... In the old way of thinking, the problem of collective life was relegated to ethics and religion and later on to sociology., They tried to bring high idealism and religious attitude in the conduct of collective life, but there was no question of working out collective ignorance. But they did not succeed in solving the basic problems of collective life which arise out of individual and collective egoism... Page 53 clear thinking about the right principles and methods of solving problems of collective life is not much in evidence even among leaders. The problem of the collective life of man brings us to the interpretation of history. History is not the record of man's collective life under the mechanical stress of economic, environmental or political forces, though these play their... the ' isms ' in which the collective life is the Ultimate Reality of existence He affirms the fundamental Divinity of the individual and accepts it as the indispensable brick in the building up of art perfection. Collective life at present is not free from ignorance and cannot, therefore, lay claim to perfection. All the values that act in the collective life derive from the present imperfect ...
... total life of humanity or, at the least, a new perfected collective life in the earth-nature. This calls for the appearance not only of isolated evolved individuals acting in the unevolved mass, but of many gnostic individuals forming a new kind of beings and a new common life superior to the present individual and common existence. A collective life of this kind must obviously constitute itself on the... it must be not only an inner experience of the Divinity, but a remoulding of both the inner and outer existence by its power; it must take form not only in the life of the individual but as a collective life of gnostic beings established as a highest power and form of the becoming of the Spirit in the earth-nature. For this to be possible the spiritual entity in us must have developed its own integralised... vital temperaments, conflict of interests, is a partial and insecure superstructure. The spiritual consciousness, the spiritual life reverses this principle of building; it bases its action in the collective life upon an inner experience and inclusion of others in our own being, an inner sense and reality of oneness. The spiritual individual acts out of that sense of oneness which gives him immediate and ...
... something terrible or wrong will ruin millions of people and bring difficulties to others who have nothing to do with it. The imperfections of the collective life have far-reaching bearing on vast masses of mankind; and therefore, it is necessary in collective life to see that we do not put the collectivity in place of the Divine, because collectivity, though a manifestation of the Universal Divine, is not... We think law is essential instrument now, but we have so many laws that I think we are just buried under them. A : Yes, that is to say there is a need for changing values in collective life. The collective life is being shaken. It has been shaken by these two world wars and it is not finding its right direction. Nature is forcing unity of mankind on this collective consciousness all over the... in his books on white-ants. He said that they exhibited a perfection in their social organization which man has not yet reached. The perfection there is automatic, instinctive; but the root of collective life is to be traced there; and even in Matter where consciousness is not directly present Page 180 on the surface, the pressure of this drive for unity,—for the Universal manifests ...
... Towards a New Ideology INDIA must evolve her own political and social ideology; she must discover and establish in this domain also, as in all others that concern her collective life, her own genius and rule. This is what Swaraj really means and demands. Russia has her Sovietic Communism, Germany, for the present at least, her Nazidom, Italy her totalitarian Fascism, old... duties, how best to accomplish them and leave the rights to take care of themselves. Such an attitude would give a man the correct outlook, the correct poise, the correct inspiration in living the collective life. Instead of each one demanding and claiming what one regards as one's dues and consequently scrambling and fighting for them (and most often not getting them or getting at a ruinous expense—what... of ideas and do not always coincide with the deeper realities of life and hence are not able to produce the perfect and durable harmony among warring members whether in the individual or in the collective life. We had in India a fairer word than "duty", a deeper and more luminous mantra: it is dharma. The expression has certainly '"fallen on evil days and on evil tongues"; it smells today of ...
... Towards a New Ideology INDIA must evolve her own political and social ideology; she must discover and establish in this domain also, as in all others that concern her collective life, her own genius and rule. This is what Swaraj really means and demands. Russia has her Sovietic Communism, Germany, for the present at least, her Nazidom, Italy her totalitarian Fascism, old... duties, how best to accomplish them and leave the rights to take care of themselves. Such an attitude would give a man the correct outlook, the correct poise, the correct inspiration in living the collective life. Instead of each one demanding and claiming what one regards as one's dues and consequently scrambling and fighting for them (and most often not getting them or getting at a ruinous expense - what... of ideas and do not always coincide with the deeper realities of life and hence are not able to produce the perfect and durable harmony among warring members whether in the individual or in the collective life. We had in India a fairer word than "duty", a deeper and more luminous mantra: it is dharma. The expression has certainly "'fallen on evil days and on evil tongues"; it smells today of m ...
... utilitarian necessities of individual or collective life. The Rita, therefore, cannot be prescribed or circumscribed by any legislation or any man-made law. Rita is, indeed, the right law of action, but it issues from the vast consciousness of the truth, and it is thus superior to any human standards of action or any laws of the individual and collective life. It is this idea of Rita which lay... upheavals of the recent times as a sign and a promise of the coming of the New World. It views modem man's concern for the collective life as something unprecedented. The experiments that have been heralded by the great revolutions have contributed to the re-making of the collective life of Man.. It is felt that these experiments will continue to grow until the highest and the deepest in the individual... administration prevailed over most parts of India. It is, however, important to note that the basic Vedic idea of the rishi as the seer and knower and as a guide of the individual and collective life has remained alive, at least to a certain degree, even in the present-day India. And there is even today an imagination and conviction in some deep recesses of Indian thought and feeling that ...
... sight natural that our age should be so named because. of the vast economic changes science has brought about and is even now bringing about in the individual and collective life of man. It has given a new concept of collective life by showing the possibility of ameliorating the material condition of the masses all over the world. Man has established himself as the undisputed king among creatures... presents so many avenues of new approaches to problems of man's individual and collective life that it is not possible to deal with all of them in a single exposition. I choose three such: (1) the physical body in the scheme of supramental perfection; ( 2 ) the place of material, economic organisation and ethics in the collective life of man from the point of view of The Life Divine; ( 3 ) the origin of... scientific, outlook Truth is unknowable. Page 4 What is urgently needed is not only mastery of material Nature but also self-mastery. The application of scientific advance to collective life has put into man's hand such a tremendous reservoir of material power that without a corresponding inner transformation of his nature man would not be able to make a real advance in his culture ...
... means and a framework for a better, richer, more happy and puissant individual and collective life. But hitherto the experience of mankind has not favoured the view that huge aggregations, closely united and strictly organised, are favourable to a rich and puissant human life. It would seem rather that collective life is more at ease with itself, more genial, varied, fruitful when it can concentrate... widespread material well-being. Therefore this earlier form of collective life tended to disappear and give place to the organisation of nations, kingdoms and empires. And here we notice, first, that it is the groupments of smaller nations which have had the most intense life and not the huge States and colossal empires. Collective life diffusing itself in too vast spaces seems to lose intensity and... transitions. Nothing is more obscure to humanity or less seized by its understanding, whether in the power that moves it or the sense of the aim towards which it moves, than its own communal and collective life. Sociology does not help us, for it only gives us the general story of the past and the external conditions under which communities have survived. History teaches us nothing; it is a confused torrent ...
... e and impression. The tendency to image the terrestrial life often magnified, as Page 22 in the Mahabharata and in the Ramayana, reflects the Vedic influence. In the field of collective life, Indian society developed its communal coordination of the mundane life of interest and desire, kama and artha. But it governed its action always by a reference at every point to the moral... could all open up to the spiritual light and force. This attempt had not only an individual aspect but also a collective one. This was a remarkable attempt which could have revolutionised the collective life of India. But this was interrupted on account of several factors. Among these factors was the fact of the exhaustion of the vital force as a result of a long inarch and effort from Page... could not bear its natural fruit, although it has done much to prepare a great possibility for the future. The significance of the third stage lies in its message that the spiritualization of the collective life cannot be achieved if only the physical mind of the common man is trained as in the Vedic Age or even if a greater effort is made to train the psychic-emotional part of common man's nature, as ...
... advent of the Supramental Being Yoga and Collective Life: Collective Aspiration: Its Necessity for General Health and Perfection; Formation of the Collective Aspiration at various Psychological levels; The formation of the Group soul by yogic aspiration and methods: Its necessity and purpose; Problems of Collective Life and Yogic Solutions Transformation by Yoga and its rationale... Yogic Research; New Paths of Yoga Yoga and Knowledge of Sciences and Arts, Yoga and Medical Sciences, Yoga and Technology Yoga, Religion and Morality, Yoga and Collective Life, Yoga and change in the world-conditions: the idea of Cosmic Yoga, Yoga and the New World of Truth, Harmony and Liberty Books recommended: The Principal Upanishads Yoga Sutra... tion, Instruments of the Spirit and their purification, Psychology of Self-Perfection, Perfection of Personality by Yoga, Supermind, its descent and its action upon the earth, Supermind and Collective life, Divine life on the earth Yoga and Health: Psychology, Yoga and Health Esoteric Causes of Illness and Yogic Remedies Page 369 Role of Hypnotism and allied Processes ...
... a psychic significance and impression. The tendency to image the terrestrial life often magnified, as in the Mahabharata and in the Ramayana, reflects the Vedic influence. In the field of collective life, Indian society developed its Page 93 communal coordination of the mundane life of interest and desire, kama and artha. But it governed always its action by a reference at every... could all open up to the spiritual light and force. This attempt had not only an individual aspect but also a collective aspect. This was a remarkable attempt which could have revolutionised the collective life of India. But this was interrupted on account of several factors. Among these factors was the fact of the exhaustion of the vital force as a result of a long march and effort from the earliest... development of India could not bear its natural fruit, although it has done much to prepare a great possibility for the future. The message of the third stage is that the spiritualisation of the collective life cannot be achieved if only the physical mind of man is trained or even if a greater effort is made to train the psychic- emotional part of man's nature. What is needed is to turn the entirety of ...
... harmony. But the question is, why so? Why is all this clash and collision and disharmony? What is the root-cause of this ignoble failure on the part of man to organise his individual and collective life on the basis of harmony and union? If we really want to construct our society on an ideal basis, we have to touch and tackle the problem at its very root. To manipulate only on the surface without... truth-consciousness in him would see the right relation at each step and find the dynamic right expression of that relation." 1 Unity, mutuality and harmony will thus be the law of a common collective life. But for that it need not be feared that the group life will be just a white monotone excluding from itself all the manifold richness of a polychrome diversity. Indeed, there will be infinite... of the Truth-Consciousness. And once this is effected, once the Supramental Power fully takes its stand and gets organised in the nature of a few individuals, it will become operative in the collective life also. And like some dissolving corrosive acid, it will then cut its way through the obstinate obstacles and dark resistances of the present nature of Ignorance and establish its divine reign ...
... Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny The Ideal Group-life: Its Character All the past attempts of man to build an ideal collective life have invariably foundered on the rocks of ego-consciousness Page 25 of the constitutive individuals. Egos in different persons in a group are bound to differ in their separate ideas... A veritable community of spiritual seekers, as our Page 26 Ashram yearns to grow into, must reverse the ordinary principle of group-building and base its action in the collective life upon an inner experience and inclusion of others in our own being. An inner sense of oneness should be the binding element in the group-existence. To quote Sri Aurobindo again: "The spiritual... a divine life that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother want to establish upon earth, and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram should consciously and deliberately aspire to be the nucleus of such a noble type of collective life. In such a group-life what would bind and hold together different individuals forming the group would be, not the physical fact of life creating a sufficiently workable united social consciousness ...
... development of State Law but also to the development of the Shastra. And this Shastra grew into higher and higher levels of excellence, and there developed also a subtler science and art not only of collective life but also of individual life, culminating into what is called adhyatma shastra, of Page 119 which the Bhagvad Gita is regarded as one of its highest formulations. " In the Gita... that every member would be so enlightened that he would not only submit automatically but would love to submit himself to the regulations which would be required for the smooth functioning of the collective life. But in practice, there are bound to be differences among individuals, and, therefore, in their level of enlightenment. What about children? Would they not be required to be compelled to follow... refers when he declares that the Lord created the Universe along with the law of the sacrifice. "This matter is extremely important for those who want to practise law in individual life or collective life or in the life of the State. It is when I came to understand the law of sacrifice that the entire domain of legal studies came to assume a different aspect. I came to realise that all lawyers, ...
... unpublished correspondence we felt could well give us some food for thought. Madhav-ji, Two days back, I heard your tape-recorded speech, and I fully agree with you. In our Ashram collective life there is no true unity. For a long time I have been feeling it. Once I told the Mother that our ideal was unity in diversity. There was plenty of diversity in the Ashram. But the Mother... if the elders amongst us who are running the organisation had the true realisation, they could surely lead us to a better understanding, and as a result there would be better unity in our collective life. All the qualities you mention in your speech which favour better unity, such as love, understanding, fellow-feeling, comradeship, compassion, tolerance, patience, etc., are psychic qualities... exceeding three must be first formed, with the door open for a larger circle to be formed later. This core group must be essentially a spiritually oriented body exerting itself to see that the collective life of the Ashram keeps to certain well-defined norms. It should be its duty to draw the attention of the Board of Administration When lapses occur or threaten to occur. Its role must be constructive ...
... of cosmonauts, the age of technical advance and it seems at first sight natural that it should be so called because it has brought about and is even now bringing about in the individual and collective life vast changes by showing the possibilities of ameliorating the material conditions of the masses by technology all over the world. Man has been enabled to establish himself as the undisputed king... rationalistic view Truth is unknowable. What is urgently needed today is not only mastery over Page 24 nature but also mastery over self. The application of scientific advance to collective life has put into man's hands such a tremendous reservoir of material power that without a corresponding inner transformation of his nature, man would not be able to make a real advance in his culture... still it is clear that Gandhi did the right thing in trying his novel experiment after consulting only his own conscience. The world has now a new weapon for setting right some of the wrongs of collective life. What is, or what seems impossible at one time becomes possible after sometime. So the sciences of medicine, physics, etc., have achieved many things that were at one time considered impossible ...
... visions of perfection of the human Spirit on earth, I found the synthetic and integral vision of Sri Aurobindo the most rational and the most satisfying. It meets the need of the individual and collective life of man today. It is the international form of the fundamental elements of Indian culture. It is, as Dr. S. K. Maitra says, the message which holds out hope in a world of despair. This aspect... aim is not liberation merely but the manifestation of divine perfection. In his vision not only the individual but the collectivity also is a term of the Divine. Acceptance of life includes the collective life. There is a deeper reason for accepting life. In his vision of the Reality Sri Aurobindo shows the rationality and the inevitability of an ascent by man to a higher consciousness than Mind... the lowest plane of physical consciousness – the subconscient – but it must become a part of the collective consciousness on earth too. I asked him many questions about the organisation of a collective life based on spiritual aspiration. On the last day of my stay of eleven days I met Sri Aurobindo between 3 and 4 in the afternoon. The main topic was sadhana. When I got up to take leave ...
... visions of perfection of the human Spirit on earth, I found the synthetic and integral vision of Sri Aurobindo the most rational and the most satisfying. It meets the need of the individual and collective life of man today. It is the international form of the fundamental elements of Indian culture. It is, as Dr. S. K. Maitra says, the message which holds out hope in a world of despair. This aspect... aim is not liberation merely but the manifestation of divine perfection. In his vision not only the individual but the collectivity also is a term of the Divine. Acceptance of life includes the collective life. There is a deeper reason for accepting life. In his vision of the Reality Sri Aurobindo shows the rationality and the inevitability of an ascent by man to a higher consciousness than Mind... the lowest plane of physical consciousness – the subconscient – but also must become a part of the collective consciousness on earth. I asked him many questions about the organisation of a collective life based on spiritual aspiration. On the last day of my stay of eleven days I met Sri Aurobindo between three and four in the afternoon. The main topic was sadhana. When I got up to take leave ...
... material universe,—for possibly there may be thinking living beings in other planets,—an acceptance of man's mortality and a passive endurance of it or an active dealing with a limited personal or collective life and life-aims are the only choice possible. The one high and reasonable course for the individual human being,—unless indeed he is satisfied with pursuing his personal purposes or somehow living... during its persistence on earth provide the largest field and the natural limits for the terrestrial aim of our being; the superior persistence of the race and the greatness and importance of the collective life should determine the nature and scope of our ideals. But if the progress or welfare of humanity be excluded as not our business or as a delusion, the individual is there; to achieve his greatest ...
... The Need of Roots ), the term has several tiers of meaning. But broadly speaking it has two aspects - Culture as individual trait or traits and Culture as an identifiable trait or traits in the collective life of a community, society, race or nation. Needless to say, the traits in question are those that convey refined and ennobling thoughts, ideas and inspirations and their evidence in the conduct and... towards the Definition of Culture ) From another angle (which does not contradict Eliot's) we can say that the right kind of cultural activities are the product of a harmonious state of the collective life. Can there be a Manadanda , a measuring rod for culture -to determine whether it was on its right path or had deviated from it at any given time? The word in Sanskrit for Culture is ...
... A civilised existence would ensure freedom from fear and suspicion in our individual, national and international relations. No treachery or breach of faith should vitiate individual and collective life. Mentally, humanity has progressed beyond imagination from the beginnings of our ancestors, the cavemen, hunters and nomads who lived more or less animal lives though they were far superior to... developed various arts and sciences. A fairly civilised existence commenced with pursuits of higher arts and sciences. Music, poetry, literature, painting, architecture, sculpture were cultivated. A collective life with ideas and ideals of philanthropy, humanitarianism and social services was built up in course of a few centuries. Medical, engineering and other sciences grew. Man began slowly and consciously ...
... provides codes of conduct or of prescribed acts, the ultimate justification of which is sought to be rooted in the revealed truth. It also erects or creates systems of institutions and modes of collective life designed to sub-serve the revealed truth. But religion is still governed by mental consciousness; it often revolves in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices of set prescriptions and forms... and always enlarging way of knowledge and spiritual or religious discipline. Lastly, they were led to provide, for those not yet ready for the higher steps, an organization of the individual and collective life, a framework of personal and social discipline and conduct, of mental and moral and vital development by which they could move each in his or her own limits and according to his or her own nature ...
... necessarily injurious. The western ideals of progress, — those of liberty, equality and fraternity, — if received rightly and assimilated properly, can ensure the rejuvenation of our individual and collective life. The west can teach us secrets of modern science, and if we can learn these lessons rightly but in accordance Page 12 with Indian spirit, we can recover and even refashion our own... from egoism and yet not lose but rather greaten our capacities for dynamic action. We need to receive that knowledge once again and make it active in the present difficult conditions of modern collective life. We do not need to worship selfish selfcentredness and narrow competitiveness in self-assertion. India has been constantly teaching that Page 13 the world is vast and that everybody ...
... Divine, p. 1031) Page 22 And what is created in this way is a natural or artificially managed constructed order. But all such man-made attempts at the building up of a perfect collective life are bound to fail in practice and cannot but be exposed to an inevitable process of decay and disruption. For, the constituent individuals of any human order remain rooted in their egoistic nature... to separation of consciousness from others and wear the fetters of the ego. Our very pose of selflessness hides behind it more often than not a subtle form of selfishness. To build up an ideal collective life harmonious and spiritually perfect is a task far transcending the capability of such ego-governed individuals. What Sri Aurobindo has described in a significant passage of The Life Divine is ...
... conversant with her way of working - are all "departing" from us one by one, leaving a tremendous vacuum of transition, one has to be, in order to prevent the qualitative deterioration of the collective life of the Ashram, very strict in the matter of admitting new entrants. Otherwise, there is fear that our Ashram too will meet the same fate as befell many other spiritual communities attempted in... of satisfying this basic psychological criterion before any one is considered for admission to the Ashram. Page 40 Otherwise he will prove himself to be a nuisance to the Ashram's collective life and himself be harassed by unruly drives and impulses. For, every sadhak staying in the Ashram has perforce to confront a host of personal difficulties. There is an occult reason for this upsurge ...
... growth can occur. The family furnished such a nucleus in the early epochs of humanity. But with the growth of human life there came a time when, for a better and more efficient organization in collective life, larger units were needed. The original unit had to be enlarged in order to meet the demands of a wider and more complex growth. Also it is to be noted that the living body is not merely a con... in secret and justified its advent and reign is a truth that has still its day. The drive of Nature, of the inner consciousness of humanity was always to find a greater and larger unit for the collective life of mankind. That unit today has to be a federation of free peoples and nations. In the place of nations, several such commonwealths must now form the broad systems of the body politic of human ...
... should learn to enact the collective life of a Divine Society. A double attempt at self-perfection is thus called for: individual transformation and social transformation, or the perfection of the individual and the perfection of the race. Before the entire race can be perfected, we may have to start with experimental groups that strive in their individual and collective life towards perfection. The ...
... problem is to bring into the earth consciousness a new element, a Higher Consciousness. The great obstacle that prevents the descent is the materialistic outlook and domination of economy in collective life. Economic organization and scientific advance are in themselves great helps in the task of bringing about the descent of the Supermind. But man's psychology dominated by desire and ambition is... the material proof of the sympathy which brings humanity together, brings unity of mankind nearer. It is a work whose basis is very sound. What we are discussing is the orientation of collective life by money, raising money to the highest value in human culture. It has become a craze with all nations. The whole world seems to be coming under the domination of economy-centric outlook. It is ...
