The philosophy and the
personality of Sri
Aurobindo have been
before the world-public for
well nigh quarter of a
century. They have revealed
meaning to us – the
goal towards which mankind
has been moving. That goal
is the perfection of the
individual in the context of
world purposes. The dignity
of the human individual
which has received such
great emphasis and attention
in recent times has a source
and goal other than the
human individual as we know
him in the history of human
development. Man is seeking
ends of perfection and
peace, of unity and
unifiedness, of
values and worthiness. The
great ideals of mankind were
started again and again by
the mystics on the one hand
and perfectionists on the
other. There have been men
who have sought immortality
in the physical body and
held this to be the goal to
be aimed at – alchemists and
siddhas
have been many.
Evolutionists have added
their own strength to this
belief – mankind is to be
transcended and the goal of
evolution is the beyond-man,
or the Superman. Man is the
link towards godhood. The
earth itself is the place
for making of the gods. The
ideals of liberty for man,
equality of all men, and the
fraternity of all have been
adumbrated by the
politicians
following on the
footsteps of religious
mysticism. But how man
himself could achieve these
ideals or
realise
them has been the problem.
Religious ideals seem to
demand the climate of
renunciation of all
life-values, such as wealth,
power and comfort.
Everywhere the saints
preferred to go to the
desert and attain their
liberationas well as their
communion with God or the
Absolute of Religion. This
is the wisdom (((viveka)
that supports the
renunciation (vairagya)
and liberates from the
bondage of the world, its
fears and terrors and
sorrows. But political
life as
well as ethical life demand
the
actualisation of the
ideals in the context of the
society – human society.
Political ideals and
religious ideals seem to
need each other and in fact
we have the great attempts
to bring down the ideals of
religion into the context of
political and social life,
this being thought of as the
bringing down of the Kingdom
of God on earth as it is in
heaven. A student of
political history can
discern this continuous
process by which the
mystico-religious
tradition has attempted to
influence and modify the
political and social life of
peoples. The relation
between the Church and the
State has been
characterised by
unity, conflict and
dictatorship of one or the
other. There is however no
solution to their
problems-intractable is the
one word by which their
relationship could be
characterised. This
conflict could not be got
over in any region of the
globe. Modern studies of
history on the globe scale
as well as on
the
anthropological scale
have confirmed the law of
inevitable conflict between
the religious ideals and the
political and social ideals.
The reason has been shown to
be the notion of power-its
essential dialectic as well
as its essential nisus
towards indivisibility.
Humane efforts to solve
these tensions with the help
of the reasons which
seeks
unity and harmony of ethical
and religious interests with
the political
power-interests have borne
fruit undoubtedly in the
several constitutions
drafted. But the ideal seems
to be receding all the
while. Man has come to a
point where something more
than legalistic devices of
mutual control of checks and
balances is necessary to
secure smooth social
functioning. The entry of
the economic into the field
of politics boded the
disappearance of the
religious-the conflict
finally had become the
conflict between the
economic (materialistic)
ideals of equality and
liberty and the religious
(spiritual) ideals of
equality, liberty and
fraternity.
We are today striving to
solve this conflict, easy
enough as it should be
because linguistically the
ideals seem to be the same
for the materialist and the
spiritualist (idealist).
This however is not possible
for we find today that the
materialists themselves are
betraying their inevitable
tendency to disintegrate
into sects and factions even
as the religious aspirations
have tended to divide and
sub-divide themselves. As
Sri
Aurobindo states this
is the flaw of the
materialistic mind of our
intellect itself which is
following the curve of
matter. So any attempt to
solve the present conflict
between the materialist and
spiritual factors should
have to seek the aid of
higher-than-intellect –
namely, intuition and
supermind. Man’s
rationality which has been
such a great help for his
evolution has come to that
point where it has to become
transformed into a higher
faculty or be substituted by
it. Surely this appears to
be almost an expression of a
deep pessimism about the
power of our reason and our
consciousness. Many have
been and are the critics who
think that this call to a
higher-than-reason is a
betrayal of a most faithful
ally and servant in our
evolutionary struggle. These
critics identify the
intellect with man and his
dignity and resolutely
refuse to take the help of
the more stable and
satisfying function and
power within man, that
deeper and profoundly
unifying force which lies
within man himself, namely,
the divine insight and
inspiration which formulated
in such blazing light the
basic call to universal
harmony and peace through
the practice of fraternity,
from which flow equality of
opportunity and liberty of
individual development.
Today we are convinced that
the deep and abiding
function or power of our
consciousness to seek ideals
owes its strength to the
Consciousness above it. It
is cosmic consciousness,
integral vision, and
unifying insight. The
utilisation of this
Consciousness, beyond our
reason and intellect is the
necessity. The discovery of
this instrument of being is
our present urgent concern.
Its truth-nature has been
testified to by
scores
of saints and prophets all
the world over. Instead of
depending on the divisive
intellect or reason that
creates more problems that
it solves and is today at
the service of lower
instincts which are still
more divisive, man must seek
out this
higher-than-intellect, the
supermind, to solve
his problems of living
and
being.
