{"id":2605,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:42","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2605"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:42","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:42","slug":"09-the-interpretation-of-scripture-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\/09-the-interpretation-of-scripture-vol-12-essays-divine-and-human","title":{"rendered":"-09_The Interpretation of Scripture.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Interpretation of Scripture <\/b><\/span><\/font>
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The spirit who lies concealed behind the material world, has
\ngiven us, through the inspiration of great seers, the Scriptures as helpers and guides to unapparent truth, lamps of great power
\nthat send their rays into the darkness of the unknown beyond which He dwells,
\ntamasah parastat<\/i>. They are guides to knowledge, brief indications to enlighten us on our path, not substitutes for thought and experience. They are
\nshabdam Brahma<\/i>,
\nthe Word, the oral expression of God, not the thing to be known itself nor the knowledge of Him.
\nShabdam <\/i>has three elements,
\nthe word, the meaning and the spirit. The word is a symbol, vak <\/i>or nama<\/i>; we have to find the
\nartha<\/i>, the meaning or form
\nof thought which the symbol indicates. But the meaning itself is only the indication of something deeper which the thought seeks
\nto convey to the intellectual conception. For not only words, but ideas also are eventually no more than symbols of a knowledge
\nwhich is beyond ideas and words. Therefore it comes that no idea by itself is wholly true. There is indeed a
\nrupa<\/i>, some concrete
\nor abstract form of knowledge, answering to every name, and it is that which the meaning must present to the intellect. We say
\na form of knowledge, because according to our philosophy, all things are forms of an essentially unknowable existence which
\nreveals them as forms of knowledge to the essential awareness in its Self, its Atman or Spirit, the Chit in the Sat. But beyond
\nnama <\/i>and rupa <\/i>is swarupa<\/i>, the essential figure of Truth, which we cannot know with the intellect, but only with a higher faculty.
\nAnd every swarupa <\/i>is itself only a symbol of the one essential existence which can only be known by its symbols because in its
\nultimate reality it defies logic and exceeds perception,\u2014God.
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\tSince the knowledge the Scripture conveys is so deep, difficult and subtle,\u2014if it were easy what would be the need of the Scripture?\u2014the interpreter cannot be too careful or too
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perfectly trained. He must not be one who will rest content in
\nthe thought-symbol or in the logical implications of the idea; he must hunger and thirst for what is beyond. The interpreter who
\nstops short with the letter, is the slave of a symbol and convicted of error. The interpreter who cannot go beyond the external
\nmeaning, is the prisoner of his thought and rests in a partial and incomplete knowledge. One must transgress limits & penetrate
\nto the knowledge behind, which must be experienced before it can be known; for the ear hears it, the intellect observes it, but
\nthe spirit alone can possess it. Realisation in the self of things is the only knowledge; all else is mere idea or opinion.
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The interpretation of the Veda is hampered by many human irrelevancies. Men set up an authority and put it between
\nthemselves and knowledge. The orthodox are indignant that a mere modern should presume to differ from Shankara in interpreting the Vedanta or from Sayana in interpreting the Veda. They forget that Shankara and Sayana are themselves moderns,
\nseparated from ourselves by some hundreds of years only, but the Vedas are many thousands of years old. The commentator
\nought to be studied, but instead we put him in place of the text. Good commentaries are always helpful even when they are
\nwrong, but the best cannot be allowed to fetter inquiry. Sayana’s commentary on the Veda helps me by showing what a man of
\ngreat erudition some hundreds of years ago thought to be the sense of the Scripture. But I cannot forget that even at the time
\nof the Brahmanas the meaning of the Veda had become dark to the men of that prehistoric age. Shankara’s commentary on
\nthe Upanishads helps me by showing what a man of immense metaphysical genius and rare logical force after arriving at some
\nfundamental realisations thought to be the sense of the Vedanta. But it is evident that he is often at a loss and always prepossessed
\nby the necessity of justifying his philosophy. I find that Shankara had grasped much of Vedantic truth, but that much was dark
\nto him. I am bound to admit what he realised; I am not bound to exclude what he failed to realise.
\nAptavakyam<\/i>, authority, is
\none kind of proof; it is not the only kind: pratyaksha <\/i>is more important.