... wolf to man, and humanity has purblindly see-sawed in the past between sanguinary war and uneasy peace. History has taught us nothing, sociology hasn't been of much use. Our thought and action in collective life has been "shallow and empirical", and has not sought, much less based itself upon, "a firm, profound and complete knowledge". 33 Further, if past experience is to be trusted, it is not... in capital cities like London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, New Delhi raises its own problems, not easy to understand and much less to solve. The general drift of human experience seems to be that "collective life is more at ease with itself, more genial, varied, fruitful when it can concentrate itself in small spaces and simpler organisms". 34 Indeed, the whole process of Nature seems to be based ...
... shining cloud constantly run after in a circle and constantly deceiving the hope and escaping the embrace. That will be when man in the collectivity begins to live more deeply and to govern his collective life neither primarily by the needs, instincts, intuitions welling up out of the vital self, nor secondarily by the constructions of the reasoning mind, but first, foremost and always by the power of... according to the ancient Indian idea by each individual being following faithfully his swadharma, the true law and norm of his nature and the nature of his kind and by the group being, the organic collective life, doing likewise. The family, clan, caste, class, social, religious, industrial or other community, nation, people are all organic group beings that evolve their own dharma and to follow it is the ...
... gained in materials, in power of plasticity, in a new kind of depth and wideness. And we shall have acquired a salutary habit of many-sided thoroughness and a sincere endeavour to shape the outer collective life into an adequate image of our highest ideals. Temporary diminutions will not count before the greater inner expansion that is likely to succeed this age of external turmoil and outward-looking... no defence, for in their best parts and in their essence they were of eternal value. India's internal and individual seeking of them was earnest, powerful, effective. But the application in the collective life of society was subjected to serious reserves. Never sufficiently bold and thoroughgoing, it became more and more limited and halting when the life-force declined in her peoples. This defect, this ...
... hereafter, but meanwhile half convinced of terrestrial impotence, persuaded that the soul is a stranger and intruder upon earth, declares that after all not here in the life of the body or in the collective life of mortal man but in some immortal Beyond lies the heaven or the Nirvana where alone is to be found the true spiritual existence. It is here that the Gita intervenes with a restatement of the... itself to modern mankind; as stated here to a more ancient mentality, it does not meet the insistent pressure of the present mind of man for a collective advance, does not respond to its cry for a collective life that will at last embody a greater rational and ethical and if possible even a dynamic spiritual ideal. Its call is to the individual who has become capable of a complete spiritual existence; but ...
... The Basis of Unity I A MODERN society or people cannot have religion, that is to say, credal religion, as the basis of its organized collective life. I t was mediaeval society and people that were organized on that line. Indeed mediaevalism means nothing more – and nothing less – than that. But whatever the need and justification in the past... a modified utility. A modern people is a composite entity, especially with Page 51 regard to its religious affiliation. Not religion, but culture is the basis of modern collective life, national or social. Culture includes in its grain that fineness of temperament which appreciates all truths behind all forms, even when there is a personal allegiance to one particular form. ...
... 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 re... 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. Page 56 ...
... discipline as they choose to impose upon themselves; that might do if the only thing to be done were for each individual to get some inner realisation and life did not matter or if there were no collective life or work or none that had any importance. Page 63 But this is not the case here. We have undertaken a work which includes life and action and the physical world. In what I am trying... admitting that lately there has grown in the Ashram a tendency to confuse freedom with permissiveness. Some inmates, old and new, do not feel any compunction in breaking the healthy discipline of the collective life or even in introducing injurious innovations. How to check this trend? If allowed a free course, this tendency is bound to grow more and more with the passage of time and infect more and more people ...
... as possible a wide room, ample means, a sufficient freedom or guidance of development to his thought, his action, his growth, his possibility of fullness of being. The opposite ideal gives the collective life the first or sole importance; the existence, the growth of the race is of the highest value in this view; the individual is expected to live for the society or for Page 117 mankind... the organisation of nations, kingdoms and empires, it was groupments of smaller nations which have had the most intense life and not the huge States and colossal empires. His conclusion is that collective life, when it diffuses itself in very vast spaces, seems to lose intensity and productiveness. As illustrations, he points out that Page 121 Europe has lived in England, France, Netherlands ...
... necessarily injurious. The western ideals of progress, — those of liberty, equality and fraternity, — if received rightly and assimilated properly, can ensure the rejuvenation of our individual and collective life. The west can teach us secrets of modern science, and if we can learn these lessons rightly but in accordance with Indian spirit, we can recover and even refashion our own national intellectual... from egoism and yet not lose but rather greaten our capacities for dynamic action. We need to receive that knowledge once again and make it active in the present difficult conditions of modern collective life. We do not Page 454 need to worship selfish self-centredness and narrow competitiveness in self-assertion. India has been constantly teaching that the world is vast and that everybody ...
... Earthly Destiny The Basis of Unify A MODERN society or people cannot have religion, that is to say, credal religion, as the basis of its organized collective life. It was mediaeval society and people that were organized on that line. Indeed mediaevalism means nothing more—and nothing less —than that. But whatever the need and justification in the past, the... or only a modified utility. A modern people is a composite entity, especially with Page 128 regard to its religious affiliation. Not religion, but culture is the basis of modern collective life, national or social. Culture includes in its grain that fineness of temperament which appreciates all truths behind all forms, even when there is a personal allegiance to one particular form. ...
... yoga, and since this yoga is not only the yoga for the individual but also for the collectivity and for the advancement of the evolutionary process, its goal includes radical consequences for the collective life of humanity and even for the solution of the contemporary problems of humanity. Integral yoga has for its aim the generalization of yoga in humanity and this aim envisages three preparatory... the gnostic consciousness and nature. But there still remains the third desideratum, a new world, a change in the total life of Page 8 humanity or, at the least, a new perfected collective life in the earth-nature. This calls for the appearance not only of isolated evolved individuals acting in the unevolved mass, but of many gnostic individuals forming a new kind of beings and a new ...
... build a path leading us from the present critical condition of the world towards a better and Page 118 smoother progress ensuring the needed perfectibility of the individual and collective life? It will be seen that these questions are interrelated and demand a vast and strenuous effort of research. Fortunately, the supreme help that we can get in this task of research is the body... Rigveda closes with the call to join together and to commune together in harmony, - samgacchadhvam samvadadhvam, the vision that has been placed before us is that of the perfectibility of the collective life. In sum, it can be said that the ancient fund of knowledge that India possesses, which even Indians have largely lost or forgotten, needs to be explored with fresh eyes and with scientific ...
... the aids of which we can build a path leading us from the present critical condition of the world towards a better and smoother progress ensuring the needed perfectibility of the individual and collective life? It will be seen that these questions are interrelated and demand a vast and Strenuous effort of research. Fortunately, the supreme help that we can get in this task of research is the body... Rigveda closes with the call to join together, and to commune together in harmony, — samgacchadhvam samvadadhvam, the vision that has been placed before us is that of the perfectibility of the collective life. In sum, it can be said that the ancient fund of knowledge that India possesses, which even Indians have largely lost or forgotten, needs to be explored with fresh eyes and with scientific ...
... family furnished such a nucleus in the early epochs of humanity. But with the growth of human life there came Page 30 a time when, for a better and more efficient organization in collective life, larger units were needed. The original unit had to be enlarged in order to meet the demands of a wider and more complex growth. Also it is to be noted that the living body is not merely a con... in secret and justified its advent and reign is a truth that has still its day. The drive of Nature, of the inner consciousness of humanity was always to find a greater and larger unit for the collective life of mankind. That unit today has to be a federation of free peoples and nations. In the place of nations, several such commonwealths must now form the broad systems of the body politic of human ...
... for improving the quality of life started. Normally, individual life and collective life depend on each other for their betterment. Collectivity creates opportunities for the individuals to grow and to progress. The individuals, by their achievements in various fields of human activities, make the collective life rich and fruitful. It has often been found that an individual, having exceptional ...
... New Society THE BASIS OF UNITY I A modern society or people cannot have religion, that is to say, credal religion, as the basis of its organized collective life. It was mediaeval society and people that were organized on that line. Indeed mediaevalism means nothing more—and nothing less—than that. But whatever the need and justification in the past, the... no reality at all or only a modified utility. A modern people is a composite entity, especially with regard to its religious affiliation. Not religion, but culture is the basis of modern collective life, national or social. Culture includes in its grain that fineness of temperament which appreciates all truths behind all forms, even when there is a personal allegiance to one particular form. ...
... able to satisfy. Fasting as a method of achieving public welfare has found its limitations. Gandhi lays stress on the observance of Yama and Niyama and wishes to activate ethical values in the collective life. One may mention one result of the Gandhian outlook which seems to overlook some fundamental values. of Indian culture. In the stress for "doing" the more important fact of "being" is neglected... the human world." ; He therefore wants free India to accept boldly the challenge of the age and give the world a lead in solving problems of collective life by applying her spiritual ideals. He states: " A widest and highest spiritualising of life on earth is the last vision of all that vast and unexampled seeking and experiments in a thousand ways ...
... receive the whole universe. Having created such a centre in life, that is, the mental being, it forces the mind to go back, to reverse the process of individualizing into a necessity of accepting collective life, the need for interchange, the need for exchange, the need for "other" in order to fulfill one's self. That is what the process of nature seems to do when it evolves from the inconscience of matter... to the plane of consciousness beyond mind, where the law which operated and created this reversal would reach again the next step of its ascent. And this reversal from mind to the necessity of collective life drives the individual from egocentricity into universality; and universality must culminate into Truth-Consciousness, because the universal consciousness is not the whole truth of the Omnipresent ...
... life of man, which has nothing to do with man as the heighest creature of creation, man as the divine spirit, man as an idealist, man as a noble creature. Those values had been lowered down in collective life. That is why the war doesn't inspire us - it creates a sense of, "Oh, no. What we did was wrong." Everybody thinks like that, not only those who participated; all the human beings who were not... was not right; we didn't do the right thing." That's it. And here, even when parties had to fight, as I said, they had to rise to an idealistic plane before they themselves could create in their collective life, their animal mankind, the will to fight, the belief that the war was worth fighting for and winning. Naturally it was a question of the rights of man. freedom of association and freedom of belief-many ...
... many-branching and always enlarging way of knowledge and of spiritual or religious discipline. Lastly, for those not yet ready for these higher steps it provided an organisation of the individual and collective life, a framework of personal and social discipline and conduct, of mental and moral and vital development by which they could move each in his own limits and according to his own nature in such a way ...
... supramental consciousness Page 657 on earth, to fix it there, to create a new race with the principle of the supramental consciousness governing the inner and outer individual and collective life. Therefore the existence of the Asram, whatever difficulties it created for ourselves or for the individual, was inevitable. The method was the preparation of the earth consciousness in the human ...
