... truth, that every society represents a collective being and in it and by it the individual lives and he owes to it all that he can give it. More, it is only by a certain relation to the society, a certain harmony with this greater collective self that he can find the complete use for his many developed or developing powers and activities. Since it is a collective being, it must, one would naturally suppose... will of others. Obedience too is a part of its perfection,—but a free and natural obedience to a true guiding power and not to a mechanised government and rule. The collective being is a fact; all mankind may be regarded as a collective being: but this being is a soul and life, not merely a mind or a body. Each society develops into a sort of sub-soul or group-soul of this humanity and develops also a... ought to give each man his proper place in society, his full training and development for the common ends, his due share of work, leisure and reward, the right value of his life in relation to the collective being, society. Moreover it would be a place, share, value regulated by the individual and collective good and not an exaggerated or a depressed value brought to him fortuitously by birth or fortune ...
... example, can be mentioned for comparison. Britain is a homogeneous country or nation. Its collective being has a separate living individuality. As in Great Britain there are Scotland, Wales and England, so in India the separate states like Bengal, Maharashtra and the Punjab are the different limbs of the collective being of India. But the thing is that just as Asia is far larger than Europe, the states of... against others. None of these unions is real unity. The compromise, the compact arrived at among different interests are not the infallible unity of the soul; the undivided personality of the collective being has not emerged there. In fact every European country has a well-developed and distinct personality of its own; each wants to secure a separate fulfilment, each is self-sufficient and distinct... like the contour of an individual human body. The collective existence of Europe, awake and alive, belongs separately to each of the European countries and nations and in no way represents the collective being of all Europe. On the other hand, if we look at India we find that the whole of India possesses a well-defined and distinct geographical outline. But the boundaries of the separate states of ...
... 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... 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, ... 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 ...
... truth, that every society represents a collective being and in it and by it the individual lives and he owes to it all that he can give it. More, it is only by a certain relation to the society, a certain harmony with this greater collective self that he can find the complete use for his many developed or developing powers and activities. Since it is a collective being, it must, one would naturally suppose... will of others. Obedience too is a part of its perfection, but a free and natural obedience to a true guiding power and not to a mechanised government and rule. The collective being is a fact; all mankind may be regarded as a collective being: but this being is a soul and life, not merely a mind or a body. Each society develops into a sort of sub-soul or group-soul of this humanity and develops also a... his proper place in Page 14 society, his full training and development for the common ends, his due share of work, leisure and reward, the right value of his life in relation to the collective being, society. Moreover, it would be a place, share, value regulated by the individual and collective good and not exaggerated or a depressed value brought to him fortuitously by birth or fortune, ...
... Karma. Disciple : Can it be said that the law governing it is suprarational? Sri Aurobindo : Yes, each collective being is a projection of the Cosmic Spirit for a particular purpose. You can speak of it as a particular Shakti. Disciple : How does the collective being or Shakti work? Sri Aurobindo : It identifies itself with a particular form – here of a group of individual... Disciple : Suppose the collective entity is dissolved from life? Sri Aurobindo : When the physical form of the collectivity is dissolved here the collective being withdraws into the origin. Disciple : Can a collective being, after such a dissolution take another form – a group – for manifesting itself? Sri Aurobindo : We have as yet no proof of it. 25th February... Some disciples here believe that there is a collective Karma for which either the group, the society or the nation has to bear the consequences like the individual. Sri Aurobindo : The collective being is non-evolutionary. It is hard to believe in the reincarnation of races. Disciple : Somebody seems to have said that the Romans are born as Americans. Sri Aurobindo : Very queer ...
... goes far enough without any arrest of its course towards decadence, it may perish,—even so all the older peoples and nations except India and China perished,—as a man dies of old age. But the collective being has too the capacity of renewing itself, of a recovery and a new cycle. For in each people there is a soul idea or life idea at work, less mortal than its body, and if this idea is itself sufficiently... enlarging with a more complete aim, a more comprehensive experience, a more certain knowledge that shall reconcile life and the spirit, her ancient mission, to found the status and action of the collective being of man on the realisation of the deeper spiritual truth, the yet unrealised spiritual potentialities of our existence and so ensoul the life of her people as to make it the Lila of the greater... impulse, partly under that of the environment acting on the communal mind and temper. In this stage the people is not yet intelligently self-conscious in the way of the reason, is not yet a thinking collective being, and it does Page 398 not try to govern its whole communal existence by the reasoning will, but lives according to its vital intuitions or their first mental renderings. The early ...
