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CHAPTER TWO
The Search for Spiritual Security:
The One, the Whole, and Wholeness - 1
Biblioteca Esoterica Esonet.ORG
http://www.esonet.ORG
The earliest Hindu philosophies probably were formulated as answers to basic
questions posed by universal human experiences, the most fundamental of these being
the experience of unceasing change. Various, indeed contrasting, answers arose, and in
time they were codified into the six great Schools (or darshanas) of Indian philosophy. Yet
a central psychological motive underlies the different worldviews presented by these
schools: the search for what, psychologically speaking, it seems best to call inner security.
Security here refers to the implicit belief in "something" that, because it underlies all
changes, is changeless. To use a symbolic analogy, this something was felt and thought to
be the absolutely solid and permanent "rock" on which the house of consciousness — and
indeed the feeling of existence itself — had to rest.
Sri Aurobindo — the greatest mind and seer of modern India — stated the issue
simply in his clear and impressive prologue to his translation of the main Upanishads:
To the phenomenal world around us stability and singleness seem at first to be utterly
alien; nothing but passes and changes, nothing but has its counterparts, contrasts,
harmonized and dissident parts; and all are perpetually shifting and rearranging their
relative positions and affections. Yet if one thing is certain, it is that the sum of all this
change and motion is absolutely stable, fixed and unvarying, that all this heterogenous
multitude of animate and inanimate things are fundamentally homogeneous and one.
Otherwise nothing could endure, nor could there be any certainty in existence. And this
unity, stability, unvarying fixity which reason demands, and ordinary experience points to
is being ascertained slowly but surely by the investigations of Science. We can no longer
escape from the growing conviction that however the parts may change and shift and
appear to perish, yet the sum and the whole remains unchanged, undiminished and
imperishable; however multitudinous mutable and mutually irreconcilable forms and
compounds may be, yet the grand substratum is one, simple and enduring. 10
These statements clearly establish the central position of the spiritual aspect of Indian
philosophy, but they are remarkable for what they take for granted. The sentence
beginning "Yet if one thing is certain" constitutes an assumption which cannot be proven
or justified. Especially the statements that "the sum of all this change and motion is
absolutely stable, fixed and unvarying," and that "reason demands" this basic unity,
stability and unvarying fixity, are anything but evident. To say that without such a unity,
10 Sri Aurobindo, The Upanishads (Pondicherry: 1972), p. 1. Sri Aurobindo began his long life as one of the
earliest and most uncompromising advocates of India's independence from the British empire. Jailed for his
activities, then freed but still menaced after a famous trial, he left for Pondicherry (then a French colony),
where he died in 1950. Profound spiritual experiences while in prison led him to forgo political for spiritual
activity. After writing a great many remarkable books, he gathered around him a number of his disciples,
and with the help of a French woman, Mother Mira, an ashram was organized. After 1927, Sri Aurobindo
became a recluse almost completely, concentrating on "inner work." He also wrote an extraordinary epic
poem, Savitri, and engaged in much correspondence with students all over the world.
This passage is reprinted with the kind permission of Sri Aurobindo Trust.
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