{"id":81,"date":"2013-07-13T01:25:44","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=81"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:25:44","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:44","slug":"65-epistles-from-abroad-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\/65-epistles-from-abroad-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-65_Epistles from Abroad.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nONE<\/span><\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

\nEpistles from Abroad<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nD<\/b>early beloved,<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nY<\/b>ou, my alter ego, my second existence,
\nnow sitting comfortably at home and, doubtless, reading the
\nromantic fictions of the Empire<\/i> by the light of heavily-priced
\nkerosine; I, who roam uncomfortably in foreign climes, sighing
\nfor the joys of the Press Act and the house-search; these faces,
\nwhite and unfamiliar, that surround me; these miles of soulless
\nbrick and faultless macadam, the fitting body for a point-device
\nand dapper civilisation which has lost sight of grandeur, beauty
\nand nobility in life, \u2014 are we, I wonder, flitting visions of a
\nnightmare that passes or real men and women made in God’s
\nimage? Was life always so trivial, always so vulgar, always so
\nloveless, pale and awkward as the Europeans have made it? This well-appointed
\ncomfort oppresses me, this perfection of machinery will not allow the soul to remember that it is not itself a
\nmachine.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIs this then the end of the long march of human civilisation,
\nthis spiritual suicide, this quiet petrifaction of the soul into
\nmatter ? Was the successful businessman that grand culmination
\nof manhood toward which evolution was striving ? After all, if
\nthe scientific view is correct, why not ? An evolution that started
\nwith the protoplasm and flowered in the ourang-outang and the
\nchimpanzee, may well rest satisfied with having created hat,
\ncoat and trousers, the British Aristocrat, the American Capitalist
\nand the Parisian Apache. For these, I believe, are the chief
\ntriumphs of the European enlightenment to which we bow our heads. For these
\nAugustus created Europe, Charlemagne refounded civilisation, Louis XIV regulated society, Napoleon systematised the French Revolution. For these Goethe thought,
\nShakespeare imagined and created, St. Francis loved, Christ was
\ncrucified. What a bankruptcy! What a beggary of things that
\nwere rich and noble!<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 454<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nEurope boasts of her science and its marvels. But an Indian
\ncannot content himself with asking like Voltaire, as the supreme
\nquestion, "What have you invented?" His glance is at the soul;<\/font>
\n<\/font>it is that into which he is accustomed to enquire. To the braggart
\nintellect of Europe he is bound to reply, "I am not interested in
\nwhat you know, I am interested in what you are. With all your discoveries and
\ninventions, what have you become? Your enlightenment is great, \u2014 but what are these strange creatures that
\nmove about in the electric light you have installed and imagine
\nthat they are human?" Is it a great gain for the human intellect
\nto have grown more acute and discerning, if the human soul
\ndwindles?<\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut Science does not admit the existence of soul. The soul,
\nit says, is only an organised republic of animalcules, and it is in
\nthe mould of that idea Europe has recast herself; \u2014 that is what
\nthe European nations are becoming, organised republics of animalcules, \u2014 very intelligent, very methodical, very wonderful
\ntalking and reasoning animalcules but still animalcules. Not
\nwhat the race set out to be, creatures made in the image of the
\nAlmighty, gods that having fallen from heaven remember and
\nstrive to recover their heritage. Man in Europe is descending
\nsteadily from the human level and approximating to the ant and
\nthe hornet. The process is not complete but it is progressing apace,
\nand if nothing stops the debacle, we may hope to see its culmination in this twentieth century. After all our superstitions were
\nbetter than this enlightenment, our social abuses less murderous
\nto the hopes of the race than this social perfection.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt is a very pleasant inferno they have created in Europe, a
\nhell not of torments but of pleasures, of lights and carriages, of
\nballs and dances and suppers, of theatres and cafes and music-halls, of libraries and clubs and Academies, of National Galleries
\nand Exhibitions, of factories, shops, banks and Stock Exchanges.
\nBut it is hell all the same, not the heaven of which the saints
\nand the poets dreamed, the new Jerusalem, the golden city.
\nLondon and New York are the holy cities of the new religion,
\nParis its golden Paradise of Pleasure.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt is not with impunity that men decide to believe that they
\nare animals and God does not exist. For what we believe, that<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 455<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nwe become. The animal lives by a routine arranged for him by
\nNature; his life is devoted to the satisfaction of his instincts bodily, vital and emotional, and he satisfies himself mechanically,
\nby a regular response to the working of those instincts. Nature
\nhas regularised everything for him and provided the machinery.