... And there is a moment—in everyone's life there is a moment—when this need for perfect sincerity comes as a definitive choice. There is a moment in one's individual life, also a moment in the collective life when one belongs to a group, a moment when the choice must be made, when the purification must be done. Sometimes this becomes very serious, it is almost a Page 146 question of ...
... lines. Collective progress and individual progress are interdependent. Before the individual can take a leap forward, it is necessary that something of an antecedent progress be achieved in the collective life. A way has therefore to be found whereby the twofold progress can go on simultaneously. It is in answer to this pressing need that Sri Aurobindo conceived the scheme of his International ...
... to be a fatal error. A forced and imposed unanimity of 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 ...
... The project of Auroville is the next step, more exterior, which seeks to widen the base of this attempt to establish harmony between soul and body, spirit and nature, heaven and earth, in the collective life of mankind. 1969 * Page 15 Q: What is the difference between the Ashram and Auroville? The Ashram will retain its true role of pioneer, inspirer and guide. Auroville ...
... mind the least important part of religion is its dogma; the religious spirit matters, not the theological credo____ Hinduism has always attached to [the organisation of the individual and collective life] a great importance; it has left out no part of life as a thing secular and foreign to the religious and spiritual life The people of India, even the "ignorant masses" have this distinction that ...
... its very nature. That accounts for the predominantly economic and materialistic character of modern ideas of Socialism; for these ideas are the full rationalistic flowering of this instinct of collective life. But since the society is one competitive unit among many of its kind, and since its first relations with the others are always potentially hostile, even at the best competitive and not cooperative ...
... to the human being. We must remember that our aim of self-fulfilment is an integral unfolding of the Divine within us, a complete evolution of the hidden divinity in the individual soul and the collective life. Otherwise we may simply come back to an old idea of individual and social living which had its greatness, but did not provide all the conditions of our perfection. That was the idea of a spiritualised ...
... affirmed. The greater human collectivity exists, but it is an inchoate and unorganised existence, and its growth can best be developed by the better development of the most efficient organised collective life already existing; practically, then, by the growth, perfection and domination of the most advanced nations, or possibly of the one most advanced nation, the collective ego which has best realised ...
... feverish insistence, a vehement attempt to live more rapidly, more intensely, an inordinate will to act and to succeed, to enlarge the mere force of living or to pile up a gigantic efficiency of the collective life. It could not have been otherwise even if this vitalism had been less superficial and external, more truly subjective. To live, to act, to grow, to increase the vital force, to understand, utilise ...
... equality as absolute as can be fabricated amid the inequalities of Nature by reason and social science and machinery,—and most of all an equal association in the labour and the common profits of a collective life. It is not certain that this formula will succeed very much better than its predecessor. This equality can only be presently secured by strict regulation, and that means that liberty at least for ...
... each with each and all with all; this collectivity would be and act not as a mechanical but a spiritual integer. A similar inevitability of the union of freedom and order would be the law of the collective life; it would be a freedom of the diverse play of the Infinite in divine souls, an order of the conscious unity of souls which is the law of the supramental Infinite. Our mental rendering of oneness ...
... wanted to establish. But short of the Aurobindonian philosophy and Yoga there has been no solid ground of theory and practice for what he envisaged as total supramentalisation of individual and collective life. Now to other matters. I won't discuss the doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary nor Karl Rahner's generalising Page 22 suggestion. It may interest you that the ...
... according even to its own restricted sense of the good, the beautiful, the true. Unavoidably, when our highest power is like this, impulse and emotion tend ever to tear individual as well as collective life with discords and imbalances, and whatever little harmony and happiness is the human lot proves precarious and superficial. If Page 111 bodily mind and bodily ...
... himself—the work of psychology, not as it is understood in Europe, but the deeper practical psychology called in India Yoga; and the application of our ideas to the problems of man's social and collective life. Philosophy and religious thought based on spiritual experience must be the beginning and the foundation of any such attempt; for they alone go behind appearances and processes to the truth ...
... and towards whom our souls must rise and through whom we must strive for an evolutionary expression of those archetypes in our entire nature and for a harmony of the One and the Many in a new collective life. Sri Aurobindo's feeling of divine concretenesses behind the philosophical intellect's graspings of significance on high significance within the passing pageant of time-born figures ...
... its activities, since my purpose is to give some salient features and significant results which may be found gratifying or otherwise, as the first results of a futuristic experiment of a collective life and the hazards of its growth and encourage further study. Any individual capable of taking a broad and comparatively large and sympathetic view of the Ashram-commune and its life is ...
... (reflecting, without praise or blame) to the child in the choices she makes with regard to her daily actions. Of course, some basic rules of conduct might be in operation - as is the need of a collective life. But, the general endeavour is at becoming aware of one's weaknesses and strengths without taking them to be the final truth about oneself. In this manner one is free from taking credit or blame ...
... much impregnated by the psychic and supramental presence, remained bound within a given shape of the body. ‘An individual transformation would not be the creation of a new type of beings or a new collective life.’ 34 The evolutionary gain to be won by this Yoga, by this new development in the life of planet Earth, was clearly delineated. All previous Avatars had universalized themselves in their ...
... than collective spiritual ideal through social and humanitarian services, it failed to bring about a change of our social economic and political life. Sri Aurobindo saw that nothing good for collective life emerged out of the neo-spiritual ideals of Ramkrishria and Vivekananda and that' there was a downward trend of consciousness in the masses which cared more for material prosperity for themselves ...
... But the question is, why so? Why is all this clash and collision and disharmony? What is the root-cause of this ignoble failure on the part of man as a species to organise his individual and collective life on the basis of universal harmony and union? If we really want to reconstruct our society on an ideal basis, we have to touch and tackle the problem at its very root. To manipulate only on the ...
... everything? Naturally, the first effect will be a change of consciousness, first among the most receptive, and then in a greater number of people. A change in the general conditions of collective life can only come later, perhaps long after individual reactions have been transformed. The first noticeable result is a heightening of the general confusion, because the old principles have lost their ...
... Upanishadic revelations, the nature of future Poetry, Social, Political and National themes—all these writings which he received in a silent mind brought a new vision and a possible new mode of collective life. Global in their outlook, they encompassed in their fold the worlds of men and gods and higher beings preparing themselves to participate in the terrestrial possibilities in the greatness of ...
... Mahabharata are "products of inspired intelligence with a high poetic tone," and both are "ensouled images of a great culture." These epics give us the spiritual significance of individual and collective life from a strong and noble thought-power of a mind that has high social, political and ethical ideals and is artistically delicate and refined. Savitri too offers us a whole world of experience ...
... shining cloud constantly run after in a circle and constantly deceiving the hope and escaping the embrace. That will be when man in the collectivity begins to live more deeply and to govern his collective life neither primarily by the needs, instincts, intuitions welling up out of the vital self, nor secondarily by the constructions of the reasoning mind, but first, foremost and always by the power ...
... hesitate to pronounce that such people had no spir- itual life or experience. Certainly, I prefer that sadhaks should be reasonably considerate towards each other, but that is for the sake of collective life and harmony, not as a siddhi of the Yoga or an indispensable sign of inner experience. 143 [As for the other matter how can the écarts of the sadhaks here, none of whom have reached perfection ...
... a happy fulfillment. In one there is total immergence and disappearance, in the other the life of immortality in the splendour of the gods. Page 43 The spell of Buddhism on the collective life had to end and in that task we witness the greatness of Shankara. “Philosophy is the self-expression,” writes Radhakrishnan, “ of the growing spirit of mankind, and the philosophers are its voice ...
... recognize the dangers of the one and the difficulties of the other, and to conceive or design appropriate lines of action. In doing so, care should be taken to recognize the needs and truths of collective life of mankind. Uniformity, if led to its logical extreme, would impose not only the rule of one language, but also the overpowering dominion of one aspect of culture. Unity, on the other hand, would ...
... physical, instinctive and vital drives by infusing in them increasingly and progressively the light and power and wisdom derived from the cultivation of higher faculties and to create individual and collective life, in its inner and outer aspects in such a way that the law of the individual development and of collective development harmonise with each other. The purely physical life, devoid of mental ...
... successful conclusion. In this context, one of the central issues on which we shall be required to have great and fresh clarity is that of Dharma and its applications in the individual and collective life. The current economic field, whether competitive or socialistic, is a field of the job market, which is being fed by human resources trained by educational factories providing courses and ...
... "Be first Manu, the being of the mind, and then generate the divine being, the being of divine light.” Page 105 In the last hymn, the Rigveda enjoins a gospel for a harmonious collective life, a life in which people would work together, would think together, would speak together, would agree together, — all in harmony. Even today, humanity can hear those great and inspiring words: ...
... circles of lower life marked by hunger and satisfaction, strife and success, and perils of small and great disasters, and yet, on the other hand, the upward human aspiration to build individual and collective life on the basis of mutuality and harmony, of Peace and concord, and ever-increasing perfectibility of our highest potentialities must continue to struggle without any sound promise of its eventual ...
... or political unity is not necessarily a boon in itself; it is only worth pursuing in so far as it provides a means and a framework for a better, richer, more happy and puissant individual and collective life. 3 Page 492 Let us take the example of the Roman Empire; for it provides a historical illustration of an organisation of unity which transcended the limits of the nation, and ...
... but the earlier Upanishads are quite explicit in their acceptance of a larger Vedic ideal and in their synthesis of the transcendental and the cosmic, even the integration of the individual and collective life on the earth with the supra-terrestrial life and the supra-cosmic existence. The Upanishads have been rightly looked upon as the supreme work of the Indian mind. They are a record of the deepest ...
... individuals in the world are finding themselves in the grip of dilemmas, which have become impossible of solution through any of the ordinary known means at the disposal of humanity, but even the collective life of humanity has reached such as acute stage of mechanisation, standardisation and unbearable structuralisation that the ideals of progress which have been put forward, the ideals of Page ...
... provides codes of conduct or of prescribed acts, the ultimate justification of which is sought to be rooted in the revealed truth. It also erects or creates systems of institutions and modes of collective life designed to sub-serve the revealed truth. But religion is still governed by page - 36 mental consciousness; it often revolves in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices of set prescriptions ...
... crisis has to be met, development of psychic and spiritual consciousness should be fostered. Unfortunately, spiritual consciousness is often conceived as a denial of material life and concerns of collective life. In Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's view, however, there is no fundamental opposition between Matter and Spirit. True integrality, according to them, implies rejection of no element in human ...
... individuals in the world are finding themselves in the grip of dilemmas, which have become impossible of solution through any of the ordinary known means at the disposal of humanity, but even the collective life of humanity has reached such an acute stage of mechanisation, standardisation and unbearable structuralisation that the ideals of progress which have been put forward, - the ideals of liberty, ...
