Session 2 (20 January 2000)

What is philosophy? Yesterday I spoke of science and philosophy and spiritual experience, this will be a great aid to the definition of philosophy. If there was a sweeping experience of the totality, then there would be no need of philosophizing, that experience would be filled with knowledge of the totality.

Philosophy arises out of the need to know the totality and if the totality can be known in a supreme experience then philosophy would not be needed. It is because normally we are not capable of that experience or because it is believed that such an experience is impossible or sometimes it is believed that even what you call totality is a fiction, there is nothing but assemblage of particulars. It is because of this reason that intellect comes into operation, not experience but intellect. It is an intellectual attempt to grasp the totality, not to be limited to particularities, not to be limited to specialized domains but to cross the borders of all the domains and embrace the whole, and attain some kind of knowledge of the whole.

Philosophers of a certain kind, which include some of the best names in the field of philosophy, like Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Shankaracharya and Ramanujacharya they all maintain that the capacity of reason is not merely to understand or coordinate sensuous experiences and the knowledge derived from sense experience but has a very special access to the totality. There is, according to them Pure Reason which goes beyond the mixed action of reason. Mixed action of reason is the action which is dependent upon the sense experience. Yesterday I spoke about the activity of coordination of the results of sense experiences. This coordinating activity of the reason is a mixed action of reason, it is something more than sense experience but tied to the sense experience and therefore, it is a mixed action of reason.

Pure Reason goes beyond the mixed action of reason and has an access to the totality. It is argued that the very fact that there is an urge to know the totality, there must in human beings somewhere a faculty which is responsible for this urge. It is therefore spoken of as a light, the light of the Pure Reason, it is sometimes called the pure light, there is no mixture in it, the pure light of reason.

The way in which we grasp universal qualities is one of the best ways by which we open up to this pure action of reason. We perceive for example particular white objects; all of them are white and we arrive at the concept of the idea of whiteness. How do we come to this idea of whiteness? What we see is only normally white objects but we can make a jump out of the experience of white objects to the quality and understanding of whiteness. You see only the beautiful objects or less beautiful objects, or ugly objects and yet you arrive at the concept of beauty. How do you arrive at this concept of beauty? You see human beings are doing good actions or bad actions with various shades. How do you arrive at the idea of goodness? It is understood by the human being, what is goodness.

Taking such examples it is said that Pure Reason has the capacity to jump from particulars to the universal. This jump marks the speciality of the domain of philosophy. A full development of this jump, take for example, the concept of essence, everybody seems to understand what essence is. If somebody doesn’t, we can simply give them a paragraph and say ‘summarize it’, immediately the human mind is capable of summarizing. What does it mean? That there is something in the human mind, a capacity to grasp all that is given in a passage, to bring out the quintessence of it and to express the basic substance of what is said in such a long paragraph in a few lines, and you can judge, whether it is a good summary or not a good summary. By what capacity do we understand whether it is a good summary or not? We understand that the essence has been caught or not because you know what essence is. If you ask somebody to explain, it may be a different understanding, but he understands “essence”. In fact you might say understanding consists in the perception of essence. Whenever you say I have understood, basically it means that you have understood the essence. Without understanding the essence you can’t understand whatever is to be understood. You can understand details and paraphernalia, you can make distinction between that and which is not essence; that which is the principle, that which is subordinate. How do we do this?

In the physical world nothing is written that this is essential and this is not essential. So, this knowledge is not derived from sense experiences. Spinoza, for example, wrote a book called ‘Ethics’, it’s one of the great books in the field of philosophy. The title is ‘Ethics’ but basically it is the totality. Ethics is the culminating point of his book, and therefore he calls it ‘Ethics’, but it starts with what may be called Ontology.

Ontology is a study of essence. What is essence, or study of what is called ‘Being’. We see in the world constant flux that is visible even to the physical senses, that is called the knowledge of becoming, all that is in flux is becoming but the idea that the becoming is dependent upon Being and the study of this Being is the focal point of Ontology and Ontology is the heart of philosophy. You may say that philosophy is a very large term. One general definition of philosophy is that it is the study of the Ultimate.

