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The Urge for Progression
IN
the process of the expression and embodiment of this innermost truth,
the first necessary condition is, as we have said, sincerity, that is
to say, a constant reference to the demand of that truth, putting
everything and judging everything in the light of that truth, a
vigilant wakefulness to it. The second condition is progression.
It is the law of the Truth that it is expressing itself, seeking
to express itself continually and continuously in the march of life;
it is always unfolding new norms and forms of its light and power,
ever new degrees of realisation. The individual human consciousness
has to recognise that progressive flux and march along with it. Human
consciousness, the complex of external mind and life and body
consciousness, has the habit of halting, clinging to the forms,
experiences and gains of the past, storing them in memory, agreeing
to a minimum change only just to be able to pour the new into the
old. But this conservatism, which is another name for tamas is
fatal to the living truth within. Even like the élan
vital so gloriously hymned by Bergson, the inmost consciousness,
the central truth of being, the soul élan
has always a forward-looking reference. And it is precisely
because the normal instrument of the body and life and mind has
always a backward reference, because it slings ,back and cannot keep
pace with the march of the soul-consciousness that these members
stagnate, wear away, decay and death ends it all. The past has its
utility: it marks the stages of progress. It means assimilation, but
must not mean stagnation. It may supply the present basis but must
always open out to what is coming or may come. If one arrives at a
striking realisation, a light is revealed, a Voice, a mantra heard, a
norm disclosed, it is simply to be noted, taken in the stuff of the
being, made part and parcel of the consciousness; Page – 364
you leave it at that and pass and press on. You must not linger at
wayside illuminations however beautiful or even useful some may be.
The ideal of the paryataka – the wanderer – may be taken
as a concrete symbol of this principle. The Brahmanas described it
graphically in the famous phrase, caraivete, "move on".
The Vedic Rishi sang of it in the memorable hymn to Dawn, the
goddess who comes today the last of a succession of countless dawns
in the immemorial past and the first of a never-ending series of the
future. The soul is strung with a golden chain to the Great
Fulfilment that moves ahead: even when fulfilled the soul does not
rest or come to the end of its mission, it continues to be an ever
new expression or instrumentation of the Infinite. Page – 365
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