A companion volume to 'The Destiny of the Body,' this explores man as a species, his past beginnings, present achievements & failures, his evolutionary future.
INTRODUCTION:
A View, in Advance, of What the Book is About
The book From Man Human to Man Divine bears an unusual title and, as the title indicates, it deals with the evolutionary destiny of man. Man's past, present and future have been thoroughly discussed here in the wide perspective of the total earthly existence. Some cardinal problems besetting man's advance in his present evolutionary status have been put into focus, analysed in all their ramifications and then their probable evolutionary solutions delineated, based on the revelations made by the great seer-philosopher Sri Aurobindo. Nothing is here offered as mere dogmatic assertions to be either accepted or rejected according to the predilections of individual readers. Every solution has been presented as the natural and inevitable conclusion to be drawn from the relevant data gathered from different fields. It is for the readers to judge whether the discussions entered into in this book are professionally rigorous, logically valid and honest in presentation. The book is primarily meant for the unbiased and open-minded intellectuals. At every step of its meandering discussions, the book challenges the reader with new and bold and unconventional ideas and invites him to think afresh and then come to his own conclusions. The author will feel his efforts highly rewarded if it is found that he has been able to communicate to even a few of his readers a part of the intellectual thrill he personally experienced while composing the various chapters of this book.
In course of our sinuous discussions and deliberations, we have had to touch upon a great number of connected issues and questions; the unwary reader, while perusing the book for the first time, may feel like counting the individual trees but missing the wood as a whole. To obviate this difficulty we have felt it advisable to prelude the main body of the book with this preliminary chapter "A View, in Advance, of What the Book is About". A glance through these pages will help the readers to keep track of the central motif of the book through all its multifarious elaboration. This introductory chapter has been constituted of a series of key-passages culled from various chapters of the book.
In our times man has tended to become the central theme of almost all philosophical thinking. The outlook of the present age is
essentially humanistic. The world has become impatient with every system of thought that fails to give primacy to man and his insistent problems.
But what is this human individual? He seems to have a multiple essence. He is in nature; he is in history. He obviously belongs to the material realm but also to the biological; not merely to the biological, but also to the social: he is indeed a socio-moral creature. It may well be that there are other deeper and higher realms to which he belongs, of which he is not aware as yet.
Darwin has taught that man has evolved from the humblest form of life by a process of natural selection that was quite automatic; and, in particular, "instead of Adam, our ancestry is traced to the most grotesque of creatures!" Well, it may very well be so, so far as the past of man is concerned. But what about his future? Looking intently around, a thinking man cannot but be puzzled with a lot of intriguing questions:
Is there at all a meaning behind this colossal world-existence? Of what worth is the individual man in this immense cosmic drama? Does his existence bear any relevance here? Is there any sense and purpose behind the march of humanity, and if so, what is it? What should be the goal of man the individual and of the human race? Is there any truth in the notion of human free-will, or is man a mere creature of circumstances? What is meant after all by God or the Absolute? Does he exist at all? And if he exists, is there any way of contacting him? What should be the proper relation of man the individual to other individuals and to the community of men? How can he realise his age-old dream of three basic harmonies: cosmical harmony between man and world, social harmony between man and man and bio-psychical harmony within man himself? And, finally, what about death, that dreadful, ineluctable eventuality? Does it set to nought and mock with a derisive laughter all the hopes and aspirations, toils and striving of the individual man?
Then, again, it is well understood that man as a species has been the latest and so far the last product of biological evolution. But does he represent absolutely the end-product of it? Has the process of evolution ceased to be operative upon earth? Or, who knows, it is still continuing, albeit in a new form!
Prof. G. R. Harrison remarks in his What Man May Be: The Human Side of Science (p. 125):
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"It is not ego-centric on the part of man to consider himself the most highly evolved creature in nature. But any tendency to consider himself its end-product would be short-sighted, for evolution is taking place today faster than ever before. Physical evolution has been almost completely short-circuited by man as applied to himself. But social, emotional and mental evolution are now carrying him on to ever greater complexity and awareness."