... can the group-being also become more and more conscious; the growth of the individual is the indispensable means for the inner growth as distinguished from the outer force and expansion of the collective being. This indeed is the dual importance of the individual that it is through him that the cosmic spirit organises its collective units and makes them self-expressive and progressive and through him... tempest. The suppression or entire Page 720 subordination of the individual in the mass consciousness can give a great practical efficiency to a nation or a community if the subliminal collective being can build a binding tradition or find a group, a class, a head to embody its spirit and direction; the strength of powerful military states, of communities with a tense and austere culture rigidly... sufficiently strong individuality, he may be overpowered by the mass consciousness and lose his soul fulfilment, his mind fulfilment, his life fulfilment, become only a cell of the mass body. The collective being may then become strong and dominant, but it is likely to lose its plasticity, its evolutionary movement: the great evolutionary Page 721 periods of humanity have taken place in communities ...
... gravitation and beat the measure of the silent symphony of spaces. Individualities are the freedoms of the collective being and collectivity the concentration of individual beings. The same soul looking inward appears as the individual being and looking outward appears as the collective being. Communism takes man not as ego or the vital creature; it turns him upside down –urdhomulo' vaksakhah-and... more so in Sparta and in Rome, the individual had, properly speaking, no separate existence of his own; he was merged in the State or Nation. The individual was considered only as a limb of the collective being, had to live and labour for the common weal. The value attached to each person was strictly in reference to the output that the group to which he belonged received from him. Apart from this service ...
... sway between the three principal preoccupations of our idealism,—the complete single development of the human being in himself, the perfectibility of the individual, a full development of the collective being, the perfectibility of society, and, more pragmatically restricted, the perfect or best possible relations of individual with individual and society and of community with community. An exclusive... only a cell of the society, he has no other use or purpose of birth, no other meaning of his presence in Nature, no other function. Or it is held that the nation, the society, the community is a collective being, revealing its soul in its culture, power of life, ideals, institutions, all its ways of self-expression; the individual life has to cast itself in that mould of culture, serve that power of life... truth and self of humanity, a human spirit, a destiny of human life. The community is a formation of the Reality, a manifestation of the spirit of man, and there is a truth, a self, a power of the collective being. The individual is a formation of the Reality, and there is a truth of the individual, an individual self, soul or spirit that expresses itself through the individual mind, life and body and can ...
... mind, life, action raised to their highest tension under the drive of something which is thought to be greater, the collective soul, the collective life, is the formula found. But this obscure collective being is not the soul or self of the community; it is a life-force that rises from the subconscient and, if denied the light of guidance by the reason, can be driven only by dark massive forces which... sway between the three principal preoccupations of our idealism,-the complete single development of the human being in himself, the perfectibility of the individual, a full development of the collective being, the perfectibility of society and, more pragmatically restricted, the perfect or best possible relations of individual with individual and society, and of community with community. An exclusive... destiny of human life. The community is a formation of the Page 21 Reality, a manifestation of the spirit of man, and there is a truth, a self, a power of the collective being. The individual is a formation of the Reality, and there is a truth of the individual, an individual self, soul or spirit that expresses itself through the individual mind, life and body and can ...
... the vast subtleties of the collective being of a people a power of self-renewal with the help of its inner life-idea. The inner life-idea is the key to a nation's psychology and is more tenacious than the outer form. If it is great and intense and the body is strong enough and the surface-mind plastic and adaptive without being loose or unstable, then the collective being can keep unimpaired through... universe. The cosmic Self or Virat, as the Rishis called it, acting through its particularised representative, the soul-principle, is the true source and support of the inner life-idea of the collective being, as it is of the individual. And if this source and support is not sufficiently contacted in consciousness, the eternal is never brought with dominant effect into the temporal and ultimately comes ...
