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THE HOUR OF GOD
SRI AUROBINDO
Contents
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Page -377 knowledge, but the triangle has to be reversed before it can stand permanently.
The
action of the French Revolution was the vehement death-dance of Kali trampling
blindly, furiously on the ruins She made, mad with pity for the world and
therefore utterly pitiless. She called the Yatudhani
in her to her aid and summoned up the Rakshasi. The Yatudhani is the
delight of destruction, the fury of slaughter, Rudra in the Universal Being,
Rudra, who uses the Bhuta, the criminal, the lord of
the animal in man, the lord of the demoniac, Pashupati,
Pramathanatha. The Rakshasi
is the unbridled, licentious self-assertion of the ego which insists on the
gratification of all its instincts good and bad and furiously shatters all
opposition. It was the Yatudhani and the Rakshasi who sent their hoarse cry over France, adding to
the luminous Mantra, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the stern and terrible
addition "or death". Death to the Asura, death to all who oppose
God's evolution, that was the meaning. With these two terrible Shaktis Kali did Her work. She veiled Her divine knowledge
with the darkness of wrath and passion, She drank blood as wine, naked of
tradition and convention She danced over all Europe and the whole continent was
filled with the war-cry and the carnage and ran with the hunkara and the attahasyam. It was only when She found that She was
trampling on Mahadeva, God expressed in the principle
of Nationalism, that She remembered Herself, flung aside Napoleon, the mighty
Rakshasa, and settled down quietly to her work of perfecting nationality as the
outer shell within which brotherhood may be securely and largely organised. Page - 378 the multitude, did their work and departed. The pace was swift and, if they had remained, they would have outstayed their utility and injured the future. It is always well for the man to go the moment his work is done and not to outstay the Mother's welcome. They are fortunate who get that release or are wise enough, like Garibaldi, to take it. Not altogether happy is their lot who, like Napoleon or Mazzini, outstay the lease of their appointed greatness.
Mirabeau ruled the morning twilight, the sandhyii of the new age. Aristocratic tribune of the people, unprincipled champion of principles, lordly democrat, - a man in whom reflection was turbulent, prudence itself bold, unflinching and reckless, the man was the meeting-place of two ages. He had the passions of the past, not its courtly restraint; the turbulence, genius, impetuosity of the future, not its steadying attachment to ideas. There is an honour of the aristocrat which has its root in manners and respects the sanctity of its own traditions; that is the honour of the Conservative. There is an honour of the democrat which has its root in ideas and respects the sanctity of its own principles; that is the honour of the Liberal. Mirabeau had neither. He was the pure Egoist, the eternal Rakshasa. Not for the sake of justice and liberty did he love justice and liberty, but for the sake of Mirabeau. Had his career been fortunate, the forms of the old regime wide enough to satisfy his ambitions and passions, the upheaval of 1789 might have found him on the other side. But because the heart and senses of Mirabeau were unsatisfied, the French Revolution triumphed. So it is that God prepares the man and the moment, using good and evil with a divine impartiality for His mighty ends. Without the man the moment is a lost opportunity; without the moment the man is a force inoperative. The meeting of the two changes the destinies of nations and the poise of the world is altered by what seems to the superficial an accident. Page - 379 There are times when a single personality gathers up the temperament of an epoch or a movement and by simply existing ensures its fulfilment. It would be difficult to lay down the precise services which made the existence of Danton necessary for the success of the Revolution. There are certain things he did, and no man else could have done, which compelled destiny; there are certain things he said which made France mad with resolution and courage. These words, these doings ring through the ages. So live, so immortal are they that they seem to defy cataclysm itself and insist on surviving eternal oblivion. They are full of the omnipotence and immortality of the human soul and its lordship over fate. One feels that they will recur again in aeons unborn and worlds uncreated. The power from which they sprang, expressed itself rarely in deeds and only at supreme moments. The energy of Danton lay dormant, indolent, scattering itself in stupendous oratory, satisfied with feelings and phrases. But each time it stirred, it convulsed events and sent a shock of primal elemental force rushing through the consciousness of the French nation. While he lived, moved, spoke, felt, acted, the energy he did not himself use, communicated itself to the millions; the thoughts he did not utter, seized on minds which took them for their own; the actions he might have done better himself, were done worse by others. Danton was contented. Magnificent and ostentatious, he was singularly void of personal ambition. He was satisfied to see the Revolution triumph by his strength, but in the deeds of others. His fall removed the strength of victorious Terror from the movement within France, its impulse to destroy and conquer. For a little while the impetus gathered carried it on, then it faltered and paused. Every great flood of action needs a human soul for its centre, an embodied point of the Universal Personality from which to surge out upon others. Danton was such a point, such a centre. His