But a further, may be virtually infinite, extension of the social, emotional and mental capacities and capabilities is that all that is in store for the human race? Can there not be a far more glorious future for our wonderful species? Can there not be a further phase of evolution? Indeed, may we not pertinently raise the query: just as the inorganic phase of evolution was followed by the biological phase wherein 'life invaded the material sheath', just as towards the close of the biological phase the cerebral cortex began to be elaborated and with it 'earth-plasm first quivered with the illumining Mind', just as again at the end of the biological phase, with the development of the cerebrum, evolution started on a new course when 'man was moulded from the original brute', similarly now, with the attainment of maturity by man, evolution may very well turn another leaf and pass on to an altogether new phase: the supra-mental sector of world-manifestation. For surely man, as he is now constituted, is too imperfect a creature to be deemed the final possible product of evolution. No doubt, man is the crown of all that has been so far done, but creation's eonine labour cannot be finally justified with him; he can, by no stretch of imagination, be conferred the honour of being Nature's last poise. And, as Sri Aurobindo has so beautifully put it in Savitri (Book II, Canto V, p. 166).
"... if this were all and nothing more were meant,
If what now seems were the whole of what must be,
If this were not a state through which we pass
On our road from Matter to eternal Self, ...
Well might interpret our mind's limited view
Existence as an accident in Time,
Illusion or phenomenon or freak."
According to the vision of Sri Aurobindo, man's importance in the world is that he offers to it that development of consciousness
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in which its transfiguration by a perfect self-discovery becomes possible. The real sense of man's progress does not lie in a mere restatement in slightly different terms of what physical Nature has already accomplished. Nor can the ideal of human life be simply the animal repeated on a higher scale of mentality. Indeed, "Man has seen that there can be a higher status of consciousness than his own; the evolutionary oestrus is there in his parts of mind and life, the aspiration to exceed himself is delivered and articulate within him: ... In him, then, the substitution of a conscious for a subconscious evolution has become conceivable and practicable, and it may well be concluded that the aspiration, the urge, the persistent endeavour in him is a sure sign of Nature's will for a higher way to fulfilment, the emergence of a greater status." (Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 843)
And what is then that greater status? "The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the superman, the god. Or shall we not say, rather, to manifest God? For if evolution is the progressive manifestation by Nature of that which slept or worked in her, involved, it is also the overt realisation of that which she secretly is." (Sri Aurobindo, op. cit., pp. 3-4)
Elsewhere, in his book The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings (Ed. 1989, pp. 300-01), Sri Aurobindo makes the above points more specific. He writes:
"For what is supermanhood but a certain divine and harmonious absolute of all that is essential in man? He is made in God's image, but there is this difference between the divine Reality and its human representative that everything which in the one is unlimited, spontaneous, absolute, harmonious, self-possessed becomes in the other limited, relative, laboured, discordant, deformed, possessed by struggle, kept by subservience to one's possessions, lost by the transience and insecurity which come from wrong holding. But in this constant imperfection there is always a craving and an aspiration towards perfection. Man, limited, yearns to the Infinite; relative, is attracted in all things towards their absolute; artificial in nature, drives towards a higher ease, mastery and naturalness that must for ever be denied to her inconscient forces
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and half-conscient animals; full of discords, he insists upon harmony; possessed by Nature and to her enslaved, is yet convinced of his mission to possess and master her."
Sri Aurobindo continues:
"What he aspires to is the sign of what he may be. He has to pass by a sort of transmutation of the earthly metal he now is out of flawed manhood into some higher symbol. For Man is Nature's great term of transition in which she grows conscious of her aim; in him she looks up. from the animal with open eyes towards her divine ideal."
