The issue of India’s Independence Movement and the Spiritual Destiny is crowded with any number of conflicting formulations, of the nature of political, international, social, religious, ideological, geographical, commercial as well as occult and spiritual factors that enter into in various ways, with clash of force against injurious force. One of the main aspects of these conflicting formulations was the pernicious two-nation theory which was a dubious product of falsehood-fraud-force, and it has already caused enormous harm to the subcontinent. While we could take up some of these again, at present let us restrict in the following to just a couple of them.

 

The virus-ridden ideology

Very often Sri Aurobindo’s formulation of the Religion of the Eternal, Nationalism, the Soul of a Nation and related themes are understood in quite wrong ways, generally mixing them up with the derogatory sense of Hindutva that is existing in our present-day thinking. That is unfortunate. This confusion could perhaps arise because of the way in which the term Hindutva was coined by Savarkar in 1923. There was an element of reaction in it, and it had entered essentially to counter other ideologies which were threatening to undermine the spirit of genuine nationalism in an awakened nation. Sri Aurobindo never used the term Hindutva although he was aware of it since 1923; his emphasis was on national values and national imperatives without any religious or sectarian considerations. He knew the swabhāva of the country and it is that which he always wished to strengthen and promote. Liberal education for the Muslims and organizing themselves as a disciplined group for the Hindus is what he had recommended to Purani when the question was raised by him in 1923 itself. He knew divisive tendencies in the society would also mean vivisection of the country.

 

But we must go back to the basics and work out the remedying measures to set things aright. Today the word Hindutva carries in its gross body something obnoxious; it is terribly “virus-ridden”. Therefore, if we understand its true sense, the effort should be to cure it. What is of real importance is the social dynamics lending itself to promote the human potential in dimensions of the expressive spirit in its manifold world-play which allows each group-soul or nation-soul to find its possibilities of growth and progress. Ours is not a flat world à la the protagonists of capitalism, or mono-linguistic or monotheistic as some religious pleaders would insist it to be. This situation gets worsened when one belief or ideological system imposes itself on others. If there is something meant for us as true progress, then it is that which we must discern and accept, accept what is helpful for it to happen. In the Aurobindonian language it is the growth of collective consciousness which a secret but sure hand is shaping and furthering towards the manifestation of higher powers of the spirit. Knowledge, Happiness, Strength, Beauty, Harmony, Perfection, Sweetness, Love are some of its attributes and these are the ones which must be fortified in our organization of the social systems and establishments. These should take care of the secret evolutionary urge behind the whole process, it directing our aims and objectives.

The name given to this secret urge is Sanatan Dharma which cherishes transformation of life in terms of great and enduring spiritual verities. This wonderful urge is nothing but the ancient Vishnu Tattva, the sustaining Essence of the Cosmic Being, which upholds creatively and progressively this entire universe. We as individuals as well as group-souls or nation-souls have our own uniqueness which provides the meaning to the multiplicity of this creation. We are not typal creations but evolutionary entities associating ourselves in this multiplicity of creation. That indeed is our joy and that is our unique opportunity also to participate in this amazingly rich world of the spirit.

It might be that there are distortions in the functioning of this fourfold order,—and, sure enough, there are distortions,—but the remedy does not lie in condemning it; it rather lies in tracing and removing the deep-rooted causes of such deformations and misrepresentations. The problem, rather the confusion, got further aggravated with the appearance of several religions and religious sects, and further with the clash of civilisations. In fact, it is precisely there that the Indian genius with its roots in spirituality should come to bring harmony with the oneness the Vedantic realization proclaims. Perhaps it had an admirable purpose, an intention to work out a higher degree of synthesis and organization. But that can happen only when there is a deeper understanding not only of our nature but also of the nature of the collective. But where is that understanding, that aspiring soul of the nation cherishing spiritual transformation of life? This aspiration is not the prerogative of the Hindutva alone. Spirituality is universal, and whenever and wherever there is the urge to find the truth, whenever and wherever there is the seeker looking for answers in his silent quest, the chances are that he will get the answers. Today Hinduism itself is a temple in half-ruins, as Sri Aurobindo says, and it needs be reconstructed by the present architects and engineers of the spirit, by those who have experienced it and are living in it; they have to breathe it into it. Should that not happen? Our concern should be to see if we can activate it, to see if we can participate in it, instead of putting our ideas based on traditional and circumscribed thought or feeling or action or science or religion or philosophy or theology or political ideology, or economics that comes from the professionals of the age who are most of the time self-promoters. It is possible and we should do it. How ridiculous would then look “religious conversions and religious wars, Genocide in Germany, Nazi Fascist Holocaust, Collective Farming-killings of the farmers in Russia, Cultural Revolution in China and youth massacre in Tin Min Square, Islamic Jihads, 9/11 at World Trade Center in America, War in Iraq, Lal Masjid in Islamabad in Pakistan,” or pulling down the Babri Masjid? If there is the Kali’s hand behind it, we might understand it; but it is the destructive Asura who is sitting on the breast of mankind to suck its blood and kill it. If we are awake in our souls then it is not difficult to discern the difference. However, until then it is entirely within our means to develop and refine our perceptions, our intuition of the higher and nobler principles that they may enter into our thinking. There are realized souls who have these concerns and acknowledging their contributions is one aspect of it.