daily thoughts, feelings, impulses gave an equilibrium to that rushing fury, a fixity to that pregnant chaos. He was the character of the Revolution personified, - its heart, while Robespierre was only its hand. History which, being European, lays much stress on events, a little on speech, but has never realised the importance of souls, cannot appreciate men like Danton. Only the eye of the Page - 380 seer can pick them out from the mass and trace to their source those immense vibrations. One may well speak of the genius of Mirabeau, the genius of Danton; it is superfluous to speak of the genius of Napoleon. But one cannot well speak of the genius of Robespierre. He was empty of genius; his intellect was acute and well-informed but uninspired; his personality fails to impress. What was it then that gave him his immense force and influence? It was the belief in the man, his faith. He believed in the Revolution, he believed in certain ideas, he believed in himself as their spokesman and executor; he came to believe in his mission to slay the enemies of the idea and make an end. And whatever he believed, he believed implicitly, unfalteringly, invincibly and pursued it with a rigid fidelity. Mirabeau, Danton, Napoleon were all capable of permanent discouragement, could recognise that they were beaten, the hour unsuitable, fate hostile. Robespierre was not. He might recoil, he might hide his head in fear, but it was only to leap again, to save himself for the next opportunity. He had a tremendous force of sraddha It is only such men, thoroughly conscientious and well-principled, who can slay without pity, without qualms, without resting, without turning. The Yatudhani seized on him for her purpose. The conscientious lawyer who refused a judgeship rather than sacrifice his principle by condemning a criminal to death, became the most colossal political executioner of his or any age. As we have said, if Danton was the character of the French Revolution personified when it went forth to slay, Robespierre was its hand. But, naturally, he could not recognise that limitation; he aspired to think, to construct, to rule, functions for which he was unfit. When Danton demanded that the Terror should cease and Mercy take its place, Robespierre ought to have heard in his demand the voice of the Revolution calling on him to stay his sanguinary course. But he was full of his own blind faith and would not hear. Danton died because he resisted the hand of Kali, but his mighty disembodied spirit triumphed and imposed his last thought on the country. The Terror ceased; Page - 381 Mercy took its place. Robespierre, however , has his place of honour in history; he was the man of conscience and principle among the four, the man who never turned from the path of what he understood to be virtue. Napoleon took up into himself the functions of the others. As Mirabeau initiated destruction, he initiated construction and organisation and in the same self-contradictory spirit; he was the Rakshasa, the most gigantic egoist in history, the despot of liberty, the imperial protector of equality, the unprincipled organiser of great principles. Like Danton, he shaped events for a time by his thoughts and character. While Danton lived, politics moved to a licentious democracy, war to a heroism, of patriotic defence. From the time he passed, the spirit of Napoleon shaped events and politics moved to the rule first of the civil, then of the military dictator, war to the organisation of republican conquest. Like Robespierre he was the executive hand of destruction and unlike Robespierre the executive hand of construction. The fury of Kali became in him self-centred, capable, full of organised thought and activity, but nonetheless impetuous, colossal, violent, devastating.
II
The name of Napoleon has been a battlefield for the prepossessions of all sorts of critics, and, according to their predilections, idiosyncrasies and political opinions, men have loved or hated, panegyrised or decried the Corsican. To blame Napoleon is like criticising Mont Blanc or throwing mud at Kunchenjunga. This phenomenon has to be understood and known, not blamed or praised. Admire we must, but as minds, not as moralists. It has not been sufficiently perceived by his panegyrists and critics that Bonaparte was not a man at all, he was a force. Only Page - 382 the nature of the force has to be considered. There are some men who are self-evidently superhuman, great spirits who are only using the human body. Europe calls them supermen, we call them vibhutis. They are manifestations of Nature, of divine power presided over by a spirit commissioned for the purpose, and the spirit is an emanation from the Almighty, who accepts human strength and weakness but is not bound by them. They ate above morality and ordinarily without a conscience, acting according to their own nature. For they are not men developing upwards from the animal to the divine and struggling against their lower natures, but beings already fulfilled and satisfied with themselves. Even the holiest of them have contempt for the ordinary law and custom and break them easily and without remorse, as. Christ did on more than one occasion, drinking wine, breaking the sabbath, consorting with publicans and harlots; as Buddha did when he abandoned his self-accepted duties as a husband, a citizen and a father; as Shankara did when he broke the holy law and trampled upon custom and ācāra to satisfy his dead mother. In our literature they are described as Gods or Siddhas or Titans or Giants. Valmiki depicts Ravana as a ten-headed giant, but it is easy to see that this was only the vision of him in the world of imaginations, the "astral plane", and that in the terms of humanity he was a Vibhuti or superman and one of the same order of beings as Napoleon.
