From Man Human to Man Divine

Appendix

SRI AUROBINDO ON THE TASK BEFORE HUMANITY

"The salvation of the human race lies in a more sane and integral development of the possibilities of mankind in the individual and in the community.

The safety of Europe has to be sought in the recognition of the spiritual aim of human existence, otherwise she will be crushed by the weight of her own unillumined knowledge and soulless organisation.

The safety of Asia lies in the recognition of the material mould and mental conditions in which that aim has to be worked out, otherwise she will sink deeper into the slough of despond, of a mental and physical incompetence to deal with the facts of life and the shocks of a rapidly changing movement....

The message of the East to the West is a true message, "only by finding himself can man be saved," and "what shall it profit a man though he gain the whole world, if he lose his own soul." ...

The message the West brings to the East is a true message. Man also is God and it is through his developing manhood that he approaches the godhead ...

The problem of thought therefore is to find out the right idea and the right way of harmony ...

What then shall be our ideal? Unity for the human race by an inner oneness and not only by an external association of interests; the resurgence of man out of the merely animal and economic life or the merely intellectual and aesthetic into the glories of the spiritual existence; the pouring of the power of the spirit into the physical mould and mental instrument so that man may develop his manhood into that true supermanhood which shall exceed our present state as much as this exceeds the animal state from which Science tells us that we have issued. These three are one; for man's unity and man's self-transcendence can come only by living in the Spirit."

(The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings, pp. 287-291.)

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