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When I was asked to speak to you at the annual meeting of your
Sabha,
it was my intention to say a few words about the subject chosen for today,
the subject of the Hindu religion. I do not know now whether I shall
fulfil that intention; for as I sat here, there came into my mind a word
that I have to speak to you, a word that I have to speak to the whole of
the Indian Nation. It was spoken first to myself in jail and I have come
out of jail to speak it to my people.
It was more than a year ago that I came here last. When I came I was
not alone; one of the mightiest prophets of Nationalism ( = Bepin Pal) sat
by my side. It was he who then came out of the seclusion to which God had
sent him, so that in the silence and solitude of his cell he might hear
the word that He had to say. It was he that you came in your hundreds to
welcome. Now he is far away, separated from us by thousands of miles.
Others whom I was accustomed to find working beside me are absent. The
storm that swept over the country has scattered them far and wide. It is I
this time who have spent one year in seclusion, and now that I come out I
find all changed. One who always sat by my side and was associated in my
work is a prisoner in Burma; another is in the north rotting in detention.
I looked round when I came out, I looked round for those to whom I had
been accustomed to look for counsel and inspiration. I did not find them.
There was more than that. When I went to jail the whole country was alive
with the cry of Bande Mataram, alive with the hope of a nation, the hope
of millions of men who had newly risen out of degradation. When I came out
of jail I listened for that cry, but there was instead a silence. A hush
had fallen on the country and men seemed bewildered; for instead of God's
bright heaven full of the vision of the future that had been before us,
there seemed to be overhead a leaden sky from which human thunders and
lightnings rained. No man seemed to know which way to move, and from all
sides came the question, "What shall we do next ? What is there that we
can do ?" I too did not know which way to move, I too did not know what
was next to be done. But one thing I knew, that as it was the Almighty
Power of God which had raised that cry, that hope, so it was the same
Power which had sent down that silence. He who was in the shouting and the
movement was also in the pause and the hush. He has sent it upon us, so
that the nation might draw back for a moment and look into itself and know
His will. I have not been disheartened by that silence because I had been
made familiar with silence in my prison and because I knew it was in the
pause and the hush that I had myself learned this lesson through the long
year of my detention. When Bepin Chandra Pal came out of jail, he came
with a message, and it was an inspired message. I remember the speech he
made here. It was a speech not so much political as religious in its
bearing and intention. He spoke of his realisation in jail, of God within
us all, of the Lord within the nation, and in his subsequent speeches also
he spoke of a greater than ordinary force in the movement and a greater
than ordinary purpose before it. Now I also meet you again, I also come
out of jail, and again it is you of Uttarpara who are the first to welcome
me, not at a political meeting but at a meeting of a society for the
protection of our religion. That message which Bepin Chandra Pal received
in Buxar jail, God gave to me in Alipore. That knowledge He gave to me day
after day during my twelve months of imprisonment and it is that which He
has commanded me to speak to you now that I have come out.
Sri Aurobindo
I knew I would come out. The year of detention was meant only for a
year of seclusion and of training. How could anyone hold me in jail longer
than was necessary for God's purpose ? He had given me a word to speak and
a work to do, and until that word was spoken I knew that no human power
could hush me, until that work was done no human power could stop God's
instrument, however weak that instrument might be or however small. Now
that I have come out, even in these few minutes, a word has been suggested
to me which I had no wish to speak. The thing I had in my mind He has
thrown from it and what I speak is under an impulse and a compulsion.
When I was arrested and hurried to the Lal Bazar hajat I was shaken in
faith for a while, for I could not look into the heart of His intention.
Therefore I faltered for a moment and cried out in my heart to Him, "What
is this that has happened to me ? I believed that I had a mission to work
for the people of my country and until that work was done, I should have
Thy protection. Why then am I here and on such a charge ?" A day passed
and a second day and a third, when a voice came to me from within, "Wait
and see." Then I grew calm and waited, I was taken from Lal Bazar to
Alipore and was placed for one month in a solitary cell apart from men.
