This assignment
is a part of internal evaluation of student's academic activity in the
Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University. Here is my assignment.
Name: Rohit
Vyas
Class: Semester
1
Roll No: 29
PG Enrolment
Number: 2069108420200041
E-mail:
rohitvyas277@gmail.com
Course: M.A.
English, at Department of English, M.K. Bhavnagar University
Paper 4 - Indian Writing in English 1, Unit 3
Submitted to: Dr. Dilip Barad
Renaissance in India: A
Spiritual Study
Spirituality
There is a very thin line between spirituality and religion. Anything which reminds us of God is religion, and whichever thing connects with our self and spirit is spirituality. In other words we can say that doing meditation through which our sprit gets rejuvenated, is called spirituality. This varies from person to person but spirituality is such a thing which one cannot even deny, because it goes with us unknowingly. If we are thinking on a particular subject and we have total focus on it; it becomes spiritual. Any thought or idea, elaborated to its utmost extent, can be called spirituality. Human can be misguided through outer sources of information or data, but what comes from within, means conscience, and is spiritual.
India
through Aurobindo’s Eyes
Is India civilized? The very question might
be arising in every learned man’s mind. Aurobindo thinks about India in
different way. For him Spirituality is such a thing that one can rely on its
all manners. In his words if we see:
“Spirituality is the master key of the Indian mind. It is this dominant inclination of India which gives character to all the expressions of her culture. In fact, they have grown out of her inborn spiritual tendency of which her religion is a natural out flowering. The Indian mind has always realized that the Supreme is the Infinite and perceived that to the soul in Nature the Infinite must always present itself in an infinite variety of aspects. The aggressive and quite illogical idea of a single religion for all mankind, a religion universal by the very force of its narrowness, one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies, one ecclesiastical ordinance, one array of prohibitions and injunctions which all minds must accept on peril of persecution by men and spiritual rejection or eternal punishment by God, that grotesque creation of human unreason which has been the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty and obscurantism and aggressive fanaticism, has never been able to take firm hold of the Indian mentality.”
Here are some examples of Karma which directly connects us to our spiritual self.
Spiritual Spirit
Develops through our Karma
Hate not the oppressor; for, if he is
strong, thy hate increases his force of resistance; if he is weak, thy hate was
needless.
Very usually, altruism is only the
sublimest form of selfishness.
Revolutions hew the past to pieces
and cast it into a cauldron, but what has emerged is the old Aeson with a new
visage.
Suffer yourself to be tempted within
so that you may exhaust in the struggle your downward propensities.
If thou think defeat is the end of
thee, then go not forth to fight, even though thou be the stronger. For Fate is
not purchased by any man nor is Power bound over to her possessors. But defeat is not the end; it is only a gate
or a beginning.
I have failed, thou sayest. Say
rather that God is circling about towards His object.
If thy aim be great and thy means
small, still act; for by action alone these can increase to thee.
Care not
for time and success. Act out thy part, whether it be to fail or to prosper.
He, who would win high spiritual degrees, must pass endless tests and examinations. But most are anxious only to bribe the examiner.
Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite.
Indian religion placed four necessities before human life. First, it imposed upon the mind a belief in a highest consciousness or state of existence universal and transcendent of the universe, from which all comes, in which all lives and moves without knowing it and of which all must one day grow aware, returning towards that which is perfect, eternal and infinite. Next, it laid upon the individual life the need of self-preparation by development and experience till man is ready for an effort to grow consciously into the truth of this greater existence. Thirdly, it provided it with a well-founded, well-explored, many-branching and always enlarging way of knowledge and of spiritual or religious discipline. Lastly, for those not yet ready for these higher steps it provided an organisation of the individual and collective life, a framework of personal and social discipline and conduct, of mental and moral and vital development by which they could move each in his own limits and according to his own nature in such a way as to become eventually ready for the greater existence. The first three of these elements are the most essential to any religion, but Hinduism has always attached to the last also a great importance; it has left out no part of life as a thing secular and foreign to the religious and spiritual life.
The fundamental idea of all Indian religion is one common to the highest human thinking everywhere. The supreme truth of all that is is a Being or an existence beyond the mental and physical appearances we contact here. Beyond mind, life and body there is a Spirit and Self containing all that is finite and infinite, surpassing all that is relative, a supreme Absolute, originating and supporting all that is transient, a one Eternal. A one transcendent, universal, original and sempiternal Divinity or divine Essence, Consciousness, Force and Bliss is the fount and continent and inhabitant of things. Soul, nature, life are only a manifestation or partial phenomenon of this self-aware Eternity and this conscious Eternal. But this Truth of being was not seized by the Indian mind only as a philosophical speculation, a theological dogma, an abstraction contemplated by the intelligence. It was not an idea to be indulged by the thinker in his study, but otherwise void of practical bearing on life. It was not a mystic sublimation which could be ignored in the dealings of man with the world and Nature. It was a living spiritual Truth, an Entity, a Power; a Presence that could be sought by all according to their degree of capacity and seized in a thousand ways through life and beyond life. This Truth was to be lived and even to be made the governing idea of thought and life and action. This recognition and pursuit of something or someone Supreme is behind all forms the one universal credo of Indian religion, and if it has taken a hundred shapes, it was precisely because it was so much alive. The Infinite alone justifies the existence of the finite and the finite by itself has no entirely separate value or independent existence. Life, if it is not an illusion, is a divine Play, a manifestation of the glory of the Infinite. Or it is a means by which the soul growing in Nature through countless forms and many lives can approach, touch, feel and unite itself through love and knowledge and faith and adoration and a Godward will in works with this transcendent Being and this infinite Existence. This Self or this self-existent Being is the one supreme reality, and all things else are either only appearances or only true by dependence upon it. It follows that self-realisation and God-realisation are the great business of the living and thinking human being. All life and thought are in the end a means of progress towards self-realisation and God-realisation.
Conclusion
Thank You.
Reference:
Aurobindo, Sri. The Renaissance in India: with a Defence of Indian Culture. PDF, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Dept., 1997, https://www.sriaurobindoashram.org, www.sriaurobindoashram.org/sriaurobindo/downloadpdf.php?id=35.
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