From Man Human to Man Divine

X

Man, the Individual and Social Being

(The Malady and its Cure)

"A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white Love

Caught all into a sole immense embrace;

Existence found its truth on Oneness' breast

And each became the self and space of all.

The great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul,

To feel was a flame-discovery of God,

All mind was a single harp of many strings,

All life a song of many meeting lives;

For worlds were many, but the Self was one."

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book III, Canto III, p. 323)

Earth-life appears to us to be a vast arena where individuals and collectivities, communities and nations, all are seeking after self-expression and self-fulfilment. Self-possession, self-affirmation and self-expansion constitute the threefold urge of all living beings.

But where is the guarantee that all these diverse self-affirmations 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?

Rather, one meets the contrary phenomenon all around. We notice clash, discord and disharmony reigning supreme everywhere. Individuals clashing with individuals, communities colliding with communities, nations warring against nations - this is the normal spectacle hailing our eyes.

But certainly this cannot be the ideal way of living. Harmony, and not disharmony and discord, should be the keynote of all 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, but the disease seems to have defied all palliatives up till now.

In spite of his great and elaborate material civilisation man

Page 219

has not travelled a whit towards true unity with his fellow-beings. Essentially in his nature he has remained the same uncultured aboriginal lurking stealthily in darkness to prey upon others in order to grow in his own stature. Self-aggrandisement at the expense of all others, this principle still holds its sway over the nature of man. Even in the limited field of his own personal life he has not succeeded in establishing inner concord and harmony.

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 to organise his individual and collective life on the basis of harmony and union? If we really want to construct 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.

Man has persistently dreamt of a perfected life upon earth, but a life attaining perfection must embrace at the same time three distinct perfections: (i) a total self-finding and self-fulfilment of the individual in himself, (ii) an integral flowering of the collective being and (iii) the perfectly harmonious mutual relation between individual and individual, between society and society, and between individual and society. These three perfections are in no way incompatible with one another, rather they constitute one harmonious whole and are the natural corollaries of one single attainment. We shall try to see, in the course of our essay, what that single attainment is. But before that let us examine whether these perfections are feasible, so long as man remains what he is now.

At present man the individual conceives of himself as a separative ego, separated fom others, separated even from his own true and permanent self. As a result, he does not know in what consists his true fulfilment. Groping blindly in the world, he is tossed hither and thither by the impact of world-forces. Vain of his freewill, he is merely a tool in the hands of cosmic energies. His nature is too complex for him to grapple with it. In his apparent manifestation he seems to himself to be a multiperson. He has in him a physical being, a life-being, a mental being, all apparently seeking for their separate fulfilment. He is actuated by numberless forces, each of

Page 220

them straining after its separate satisfaction. The individual feels himself lost in the medley of impulsions. To strike an accord between all these divergent pulls is a task too difficult for his mind to execute. As a result, he suffers from a constant sense of confusion, frustration and friction, and an inner disharmony and disequilibrium.

Throughout his long history man has tried in diverse ways to solve this insistent problem. The best of all his attempts so far has been to try to govern his life with the enlightened reason. But life is not entirely rational, and human vital nature and ego are too strong to be subordinated by the mental reason.

And this is not all. Our surface existence is not the whole of our existence. It is only the summit of an iceberg the major portion of which remains submerged in a vast and obscure subconscient, and thus hidden from the outward view of man. This subconscient is the field of all sorts of blind powerful impulses which surge up now and then to the surface and smash to pieces everything bright and golden erected there in the course of long labour and preparation. So long as this subconscient part of man's nature remains un-tackled and untransformed, the individual cannot be made perfect and remoulded 'in the image of God.'

The second perfection, perfection of the collective being, remains on its part short of attainment, so long as the individuals constituting it remain imperfect themselves. For the collective being has to formulate and express itself through the individuals in order to become conscious, and the community cannot be expected to be perfect except through the perfection of the individuals.