In any field when you make the study of the Ultimate, you arrive at a philosophical idea of it. There can be a philosophy of society, which is social philosophy. There can be philosophy of politics; the knowledge of the ultimate of politics will give political philosophy. What is the ultimate meaning of life; it gives you the philosophy of life. What is the philosophy of human conduct; that gives you the ethical philosophy and moral philosophy. But if you ask what is the ultimate of all ultimate’s, that is to say ultimate of not only society, politics and human conduct but ultimate of entirety of the universe, study of entirety of all that can be known, that can be perceived, can be experienced—whatever is ultimately understood in terms of Ontology, the Ultimate Being.

As I said yesterday in philosophical terms there are no assumptions, so even to assume that there is an Ultimate entity, even that can be questioned by philosophy. Is there really anything like essence or is it simply a fiction of the mind that is also an Ontological question. The definition of philosophy would be the study of the Ultimate, if such a thing exists. It is not a study of the Ultimate because that will be also a kind of dogma; that there is an Ultimate and the study of the Ultimate is Ontology. The study of an Ultimate, if such an Ultimate exists, that is the purest definition of philosophy, when you have to study the ultimate, if it exists. Ultimate of what? Ultimate of all the facts, and there are two categories of facts in the world, physical facts and psychological facts.

Philosophy would mean a study of what is the essential significance of all the facts, physical and psychological and their relationship with the Ultimate; if such an Ultimate exists. The relationship between all the facts and the Ultimate, if such an Ultimate exists, gives you a further step in the definition of philosophy. Relationship between facts and the ultimate essence, relationship in technical terms gives you the notion of logic. If you examine the word logic, to many people the word logic as a science gives you a great fright, it’s a really difficult subject.

Basically logic is a very simple thing. If you write an essay in which there are statements made haphazardly and it is presented to you, one sentence belongs to the field of biology, unconnected with it, there is a statement from physics, another statement from psychology, if I say, for example, “I do not like cheese, moon has arisen”. A statement of this kind, you will immediately say “what is the logic in it?” In other words, there is no relationship between the two. When you try to establish a relationship between ideas and essential relationships, there are many relationships but an essential relationship between things and ideas is what is called logic. There are some relationships which are inevitable.

Wherever there are qualities, there are always substances. No qualities can be hanging, as it were, all qualities are rooted in substance, and therefore, there is an inevitable relationship between substance and quality. There are some other relationships, which may seem to be inevitable but which are not. But the relationship between things and ideas is what is called logic. There are some other relationships which may seem to be inevitable but which are not.

Relationship between uncle and nephew, there can’t be an uncle without a nephew, there can’t be a nephew without an uncle, and the two are inevitably dependent upon each other. But the man called uncle can exist without being an uncle and the nephew can exist without being a nephew. This relationship is not of the first kind, where substance and qualities are interrelated, inevitably. Here there is some kind of relationship but not absolutely binding, existence of uncle as an uncle may require the existence of a nephew as a nephew. Existence of the man called uncle can exist without the existence of the man called nephew.

These are very simple examples to show that there are varieties of relationships, relationships of dependence, relationships of reciprocity, one is related to the other and both are equally related to each other reciprocally. In the relationship of dependence there may not be reciprocal dependence. One may be independent and the other may be dependent. Not that both are dependent upon each other. Therefore, the relationship of dependence is not a reciprocal relationship, but there are other relationships which are reciprocal, there are consistent relationships. Relationships in which the two objects don’t collide with each other, so that are consistent.

You may have many colours, some colours are consistent with each other but some colours are not consistent with each other, they do not gel together. There are contrary relations. There is always a relationship of such a nature, where ‘x’ exists, ‘y’ can’t exist or can exist but a little far distant but not related. It is a contradictory relationship. Relationships are of such a nature that if ‘x’ is true ‘y’ must be false. If you are in Auroville, you can’t be in Bombay at the same time. The two statements, I am in Auroville and I am in Bombay at the same time, are contradictory to each other. One must be true and the other must be false.