Thus Sri Aurobindo envisages human evolution to continue with unabated vigour, to continue not merely as a secondary operation confined solely to the outer existence of man but primarily as a qualitative transmutation of his consciousness, leading in the end to the appearance of a new supramental species upon earth. In reality, the earthly manifestation is ever progressive, of which the key-note is the evolution of consciousness with all that it implies; and if evolution is a fact, the present man cannot be its last term, nor can his noetic faculty, Mind, be the supreme possible instrument of knowledge although we men seem at times to think so. For man as he is at present "is too imperfect an expression of the spirit, mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation; mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being." (Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine)
What is more, even at the risk of provoking derisive laughter in some of our readers, we make bold to affirm that the evolutionary movement has very recently taken a saltus; a new principle of consciousness, a higher element has already been in operation in the arena of terrestrial manifestation, one result of which would be that "all the old formulas would be changed immediately and the whole possibility according to the old unfolding would be, one cannot say increased, but supplemented by an almost infinite number of new possibilities, and that in such a manner that all the old logic would become illogical in the presence of the new logic." (The Mother's Talk, "The Supramental Manifestation and World-Change", Mother India, December '56)
And on this hopeful note does our First Chapter close.
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It is not from below but from above, not from outside but from inside, that the new phase of human evolution will be effectively directed. It is not the prior material organisation which will shape and mould the indwelling consciousness; the order will be reversed and it is the new manifesting consciousness which will be the determinant and mould the material substance and its structure.
Surely this appears to be too presumptuous a statement to be accepted easily! — Matter is a function of Consciousness and not the other way round! But is not the whole of modern man's structure of knowledge reared up on the presupposition that Matter, after all, is the foundation? Do we then seek to knock down this very materialistic basis?
And what would be the reaction of modern Science to such epoch-making assertions? We are referring to Science, for in the present period of 'materialist denial', out of which we are just emerging, materialism has based itself almost exclusively on the authority of science; and that too to such an extent as to create the illusion that a truly scientific attitude is synonymous with the materialistic conception of Reality. But is it really so?
The Second Chapter of the present book deals with this very crucial question. There we have sought to follow the evolutionary growth of science as such through all its successive phases of development and tried to show that Physics, that most developed branch of natural science, has already outgrown the phase of materialistic bias and is at present, we venture to hope, ready enough to welcome and receive the illuminating insights offered by the Integral World-Vision of Sri Aurobindo. So far as epistemo-logical and ontological pursuits are concerned, modern science finds itself imprisoned in a blind alley and it is only in the Yoga-Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo that science can discover its true self and true mission.
Reality is eluding the grasp and probe of science in its present development. Someone has remarked that the strength of science lies in its naivety. It started on its journey with complete self-assurance, without burdening itself with metaphysical problems about reality. To it it seemed that everything in this universe could be explained in terms of matter, and is not matter something tangible and immediate?
In a sense it was good that in the beginning of its career science did not concern itself with the problem of reality; for, indeed, if
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the scientist had become too self-conscious, he might have lost all his power of forward movement, "like the famous centipede who, after too profound an analysis of his own method of locomotion, found that he could no longer walk!" (Gilbert N. Lewis, The Anatomy of Science, p. 1)
But science could not avert for good the day of reckoning. It has at last come face to face with the sphinx of reality, apparently without any chance of solving its riddle. The self-assurance is broken, its pretension to uncover the body of underlying reality is humbled, and as a result agnosticism grows. And note the irony of the situation. At the very moment when science has reached the pinnacle of its practical usefulness, the scientist is altogether disconcerted by questions of fundamental import, questions which shake the very foundations of all scientific 'knowledge'. It goes without saying that we are here talking about science as a means to acquire knowledge of the reality, and not about its practical results nor about the approximate generalisations it has arrived at, which are no doubt valid in their limited domain.
Modern science has really arrived at a cross-road. To it reality appears to be ever unknowable. Should it then give up the pursuit, essential knowledge being to it unknowable? Or, should it not take a leap into the light, undergo a qualitative metamorphosis and proceed on a path of new adventure? Here comes in Sri Aurobindo with his supreme assurance that "The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognizance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development.... Fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity." (The Live Divine, p. 13)
But it should at once be emphasised that our way of knowing must be appropriate to that which is to be known; otherwise, what we can at most hope to achieve is only a distant speculation, a figure of knowledge and not veritable knowledge. And let us hasten to add that mind of man is not capable of explaining existence in the universe. For "Mind is that which does not know, which tries to know and which never knows except as in a glass darkly.... Knowledge waits seated beyond mind and intellectual
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reasoning, throned in the luminous vast of illimitable self-vision." (Sri Aurobindo, The Live Divine, pp. 118, 121)
So we see that if we seek an integral knowledge of the integral reality, the only logical course for us is to leave behind us this smoke-covered lamp of our present faculty of knowledge and, instead, awake into a still higher region of consciousness where a supra-intellectual 'seeing' will replace "a seeking Mind".
