THE TRAJECTORY OF INDIAN SPIRITUALITY
The philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, in his magisterial two-volume history, Indian Philosophy published in the 1920s, commented that writers such as Gandhi, Tagore, and Aurobindo in their efforts to fuse together Western thought and ancient Indian philosophical ideals were bringing Indian philosophy alive, rescuing it from scholasticism so that it could contribute to human betterment. They were also participating in the noble adventure of moving India beyond its sad present condition which Aurobindo described as “the mental poverty, the immobility, the static repetition, the cessation of science, the long sterility of art, the comparative feebleness of the creative intuition.” These thinkers made Indian culture more cosmopolitan and their renderings of Vedic teachings for the modern world have already begun to profoundly influence other nations, a trend that will intensify during the coming Spiritual Age.
The trajectory of Indian spirituality can be understood by relying on Aurobindo’s philosophy of history. For Aurobindo, the spirit of Vedic times was optimistic, exuberant, and world-affirming. The majority of people did not practice such mature and adult spirituality, but he nevertheless emphasizes the centrality of the Vedic tradition within Indian spirituality. It was a time of much intellectual, artistic, commercial, and political achievement among the elites; still, they gave the spiritual dimension their greatest respect and Indian creativity reached its highest expression in that realm.
Aurobindo then goes on to make the important point that the Vedic tradition has always retained a certain vitality and has been renewed by powerful spiritual personalities, thereby providing Indian civilization with the resilience necessary to remain coherent despite invasions and colonization. During the long feudal era that has not yet fully run its course, he viewed Indian spirituality as rigid and hierarchical, suffocated by rules and conventions. The most prominent philosophical systems of the time were world-negating and the effects on India’s social and political growth were highly detrimental. Yet the values of freedom and bliss found in the Vedas and the early Upanishads are still alive. His conviction is that once India recovers its ancient past and is true to its national soul, it will lead the spiritual regeneration of the world.
Aurobindo praised European secular thought of the 18th and 19th centuries for promoting political and religious freedom and giving importance to the idea of peace. He also acknowledged Europe’s contribution to material development and the flowering of the individual. In his theory of history based on the inner state of being, Aurobindo distinguished three stages that much of the world would experience: the conventional era, the time of the individual, and then the subjectivistic age.
Aurobindo tells us that consciousness evolves beyond the conventional stage because convention departs from truth to an intolerable degree which prompts people with powerful intellects to break free from the restrictions and to find the truths that have been buried or lost. Such seeking ushers in the individualistic age whose freedom is only partial since it retains the beliefs from the preceding era that truth is found outside the person and that machinery can bring about a utopian society. Nevertheless, this stage is necessary in order to reach the subjectivistic period in which humans recover their deeper selves which initiates a new cycle of civilizational progress.
In Aurobindo’s theory, the West leads the world during the individualistic age but its failure to bring the spirit into social and political life is its great shortcoming. As a result, the door is left open for India to contribute a universal spirituality that will incorporate the achievements of science and become the foundation for a new world religion in the subjectivistic age. Although Aurobindo wrote his works of social and political philosophy in the early 20th century, they are still valuable for understanding how consciousness evolves within history and for his outline of the inner qualities and social forms that are present during the various stages of history.
Indian religion underwent considerable revision during the past few centuries. In the early 19th century, Rammohun Roy attempted to meet the onslaught of Western ideas by revising the Indian tradition so that it could provide guidance in a modern age. His synthesis of Indian and Western ideas and values was a prototype for the efforts of the many religious reformers following in his wake. These reformers interpreted the Indian scriptures in a scientific manner, emphasized the ethical dimension of Vedanta, took a monotheistic approach to God, and created a new universal religion. In particular, Roy rejected what he considered superstitious elements of Hinduism such as the burning of widows upon their husband’s death, child marriage, and the caste system. It greatly troubled him that such Hindu customs were used by the British to claim moral superiority and justify colonialism. Roy’s emphasis on the need for social as well as religious reform clearly showed the influence of Western liberal thought.
The foremost among those who came after Roy was Swami Vivekananda. Observing the decline of world religions, Vivekananda was convinced that a new universal religion, arising from Indian soil, was needed to regenerate humanity. His message presented at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 electrified his audiences, forever altering the common Western perception of Indians as heathens in need of Christian uplift and enlightenment.
India’s greatest poet Rabindranath Tagore was also a distinguished writer on cultural, social, and political matters who contributed much to the modernization of the Indian cultural and religious tradition. Like Aurobindo, he believed that when there is an awakening of the soul’s inner force, people will feel kinship with all of humanity. His ideal society was also drawn along anarchist lines: the inner freedom of each person makes possible the freedom of all people. And he saw the self-sufficient village as the foundation upon which the unity of the country as well as that of humanity could be built.
Tagore’s spirituality was not opposed to reason and science; in fact, he criticized Gandhi for a hostility to modern life that he did not share. Rather Tagore hoped for a true meeting of East and West in which Western science provides solutions to our material problems and Eastern spirituality points the way to real joy and peace. He was a strong champion of personal freedom, had a deep belief in human equality, and accepted modern life with its dependence on reason and science with qualifications.
Modern Indian spirituality also contributed much to the spiritual flowering of the West. For example, Paramahamsa Yogananda brought American attention to a universal religion based on the ancient Indian science of consciousness, and Jiddu Krishnamurti influenced leading Western spiritual writers, poets, philosophers, and scientists with his own iconoclastic and anti-authoritarian version of Indian spirituality. Both settled in California during the 1920s. In addition, Sri Aurobindo’s legacy has been passed down through the California Institute of Integral Studies. In the arts, Ravi Shankar, who also lived in California, helped to adapt classical Indian music to new contexts and spread it to many parts of the world while remaining faithful to its underlying spiritual dimension, despite pressures toward commercialism and celebrity emanating from Western popular culture. Today, Indian spiritual influences are evident at many levels of Western culture from fashionable yoga studios to the yogic mysticism of Sadhguru.
India’s history is to some degree unique and there is no one pattern of historical development that all nations must follow. This means that the modern Western self is also not universal. The challenge is to find ways for India to make use of this awareness in order to shed colonial habits, open up its future, and then go further by helping to spread this awareness over the world.
