Buddha and Shankara and our immense ascetic impulse

The Life Divine, A commentary of Sri Aurobindo on the Isha Upanishad

Buddha and Shankara and our immense ascetic impulse of three thousand years are not the last word of our race nor of humanity; they are the expression of a salutary and violent necessity seizing on man and driving him to abandon utterly the world in its false appearances, by renunciation of all that here we perceive only as motion of Nature, sarvam idaik yat kinca jagatyam jagat; they are a divine Inspiration and a compelling Impulse which will have us by any means and at any cost open our eyes to the truth that not in besotted attachment to the name and form of things, not in the blind, unillumined or falsely illumined movements of the jagati, not in that ignorant state of the soul in which it seems to the mind to be anis and not Ish and acts as anis, not Ish, subject and not Lord of the jagati, is the ultimate fulfillment God intends for us, but there is a stillness beyond the movement which we have to reach, a self-luminousness of the soul in its true peace, freedom and wideness to which we have to aspire. Anyad ahur avidyaya.

But when we have obeyed the Impulse, it should, normally, lead us beyond itself; for when we have conquered and transcended the movement, we have yet to surpass and transcend the stillness. Beyond the Kshara and Akshara we rise into the comprehensive infinity of the uttama; lifted above Buddha and Shankara stand Janaka and Krishna, the supreme Yogin and the entire Avatar; they in full action are in entire possession of peace and, conquerors of desire and ego or eternally superior to them, keep their hold on the real and divine bliss of God's triple self-manifestation; they know and exercise the simultaneous and harmonious enjoyment of His transcendent being, His universal Self and His individual play of becoming. Home