A companion volume to 'The Destiny of the Body,' this explores man as a species, his past beginnings, present achievements & failures, his evolutionary future.
IX
"All problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony."
(Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 2.)
The Dream of Harmony
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 harmony between man and the world around him. But to the man of our epoch, all these three basic harmonies have come to appear as so many vain and ineffectual dreams. For, as J.W. Krutch has aptly remarked, one of the most shocking features of our age is that "man's inhumanity to man" has reached what seems almost unparallelled proportions: there has been more violence, more brutality, more cold and calculated cruelty than at any time since the end of the ages we complacently call "dark". Thus the problem of right conduct of man towards his fellow-beings has assumed a first importance in our epoch.
The same problem of disbalance and disharmony has lately shown itself in an equally acute form also in the relation between the individual and the collectivity. The maladjustment between the individual's hopes and needs and aspirations and the demands of the organised society has become so much pronounced that the representative man of the century is "constantly (and unsuccessfully) striving to reconcile tendencies towards aggression and yielding; excessive demands on others, and fears of never getting anything; fantasies of boundless power, and feelings of utter helplessness."1 Indeed, in this second half of the twentieth century, the problem of community - what it is and how it may be resolved in harmony and perfection - has become a live issue engaging the attention of philosophers and social scientists of diverse views.
1. Bernard Notcutt, The Psychology of Personality, p. 89.
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The present essay is an attempt to show how in the Yoga-Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo these basic problems of human relations are viewed in the wider perspective of the meaning and sense of world-existence and thus acquire an altogether novel and significant hue. We shall see 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 way for their harmonious resolution.
Trends at War
If we probe deep enough we shall invariably come to see that "all problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony."2 In the sphere of human relations too - whether between man and man or between the individual and collectivity - the essential problem is of harmonisation between two basic trends of man: the trend to over-accentuated individualisation, the individual's all-imperative impulse towards self-assertion and self-aggrandisement; and the trend to associate with others, the impulse towards cohesion and social solidarity, variously labelled from time to time as "gregarious instinct", "social instinct", "phylic force", "bio-social drive" and "herd instinct".
Indeed, "the whole process of Nature depends on a balancing and a constant tendency to harmony between two poles of life, the individual whom the whole or aggregate nourishes and the whole or aggregate which the individual helps to constitute. Human life forms no exception to the rule. Therefore the perfection of human life must involve the elaboration of an as yet unaccomplished harmony between these two poles of our existence, the individual and the social aggregate. The perfect society will be that which most entirely favours the perfection of the individual; the perfection of the individual will be incomplete if it does not help towards the perfect state of the social aggregate to which he belongs and eventually to that of the largest possible human aggregate, the whole of a united humanity....
"Therefore at every step humanity is confronted with various problems 'which arise not only from the difficulty of accord between the interests of the individual and those of the immediate
2. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 2.
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aggregate, the community, but between the need and interests of the smaller integralities and the growth of that larger whole which is to ensphere them all."3
Now, confronted with the difficult task of harmonisation between his individualistic trend and his drive towards socialisation, man has laid an exclusive or dominant stress sometimes on the individual, at other times on the collectivity. In the first view wherein emphasis is laid on the individual, the society is considered to exist only as a field of activity and growth for the individual; its sole function is to help the individual to satisfy his needs and interests of all sorts. In the opposite view, the individual's importance is considered to be secondary; he has to live for the society, for he is only a cell of the group, "he has no other use or purpose of birth, no other meaning of his presence in Nature, no other function."4 We may recall in this connection the rash assertion that there could be no rights for the individual, as the individual was nothing more than "a multitude of one million divided by one million." But neither of these views is altogether valid and cannot be satisfying to the human being. Of course, this alternation of stress is itself a part of the process of Nature leading to a final solution of the problem. For, as Sri Aurobindo has said: "It is a constant method of Nature, when she has two elements of a harmony to reconcile, to proceed at first by a long continued balancing in which she sometimes seems to lean entirely on one side, sometimes entirely to the other, at others to correct both excesses by a more or less successful temporary adjustment and moderating compromise. The two elements appear then as opponents necessary to each other who therefore labour to arrive at some conclusion of their strife. But as each has its egoism and that innate tendency of all things which drives them not only towards self-preservation but towards self-assertion in proportion to their available force, they seek each to arrive at a conclusion in which itself shall have the maximum part and dominate utterly if possible or even swallow up entirely the egoism of the other in its own egoism. Thus the progress towards harmony accomplishes itself by a strife of forces and seems often to be no effort towards concord or mutual adjustment at all, but rather towards a mutual devouring."5
3.Sri Aurobindo, The Ideal of Human Unity (1950 ed.), pp. 8-9.