A detailed study of various kinds in relationships, their inevitabilities, their various shades of relationships, is fundamentally the study of logic. Law for example, is supposed to be one of the best means of application of logic, because law is a study of ideal relationships and in the field of law the exposition has to be logical in the sense that you start with the highest universal and then go on applying to the minutest details. A good lawyer is one who has got this great logical sense so that he can move from universal to the particular and from the particular to the universal with the right rhythm of relationships.

The study of logic is therefore regarded as a very important element of philosophy because philosophy studies physical and psychological facts, not in the way in which science studies them but in search of the significance of these facts. The word significance is very important. Science does not study the significance of the facts; it studies facts as they are. But significance of facts, what is the meaning of facts, what is the importance of the facts, the relative importance of facts? This significance of facts and this significance is very much dependent upon the relationship they may have with the ultimate Reality, if it so exists.

The study of facts and the relationships among themselves and their relationships with the Ultimate, if such an Ultimate exists, becomes a matter of logic. If you can show the interrelationships of facts and the kind of relationship that exists and this relationship becomes more and more significant, when you can relate these facts to the Ultimate Reality.

I shall read out to you a few lines, where Sri Aurobindo has given a definition of philosophy. The book is called ‘Essays on the Gita’. When we shall study ‘The Life Divine’, I would like several books of Sri Aurobindo to be present with us, because as Mother herself has said, ‘don’t study Sri Aurobindo book by book, but subject by subject and then you can take help of varieties of books of Sri Aurobindo and you can refer to them.’

Here is the definition of philosophy that Sri Aurobindo has given on page 241 in ‘the Essays on the Gita.’

..philosophy is only a way of formulating to ourselves intellectually in their essential significance the psychological and physical facts of existence and their relation to any ultimate reality that may exist.. Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita: The Gist of the Karmayoga

There are three terms which are very important, ‘formulating intellectually’. That means you can formulate facts of the psychology and of the physical universe not necessarily intellectually, there can be other ways of stating the relationship but not intellectually. It is only when you intellectually state the facts of psychology and the physical world that philosophy arises. Take for example the 1st verse of the Isha Upanishad; this is a very famous statement which says,

‘All this that moves in the moving universe is the habitation of the Lord’.

The 2nd statement is,

‘Enjoy by being renounced. Do not covet anybody else’s wealth.’

You can see here, that the 1st and the 2nd statement, they are not intellectually related. There is a relationship, intellectually afterwards if you want to state, you can make a commentary on it but the composer of the Isha Upanishad did not want to make an intellectual statement. Therefore, Isha Upanishad cannot be regarded as an intellectual, philosophical treatise. Upanishads are not actually philosophical treatises, although they can be rendered into philosophical statements. But it is a good example to show how if you write philosophy, then you have to make an intellectual connection between the statements that you make.

The relationship between one statement and the other must have an intellectual connection. If you don’t state it intellectually, it is not philosophy, it may be anything else. “Your face is as beautiful as the moon”, this is not a philosophic statement, it is a poetic statement, it may be anything else. Because the experience of seeing that beautiful face, gives you the imagination of the face of the moon, you bring them together in a relationship, but it is not an intellectual relationship. Philosophical or intellectual statements have to have an austerity, in fact philosophy is a kind of ascetic among all the studies—no dogma, nothing to be assumed, very rigorous, very austere. As Sri Aurobindo says ‘You have to look at the Reality in itself, for itself, for the sake of the truth and truth alone in a colourless light’, there has to be no colour in it.

You can be a good philosopher only when you have this rigour; it is only when you see the facts as they are, in their essentiality then only they get that rigour. The face of the one whom you love may look like the moon, but is it really a rigorous, intellectual statement? It is not, because it is a subjective feeling of the beholder, who feels a kind of an excitement about that perception of beauty. But in itself is the face like the moon? Intellectually can you show that it is exactly like this? It is this rigour that is required in philosophy. So, there is an intellectual account, it does not mean that only intellectual accounts are right or valid. It does not mean that the poetic vision is therefore false? No. It is a different way of approaching and understanding Reality. But if you want to claim to be a philosopher, then as a philosopher you have to be colourless and rigorous in your relationship that you establish. That is called an intellectual account.

