The spirit who lies concealed behind the material
world, has given us, through the inspiration of great seers, the Scriptures as helpers
and guides to unapparent truth, lamps of great power that send their rays into
the darkness of the unknown beyond which He dwells, tamasah parastat. They are guides to knowledge, brief indications
to enlighten us on our path, not substitutes for thought and experience. They
are shabdam Brahma, the Word, the
oral expression of God, not the thing to be known itself nor the knowledge of
Him. Shabdam has three elements, the
word, the meaning and the spirit. The word is a symbol, vak or nama; we have to find
the artha, the meaning or form of
thought which the symbol indicates. But the meaning itself is only the
indication of something deeper which the thought seeks to convey to the
intellectual conception. For not only words, but ideas also are eventually no
more than symbols of a knowledge which is beyond ideas and words. Therefore it
comes that no idea by itself is wholly true. There is indeed a rupa, some concrete or abstract form of
knowledge, answering to every name, and it is that which the meaning must
present to the intellect. We say a form of knowledge, because according to our
philosophy, all things are forms of an essentially unknowable existence which reveals
them as forms of knowledge to the essential awareness in its Self, its Atman or
Spirit, the Chit in the Sat. But beyond nama
and rupa is swarupa, the essential figure of Truth, which we cannot know with
the intellect, but onlywith a higher faculty. And every swarupa is itself only a symbol of the one essential existence
which can only be known by its symbols because in its ultimate reality it defies
logic and exceeds perception,—God.
Since the knowledge the Scripture conveys is so deep,
difcult and subtle,—if it were easy what would be the need of the Scripture?—the
interpreter cannot be too careful or too perfectly trained. He must not be one
who will rest content in the thought-symbol or in the logical implications of
the idea; he must hunger and thirst for what is beyond. The interpreter who stops
short with the letter, is the slave of a symbol and convicted of error. The
interpreter who cannot go beyond the external meaning, is the prisoner of his
thought and rests in a partial and incomplete knowledge. One must transgress
limits and penetrate to the knowledge behind, which must be experienced before
it can be known; for the ear hears it, the intellect observes it, but the
spirit alone can possess it. Realisation in the self of things is the only
knowledge; all else is mere idea or opinion.
The interpretation of the Veda is hampered by many
human irrelevancies. Men set up an authority and put it between themselves 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, separated
from ourselves by some hundreds of years only, but the Vedas are many thousands
of years old. The commentator ought to be studied, but instead we put him in
place of the text. Good commentaries are always helpful even when they are wrong,
but the best cannot be allowed to fetter inquiry. Sayana's commentary on the
Veda helps me by showing what a man of great erudition some hundreds of years
ago thought to be the sense of the Scripture. But I cannot forget that even at
the time of the Brahmanas the meaning of the Veda had become dark to the men of
that prehistoric age. Shankara's commentary on the Upanishads helps me by
showing what a man of immense metaphysical genius and rare logical force after
arriving at some fundamental realisations thought to be the sense of the
Vedanta. But it is evident that he is often at a loss and always prepossessed by
the necessity of justifying his philosophy. I find that Shankara had grasped
much of Vedantic truth, but that much was dark to him. I am bound to admit what
he realised; I am not bound to exclude what he failed to realise. Aptavakyam, authority, is one kind of
proof; it is not the only kind: pratyaksha
is more important.
The heterodox on the other hand swear by Max Muller and
the 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 forces of Nature, and for many their opinion is
conclusive of the significance of the mantras.
All other interpretation is to them superstitious. But to me the ingenious
guesses of foreign grammarians are of no more authority than the ingenious
guesses of 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 what 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 face to face with that which it illumines.
There are those who follow neither Sayana and Shankara nor
the Europeans, but interpret Veda and Vedanta for themselves, yet permit
themselves to be the slaves of another kind of irrelevancy. They come to the
Veda with a preconceived and established opinion and seek in it a support for
some trifling polemic; they degrade it to the position of a backer in an
intellectual prizefight. Opinions are not knowledge, they are only sidelights
on knowledge. Most often they are illegitimate extensions of an imperfect
knowledge. A man has perhaps traveled to
What then are the standards of truth in the
interpretation of the Scripture? The standards are three, the knower, knowledge
and the known.
The known is the text itself that we seek to interpret.
We must be sure we have the right word, not an emendation to suit the exigency
of some individual or sectarian opinion; the right etymology and shade of meaning,
not one that is traditional or forced to serve the ends of a commentator; the
right spirit in the sense, not an imported or too narrow or too elastic spirit.
The knower is the original drashta or seer of the mantra,
with whom we ought to be in spiritual contact. If knowledge is indeed a
perishable thing in a perishable instrument, such contact is impossible; but in
that case the Scripture itself must be false and not worth considering. If
there is any truth in what the Scripture says, knowledge is eternal and
inherent in all of us and what another saw I can see, what another realised I
can realise. The drashta was a soul in relation with the infinite Spirit, I am
also a soul in relation with the infinite Spirit. We have a meeting-place, a
possibility of communion.
Knowledge is the eternal truth, part of which the drashta expresses to us. Through the
part he shows us, we must travel to the whole, otherwise we shall be subject to
the errors incidental to an imperfect knowledge. If even the part is to be
rightly understood, it must be viewed in the terms of the whole, not the whole
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 their knowledge. It is true that we
are usually the slaves of our individual and limited outlook, but our capacity
is unlimited, and, if we can get rid of ahankara, if we can put ourselves at
the service of the Infinite without any reservation of predilection or opinion,
there is no reason why our realisation should be limited. Tasmin vijnate sarvam vijnatam. He being known, all can be known.
To understand Scripture, it is not enough to be a scholar, one must be a soul.
To know what the drashta saw one must
oneself have drishti, sight, and be a student if not a master of the knowledge.
Atha para yaya tad aksharam adhigamyate.
Grammar, etymology, prosody, astronomy, metaphysics, logic, all that is good;
but afterwards there is still needed the higher knowledge by which the
Immutable is known.
Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 12, Essays Divine and Human, pp. 33-37