4.Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 1047.
5.Sri Aurobindo, The Ideal of Human Unity (1950 ed.), p. 14.
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But somehow or other we have to find a perfect reconciliation between freedom and harmony, unity and diversity, growth of the individual and the development of the social being. For both the individual and the collectivity are fundamental truths of existence. And to curb the freedom of the individual for the sake of social order and stability or to inhibit the growth of the society for the sake of the self-seeking demands of the individual cannot in the nature of things offer any lasting solution. For the inner spirit of man is bound to revolt and break down again and again all compromising structures until the true basis of harmonisation is discovered in principle and applied in practice.
If we turn our gaze from the problem of community to the sphere of man's relations with other individual men, we come to witness the same tragic spectacle. Here, too, the same maladjustment and disbalance between the two basic drives of man -egoistic self-assertion and self-enlargement matched by an almost instinctive hunger for cohesion and solidarity with fellow-beings -vitiate for ever all human relations. Indeed, a separate being at odds with other separate beings - this is the normal status of the individual man; for he takes his stand on the consciousness of a separate ego and all his reactions arise out of this basic situation. All the divided strainings of individual natures, passions and strifes of separate egos, mutual ignorance and discordant notes, conflicts of minds and hearts and vital temperaments, conflicts even of separate interests: these are but natural and inevitable accompaniments of human relations.6
Such is then the inadequacy and imperfection of all actual human relations. But man cannot for ever remain satisfied with this insecure basis for his social life. But the question is: how to solve this problem of harmonisation? It is evident that an "imposed unanimity of mind and life", a mechanical organisation of the communal existence, a "rationalised piecing together" of the opposing elements or any other ingenuity of mental, vital or physical construction can never accomplish the perfect harmony. All external attempts at harmonisation are bound to fail, for they miss the true clue to the situation. It is a unifying and harmonising knowledge that can alone find the way. But this knowledge can come to us only if we care to study the true metaphysical
6. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 1029.
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significance of the two basic trends of man; and for that, again, we have to go down in thought even to the sub-atomic level of existence; for, as we shall presently see, the problem of human relations is essentially an evolutionary problem intimately linked to the very march of world-existence. In fact, man's problem is by no means an isolated or unique one: it is a significant scene in a cosmic drama, an important link in a developing whole. The two basic drives of man towards cooperation and conflict, individuali-sation and socialisation with their attendant problems of mutual adjustment are manifestations on the human plane of a dual principle that is operative throughout the whole course of inorganic, organic and biological evolution.
Thus, to understand fully the real import of these two urges, we have to place them against an evolutionary perspective; and to judge adequately the problems of human relations, we have to call in as a witness the whole panorama of life.
An Evolutionary Problem7
If we glean and integrate modern scientific findings - whether physical, biological or psychological - we cannot fail to note the striking fact that all this knowledge tends to corroborate in an astonishing way the following basic statement of Sri Aurobindo: "Unity is the very basis of existence. The oneness that is secretly at the foundation of all things, the evolving spirit in Nature is moved to realise consciously at the top; the evolution moves through diversity, from a simple to a complex oneness. Unity the race moves towards and must one day realise. But uniformity is not the law of life. Life exists by diversity; it insists that every group, every being shall be, even while one with all the rest in its universality, yet by some principle or ordered detail of variation unique."8
In fact the whole evolutionary problem turns out to be a various attempt at the harmonious equation of Unity to Diversity, Freedom to Order, Growth to Cohesion. In this connection we may recall a remarkable discovery of modern bio-sociological researches: the universal existence of a double principle of individual
7.For much of the material in this section, the writer is indebted to Professor Paul Halmos' works, especially to the very interesting book, Towards a Measure of Man.
