{"id":78,"date":"2013-07-13T01:25:43","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=78"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:25:43","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:43","slug":"16-on-original-thinking-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03\/16-on-original-thinking-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-16_On Original Thinking.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nOn Original Thinking<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nT<\/font>HE <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/b>attitude of mankind towards originality of opinion is marked by a natural hesitation and
\ninconsistency. Admired for its rarity, brilliancy and potency, yet in
\npractice and for the same qualities it is more generally dreaded,
\nridiculed or feared. There is no doubt that it tends to disturb
\nwhat is established. Therefore tamasic men and tamasic states
\nof society take especial pains to discourage independence of
\nopinion. Their watchword is authority. Few societies have been
\nso tamasic, so full of inertia and contentment in increasing
\nnarrowness as Indian society in later times; few have been so
\neager to preserve themselves in inertia. Few therefore have
\nattached so great an importance to authority. Every detail of
\nour life has been fixed for us by Shastra and custom, every detail
\nof our thought by Scripture and its commentators, \u2014 but much
\noftener by the commentators than by Scripture. Only in one
\nfield, that of individual spiritual experience, have we cherished
\nthe ancient freedom and originality out of which our past greatness sprang; it is from some new movement in this inexhaustible
\nsource that every fresh impulse and rejuvenated strength has
\narisen. Otherwise we should long ago have been in the grave
\nwhere dead nations lie, with Greece and Rome of the Caesars,
\nwith Esarhaddon and the Chosroes. You will often hear it said
\nthat it was the forms of Hinduism which have given us so much
\nnational vitality. I think rather it was its spirit. I am inclined
\nto give more credit for the secular miracle of our national survival
\nto Shankara, Ramanuja, Nanak and Kabir, Guru Govind,
\nChaitanya, Ramdas and Tukaram than to Raghunandan and
\nthe Pandits of Nadiya and Bhatpara.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe 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,
\natrophy, impotence have marked our later activities even at their
\nbest. The most striking instance is our continued helplessness<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 110<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nin the face of the new conditions and new knowledge imposed
\non us by recent European contact. We have tried to assimilate,
\nwe have tried to reject, we have tried to select; but we have not
\nbeen able to do any of these things successfully. Successful assimilation
\ndepends on mastery ; but we have not mastered European conditions and knowledge, rather we have been seized,
\nsubjected and enslaved by them. Successful rejection is possible
\nonly if we have intelligent possession of that which we wish to
\nkeep. Our rejection too must be an intelligent rejection; we
\nmust reject because we have understood, not because we have
\nfailed to understand. But our Hinduism, our old culture are
\nprecisely the possessions we have cherished with the least
\nintelligence; throughout the whole range of our life we do things
\nwithout knowing why we do them, we believe things without
\nknowing why we believe them, we assert things without
\nknowing what right we have to assert them, \u2014 or, at most, it is because some
\nbook or some Brahmin enjoins it, because Shankara thinks it, or because someone has so interpreted something
\nthat he asserts to be a fundamental Scripture of our religion.
\nNothing is our own, nothing native to our intelligence, all is
\nderived. As little have we understood the new knowledge; we
\nhave only understood what the Europeans want us to think
\nabout themselves and their modern civilisation. Our English
\nculture \u2014 if culture it can be called \u2014 has increased tenfold the
\nevil of our dependence instead of remedying it.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nMore even than the other two processes successful selection
\nrequires the independent play of intellect. If we merely receive
\nnew ideas and institutions in the light in which they are presented to us, we
\nshall, instead of selecting, imitate \u2014 blindly, foolishly and inappropriately. If we receive them in the light given
\nby our previous knowledge, which was on so many points nil,
\nwe shall as blindly and foolishly reject. Selection demands that
\nwe should see things not as the foreigner sees them or as the
\northodox Pandit sees them, but as they are in themselves. But
\nwe have selected at random, we have rejected at random, we have
\nnot known how to assimilate or choose. In the upshot we have merely suffered the
\nEuropean impact, overborne at points, crassly resisting at others, and, altogether, miserable, enslaved by our<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 111<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nenvironments, able neither to perish nor to survive. We preserve indeed a certain ingenuity and subtlety; we can imitate with
\nan appearance of brightness; we can play plausibly, even brilliantly with the minutiae of a subject; but we fail to think usefully, we fail to master the life and heart of things. Yet it is only