But at this point the readers may object: Is it not an idle dream to hunt after this super-mind, for how can there be anything higher and greater than man's mind and reason?
But we should note that Sri Aurobindo is no speculative philosopher. He is not satisfied merely with painting in rainbow colours an aureate picture of the ideal. He is a supreme scientist of life who proceeds to realise the ideal in himself and then to build up an integral method for others to follow. And what is the efficacy of this recommended method called the Integral Yoga of self-transformation? Well, let us listen to Sri Aurobindo himself:
"I must remind you that I have been an intellectual myself and no stranger to doubts - both the Mother and myself have had one side of the mind as positive and as insistent on practical results and more so than any Russell can be. We could never have been contented with the shining ideas and phrases which a Rolland or another takes for gold coin of Truth. We know well what is the difference between a subjective experience and a dynamic outward-going and realising Force. So although we have faith (and who ever did anything great in the world without having faith in his mission or the Truth at work behind him?), we do not found ourselves on faith alone, but on a great ground of knowledge which we have been developing and testing all our lives. I think I can say that I have been testing day and night for years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane.... I know that the Supramental Descent is inevitable -I have faith in view of my experience that the time can be and should be now and not in a later age." (On Himself, pp. 468-9)
So we say that a positive adventure's call is now beckoning science to transcend its self-imposed present limitations and get transformed into a meta-science which will be the science of the
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New Man. As Sri Aurobindo indicates, "it must be a new science not yet developed, which deals directly with the forces of the life-world and of Mind and so arrives at what is beyond Mind: but present-day science cannot do that." (Letters on Yoga")
But the readers may ask with some irritation: What is all this talk about present-day science and future science? Science is science and it is bound to be ever the same in its intrinsic nature, and it cannot but be that science, in its very nature and methodology, must perforce be antithetical to the methods of inquiry and exploration as preconised by the mystics and the yogis: science and spirituality will always be at poles apart and as Sri Aurobindo's revelations arise out of his so-called spiritual knowledge, ipso facto their truth-validity is almost nil so far as the scientists are concerned.
But is it really so? Must science be, by its very nature, unresponsive if not positively hostile to the spiritual vision and interpretation of the world?
The Third Chapter of the present book deals with these and allied questions and purports to demonstrate that a harmonious and fruitful reconciliation between the two disciplines is not merely possible but quite natural and inevitable if only Science and Spirituality, in their extraneous and inessential fortuitous accretions, consent to shed the dead weight of their inhibitions and presumptions. As the Mother has so pertinently pointed out, anything "that keeps to its proper place and plays its appointed role is helpful, but directly it steps beyond its sphere, it becomes twisted and perverted and therefore false." (Words of the Mother, p. 52)
We have tried to show in course of the third chapter that much of the conflict between Science and Religion is solely due to this overstepping of respective spheres and is therefore devoid of any veritable raison d'être.
Thus the so-called conflict between Science and Spirituality arises from a misunderstanding of each other's position, role and field of study. And it is not so much on the positive side, on the side of vindication of one's own right to exist and grow, the conflict is more often on the negative side, - and therefore unnecessary and eliminable, - when one tries to deny the right of existence to the other. And this is nothing but an error of misdirected enthusiasm
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and the folly of the presumptuous vital in man.
The dark doom to which humanity is now apparently hurtling headlong down under the impact of its external opulence and inner penury can be averted only if there dawns in man a greater spiritual consciousness adequate to meet and master the increasing technological potentialities of existence and harmonise them. To quote Sri Aurobindo, "a greater whole-being, whole-knowledge, whole-power is needed to weld all into a greater unity of whole-life." (The Life Divine, p. 1055)
It is not expected that everybody will be a yogi or everybody a practising scientist. But in order that a few can be effectively the same for the welfare of all and for the general flowering of Science and Spirituality, it is absolutely essential that the collective mind of man accept the simultaneous necessity of both the disciplines, for the eradication of the multipronged ills of man and of his society as evolved at present, also the validity and truth of each of them in its own field of research.