8.Sri Aurobindo, The Ideal of Human Unity (1950 ed.), p. 296.
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growth and collective cohesion at the basis of all manifestations of life on all its levels of simple or complex organisation. On one side there is the principle of individual growth entailing self-assertion and separation from 'others', on the other is the principle of cohesion implying a basic resistance operating universally in all separation. But what is noteworthy is the fact that this resistance manifests itself not on the plane of individual growth where this growth can be permanently negatived and thus the whole life-process brought to an end, but, rather, it acts as a force seeking restitution for the separation on a higher level of organisation. Thus these two principles, through their mutual opposition and secret cooperation, continue to govern life through all its specialisation on the various levels of evolution.
And what is still more important in the discovery is the fact that in the ultimate analysis this double principle seems to be the manifestation of a basic entelechy of union which has split itself up into the mutually complementary aspects of growth and cohesion at the dawn of organic life and possibly even before that. We say 'even before that', for as a matter of fact, there is an unbroken continuity between the living and the non-living, and "if we can pursue our inquiries farther, not obliged to stop short where our immediate means of investigation fail us, we may be sure from our unvarying experience of Nature that investigations thus pursued will in the end prove to us that there is no break, no rigid line of demarcation between the earth and the metal formed in it or between the metal and the plant and, pursuing the synthesis farther, that there is none either between the elements and atoms that constitute the earth or metal and the metal or earth that they constitute. Each step of this graded existence prepares the next, holds in itself what appears in that which follows it. Life is everywhere, secret or manifest, organised or elemental, involved or evolved, but universal, all-pervading, imperishable; only its forms and organisings differ."9
Thus, as Sherington has rightly observed, "when we systematize, the animate falls unconstrainedly into series with the inanimate. The inanimate then becomes merely a special case within the more general."I0 It is not without reason that A.N. Whitehead included the atomic and molecular aggregates of physics under the
9. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 179. 10. Sherington, Man and His Nature, p. 122.
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general concept of organism: "Science is taking on a new aspect which is neither purely physical, nor purely biological. It is becoming the study of organisms. Biology is the study of the larger organisms; whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms!"11 We may recall, too, in this connection the significant statement made by W.M. Wheeler in a slightly different context: "There is something fundamentally social in living things; and closer scrutiny shows that this must be characteristic of all life, since every organism is, at least temporarily, associated with other organisms, even if only with members of the opposite sex and with its parents.... We may say, therefore, that the social is a correlate as well as an emergent of all life in the sense in which Morgan speaks of the Mind as being both a correlate and emergent of life.... Indeed, the correlations of the social - using the term in its general sense - even extend down through the non-living to the very atom with its organization of component electrons"12 (italics ours).
Now, in this uninterrupted inorganic-organic continuity, the fundamental entelechy of union manifests in various ways in the atomic constituents uniting into atoms, atoms uniting into molecules, and the aperiodic organic molecules uniting to form unicellular living beings. These are the first three levels of union in the elaboration of a cosmic evolutionary force. In the fourth level, multicellular organisms grow out of the unicellular creatures of the primeval slime, wherein the principle of cohesion tries to offset the lopsided action of the principle of individuation. For, as Paul Halmos has pointed out, "until multicellular organisms appeared mitosis (i.e. reproduction through cell-division) involved separation of the individual units of life. The evolutionary process would have come to a standstill had there not been a force powerful enough to oppose that separation and dispersion of life in spite of mitosis. No multicellular organism could have come into being without this rebellion against separation and dispersion. One of the two things had to happen: either cell-division ceased to involve separation, or a reunion of separated cells into colonies had to take place. Contemporary microbiology strongly supports the evolutionary hypothesis that both these occurred."13 Indeed, in the cellular slime moulds there is first a unicellular stage of separate,
11.A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p. 105.