There I waited day and night for the voice of God within me, to know what
He had to say to me, to learn what I had to do. In this seclusion the
earliest realisation, the first lesson came to me. I remembered then that
a month or more before my arrest, a call had come to me to put aside all
activity, to go in seclusion and to look into myself, so that I might
enter into closer communion with Him. I was weak and could not accept the
call. My work was very dear to me and in the pride of my heart I thought
that unless I was there, it would suffer or even fail and cease; therefore
I would not leave it. It seemed to me that He spoke to me again and said,
"The bonds you had not the strength to break, I have broken for you,
because it is not my will nor was it ever my intention that that should
continue. I have had another thing for you to do and it is for that I have
brought you here, to teach you what you could not learn for yourself and
to train you for my work." Then He placed the Gita in my hands. His
strength entered into me and I was able to do the sadhana of the Gita. I
was not only to understand intellectually but to realise what Sri Krishna
demanded of Arjuna and what He demands of those who aspire to do His work,
to be free from repulsion and desire, to do work for Him without the
demand for fruit, to renounce self-will and become a passive and faithful
instrument in His hands, to have an equal heart for high and low, friend
and opponent, success and failure, yet not to do His work negligently. I
realised what the Hindu religion meant. We speak often of the Hindu
religion, of the Sanatan Dharma, but few of us really know what that
religion is. Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and
profession, but the Sanatan Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has
not so much to be believed as lived. This is the Dharma that for the
salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula
from of old. It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does
not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample
on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over
the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and
it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great.
Therefore this was the next thing He pointed out to me, - He made me
realise the central truth of the Hindu religion. He turned the hearts of
my jailors to me and they spoke to the Englishman in charge of the jail,
"He is suffering in his confinement; let him at least walk outside his
cell for half an hour in the morning and in the evening." So it was
arranged, and it was while I was walking that His strength again entered
into me. I looked the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer
by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who
surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell
but it was not the tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna whom I
saw standing there and holding over me his shade. I looked at the bars of
my cell, the very grating that did duty for a door and again I saw
Vasudeva. It was Narayana who was guarding and standing sentry over me. Or
I lay on the coarse blankets that were given me for a couch and felt the
arms of Sri Krishna around me, the arms of my Friend and Lover. This was
the first use of the deeper vision He gave me. I looked at the prisoners
in the jail, the thieves, the murderers, the swindlers, and as I looked at
them I saw Vasudeva, it was Narayana whom I found in these darkened souls
and misused bodies. Amongst these thieves and dacoits there were many who
put me to shame by their sympathy, their kindness, the humanity triumphant
over such adverse circumstances. One I saw among them especially, who
seemed to me a saint, a peasant of my nation who did not know how to read
and write, an alleged dacoit sentenced to ten years' rigorous
imprisonment, one of those whom we look down upon in our Pharisaical pride
of class as Chhotalok. Once more He spoke to me and said, "Behold the
people among whom I have sent you to do a little of my work. This is the
nature of the nation I am raising up and the reason why I raise them."
When the case opened in the lower court and we were brought before the
Magistrate I was followed by the same insight. He said to me, "When you
were cast into jail, did not your heart fail and did you not cry out to
me, where is Thy protection ? Look now at the Magistrate, look now at the
Prosecuting Counsel." I looked and it was not the Magistrate whom I saw,
it was Vasudeva, it was Narayana who was sitting there on the bench. I
looked at the Prosecuting Counsel and it was not the Counsel for the
prosecution that I saw; it was Sri Krishna who sat there, it was my Lover
and Friend who sat there and smiled. "Now do you fear ?" He said, "I am in
all men and I overrule their actions and their words. My protection is
still with you and you shall not fear. This case which is brought against
you, leave it in my hand. It is not for you. It was not for the trial that
I brought you here but for something else. The case itself is only a means
for my work and nothing more." Afterwards when the trial opened in the
Sessions Court, I began to write many instructions for my Counsel as to
what was false in the evidence against me and on what points the witnesses
might be cross-examined. Then something happened which I had not expected.
The arrangements which had been made for my defence were suddenly changed
and another Counsel stood there to defend me. He came unexpectedly, - a
friend of mine, but I did not know he was coming. You have all heard the
name of the man who put away from him all other thoughts and abandoned all
his practice, who sat up half the night day after day for months and broke
his health to save me, - Srijut Chittaranjan Das. When I saw him, I was
satisfied, but I still thought it necessary to write instructions. Then
all that was put away from me and I had the message from within, "This is
the man who will save you from the snares put around your feet. Put aside
those papers. It is not you who will instruct him. I will instruct him."
