The Mission of India - Words of Sri Aurobindo

If these things do not satisfy

me,

What then do I seek?*

I seek a light

that shall be new, yet old,

the oldest indeed of all lights.

I seek an authority

that accepting, illuminating

and reconciling all human truth,

shall yet reject and get rid of

by explaining it all mere human

error.

I seek a text and a Shastra

that is not subject to

interpolation, modification and replacement,

that moth and white ant cannot destroy,

that the earth cannot bury nor time mutilate.

time mutilate.

I seek an asceticism

from self and from ignorance

without stultifying God and His universe.

I seek a skepticism

that shall question everything

but shall have the patience

to deny nothing that may 

possibly be true.

I seek a rationalism

not proceeding on the

not proceeding on the untenable supposition

that all the centuries of man’s history

except the nineteenth

were centuries of folly and superstition,

but bent on discovering truth

instead of limiting inquiry

by a new dogmatism,

obscurantism

and furious intolerance

which it chooses to call 

common sense

and enlightenment;

I seek a materialism

that shall recognize matter

and use it without being its

slave.

I seek an occultism

that shall bring out

all its

processes and proofs into the light of day

without mystery, without jugglery,

without the old stupid call to humanity,

"Be blind, O man, and see!"

In short, I seek

not science, not religion, not

Theosophy,

but Veda – the truth about

Brahman,

not only about His essentiality,

but about His manifestation,

not a lamp on the way to the

forest,

but a light and a guide

to joy and action in the world,

the truth which is beyond

opinion,

the knowledge which all thought

strives after –

yasmin vijnate sarvam vijnatam.

I believe that Veda to be

the foundation of the Sanatan

Dharma;

I believe it to be

the concealed divinity within

Hinduism, —

but a veil has to be drawn

aside,

a curtain has to be lifted.

I believe it to be

knowable and discoverable.

I believe

the future of India and the world

to depend on its discovery

and on its application,

not to the renunciation of life,

but to life in the world and

among men.

© "All India Magazine" (April 2002) published by Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry 605 002. Website: www.sriaurobindosociety.org.in. Reprinted with permission.

* In this excerpt the sentences are broken down into phrases and printed in separate lines.  Reproduced from AuroMa, October 2001 bulletin of the Surat Branch of the Society. --Ed.

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