12.W.M. Wheeler, Emergent Evolution and the Development of Societies.
13.Paul Halmos, Towards a Measure of Man, p. 6.
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independent cells followed by an aggregation of the single cells that cooperate in the development of one unified structure. "This unusual life cycle is useful in underlying the fact that the borderline between the development of one organism and the association and interaction of numerous organisms is indeed thin, for the slime moulds appear to be doing both. If we examine other lower forms we are repeatedly confronted with the problem of individuality, for there appears to be a continuous gradation from the single-celled individuals through colonies of varying degrees of integration, and finally to multicellular individuals. The problem again arises in animal societies which Emerson"14 calls 'superorganisms', and in plants it arises in the compound filamentous forms such as the fleshy fungi"15 (italics ours).
In the fifth level of union, the level of macro-organisms and metazoa, the cohesion is sought on a still higher level that may be described as social. For, in the very nature of the circumstances prevailing, the macro-organisms cannot remain in, or enter into, the inseparable organic bonds accepted by cell-colonies, for instance. Because plants need food and air and animals must move, macro-organisms could not survive in such bonds. Hence arises the well-known phenomenon of universal sociality in all higher organisms. But here, too, subsists the dualism of cooperation-competition. Thus although "...love and sociality, cooperation and sacrifice [are] the highest expression of the central evolutionary process of the natural world",16 this too cannot be denied that "competition and survival of the fittest are never wholly eliminated, but reappear on each new plane to work out the predominance of the higher, i.e. more integrated and associated type, the phalanx being victorious till in turn it meets the legion."17
At last we arrive at the sixth level of union, the level of man, typifying the emergence of conscious mind in evolution. Viewed in the background of phylogenesis discussed above, the so-called social instinct of man appears to be no more than the manifestation of "a perennial and universal principle of union that works on the human level under the double guise of a Principium Sociale
14.See chapter in Structure et physiologie des sociétés animales (CNRS, Paris), 1952.
15.J .T. Bonner, The Evolution of Development (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1958).
16.& 17. Geddes and Thomson, The Evolution of Sex, pp. 329-330.
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and a Principium Individuationis."18 But the problem of harmoni-sation has also become more difficult in the case of self-aware man. Already in the case of other metazoa, the fulfilment of the principle of cohesion was made impossible on a purely biological plane. For that the social consciousness had to be created in order to counterbalance the principle of individual growth in isolation. But although this social platform of cohesion might have operated adequately on the animal level, the self-awareness of man the mental being has prevented him from having a spontaneous sociability and a spontaneous cohesion with his fellow-men, thus making the problem of adjustment infinitely more difficult in his case. As a matter of fact, as some social scientists have come to realise, the evolutionary process has not yet reached a stage where it is apparent how cohesion on the level of man should be realized. Most of what is abnormal in the human adjustment process is so on account of the lack of a proper harmonisation. Indeed "abnormality spells either over-socialization or over-individualization. The supremacy of either is a sham supremacy, for a man who is hypersocial without the complementary individuality of a corresponding power of uniqueness and autarchy is not socializing a genuine person but merely goes through the motions of 'communion' whereas the man who strives for an alien uniqueness of individuality without sustaining it by the life-blood of fellowship individuates not a person but a thing."19 For, to quote Werner Wolff, "when an individual identifies himself to an extreme degree with a group, the effect is that he loses his value. On the other hand, a complete inability to identify has the effect that the environment loses its value for the individual. In both cases the dynamic relationship between individual and environment is distorted."20
Such is then the predicament of modern man viewed in the background of the whole panorama of life - a maladjusted being seeking desperately but missing always a true and harmonious adjustment with his fellow-men and with the society he lives in. But what is the fundamental meaning of the dual principle discussed above or its significance in the life of man? In fact, what is the ultimate entelechy that is being worked out in the progressive
18.Paul Halmos. op. cti.
