{"id":676,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=676"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:38","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:38","slug":"38-the-secret-of-the-isha-vol-12-the-upanishad-volume-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/12-the-upanishad-volume-12\/38-the-secret-of-the-isha-vol-12-the-upanishad-volume-12","title":{"rendered":"-38_The Secret of The Isha.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\n
\nThe Secret of the Isha<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI<\/span>T
\n<\/span>IS <\/span>
\n<\/b>now several thousands of years since men ceased to study
\nVeda and Upanishad for the sake of Veda or Upanishad. Ever since the human mind
\nin India, more and more intellectualised, always increasingly addicted to the
\nsecondary process of knowledge by logic and intellectual rationalism,
\nincreasingly drawn away from the true and primary processes of knowledge by
\nexperience and direct perception, began to dislocate and dismember the
\nmany-sided harmony of ancient Vedic truth and paved it out into schools of
\nthought, a system of metaphysics, its preoccupation has been rather with the
\nopinions of later Sutras and Bhashyas than with the early truth of Scripture.
\nThe Veda and Vedanta ceased to be guides to knowledge and became merely mines
\nand quarries from which convenient texts might be extracted regardless of
\ncontext, to serve as weapons in the polemic disputes of metaphysicians. The
\ninconvenient texts were ignored or explained away by distortion of their sense
\nor by depreciation of their value. Those that neither helped nor hindered the
\npolemical purpose of the exegete were briefly paraphrased or often left in a
\ntwilit obscurity. For the language of the Vedantic writers ceased to be
\nunderstood; their figures, symbols of thought, shades of expression became
\nantique and unintelligible. Hence passages which when once fathomed reveal a
\ndepth of knowledge and delicacy of subtle thought almost miraculous in its
\nwealth and quality seem to the casual reader today is a mass of childish,
\nobscure and ignorant fancies characteristic of an unformed and immature
\nthinking. Rubbish and babblings of humanity’s nonage, an eminent Western scholar
\nhas termed them, not perceiving that it was not the text but his understanding
\nof it that was rubbish and the babblings of ignorance. Worst of all, the
\nspiritual and psychological experiences of the Vedantic seekers were largely
\nlost to India as the obscurations of the Iron Age grew upon her, as her
\nknowledge contracted, her virtues diminished and her old<\/span> \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 520<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\nspiritual valiancy lost its daring and its nerve. Not
\naltogether lost indeed for its sides of knowledge and practice still lived in
\ncave and hermitage, its sides of feeling and sensation, narrowed by a more
\nexclusive and self-abandoned fervour, remained, quickened even in the throbbing
\nintensity of the Bhakti Marga and the violent inner joys of countless devotees.
\nBut even here it remained dim and obscure, shorn of its fullness, dimmed in its
\nancient and radiant purity. Yet we think we have understood and possess however
\nit may be half the Vedas. The Upanishads! we have understood a few principal
\ntexts and even those imperfectly; but of the mass of the Upanishads we
\nunderstand less than we do of the Egyptian hieroglyphics and of the know\u00adledge
\nthese great writings hold enshrined we possess less than we do of the wisdom of
\nthe ancient Egyptians. Dabhram evāpi tvam vettha brahman<\/i><\/span>̣<\/span>o
\nrūpam<\/span><\/i>!<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI have said that the increasing intellectualisation of the
\nIndian mind has been responsible for this great national loss. Our forefathers
\nwho discovered or received Vedic truth, did not arrive at it either by
\nintellectual speculation or by logical reason\u00ading. They attained it by actual
\nand tangible experience in the spirit, \u2014 by spiritual and psychological
\nobservation, as we may say, and what they thus experienced they understood by
\nthe instrumentality of the intuitive reason. But a time came when men felt an
\nimperative need to give an account to themselves and to others of this supreme
\nand immemorial Vedic truth in the terms of logic, in the language of
\nintellectual ratiocination. For the maintenance of the intuitive reason as the
\nordinary instrument of knowledge demands as its basis an iron moral and
\nintellectual discipline, a colossal disinterestedness of thinking, \u2014 otherwise
\nthe imagination and the wishes pollute the purity of its action, replace,
\ndethrone it and wear flamboyantly its name and mask; Vedic knowledge begins to
\nbe lost and the practice of life and symbol based upon it are soon replaced by
\nformalised action and unintelligent rite and ceremony. Without Tapasya there can
\nbe no Veda. This was the course that the stream of thought followed among us
\naccording to the sense of our Indian tradition. The capacity for Tapasya belongs
\nto the Golden Age of man’s first virility; it fades as humanity ages and the
\ncycle takes its way<\/span> \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 521<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\ntowards the years that are of Iron, and with Tapasya, the
\nbasis, divine knowledge, the superstructure, also collapses or dwindles. The
\nplace of truth is there taken by superstition, by irrational error that takes
\nits stand upon the place where truth lies buried and builds its tawdry and
\nfantastic palace of pleasure upon lost, concealed and consecrated foundations
\nand even the ruins of old truth as stones for its irregular building. But such
\nan usurpation can never endure. For since the need of man’s being is truth and
\nlight, the divine law, whose chief aspect it is that no just demand of the soul
\nshall remain always unsatisfied, raises up Reason to clear away Superstition.
\nReason arrives as the Angel of the Lord, armed with her sword of double denial
\n(for it is the nature of intellectual Reason that beyond truth of objective
\nappearance she cannot confidently and powerfully affirm anything but must always
\nremain with regard to fundamental truth agnostic and doubtful, her highest word
\nof affirmation "probably", her lowest "perhaps"), \u2014 comes and cuts away whatever
\nshe can, often losing herself also in a fury of negation, denying superstition
\nindeed, but doubting and denying even Truth because it has been a foundation for
\nsuperstition or formed with some of its stones part of the building. But at any
\nrate she clears the field for sounder work; she makes tabula<\/i> rasa <\/i>
\nfor a more correct writing. The ancient Indian mind felt instinctively<\/span>
\n<\/span> \u2014 I do not say it realised or argued consciously \u2014
\nthe necessity, as the one way to avoid such a reign of negation; the necessity
\nof stating to the intellectual reason so much of Vedic truth as could still be
\ngrasped and justify it logically. The Six Darshanas were the result of this
\nmighty labour. Buddhism, the inevitable rush of negation came indeed but it was
\nprevented from destroying spirituality, as European negation destroyed it for a
\ntime in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, by the immense and unshakeable
\nhold the work of the philosophers had taken upon the Indian temperament, so firm
\nwas this grasp that even the great Masters of negation \u2014 for Brihaspati who
\naffirmed matter was a child and weakling in denial compared with the Buddhists,<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u2014could not wholly divest themselves of this
\ncharacteristic Indian realisation that subjective experience is the basis of
\nexistence, the objective only an outward term of that existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 522<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\nBut admirable and necessary as was this vast work of
\nintellectual systemisation, subtle, self-grasped and successful beyond parallel,
\nsupreme glory as it is now held and highest attainment of Indian mentality, it
\nhad from the standpoint of Vedantic truth three capital disadvantages.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n(Incomplete<\/i> )<\/span> \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 523<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Secret of the Isha   IT IS now several thousands of years since men ceased to study Veda and Upanishad for the sake of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-12-the-upanishad-volume-12","wpcat-14-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676","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=676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}