Q. What does Sri Aurobindo say about the Renaissance in India?
Ans : In answer to an extravagant and outright attack by William Archer, a book under this title was published some years ago by Sir John Woodroffe. The reply, otherwise unnecessary, was called for because, first, the attack came from the rationalistic and not from the Christian and missionary standpoint; secondly, because it raised the important question of the survival of Indian civilisation and its rationale for the future.
A true happiness through finding and maintaining the harmony of spirit, mind and body is the right aim of man. India’s central conception is that of the Eternal, the spirit here incased in matter, involved and immanent in it and evolving in the material plane by rebirth of the individual up the scale of being till in mental man it enters the world of ideas and conscious morality. India’s social system is built upon this conception
Philosophy and thought have taken a sharp curve away from rationalistic materialism and its confident absolutisms.The rationalist critics’ overconfident denial of any civilisation in India is of course an absurd exaggeration not to be taken seriously.
The true line of advance, it is suggested, lies through European modernism. The old limits of scientific interest have begun to break down; various forms of psychical research and novel departures in psychology have come into increasing vogue. . Even science itself is constantly arriving at conclusions which only repeats upon the physical plane and in its language truths which ancient India had already affirmed from the standpoint of spiritual knowledge in the Veda and Vedanta.
The tendency of the normal Western mind is to live from below upward and from out inward. India’s constant aim has been, on the contrary, to find a basis of living in the higher spiritual truth and to live from the inner spirit outwards. It may well be that both tendencies are needed for the completeness of the movement.We must approach the problem with wisdom and insight, awaken to the situation and meet it with original think ing and rigorous conscious action.
The very idea of progress is an illusion to some minds, these either take a cynical view or find greatness only in the past. Altogether, on the contemporary scene the spiritual seeker would feel an aching void. The modern Indian scene, impotent and confused, would cause more melancholy. But to the impartial beholder both modem India and world would appear as an evolutionary stage. From the view of the evolutionary future neither Europe nor India nor any race; country or continent has ever been fully civilised . The cultural quarrel has been complicated with a political question. Archer’s attack makes this quite clear.
A Europeanisation of the world is not unlikely, though across the possibility falls the shadow of India. She alone, with whatever fall or decline, has remained faithful to the spiritual motive. Affected she has been but not yet overcome.
If we define civilisation as a harmony of spirit, body and mind, where has that harmony been altogether ·real? The achievements that we regard as real today, will be condemned as a self-satisfied imperfection; the ideas that we vaunt will be regarded as a demi-light or a darkness.
There are certain fundamental motives or essential idea-forces which cannot be thrown aside, because, capable of an application always varying and progressive, they are part of the vital principle of our being and of the aim of Nature in us, our swadharma, which must come to terms with yugadharma. This means a true and independent view, neither flattering nor glossing, of our past and present.
The spirit and ideals of our civilisation need no defence. In essence they are of eternal value. But their application to the collective life was subjected to serious reserves, especially when the life-force declined in her peoples and a static regulation of society became its latter end.
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