Sri Aurobindo has defined the consciousness of man the mental being as "a many-sided Ignorance striving to become an all-embracing Knowledge." Yes, 'striving to become', but always failing to attain to its cherished end. But why? Because mind-consciousness, the principal instrument of knowledge for man in his presently evolved status, suffers from some basic limitations and inadequacies. Man has to develop a new and greater faculty of knowledge if he would like to reach his goal.
But whatever is this new faculty of greater and more authentic knowledge? It is Sight, in one word. 'Sight? What do you mean by Sight', the readers may wonder. Of course, it is not 'sight' understood in its ordinary sense. Yet it is no doubt sight in its essential character. As a matter of fact, there are sights and sights of different orders: there is a veritable ascension of sight as a faculty of knowledge. The Fifth Chapter of the present book, "Sight, More Sight", devotes itself to the elaboration of this thought-provoking theme and tries to show that seer-knowledge is always much more authentic than the thinking knowledge; a consciousness proceeding by 'sight' has a much greater and more direct access to the truth of things than the consciousness relying on the crutches of thoughts and concepts alone.
Thus the commanding word to the jijnāsu or the seeker after
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true knowledge on his upward journey to the Vedic 'Sun of Gnosis', has always been to replace his "seeking Mind" by the "seeing Soul" and to acquire a new cognitive status in which "sight was a flame-throw from identity." For then alone will man be made a Rishi or Kavi and no mere thinker, - a Rishi or Seer who, in the words of Sri Aurobindo, "does not need the aid of thought" as "a means of knowledge, but only as a means of representation and expression, - ... If a further extension of knowledge is required, he can come at it by new seeing without the slower thought processes..." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 803)
In his further evolutionary development, man is expected to acquire and put to greater use this ascending faculty of 'sight'. But it needs no mention that the sight of which we are speaking has nothing to do with mere physical sight. In fact, the operation of 'sight' is not confined to physical sight alone. To each plane of consciousness there corresponds a particular strand of sight. Thus, we may possess and utilise a sight in the sense-mind, an emotional sight of the heart, a conceptual sight, a psychic sight, a mental intuitive sight, a spiritualised mental sight, etc., etc.
Thus, with the progressive widening and heightening and deepening of consciousness, ever new vistas of 'light' open up before the ascending soul and every step of advance on this 'path of the Gods', devayāna, brings in a new ascension of sight, and this process continues till we reach the highest height and the greatest 'sight', parā dṛk, the all-embracing, all-relating and all-unifying vision of the supramental infinite consciousness.
Well, since the seeing knowledge, as we have ventured to state, is always more authentic, more compelling and more satisfying than a mere thinking conceptual knowledge, an ever-insistent although mostly unconscious thirst for this 'vision', dṛṣṭi, invariably creates even in man the mental thinker, the exigence of 'visualisation' in diverse domains of his intellectual activity. The Sixth Chapter of our book deals with this very interesting phenomenon.
And the next one, Chapter Seven, discusses a basic dilemma confronting man in his ascending march of consciousness. The present man is rightly proud of his power of speech and the power of his conceptual thought. But the Kena Upanishad cryptically declares that "there sight attains not, nor speech attains, nor the
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mind.... That which remains unexpressed by the word, that by which the word is expressed, know that indeed to be the Brahman." (na tatra cakṣurgacchati na vāg gacchati no memo... yad vācāna-bhyuditam yena vāg abhyudyate tadeva brahma tvam viddhi)
This is indeed the dilemma: according to the unanimous assertions made by various seers and mystics, when the direct spiritual Sight is operative in its full potency, the human tongue proves its utter inadequacy to convey the glory and opulence of the Vision; on the contrary, any attempt at mental formulation brings the consciousness headlong down with the inevitable result that the Vision and the original Experience vanish in the process!
But is the fact really so? Can there be any experience (however high and profound, mystical or spiritual that may be), which intrinsically and absolutely defies all expression? Many thinkers would vehemently deny the truth of such an assertion. For according to them, "the limits of my language are the limits of my world"; or, "there is no experience without speech"; or, again, "there is no knowledge without expression, expression is part of the knowing process".
