Chapter 23Nations Other than India

knowledge, in the vital as power and in the physical as beauty. If you discard beauty it means that you are depriving the Divine of this manifestation in the material and you hand over that part to the Asura.§

* From time immemorial (some scholars say 8000 years before the Christian era) India has been the land of spiritual knowledge and practice, of the discovery of the Supreme Reality and union with it. It is the country that has practised concentration most and best. The methods, called Yoga in Sanskrit, that are taught and used in this country are countless. Some are merely material, others purely intellectual, others religious and devotional; lastly, some of them combine these various processes in order to achieve a more integral result.

*

“Ah! Since India is the cradle of religion and since so many gods preside over her destiny, who among them will accomplish the miracle of resuscitating the city?”

A. Choumel (in an article on Pondicherry in 1928)

Blinded by false appearances, deceived by calumnies, held back by fear and prejudice, he has passed by the side of the god whose intervention he implores and saw him not; he has walked near to the forces which will accomplish the miracle he demands and had no will to recognise them. Thus has he lost the greatest opportunity of his life — a unique opportunity of entering into contact with the mysteries and marvels whose existence his brain has divined and to which his heart obscurely aspires.

In all times the aspirant, before receiving initiation, had to pass through tests. In the schools of antiquity these tests were artificial and by that they lost the greater part of their value. But it is no longer so now. The test hides behind some very ordinary every-day circumstance and wears an innocent air of coincidence and chance which makes it still more difficult and dangerous.

It is only to those who can conquer the mind’s preferences and prejudices of race and education that India reveals the mystery of her treasures. Others depart disappointed, failing to find what they seek; for they have sought it in the wrong way and would not agree to pay the price of the Divine Discovery.

11 September 1928

*

(Description of a model by an Ashram artist which symbolised the significance of the State of Pondicherry)

The new State of Pondicherry is here represented by a small country craft carrying a pavilion. The four principal pillars of this pavilion are the four Continents of Asia, Europe, Africa and America. Asia is represented by the Buddha, Europe by Pallas Athene, Africa by Isis and America by the Statue of Liberty. The spiritual supports upbear the globe of the world on which the Dove of Peace descends from on high. On either side of the globe stand an Indian lady with a welcoming leaf of palm and a French lady with an auspicious olive branch. This amity between the Orient and the Occident augurs well for an enduring peace and concord among nations.

The open spaces between the four pillars of the pavilion are covered by entwining creepers with alternating red and white lotuses. The red and the white lotuses represent the twin spiritual Consciousness guiding the terrestrial evolution.

At the four corners of the pavilion stand four guarding lions symbolising spiritual Powers.

It is hoped that the State of Pondicherry will materialise this spiritual vision and become a meeting place of all the cultures of the world with the full consciousness of the fundamental Unity that binds the peoples of the world together.

*

(To Mme. Yvonne Robert Gaebel´e, author of Histoire de Pondich´ery, published in 1960)

My dear child,

I have just been through the beautiful and very interesting book; I have looked at the pictures and read the recommended passages, as well as some others, which are very valuable for their information.

It is very fine, and I am happy to congratulate you on this beautiful work.

Will we have a copy for the library? In that case, I shall not send mine.

A day will come, I hope, when we shall be able to tell freely and truly all that Sri Aurobindo’s Presence has meant for the town of Pondicherry....

In the meanwhile, I send you my love and blessings.

12 January 1961

* I have the deepest respect for Indian languages and continue to study Sanskrit when I have time.

* The Sanskrit ought to be the national language of India.

Blessings.

19 April 1971

* Hindi is good only for those who belong to a Hindi-speaking province. Sanskrit is good for all Indians.

*

On certain issues where You and Sri Aurobindo have given direct answers, we (Sri Aurobindo’s Action) are also specific, as for instance... on the language issue where You have said for the country that (1) the regional language should be the medium of instruction, (2) Sanskrit should be the national language, and (3) English should be the international language.

Are we correct in giving these replies to such ques-

tions?

Yes.

Blessings.

4 October 1971

Part Six

MESSAGE FOR AMERICA Stop thinking that you are of the West and others of the East. All human beings are of the same divine origin and meant to manifest upon earth the unity of this origin.

4 August 1949

*

MESSAGE FOR THE INAUGURATION OF A

FRENCH INSTITUTE AT PONDICHERRY In any country the best education that can be given to children consists in teaching them what the true nature of their country is and its own qualities, the mission their nation has to fulfil in the world and its true place in the terrestrial concert. To that should be added a wide understanding of the role of other nations, but without the spirit of imitation and without ever losing sight of the genius of one’s own country. France meant generosity of sentiment, newness and boldness of ideas and chivalry in action. It was that France which commanded the respect and admiration of all: it is by these virtues that she dominated the world.