\nMan in Europe arranges his own routine, invents his own machinery, and adds to the needs of which he is a slave, the intellectual.
\nBut there will soon be no other difference.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nSystem, organisation, machinery have attained their perfection. Bondage has been carried to its highest expression, and
\nfrom a passion for organising external liberty Europe is slaying
\nher spiritual freedom. When the inner freedom is gone, the
\nexternal liberty will follow it, and a social tyranny more terrible,
\ninquisitorial and relentless than any that caste ever organised in
\nIndia, will take its place. The process has already begun. The
\nshell of external liberty remains, the core is already being eaten away. Because
\nhe is still free to gratify his senses and enjoy himself, the European thinks himself free. He does not know what
\nteeth are gnawing into the heart of his liberty.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nStill in his inmost self he has an uneasy consciousness of
\nsomething terribly, vitally wrong, and therefore he is turning
\nmore and more to Socialism among the thinking or cultured,
\namong the unthinking to Anarchism. The Socialist hopes, by
\naccepting, swiftly fulfilling and thoroughly organising the inevitable tyranny of society, at least to recover leisure and create
\na breathing space in which to realise the dignity, beauty and repose of the god in man. The Anarchist sees in Government and
\nSociety the enemy of the race and gropes for the bomb and the
\nrevolver to recover individual liberty and destroy the tyranny of
\nthe majority. Both are guilty of the same fallacy, the mechanical
\nfallacy. One hopes to liberate man by perfecting machinery, the
\nother by destroying it.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nAnd yet the true secret is ready to their hand in the formula
\nof the great Revolution. Two ideas of that formula Europe has
\npursued with some eagerness, Liberty and Equality; but she has
\ntotally rejected the third and most necessary. Brotherhood. In
\nits place she has erected the idol of her heart. Machinery, and
\ncalled it Association; for Association without Brotherhood is<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 456<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nmerely Machinery. Yet what can be more evident than that the
\nFrench thinkers were perfectly guided in their selection of the
\nthree things necessary for an ideal associated happiness? It is
\nonly Love that can prevent the misuse of Liberty; it is only
\nBrotherhood which can make Equality tolerable.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 457<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nTWO<\/span><\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

\nEpistles from Abroad<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nFriend and Brother,<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/p>\n

\nI am as yet among the unregenerate. Instead of my eccentric notions of life changing under the pressure
\nof victorious European enlightenment, they seem to harden and
\nfix their hold. Here I am in Paris, the centre of civilisation, and
\nI am still the same dark-skinned barbarian you knew. Neither
\nthe complexion of my face nor the complexion of my thoughts
\nhas improved. I still believe in God and Vedanta, in India and
\nimpossibilities. Man is still to my eyes divine and not an animal.
\nI believe in the soul and am afflicted with the imagination that it
\nhas a past and a future, that it neither came ready made into the
\nworld out of the mother’s womb nor will disintegrate at the end
\nwhether on the pyre or in the coffin. That our first stage is an
\nembryo and our last worms or ashes, is a creed I hold to be still
\nunproved and unprovable. I believe that nothing in this world is
\nmade, but everything grows; that body cannot create soul and
\nthat a mass of cells is not Buddha or Napoleon. And if you ask
\nfor my ground of belief, I shall still refuse to base it on the logical
\nreason which can only argue and cannot see, and I shall give the
\nanswer of the visionary, the victim of hallucinations, that I have
\nseen my soul and talked face to face with my Creator.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThere are excellent logicians in Paris. One of them spoke
\nthe other day of the power of telepathy and, while admitting it
\nto be a fact, argued that to develop the power would be to go