Well, how to reconcile and heal this dichotomy of positions? For that we have to successively explore the questions:
What is the essential nature of a language? Can thought exist without the clothing of words? Does conceptual thought represent the supreme process of knowledge? Is there any possibility of having knowledge without concepts? What is the relation between logic and reality? Does ineffability imply at the same time unknowability? And is the avowal of ineffability synonymous with vague and confused awaieness? etc., etc.
Chapter Seven of our book discusses these questions and tries to show that those thinkers who fail to appreciate the yogis' position do so because of certain erroneous assumptions, e.g.,
(i)consciousness must be synonymous with mind;
(ii)mind is the only possible cognitive instrument available to man;
(iii)any valid knowledge and conceptual thought-process are inseparable one from the other;
(iv)there can be no thought without the accompanying corelate of verbal expression;
(v)anything to be accorded the status of reality must submit itself to the norms of mental logic.
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But these assumptions are simply not true. And what is more, the final test of truths... is not reason but spiritual illumination, and a single decisive spiritual experience may undo a whole edifice of reasonings and conclusions erected by the normal logical intelligence.
Also, a genuine spiritual knowledge - and we cannot but insist on this point again and again - is not to be arrived at through a ratiocinative process of thinking or by a logomachy of the logical mind. Spiritual awareness should not be confused with a very subtle and opulent conceptual thought. As Sri Aurobindo has pointed out: "Mental knowledge is not true knowledge; true knowledge is that which is based on the true sight, the sight of the Seer, of Surya, of the Kavi. Mental thought is not knowledge, it is a golden lid placed over the face of the Truth, the Sight, the divine Ideation, the Truth Consciousness. When that is removed, sight replaces mental thought, the all-embracing truth-ideation... replaces the fragmentary mental activity." (The Upanishads, Part One, p. 96)
But still the question remains: Are thought and speech intrinsically barred from becoming the vehicles of expression of the spiritual Reality? But before we can expect to receive an adequate answer to this question, we must first be clear in our mind about what we mean by 'thought' and 'speech'. For, as our Chapter Seven will show, there are thoughts and thoughts, the verbal conceptual thought being no more than a minor form of them; and there are types of 'speeches' far transcending the capabilities of our ordinary human language.
As a matter of fact, with each step of man's ascension through a graded series of spiritual planes and powers of consciousness, which can lead us through 'the domains of Other-Mind into the Beyond-Mind', we encounter a different kind of 'thought', different in potency as well as in character. But be it at once noted that even at its supreme elevation, thought will remain a secondary and derivative power at a certain remove from the corresponding spiritual knowledge.
But what about 'speech'? Has this, too, an ascending march analogous to that of 'thought'? And how far can it possibly go in its attempt at formulating the 'ineffable spiritual experience'? Is man justified in his expectation that he will be able to seize reality in its entirety through the mediation of linguistic symbols properly enriched?
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How far does the reach of man-made speech go to express all possible knowledge? And what is the status of the vocal symbols in relation to the reality they claim to embody or express? Are they mere tags, arbitrary substitutional signs, extrinsically related to the object of knowledge? Or, on the contrary, do they inviolably inhere in the reality from which they are inseparable?
For the answers to these and cognate questions, our readers are invited to go through chapter seven of the present book. For, before the New Man appears on the scene and solves these problems in his own way, we men in our actually evolved status must know where we stand.
The next three chapters (Chapters VIII, IX & X) of the book introduce the readers to the discussion of the basic problems that are confronting the man of our age. Man the individual and social being has been suffering from an all-round malaise. And the reason for this is not far to seek. Man is, after all, a transitional being: he is the end-product of animal evolution but he is at the same time the precursor to the advent of divine humanity. Evolution is on the point of entering a new phase with undreamt-of possibilities. The throes of this new creation and of the manifestation of a super-humanity are vibrant everywhere. It is now the darkest night before the emergence of the long-awaited Dawn. And as a result all the inherent problems and discords, disorders and disharmonies, lacunae and limitations of present humanity have come to the fore with the utmost acuity. Their solutions brook no delay or postponement. Earth-Mother is astir with the dream of bringing into the world the divine Child. Evolutionary oestrus is at work for a glorious earthly manifestation. Now, where does man stand at this supreme moment of earthly destiny?