19.Paul Halmos, op. dr., p. 84.
20.Werner Wolff, The Threshold of the Abnormal, pp. 131-132.
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elaboration of life with man as the latest, but by no means the last, product of evolution?
The man of science is silent here; for basing his findings on outward and visible aspects alone, he can never expect to unravel the true mystery of things. In fact, as Prof. Bernal has pointed out, "the ultimate entelechy of aggregation... remains metaphysical"21 and in the view of Paul Halmos, "the nature of the ultimate entelechy is such as to be beyond the scope of all our experience, past, present, and probably future."
But the clue to the mystery we must have if we would solve the problems of human relations. Otherwise we, in our philosophical, psychological or sociological researches, may go on for ever groping and probing in blinded darkness but never reaching the true solution. In order to fix rightly the meaning of man's individual existence and the perfect aim and norm of his society, indeed in order to have a radical solution of all human ills, what is imperatively needed at the moment is a dynamic philosophy of Integral Humanism and to whom else can we turn for this message of fulfilment and practical guidance, if not to Sri Aurobindo, the great Prophet of Divine Humanity?
Meaning of World-Existence
The Yoga-Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo arises out of an integral vision of the Integral Reality. It embodies not merely a well-reasoned structure of thought, but, above all, the fundamental truths of existence.
In Sri Aurobindo's vision of Integral Reality, the meaning and sense of our world-existence and the significance of the advent of man therein have to be sought in an evolutionary interpretation of the terrestrial existence. But this evolution is primarily and essentially an evolution of consciousness, the form-evolution discovered by modern science being no more than a subsidiary process meant to support the former with a progressively developing "exterior metre mould of form which is devised to sustain in matter the rising intonations of the spiritual harmony."22
In Sri Aurobindo's view, "an involution of the Divine Existence, the spiritual Reality, in the apparent inconscience of Matter
21.Bernal, The Physical Basis of Life.
22.Sri Aurobindo, The Problem of Rebirth (1969 ed.), p. 75.
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is the starting-point of the evolution. But that Reality is in its nature an eternal Existence, Consciousness, Delight of Existence: the evolution must then be an emergence of this Existence, Consciousness, Delight of Existence, not at first in its essence or totality but in evolutionary forms that express or disguise it. Out of the Inconscient, Existence appears in a first evolutionary form as substance of Matter created by an inconscient Energy. Consciousness, involved and non-apparent in Matter, first emerges in the disguise of vital vibrations, animate but subconscient; then, in imperfect formulations of a conscient life, it strives towards self-finding through successive forms of that material substance, forms more and more adapted to its own completer expression. Consciousness in life, throwing off the primal insensibility of a material inanimation and nescience, labours to find itself more and more entirely in the ignorance which is its first inevitable formulation; but it achieves at first only a primary mental perception and a vital awareness of self and things, a life perception which in its first forms depends on an internal sensation responsive to the contacts of other life and of Matter. Consciousness labours to manifest as best it can through the inadequacy of sensation its own inherent delight of being; but it can only formulate a partial pain and pleasure. In man the energising Consciousness appears as Mind more clearly aware of itself and things; this is still a partial and limited, not an integral power of itself, but a first conceptive potentiality and promise of integral emergence is visible. That integral emergence is the goal of evolving Nature."23
The self-effectuation of the Spirit in the world, its "great and long self-weaving in time", is then the secret of the process of evolution. But what is the essential purpose behind this colossal evolutionary movement? In Sri Aurobindo's vision, if Brahman has entered form, it can only be to enjoy self-manifestation in the "figures of the relative and phenomenal consciousness". And the "purpose for which all this exclusive concentration we call the Ignorance is necessary is to trace the cycle of self-oblivion and self-discovery for the joy of which the Ignorance is assumed in Nature by the secret spirit.... It is to find himself in the apparent opposites of his being and his nature that Sachchidananda descends into the material Nescience and puts on its phenomenal ignorance as a
23. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pp. 683-84.