... ventured to state that even in the "golden" past when the number of inmates was very much restricted and the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were physically present to look after everything, the Ashram's collective life was beset with certain difficulties arising out of the capricious nature and behaviour of some disciples. And this phenomenon was neither fortuitous nor unessential to the fulfilment of the central ...
... structures that aim at flexibility, equity, justice and freedom. Again, when the three ideals of the social Reason, — liberty, equality and fraternity, — are attempted to be established in collective life, the three are found to be in conflict with each other and defeated by the powers of Unreason. When liberty wins, equality gets dethroned; when equality is attempted to be raised up, liberty gets ...
... social or political unity is not necessarily a boon in itself; it is only worth pursuing in so far as it provides a means and framework for a better, richer, more happy and puissant individual and collective life. Looking at the past examples of large aggregates such as we find under the Roman Empire and others, we are likely to conclude that if there were to come about today a social, administrative and ...
... basic commitment to what the Mother and Sri Aurobindo expect of us as their loving and loyal children, he will not only lose his own peace and happiness but, what is worse, he will disturb the collective life here into the bargain. A sadhak of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, if he would really like to deserve the appellation, must show his zeal to fight out his weaknesses again and again; for, as Sri Aurobindo ...
... Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny The Deficiencies If we in the Ashram would like to fulfil the God-given task of building a collective life in which spiritually perfect individuals would dwell in a spiritually perfect community, many of the Ashramites, or even the majority of them, would have to sincerely try to grow into a more complete ...
... realise, a goal sure to be realised one day but - it is realistic to admit - not in the immediate future. In the meantime, what sort of relationships should the Ashramites seek to establish in their collective life? Now, what the sadhaks are expected to avoid and what to cultivate have been made abundantly clear by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo in their various writings. If we become sincere in our effort ...
... institution where almost two thousand men and women of varying ages, belonging to different nationalities and coming from diverse social backgrounds, are consciously striving to build up a new type of collective life which, far from being a monastic life of a few isolated spiritual seekers, gives full scope to life-manifestation in all its vigour and variety. Sri Aurobindo Ashram aspires to create a "new common ...
... between our members. ... This supreme truth of ourselves must have a double character. It must be a law and truth that discovers the perfect movement, harmony, rhythm of a great spiritualised collective life and determines perfectly our relations with each being and all beings in Nature's varied oneness. It must be at the same time a law and truth that discovers to us at each moment the rhythm and ...
... we do not recognise them. It points out that the messages from the West of liberty, equality and fraternity, if rightly received and assimilated, have the power to rejuvenate our individual and collective life; it also welcomes the Western messages of original, critical and scientific thought; it also stresses the Western insistence on creativity, prosperity and unity. On the other hand, it warns against ...
... creation of collective consciousness. There were deeper imperatives, too. Already we find, in the Agenda of 1961, certain indications of the idea of an ideal city which could be a habitation of a collective life and which could serve as the embryo or seed of the future supramental world. In the words of Mother: What I myself have seen... was a plan that came complete in all details, but that doesn't ...
... blending of the principles of freedom and discipline, cannot be realised in a day in all the members of the Ashram. So if at times we happen to see some imperfections troubling the atmosphere of our collective life here, we should not turn unduly pessimistic. Knowing that there cannot but be some natural difficulties on the arduous path of the achievement of our difficult goal, we should redouble our efforts ...
... Congress, held at Bombay in 1885. This event heralded the beginning of a political awakening. The demand for political freedom, however half-hearted and halting, began to find expression in the collective life of political India. Page 28 ...
... conflict or clash between the claims of the state and the individual's right to follow the truth of his ideal. The state demands the discipline of laws and the restrictions necessary for an orderly collective life. It cannot tolerate a deviation or protest. It does not grant to any individual the right to move a step away from the prescribed norm. All this ends in tyranny and persecution. The individual ...
... individual is taught to remain in the world and with the society, maintain his individuality and independence and gradually enlarge them in and through the natural fetters and bondages that a collective life and efficient organisation demands and inevitably imposes. The East, on the contrary, asks the individual never to protest and assert his individuality, which is in their view only another name ...
... it necessary for the moment to envisage in detail what this divinised man would be like, externally— his mode of outward being and living, kim asita vrajeta kim, as Arjuna queried—or how the collective life of the new humanity would function or what would be the composition of its social fabric. For what is happening is a living process, an organic growth; it is being-elaborated through the actions ...
... cells, exposing them to decay and disintegration. But in itself, each cell has an infinite vitality. Thus the problem is, if one cell is essentially immortal, then how can they be made, in their collective life, to avoid conflict and decay, undergo rejuvenation and youthfulness. Science in a practical way through material means tries to prolong life as far as possible, as for us, we are not limited ...
... it necessary for the moment to envisage in detail what this divinised man would be like, externally—his mode of outward being and living, kim asita vrajeta kim, as Arjuna queried—or how the collective life of the new humanity would function or what would be the composition of its social fabric. For what is happening is a living process, an organic growth; it is being elaborated through the actions ...
... orked out into the super-consciousness. Such is Nature's evolutionary nisus and such is the truth and fact man is being driven to face in his inner individual consciousness as well as outer collective life. We can thus note, broadly speaking, three stages in the human cycle of Nature's evolution. The first was the period of emergence of self-consciousness and the trials and experiments it went ...
... ensure the protected freedom necessary to the child for his self-educative process. But for the purpose of carrying this attitude of the teacher and this way of living of the child into the collective life and work of the school, we have to construct a frame-work, to devise methods, to elaborate techniques. The principal aims of these methods and techniques are to co-ordinate the activities of the ...
... meant the supremacy of the family and the clan: that was the central unit round which society grew and was held together. Krishna came to break that mould and evolve a higher and larger unit of collective life. It was not yet the nation, but an intermediary stage something like a League of clans, (as we in our day are trying another higher stage in the League of Nations). The Rajasuya celebrates the ...
... honestly and whole-heartedly to its production. That is the line of true communism. Above all, one must cultivate the civic sense, the very primary thing one must have for a harmoniously prosperous collective life, we have to learn again the first lesson of civilised living in these days when the brute and the vampire are seated in human hearts. We must not always clamour for selfish gains, gains for oneself ...
... necessary for the moment to envisage in detail what this divinised man would be like, externally – his mode of outward being and living, kim asita vrajeta kim, as Arjuna queried – or how the collective life of the new humanity would function or what would be the composition of its social fabric. For what is happening is a living process, an organic growth; it is being elaborated through the actions ...
... with a varying tempo. The view implies two conclusions or rather postulates: (l) that whatever is born must die, there is no resurrection or rejuvenation, neither in the individual nor in. the collective life and (2) that humanity remains on the whole more or less the same, there is no global progress: there is no continued march forward towards a kingdom of heaven upon earth, even as there has not ...
... and follows narrow and circuitous by-paths; rarely does it appear on the top in sudden and momentary flashes and even then only to dive back again into its subterranean hiding-place; upon the collective life and culture it acts more as an indirect influence, an auxiliary leaven than as. a direct and dynamic Force. In India there is an abundance, a superfluity even, of religious paraphernalia, but it ...
... cells, exposing them to decay and disintegration. But in itself, each cell has an infinite. vitality. Thus the problem is, if one cell is essentially immortal, then how can they be made, in their collective life, to avoid conflict and decay, undergo rejuvenation and youthfulness. Science in a practical way through material means tries to prolong life as far as possible, as for us, we are not limited ...
... wanted liberty and equality and fraternity in the world at large, the ideal has not been realised because we did not care to realise it in the consciousness and life of each one of us. In the collective life of mankind that truth will alone become a fact which is a fact in the inner existence and consciousness of every human being. The inner discovery is indeed a battle and here too a victory has ...
... there, this inner life not with much difficulty, for it is already there, a collective inner life, which is so beautiful as I say, filled with the fragrance of the Mother's Presence. It is a collective life in which you all are not only brothers and sisters but one body and soul unified in the Mother's loving and living substance. Page 107 That inner life you have ...
... practised at present. But it is quite obvious that if politics is taken in its true spirit, that is, as the organisation of human masses and all the details of government and regulation of the collective life, and relations with other collectivities - that is, with other nations, other countries - it must necessarily enter into the supramental transformation.... 5 The Mother had taken, as we saw ...
... of pain, its why and wherefore and the remedy for it, because pain exists not only on one level. In the physical body there is pain owing to disease and weakness and fatigue and illness. In the collective life you will find that the problem of pain, the infliction of pain, is in the whole record of human history. If you study history, you will find that there is war and death and pestilence and killing ...
... Supracosmic Reality, a Creator of the Universe, and lays down rules to govern man's relation with Him and with his fellow beings. It attempts to bring a higher Truth into man's individual and collective life. Art, too tried to reach out to the same Reality through aesthetic sensibility, creative urge and a sense of beauty. It *Lecture delivered at the Benares Hindu University December ...
... __________________________ ¹ Future Poetry, Sri Aurobindo. ² Ibid. Page 72 Him and with his fellow beings. It attempts to bring a higher Truth into man's individual and collective life. Art too tried to reach out the same Reality through aesthetic Sensibility, creative urge and a sense of beauty. It created forms which attempted to bring the invisible reality into the realm ...
... the master The societies that tried to set up Reason as the governor of life found that it could not lead man to perfection and that even the order which Reason attempted to establish in the collective life was only provisional. Many more things than Reason are needed for the integral fulfilment of man's life. For instance he needs art and beauty. Is the seeking for beauty, the impulse to create ...
... whole active nature of man, so that the gulf between his outer consciousness and the divine Consciousness may be bridged and he may manifest the Divine in every movement of his individual and collective life on earth. The Ashram of Sri Aurobindo is the Mother's creation, and she has built it up, brick by brick, arch by arch, so that one day it may become a temple and a radiating centre of the ...
... active nature of man, so that the gulf between his outer consciousness and the divine Consciousness may be bridged and that he may manifest the Divine in every movement of his individual and collective life on earth. The Ashram of Sri Aurobindo is the Mother's creation, and she has built it up, stone by stone, arch by arch, so that one day it may become a temple and a radiating centre of ...
... expelled from the normal waking consciousness, it sinks into the sub-conscient and re-emerges from there in sudden, fretful spurts, playing havoc with the order and security of individual and collective life. Besides, violence cannot be regarded with indifference, but has to be met and combated, not certainly out of any love of revenge or retribution, but for the protection and preservation of ...