... the vast subtleties of the collective being of a people, a power of self-renewal with the help of its inner life-idea. The inner life-idea is the key to a nation's psychology and is more tenacious than the outer form. If it is great and intense and the body is strong enough and the surface mind plastic and adaptive without being loose or unstable, then the collective being can keep unimpaired through... universe. The Cosmic Self or "Virat", as the Rishis called it, acting through its particularised representative, the soul, is the true source and support of the inner life-idea of the collective Page 16 being, as it is of the individual. And if the source and support is not sufficiently contacted in consciousness through the soul, the eternal is never brought with dominant effect into the ...
... would otherwise remain underbodies. But the time will soon come when the shaping hand will no longer deal blows and begin to caress us—when we shall be ready on all levels of our individual and collective being to live in peace. That is our first dream. There is another, born of this century, its fervour rekindled each day. Often linked to the idea of harmony between peoples, it is, like the latter... the term refers to the notion of exceptional individuals—Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart, Napoleon, Einstein—in whom the collective unconscious culminates, without the individual members of the collective being able to equal them. In this case, on the other hand, the men of a new kind will be the prototypes of the humanity to come. Externally resembling the rest of the collective, they will surpass ...
... has any permanent meaning or value except in so far as it adds something or recovers something or preserves something for this human march.” 68 “The collective being is a fact; all mankind may be regarded as a collective being: but this being is a soul and life, not merely a mind and a body.” 69 “[Individual man] is not merely the noble, merchant, warrior, priest, scholar, artist ...
... developing consciousness between three preoccupations of human idealism, — the complete single development of the human being himself, the perfectibility of the individual, a full development of the collective being, the perfectibility of the society, and, more pragmatically restricted, the perfect or best possible relation of individual with individual and society or of community with community. Hence, we... society, and he has no other use or purpose of birth, no other meaning of his presence in Nature, no other foundation. Or, it is sometimes held that the nation, the society, the community is a collective being, revealing its soul in its culture, power of life, ideals, institutions, or its ways of self-expression. In this context, the individual life has to cast itself in the social mould, serving the ...
... into practice, will help man the individual and man the collective being to realise the great destiny that is awaiting the race. And, be it noted, all the principles of education enunciated by Sri Aurobindo are designed to fulfil that very task. We have advisedly employed the expression "man the individual and man the collective being". For, the insistent problems of man do not pertain to his ...
... truth and self of humanity, a human spirit, a destiny of human life. The community is a formation of the Reality, a manifestation of the spirit of man, and there is a truth, a self, a power of the collective being. The individual is a formation of the Reality, and there is a truth of the individual, an individual self, soul or spirit that expresses itself through the individual mind, life and body and can... perfect harmony of a * Plato's idea of a philosopher was that he should have a true vision of Reality and that he should possess utter truthfulness. Page 478 collective being". 26 But if that is ever to happen, "it must be on a foundation of soul's brotherhood and the death of egoism. A forced association and a mechanical comradeship would end in a world-wide fiasco" ...
... the term refers to the notion of exceptional individuals—Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart, Napoleon, Einstein—in whom the collective unconscious culminates, without the individual members of the collective being able to equal them. In this case, on the other hand, the men of a new kind will be the prototypes of the humanity to come". This is the first of Archaka's essays published in English ...
... individuality in an undifferentiated Nescience.” 26 “The growth of the individual is the indispensable means for the inner growth as distinguished from the outer force and expansion of the collective being. This indeed is the dual importance of the individual that it is through him that the cosmic spirit organises its collective units and makes them self-expressive and progressive and through him ...
... its own divine perfection which pre-exists archetypally in the Supermind. He was interested also in establishing the Supermind as not only an individual consciousness but as a part of earth's collective being. Provided he did these things he never bothered whether the doing of them made people look at him Page 135 as at an Avatar or as at only a Brahma Bhuta or Siddha or Mukta ...
... constituted, the interdependence of the group and the individuals of the group. In the language of Indian philosophy the Divine manifests himself always in the double form of the separative and the collective being, vyaṣṭi, samaṣṭi . Man, pressing after the growth of his separate individuality and its fullness and freedom, is unable to satisfy even his own personal needs and desires except in conjunction ...
... glorified under the name of the competitive system, and dissatisfaction with its results has led to the opposite idea of State socialism, which supposes that the negation of individual liberty in the collective being of the State can be made to amount by some mechanical process to a positive sum of liberty nicely distributable to all in a carefully guarded equality. The individual gives up his freedom of action ...