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superficial mask in which he hides himself from his own conscious energy, leaving it self-forgetful and absorbed in its works and forms. It is in those forms that the slowly awaking soul has to accept the phenomenal action of an ignorance which is really knowledge awaking progressively out of the original nescience, and it is in the new conditions created by these workings that it has to rediscover itself and divinely transform by that light the life which is thus labouring to fulfil the purpose of its descent into the Inconscience.... To find and embody the All-Delight in an intense summary of its manifoldness, to achieve a possibility of the infinite Existence which could not be achieved in other conditions, to create out of Matter a temple of the Divinity would seem to be the task imposed on the spirit born into the material universe."24
Now in the very nature of this world-play of Sachchidananda, the evolutionary ascent has to proceed through the mutual cooperation of the double terms: the universal and the individual. For they are the two essential terms into which the Absolute has descended in manifestation and always indeed they exist for each other and profit by each other. For "universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which tan neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning. Therefore it creates in itself a self-conscious concentration of the All through which it can aspire. In the conscious individual Prakriti turns back to perceive Purusha, World seeks after Self; God having entirely become Nature, Nature seeks to become progressively God.
"On the other hand it is by means of the universe that the individual is impelled to realise himself. Not only is it his foundation, his means, his field, the stuff of the divine Work; but also, since the concentration of the universal Life which he is takes place within limits and is not like the intensive unity of Brahman free from all conception of bound and term, he must necessarily universalise and impersonalise himself in order to manifest the divine All which is his reality. Yet is he called upon to preserve, even when he most extends himself in universality of consciousness,
24. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pp. 591-92.
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a mysterious transcendent something of which his sense of personality gives him an obscure and egoistic representation. Otherwise he has missed his goal, the problem set to him has not been solved, the divine work for which he accepted birth has not been done."25
Now if we look at the problem of human relations from this perspective of progressive revelation of Sachchidananda here in this mould of matter, we cannot fail to note that it is nothing but the transposition on the human level of a secret but profound dual urge that is the very constitutive basis of the whole movement. For, whatever comes into form and creation, being in its essence nothing else but the supreme Brahman who is the one without second, is always spurred by the secret Sachchidananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss) that is its true Self to realise at once its all embracing unity and infinite omnipotence. But these two urges cannot be simultaneously satisfied on the basis of a fragmented consciousness. For the absolute completeness is not feasible in the finite ego-bound individual consciousness concentrated within the limits of the individual formation, because it is alien to the self-conception of the finite. Indeed "though Life is Power and the growth of the individual life means the growth of the individual Power, still the mere fact of its being a divided individualised life and force prevents it from really becoming master of its world. For that would mean to be master of the All-Force."26 But this too is a permanent undeniable fact of existence that "a physical, vital, moral, mental increase by a more and more all-embracing experience, a more and more all-embracing possession, absorption, assimilation, enjoyment is the inevitable, fundamental, ineradicable impulse of Existence, once divided and individualised, yet ever secretly conscious of its all-embracing, all-possessing infinity. The impulse to realise that secret consciousness is the spur of the cosmic Divine, the lust of the embodied Self within every individual creature; and it is inevitable, just, salutary that it should seek to realise it first in the terms of life by an increasing growth and expansion."27
As a matter of fact, the individual's two urges to strive for infinite self-possession and possession of the world and to seek an
25.The Life Divine, pp. 45-46.
26.Ibid., p. 191.
27.Ibid., p. 194.
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integral unity with others in a growing movement of self-giving are the two poles of this unique truth of existence: "the inalienable all-possessing and self-possessing unity of the Divine." But in the middle terms of evolution, because of the intervention and interference of the self-limiting factor of ego, these two urges cannot be simultaneously satisfied in their infinite extent. Their true solution can be found only when the evolutionary process will arrive at its supreme and glorious end and Sachchidananda will stand revealed in its infinite splendour and bliss even in this manifested existence. But till then the problem of harmonisation is bound to exist always and at every step of the ascent of life, and the progressive elaboration of life is nothing else but. an attempt to seek this reconciliation in a more and more luminous way until the final unitary harmony is securely established. But that harmony lies even beyond the reaches of Mind and so man has to progress farther if he would solve his problems of relations. Let us now look at the various attempts at this harmonisation made by Life in different phases of its evolutionary ascent.