The ideal of human unity can
be
realised only when
men begin to work in and
through the
higher-than-mind-and-intellect in
all their work. Just as
philosophers began by
distrusting their senses and
depended on their reason for
determining the nature of
truth or truth itself and
reality,so
too man has to
realise
more and more illusory
problems and solutions. The
world of
maya is
not only
sovereignly ruled by
sense but by intellect as
well. Ignorance not only
persists in the realms of
intellectual thought but
deepens out the shadows of
illusion. As the
Ishopanishad states
knowledge leads to greater
darkness as it were—tato
bhuyaiva
te
vidyayagm
ratah—.
The ancient
thinkers had acknowledged
the Ultimate superiority of
the
Revelational
knowledge contained in the
scriptures, especially the
Veda in India. Its
paramount purpose was to
reveal the Ultimate
Reality in its eternal or
true nature and also to help
the attainment of
freedom from death and
immortality. These goals
are the Ultimate goals of
man, everywhere. Sri
Aurobindo acknowledges
this primacy and sovereignty
of the
apta-vacana
or Veda. But what he
really has done in modern
times is to reveal that this
mode of apprehension of
Reality as it is in itself
is not to be the peculiar
and unique position of
saints but of all aspiring
humanity. It is something
that has to be sought after
seriously. Even as the
elan
for survival through
adaptation to the
challenging environment has
produced the evolutionary
process
upto man, it is
possible to urge mankind
itself onward by striving
after this new
organon
or instrument to transcend
man. Human survival is
possible only through this
seeking of the
higher-than-mind, to be
divinised entirely in
all one’s parts. Not only
should man be remade but
also transformed into
divine Nature.
The dynamics of
this process is Yoga through
integral surrender or total
dedication to the
supermind or
God Himself. This union
with God through surrender
and total offering of
oneself immediately makes
for the descent of this
superconscious or
supramental force
into one’s Nature and
gradually begins to
transform him. Similarly it
brings about dynamic changes
in the environment and
relations through the
unifying quality of its
action. May be cooperation,
may be said to get first
emphasis against competitive
approach, peaceful
co-existence or tolerance
might replace fanaticism and
bigotry and warfare. But
this is undoubtedly due to
the already present
operation of the higher type
consciousness through the
mental being – thanks to the
work of the ancient seers
and sages. The total change
is called for today because
of the increased
knowledge of science and the
discoveries made by man.
These too are due to the
operations of the
higher-than-intellect consciousness
as even the scientists have
stated. Intuition or the
inventive unconscious, or
what you will, has made for
the leaps in our knowledge
and techniques. The
religious would call it the
act of grace of God, whereas
the materialist would affirm
that it is due to insight
and intuition-natural
operations of mind itself in
its confrontation of
matter and situation. May
be even the mind itself is
the operation of matter or
otherwise. In any case in
the fields of science
intuition or the higher
mind has been continuously
operative. The stretch of
this operation into fields
of human
behaviour or
sociology would lead to
formation of new
associations or units of
social organization which
would abolish the lower-type
associations of the beehive
and ant-hill, or primitive
clan and social
colour-units
or economic units or
functional units or castes
or patterns of culture. If
at first the higher type
associations seem to break
up the lower ones it is only
to erect a more dynamic and
universal union. Thus at
the beginning there was the
rise of religions which
sought unification of all
mankind under the ideology
or the ritual of one creed
or church. However this
religious approach to the
whole of mankind helped only
to some extent. The
unification of man took
several steps and
directions, and history is
replete with the stories of
these religious, political,
national, sectional, unions
or sects whose rivalry and
struggle have littered it.
Sri
Aurobindo in his two
seminal
works The
Human Cycle and The Ideal of
Human Unity has
canvassed this large area
brilliantly.
The
progress of man however has
neverthless been
maintained. The
ideal has been often dimmed
but never completely
abolished from man’s
vision. Seers and saints,
warriors of knowledge have
striven to
untarnish and uncover
the ideal to man, so that he
may be aware of his large
destiny. A world union is
undoubtedly our goal, but it
cannot be achieved either by
the consuming zeal of
baptismal religions or
economic socialism such as
communism that drives out
the individual. It must be
known that the real strength
of communism is its drive
towards human worth and
dignity of being for
himself
in and through the society.
Nationalism, itself a unity,
becomes at a later stage an
obstacle to world unity.
Racialism is itself
confronting a new dimension
of human relationship. Only
the souls in all strata and
all religions and cultures
who have listened to the
call of the superman and
partaken of the
supramental activity
can forge the unity of man
in Godhood, brotherhood and
freedom. Our techniques of
international cooperation in
all fields are today
informed unconsciously by
the
supramental goals and
this itself is due to the
descent
of the
supramental Nature
into everyman awakened or
unawakened to its
ingression.
Sri
Aurobindo chanted
this great mantra of the
superman and held out the
hope of a world union
through
divine consciousness that is
love or true fraternity and
sharing. It is our duty to
remember Him with gratitude
on this day of our political
and national and
spiritual freedom.
* (Broadcast from A.I.R
Madras on 17.8.1963)