Let us now analyse the possibility or otherwise of the third perfection: harmonious mutual relation between individual and individual and between individual and society. This too is bound to remain an unrealisable chimera until and unless man transcends his present ego-centric nature. For ego means separation, division and fragmentation. The consciousness, knowledge and will of the egoistic individual remain divorced from the consciousness, knowledge and will of all other individuals, and as a result the minds, hearts, lives of the constituting individuals in a human society cannot be perfectly and harmoniously accommodated. Ego misses the truth of the whole and tries to assert itself for the sake of its separate advantage. Consequently life-discord, conflict and disharmony are bound to arise. No amount of political, social or other

Page 221

mechanical panaceas can solve this problem. The most drastic changes attempted by them will come to naught; for the root-canker of all ills, the ego, is left unscathed. The individual continues still to be governed by vital desires and passions and moved by all sorts of ignorant forces.

Being thus baffled in his efforts to square accounts between his own individual self-affirmation and the self-affirmation of the collective being, man has tried in desperation to cling to one of two extreme views. In one of these views, he has over-emphasised the so-called self-fulfilment of the individual. But if by individual self-fulfilment is meant the satisfaction of one's seperative ego, then disunity and discord are sure to crop up. Being spiritually ignorant and unaware of the truth of other individuals, the individual is bound to be anarchic and wound others' interests in order to aggrandise his own blinded ego. Thus he will destroy altogether the very foundation of a successful collective living.

In the other extreme view, the society has been made all in all, the communal ego has been elevated to the status of an uncompromising master at whose altar the individual is forced to immolate himself. But in this way, neither the individual nor the society stands to gain. For the collective consciousness is always less evolved than the consciousness of the best individuals forming it, and the collective being can progress and move onward only through the enlightened consciousness of its individuals. So, if the society tries to crush the individual, it does so only at the risk of the drying up of its own hidden springs of action. It becomes mechanised and all further evolutionary possibility recedes from it.

In fact, we have to seek the solution elsewhere. For we have seen that the malady of the individual is that he has not found his true soul, his divine individuality. Before any attempt at truly perfected living can be taken in hand, the ego has perforce to be dethroned from its present elevated pedestal. But it may be argued that if the ego is abolished, man will lose his individuality à même coup.

But precisely this is an erroneous way of looking at the reality. For the ego is not the individual. The true individuality of man lies in his psychic being, his spiritual individuality, which is preparing through his evolution to emerge in him: its emergence and integral self-manifestation and not the satisfaction of the mere egoistic will-to-live is the true object of individual living.

Page 222

But since the evolution is progressive, the true person does not at once show himself in the outward nature of the individual. He is now, as it were, the constitutional monarch, and his false deputy, the ego, is governing the nature of man. But the first preoccupation of man should be to discover this secret person and dwell in his consciousness.

But this is not enough. For, ordinarily, spirituality liberates and illumines the inner ranges of the being. But so long as it has to work through the instrumentality of mind, it loses its effectivity and can only influence the outer earth-life but not bring about any radical transformation of life. In order to transform radically a nature created by Ignorance, a higher instrumental dynamis than Mind is absolutely needed. This superior dynamis with perfect effective power has been called by Sri Aurobindo the Supermind. This is a higher Power of the Spirit, which is bound to appear overtly in earth-nature in the inexorable march of evolution. For the terrestrial evolution is essentially an evolution of Consciousness-Force and the oestrus of evolution has by no means stopped with the emergence of man, the mental animal. Life emerged in Matter; Mind has followed Life. But Mind is not the highest possible Power of the Spirit and in the inevitability of things Supermind, the supremely dynamic Gnosis, is bound to emerge in terrestrial evolution and become in time the principal instrumentation of divine manifestation here upon earth.

But wherein lies the essential difference between the nature of Mind as we know it and the nature of Supermind? To put it in brief, mental nature is based on a consciousness of the finite, whereas supramental nature is a consciousness and power of the Infinite. Mind thinks, sees, feels, senses with division and separation as its starting-point, also as its most dominant trait; but Supermind, whose very nature is Truth-Consciousness, bases itself intrinsically and always on the standpoint of essential and inalienable oneness and regards everything, even the most diverse and apparently the most glaring multiplicity and diversity in the light of this oneness. Its will, ideas, feelings, sense are all made of the stuff of oneness and its dynamic action invariably proceeds upon that secure basis.

