Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny

A Utopian Dream?

We have put forward in the preceding Section the idea that in order to fulfil its destiny, the destiny of erecting an ideal collective life wherein will live perfect spiritual individuals, a significant number of Ashramites should seriously endeavour to grow within and live from within, know their real selves and build up their relationships with their comrades on the basis of the inner unity of consciousness.

But this is a solution to which it may be objected that it puts off the consummation of an ideal human grouping to a remote future; for it presupposes that no machinery invented by man's reason can perfect either the individual or the collective man. And who will deny that the inner change needed in human nature to achieve this goal of dual perfection is something too difficult to be ever achieved except by a microscopic minority?

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But, whether we agree with this misgiving or not, the indubitable fact remains that "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..." (The Human Cycle, p. 207)

Sri Aurobindo has elaborated this point in The Life Divine. A portion of what he has said there is worth quoting here:

"At first sight this insistence on a radical change of nature might seem to put off all the hope of humanity to a distant evolutionary future; for the transcendence of our normal human nature, a transcendence of our mental, vital and physical being, has the appearance of an endeavour too high and difficult and at present, for man as he is, impossible. Even if it were so, it would still remain the sole possibility for the transmutation of life; for to hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition; it is to ask for something unnatural and unreal, an impossible miracle." (The Life Divine, p. 1059)

But to grow within and live from within, is it really too difficult a task for the awakened section of humanity, for those who have deliberately chosen to form a part of this Ashram in order to realise the Goal given them by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? Are earth-conditions not yet propitious for the fulfilment of that task? Sri Aurobindo assures us that these doubts are ill-founded. The time has come to disprove all these forebodings and realise the goal in actual practice. Let us recall in this connection a passage from The Life Divine which makes the issue in all its aspects absolutely and unambiguously clear:

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"What is demanded by this change [of human nature] is not something altogether distant, alien to our existence and radically impossible; for what has to be developed is there in our being and not something outside it: what evolutionary Nature presses for, is an awakening to the knowledge of self, the discovery of the self, the manifestation of the self and spirit within us and the release of its self-knowledge, its self-power, its native self-instrumentation. It is, besides, a step for which the whole of evolution has been a preparation and which is brought closer at each crisis of human destiny when the mental and vital evolution of the being touches a point where intellect and vital force reach some acme of tension and there is a need either for them to collapse, to sink back into a torpor of defeat or a repose of unprogressive quiescence or to rend their way through the veil against which they are straining." (The Life Divine, pp. 1055-60)

Sri Aurobindo assures us further that the evolutionary movement of man has indeed reached a critical point when a serious attempt can be made to effectuate a radical change of present human nature and with it to usher in unity, mutuality and harmony in man's collective living. Let us listen to him:

"...if an evolution of being is the law, then what we are seeking for is not only possible but part of the eventual necessity of things. It is our spiritual destiny to manifest and become that Supernature, - for it is the nature of our true self, our still occult, because unevolved, whole being. A nature of unity will then bring inevitably its life-result of unity, mutuality, harmony. An inner life awakened to a full consciousness and to a full power of consciousness will bear its inevitable fruit in all who have it, self-knowledge, a perfected existence, the joy of a satisfied being, the happiness

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of a fulfilled nature." (The Life Divine, p. 1036)

And we venture to hope that this glorious destiny of man is not something belonging to an indeterminately far future of humanity: it can be realised in the foreseeable future. For, Sri Aurobindo has assured us, Nature is ready and has taken the evolutionary decision and along with it, according to the Mother's declaration, the supramental Truth-Consciousness - the complete power of the Spirit -has descended into the earth-atmosphere and is very much active there. As a result all the difficulties encountered on the Path will be progressively overcome and a first evolutionary formation of an ideal group life will be a reality.

And can we not expect that the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, the joint creation of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, will have the unique privilege of enshrining such a formation? Are we too timid to hope for that? Have we become too cynical to enthusiastically participate in that effort?

But mere idealism or a pious wish will not deliver the goods. For that what is necessary is that there should be a turn in the Ashramites felt by some or many towards "the vision of this [inner] change, a feeling of its imperative need, the sense of its possibility, the will to make it possible in themselves and to find the way." (The Life Divine, p. 1060)

And if these psychological factors are found in the Ashramites, our dream of building a perfect collective life made up of spiritually active individuals will prove neither Utopian nor chimerical.

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