A utilitarian, calculating, mercantile France is France no longer. These things do not agree with her true nature and in practising them she loses the nobility of her world position.

This is what the children of today must be made to know.

4 April 1955

* It is France that can connect Europe with India. There are great spiritual possibilities for France. She will play a big part in spite of her present bad condition. It is through France that the spiritual message will reach Europe. That is why I chose France for my birth, although I am not French.§1

*

Dear X,

In October 1961 I had written to Mother regarding

my impending World Union tour in Africa. I had referred to the many new nations entering their freedom and independence. Did she have a message for these peoples? With the words “Will this help you?”, she gave me the following:

The true freedom is to be free from desire.

The true independence is to be independent from passion. The true mastery is to be master of oneself. That alone is the key to happiness; all the rest is passing illusion.

It is not in division but in unity that can be found the solution of human problems and the remedy to human miseries.

October 1961

*

Divine Mother,

Could we have a message from you to pass along to

those in the United States who may be ready to aid in the fund-raising work we are doing?

Money is not meant to make money; money is meant to make the earth ready for the New Creation.2

15 June 1966

* 1 The Mother’s father was Turkish, her mother Egyptian. They emigrated from Egypt to France in 1877, one year before her birth. 2 This message was originally given for a different occasion.

Those who serve the Truth cannot take one side or another.

Truth is above conflict and opposition. In Truth, all countries unite in a common effort towards progress and realisation.

8 June 1967

* Israel as a nation has the same right to exist as all the other nations.

12 June 1967

* How can you believe that the Grace works for one nation or against another? The Grace works for Truth and in the present conditions of the world, Truth and falsehood are both present everywhere, in all nations. It is the human mind which thinks: this one is right and that one is wrong — right and wrong are present everywhere.

The Truth is above all conflicts and all oppositions.

13 June 1967

*

May I have a clarification from you on two points?

(1) Does not the Grace work for whatever Truth

there may be on both sides of a conflict?

Yes.

Or does it keep altogether aloof just because either side has falsehood also?

No. I said work — it is a constant working.

(2) Do the present conflicts differ radically from a conflict like World War II, in which the Grace worked definitively and decisively on one side — at least on the whole?

You are mixing up two things, the working of the Grace and the result which is the inevitable consequence of the triumph of the Truth: they are quite different things on a different level.

The progressive victory of the Truth brings automatically certain results complex and often unexpected by the human mind which always wants clean cuts. It is only a total vision both in time and space that can understand.

14 June 1967

*

How is one to explain this age-old enmity between the Jews and the Arabs (although having a common ancestor) hating each other, generation on generation up to the impasse in which we have been living from some days back?

Perhaps the enmity exists only because they are neighbours!

Violence and enmity... when brothers hate, they hate much more than others. Sri Aurobindo has said: “Hate is the indication of the possibility of a much greater love.”

Could we think that these two great peoples in conflict represent the symbolic Forces called to decide the fate of our civilisation?

It is not this conflict that will decide the future of our civilisation.

The Mussulmans and the Israelites represent the two reli-gions where the faith in God is the most extreme. Only, the faith of the Israelites is a faith in an impersonal God and the faith of the Mussulmans is a faith in a personal God.

The Arabs have passionate natures. They live almost exclusively in the vital, with its passions, its desires, while the Israelites live chiefly in the mind with a greater power of organisation and of realisation, which is quite exceptional. The Israelites are intellectuals with a remarkable will. They are not sentimental, that is to say they do not like weakness.

The Mussulmans are impulsive, the Israelites are rational.

June 1967

*

(Message for the Sri Aurobindo Society, Osaka, Japan)

Japan was in the physical world the teacher of beauty.

She must not renounce her privilege. Blessings.

16 October 1972

* All countries are equal and essentially “one”.

Each of them represents an aspect of the One Supreme. In the terrestrial manifestation they all have the same right to a free expression of themselves.

From the spiritual point of view, the importance of a country does not depend on its size or its power or its authority over other countries, but on its response to Truth and on the degree of Truth it is capable of manifesting.

Note on the Texts Most of the statements in this volume were first published between the 1930s and 1970s in books and journals put out by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram or groups associated with it. The remaining statements first appeared in 1980 in the first edition of this volume. About sixty per cent of the statements were written or spoken in English, the rest in French.

The volume has been divided into six parts, each part having a number of sections. Each section does not necessarily contain all of the statements that could be placed there. Each statement has been put only in one section, though it might have been put in more than one. Statements that appear in other volumes have not, as a rule, been reproduced here.

Quotations from the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are occasionally cited in the text and footnotes. The sources of these works are the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (SABCL) and the second edition of the Collected Works of the Mother (CWM).

The text of this second edition is the same as that of the first edition, apart from the correction of some typographical errors and the revision of a few English translations.