Sadhana | Page 5

best for the commerce of the spirit that people
differently situated should bring their different products into the market of humanity,
each of which is complementary and necessary to the others. All that I wish to say is that
India at the outset of her career met with a special combination of circumstances which
was not lost upon her. She had, according to her opportunities, thought and pondered,
striven and suffered, dived into the depths of existence, and achieved something which
surely cannot be without its value to people whose evolution in history took a different
way altogether. Man for his perfect growth requires all the living elements that constitute
his complex life; that is why his food has to be cultivated in different fields and brought
from different sources.
Civilisation is a kind of mould that each nation is busy making for itself to shape its men
and women according to its best ideal. All its institutions, its legislature, its standard of
approbation and condemnation, its conscious and unconscious teachings tend toward that
object. The modern civilisation of the west, by all its organised efforts, is trying to turn
out men perfect in physical, intellectual, and moral efficiency. There the vast energies of
the nations are employed in extending man's power over his surroundings, and people are

combining and straining every faculty to possess and to turn to account all that they can
lay their hands upon, to overcome every obstacle on their path of conquest. They are ever
disciplining themselves to fight nature and other races; their armaments are getting more
and more stupendous every day; their machines, their appliances, their organisations go
on multiplying at an amazing rate. This is a splendid achievement, no doubt, and a
wonderful manifestation of man's masterfulness which knows no obstacle, and which has
for its object the supremacy of himself over everything else.
The ancient civilisation of India had its own ideal of perfection towards which its efforts
were directed. Its aim was not attaining power, and it neglected to cultivate to the utmost
its capacities, and to organise men for defensive and offensive purposes, for co-operation
in the acquisition of wealth and for military and political ascendancy. The ideal that India
tried to realise led her best men to the isolation of a contemplative life, and the treasures
that she gained for mankind by penetrating into the mysteries of reality cost her dear in
the sphere of worldly success. Yet, this also was a sublime achievement,--it was a
supreme manifestation of that human aspiration which knows no limit, and which has for
its object nothing less than the realisation of the Infinite.
There were the virtuous, the wise, the courageous; there were the statesmen, kings and
emperors of India; but whom amongst all these classes did she look up to and choose to
be the representative of men?
They were the rishis. What were the rishis? _They who having attained the supreme soul
in knowledge were filled with wisdom, and having found him in union with the soul were
in perfect harmony with the inner self; they having realised him in the heart were free
from all selfish desires, and having experienced him in all the activities of the world, had
attained calmness. The rishis were they who having reached the supreme God from all
sides had found abiding peace, had become united with all, had entered into the life of the
Universe._ [Footnote: /** Samprapyainam rishayo jnanatripatah Kritatmano vitaragah
pracantah te sarvagam sarvatah prapya dhirah Yuktatmanah sarvamevavicanti. */ ]
Thus the state of realising our relationship with all, of entering into everything through
union with God, was considered in India to be the ultimate end and fulfilment of
humanity.
Man can destroy and plunder, earn and accumulate, invent and discover, but he is great
because his soul comprehends all. It is dire destruction for him when he envelopes his
soul in a dead shell of callous habits, and when a blind fury of works whirls round him
like an eddying dust storm, shutting out the horizon. That indeed kills the very spirit of
his being, which is the spirit of comprehension. Essentially man is not a slave either of
himself or of the world; but he is a lover. His freedom and fulfilment is in love, which is
another name for perfect comprehension. By this power of comprehension, this
permeation of his being, he is united with the all-pervading Spirit, who is also the breath
of his soul. Where a man tries to raise himself to eminence by pushing and jostling all
others, to achieve a distinction by which he prides himself to be more than everybody
else, there he is alienated from that Spirit. This is why the Upanishads describe those who
have attained the goal of human life