Vivekananda’s Quest for God

One glowing example is Vivekananda’s. In fact the spiritual tapasya that is behind it is what has really made India meaningful and well-envisioned India, a country offering her soul to the cause of the spirit manifesting itself in a thousand activities of the world. Vivekananda’s quest for God first took him to the nearby lands and to the distant hills and valleys, to the places of worship, to the revered Holy Scriptures, led him to all sorts of religious practices; but all in vain, and in the wilderness of life he seemed to have got lost. The quest remained unfulfilled, without bearing any fruit. When the hope was abandoned in that state of despair and helplessness, a gentle soft and soothing voice beckoned him, striking the chords of his inner being. Something stirred and the voice spoke and the heart opened wide. The countryside and the hills and the rivers, the moon and the stars in the night sky, and the glorious day, morn, eve, the billowing sea, the birds, trees, nature—all told him it is He who is behind them all: “I see through them—it is He.” All became Vasudevamaya. In the lap of the mother, in the eye of the baby, in the mother’s kiss and the baby’s ‘mama’, it is He who is present. What need then of the Vedas and the Bible and the Koran?

 

O'ver hill and dale and mountain range,

In temple, church, and mosque,

In Vedas, Bible, Al Koran

I had searched for Thee in vain.

 

Like a child in the wildest forest lost

I have cried and cried alone,

"Where art Thou gone, my God, my love?

The echo answered, "gone."

 

And days and nights and years then passed

A fire was in the brain,

I knew not when day changed in night

The heart seemed rent in twain.

 

I laid me down on Ganges's shore,

Exposed to sun and rain;

With burning tears I laid the dust

And wailed with waters' roar.

I called on all the holy names

Of every clime and creed.

 

"Show me the way, in mercy, ye

Great ones who have reached the goal."

 

Years then passed in bitter cry,

Each moment seemed an age,

Till one day midst my cries and groans

Some one seemed calling me.

 

A gentle soft and soothing voice

That said 'my son' 'my son',

That seemed to thrill in unison

With all the chords of my soul.

 

I stood on my feet and tried to find

The place the voice came from;

I searched and searched and turned to see

Round me, before, behind,

Again, again it seemed to speak

The voice divine to me.

 

In rapture all my soul was hushed,

Entranced, enthralled in bliss.

A flash illumined all my soul;

The heart of my heart opened wide.

 

O joy, O bliss, what do I find!

My love, my love you are here

And you are here, my love, my all!

And I was searching thee—

From all eternity you were there

Enthroned in majesty!

From that day forth, wherever I roam,

I feel Him standing by

O'ver hill and dale, high mount and vale,

Far far away and high.

The moon's soft light, the stars so bright,

The glorious orb of day,

He shines in them; His beauty—might—

Reflected lights are they.

 

The majestic morn, the melting eve,

The boundless billowing sea,

In nature's beauty, songs of birds,

I see through them—it is He.

 

When dire calamity seizes me,

The heart seems weak and faint,

All natures seems to crush me down,

With laws that never bend.

Meseems I hear Thee whispering sweet

My love, "I am near", "I am near".

 

My heart gets strong.

With thee, my love,

A thousand deaths no fear.

 

Thou speakest in the mother's lay

Thou shutst the baby’s eye,

When innocent children laugh and play,

I see Thee standing by.

 

When holy friendship shakes the hand,

He stands between them too;

He pours the nectar in mother's kiss

And the baby's sweet "mama".

 

Thou wert my God with prophets old,

All creeds do come from Thee,

The Vedas, Bible, and Koran bold

Sing Thee in Harmony.

 

So where are the scriptures? Where are the written shastras? Where are the doctrines and dogmas and the rites and the rituals? They have disappeared in the fire of the kindled soul. and they are discovered with new sense in the very kiss of the mother and in the sweetness of the child uttering ‘mama’. The meaning of life is recovered.