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The heterodox on the other hand swear by Max Muller and
\nthe Europeans. It is enough for them that Max Muller should have found henotheism in the Vedas for the Vedas to be henotheistic. The Europeans have seen in our Veda only the rude chants of an antique and primitive pastoral race sung in honour of the
\nforces of Nature, and for many their opinion is conclusive of the significance of the
\nmantras<\/i>. All other interpretation is to them
\nsuperstitious. But to me the ingenious guesses of foreign grammarians are of no more authority than the ingenious guesses
\nof Sayana. It is irrelevant to me what Max Muller thinks of the Veda or what Sayana thinks of the Veda. I should prefer to know
\nwhat the Veda has to say for itself and, if there is any light there on the unknown or on the infinite, to follow the ray till I come
\nface to face with that which it illumines.
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There are those who follow neither Sayana and Shankara
\nnor the Europeans, but interpret Veda and Vedanta for themselves, yet permit themselves to be the slaves of another kind
\nof irrelevancy. They come to the Veda with a preconceived and established opinion and seek in it a support for some trifling
\npolemic; they degrade it to the position of a backer in an intellectual
\nprize-fight. Opinions are not knowledge, they are only
\nsidelights on knowledge. Most often they are illegitimate extensions of an imperfect knowledge. A man has perhaps travelled
\nto England and seen Cumberland and the lakes; he comes back and imagines England ever after as a country full of verdant
\nmountains, faery woodlands, peaceful and enchanted waters. Another has been to the manufacturing centres; he imagines
\nEngland as a great roaring workshop, crammed with furnaces and the hum of machinery and the smell of metal. Another
\nhas sojourned in the quiet country-side and to him England is all hedges and lanes and the daisy-sprinkled meadow and the
\nwell-tilled field. All have realised a little, but none have realised England. Then there is the man who has only read about the
\ncountry or heard descriptions from others and thinks he knows it better than the men who have been there. They may all admit
\nthat what they have seen need not be the whole, but each has his little ineffaceable picture which, because it is all he has realised,
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persists in standing for the whole. There is no harm in that, no
\nharm whatever in limitation if you understand and admit the limitation. But if all the four begin quarrelling, what an aimless
\nconfusion will arise! That is what has happened in India because of the excessive logicality and too robust opinionativeness
\nof Southern metaphysicians. We should come back to a more flexible and rational spirit of inquiry.
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What then are the standards of truth in the interpretation of the Scripture? The standards are three, the knower, knowledge
\nand the known.
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The known is the text itself that we seek to interpret. We
\nmust be sure we have the right word, not an emendation to suit the exigency of some individual or sectarian opinion; the right
\netymology and shade of meaning, not one that is traditional or forced to serve the ends of a commentator; the right spirit in the
\nsense, not an imported or too narrow or too elastic spirit.
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The knower is the original
\ndrashta <\/i>or seer of the mantra<\/i>,
\nwith whom we ought to be in spiritual contact. If knowledge is indeed a perishable thing in a perishable instrument, such
\ncontact is impossible; but in that case the Scripture itself must be false and not worth considering. If there is any truth in what
\nthe Scripture says, knowledge is eternal and inherent in all of us and what another saw I can see, what another realised I can
\nrealise. The drashta <\/i>was a soul in relation with the infinite Spirit, I am also a soul in relation with the infinite Spirit. We have a
\nmeeting-place, a possibility of communion.
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Knowledge is the eternal truth, part of which the
\ndrashta<\/i>
\nexpresses to us. Through the part he shows us, we must travel to the whole, otherwise we shall be subject to the errors incidental
\nto an imperfect knowledge. If even the part is to be rightly understood, it must be viewed in the terms of the whole, not the
\nwhole in the terms of the part. I am not limited by the Scriptures; on the contrary I must exceed them in order to be master of
\ntheir knowledge. It is true that we are usually the slaves of our individual and limited outlook, but our capacity is unlimited,
\nand, if we can get rid of ahankara<\/i>, if we can put ourselves at the service of the Infinite without any reservation of predilection
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or opinion, there is no reason why our realisation should be
\nlimited. Tasmin vijnate sarvam vijnatam<\/i>. He being known, all can be known. To understand Scripture, it is not enough to be a
\nscholar, one must be a soul. To know what the drashta <\/i>saw one must oneself have
\ndrishti<\/i>, sight, and be a student if not a master
\nof the knowledge. Atha para yaya tad aksharam adhigamyate<\/i>. Grammar, etymology, prosody, astronomy, metaphysics, logic,
\nall that is good; but afterwards there is still needed the higher knowledge by which the Immutable is known.
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The Interpretation of Scripture   The spirit who lies concealed behind the material world, has given us, through the inspiration of great seers, the Scriptures…<\/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-2605","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\/2605","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=2605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}