CWTVKS Volume 2

Is Progress an Illusion?

[Notes given to the editor.]

The question is easy to put, the answer is easier. For an answer in the affirmative is as possible as one in the negative. And in fact any question can be argued in either way and can be so established by human logic. But logical conclusions are not always satisfying, do not always answer to human needs material and moral or intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual.

Still logic is indispensable; its chief function is to guard against error. But the moment the intellectual arrogance of man makes it a discoverer of truth i.e. makes it do duty for something subtler than itself, some superior or more refined faculty, call it intuition if you like, it transgresses its limits, we make misuse of it.

Let us first make clear the meaning of the terms we employ when we speak of ‘Progress as an illusion’.

Is progress a reality or not? If we change the form of the question, the answer we get may be nearer the truth. For the concept here is more positive. Reality is something that is always positive. Illusion as opposed to reality is a negative term.

With all the illusions, imperfections, negations and defects, man himself is something very very positive, every part of his being is occupied not with what is not, but something that is: take the senses, take the mind. Even when the mind is given to fancies you call it as given to erroneous thought movement not in harmony with what is possible or certain. Someone said, and rightly said, that ‘Absolute nothing is unthinkable'.

Illusions have a value. They vary in degree, e.g. a child's view of the world; our own outlook. Man is in an all-round flux. He is not something that is stationary, static. Man is a developing proposition. Change seems to be the order everywhere in Nature.

The urge for getting at what seems a better and happier life, mind or spirit is incessant and is an unmistakable sign of a universal hunger, call it a cosmic impulsion to move forward to a higher or different order by which man can gather up his dissipated energy, bring into harmony the many sides of his personality so that such a music in his own being, a rhythm and well-ordered measure in his many-sided activities may be in tune with the universal or cosmic being.

After all, what is the meaning of this impelling force within us—and also compulsion without? If it is not happiness (freedom etc.) what else can it be? And what is it that we call happiness, if it is not at once a result and expression of a living from the depths with all the parts brought to a harmonious play adjusting itself to the needs and dictates of the cosmic being?

Progress as an illusion may be a logical fact from the point of view of an ultra-mundane or supracosmic or transcendental inconceivable—Absolute—Truth of the philosopher.

Progress is felt concrete by the spirit which uses the logical mind.

Note the difference between a philosophical concept that is lodged in the logical mind and a concrete experience shared by the general mind, life and the very soul of man.

Man is not merely logic, he is greater than his mind and much more than its logic.