\nback to the savage; it would be a denial of Science and civilisation. The civilised man sees with his eyes, talks with his tongue;<\/font>
\n<\/font>to see with the soul, mind to talk with mind is a thing weird and
\nbarbarous. That is what the logical reason is. It can support
\nthe grossest absurdity under the sun and yet satisfy its user. The
\nsavage had the power, the civilised man has renounced it as an
\nencumbrance or a superstition; to develop the power is to go
\nback from civilisation to the savage. The argument is unde-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 458<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nniable. Whether it is not worth while, in this respect, to go back
\nto the savage, is a question my logical friend refuses to discuss. To entertain
\nit would be an insult to civilisation. Another gentleman of equal clarity poohpoohed the idea of considering the
\nexistence of God and immortality on the ground that the very
\nmotion would be retrograde. "It would be going back," he cried,
\n"it would be going back. We have got rid of God; we have
\nfinished with the superstition of immortality. Will you deny the
\nprogress of enlightenment? My friend, let these ghosts rest in
\ntheir shadows." And nothing would induce him to give God a
\nchance. Darwin and Huxley and Haeckel had settled the Creator’s hash for Him; it was res judicata<\/i>. It is wonderful how
\neasily man tramples on one formula merely to bow reverently
\nbefore another. Nature replaces God, Progress dethrones Immortality. Yet, in fact, these are merely different names for one
\nthing in its varying aspects. Nature is God manifest in Matter;<\/font>
\n<\/font>Progress is possible because the soul of man is immortal.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis talk wearies you. You would prefer perhaps that I
\nshould write of the municipality in Paris, the merits and defects
\nof the sewer system, the latest plays at the theatres, a description
\nof boulevard and caf\u00e9 or the debates in the Chamber or some
\nhint as <\/b> to whether I have made acquaintance with any of the
\nFrench Academicians. "Plague take the fellow!" <\/b> you will cry,
\n"he is like the Englishman who marches about in the full panoply of Europe in the heats of a Calcutta summer; wherever he
\ngoes he takes India with him." Pardon me, my friend; that is
\nnot wholly correct. I have forgotten for the time what a detective looks like. I no longer look round at every fifty yards to see
\nhow many policemen in plain clothes are following me. Dacoits
\nand approvers are growing as far away from my mind as Titus
\nOates or Tiberius. I no longer pant to know our excellent
\nBaikuntha Babu’s latest blank question or withdrawn resolution in Bengal’s new
\nParliament or what Bengal’s only Maharajadhiraj thinks about English coolies. I have left India behind; I
\nhave not brought it with me.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut in the sense you mean, I have brought India with me,
\nthat which is eternal in India. Danton, when pressed to escape
\nfrom the coming doom to Switzerland, answered, "One does not<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 459<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ncarry one’s country away with one on the sole of one’s shoes."
\nThat is the materialist’s answer, to whom the body is all. No,
\none cannot carry it on the shoe-soles, but one can carry it in one’s
\nheart and one can carry it in one’s soul. When I listen to the
\nnightingale singing on English river-bank or garden-reaches or
\nsee the Seine flowing through the modern gaiety of Paris, I can
\nhear again the manifold noise of the birds on an Indian morning and see rather
\nGanges flowing grandiose and leonine to her Eastern seas. The body is bound to its surroundings, but the heart
\nexceeds them, and I carry the love of India with me even to the
\ncoldest climes. The soul is yet more free. It will be well when
\nevery Indian, instead of taking a waxlike stamp from his foreign
\nsurroundings, is able to carry India with him wherever he goes.
\nFor that will mean that India is destined to conquer and place her
\nstamp upon the whole world.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 460<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nTHREE<\/span><\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nEpistles from Abroad<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nDear Biren,<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nYour list of questions is rather a long one.