... State. It is rigid and hard centralisation and mechanization of the life of the nation perfectly organised in all details to meet an aggression, to defend and to expand. In the old Indian collective life the three Indian things were : (1) spontaneously growing free communal units; (2) the Dharma-idea; (3) harmonising of national life by a central agency. In India we had nothing of the mental ...
... is spontaneously perfect. It is man's ascent to it and its descent into Man that can eliminate the fundamental ignorance of the Mind and fulfil man's seeking for perfection of individual and collective life. This upward movement of consciousness is the real sense of man's religious, philosophical and artistic efforts throughout the ages. It has been seen that man is endowed with an organisation ...
... Sri Aurobindo : The same principle is accepted by the Vaishnavas, who follow the Nityanand – school – they accept a Vaishnavi. Disciple : All sorts of attempts at collective life seem to have been made and when one sees them all, one is driven to despair like the bald man – who was trying all kinds of remedies to cure baldness – who on looking at king Edward VII’s photo ...
... wherefore of it, and probing into causes and the profundities of it, and then giving it not merely a philosophy but also a line of growth toward that Light, thereby explaining the individual and the collective life of man—these things are lacking. What I have seen is that the modern mind is faced with so many different problems that the Bible though a great revelation in a certain sense, does not satisfy ...
... battle only though each participant has joined it for his own purpose it is mine and I have a purpose to carry out and it would be carried out at any cost. We might note that the Gita teaches that collective life has a divine purpose to fulfil. The world we live in wears the appearance of an inert, in- conscient creation, and the human life is full of the play of ignorant forces and is undivine. Many ...
... interchange between two beings arid a relation,—a mental, an emotional, even a vital and nervous relation is actualised which, for the first time, draws beings together and creates the possibility of collective life. For There beat a throb of living interchange: Being felt being even when afar And consciousness replied to consciousness." Page 191 And yet, this interchange and ...
... we respect them, we evoke their help so far as it can be of help in the present conditions, but the highest help that one can have in his mind, in his vital life, in his individual life, in his collective life today, is from a Light like Sri Aurobindo, because he gives you the full expanded view of that perfect world; its relation with this world; then the way to reach it; the way to bring it down. He ...
... (relatively fast). This work is BEING DONE, but, you understand, it may stretch over hundreds of years! That’s what Sri Aurobindo said: a state of consciousness has to be established in which the collective life of the cells can be preserved for as long as desired. 34 And effectively, it was what was in the process of happening with the development of the Mind of the cells, that small golden vibration ...
... and outer discipline; third, the practice of one of the prescribed religious or spiritual disciplines with a view to Grace or Knowledge; and, fourth, conformity to the laws of individual and collective life. For the Hindu, then, "all life and thought are in the end a means of progress towards self-realisation and God-realisation". 17 And one particular feature of Indian religion has been the periodic ...
... of it, not because you are attached t» it, but because it manifests something of the Divine Consciousness." Page 541 and trembling vitality and a new intensity and tone to the collective life of the sadhaks with Sri Aurobindo. The talks and discussions didn't interfere with the collective meditation, and everything in fact seemed to find its proper place like the several notes in a ...
... and even so one couldn't be sure that such peace would be permanent. It was Sri Aurobindo's view that, Page 283 while peace was part of the highest ideal of individual and collective life, it must be spiritual or at the very least psychological in its basis; without a change in human nature - the supersession of egocentric thought and action by something far more widely based ...
... other culture. And, as interpreted by the Indian genius, it became a greater thing than a mere outward economic, political and social mechanism intended to serve the needs and convenience of the collective life. For the real greatness of the Indian system of the four varnas did not lie in its well-ordered division of economic function; its true originality and permanent value was in the ethical and ...
... into a beatific beyond (whether the Vedantic Liberation, the Buddhist Nirvana, the Vaishnava Bliss-world, the Zoroastrian or Christian Heaven, the Muslim Paradise), there has to be an organised collective life with a certain minimum of rules. An extreme tolerance is attempted because human beings are so various. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have tried to give the utmost liberty to their disciples so ...
... ignorance pursues relentlessly the beings of the world of sense-mind and causes sleep, fatigue, disease and death. As in the plant, so in the animal world also, the individual animal dies, but the collective life-force, the total rhythm of the sense-mind continues. The plant world is more in consonance with the laws of its parent, the matter-world, and therefore the royal representatives of the plant-world ...
... the present rules and ways and means of the society that have held together all the individuals. The laws of morality and compulsory rules will have no place in that society. The individual and collective life of that new society will be based on a totally transformed outlook. The spirit that is one and all will manifest itself outwardly and inwardly — even the feeling, seeing, dealing, etc. that every ...
... as there is the mark of a dominant and insistent wholeness suggestive of an overall purpose. The solitary cell has this mark and, when many cells combine, the unit-life retains it and yet the collective life at each moment both of development and of maintenance of developed existence is not a bare aggregate any more than the single cell is a bare aggregate: it has itself Page 229 the ...
... Aswapati. He retires to the forest and worships goddess Savitri with the intention of getting a boon from her to have a son. For upholding and perpetuating the truth-values in the society, in the collective life, he considers this to be necessary. The continuance of the race of the meritorious engaged in sacrifices is an aspect of Satya Yuga, the Age of the Right, and the responsible should not fail in ...
... the Ramayana are "products of inspired intelligence with a high poetic tone." Both are "ensouled images of a great culture." These epics give us the spiritual significance of individual and collective life from a strong and noble thought-power of a mind that has high social, political and ethical ideals Page 102 and is artistically delicate and refined. Savitri too offers ...
... discipline as they choose to impose upon themselves; that might do if the only thing to be done were for each individual to get some inner realisation and life did not matter or if there were no collective life or work or none that had any importance. But this is not the case here: we have undertaken a work which includes life and action and the physical world. In what I am trying to do, the spiritual ...
... hesitate to pronounce that such people had no spiritual life or experience. Certainly, I prefer that sadhakas should be reasonably considerate towards each other, but that is for the rule of collective life and harmony, not as a siddhi of the Yoga or an indispensable sign of inner experience. "And then how can the écarts of the sadhakas here, none of whom has reached perfection or is anywhere ...
... The project of Auroville is the next step, more exterior, which seeks to widen the base of this attempt to establish harmony between soul and body, spirit and nature, heaven and Earth, in the collective life of mankind.’ 63 One marvels at the power of the impulse in humanity towards the realization of its utopias throughout its history. Auroville may be called ‘the Utopia of all Utopias,’ ...
... goal. The project of Auroville is the next step, more exterior, which seeks to widen the base of this attempt to establish harmony between soul and body, spirit and nature, heaven and earth, in collective life of mankind . When the Mother re-read this Text in 1972, she added the words: "more exterior' in the last sentence. ...
... like the Irish or the Indians at the present moment, this kind of conscious nationalism in literature may be for some time a living idea and a powerful motive. In others which have had a vivid collective life that has exercised a common and intimate influence on all its individuals or in those which have cherished an acute sense of a great national culture and tradition, the more stable elements of ...
... is to bring down the supramental consciousness on earth, to fix it there, to create a new race with the principle of the supramental consciousness governing the inner and outer individual and collective life. Therefore the existence of the Asram, whatever difficulties it created for ourselves or for the individual, was inevitable. The method was the preparation of the earth consciousness in the human ...
... brutally, heavily, mechanically in the mass; the group self has no true right to regard the individual as if he were only a cell of its body, a stone of its edifice, a passive instrument of its collective life and growth. Humanity is not so constituted. We miss the divine reality in man and the secret of the human birth if we do not see that each individual man is that Self and sums up all human potentiality ...
... touch with the Transcendent, this supreme truth of ourselves must have a double character. It must be a law and truth that discovers the perfect movement, harmony, rhythm of a great spiritualised collective life and determines perfectly our relations with each being and all beings in Nature's varied oneness. It must be at the same time a law and truth that discovers to us at each moment the rhythm and ...
... life as a trial or a temporary affliction or a vanity and fix our hopes beyond; in some we find a vague hint of a future triumph of the Spirit, the Divine in the body, upon this earth, in the collective life of man, and so justify not only the separate hope and aspiration of the individual but the united and sympathetic hope and aspiration of the race. Religion in fact is not knowledge, but a faith ...
... make it possible for vast masses of men seized by the passion for an ideal and by the hope of a new happiness for mankind to break up the present basis of things and construct a new scheme of collective life. In another direction, the replacing of the individualistic basis of society by an increasing collectivism, there has been to a large extent such an intellectual preparation and gathering force ...
... "truth of being", some idea or ideal of its perfection or practice or efficiency, right way of being or living, and attempt to let that grow in the individual and govern his nature, grow in the collective life and govern its formations. Or it would place the development and organisation of the mental life of man as the primary consideration and life and society as a convenience for this true aim of human ...
... confusedly by the force of events. The creation of a real, efficient and powerful authority which would stand for the general sense and the general power Page 481 of mankind in its collective life and spirit and would be something more than a bundle of vigorously separate States loosely tied together by the frail bond of a violable moral agreement is the only effective step possible on this ...
... change in each human life. The collective soul is there only as a great half-subconscient source of the individual existence; if it is to take on a definite psychological form or a new kind of collective life, that can only come by the shaping growth of its individuals. As will be the spirit and life of the individuals constituting it, so will be the realised spirit of the collectivity and the true ...
... would hesitate to pronounce that such people had no spiritual life or experience. Certainly, I prefer that sadhaks should be reasonably considerate towards each other, but that is for the sake of collective life and harmony, not as a siddhi of the Yoga or an indispensable sign of inner experience. As for the other matter how can the écarts of the sadhaks here, none of whom have reached perfection ...
... discipline as they choose to impose upon themselves; that might do if the only thing to be done were for each individual to get some inner realisation and life did not matter or if there were no collective life or work or none that had any importance. But this is not the case here. We have undertaken a work which includes life and action and the physical world. In what I am trying to do, the spiritual ...
... practised at present. But it is quite obvious that if politics is taken in its true spirit, that is, as the organisation of human masses and all the details of government and regulation of the collective life, and relations with other collectivities—that is, with other nations, other countries—it must necessarily enter into the supramental transformation, for so long as national life and the relations ...
... The project of Auroville is the next step, more exterior, which seeks to widen the base of this attempt to establish harmony between soul and body, spirit and nature, heaven and earth, in the collective life of mankind. 7 1969 I have always considered the Ashram and Auroville to be parts of an integral whole. I cannot see them as different entities. How then was a difference made by ...
... DONE (I am conscious of it), you understand ( laughing ), only it may stretch over hundreds of years! That's what Sri Aurobindo said: a state of consciousness has to be established in which the collective life of the cells can be preserved for as long as desired; that means the Lord's Will must be sufficiently active to keep the balance between all those elements for as long as necessary for all of them ...