The Ascent of Life28
In existence, unity is "the master principle of which division is only a subordinate term, and to the principle of unity every divided form must therefore subordinate itself in one fashion or another by mechanical necessity, by compulsion, by assent or inducement." Thus "the atom, as it is the first aggregate," is also made by Nature "the first basis of aggregate unities" in the first material status of Life.
"When Life reaches its second status, that which we recognise as vitality, the contrary phenomenon takes the lead and the physical basis of the vital ego is obliged to consent to dissolution. Its constituents are broken up so that the elements of one life can be used to enter into the elemental formation of other lives."
"We have then two principles in Life, the necessity or the will of the separate ego to survive in its distinctness and guard its identity and the compulsion imposed upon it by Nature to fuse itself with others. In the physical world she lays much stress on the former impulse; for she needs to create stable separate forms, since it is
28. Adapted from chaps. XIX-XXII of The Life Divine.
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her first and really her most difficult problem to create and maintain any such thing as a separative survival of individuality and a stable form for it in the incessant flux and motion of Energy and in the unity of the infinite.... But as soon as Nature has secured a sufficient firmness in this respect for the safe conduct of her ulterior operations, she reverses the process; the individual form perishes and the aggregate life profits by the elements of the form that is thus dissolved. This, however, cannot be the last stage; that can only be reached when the two principles are harmonised, when the individual is able to persist in the consciousness of his individuality and yet fuse himself with others without disturbance of preservating equilibrium and interruption of survival."
"The terms of the problem presuppose the full emergence of Mind; for in vitality without conscious mind there can be no equation.... The mental being expressive of soul-consciousness is the nodus of the persistent individual and the persistent aggregate life; in him their union and harmony become possible." "This mental status of life is a condition in which we rise progressively beyond the struggle for life by mutual devouring and the survival of the fittest by that struggle; for there is more and more a survival by mutual help and a self-perfectioning by mutual adaptation, interchange and fusion."
Indeed, in its life-origin, the law of association and "the law of love is the impulse to realise and fulfil oneself in others and by others, to be enriched by enriching, to possess and be possessed because without being possessed one does not possess oneself utterly." Ultimately all problems of life are problems of relations between self and not-self, and these problems can never be adequately solved unless and until one comes to experience the not-self as one's own self. And this is, in essence, what the evolutionary ascent of life is seeking to realise here upon earth: a simultaneous mutual possession of the self and the not-self.
"All the difficult effort of man towards the harmonisation of self-affirmation and freedom, by which he possesses himself, with association and love, fraternity, comradeship, in which he gives himself to others, his ideals of harmonious equilibrium, justice, mutuality, equality by which he creates a balance of the two opposites, are really an attempt inevitably predetermined in its lines to solve the original problem of Nature, the very problem of
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Life itself, by the resolution of the conflict between the two opposites which present themselves in the very foundations of Life in Matter" (italics ours). The resolution is attempted by the higher principle of Mind, but Mind in its nature being a separative consciousness cannot solve this problem within its own borders, and the harmony has to be sought in a Power still beyond Mind. "Indeed, the end of the road, the goal itself can only be reached by Mind passing beyond itself into that which is beyond Mind, since of That the Mind is only an inferior term and an instrument, first for descent into form and individuality and secondly for reascen-sion into that reality which the form embodies and the individuality represents. Therefore the perfect solution of the problem of Life is not likely to be realised by association, interchange and accommodations of love alone or through the law of the Mind and the heart alone. It must come by a fourth status of life in which the eternal unity of the many is realised through the spirit, and conscious foundation of all the operations of life is laid no longer in the divisions of body, nor in the passions and hungers of the vitality, nor in the groupings and the imperfect harmonies of the mind, nor in a combination of all these, but in the unity and freedom of the Spirit."