\nI will answer you in the mass rather than in detail; and chiefly I
\nwill attack two fallacies with which your letter teems, if I may use
\nsuch an expression, and which lie at the root of your very disfavourable attitude. There are two Hinduisms; one which takes
\nits stand on the kitchen and seeks its Paradise by cleaning the
\nbody; another which seeks God, not through the cooking pot and the social
\nconvention, but in the soul. The latter is also Hinduism and it is a good deal older and more enduring than the other;<\/font>
\n<\/font>it is the Hinduism of Bhishma and Srikrishna, of Shankara and
\nChaitanya, the Hinduism which exceeds Hindusthan, was from of
\nold and will be for ever, because it grows eternally through the
\naeons. Its watchword is not kriyā<\/i>, but karma<\/i>; not śāstra<\/i>, <\/i> but
\nj\u00f1ānam<\/i>; not ācāra<\/i>, but bhakti<\/i>. Yet it accepts kriyā<\/i>, śāstra<\/i> and
\nācāra<\/i>, not as ends to be followed for their own sake, but as means
\nto perfect karma, j\u00f1āna<\/i> and bhakti<\/i>. Kriyā<\/i> in its dictionary means
\nevery practice which helps the gaining of higher knowledge, such
\nas the mastering of the breath, the repetition of the Mantra, the
\nhabitual use of the Name, the daily meditation on the idea. By
\nśāstra<\/i> it means the knowledge which regulates karma<\/i>, which
\nfixes the kartavyam<\/i> and the akartavyam<\/i>, that which should be
\ndone and that which should not, and it recognizes two sources
\nof that knowledge, \u2014 the eternal wisdom, as distinct from the
\ntemporary injunctions in our ancient books and the book that is
\nwritten by God in the human heart, the eternal and apauruṣeya
\n<\/i>Veda. By ācāra<\/i> it understands all moral discipline by which the
\nheart is purified and made a fit vessel for divine love. There are
\ncertain kriyās<\/i>, certain rules of śāstra<\/i>, certain details of ācāra<\/i>,
\n<\/i>which are for all time and of perpetual application; there are
\nothers which are temporary, changing with the variation of deśa<\/i>, kāla<\/i> and pātra<\/i>, time, place and needs of humanity. Among<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 461<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe temporary laws the cooking pot and the lustration had their
\nplace, but they are not for all, nor for ever. It was in a time of
\ncalamity, of contraction, under external pressure that Hinduism
\nfled from the inner temple and hid itself in the kitchen.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe higher and truer Hinduism is also of two kinds, sectarian and unsectarian, disruptive and synthetic, that which binds
\nitself up in the aspect and that which seeks the All. The first is
\nborn of rajasic or tamasic attachment to an idea, an experience,
\nan opinion or set of opinions, a temperament, an attitude, a
\nparticular Guru, a chosen Avatar. This attachment is intolerant,
\narrogant, proud of a little knowledge, scornful of knowledge
\nthat is not its own. It is always talking of the ku-samskāras<\/i>, superstitions, of others and is blind to its own; or it says, "My Guru
\nis the only Guru, and all others are either charlatans or inferior,"
\nor, "My temperament is the right temperament, and those who
\ndo not follow my path are fools or pedants or insincere," or
\n"My Avatar is the real God Himself and all the others are only
\nlesser revelations;" or "My iṣṭadevatā<\/i> is God, the others are
\nonly His partial manifestations." When the soul rises higher, it follows by
\npreference its own ideas, experiences, opinions, temperament, Guru, iṣṭa<\/i>,
\nbut it does not turn an ignorant and exclusive eye upon others. "There are many paths," it cries, "and
\nall lead equally to God. All men, even the sinner and the atheist
\nare my brothers in Sadhana and the Beloved is drawing them each
\nin His own way to the One without a second." But when the full
\nknowledge dawns, I embrace all experiences in myself, I know
\nall ideas to be true, all opinions useful, all experiences and attitudes means and stages in the acquisition of universal experience
\nand completeness, all Gurus imperfect channels or incarnations
\nof the one and only Teacher, all iṣṭas<\/i> and Avatars to be God
\nHimself.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThat is what Ramakrishna taught by His life and Sadhana
\nand therefore is He the Avatar of the age, the One who prepares
\nthe future of humanity. But there is a danger of turning Him into
\nthe Guru of a sect, the incarnate God of a dogmatic religion, to
\nstultify His own life and teachings by making Him the object of
\na narrow attachment, an intolerant reverence, a sectarian worship. That must be avoided. It is the great curse which attends<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 462<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe organisation of religion. Let us have done with sects and
\nchurches and worship God only.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe destruction of bondage, the realisation of freedom, the
\ntrampling upon our fetters, that is the first need of the future.
\nIt was to give mukti<\/i> that Ramakrishna came, not to impose a
\nnew bondage. Therefore was Vivekananda His Apostle to the
\nGentiles, a man who in all things asserted freedom. The soul of
\nHinduism languishes in an unfit body. Break the mould that the
\nsoul may live. Is it not the first teaching of Yoga to destroy the
\ndehātmaka-buddhi<\/i>, the blindness that identifies the soul with its
\ntemporary body? If the body were young, adaptable, fit, the
\nliberated soul might use it, but it is decrepit, full of ill-health and
\nimpurity. It must be changed, not by the spirit of Western iconoclasm which destroys the soul with the body, but by national
\nYoga.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 463<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ONE Epistles from Abroad   Dearly beloved,   You, my alter ego, my second existence, now sitting comfortably at home and, doubtless, reading the romantic…<\/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-81","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\/81","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=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}