If you read ‘The Life Divine’ although Sri Aurobindo is a supreme poet, the account that he has given of the Ultimate Reality in ‘The Life Divine’ is that colourless, austere, rigorous, intellectual account of the Reality. You can easily distinguish between ‘The Life Divine’ and ‘Savitri’. ‘Savitri’ is a supreme revelation, the truth manifested but it is a poetic revelation perhaps it takes you to the Reality much more directly than philosophy, it’s a poetic revelation. Because philosophy has its own limitations of abstraction, whereas poetry gives you the experience of concreteness, it’s a vehicle of experience. So, there can be a poetic exposition, poetic understanding of facts; and there can be a philosophical understanding of facts; there can be a scientific and philosophical understanding as long as you state facts as they are, it is a scientific account. It is an intellectual account but it is a scientific account. But the moment you give not only the account of facts but also the significance of facts, that is philosophy. An intellectual statement of the significance of psychological and physical facts and their relationships, that brings in the question of logic—the logic of all these facts with the Ultimate Reality—in which you discuss whether the Ultimate Reality exists or not. When you do this exercise and you do this exercise fully then that is philosophy. Once we establish this statement of philosophy we can then measure and appreciate the way in which Sri Aurobindo gives us the entire philosophical statement of the Ultimate Reality.

In ‘The Life Divine’ we can expect, therefore, three things. The discussion whether the Ultimate Reality exists or not, whether there is anything like the Ultimate at all is a very important discussion. Secondly, there is a statement of physical and psychological facts. You can look for these facts in ‘The Life Divine’, not only that but significance of all these facts, their relationship with the Ultimate, which Sri Aurobindo establishes after thorough discussion, whether there is such a Reality or not. The entire statement is intellectual, meaning thereby something that is siezeable in terms of ideas. This is the essentiality of intellect, not images but ideas. Art, poetry, music—these are the vehicles in which symbols and images play a role.

Philosophy and science are the two fields where ideas play the role, not symbols and images. This is a speciality of intellectuality, when you say these intellectual statements, if you bring in images they will be secondary, not that they are completely eliminated but as an aid, as a subordinate element. Plato, for example wrote his philosophy and his dialogues, are regarded as poetic, the way in which he expresses his prose is poetic in its character because it abounds with images but still it is philosophical because its fundamental character is ideative not imaginative, images are brought in only as a subordinate strain. Whenever you take up a book of philosophy or you want to write philosophy, then you should be careful to state your statements in terms of ideas. That is the intellectual rigour of a philosophical statement and then you strive to bring out what is called significance.

This idea of significance is very important. Significance is a word which implies meaning. This is something which is not written anywhere in the world. I may see a huge mountain, nowhere is it written what is meant by huge, you see the hugeness but hugeness is not written that the mountain is huge. You see the facts as they are and what they mean is not given anywhere. Therefore, Science does not give you the significance of facts; science only describes colourlessly the facts as they are. Philosophy differs from science because it also asks the question, do these facts imply any meaning? From where does this question arise? It is not suggested by the facts themselves. If you just look around in the world, there is nowhere in the world it is written, ‘look! This is the meaning’. You don’t get from sense experience any idea of meaning and yet we do raise this question. Human beings have a faculty of Pure Reason. The Pure Reason has embedded in it, as it were, a search for meaning. The full exercise of the search for meaning constitutes the heart of philosophy. You may study anything, you may describe anything, but if you don’t raise the question as to what is the meaning, then there is no philosophy as yet. It is the attempt to know the meaning of this, is there any meaning at all, ultimately you come to the conclusion that there is no meaning, but after having examined whether there is meaning or not, after examining the meaning of meaning. Once you examine even the concept of meaning itself, you don’t assume the meaning of meaning, you examine the meaning of meaning and then come to a conclusion; that if there is meaning and then state what is the meaning of all the facts that you perceive. This is a very difficult task.