The twentieth century has been called the 'Age of Human Predicament'. The man of our epoch has been suffering from an all-pervading sense of anxiety with its background of multiform frustration, maladjustment and inner disintegration.
The individual man has become an enigma to himself. He wonders what he is after all. He has been told, for example, that Matter is the basic cosmic reality and Spirit only an epiphenomenon, a self-creation of Matter in the process of its development from the simple to the more and more complex combinations of its constituent elements. He has also been told that he is purely a
mechanical being, a creature made up of automatic reflexes. The problem of free-will has been given a new twist by the assertion that man is not, after all, such a free agent as he has supposed himself to be; he never is and never can be anything except the product of economic determinism.
Modern man is confused in the medley of all these assertions but he is reluctant to accept their implications: he simply protests and protests.
He protests against that sort of logical analysis that purports to declare that he is nothing more than the agglomeration of the factors in which he can be analysed. He protests against all forms of totalitarian philosophy that threaten the dignity, independence and individual value of the human person. He voices his protest against the 'typing' of the human being by the society, against impersonal functionalisation of life.
It becomes imperative that man the multi-dimensional being should be treated integrally in all his aspects. But almost everywhere in current philosophical thinking one finds the mistake of the fallacy of reductionism, the mistake of trying to reduce to one aspect all the rest and thus offering an all-too-partial one-sided picture of man. It is no wonder, then, that modern man fails to find his heart's fulfilment in any of the prevalent philosophies. Indeed, he is haunted by a corroding lack of faith in himself, faith in his destiny and also in the destiny of the world.
Here comes Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy of Integralism, an integral philosophy of life that embraces in its synthetic sweep Man, Cosmos and the Transcendent. Sri Aurobindo's Yoga-Philosophy of Divine Humanity offers man a new hope to live by and a glorious ideal to strive after. For, it is not concerned with man in his actuality alone; it concerns itself equally, or even more, with man in his potentiality, with man as he is bound to evolve into. For, it is sure that, although at present hampered and burdened, mental man has still to evolve out of himself the fully conscious being, a divine manhood or rather a spiritual-supramental manhood which shall be the next product of earthly evolution.
Sri Aurobindo's message represents a forward-looking philosophy that wants to pull man out of the morass in which he has placed himself and spur him on to the marvellous adventure of self-discovery and self-exceeding. And it is, for that matter, no mere system of thought, it is above all a philosophy of action, a
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practical guide to integral living. Not only does this philosophy reveal to mankind the resplendent vistas of the future awaiting the probe of aspiring men; but, what is still more important and significant, it shows to anxious humanity the proper path to tread to reach this goal. And this is the theme of our Chapter Eight.
The Ninth Chapter of our book takes up for its study another aspect of man's besetting problems, the problem of human relations.
It is well recognised that ever since the dawn of human history, man has been actuated by a persistent dream of triple harmony: harmony within man himself, social harmony between man and man, and the harmony between man and the world around him. But, alas, all these three basic harmonies have come to appear as so many vain and ineffectual dreams. But why? Why does man human inexorably fail to realise his dreams?
The Ninth Chapter of the present book tries to show that the basic problems of human relations cannot be analysed apart in isolation: they have to be viewed in the wider perspective of the meaning and sense of world-existence and when done so they acquire indeed an altogether novel and significant hue. We have sought to point out how this cosmic perspective not only helps us to unravel the mystery of these problems and understand clearly their true nature and inner significance, but also reveals to us at the same time the only true and perfect procedure for their harmonious resolution.
The readers are referred to this Chapter Nine for a detailed discussion of the questions at issue, also for the way the Philosophy of divine Humanism as propounded by Sri Aurobindo seeks to solve these problems for the New Man. For has not Sri Aurobindo assured us that the destiny of man is to consciously cooperate with the secret nisus of evolution and thus to transmute his own nature and stature into the splendid harmony of a divine manhood?
