DIVINE LIFE

The whole world is looking forward to a New World and a new future. It is not something that can be said to be like any past though even the golden age of the past is something that has been looked forward to in our human conception of eternal recurrence.

A New World, a new consciousness informing all the individuals, right from the lowest to the highest creature, a world in which not only peace but plenty and freedom is to be had for one and all. But this world of plenty and prosperity is sought after in terms of economic socialists, and humanistic services, and above all in terms of material comforts and securities. Does it reveal the inner depths of human aspiration for such ideals as sense of real existence (sat), real consciousness (cit) and real bliss (ananda) along with a sense of real freedom (svarajya or mukti) ! The golden age of the past was called the Age of Krta (the done) the perfect age of perfect fourfold virtues of sat, cit, anand and mukti. The dimunition of any one of these means a relative decrease in the perfection.

There is another way of stating this fourfold yugas, that the Krta has Satya, Treata has dharma, Dvapara has kama and Kali has artha as predominant features or emphases, but the first contains all the others and so on, so much so, the Kali yuga only emphasizes artha (power and economic wealth) at the cost of all the others such as Kama, dharma and moksa (satya). Be this as it may, we have a clear enough notion that today in Kali, the wealthpower axis is stronger than over. All that the spiritual people have been trying during the past thousand years and more is to seek to limit or organize wealth power under the law of spiritual values. The general note and quality of life during Kali is indisputably with the Wealth-power axis and accent and no one will heed any other voice, such as that of pure desire, pure dharma, or pure moksa or Satya. We want and aspire for the desires that confirm our wealth and power, dharma which confirms our wealth and power and moksa or satya that confirms our wealth and power. The tendency to speak for the pure moksa or pure dharma or pure kama is undoubtedly utopian, and has no basic or elemental relevance to the world around us. We are essentially seized with this world-consciousness of wealth and power.

It is wrong to assume that this is equivalent to the darkages. Kali may be dark but it has to be illuminated with the higher powers of the Spirit and not abandoned to pessimism and ignorance and illusion.

The life of man being conditioned by temporal phases of the Cosmic Process, the best that any one could strive after is to get the best values through the living medium of human beings. The modern age began with scepticism about higher and invisible realities, such as soul, spirit, and after-life and so on. It refused to recognize the validity of all those phenomena that are beyond and sensory and motor experiences of man. Science became the synonym for materialistic interpretation of experience. Thought also became a handmaid of sensory-motor experiences and nothing was valuable that was not instrument to our physical and material welfare. The problems of values were no longer sought in the realm of super-natural and super-physical events. All mysteries were rediculed as superstition; all miracles were those of science alone. All these developments had their full growth and confirmation in the rapid evolution of the sciences - physical, chemical, biological. Even psychology became more a reorganised and reorientated to suit the demands of objective measuremental science. Nothing that cannot be measured is true and inner life must yield its treasures to the objective measurative science provided one makes the strenuous effort.

All this of course is a preparation for the end. The discoveries and inventions of science, impressive though they are; have however not been able to save man from his one undeniable urge to freedom and understanding of the problems of life and death. However inevitable death may be, it is yet a problem not an answer to the problem.Inevitable is a statement of fact not at all a real satisfying answer - satisfying in any sense of the term. Thus we are today despite our luxurious all-sided materiality and security and despite the ability to move towards providing all persons on the globe with these luxuries (or necessities ?), in a sick-frame of mind. Man is mal- adjusted to Reality. This mal-adjustment is writ large on every area of human behaviour.

Therefore when there are in the present world people who think that it is better to help man to live and feed and have the necessary creature-comforts than to aim at something that is beyond most men - the ultimate freedom, it becomes imperative enough to think about this matter rather seriously.

Service of daridra-narayana or the manava who is depressed, suppressed and oppressed is all to the good. But the real blessing in the matter, which will bless the giver as well as the receiver, is something that aims at the evolutionary change or change of heart which will make a man seek the ultimate and not the penultimate goods of the world. But most men seek the low, and that is that.

