28-08-2013
Happiness – Joy – Bliss – Delight
Existence is experience. An act expresses itself. Man through whom it expresses experiences that act expressing in him. The title speaks of its various levels of increasing intensity. Happiness is the vital sensation in success. Man seeks it as victory. Mind understands, heart feels, the body senses. They happen simultaneously but different parts receive it differently. Ananda descends on Man. The soul feels it as love, the vital receives it as joy, to the Mind it is beauty.
Existence experiences itself as being. The power of that being is felt as consciousness. Tradition sees them through the partial Mind each in itself. In reality the being and its power are inseparable. Seen separately it is felt as bliss. Seen in unison it is experienced as delight. In the philosophic explanation of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss it is also said as Being-Consciousness-Delight. Sachchidananda is explained in involution as well as evolution. The goal of evolution He says is not to return to the origin, but to enjoy Ananda in the Self. Evolution in the Cosmos continues in the transcendence. We see transcendence as a single dimension beyond the cosmos. But it has another status where it includes the other two. Then it is Transcendence, Being, Consciousness, Delight, then rises into Transcendence to unite. There Being is seen as Self, consciousness as Spirit, Delight as Divine Being. When they unite, it is called Purushothama. His vocabulary describes it as Self enjoying Ananda. The goal of integral yoga is to enjoy Ananda in the Self.
This high point of evolution is felt positively at all stages of existence, partially as well as totally. Pain is one experience of it in the surface Mind. It is negative. India is a land of Rishis. Spirit is her breath of Being. The Southern culture of Dravidians is not part of it. Spirit is the legacy of the Aryans who came from the Middle East. Tamilnadu developed as an ethical culture. கணியன் பூங்குன்றனார் எழுதிய யாதும் ஊரே யாவரும் கேளீர் என்பது our motto. I always quote his sage lines about the dark hair in old age. Sri Aurobindo has raised the question whether one’s present civilisation is one that tries to revive a lost older one. Especially He thinks of Africa in that light. It is said they are capable of infinite calm in general. Their agility in sports and the heights to which they can rise in music are seen as endowments of that deeper calm. One attitude that is impermissible in understanding Man is the evaluation of civilisation on a scale of superiority at one end and inferiority at the other end.
The Indian classification of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya, Sudra describes them as born out of Brahma’s head, body, thighs and legs. Sri Aurobindo explains the indispensability of each part for the whole and emphasizes the evolutionary movement that keeps one in the front. In the world as a whole up to 1500 AD or even 1800 it was the priest who ruled. From 1800 till 1900 it was given to the leaders of the army who ruled. Since then, money – Vaisya – rules. The future, on this reckoning belongs to the Sudra. In winning the highest versions of knowledge, the mildness of the Brahmin usually of timidity will not do. It requires the courage of the Kshatriya. HE points out in the Upanishads the bolder visions were conquered by the Kshatriya Rishis. One can see the sense of superiority of the Brahmin, who classified all the other three castes as Sudra, as the cultural distance between him and the others is not a gap, but a gulf. Brahmins in India are the repositories of culture, even as America has all the wealth of the world or Europe is the home of science. It is an incontrovertible truth. But there are other sides of it.
To the American, work is first, work is last, work is his life, its very culture. In no culture work is so much worshipped or identified with. By any definition of our sastras, he who works like that is a Sudra. Only that in our culture the Sudra’s work aims at perfection and he does not bring himself to ask for wages. It is beneath the dignity of the Sudra to ask to be paid for his services. To qualify as a Brahmin according to our sastras, one must be a புரோகிதர். Today no one wants to be a புரோகிதர் or குருக்கள்.These are professions resorted to by those who are illiterate and are unable to get a job. Government job is for the Vaisya, as army recruitment makes a soldier a Kshatriya. By that definition all engineers, doctors, software employees are sudras. Including the high IAS officers all in government service are Vaisyas. The Brahmin calls himself a Brahmin by birth, not profession. It is an inevitable superstition. For us caste is beside the point now. What is important is the future when equality of Man is, at least in theory, established all over the world, how the truth enshrined in caste will be practiced by the society so that the most opulent social results will issue out of the practicing culture.
Sri Aurobindo says that is what Nature is trying for in India in the future with the territorial unity as the first step. It is my own personal conviction that one has to fully grasp the Supramental truth behind the evolution of society. In politics, democracy has come to stay, whatever its imperfections are. Democracy intends, in theory, that every citizen must be given the equal opportunity to rise without external prohibitions. Its economic equivalent is free enterprise with a guaranteed job of an income higher than the national average. What is its social or spiritual or cultural equivalent. One may attain in knowledge or courage or enterprise or service, but cannot fully appreciate the psychological value of greatness of the other endowments. To earn in abundance is great. To give it away in full does not go with the capacity of that earning. To have a spiritual Darsan is a great lucky possession of ages. To offer it all is not given to the human heart. A sculptor, a painter, a carpenter may create a wonder of a work of art. To give it away and not ask for a compensation till it is offered, knowing NOT one is capable of it, is not an endowment of the human heart. Motilal Nehru was earning in lakhs in the last quarter of the 19th century, not in a year, but in one week. His joint family of cousins consisted of 25 members. His one responsibility to each one of them was to educate them in England and marry them accordingly. One requires a heart that can contain the whole of India. The soldier who wins the battle to defend the borders should have the attitude of handing over the territory won to the ablest administrator around.
Acquiring all the four endowments in perfection with one field for action is the ideal they had really set before the society. The Opulent Ideal He has in Mind goes further. It is my aim to explain that ideal in Spirit and Practice in another article when ideas take more precise shape in me.
Happiness, joy, Bliss, Delight felt in such a life is the theme this title has in mind.
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