Difference between Indian and European culture
The whole root of difference between Indian and European
culture springs from the spiritual aim of Indian civilisation. It
is the turn which this aim imposes on all the rich and luxuriant
variety of its forms and rhythms that gives to it its unique
character. For even what it has in common with other cultures
gets from that turn a stamp of striking originality and solitary
greatness. A spiritual aspiration was the governing force of this
culture, its core of thought, its ruling passion. Not only did it
make spirituality the highest aim of life, but it even tried, as far
as that could be done in the past conditions of the human race, to
turn the whole of life towards spirituality. But since religion is in
the humanmind the first native, if imperfect form of the spiritual
impulse, the predominance of the spiritual idea, its endeavour to
take hold of life, necessitated a casting of thought and action into
the religious mould and a persistent filling of every circumstance
of life with the religious sense; it demanded a pervadingly religio-philosophic
culture. The highest spirituality indeed moves in a
free and wide air far above that lower stage of seeking which
is governed by religious form and dogma; it does not easily
bear their limitations and, even when it admits, it transcends
them; it lives in an experience which to the formal religious
mind is unintelligible. But man does not arrive immediately at
that highest inner elevation and, if it were demanded from him
at once, he would never arrive there. At first he needs lower
supports and stages of ascent; he asks for some scaffolding of
dogma, worship, image, sign, form, symbol, some indulgence
and permission of mixed half-natural motive on which he can
stand while he builds up in him the temple of the spirit. Only
when the temple is completed, can the supports be removed,
the scaffolding disappear. The religious culture which now goes
by the name of Hinduism not only fulfilled this purpose, but,
unlike certain credal religions, it knew its purpose. It gave itself
no name, because it set itself no sectarian limits; it claimed no
universal adhesion, asserted no sole infallible dogma, set up no
single narrow path or gate of salvation; it was less a creed or
cult than a continuously enlarging tradition of the Godward
endeavour of the human spirit. An immense many-sided manystaged
provision for a spiritual self-building and self-finding, it
had some right to speak of itself by the only name it knew, the
eternal religion, san¯atana dharma. It is only if we have a just and
right appreciation of this sense and spirit of Indian religion that
we can come to an understanding of the true sense and spirit of
Indian culture.
Now just here is the first baffling difficulty over which the
European mind stumbles; for it finds itself unable to make out
what Hindu religion is. Where, it asks, is its soul? where is its
mind and fixed thought? where is the form of its body? How can
there be a religion which has no rigid dogmas demanding belief
on pain of eternal damnation, no theological postulates, even
no fixed theology, no credo distinguishing it from antagonistic
or rival religions? How can there be a religion which has no
papal head, no governing ecclesiastic body, no church, chapel
or congregational system, no binding religious form of any kind
obligatory on all its adherents, no one administration and discipline?
For the Hindu priests are mere ceremonial officiants
without any ecclesiastical authority or disciplinary powers and
the Pundits aremere interpreters of the Shastra, not the lawgivers
of the religion or its rulers. How again can Hinduism be called
a religion when it admits all beliefs, allowing even a kind of
high-reaching atheism and agnosticism and permits all possible
spiritual experiences, all kinds of religious adventures? The only
thing fixed, rigid, positive, clear is the social law, and even that
varies in different castes, regions, communities. The caste rules
and not the Church; but even the caste cannot punish a man for
his beliefs, ban heterodoxy or prevent his following a new revolutionary
doctrine or a new spiritual leader. If it excommunicates
Christian or Muslim, it is not for religious belief or practice, but
because they break with the social rule and order. It has been
asserted in consequence that there is no such thing as a Hindu
religion, but only a Hindu social system with a bundle of the
most disparate religious beliefs and institutions. The precious
dictum that Hinduism is a mass of folk-lore with an ineffective
coat of metaphysical daubing is perhaps the final judgment of
the superficial occidental mind on this matter.
VOLUME 20
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO P179-180
