only a sanskara. Nevertheless it is certain that the great mass of our
\nhabitual conceptions are not only temporary, but imperfect and misleading. We must escape from these imperfections and take
\nour stand on that which is true and lasting. But in order to find out what in our conceptions is true and lasting, we must
\nquestion all alike rigorously and impartially. The necessity of such a process not for India, but for all humanity has been
\nrecognised by leading European thinkers. It was what Carlyle meant when he spoke of swallowing all formulas. It was the process by which Goethe helped to reinvigorate European thinking. But in Europe the stream is running dry before it has reached
\nits sea. Europe has for some time ceased to produce original thinkers, though it still produces original mechanicians. Science
\npreserves her freedom of inquiry in details, in the mint and anise and cummin of the world’s processes, but, bound hand & foot
\nin the formulas of the past, she is growing helpless for great ideas and sound generalisations. She sits contented with her
\ntreasuries; she has combed all the pebbles on the seashore and examined the shoreward gulfs and bays; of the oceans beyond
\nand their undiscovered continents she cries scornfully “They are a dream; there is nothing there but mists mistaken for land
\nor a waste of the same waters that we have already here examined.” Europe is becoming stereotyped and unprogressive;
\nshe is fruitful only of new & ever multiplying luxuries and of feverish, fiery & ineffective changes in her political and social
\nmachinery. China, Japan and the Mussulman States are sliding into a blind European imitativeness. In India alone there is
\nself-contained, dormant, the energy and the invincible spiritual individuality which can yet arise and break her own and the
\nworld’s fetters.
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It is true that original thinking makes for original acting,
\nand therefore a caution is necessary. We must be careful that our thinking is not only original but thorough before we even initiate
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action. To run away with an isolated original idea, or charmed
\nwith its newness and vigour, to ride it into the field of action is to make of ourselves cranks and eccentrics. This world, this society,
\nthese nations and their civilisations are not simple existences, but complex & intricate, the result of a great organic growth in
\nmany centuries, sometimes in many millenniums. We should not deal with them after snatching at a few hurried generalisations
\nor in the gust and fury of a stiff fanaticism. We must first be sure that our new thought is wide and strong-winged enough, our
\nthoughts large enough, our natures mighty enough to deal with those vastnesses. We must be careful, too, to comprehend what
\nwe destroy. And destroy we must not unless we have a greater and more perfect thing to put in the place even of a crumbling
\nand mouldering antiquity. To tear down Hindu society in the spirit of the social reformers or European society in the spirit
\nof the philosophical or unphilosophical Anarchists would be to destroy order and substitute a licentious confusion. If we
\ncarefully remember these cautions, there is no harm in original thinking even of the boldest and most merciless novelty. I may,
\nfor example, attack unsparingly the prevailing system of justice and punishment as extraordinarily senseless and evil, even if I
\nhave no new system ready-made to put in as its successor; but I must have no wish to destroy it, senseless & evil though it be,
\nuntil our new system is ready. For it fills a place the vacancy of which the Spirit that uplifts & supports our human welfare,
\nwould greatly abhor. I may expose, too, the weaknesses and narrownesses of an existing form of religion, even if I have no new &
\nbetter form to preach of my own, but I must not so rage against those weaknesses as to destroy all religious faith and I should
\nremember before the end of my criticism that even a bad religion is better than no religion,\u2014that it is wiser to worship energy in
\nmy surroundings with the African savage than to be dead to all faith and all spirituality like the drunkards of a little knowledge\u2014for even in that animal and unintelligent worship there is a spark of the divine fire which keeps humanity living, while
\nthe cultured imperial Roman or the luxurious modern wealth-gatherer and body worshipper drags his kind into a straight
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& well built road which is so broad only to lead more easily to a mighty
\n\tperdition\u2014na ched ihavedin mahati vinashtih<\/i>. Otherwise there is no harm in spreading dissatisfaction with
\nfetish worship or refusing praise to an ancient and cruel folly. We need not be troubled if our thinking is condemned as too
\nradical or even as reckless & revolutionary,\u2014for the success of revolutionary thought always means that Nature has need of one
\nof her cataclysms; even otherwise, she will make of it whatever modified use is best for our present humanity. In thought as
\nin deeds, to the thinking we have a right, the result belongs to the wise & active Power of God that stands over us & in us
\noriginating, cherishing, indefatigably dissolving & remoulding man and spirit in the progressive harmonies of His universe. Let
\nus only strive that our light should be clear, diffused & steady, not either darkness or a narrow glare and merely violent lustre.
\nAnd if we cannot compass that ideal, still it is better to think than to cease from thinking. For even out of darkness the day is
\nborn and lightning has its uses!
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[Draft opening of another version]
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W have had recently in India a great abundance of speculations on the real causes of that gradual decline and final arrest which
\nIndian civilisation no less than European suffered during the Middle Ages. The arrest was neither so sudden as in Europe nor
\nso complete; but its effect on our nation, like the undermining activity of a slow poison, was all the more profoundly destructive, pervasive, hard to remedy, difficult to expel. At a certain period we entered into a decline, splendid at first like a long
\nand gorgeous sunset, afterwards more & more sombre, till the darkness closed in, and if our sky was strewn with stars of a
\ngreat number & brilliance, it was only a vast decay, confusion and inertia that they lighted and emphasised with their rays.
\nWe have, most of us, our chosen explanation of this dolorous phenomenon. The patriot attributes our decline to the ravages
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of foreign invasion and the benumbing influences of foreign
\nrule; the disciple of European materialism finds out the enemy, the evil, the fount and origin of all our ills, in our religion and
\nits time-honoured social self-expression. Such explanations, like most human thoughts, have their bright side of truth as well
\nas their obscure side of error; but they are not, in any case, the result of impartial thinking. Man may be, as he has been
\ndefined, a reasoning animal, but it is necessary to add that he is, for the most part, a very badly-reasoning animal. He does not
\nordinarily think for the sake of finding out the truth, but much more for the satisfaction of his mental preferences and emotional tendencies; his conclusions spring from his preferences, prejudices and passions; and his reasoning & logic paraded to
\njustify them are only a specious process or a formal mask for his covert approach to an upshot previously necessitated by his
\nheart or by his temperament. When we are awakened from our modern illusions, as we have been awakened from our mediaeval
\nsuperstitions, we shall find that the intellectual conclusions of the rationalist for all their [ . . . ] pomp & profuse apparatus
\nof scrupulous enquiry were as much dogmas as those former dicta of Pope & theologian, which confessed without shame
\ntheir simple basis in the negation of reason. Much more do all those current opinions demand scrutiny & modification, which
\nexpress our personal view of things and rest patently on a partial and partisan view or have been justified by preferential selection
\nof the few data that suited our foregone & desired conclusion. It is always best, therefore, to scrutinise very narrowly those bare,
\ntrenchant explanations which so easily satisfy the pugnacious animal in our intellects; when we have admitted that small part
\nof the truth on which they seize, we should always look for the large part which they have missed. Especially is it right, when
\nthere are subjective movements & causes of a considerable extent and complexity behind the phenomena we have to observe,
\nto distrust facile, simple and rapid solutions.  
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On Original Thinking   The attitude of mankind towards originality of opinion is marked by a natural hesitation and inconsistency. Admired for its rarity, brilliancy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-12-essays-divine-and-human","wpcat-52-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}