The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

Interpretation of the Veda
MR. AUROBINDO GHOSE writes to us from Pondicherry: —
While thanking you for the generous appreciation in your
review of the “Arya”, may I also crave the indulgence of your
columns, — if indeed you can spare so much space at such a
time when the whole world is absorbed in the gigantic homicidal
conflict convulsing Europe, — for an answer to your criticisms
on my “Secret of the Veda”, or rather to an explanation of my
standpoint which the deficiencies of my expression and the brief
and summary character of my article in the “Arya” have led
you, in some respects, to misconceive?
Surely, I have nowhere said that “knowledge of which no
origin can be traced to previous sources must necessarily be
disregarded or discarded”! That would be indeed a monstrous
proposition! My point was that such knowledge, when it expressed
a developed philosophy and psychology, stood in need
of historical explanation, — a very different matter. If we accept
the European idea of an evolving knowledge in humanity, —
and it is on that basis that my argument proceeded — we must
find the source of the Brahmavada either in an extraneous origin
such as a previous Dravidian culture — a theory which I cannot
admit, since I regard the so-called Aryans and Dravidians as one
homogeneous race — or in a previous development, of which the
records have either been lost or are to be found in the Veda itself.
I cannot see how this argument involves a regressus ad infinitum
except in so far as the whole idea of evolution and progressive
causality lies open to that objection. As to the origins of the Vedic
religion, that is a question which cannot be solved at present for
lack of data. It does not follow that it had no origins or in other
words that humanity was not prepared by a progressive spiritual
experience for the Revelation.