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Arya: Its Significance
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Arya: Its Significance
By Yogi Arvind
To those not familiar with Vedic culture, the word 'arya' is no more than a
hieroglyph which attracts or repels according to their temperament. To some,
the word has been converted to purely racial terms, an unknown ethnological
quantity on which different speculations fix different values. To others,
the word represents a difference of culture because the Vedic rishis had
accepted a particular type of self-culture, of inward and outward practice,
of ideality, of aspiration. Their gods were the supraphysical powers who
assisted the mortal in his struggle towards the nature of the godhead. All
the highest aspirations of the early human race, its noblest religious
temper, its most idealistic velleities of thought are summed up in this
single vocable.
In later times, the word Arya expressed a particular ethical and social
ideal, an ideal of well-governed life, candour, courtesy, nobility, straight
dealing, courage, gentleness, purity, humanity, compassion, protection of
the weak, liberality, observance of social duty, eagerness of knowledge,
respect for the wise and learned, the social accomplishments. It was the
combined ideal of the Brahmana and the Kshatriya. Everything that departed
from this ideal, everything that tended towards the ignoble, mean, obscure,
rude, cruel or false, was termed un-Aryan or anarya (colloq anari). There is
no word in human speech that has a nobler history.
In the early days of comparative Philology, when the scholars sought in the
history of words for the prehistoric history of peoples, it was supposed
that the word Arya came from the root 'ar', to plough, and that the Vedic
Aryans were so called when they separated from their kin in the north-west
who despised the pursuits of agriculture and remained shephards and hunters.
This ingenious speculation has little or nothing to support it. But in a
sense we may accept the derivation. Whoever cultivates the field that the
Supreme Spirit has made for him, his earth of plenty within and without,
does not leave it barren or allow it to run to seed, but labours to exact
from it its full yield, is by that effort an Aryan.
If Arya were a purely racial term, a more probable derivation would be 'ar',
meaning strength or valour, from ar to fight, whence we have the name of the
Greek war-god Ares, areios, brave or warlike, perhaps even arete, virtue,
signifying, like the Latin virtus, first, physical strength and courage and
then moral force and elevation. This sense of the word also we may accept.
"We fight to win sublime Wisdom, therefore men call us warriors." For Wisdom
implies the choice as well as the knowledge of that which is best, noblest,
most luminous, most divine. Certainly, it means also the knowledge of all
things and charity and reverence for all things, even the most apparently
mean, ugly or dark, for the sake of the universal Deity who chooses to dwell
equally in all. But, also, the law of right action is a choice, the
preference of that which expresses the godhead to that which conceals it.
And the choice entails a battle, a struggle. It is not easily made, it is
not easily enforced.
Whoever makes that choice, whoever seeks to climb from level to level up the
hill of the divine, fearing nothing, deterred by no retardation or defeat,
shrinking from no vastness because it is too vast for his intelligence, no
height because it is too high for his spirit, no geatness because it is too
great for his force and courage, he is the Aryan, the divine fighter and
victor, the noble man, aristos, best, the srestha of the Gita.
Intrinsically, in its most fundamental sense, Arya means an effort or an
uprising and overcoming. The Aryan is he who strives and overcomes all
outside him and within him that stands opposed to the human advance.
Self-conquest is the first law of his nature. He overcomes earth and the
body and does not consent like ordinary men to their dullness, inertia, dead
routine and tamasic limitations. He overcomes life and its energies and
refuses to be dominated by their hungers and cravings or enslaved by their
rajasic passions. He overcomes the mind and its habits, he does not live in
a shell of ignorance, inherited prejudices, customary ideas, pleasant
opinions, but knows how to seek and choose, to be large and flexible in
intelligence even as he is firm and strong in his will. For in everything he
seeks truth, in everything right, in everything height and freedom.
Self-perfection is the aim of his self-conquest. Therefore, what he conquers
he does not destroy, but ennobles and fulfils. He knows that the body, life
and mind are given him in order to attain to something higher than they;
therefore they must be transcended and overcome, their limitations denied,
the absorption of their gratifications rejected. But he knows also that the
Highest is something which is no nullity in the world, but increasingly
expresses itself here, - a divine Will, Consciousness, Love, Beatitude which
pours itself out, when found, through the terms of the lower life on the
finder and on all in his environment that is caoable of receiving it. Of
that he is the servant, lover and seeker. When it is attained, he pours it
forth in work, love, joy and knowledge upon mankind. For always the Aryan is
a worker and warrior. He spares himself no labour of mind or body whether to
seek the Highest or to serve it. He avoids no difficulty, he accepts no
cessation from fatigue. Always he fights for the coming of that kingdom
within himself and in the world.
The Aryan perfected is the Arhat. There is a transcendent Consciousness
which surpasses the universe and of which all these worlds are only a
side-issue and a by-play. To that consciousness he aspires and attains.
There is a Consciousness which, being transcendent, is yet the universe and
all that the universe contains. Into that consciousness he enlarges his
limited ego; he becomes one with all beings and all inanimate objects in a
single self-awareness, love, delight, all-embracing energy. There is a
consciousness which, being both transcendental and universal, yet accepts
the apparent limitations of individuality for work, for various standpoints
of knowledge, for the play of the Lord with His creations; for the ego is
there that it may finally convert itself into a free centre of the divine
work and the divine play. That consciousness too he has sufficient love, joy
and knowledge to accept; he is puissant enough to effect that conversion. To
embrace individuality after transcending it is the last and divine
sacrifice. The perfect Arhat is he who is able to live simultaneously in all
these three apparent states of existence, elevate the lower into the higher,
receive the higher into the lower, so that he may represent perfectly in the
symbols of the world that with he is identified in all parts of his being, -
the triple and triune Brahman.
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References
The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings by Sri Aurobindo
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