Men tend to worship the mean and the lowly not the high and the virtuous. Our sympathy with the lowliest and the lost should not lead to ourselves being led to be one of them, of the lowliest and the lost. Our aspirations would tend to become perverse instead of converse. This danger has not been avoided by most religions of the forlorn and the sinner. Instead of raising the forlorn and the sinner the religions became the hotbeds of sinning and forlorness. No wonder that the clarion call of Swami Vivekananda that addressed all as Brothers and Sisters and not as sinners and forlorns, has been drowned by the latter which almost made the lions of Vedanta representatives of the forlorn and the lost. Vedanta has sounded the high note of Perfection, Sukrtatva, and not of those who have made the worship of the sinners and the lost more important however socialistic this may appear. The fact is the true spirituality affirms the dynamic evolutionary ascent of man to divine nature and places it as its goal and inspiration and urge and does not tend to make this possible only by means of service of the lost and the lowly. The means and ends are not properly connected and here even the Vedanta counselled that ends and means are the same, the Service of the Divine and nothing else. It would be a travesty to say that since the Divine is in all therefore the worship of all wherever they are in the evolutionary scale entails the service of the Divine. In matters of realisation though not of sympathy the object and goal of man must continue to be the Divine.

Divine Life is the life lived in and for the Divine. To this great ideal of the Life in God one must be dedicated. This dedication solely to God is known as Sannyasa, right disposal of oneself in all one's parts. Its element is renunciation of all other, ends and goals and means. Divine life used divine means and divine works informed by divine wisdom. True wisdom really does not centre in the vision of seeing God in all as such but in seeing God alone as one's destiny. There is then release from human and other obligations rather than release from the obligations to God which become paramount. Divine life is thus liberated life, where life finds its meaning and force and consciousness in God alone. It derives its light, and creative being in God. No longer does man or the soul live for itself or for others, which are ethical principles of egoism and altruism, but for divine fulfilment. No one thereafter imposes his notions of life on God. Thus the master expounders of the Path of Theosophy or Divine Life have stated at all times. This is supremely true common to both of the East and the West.

The craving for divine life has been expressed in earlier periods of Indian History. Not to speak of the Vedic period when men seem to have kept company with the gods and lived in closest association with them, the puranic stories give us quite ample evidence of this close intimacy between the Gods and men. Gods seem to have accustomed men to their ways of living in freedom. The Upanishads have supremely laid down that not even that is the goal of man. Svarga or the living in the worlds and company of gods is good, but the Ultimate is that which is higher than that - the world of Brahman, or Brahman himself - knowing or attraining whom one verily becomes Brahman, or Brahmanised. If living in Svarga meant divinisation the living in Brahman means Brahmanisation (Brahmabhuta).

This was a supreme ideal. Man has to arrive at this attainment by becoming entirely devoted to that ideal of Brahman. By this the process of brahmanization would start and one begins to live the divine life. The ideal found its first expression in the Upanisadic seers, who not only experienced God as the Absolute that also as self and all-instigator, creator, sustainer and releaser or destroyer. Several have been the modes of approach, vidyas, several the expressions of the experience. The Brahman though transcending all was however the unity of all these.

However the basic needs were all well known - loyalty to truth, charity, self-discipline, and dedicated faith in the path of Brahman (Brahmacarya). All life should be brahmacharya a following on the footsteps of Brahman. Explained rigidly and in limited way it led to the view that those who seek Brahman should abjure all other stages of life, such as Grhastha and Vanaprastha and Sannyasa, but it is clear that this was not the veiw. Some have sought to jump off the intermediary stages and seek Sannyasa as the next asrama to Brahmacarya. It all depends on the wholesomeness of the faith and the supreme urge to attain the Brahman. Thus it was well-known that the follower of the Dictate of Brahman rapidly passes on to the dedicated life of the Sannyasi.

Buddha had also sought to inculcate the life of supreme Dharma - dedication to the Ultimate condition from which there is no return to the life of samsara or bondage and causal misery. Jaina Mahavira also counselled the utter abandonment of the world for the sake of purity of soul-existence, free from karma matter. All these demanded as essential elements of practice satya and dharma, the five yamas of Yoga. There was no exception to this discipline any where and for any one.

