595. Indian Spiritual Wisdom

The Spirit is Infinite and Eternal. Indian spiritual wisdom knows how the entire infinite universe is compressed into the infinitesimal and how one can release that infinite from the infinitesimal. Vinayaka knew that the whole world was compressed in his parents and that KNOWLEDGE helped him win the contest with his brother. The modern computer is a technological representation of this fact, abridging into a small laptop computer whole libraries. Life is an ocean and contains the universe in it. Literature is the form that contains all the force of life which is the universe. Shakespeare lives forever as he knew this spiritual secret. So do all the great poets of the world. Even in prose, several great writers successfully tried what Shakespeare did in drama. Pride and Prejudice has that power within its pages.

Jane Austen wrote this story at the age of 19. The very first line of this book is, "It is a universal truth that a single man with a large fortune must be in want of a wife", expressing one essential dimension of the institution of marriage which is said to be the consummation of Romance. This is a story of five handsome sisters whose mother's one ambition is to get them married. In an oblique form, three of her daughters were married so well that even her ambition was outstripped by the miraculous turn of events. Behind the outer expression of its plot lies the Spirit of the French revolution whose powerful waves in England made the English aristocracy save its skin, rather their venerable heads, by condescending to compromise with the lower levels of the society.

The Prince regent, the future king of England, read Pride and Prejudice sixteen times. So did the Prime Minister of England, Disraeli, who reached the top of the greasy pole of political power - the Prime Ministership of England for a Jew converted to Christianity. So absorbing is the story even in the fifth reading or the fifteenth. Anxious to illustrate Sri Aurobindo's theory of Spiritual Evolution through a great work of literature, we chose Pride and Prejudice and studied it for some time from the angle of the Spirit. A member of our Society addressed like-minded devotees numbering about a hundred for two days on The Life Divine for seven hours on the first day and nine hours on the second day. Our research findings enabled him again to address the same audience on another occasion for another two days of nine hours, followed by ten hours. It is a burning passion in me that India should awake to her Spiritual Treasure and become prosperous soon.