But whatever may be the prospect for the future, what do we see now all around us? Earth-life appears at first sight to be a vast arena where individuals and collectivities, communities and nations, all are feverishly seeking after self-expression and self-fulfilment. But where is the guarantee that all these diverse self- affirmations
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will move in perfect harmony and mutual adaptability? Where is the assurance that the self-affirmation of the individual will not go counter to the self-affirmation of the collective being and vice versa?
Harmony, and not disharmony and discord, should be the keynote of all true living, whether individual or collective. But till this day, man's attempts at harmonisation have all miscarried and failed. He has tried his hand at a number of remedies, educational, administrative, social and religious, but the disease seems to have defied all palliatives up till now.
But the question is, why so? Why is all this clash and collision and disharmony? What is the root-cause of this ignoble failure on the part of man as a species to organise his individual and collective life on the basis of universal harmony and union? If we really want to reconstruct our society on an ideal basis, we have to touch and tackle the problem at its very root. To manipulate only on the surface without caring to go into the fundamentals of the problem - this is precisely the reason why man has till this day failed in his attempts to usher in a rule of the Spirit upon earth.
The Chapter Ten of this book analyses to its depths this particular problem of man the individual and social being, lays bare the root-causes of the failures of man's so-far attempted solutions, and then shows how, following the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, the New Man appearing on the earthly scene will tackle and solve this problem to the satisfaction of all.
Then comes our Eleventh and last chapter: "On Physical Transformation". This chapter deals with a very important question, absolutely central to the destiny of man as an earthly being.
An integral spiritual sadhana should have for its goal not merely the spiritual liberation of some isolated individuals from the shackles of phenomenal Ignorance, avidyā, but the establishment of a divine life upon earth, ihaiva. But since Matter is the foundation of all evolutionary efflorescence of life here upon the terrestrial plane, our physical body assumes a supreme importance in the total scheme of our spiritual achievement. A divine transformation even of our physical sheath, annamaya koṣa, is an indispensable concomitant of a truly divine living in the world. But in the actually realised status of consciousness of man the mental being, this transformation can by no means be achieved nor even
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initiated on the plane of the material body. For, where is the necessary lever of transformation or the potent agent to effectuate this momentous change?
And is it not a fact that even the states of spiritual consciousness attained so far by the men of the spirit in different climes and times have failed to mould the physical existence of man in the image of divinity? But, what are the basic difficulties which render this task of physical transformation almost impossible of realisation?
The readers are invited to go through our Chapter Eleven for answers to these and allied questions and then for the nature of future achievements that will be brought about by the evolutionary march of man. For, no limit need be or can be put to evolutionary possibilities. Actuality never exhausts the sum of possibilities. And, as Sri Aurobindo has so forcefully pointed out, to argue that something cannot be done because it has never yet been done is to "deny the possibility of changing things and thus of evolution, of the realisation of the unrealised, ... and reduce all to a matter of rigid and unalterable status quo, which is an insolent defiance to both fact and reason (!) and super-reason."
The Eleventh Chapter seeks to show that when we envisage the ultimate conquest of the present disabilities of man's physical existence, to be achieved through the process of an evolutionary transfiguration, we are not indulging in a child-soul's phantasy or its demands for arbitrary miracles nor are we visualising any impossible chimera that goes beyond or outside all forces of Nature. What we are envisaging is the control and conquest of the prevailing determinism of our bodily system by the higher determinism of the supernal grades and powers of our consciousness. And when Supermind, the divine Gnosis, takes charge of evolution, there is absolutely nothing impossible under the Sun:
But more there is concealed in God's Beyond That shall one day reveal its hidden face. Now mind is all and its uncertain ray, Mind is the leader of the body and life,... There are greater destinies mind cannot surmise Fixed on the summit of the evolving Path The Traveller now treads in the Ignorance, Unaware of his next step, not knowing his goal. Mind is not alt his tireless climb can reach,
There is a fire on the apex of the worlds,
There is a house of the Eternal's Light.
There is an infinite truth, an absolute power.
The spirit's mightiness shall cast off its mask;
Its greatness shall be felt shaping the world's course.
(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Bk. XI, C. 1, p. 704.)
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