The Rakshasa is the supreme and thoroughgoing individualist, who believes life to be meant for his own untrammelled self- fulfilment and self-assertion. A necessary element in humanity, he is particularly useful in revolutions. As a pure type in man he is ordinarily a thing of the past; he comes now mixed with other elements. But Napoleon was a Rakshasa of the pure type, colossal in his force and attainment. He came into the world with a tremendous appetite for power and possession and, like Ravana, he tried to swallow the whole earth in order to glut his super- natural hunger. Whatever came in his way he took as his own, ideas, men, women, fame, honours, armies, kingdoms; and he Page - 383 was not scrupulous as to his right of possession. His nature was his right; its need his justification. The attitude may be expressed in some such words as these, "Others may not have the right to do these things, but I am Napoleon." The Rakshasa is not an altruist. If by satisfying himself he can satisfy others, he is pleased; but he does not make that his motive. If he has to trample on others to satisfy himself, he does so without compunction. Is he not the strong man, the efficient ruler, the mighty one? The Rakshasa has Kama, he has no Prema. Napoleon knew not what love was; he had only the kindliness that goes with possession. He loved Josephine because she satisfied his nature, France because he possessed her, his mother because she was his and congenial, his soldiers because they were necessary to his glory. But the love did not go beyond his need of them. It was self-satisfaction and had no element in it of self-surrender. The Rakshasa slays all that opposes him and he is callous about the extent of the slaughter. But he is never cruel. Napoleon had no taint of Nero in him, but he flung away without a qualm whole armies as holocausts on the altar of his glory; he shot Hofer and murdered Enghien. What then is there in the Rakshasa that makes him necessary? He is individuality, he is force, he is capacity; he is the second power of God, wrath, strength, grandeur, rushing impetuosity, overbearing courage, the avalanche, the thunderbolt, he is Balaram, he is Jehovah, he is Rudra. As such we may admire and study him.
But the Vibhuti, though he takes self-gratification and enjoyment on his way, never comes for self-gratification and en- joyment. He comes for work, to help man on his way, the world in its evolution. Napoleon was one of the mightiest of Vibhuties, one of the most dominant. There are some of them who hold themselves back, suppress the force in their personality in order to put it wholly into their work. Of such were Shakespeare, Page - 384 Washington, Victor Emmanuel. There are others like Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Goethe, who are as obviously superhuman, in their personality as in the work they accomplish; Napoleon was the greatest in practical capacity of all moderns. In capacity, though not in character, he resembles Bhisma of the Mahabharat. He had the same sovran, irresistible, world-possessing grasp of war, politics, government, legislation, society; the same masterly handling of masses and amazing glut for details. He had the iron brain that nothing fatigues, the faultless memory that loses nothing, the clear insight that puts everything in its place with spontaneous accuracy. It was as if a man were to carry Caucasus on his shoulders and with that burden race successfully an express engine, yet note and forecast every step and never falter. To prove that anything in a human body could be capable of such work is by itself a service to our progress for which we cannot be sufficiently grateful to Napoleon. The work of Bonaparte was wholly admirable. It is true that he took freedom for a season from France, but France was not then fit for democratic freedom. She had to learn discipline for a while under the rule of the soldier of Revolution. He could not have done the work he did, hampered by an effervescent French Parliament ebullient in victory, discouraged in defeat. He had to organise the French Revolution so far as earth could then bear it, and he had to do it in the short span of an ordinary life-time. He had also to save it. The aggression of France upon Europe was necessary for self-defence, for Europe did not mean to tolerate the Revolution. She had to be taught that the Revolution meant not anarchy but a reorganisation so much mightier than the old that a single country so reorganised could conquer united Europe. That task Napoleon did effectively. It has been said that his foreign policy failed, because he left France smaller than he found it. That is true. But it was not Napoleon's mission to aggrandise France geographically. He did not come for France, but for humanity, and even in his failure he served God and prepared the future. The balance of Europe had to be Page - 385 disturbed in order to prepare new combinations and his gigantic operations disturbed it fatally. He roused the spirit of Nationalism in Italy, in Germany, in Poland, while he established the tendency towards the formation of great Empires; and it is the harmonised fulfilment of Nationalism and Empire that was the immediate future. He compelled Europe to accept the necessity of reorganisation, political and social.