... system must lead to a termite civilisation or the suppression of the individual; it could well be, on the contrary, a means at once of the fulfilment of the individual and the perfect harmony of a collective being. The already developed systems which go by the name are not really Communism but constructions of an inordinately rigid State Socialism. But Socialism itself might well develop away from the Marxist ...
... evolution, as it were, which would serve as the beginning of a race of Supermen carrying to perfection both the inner and the outer existence, the individual and the Page 45 collective being, in the immediate or near future. The physical transformation, divinisation, supramentalisation at which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother aimed has no anticipatory parallel in the resurrected body ...
... achievement by a revolutionary evolution, as it were, which would serve as the beginning of a race of Supermen carrying to perfection both the inner and the outer existence, the individual and the collective being, in the immediate or near future. The physical transformation, divinisation, supramentalisation at which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother aimed has no anticipatory parallel in the resurrected body ...
... life itself has to be conducted and lived according to the demands of that view. It is this that humanity is one, that mankind as a whole is a single organism. Even like an individual being, the collective being too is a unit, a close knit living unit. As the individual has different parts and limbs, organs and systems, so is humanity composed of nations and races, cultures and religions. And as the parts ...
... identified with essential energy. Chit and Tapas are one and the same. The seed of consciousness has to be sown in the field of our being, whether it is the individual or the collective being. How is it to be done? And who is to find the seed? There must be some one or even a few who are the prophets, pioneers or forerunners, who are the appointed missionaries. You or I may be elected ...
... consciousness is identified with essential energy. Chit and Tapas are one and the same. The seed of consciousness has to be sown in the field of our being, whether it is the individual or the collective being. How is it to be done? And who is to find the seed? There must be some one or even a few who are the prophets, pioneers or forerunners, who are the appointed missionaries. You or I may be elected ...
... to me the symbol of a great experiment, of a divine ideal. It is marching every hour towards the ultimate goal of man's upward ascent to the Divine. Not a city but a spiritual laboratory, a collective being with a daily changing horizon yet pursuing a fixed distant objective, a place fixed to the outer view but constantly moving – Pondicherry to me is always like the Arab's tent. 1920 (Nov ...
... to me the symbol of a great experiment, of a divine ideal. It is marching every hour towards the ultimate goal of man's upward ascent to the Divine. Not a city but a spiritual laboratory, a collective being with a daily changing horizon yet pursuing a fixed distant objective, a place fixed to the outer view but constantly moving – Pondicherry to me is always like the Arab's tent. Page 298 ...
... arbitrarily in its formation. In short, let us become the living cells of the organism we want to bring forth, and let us not forget that on the value of its cells will depend the value of the collective being and its action, its usefulness in the work of universal harmony. Page 63 ...
... of the body, unspiritual and superficial in his outlook, ignorant of his own self and the forces that drive and use him. His life constructions have a value as expressions of his individual and collective being in the stage to which they have reached or as a machinery for the convenience and welfare of his vital and physical parts and a field and medium for his mental growth, but they cannot take him ...
... making a high use of the will and thought which have been developed in him or from directing them to great ends which shall or may be worked out by humanity. Even the temporary character of the collective being of humanity does not so very much matter,—except in the most materialist view of existence; for so long as the universal Becoming takes the form of human body and mind, the thought, the will it ...
... phenomena was the need of “unity for the human race by an inner oneness,” without which, according to Sri Aurobindo, the new world would not be possible. For “all mankind may be regarded as a collective being,” as “all mankind is one in its nature, physical, vital, emotional, mental and ever has been in spite of all differences of intellectual development ranging from the poverty of the Bushman and ...
... xxx 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? Harmony, and not disharmony and discord, should be the keynote of all true living, whether individual or collective. But till this day, man's attempts at harmonisation ...
... Such a consummation has been called the reaching of Omega Point, after the terminology brought into fashion by the priest-palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard spoke of the evolution of a collective being in the far future, a super-organism with a super-consciousness compassing the whole world. But, under the influence of orthodox Christian theology, he envisaged a world-end when the souls sharing ...
... partly under that of the environment acting on the communal mind and temper. In this stage the people is not yet intelligently self-conscious in the way of the reason, is not yet a thinking collective being, and it does not try to govern its whole communal existence by the reasoning will, but lives according to its vital intuitions or their first mental renderings.... A second stage of the ...