... We can conceive that food will no longer be needed, that there will be another method of sustenance, but... No need of houses! ( Mother does not hear and goes on ) Individual life or collective life? A constructed house, or a... spontaneous house? They don't need houses, they draw back within! You think they can make themselves invisible? Yes, they can draw back within. Ah ...
... goal. The project of Auroville is the next step, 'more exterior,' seeking to widen the base of this endeavor to establish harmony between soul and body, spirit and nature, heaven and earth in the collective life of humanity." Page 215 ( original manuscript ) (First version) The task of giving a concrete form to Sri Aurobindo's vision has been given to the Mother. (Second version) ...
... nature. He has no doubt developed the powers of reason but this reason turns traitor the moment his own self-interest is affected. And this—not only for the individual human being but also for the collective life. Greed, lust for power and domination over others are his characteristic nature even in these days of so-called enlightened self-interest which is only an euphemism for blatant exploitation of ...
... Auroville all life is research. Auroville is meant to be a living laboratory. Whether we are busy trying to invent a new economy, whether we are engaged in discussions to attempt to organize the collective life of the community, whether we teach or we build houses, in fact we make a practical research in the ways by which we could create a new society, a society that will be governed by the soul. ...
... of Athens, elected and. re-elected for almost 30 years by the Athenians, the polls (city) of Athens reached the zenith of its political power and cultural achievements, and every aspect of the collective life prospered and developed. In his childhood and youth, he received music lessons from Damon 6 the most famous music teacher of his time, he learnt literature from Pythocleides, he absorbed philosophy ...
... After repelling two Persian invasions, the polis (city) of Athens reached during Socrates' lifetime the zenith of its political power and cultural achievements, and every aspect of the collective life prospered and developed. 2 Architecture and the arts blossomed during this time, when Pericles, a political leader, promoted the extension and beautification of the Acropolis, and Phidias, the ...
... "Have-Nots". Exploitation was-the motto of the age. The "exploiters" and the "exploited", this trenchant duality was the whole truth of the social scheme and that summed up the entire malady of the collective life. Then came the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution which brought to a head the great crisis and initiated the change-over to new conditions. The French Revolution called up from the rear ...
... all. A nation by choosing a particular line of action, in asserting its absolute freedom, may go against other nations, or against the general good. Such freedom has to be curbed and controlled. Collective life – if one does not propose to live the life of the solitary – the animal or the saint – is nothing if not such a system of controls. "The whole of politics is an interference with personal liberty ...
... ess, integrating all elements into a more and more intimate and inviolable unity and harmony. ' This progress towards ever higher and wider consciousness means also in man's social or collective life the formation of larger and larger aggregates, unification of mankind in ever widening groups. From man the solitary animal, through the family, the clan, the tribe to the nation the race has been ...
... months if not years. In his letter, among other things, P-da has expressed his anguish over the supposed absence of harmony and brotherly feeling among many Ashramites. He somehow feels that our collective life here is not as he thinks it should be. He wanted to meet some senior member of the Ashram who could possibly clear his sense of uneasiness. I immediately took the letter to respected Nirod-da ...
... preferences and antipathies, blind impulses and urges, self-centred behaviour, erratic and erroneous actions and reactions, etc. And because of these we have not yet succeeded in building up an ideal collective life in accordance with the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's dream. And it is good to be reminded that we shall never be able to realise our goal if we fail to remedy the basic malady assailing and corrupting ...
... quality of life. Lifelong learning project will have a special role in promoting work place skills and in stimulating participation by increasing number of people in the civic, cultural and collective life of the country. Lifelong learning includes continuing education, adult education, independent study, open system education, agricultural education, business education, labour education, occupational ...
... quest among the students by means of one's own example of character and mastery of knowledge that is relevant to the over-arching importance of character both in the individual life and in the collective life. It is only by embodying values within oneself that the teacher can really radiate values to students. While laying a great emphasis on the role of the teacher in respect of education for ...
... circles of lower life marked by hunger and satisfaction, strife and success, and perils of small and great disasters, and yet, on the other hand, the upward human aspiration to build individual and collective life on the basis of mutuality and harmony, of peace and concord, and ever- increasing perfectibility of our highest potentialities must continue to struggle without any sound promise of its eventual ...
... consciousness with the universal consciousness and transcendental consciousness, but also to manifest the consequences of this union for arriving at ever increasing perfection of the individual and collective life in the physical world and even to transform earthly life into what can be called divine life. The distinctive methods of Yoga relate to the meticulous handling of customary psychological ...
... and follows narrow and circuitous by-paths; rarely does it appear on the top in sudden and momentary flashes and even then only to dive back again into its subterranean hiding-place; upon the collective life and culture it acts more as an indirect influence, an auxiliary leaven than as a direct and dynamic Force. In India there is an abundance, a superfluity even, of religious paraphernalia, but it ...
... sense of personal value and importance. Therefore he is given a family, a nation, a grouping more or less large in which he can find other selves to meet and learn to live with harmoniously. A collective life whether in a nation or in the family or in any other group formation demands a control over the selfish impulses and egoistic urges. That is the discipline, that is to say, the necessity of submitting ...
... secret aspiration that is given expression here. It is by the power of this mantra , protected by this invulnerable armour, – if we choose to Page 65 accept it as such, - that the collective life of man will attain its fulfilment. We have often stated that the outstanding feature of the modern world is that it has become a Kurukshetra of Gods and Titans. It is no doubt an eternal truth ...
... wanted liberty and equality and fraternity in the world at large, the ideal has not been realised because we did not care to realise it in the consciousness and life of each one of us. In the collective life of mankind that truth will alone become a fact which is a fact in the inner existence and consciousness of every human being. The inner discovery is indeed a battle and here too ...
... him a real work to be- done. To build is to create. To create is to fashion a thing beautifully. The Page 154 ideal of his patriotic society has to foster all limbs of the collective life of the entire nation, to make it a united organism, to endow it with the beauty of forms and rhythm in action. So we say that the beautiful poetry and the poetry of beauty written by him are ...
... meaning, that sprung in his intuition gradually blossomed into a lush of foliage and flowers and fruits. He brought a new birth, a new life and a new' creation everywhere in all the fields of the collective life of state, society, religion, culture, literature and language. He made the fundamental scheme, the blue-print for the future fulfilment of the country. It is he who laid down the first principles ...
... Page 6 its secret aspiration that is given expression here. It is by the power of this mantra, protected by this invulnerable armour,—if we choose to accept it as such,—that the collective life of man will attain its fulfilment. We have often stated that the outstanding feature of the modern world is that it has become a Kurukshetra of Gods and Titans. It is no doubt an eternal truth ...
... transmuted into the living sap that mounts high up the plant towards its very top, to the light and energy above. In the scheme and pattern of human existence in the hierarchy that is collective life, Sri Aurobindo sought to express the play of the supreme Truth, express materially that which works always in secret and behind the veil. The Supreme Reality is not merely the supreme awareness ...
... worked out into the superconsciousness. Such is Nature's evolutionary nisus and such is the truth and fact man is being driven to face in his inner individual consciousness as well as outer collective life. We can thus note, broadly speaking, three stages in the human cycle of Nature's evolution. The first was the period of emergence of self-consciousness and the trials and experiments it went ...
... decline and succumb to the forces of the unconscious Unreason. Again, when the three ideals of the social Reason, — liberty, equality and fraternity, - are attempted to be established in collective life, these three are found to be in conflict with each other and defeated by the powers of Unreason. When liberty wins, equality gets dethroned; when equality is attempted to be raised up, liberty ...
... life upon the earth. But there is also a third perfection to be attained. This will mean the development of a new world, a change in the total life of humanity, or, to begin with, a new perfected collective life in the earth-nature. Integral yoga is an evolving yoga, and in order to lead this yoga to its farthest possibilities, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have suggested a difficult programme of research ...
... development of skills and faculties, and the capacities required to meet the challenges of life and of the cultural context in which one is required to meet the demands of the individual and collective life; At a deeper level, human growth is aided by the development of arts, sciences, and technologies that enable the individual and collectivity to build up bridges between the past and ...
... and always enlarging way of knowledge and spiritual or religious discipline. Lastly, they were led to provide, for those not yet ready for the higher steps, an organization of the individual and collective life, a framework of personal and social discipline and conduct, of mental and moral and vital development by which they could move each in his or her own limits and according to his or her own nature ...
... most distinctive element of Hinduism lies in the fact that through successive stages, it built up for larger and larger gradations of human consciousness an organisation of the individual and collective life, — a framework of personal and social discipline and conduct, of mental and moral and vital development by which they could move each in one's own limits and according to one's own nature in such ...
... all open up to the spiritual light and force. This attempt had not only an individual aspect but also a collective aspect, and this was a remarkable attempt which could have revolutionized the collective life of India. But this was interrupted on account of several factors. Among these factors was the fact of the exhaustion of the vital force as a result of a long march of effort from the earliest ...
... to bring down the supramental consciousness on earth, to fix it there, to create a new race with the principle of the supramental consciousness governing the inner and outer individual and collective life. That force accepted by individual after individual according to their preparation would establish the supramental consciousness in the physical world and so create a nucleus for its own ...
... the community as a whole. That is why we often hear an aspirant of the Vedas calling his friends to assemble in spiritual practice and bring down the divine force with a collective effort. The collective life flourished in those days with the help of companions and helpers in sadhana. The gods too were companions and helpers in the spiritual endeavour. Hence they were addressed as friends. Page ...
... worked out into the superconsciousness. Such is Nature's evolutionary nisus and such is the truth and fact man is being driven to face in his inner individual consciousness as well as outer collective life. We can thus note, broadly speaking, three stages in the human cycle of Nature's evolution. The first was the period of emergence of self-consciousness and the trials and experiments it ...
... already there, this inner life, without much difficulty; it is already there, a collective inner life, which is so beautiful as I say, filled with the fragrance of the Mother's Presence. It is a collective life in which you all are not only brothers and sisters but one body and soul unified in the Mother's loving and living substance. That inner life you have to bring out in your body and all the ...
... "Have-Nots". Exploitation was the motto of the age. The "exploiters" and the "exploited", this trenchant duality was the whole truth of the social scheme and that summed up the entire malady of the collective life. Then came the First World War and the Bolshevic Revolution which brought to a head the great crisis and initiated the change-over to new conditions. The French Revolution called up from the rear ...
... all. A nation by choosing a particular line of action, in asserting its absolute freedom, may go against other nations, or against the general good. Such freedom has to be curbed and controlled. Collective life—if one does not propose to live the life of the solitary—the animal or the saint—is nothing if not such a system of controls. " The whole of politics is an interference with personal liberty. Law ...