From that time I did not of myself speak a word to my Counsel about the
case or give a single instruction, and if ever I was asked a question, I
always found that my answer did not help the case. I had left it to him
and he took it entirely into his hands, with what result you know. I knew
all along what He meant for me, for I heard it again and again, always I
listened to the voice within; "I am guiding, therefore fear not. Turn to
your own work for which I have brought you to jail and when you come out,
remember never to fear, never to hesitate. Remember that it is I who am
doing this, not you nor any other. Therefore whatever clouds may come,
whatever dangers and sufferings, whatever difficulties, whatever
impossibilities, there is nothing impossible, nothing difficult. I am in
the nation and its uprising and I am Vasudeva, I am Narayana, and what I
will, shall be, not what others will. What I choose to bring about, no
human power can stay." |
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The Mother
Meanwhile He had brought me out of solitude
and placed me among those who had been accused along with me. You have
spoken much today of my self-sacrifice and devotion to my country. I have
heard that kind of speech ever since I came out of jail, but I hear it
with embarrassment, with something of pain. For I know my weakness, I am a
prey to my own faults and backslidings. I was not blind to them before and
when they all rose up against me in seclusion, I felt them utterly. I knew
them that I the man was a man of weakness, a faulty and imperfect
instrument, strong only when a higher strength entered into me. Then I
found myself among these young men and in many of them I discovered a
mighty courage, a power of self-effacement in comparison with which I was
simply nothing. I saw one or two who were not only superior to me in force
and character, - very many were that, - but in the promise of that
intellectual ability on which I prided myself. He said to me, "This is the
young generation, the new and mighty nation that is arising at my command.
They are greater than yourself. What have you to fear ? If you stood aside
or slept, the work would still be done. If you were cast aside tomorrow,
here are the young men who will take up your work and do it more mightily
than you have ever done. You have only got some strength from me to speak
a word to this nation which will help to raise it." This was the next
thing He told me.
Then a thing happened suddenly and in a moment I was hurried away to
the seclusion of a solitary cell. What happened to me during that period I
am not impelled to say, but only that day after day, He showed me His
wonders and made me realise the utter truth of the Hindu religion. I had
many doubts before. I was brought up in England amongst foreign ideas and
an atmosphere entirely foreign. About many things in Hinduism I had once
been inclined to believe that they were imaginations, that there was much
of dream in it, much that was delusion and Maya. But now day after day I
realised in the mind, I realised in the heart, I realised in the body the
truths of the Hindu religion. They became living experiences to me, and
things were opened to me which no material science could explain. When I
first approached Him, it was not entirely in the spirit of the Jnani. I
came to Him long ago in Baroda some years before the Swadeshi began and I
was drawn into the public field.
When I approached God at that time, I hardly had a living faith in Him.
The agnostic was in me, the atheist was in me, the sceptic was in me and I
was not absolutely sure that there was a God at all. I did not feel His
presence. Yet something drew me to the truth of the Vedas, the truth of
the Gita, the truth of the Hindu religion. I felt there must be a mighty
truth somewhere in this Yoga, a mighty truth in this religion based on the
Vedanta. So when I turned to the Yoga and resolved to practise it and find
out if my idea was right, I did it in this spirit and with this prayer to
Him, "If Thou art, then Thou knowest my heart. Thou knowest that I do not
ask for Mukti, I do not ask for anything which others ask for. I ask only
for strength to uplift this nation, I ask only to be allowed to live and
work for this people whom I love and to whom I pray that I may devote my
life." I strove long for the realisation of Yoga and at last to some
extent I had it, but in what I most desired I was not satisfied. Then in
the seclusion of the jail, of the solitary cell I asked for it again. I
said, "Give me Thy Adesh. I do not know what work to do or how to do it.