It is very significant that the ‘The Life Divine’, begins with the very 1st chapter is called ‘The Human Aspiration’. It is the most important or you might say the quintessential philosophical question. Human aspiration means the human search for meaning, human beings aspire. This aspiration springs from a search for meaning; there is no aspiration, if I do not search for meaning. What do I aspire for? I aspire to fulfill a sense of meaning. The very starting point of the great magnum opus goes straight to the most important question of philosophy. Sri Aurobindo raises the question of the search for meaning. Everything else falls in its proper place, if you first fix this. Is there a human aspiration, that is the basic fact that he is putting the question before us. Is there a human aspiration? Has there been a continuity of this aspiration? What are the facts and the facts are to be seen colourlessly. What are the psychological facts, what are the physical facts? Which word expresses to you the significance of this aspiration, the meaning of this aspiration? Ultimately you may come to the conclusion that there is no such aspiration at all, that human beings are haphazard, looking for this, looking for that, giving up this thing now, giving up that thing then, there is no system in it. It is simply a haphazard movement. That could be one of the ways by which you can look upon all the facts of the world. But you can ask a question: ‘Is it so?’ Is that so, is that what your study of facts given to you shows? that the whole history of mankind is a haphazard movement. Is it a story of an idiot or is there meaning in it, is it rational or supra-rational meaningful search.

The entire edifice of philosophy depends upon this basic important point, if you say that, if you decide from this, that from the very beginning that there is no meaning at all: then you write the 1st chapter and close it and that is the end of it. That there has been no aspiration at all in mankind, there is no search for meaning at all, if this is your conclusion, then you don’t need to find significance of the physical facts, psychological facts and their relationship with the Ultimate Reality, nothing at all is relevant, that is the conclusion. Even to make this statement you have to be a very competent philosopher. You should really know what meaning is, and what the meaning of the essence of the meaning is, and how you can establish that there is no meaning. It requires great competence. The mark that this book is preeminently philosophical in character is the very starting point.

Very often when I read ‘The Life Divine’, I feel as if I am in the presence of a huge orchestra played by a thousand musicians at the same time. And as you enter into this orchestra, you start with a huge ‘dong’, the first ‘dong’ in which everything is contained, as it were. This chapter ‘The Human Aspiration’ when I read, then starts the ‘dong’, it wakes you from your ordinary pursuits of thought or experience and awakens you to the search of meaning. A new level of consciousness arises as soon as you take up the book and the very starting point of ‘The Human Aspiration’ you are already in the realm of philosophy.

Then the whole book may be regarded as an answer to this question. Is there a human aspiration? What does history tell us? That means what world history is to be examined at the very outset, all psychological facts of human history, unless you make a complete study of all the psychological facts of history you cannot arrive at a conclusion, since the psychological facts are very much connected with the whole geographical world, physical world or the universe. In fact human aspiration brings up the question of all psychological facts and physical facts, their inter-relationships, relationships with man.

The wealth of historical knowledge that is required for understanding this book is tremendous. In fact the very 1st paragraph is an account of the whole history of mankind. And stated so briefly with the highest competence of knowledge, highest skill of writing, and the skill of a vision; all combined together in a supreme manner is manifest in the very 1st paragraph.

This is the best introduction to the ‘Life Divine’. You will see what a breathtaking sweep it is; it is only 4-5 lines in fact. It is a difficult sentence, I will read very slowly. Next time when you come, if you bring the text, it will be very useful.

The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thoughts and, as it seems, his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation,—for it survives the longest periods of scepticism and returns after every banishment,—is also the highest which his thought can envisage. It manifests itself in the divination of Godhead, the impulse towards perfection, the search after pure Truth and unmixed Bliss, the sense of a secret immortality. The ancient dawns of human knowledge have left us their witness to this constant aspiration; today we see a humanity satiated but not satisfied by victorious analysis of the externalities of Nature preparing to return to its primeval longings. The earliest formula of Wisdom promises to be its last,—God, Light, Freedom, Immortality. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - I: The Human Aspiration

This is the 1st paragraph of the ‘Life Divine’ and it contains everything that is in the whole book. Let me make a few comments on the speciality of this paragraph. I don’t like to comment on what Sri Aurobindo has written, but this can be such an innocent comment, it can be pardoned. I just wanted to show you what I find in this paragraph of very special importance. Let me read again. “The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thought....” This adjective ‘awakened thoughts’ is very important.

