If these things do not satisfy me, what then do I seek?
I seek a light that shall be new, yet old, the oldest indeed
of all lights. I seek an authority that accepting, illuminating and reconciling
all human truth, shall yet reject and get rid of by explaining it all mere
human error.
I seek a text and a Shastra that is not subject to
interpolation, modification and replacement, that moth and white ant cannot
destroy, that the earth cannot bury nor Time mutilate.
I seek an asceticism that shall give me purity and
deliverance from self and from ignorance without stultifying God and His
universe.
I seek a skepticism that shall question everything but shall
have the patience to deny nothing that may possibly be true.
I seek a rationalism not proceeding on the untenable
supposition that all the centuries of man’s history except the nineteenth (read
as present century) were centuries of folly and superstition, but bent on
discovering truth instead of limiting inquiry by a new dogmatism, obscurantism
and furious intolerance which it chooses to call common sense and
enlightenment; I seek a materialism that shall recognise matter and use it
without being its slave.
I seek an occultism that shall bring out all its processes
and proofs into the light of day, without mystery, without jugglery, without
the old stupid call to humanity, “Be blind, O man, and see!”
In short, I seek not science, not religion, not Theosophy,
but Veda - the truth about Brahman, not only about His essentiality, but about
His manifestation, not a lamp on the way to the forest, but a light and a guide
to joy and action in the world, the truth which is beyond opinion, the
knowledge which all thought strives after - yasmin vijnate sarvam vijnatam.
I believe that Veda to be the foundation of the Sanatan
Dharma; I believe it to be the concealed divinity within Hinduism, - but a veil
has to be drawn aside, a curtain has to be lifted. I believe it to be knowable
and discoverable. I believe the future of India and the world to depend on
its discovery and on its application, not to the renunciation of life, but to
life in the world and among men.
Aurobindo
Source – Excerpt from the book Essays and Human by
Sri Aurobindo