Give me a message." In the communion of Yoga two messages came. The first
message said, "I have given you a work and it is to help to uplift this
nation. Before long the time will come when you will have to go out of
jail; for it is not my will that this time either you should be convicted
or that you should pass the time, as others have to do, in suffering for
their country. I have called you to work, and that is the Adesh for which
you have asked. I give you the Adesh to go forth and do my work." The
second message came and it said, "Something has been shown to you in this
year of seclusion, something about which you had your doubts and it is the
truth of the Hindu religion. It is this religion that I am raising up
before the world, it is this that I have perfected and developed through
the Rishis, saints and Avatars, and now it is going forth to do my work
among the nations. I am raising up this nation to send forth my word. This
is the Sanatan Dharma, this is the eternal religion which you did not
really know before, but which I have now revealed to you. The agnostic and
the sceptic in you have been answered, for I have given you proofs within
and without you, physical and subjective, which have satisfied you. When
you go forth, speak to your nation always this word, that it is for the
Sanatan Dharma that they arise, it is for the world and not for themselves
that they arise. I am giving them freedom for the service of the world.
When therefore it is said that India shall rise, it is the Sanatan Dharma
that shall be great. When it is said that India shall expand and extend
herself, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall expand and extend itself over
the world. It is for the Dharma and by the Dharma that India exists. To
magnify the religion means to magnify the country. I have shown you that I
am everywhere and in all men and in all things, that I am in this movement
and I am not only working in those who are striving for the country but I
am working also in those who oppose them and stand in their path. I am
working in everybody and whatever men may think or do, they can do nothing
but help in my purpose. They also are doing my work, they are not my
enemies but my instruments. In all your actions you are moving forward
without knowing which way you move. You mean to do one thing and you do
another. You aim at a result and your efforts subserve one that is
different or contrary. It is Shakti that has gone forth and entered into
the people. Since long ago I have been preparing this uprising and now the
time has come and it is I who will lead it to its fulfilment."
This then is what I have to say to you. The name of your society is
"Society for the Protection of Religion". Well, the protection of the
religion, the protection and upraising before the world of the Hindu
religion, that is the work before us. But what is the Hindu religion ?
What is this religion which we call Sanatan, eternal ? It is the Hindu
religion only because the Hindu nation has kept it, because in this
Peninsula it grew up in the seclusion of the sea and the Himalayas,
because in this sacred and ancient land it was given as a charge to the
Aryan race to preserve through the ages. But it is not circumscribed by
the confines of a single country, it does not belong peculiarly and for
ever to a bounded part of the world. That which we call the Hindu religion
is really the eternal religion, because it is the universal religion which
embraces all others. If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal.
A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live
only for a limited time and a limited purpose. This is the one religion
that can triumph over materialism by including and anticipating the
discoveries of science and the speculations of philosophy. It is the one
religion which impresses on mankind the closeness of God to us and
embraces in its compass all the possible means by which man can approach
God. It is the one religion which insists every moment on the truth which
all religions acknowledge that He is in all men and all things and that in
Him we move and have our being. It is the one religion which enables us
not only to understand and believe this truth but to realise it with every
part of our being. It is the one religion which shows the world what the
world is, that it is the Lila of Vasudeva. It is the one religion which
shows us how we can best play our part in that Lila, its subtlest laws and
its noblest rules. It is the one religion which does not separate life in
any smallest detail from religion, which knows what immortality is and has
utterly removed from us the reality of death.
This is the word that has been put into my mouth to speak to you today.
What I intended to speak has been put away from me, and beyond what is
given to me I have nothing to say. It is only the word that is put into me
that I can speak to you. That word is now finished. I spoke once before
with this force in me and I said then that this movement is not a
political movement and that nationalism is not politics but a religion, a
creed, a faith. I say it again today, but I put it in another way. I say
no longer that nationalism is a creed, a religion, a faith; I say that it
is the Sanatan Dharma which for us is nationalism. This Hindu nation was
born with the Sanatan Dharma, with it it moves and with it it grows. When
the Sanatan Dharma declines, then the nation declines, and if the Sanatan
Dharma were capable of perishing, with the Sanatan Dharma it would perish.
The Sanatan Dharma, that is nationalism.
This is the
message that I have to speak to you.
first published in "Karmayogin", June 1909
in SABCL, Volume
2
published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherry
diffusion by
SABDA
Solitary cell in Alipore Jail
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