Sri Aurobindo here describes the history of mankind from the time, not the most primitive time, but when man began to become awakened, when he began to think at all. In other words, Sri Aurobindo wants to emphasize this history of thought. Human aspiration has expressed itself in the thought movement, so, Sri Aurobindo begins with the history of thought. This adjective ‘awakened thought’ is very significant. Then ‘as it seems’, this phrase, he could have said also ‘it will be’ that would be un-philosophical; he has not proved as yet, that ‘it will be also its inevitable preoccupation’. Since it is not proved intellectually you cannot you cannot make a statement, ‘and it will be’, " No, ‘As it seems’. Why ‘seems’, because if you read the whole book then it will justify why it ‘seems’ here. So, purely from intellectual rigour this small phrase ‘as it seems’, there is no dogma in it, there is no assertion which is not supported as yet, which has not been examined. ‘….his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation’, that is Sri Aurobindo says, ‘The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thought and as it seems his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation’. This is his reading of the whole human history. But since he has not expounded the whole history, he doesn’t say ‘it will be’. That is the subject matter of the whole book, " to show that what was aspired after by man in earliest times, when he began to think consciously and if you examine man throughout the history of mankind, a constant theme, if there is any one constant theme, in the human history and therefore ‘it seems’ that even in future, it is very likely that it will be his inevitable pre-occupation. But that it will be, cannot be affirmed at the very beginning because that is still to be brought out. So, Sri Aurobindo uses the word’ as it seems’. Let’s read the whole sentence and see the compactness of intellectual rigour in it.

“The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thoughts and as it seems his inevitable and ultimate pre-occupation…… is also the highest….” Here it is not ‘as it seems’, here he makes a statement that “The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thought and as it seems his inevitable and ultimate pre-occupation " is also the highest which its thought can envisage.’ Why this, here he doesn’t say, ‘it seems’. Why in the first place he has written ‘as it seems’ and here he simply says, “….is also the highest which his thought can envisage.” What is the justification of this change? Why here he does not say, ‘that earliest preoccupation’ it ‘seems’ to, is also the highest which its thought can envisage.’ Why not?

The reason is that, if you examine the content of that aspiration then philosophically you can demonstrate that it is the highest that human thought can envisage, not seems. You can demonstrate, that is also the task of the book, it will demonstrate that this preoccupation of man can demonstrably be shown to be really the highest that human thought can envisage. That is to say, if you examine the nature of thought and if you can examine the peaks that thought can rise to, have risen to all the peaks, then having risen to all the peaks you can be absolutely certain, no probability, you can be certain that content of the preoccupation is the highest that human thought can envisage. That is to say that human thought has a certain capacity of reaching the highest point. This is the speciality of thought or Pure Reason. This is the strongest point of a philosopher. A philosopher can say that even before the history is over, before that any time in the history of thought you can say what is the highest that thought can envisage.

What Plato says is the highest that human thought can envisage, is also what Deepti can say as a philosopher as to what is the highest that human thought can envisage. The conclusions will be identical, if both have reached the peak of thought and that can be reached at any given time of human history. The moment you begin to think and think deeply and seriously, this is the possibility that is presented to the thought itself. Thought can rise to its highest peak and can be certain that it has reached the highest peak, it can find out that, now, it has the highest reach. If you reach the top of Everest, you can be sure that you have reached the highest peak. Similarly, when you reach the highest peak of thought you can be sure there is certainty in it. That is the meaning of logic of thought.

