The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 5

VII

MAN AND SUPERMAN

When we speak of the superman we refer to a new race—almost a new species—that will appear on earth as the inevitable result of Nature's evolution. The new race will be developed out of the present humanity, there seems to be no doubt about that; it does not mean however that the whole of humanity will be so changed. As a matter of fact, humanity in general does not ask for such a catastrophic change in itself or for itself. But Supermanhood does mean a very radical change: it means giving up altogether many and some very basic human qualities and attributes. It does not aim merely at a moral uplift, that is to say, a shedding of the bad qualities, what are considered, for example, as predominantly animal and brutish in man; it signifies also a shedding of some at least

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of the good qualities or what are considered as such. The superman is not a purified moralised man, even as he is not a magnified glorified animal man; he is man of a different type, qualitatively different. Let us take an analogy. What was the situation at the crisis when man was about to come out of (or be superimposed upon) an ape race? We can imagine a good part of that old race quite unwilling to go in for the new type that would appear to them queer, outlandish, even if not inferior on the whole or in some respects at least. They cannot envisage with equanimity the disappearance of many of their cherished characteristics and powers: the glory of the tail, for example, the infinite capacity to swing and jump, the strength to crack a nut with the sheer force* of the jaws. And who knows whether they would not consider their intelligence sharper and more efficacious than the type of reason, dull and slow, displayed before them by man! They would lose much to gain little. That would most probably be the general verdict. Even so mankind, at the crucial parting of the ways, would very

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naturally look askance at the diminished value of many of its qualities and attributes in the new status to come. First of all, as it has been pointed out, the intellect and reasoning power will have to surrender and abdicate. The very power by which man has attained his present high status and maintains it in the world has to be sacrificed for something else called intuition or revelation whose value and efficacy are unknown and have to be rigorously tested. Anyhow, is not the known devil by far and large preferable to the unknown entity? And then the zest of life, peculiar to man, that works through contradictions—delight and suffering, victory and defeat, war and peace, doubt and knowledge, all the play of light and shade, the spirit of adventure, of combat and struggle and heroic effort, will have to go and give place to something peaceful and harmonious perhaps but monotonous, insipid, unprogressive. The very character of human life is its passion to battle through, even if it is not always "through". For it is often said that the end or goal does not matter, the goal is always something uncertain; it is

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the way, the means, the immediate action that is of supreme consequence: for it is that that tests man's manhood, gives him the value he may have. And above all man is asked to give up the very thing which he has laboured to build up through millenniums of his terrestrial life, his individuality, his personality, for the demand is that he must lose his ego in order to attain the superhuman status.

So, the probability is that a large part of humanity will remain wedded to the normal human life. But this does not lessen in any way the value, the tremendous importance of what happens to the other part, may be, not insignificant or inconsiderable. Along with those that doubt and deny, there will be those who believe and affirm, who will stand for divinisation, whatever dehumanisation it may signify.

Now, one may ask, what would be the relation between the two humanities—the human and the divine ? And what would be the effect of the appearance of the new race upon the older stock? Here again we can take up the animal analogy. How has the advent of

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man affected the animal kingdom? It has affected to a certain extent, even to a considerable extent, one may venture to say. First of all, man has parked around him a fairly-large group of animals, domesticated them, as it is termed, employing them in his service, using them for his purposes. Furthermore, he has gone out into the woods, the forests and mountains, ice-bound regions and deep seas,and there extended his sphere of influence, hunting and capturing animals that were so long free and unmolested, bringing about a change in the conditions of life even among wild animals. We do not say that the superman will deal with man in the same way (although something of the kind may be found in the Nietzschean ideology). For man was a creature of Ignorance, and his behaviour and influence were naturally of the ignorant kind. The superman, however, being delivered of ignorance and living in perfect knowledge, has a different nature and outlook. He is one with the universe, with all its creatures; united with the Divine, he finds and realises his own self in each and every creature and thing: his,

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character and conduct are the automatic expression of this sense of perfect identity. So he can do nothing that may seek to enslave or do real injury to mankind. On the contrary, his love and his knowledge, being one with the cosmic existence, will inevitably work for the progress and welfare of man too; indeed, his will be the perfect aid that even ordinary humanity can ask for and receive.

In spite of all the achievements he has had in the past, and in spite of the cul-de-sac or the blind alley into which he seems now to be stagnating, there is yet possibility enough for man to progress further, that is to say, even as a human being without taking the more audacious jump into supermanhood. The present miseries of human society, the maldistribution of the necessities of life, the ravages of illness and disease, the prevalence of ignorance, are not and need not after all be a permanent and irrevocable feature of human organisation. They can be remedied to a large extent, and society made more decent to live in, even though it may not be transfigured into the City of God. Man, without

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foregoing his present human nature, can yet he a more humane and humanistic creature, that is to say, more truly human and less animal and demoniac that he is trying to be. To this end the advent and the presence of the divine race will surely contribute in a large measure. The influence which the individuals of such a race will exert by the force of their luminous consciousness and the impact of their purified living, the sympathy and knowledge and comprehension which their very presence carries, will materially alter the nature and composition of the normal man and his society. There will emerge a sort of higher humanity—an intermediary between the present more or less animal, degraded humanity and the divine humanity of the future. The two humanitites may very well live amicably together and be of help and service to each other.

We may mention here the other extreme possibility also. If, for example, the old humanity in a body rejects the New Man and will not allow him an inch of ground on the earth which it holds now as its fief and domain

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—as it may very well do—in view of the evidence that we have of the envy, jealousy, hatred, incomprehension moving normal men when they come in contact with men who do-not follow their mode of life, who seem to pursue avocations that are meaningless and even perhaps injurious to them: if such is the case, then, we say, it would mean either the end of humanity, in the same way as some species have become in fact extinct, or its reversion to a wild savage state, something like that (or perhaps worse) out of which it came.

Either you accept the Divine and allow yourself to be influenced and moulded by it; in that case you are in the line of progress and fulfilment. Or else if you stand against and come into clash with the Power that drives inevitably towards its high goal, then the result is, in the graphic words of the Bible;

"And whatsoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken; but on whatsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder." (Matthew 22)

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