Indian Spiritual Wisdom
Wednesday October 20 2004 08:32 IST
By Karmayogi
The Spirit is Infinite
and Eternal. Indian spiritual wisdom knows how the entire infinite universe is
compressed into the infinitesimal and how one can release that infinite from
the infinitesimal.
Vinayaka knew that the whole world was compressed in his parents and that
KNOWLEDGE helped him win the contest with his brother. The modern computer is a
technological representation of this fact, abridging into a small laptop
computer whole libraries.
Life is an ocean and contains the universe in it. Literature is the form that
contains all the force of life which is the universe. Shakespeare lives forever
as he knew this spiritual secret. So do all the great poets of the world. Even
in prose, several great writers successfully tried what Shakespeare did in
drama.
Pride and Prejudice has that power within its pages. Jane Austen wrote this
story at the age of 19. The very first line reads, ‘‘It is a
universal truth that a single man with a large fortune must be in want of a
wife,'' expressing one essential dimension of the institution of
marriage, which is said to be the consummation of Romance. This is a story of
five handsome sisters whose mother's one ambition is to get them married.
In an oblique manner, three of her daughters were married so well that even her
ambition was outstripped by the miraculous turn of events.
Behind the outer expression of its plot lies the Spirit of the French
Revolution, whose powerful waves in England made the English
aristocracy save its skin, rather their venerable heads, by condescending to
compromise with the lower levels of the society.
The Prince regent, the future king of England, read Pride and
Prejudice sixteen times. So did the Prime Minister of England, Disraeli, who reached
the top of the greasy pole of political power – the Prime Ministership of
England – for a Jew converted to Christianity. So absorbing is the story even
in the fifth reading or the fifteenth.
Anxious to illustrate Sri Aurobindo's theory of Spiritual Evolution
through a great work of literature, we chose Pride and Prejudice and studied it
for some time from the angle of the Spirit. A member of our Society addressed
like-minded devotees numbering about a hundred for two days on The Life Divine
for seven hours on the first day and nine hours on the second day.
Our research findings enabled him again to address the same audience on another
occasion for another two days of nine hours, followed by ten hours. It is a
burning passion in me that India should awake to her Spiritual Treasure
and become prosperous soon.