The thought and its highest peak; what is the relationship? In human thought there are many thoughts, among them there are the peaks and you can reach the highest peaks. When you reach the highest peak you are certain that you have reached the highest peak. What you see in that you can be certain that what you are seeing, you can’t doubt it. Therefore, that gives you the strength of stating this small word ‘is’, not ‘seems’. You can say with confidence that, that ‘is’ the highest that human thought can envisage. At the very 1st point you have got the purely philosophical rigour. Where certainty cannot be ascertained, cannot be affirmed, Sri Aurobindo uses the word ‘as it seems’, where certainty can be ascertained and asserted he uses the word ‘is’.

So, let me read again. “The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thought and, as it seems, his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation ...is also the highest which its thought can envisage.” There is a parenthesis, which I omitted a very important parenthesis and is the justification of the word ‘seems’, ‘The earliest preoccupation of man’, and Sri Aurobindo says ‘it seems’ also his inevitable preoccupation. Then he gives reason, as to why he writes that there is some basis for the word ‘it seems’, " for it survives the longest period of scepticism and returns after every banishment” ‘this preoccupation of man’, is of such a nature that even when you doubt it and doubt it on, and on, and on, and on ... longest periods of scepticism. Scepticism is an attitude of doubting. You go on doubting for a long period, hundred years, two-hundred years, and three- hundred years. You try to banish it, this preoccupation, you have nothing to do with it, but historically it’s a fact. Now you can controvert it, you can read history, does it happen or not but it’s a fact, it may be mankind is mad and returns to it again and again after banishment of this preoccupation, even after centuries of banishment. This is only a historical fact that man’s madness for that preoccupation is so great that even when you try to throw it away from your kingdom of mind, and exile it for centuries, you exile it, it comes back again, again man begins to think. Man’s search returns to this God, Light, Freedom, Immortality, this is the earliest preoccupation of man. You try to banish God, if you read history, how many times God has been banished by man and yet he returns. Man’s hunger for God returns and sometimes it returns with a tremendous hunger, greater than before. This is a historical fact, if you read the history of mankind.

There is an autobiographical statement that I would like to make: ‘I had read world history quite a good deal before I ever happened to read this book. And my study of history, ancient civilization, medieval times, modern times, I was thinking a lot after reading history and I asked the question, “what is in history the most important theme, historically, without any kind of bias or prejudice?”’

If you read the historical pages of the world, at least I found the most recurrent theme is God, in the history of mankind. Recurrent theme, wherever you go, Egyptian civilization starts with God, Greek civilization is full of God and Gods, Persian civilization is full of Gods, Assyrian civilization, Indian civilization and throughout if you ask the greatest number of pages devoted in history, it is man’s search for God. It is the most significant theme in the history of mankind. It’s an incontrovertible statement, whether you believe in God or not is a different matter but the fact is that man's preoccupation with God is the fundamental theme of human history. You cannot avoid, you may say that man is mad after God but so he is, that is why he returns again and again, even after saying that I don’t want God and he quarrels with God and he yet comes back to him and says, ‘I Love you so much’, I can’t avoid you, that is the significant theme of human history.

Sri Aurobindo captures the whole thing, therefore when I read the very first sentence of ‘The Life Divine’, I said, 'here is the truth.’ I had come to the conclusion, which is stated in the very 1st statement, you can imagine how much this book immediately captured me as soon as I looked. Nobody had told me that this book is one of the greatest books; nobody had said that it’s the greatest book. It simply happened to come in my life suddenly at one time and when I opened the book the very 1st sentence captured me thoroughly, because of this statement, that here is somebody who has seen as it were both telescopically and microscopically the whole human history and captured the whole fundamental theme in one sentence, very powerful sentence in which you can’t question. Where there is a question he puts the word ‘seems’, you can’t controvert it. Where there is no question he puts the affirmative ‘is’. So, it is a complete, perfect statement.

Sri Aurobindo explains, ‘what is that preoccupation’, in two lines, “It manifests itself in the divination of Godhead”, man has it as it were divined, felt the secret presence of God, this is of ultimate knowledge, a kind of a magic of human history. Nowhere do you see God and yet man divines him that is as if the magic of man, man’s consciousness. So, “It manifests itself in the divination of Godhead, the impulse towards perfection, the search after pure Truth and unmixed Bliss, the sense of a secret immortality.” You read the whole history of mankind and these five words constantly occur everywhere," the search for Truth, the search for Bliss, the search for perfection, the search for Immortality, the search for the most beloved God. This is a constant theme as it were. Nobody, even the greatest critic of God cannot controvert this basic statement; historically this is true.