Brahmacarya and Yoga became identical. If all life is Brahmacarya, so is all life Yoga. The period of the great Rishis of the Sutra period led to intellectual understanding of the Scriptural (sruti) truths and paved the way for approaching spiritual life through intellectual life. The scholarstic acaryas were undoubtedly men of deep sadhana though they expressed themselves in the language of rationality.

The mystic hymnists of the Alvar period had opened up a new horizon in man, recalling the Vedic hymnists, and through their devotion were able to create immense love for God. They gave God habitats so to speak not only in the hearts of men, but in the hearts of cities, towns, villages and shrines grew up every where. Men could get their spiritual food from these, and serve these temples and shrines in a spiritual way for the sake of spiritual evolution. The mystics of Tamil land were followed up by mystics in Karnataka, Andhra, Maharastra and Bengal. The wave of religious love of God and dedication to God was waxing everyday and we find other religious persons also following this path of divine devotion. The acaryas of Vedanta found immense help and assistance from these hymnists and we find the age of praise (stotra) in full swing. Poetry followed song, even as both became media for intellectual philosophy. This of course led to a lot of artificial poetry not deeply inspired by the descending grace. However there were instances of devotion that did not get its medium in poetry. But all attempted poetry and hymning - and devotion was released. In religion and spirituality art is not the important factor. Art is not sought for the sake of perfection of prescribed forms of poetry or sculpture or any kind of art; a more sophisticated period would release art from the thraldom of spirituality, and make it autonomous. But such art always is uncreative and this has been ruefully found out by great artistis themselves.

Divine life of the period of Sankara and Ramanuja and Madhava was of a different plane of existence. Dedication to God made them serious and strenuous workers for the transformation of man from an intellectual being, to a devotional being and to a man of service of God. This transition however was not either uniform or continuous. In fact since history follows its own caprice, human beings had continued to follow diverse ways according to their fitnesses and needs and all systems have tended to grow side by side like trees and creepers entwining each other and supporting each other.

The age of the scholastic giants coincided with the invasions of foreigners, the Islamic and the Christian. However it would be a mistake to think that it is their legions that invaded. On the other hand it is clearly the economic wealth of India that was the cupid's arrow. Religion was a handmaid and an altogether an after-thought in these invasions. For as we clearly see the religions of Islam and Christianity except for abberrations in certain practices have been inculcating the basic truths of spirituality. Devotion to God, and ever to any human being however exalted, freedom from all superstition, cruelty, and cupidity, an emotional adherence to truth and justice and fairplay, these have been common to all. We call these the pancasila, the five virtues of satya, asteya, aparigraha, ahimsa and brahmacarya; they too have the devotional prayers in the appointed time, love for all as children of God, and sympathy for all which is natural to every one is encouraged every where. One is prohibited from solving disputes through force but through prayer. That these virtues have been violated with the help of casuistical arguments and opportunist ethics should not make us forget the truth behind all spiritual life. The practical and pragmatic use of religion and spirituality bodes ill for both the society and individual. What one should help to cultivate in all individuals is the sense of divine sanction for the pancasila, to root out corruption under all conditions without any arguments seeking to abridge the scope and meaning and language of virtue. Unless men become warriors of virtue they can hardly become saints of virtue or spirituality.

The western invasions brought certain attitudes which were either formulated by zealous missionaries or political adventurers which had been shown to be anti-vedic and anti-dharma. Surely the vicissitudes of religion and spirituality in the context of Hindu society earlier had bred certain customs and motivations which were insiduous of spiritual life. There have always been people who had protested against the procrusteanism of spiritual life and needed freedom from the disciplines of higher evolution. Misrepresentations of the West had found quite a lot of sympathy from these protestants and materialists and thus the reform movements to purge Hindu society in the light of the criticisms of the Western critics, sympathisers and missionaries began to take shape. The socalled renaissance movements of the 19th Century could be viewed in the perspective of this approach and we will see how the forces of spirituality had to strive to resurrect the true force and character of divine existence in the Indian scene.

