Arthur Osborne - I become a writer...(7)

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Now that the beloved face was no longer with us, my wife

at last started work on the long delayed sculpture. It was felt that

there should be a statue of Bhagavan and the ashram had several

times commissioned one, but the results were deplorable. One

can measure features, but to reproduce the expression of the

Divine Man would require love and understanding. My wife got

some clay and started work on a bust. For over a year she worked

at it, never quite satisfied, always changing and perfecting. Finally

the face came to have a beautiful expression reminiscent of the

living Bhagavan, but the poise of the head and shoulders was still

not right. Then she went to Tiruvannamalai for a few weeks and

it dried up and cracked. The face fell off in one unbroken piece,

while the rest broke into bits. Taking this as a sign, we made a

plaster cast of the face alone.

 

I had no intention of becoming a writing addict and going

on with book after book. However, there were two more books

that I wanted to get written. Both of them were ideas that had

been in my mind ever since I was in the internment camp;

which means that both were legacies from the period of Guenon’s

influence and were concerned rather with contingent matters

than with the path and its technique. I had vaguely hoped

through the years that I should meet some scholar to whom I

could pass them on, but had not considered writing them myself.

I saw now, however, that they would not be written unless I did

it, and, having a connection now with two publishers, I decided

to do so. I was so familiar with them that it was rather a case of

writing out than writing; nevertheless an idea is vitally affected

by the crystallization of form-giving and there was quite a lot of

work to do — work which I found enthralling.

 

The first to be written was called The Rhythm of History

and was published by Orient Longmans in Calcutta. I was not

joining the ranks of historians who try to decide what this rhythm

is, but simply indicating that if the history of the various

civilizations of mankind falls into any uniform pattern at all,

and if this pattern cannot be ascribed to mutual influences or

to progress, there must be some meaning or harmony underlying

it; it cannot be a mere succession of blind accidents. That there

is such a pattern is clear but has been rather overlooked by

historians. I began with the amazing coincidence of the founding

or re-founding of religions and civilizations about the 5th

century before Christ — Lao Tzu and Confucius in China,

Buddha and Mahavir in India, probably Zoroaster in Persia,

Ezekiel and the Deutero-Isaiah and return from the Babylonian

Captivity among the Jews, Pythagoras in Greece, the founding

of the Roman Republic, at all approximately the same time.

Then, midway between this time and the time of Christ, there

was the creation of great empires which served the diffusion

and interconnection of the new cultural patterns, although not

created for that purpose — Alexander’s Empire stretching from

Greece to India, that of Asoka in India, the unification of China

by the Chin, followed by the Han Dynasty with its state

patronage of Taoism and Confucianism.

 

The next wave is the

contemporaneous infiltration of the young Roman Empire and

the West by Christianity and of the young Han Empire and the

East by Mahayana Buddhism. Then all the classical civilizations

alike fell into dark times, times of turbulence and governmental

impotence. Out of this eventually rose recognizably mediaeval

types of civilization — in China, in India, in Islam, in

Christendom, everywhere. The Renaissance also was a

worldwide phenomenon, only in the West it triumphed whereas

in all Eastern civilizations Counter-Reformatory movements

suppressed it. This led to an end in the present century by the

uniform acceptance of the modern, materialistic, mechanized,

utilitarian type of civilization without spiritual foundations.

There was, of course, much more detail, but it was still a

slim book. It might have been better if it had been twice the

length or more, based on more erudition, but I have not the

disposition of a research worker. It said more than I now

consider wise about the world being ripe for the coming of the

Tenth Avatar. Whether that is so or not, it may unsettle an

already unsettled age to talk about it and thus do more harm

than good...............

 

 

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* Arthur Osborne: My Life & Quest *

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