Sri Aurobindo gives some kind of a proof, a very clinching proof in the very 1st paragraph of all the statements that he has made so far. He says, “The ancient dawns of human knowledge have left us their witness to this constant aspiration…” If you want proof of this aspiration, then take up the most ancient records, scientifically, we should not merely go by mythologies, stories which are told, which are current, which were told that they were told," No! The greatest proof is to go to the records. What are the records? Are there the most ancient records available in the world, " it is the Veda. It’s a record available to us and if you read the Vedas, what do you find in it? It’s nothing but a hymn of God, Immortality, Truth and Bliss. It is ‘Soma’, the wine of immortality that you drink, that is the aspiration in the Veda. So, this is the truth of the ancient, earliest preoccupation of the awakened human thought.

Sri Aurobindo says if you come to the present day; what do you see? “...today we see a humanity satiated but not satisfied by victorious analysis of the externalities of Nature preparing to return to its primeval longings.” Today we are passing through a long period of scientific investigation and science has been trying to examine the externalities of nature. This is the speciality of modern science. It does not go into the occult truth of things, spiritual truth of things but the externalities of nature and rigorously, it does not want to enter in the so-called non-sense of spirituality or religion. It simply wants to keep completely aloof from it so that it simply wants to examine the externalities of nature.

These externalities of nature when you examine, Sri Aurobindo says, we have reached the climax of it, as it were. Then if you ask humanity are you now satisfied? You have supersonic speed, you can converse, and you have the magic of cinema and TV, so many things you have conquered, are you now happy, and satisfied? Sri Aurobindo uses the words, “Humanity is satiated but not satisfied”, which is a fact. If anybody wants to controvert it but it is a fact. “…..humanity satiated but not satisfied” and since it is not satisfied, what are the latest trends of humanity?

Why could Vivekananda, a young man going from India to the West and speak of Vedanta, simply speak, “Brothers and sisters of America” and there is applause, what is the magic of this man, why should this happen? It’s an expression of an appetite, a hunger for brotherhood and here is a man who expresses that brotherhood so simply, so spontaneously, from the bottom of the heart, from the soul, as it were. Godhead comes and speaks to mankind and there is an immediate response. Mankind is preparing, it’s only one small example, how mankind is preparing itself to return to the primeval longings, once again a tryst with God and man is returning to embrace God. That is his search for satisfaction has not been fulfilled.

So, Sri Aurobindo says “...today we see a humanity satiated but not satisfied by victorious analysis of the externalities of Nature preparing to return to its primeval longings.” Then the last word, “The earliest formula of Wisdom promises to be its last, " God, Light, Freedom, Immortality.” He summarizes, who humanity is, the great aspiration of man written at large throughout the pages of history, everything that is in human history is recorded in five lines. A complete summary as it were to start with. This is what I call a ’dong’. ‘Dong’ of the orchestra from where all the strings of the music, begin to vibrate and if you read ‘The Life Divine’ as a musical composition, you will see how one movement gives rise to another movement, one harmony is giving rise to another harmony and a symphony of harmonies simultaneously and again falling into a hush and again giving rise to numerous harmonies.

If you read only ‘The Life Divine’, not from a logical, or psychological, or scientific, or philosophical point of view, but merely as a notation of music one can compose a new kind of music which will be breathtaking in the world. Even if one follows the rhythm of this book and produces a music, it will be most breathtaking and therefore if you read ‘The Life Divine’ in that sense you will get not only the greatest intellectual happiness and satisfaction but also artistic exposition and its satisfaction and the deepest musical stirrings of your being, so, that we can play with the spheres of the universe, simultaneously. This is the experience that we get from this great magnum opus of Sri Aurobindo.

We shall stop here today. I will be very happy if you could read the 1st chapter, when we meet next time.