The punya of overthrowing Napoleon was divided
between England, Germany and Russia. He had to be overthrown, be- cause, though
he prepared the future and destroyed the past, he misused the present. To save
the present from his violent hands was the work of his enemies, and this merit
gave to these three countries a great immediate development and the possession
of the nineteenth century. England and Germany went farthest because they acted
most wholeheartedly and as nations, not as Governments. In Russia it was the
Government that acted, but with the help of the people. On the other hand, the
countries sympathetic to Napoleon, Italy, Ireland, Poland or those which acted
weakly or falsely, such as Spain and Austria, have declined, suffered,
struggled and, even when partially successful, could not attain their
fulfilment. But the punya is now exhausted. The
future with which the victorious nations made a temporary compromise, the
future which Napoleon served and prepared its early movements demands
possession, and those who can reorganise themselves
most swiftly and perfectly under its pressure, will inherit the twentieth
century; those who deny it, will perish. The first offer is made to the nations
in present possession; it is withheld for a time from the others. That is the
reason why Socialism is most insistent now in England, Germany and Russia; but
in all these countries it is faced by an obstinate and unprincipled opposition.
The early decades of the twentieth century will select the chosen nations of
the future. Page - 386
There remains the question of Nationalism and Empire; it is put to all these
nations, but chiefly to England. It is put to her in Ireland, in Egypt, in
India. She has the best opportunity of harmonising the conflicting claims of
Nationalism and Empire. In fighting against Nationalism she is fighting against
her own chance of a future, and her temporary victory over Indian Nationalism
is the one thing her guardian spirits have most to fear. For the recoil will be
as tremendous as the recoil that over- threw Napoleon. The delusion that the despotic
possession of India is indispensable to her retention of Empire, may be her
undoing. It is indispensable to her, if she meditates, like Napoleon, the
conquest of Asia and of the world; it is not necessary to her imperial
self-fulfilment: for even without India she would possess an Empire greater
than the Roman. Her true position in India is that of a trustee and temporary
guardian; her only wise and righteous policy the devolution of her trust upon
her ward with a view to alliance, not ownership. The opportunity of which
Napoleon dreamed, a great Indian Empire, has been conceded to her and not to
Napoleon. But that opportunity is a two-edged weapon which, if misused, is
likely to turn upon and slay the wielder. Page - 387
"It substitutes force for inertia, life
for death and liberty for fatalism." "Physics and logic are
appropriate to the study of the inverse movement, matter, which is life or elan vital pulverised and its method is intellect and logic." "Scrap
the Platonic tradition and follow Plotinus. 'Ask me
not but understand in silence as I (Nature) am silent and am not wont to
speak'."
II
Page - 388
and reality. Intellect (logic) goes round the object, intuition enters into the
object; one stops at the [absolute], the other enters into the absolute. An object changes, a person changes, a condition of things changes. But can it be said that the object is no real object but only a continuity of change, or that a person is not a person but a continuity of change, a condition of things is not a condition and there are no things but there is only a continuity of change? This seems to be an illustration of the besetting sin of metaphysics - to exalt a word into a reality or an idea into a reality without fathoming what is the reality which it tries to indicate. For to label with a word or a name is not to fathom and to define, to erect a concept is not to fathom. Fathom for us then what is change before you ask us to accept it as the only reality. You may say, "I have fathomed it, I have seen it to be the one constant real, but do not ask me to define what it is; listen rather in silence to the silence of Nature and you too will fathom." But what if so listening, I fathom other realities than change - let us say, immutable being as well as mutable force, status as well as Page -389
change? To prevent that you plunge into speech
and not silence, into dialectics of the intellect instead of the undebatable certitudes of intuition, and so abandon your own methodology. If
intuition alone is to be used, then you must give a place to my intuition as
well as yours, and all, however contradictory in appearance, must stand until a
greater intuition comes in to put all in their place, reconcile, include in a consistent whole. Page -390 |