The first truly spiritual force undoubtedly was that initiated by the Paramahamsa Sri Ramakrishna, in the North and his impact on educated persons was very great. In the South we have had the traditional growth of the Bhakti movement through songs and hymnists - at Thyagaraja of Tiruvayyar.

The movement inaugurated by Swami Dayananda Saraswati was the next spiritual movement to stem the rot of impersonalistic Vedanta and atheism. His clarion call to inward discipline of the Veda has undoubtedly awakened the great literature from its slumber. His was the call for a proper appreciation of that literature which had fallen into the naturalistic hands of the linguists and indologists abroad.

The movement that the political leaders undertook was for the emancipation of India from the foreign yoke which was slowly undermining our spiritual heritage. Today we can see the spell that the western theories of society have cast on our leaders; and the lawyers and statesman of today are securely anchored on the materialistic genetic bases of society more than ever. Though the noble and religious teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and his followers like Vinoba Bhave are in the main intended to rehabilitate man as a spiritual being, yet the direction of their political activities has tended towards a society of social welfare and without the dynamics of the awareness of the Spiritual evolution.

In Sri Aurobindo's movement for the Life Divine this ideal has been firmly fixed. Man is something to be surpassed. The ideal for man is not man but God condition. It is true that humanists plead that the best of man is divine and as such we must in human society seek to evolve the human diving or the divine in the human rather than seek to emancipate man from his manhood in the process of turning him into a divine being. But the concept of the Supermind as a possible consciousness open to the human being by which he could be transformed into divine nature is a very dynamic evolutionary concept. Whether the dream of transformation and divinisation of man into superman would be achieved in man's life-history or not it is something that is both a challenge to the man of today and the promise of the future more glorious than ever before. Many among his adherents have claimed that the golden gates of the golden age are being thrown open thanks to the indefatigable work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. This of course is a very glorious Vision of the Future and we seem to have a hand in the making of it. Even like those who feel that the golden age of socialism is being ushered in through dialectical operations or revolutionary processes or just adjustmental processes of the political scene, the operations of the Supremental in the plane of humanistic thought seem to be ushering about the same time the Goden Age. We are witnessing the cooperative action of both in our age of transition. But our ideals are appearing to be nearer fruition than ever before. Into this scene already made fit for the ushering of a new age with faith in the possibility of a divine life for man for whom even a gospel was prepared by the great seer Sri Aurobindo, entered another marvellous person, Swami Sivananda. There was hardly any glamour of politics in him, nor was there the aura of poetic gift and brilliance in scholastic studies. He was a simple person, endowed with a simple destiny that of following the ancient path of his own ancestors - the path of renunciation that leads to knowledge of the Ultimate. His majir preoccupation became not so much the saving of souls as but the showing of the direction that it ought to move in order to save itself. The past was rich with all possibilities and fruitions. India was equipped with all the spiritual riches which, if it could give, would transform our political and social life. Indian freedom must be nurtured by the spiritual freedom and realisation of each one of its citizens. What if we got our Political freedom if we could fritter it away or lose it through losing the spiritual basis of human existence? The pivot of existence is in the divine not in the theories of the human. We are realising that corruption in all our three instruments, mano- vak-kaya, is bound to make short-work of our political freedom and amy endanger our spiritual life. Divine life is a solution to this on coming disease, which is being realised all the world over. Swami Sivananda has been one of the most important leaders of mankind to take up this world work in the novel way of appealing to each and every aspirant to come to the ideal of divine life in the human frame even. The direct impact of his appeal has been enormous. His technique has been to realise that there is no other way towards divine life except living it.

His wide range of spiritual experiences and sympathy had firstly led him to experience the ultimate conditions and then also stimulated his unbounded enthusiasm and infective emotion to help all those who seek avenues and paths of ascent. He had made his goal the living of the divine life which will prepare every one taking up the path to live the life of the Divine, in and for the Divine.

The amount of emotional integration that he had been able to achieve in the religion has been amazing. He injected into each and every one who came across him the living sense of the Divine, so much so, almost all felt the radiant possibility within oneself. What more could be asked of any one except that he makes one aware of one's own supreme possibility the divinisation of oneself in and through God Himself.