... development of the individual [is not] the sole object of the Divine in the world..." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 182); "the Divine manifests himself always in the double form of the separative and collective being, vya ṣṭ i, sama ṣṭ i." (Ibid.) To fulfil with equal importance this double requirement of a truly divine manifestation the Sri Aurobindo Ashram has been created, "not for the renunciation ...
... consciousness of its own; it may be said to be the unit individual consciousness. Many such cells combine to form the organism, the individual (who in this way may be viewed as a composite or collective being). Many individuals form the family—-each family with its group consciousness (whence the idea of kuladharma, the genius of the family or the tradition and stamp of a Royal House). Many families ...
... them evoke conflict, some deliberately, and the resolution of the conflict ends in suppression, amputation and atrophy. We have to recognise that man, in his individual as well as in his collective being, is a complex entity, not something simple and one-dimensional. The healthy growth of himself and his society means a simultaneous development on many lines, all moving together in concord and ...
... there and Socialism and Collectivism or Communism had to Page 129 be brought in to counteract the individualistic tendencies of the present-day civilisation. Assertion of the collective being is necessary for organisation and efficiency because the tendency of Capitalism was, and would be, to concentrate the power of.money in the hands of the few. It is futile to expect the capitalists ...
... of them evoke conflict, some deliberately, and the resolution of the conflict ends in suppression, amputation and atrophy. We have to recognise that man, in his individual as well as in his collective being, is a complex entity, not something simple and one -dimensional. The healthy growth of himself and his society means a simultaneous development on many lines, all moving together in concord and ...
... consciousness of its own; it may be said to be the unit individual consciousness. Many such cells combine to form the organism, the individual (who in this way may be viewed as a composite or collective being). Many individuals form the family – each family with its group consciousness (whence the idea of kuladharma, the genius of the family or the tradition and stamp of a Royal House). Many families ...
... of man's collective life under the mechanical stress of economic, environmental or political forces, though these play their part in it. History is the gradual revelation of the Soul of the collective being of man. It is true, history was regarded at one time as the chronicle of dynasties of kings and a story of their conquests and defeats. Then it became the story of peoples, their growth and ...
... cycle of birth, growth, youth, ripeness and decline. "If we let it go unchecked, the course towards decadence will make it perish, as a man dies of old age." "But," said Sri Aurobindo, "the collective being has too the capacity of renewing itself, of a recovery and a new cycle." What is India going to do? Renew herself and begin a new cycle? Rise from her ashes like the Phoenix? Page 105 ...
... How big this camel may be can be gauged still more if in addition to looking at the common or collective unconscious m relation to space we look at it in relation to time. Jung has an eloquent passage: "If it were permissible to personify the unconscious, we might call it a collective human being combining the characteristics of both sexes, transcending youth and age, birth and death, and, from... mind being not only a vera causa but also an independent existent in its own right with an extension beyond the individual organism and with operations that are outside the body and brain, outside even physical space and time, though capable of contact with them all. For this extension we have allowed the label introduced and discussed by Mrs. Knight herself - Jung's "common (or collective) unconscious"... it. And the common or collective unconscious is this consciousness at its deepest and widest - an ultra- individual cosmicity of multi-dimensional experience. Yes, a veritable cosmicity and not only a commonalty behind the human or at most the whole of the organic. Particularly if we accept the principle of developmental and evolutionary continuity it has every mark of being a universal subliminal ...
... - is also the path beautiful, and must lead on to the total good and happiness of one and all. But how is the experience and distilled wisdom of the race to be mobilised on the issue of the collective well-being of the future? How are children to be taught to fight ignorance, tamas and ugliness? This was the large aim of this little book, and the Mother's telling of the tales, born of her intense... growth in Page 468 capacities or its progress.... This is one of the many experiments which we want to attempt in order to break these collective suggestions and show the world that human potentialities exceed all imagination. 8 The collective suggestion is that, as the years pass, the body must weaken, decay and race towards decrepitude and death. But there is nothing inevitable about... mind: I now know for certain that only one love can satisfy my being: it is the love for the Divine, the divine love, for that alone never fails. Perhaps one day I shall find the favourable conditions and the necessary help for the achievement of the supreme realisation, the transformation and divinisation of the physical being which will change the world into a blessed place full of harmony and ...
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