 

The Soul of a Nation as revealed by the Mother

A nation is a living personality; it has a soul, even like a human individual. The soul of a nation is also a psychic being, that is to say, a conscious being, a formation out of the Divine Consciousness and in direct contact with it, a power and aspect of Mahashakti. A nation is not merely the sum total of the individuals that compose it, but a collective personality of which the individuals are as it were cells, like the cells of a living and conscious organism. The psychic being or soul of a nation is indeed conscious; it knows its raison d'être, its life purpose, its destiny, the role it has to play in the divine scheme as the divine instrument. And its will—for it has a will, the expression of its consciousness, the Divine's impulse in and through it—is inevitable, sooner or later it will fulfil itself. Even like the soul of a man, the nation's soul is behind all the movements that form its external life, supporting, building, guiding its political, economic, social or cultural make-up. The individual can know of and come in contact with the nation's soul in and through his own soul. When one becomes conscious of his psychic being then only one is in a condition to be conscious of the psychic being of the collective person of his nation or the nation with which he has inner affinity.

 

There are periods in the life cycle of a nation, critical moments, when it is in deadly peril, when its very existence is threatened, attacked by enemy forces either from within or from without. Such was the case when, for example, Britain was invaded by the Spanish Armada or when France was being subjugated by England. Those were very anxious times, but in each instance the soul of the nation came for­ward and inspired the nation to react and go through the ordeal and survive. Jeanne d'Arc may be considered as the embodiment of France's national soul, as on a still earlier occasion that same soul embodied itself in St Genevieve. But a nation may fall on much more evil days, namely, when it loses contact with its very soul, goes astray, its life movement taking a wrong curve. A nation can deny its soul, even as an individual may and the result is disaster. Germany is a terrible example of such a tragedy in our own day.

 

India is offering a spectacle, of another tragedy. What is happening here is the attack of a disease that is convulsing the body politic: it seems to be a cancerous disease, the limbs seeking to grow independently at the expense of each other. The patient is passing through a very critical period and it is indeed a question of life and death. But we hope—we are sure—that the soul of this ancient nation will assert itself and through whatever vicissitudes re-establish health and har­mony: for that soul's mission is yet to be done.

 

Like the individual a nation too dies. Ancient Greece and Rome, Egypt and Babylon and Chaldea are no more. What has happened to their souls, it may be asked. Well, what happens to the soul of the individual when the body falls away? The soul returns to the soul-world. Like the individual Psyche the collective Psyche too goes and retires into the womb of peace and light with all its treasures, its beauty and glory gathered in, like a bird that goes to sleep within its folded wings. What the Greek culture and civilisation was still continues to exist in its quintessential reality in a world to which one has access if one has the requisite kinship of consciousness and psychic opening. That soul lives in its own domain, with all the glory of its achievement and realisation at their purest; and from there it sheds its lustre, exerts its influence, acts as living leaven in the world's cultural heritage and spiritual growth.

 

When however the soul withdraws, when a nation in a particular cycle of its soul manifestation has fulfilled its role and mission, the body of the nation falls gradually into de­cadence. The elements that composed the organic reality, the living consistency of national life disintegrate, lose their energy and cohesive capacity; they die out and are dispersed or persist for a time as a confused mixture of disconnected and mechanically moving cells. But it may happen too that in an apparently dying or dead nation, the soul that retired comes back again, not in its old form and mode of life—for that cannot be—Egypt, if it lives again today cannot repeat the ages of the Pharaohs and the Pyramids, but in a new personality, with a fresh life purpose, In such a case what happens is truly a national resurrection—a Lazarus coming back to life at the touch of the Divine.

 

We do not believe that India was ever completely dead or hopelessly moribund: her soul, although not always in front, was ever present as a living force, presiding over and guiding her destiny. That is why there is a perennial capacity for renewal in her and the capacity to go through dire ordeals. And to live up to her genius, she too must know how to march with the time, that is to say, not to cling to old and past forms—to be faithful to the ancient soul does not mean eternising the external frames and formulas that expressed that soul one time or another. Indeed the soul becomes alive and vigorous when it finds a new disposition of the life plan which can embody and translate a fresh creative activity, a new fulfil­ment emanating from the depths of the soul.

 

[This article by Nolini Kanta Gupta is based on the Mother’s talk she gave to the students of the Ashram school in the early days, and was published first in the Advent of August 1947; this has now been included in his Collected Works, Vol. 3, published by the Ashram. We should note its relevance to August 1947, the day of India's fractured Independence.]