Supermind being a unitarian, integralising and harmonic consciousness, the supramental being, in contrast with the present mental being, will succeed in founding all his living, whether

Page 223

individual or collective, on an innate sense and effective realisation of harmonic unity in his own inner and outer life or group life. All other beings would be to him his own selves. He will realise himself to be a soul of the All-Soul, "a centre of differentiation of the one personal Consciousness, a centre of determination of the one total movement". The individual will then know that he is not only himself but also all others, that the total universal movement is one and indivisible and he who is presiding over this cosmic Manifestation is also One and indivisible. To quote from Sri Aurobindo:

"The supramental being in his cosmic consciousness seeing and feeling all as himself would act in that sense; he would act in a universal awareness and a harmony of his individual self with the total self, of his individual will with the total will, of his individual action with the total action.... His cosmic individuality would know the cosmic forces and their movement and their significance as part of himself, and the truth-consciousness in him would see the right relation at each step and find the dynamic right expression of that relation."¹

Unity, mutuality and harmony will thus be the law of a common collective life. But for that it need not be feared that the group life will be just a white monotone excluding from itself all the manifold richness of a polychrome diversity. Indeed, there will be infinite variation in the manifestation of the individuals constituting a gnostic society; but since each one will be aware of the total truth of things and beings and of their inner self which is also the self of all, this diversity will never clash with the inherent unity of the movement. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

"A supramental or gnostic race of beings would not be a race made according to a single type, moulded in a single fixed pattern; for the law of the supermind is unity fulfilled in diversity, and therefore there would be an infinite diversity in the manifestation of the gnostic consciousness although that consciousness would still be one in its basis, in its constitution, in its all-revealing and all-uniting order."²

Thus all problems of living, individual and collective, will then be definitively solved. And we conclude that three movements are necessary for remedying the ills of human life. Firstly, each individual has to awake to his now secret spiritual individuality and

1.Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 974.

2.Ibid., p. 971.

Page 224

make it the centre of his living; secondly, he has to open himself fully to the riches of the Spirit above; thirdly, he has to invoke the Supramental Gnosis so that it can come down and transform his nature in its absolute entirety. For Supermind alone has got the requisite power to change human nature down to the subconscient and the inconscient.

But this may sound like a solution ideal but unrealisable. For none of these movements is easy to undertake and fulfil - so it seems at least - even for the rare individuals; so, how can we reasonably expect that the collectivity will either take to or persevere in this attempt?

But the eye of spiritual vision holds out the hope, nay, the assurance that man has reached a crucial point in his evolutionary march, where Supramental Gnosis is in the foreseeable future going to emerge overtly in the earth-nature. The evolutionary nisus is still working and just as it has brought out successively Life and Mind out of the apparently inconscient shell of Matter, so also it is going to release the involved Supermind in the not too distant future. The Supermind from above is not only ready to descend; it has, in fact, already descended into earth-nature. It is now actively at work there and, as a preparatory measure, it is trying to fully awaken a few individuals to the divine possibility upon earth itself and convert their mind, life and body into perfect receptacles and vehicles of manifestation of the Truth-Consciousness. And once this is effected, once the Supramental Power fully takes its stand and gets organised in the nature of a few individuals, it will become operative in the collective life also. And like some dissolving corrosive acid, it will then cut its way through the obstinate obstacles and dark resistances of the present nature of Ignorance and establish its divine reign here upon this earth. And in that divine event lies man's true fulfilment as an individual and as a race. Nānyo panthā vidyate ayanāya.

But a nagging question may haunt us at this point: Will man's physical existence too share in the glory of the divine life upon earth? Will the body of man be ever able to liberate itself from all the present frailties and limitations? In which way will the New Man's body, in its form and functioning, be different and distinguished from the present physical body of man?

Our last chapter seeks to furnish answers to these questions.

Page 225