\nby mastering the life and heart of things that we can hope, as a
\nnation, to survive.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nHow shall we recover our lost intellectual freedom and elasticity ? By reversing, for a time at least, the process by which we
\nlost 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
\nminds. But they mean by these sounding recommendations that
\nwe should renounce the authority of Sayana for the authority of
\nMax M\u00fcller, the Monism of Shankara for the Monism of Haeckel, the written Shastra for the unwritten law of European social
\nopinion, the dogmatism of Brahmin Pandits for the dogmatism
\nof European scientists, thinkers and scholars. Such a foolish
\nexchange of servitude can receive the assent of no self-respecting
\nmind. Let us break our chains, venerable as they are, but let it
\nbe in order to be free, \u2014 in the name of truth, not in the name of
\nEurope. It would be a poor bargain to exchange our old Indian
\nilluminations, however dark they may have grown to us, for a
\nderivative European enlightenment or replace the superstitions
\nof popular Hinduism by the superstitions of materialistic Science.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nOur first necessity, if India is to survive and do her appointed work in the world, is that the youth of India should learn
\nto think, \u2014 to think on all subjects, to think independently, fruitfully, going to the heart of things, not stopped by their surface,
\nfree of prejudgments, shearing sophism and prejudice asunder as
\nwith a sharp sword, smiting down obscurantism of all kinds as
\nwith the mace of Bhima. Let our brain no longer, like European
\ninfants, be swathed with swaddling clothes; let it recover the
\nfree and unbound motion of the gods; let it have not only the
\nminuteness but the wide mastery and sovereignty natural to the
\nintellect of Bharata and easily recoverable by it if it once accustoms itself to feel its own power and be convinced of its own<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 112<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nworth. If it cannot entirely shake off past shackles, let it at least
\narise like the infant Krishna bound to the wain, and move forward dragging with it wain and all and shattering in its progress
\nthe twin trees, the twin obstacles to self-fulfilment, blind mediaeval prejudice and arrogant modern dogmatism. The old fixed
\nfoundations have been broken up, we are tossing in the waters
\nof a great upheaval and change. It is no use clinging to the old
\nice-floes of the past, they will soon melt and leave their refugees
\nstruggling in perilous waters. It is no use landing ourselves in the infirm bog,
\nneither sea nor good dry land, of a second-hand Europeanism. We shall only die there a miserable and unclean death.
\nNo, we must learn to swim and use that power to reach the good
\nvessel of unchanging truth; we must land again on the eternal
\nrock of ages.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nLet us not, either, select at random, make a nameless
\nhotchpotch and then triumphantly call it the assimilation of East and
\nWest. We must begin by accepting nothing on trust from any
\nsource whatsoever, by questioning everything and forming our
\nown conclusions. We need not fear that we shall by that process
\ncease to be Indians or fall into the danger of abandoning Hinduism. India can never cease to be India or Hinduism to be Hinduism, if we really think for ourselves. It is only if we allow
\nEurope to think for us that India is in danger of becoming an ill-executed and foolish copy of Europe. We must not begin by
\nbecoming partisans, our first business as original thinkers will be
\nto accept nothing, to question everything. That means to get rid of all
\nunexamined opinions old or new, all mere habitual Sanskaras in the mind, to have no preconceived judgments. Anityah sarvasamskārah<\/i>, said the Buddha. I do not know that I quite
\nagree. There are certain Sanskaras that seem to me as eternal as
\nthings can be. What is the Atman itself but an eternal and fundamental way of looking at things, the essentiality of all being in
\nitself unknowable, neti<\/i>, neti<\/i>. Therefore the later Buddhists
\ndeclared that the Atman itself did not exist and arrived at
\nultimate nothingness, a barren and foolish conclusion, since
\nNothingness itself is only a Sanskara. Nevertheless it is certain that the great
\nmass of our habitual conceptions are not only temporary, but imperfect and misleading. We must escape from<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 113<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthese imperfections and take our stand on that which is true and
\nlasting. But in order to find out what in our conceptions is true
\nand lasting, we must question all alike rigorously and impartially.
\nThe necessity of such a process not for India, but for all humanity has been recognised by leading European thinkers. It
\nwas 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
\ndry before it has reached its sea. Europe has for some time
\nceased to produce.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 114<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","wpcat-4-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","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=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}