When we look at the problem of human relations - whether between individual and individual or between individual and aggregate - we thus come to see that in order to solve them integrally "we must arrive at a conscious unity with our fellow-beings and not merely at the sympathy created by love or the understanding created by mental knowledge, which will always be the knowledge of their superficial existence and therefore imperfect in itself and subject to denial and frustration by the uprush of the unknown and unmastered from the subconscient or the subliminal in them and us. But this conscious oneness can only be established by entering into that in which we are one with them, the universal, and the fullness of the universal exists consciously only in that which is superconscient to us, in the Supermind.... The lower conscious nature is bound down to ego in all its activities, chained triply to the stake of differentiated individuality. The Supermind alone commands unity in diversity." Therefore the emergence of the Supermind in the terrestrial manifestation as the next phase of evolution can alone solve the problems of human relations.
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The Message of Divine Humanism
We thus come to the inevitable conclusion that the true solution for the problem of harmony can intervene and human relations can be based on a secure and perfect basis, only if we transfer the roots of our relations from the mind, life and body to a greater consciousness above the mind. All relations must be founded on a spiritual intimacy, created in and around the Divine. "The solution lies not in the reason but in the soul of man, in its spiritual tendencies. It is a spiritual, an inner freedom that can alone create a perfect human order. It is a spiritual, a greater than the rational enlightenment that can alone illumine the vital nature of man and impose harmony on its self-seekings, antagonisms and discords. A deeper brotherhood, a yet unfounded law of love is the only sure foundation possible for a perfect social evolution, no other can replace it. But this brotherhood and love will not proceed by the vital instincts or the reason.... Nor will it found itself in the natural heart of man where there are plenty of other passions to combat it. It is in the soul that it must find its roots."29
Only when the individual discovers his secret Self which is at the same time the Self of all, when he sees the Divine not only in himself but in all others, can true unity between man and man be realised on earth. "For so only can egoism disappear and the true individualism of the unique godhead in each man found itself on the true communism of the equal godhead in the race; for the Spirit, the inmost Self, the universal Godhead in every being is that whose very nature of diverse oneness it is to realise the perfection of its individual life and nature in the existence of all, in the universal life and nature."30
But does this not seem to be a solution that appears too remote, too chimerical and thus puts, off the consummation of a better human society to a far-off date in the future evolution of the race? For it means that an inner change is needed in the very basis of human nature, a change apparently too difficult to be effected or even attempted except by the rare few. But, if Sri Aurobindo's evolutionary interpretation of world-existence is correct, and if the total emergence of Sachchidananda in manifested nature is the ultimate goal of this evolution, then Nānyaḥ panthā vidyate
29 & 30. Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, pp. 206-07.
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ayanāya." "In any case, if this is not the solution, then there is no solution, if this is not the way, then there is no way for the human kind. Then the terrestrial evolution must pass beyond man as it has passed beyond the animal and a greater race must come that will be capable of the spiritual change, a form of life must be born that is nearer to the divine."32
But man need not be pessimistic about his fate. For, as Sri Aurobindo assures us, the destiny of man is to consciously cooperate with the secret nisus of evolution and thus to transmute his own texture and stature into the splendid harmony of a divine manhood.
Such is then the glorious message of divine humanism that Sri Aurobindo offers to modern man perplexed and frustrated with manifold ills of human relations. But Sri Aurobindo is not content only with offering this message, for he is not a mere philosopher in the Western sense of the term: he is, above all, the Mahayogi, the supreme Architect of this great divine birth whose advent he has heralded in no uncertain terms in his own personal life. In fact, he has built up a new system of Yoga, the Supramental Yoga, and chalked out ways and means by following which every individual man of our age can realise in his own life and in his communal living the marvellous possibilities that already lie latent in him, - of course, if he chooses to do so and prepares to pay the necessary price in patience, perseverance, but, above all, in sincerity.
31."There is no other way to the goal".
32.Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, p. 207.
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