... western educationists, and after them the entire world, have seized only half the truth, and this deficiency may be the source of the ominous trend in education evinced the world over. No human collective life is possible without discipline, but it ought to be a discipline taking into account as much the diversity of human nature as the unity of the soul, the deeper consciousness in man. Only a ...
... bring the full force of spiritual concentration and sincerity to bear upon them. I said something about this at Los Angeles. The subject was the need of establishing higher values in our collective life to-day. At present it is dominated by economy-centric outlook. I said : "Some one from you will have to take up the cause of higher values against money. Some one who does not surrender to the ...
... to realize God. If you have an ethical Page 263 basis you will say I want to realize Truth. If you are social minded you will say I want to improve society, or create perfect collective life. You will say I want to have self-control or I want to have peace etc. All that is an operation of the Supreme here. It is That which is working here in man and not allowing him to rest satisfied ...
... R ā m ā yana are "products of inspired intelligence with a high poetic tone". Both are "ensouled images of a great culture". These epics give us the spiritual significance of individual and collective life from a strong and noble thought power of a mind that has high social, political and ethical ideals and is artistically delicate and refined. Sāvitrī too offers a whole world of experience but ...
... being-the intellect, emotions, passions, desires-are in constant conflict. To bring about harmony within oneself and express it in life is the problem of the individual. To achieve harmony in collective life is the problem of human culture. Page 85 The instruments of nature in man are not able to achieve this harmony. It is only by bringing forward the Soul, the psychic being, ...
... can "break through the soul's stillness with a noise and cry". "Man's lower nature hides these awful guests." Page 311 Sometimes these lower forces break out into the open in the collective life of man. Then they let loose blood-lust and "the will to slay", "and fill with horror and carnage God's fair world". Pain, destruction, calamity are then abroad: "Creation rocks and tremble top ...
... progress under the pressure of a new Truth and a new Consciousness. Some people are aware of it; many are not. But that does not matter. The movement is going all right in the individual and in collective life: there is unrest, turmoil and upheaval everywhere; old bases and old values are getting shaken and are gradually yielding place to the new. Women, whether in India or elsewhere, are no exception ...
... nationalism or who had a regard for Sri .Aurobindo found it easy to render economic help through Motilal. They contacted him and he remitted the sums to Sri Aurobindo. After 1914 a centre of collective life under the inspiration of Sri Aurobindo, called the Prabartak Samgha, had taken form around Motilal. All Bengali books and many English books connected with Sri Aurobindo as well as the two journals ...
... integral like the Yoga of the Gita, but a new dimension - the bringing down of the Supramental Light and Force - is added, and this makes all the difference. As in individual life, in collective life also there are ascending levels of conduct above the promiscuous play of personal need, preference and desire. There is the sense of the common good of the community, which governs the actions ...
... country into the new religion of the new age; in him appeared in seed-form the potentialities of all future creation; sparks of his illumined mind entered into every important domain of the collective life of the race — politics, society, religion, education, literature, language — and brought to the country a new birth, a new life, a new creation. 28 A Colossus though Rammohan was, he too ...
... A divine life means, firstly, the fulfilment of man's urge to individual perfection; and secondly, the harmonisation of perfected individuals with one another, and the evolution of a perfect collective life. "Perfect the individual, perfect the race"! Page 611 Between the twin poles of individual perfection and hierarchic perfection will revolve the many-splendoured Divine Life. ...
... . Sincerity is to aspire for the lovely rain that makes things grow, but strangely enough we simultaneously aspire for germs; we always pull in two directions. There is also a moment in the collective life—if one is part of a group—there is a moment when a choice MUST be made, when the purification must be achieved. Sometimes it is imperative, it's almost a question of life and death for the group; ...
... earth, who accepted to make the experiment of the new Consciousness in their bodies and in their lives—this Consciousness of the terrestrial body's material oneness. How is it materialized in a collective life? How will human bodies bear the infiltration of this true Vibration, let themselves be molded by it, and thus organize their lives according to norms that are no longer "human" or mental, but ...
... 29 October 1958 " It is true that the spiritual tendency has been to look more beyond life than towards life. It is true also that the spiritual change has been individual and not collective; its result has been successful in the man, but unsuccessful or only indirectly operative in the human mass. The spiritual evolution of Nature is still... dynamically diffusive character can be expected or any attempt at collective spiritual life,—such attempts have been made, but mostly as a field of protection for the growth of the individual's spirituality,—acquire a successful permanence. For till then the individual must be preoccupied with his own problem of entirely changing his mind and life into conformity with the truth of the spirit which he is achieving... achieving or has achieved in his inner being and knowledge. Any premature attempt at a large-scale collective spiritual life is exposed to vitiation by some incompleteness of the spiritual knowledge on its dynamic side, by the imperfections of the individual seekers and by the invasion of the ordinary mind and vital and physical consciousness taking hold of the truth and mechanising, obscuring or corrupting ...
... far we in the Ashram have advanced towards the realisation of the double goal of Page 12 establishing spiritual consciousness in the constituent individuals and building up a collective spiritual life. Where does our Ashram stand in its present form and disposition with respect to that dual achievement? Surely, as it is, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram cannot be considered to conform to... ours) Now the crucial question is: What do these expressions "preparation", "first form" and "preparatory work" signify? Have Mother and Sri Aurobindo an occult plan to build the "ideal group-life" of their dream elsewhere than at Pondicherry and at some other time than at present? Has our Ashram to remain content with its arrested flowering and the not too glorious a role of being a mere pilot... assessment of our work, let us, the Ashramites -one and all - turn our gaze within and see for ourselves how far we have been faithful to the ideal of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo in our own individual life and practice. And if on soul-searching it is found that lapses and failings have appeared at some point, let us take remedial measures to arrest in time any possible erosion of spiritual values here ...
... harmonious new life. The Mother, On Education: A Dream In his book The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo has written: There has been the dream or a psychic prevision of a fulfilment exceeding the individual transformation, a new earth and heaven, a city of God, a divine descent upon earth, a reign of the spirit, a kingdom of God, not only within us but outside in a collective human life ... Sri... provided for equally in the case of each and everyone. In the general organisation intellectual, moral and spiritual superiority will find expression not in the enhancement of the pleasures and powers of life but in the increase of duties and responsibilities. Artistic beauty in all forms, painting, sculpture, music, literature, will be available equally to all, the opportunity to share in the joys they... Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: Man and the Evolution I plunged into the reveries of my childhood: Beauty, Wonder and Quietude. These things surely create a paradise upon earth, and to realise this, sincere, true and pure aspiration and effort are essential. A few lines from Savitri came to my mind: In us too the intuitive Fire can burn; An agent Light, it is coiled in our folded ...
... Supermind, the creative Truth-Consciousness, which has never been brought into play in its direct form. The Supermind can divinise the mental and vital and physical being of man and bring about a collective spiritual life on the basis of an inner unity and take up all the fields of activity and give them a divine value, direction and fulfilment. Thus the Intergral Yoga sweeps everything into its... THE INTEGRAL YOGA, WORK AND LIFE-ACTIVITY SOME NOTES FOR AN AMERICAN SEEKER Q: Please define Sadhana and Integral Yoga. What is their relationship to each other? What is the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's attitude toward work and what part do work and life-activity play in the life of one who undertakes Integral Yoga? ... to manifest it in our own humanity and put it in relation to the ordinary life around us. The manifestation in ourselves and the channelling out to the world have to be of a Divine Presence and Power that can utterly transform into perfection all the terms of our being and nature, all the terms of the world's life, leaving nothing untouched. There is a supreme original, an eternal truth ...
... " 70 The integrality of perfection cannot remain confined to the individual, but it would extend progressively to the development of the collective divine life on the earth. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: "The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect... knowledge and conscious experience as the out-flowing of that consciousness, and all in the terms of that one Ananda. His physical being will be one with all material Nature, his vital being with the life of the universe, his mind with the cosmic mind, his spiritual knowledge and will with the divine knowledge and will both in itself and as it pours itself through these channels, his spirit with the... processes, always incorporating into them all the relevant fund of knowledge gathered in the past, provide us the real kernel of the new synthesis of yoga, which Sri Aurobindo has expounded in 'The Life Divine', 'The Synthesis of Yoga', 'The Supramental Manifestation upon the Earth', 'Savitri', and this has been recorded as worked out in detail by the Mother in thirteen volumes of 'Mother's Agenda' ...
... this episode taking place in the thick of battle. Through it the deeper sense of action has been brought out in a most dramatic way to make that drama in the individual’s and through him in the collectivity’s life a living moment, a moment of action in the truth, action in the supremacy of dharma of the being itself. It is in this totality that we must witness the mighty power of the Gita’s Theory of Karma... every problem of life; we have to encounter them without ignoring or running away from them. Whatever is conducive for this progress and in whichever way we respond and act, it should be always in the inner freedom and inner perception of ours; it is that which becomes our sahaja karma . In it is the true excellence of our action and in it has Arjuna been enjoined to live and be. Life's gainworthy pragmatism... his own prakriti dharma and swabhava dharma and accordingly shape the course of his life. Howsoever much he may like not to be concerned about these issues, the imperative of his birth as a warrior he just cannot obliterate or dismiss: Arjuna cannot but fight. Not only the external circumstances of war and life and society, but Prakriti herself would make him do what he ought to do. But then ...
... Nature and bring about perfection or at least some approach to perfection in the collective human life. Page 461 × It does not follow that a true democracy must necessarily come into being at some time. For man individually or collectively to come to a full self-consciousness is a most difficult task. Before a true... unified will? Socialism is the complete expression of this idea. Uniformity of the social and economic principles and processes that govern the collectivity secured by means of a fundamental equality of all and the management of the whole social and economic life in all its parts by the State; uniformity of culture by the process of a State education organised upon scientific lines; to regularise and maintain... freedom of variation is the surviving sign of a former natural or organic life of society as opposed to an intellectually ordered, rationalised or mechanised living. The organic group-life fixed its general lines and particular divergences by the general sense Page 453 and instinct or intuition of the group-life rather than by the stricter structure of the reason. The first marked sign ...
... It is true that human life has not come to be transformed, and the spiritual tendency has been to look more beyond life than towards life. It is also true that spirituality has been successful in the life of individuals but not in the field of collectivity. At the same Page 12 time, it needs to be underlined that the solution of the problems of human life which spirituality offers... has fully confirmed this intensive evolution and formation through the individual that anything radical of an expanding or dynamically diffusive character can be expected or any attempt at collective spiritual life, — Page 13 such attempts have been made, but mostly as a field of protection for the growth of the individual's spirituality, — acquire a successful permanence."13 ... stage and turn of its development, enter into the spiritual ways and pass by its own chosen path out of this inferior existence. But then the collectivity of humanity will have to remain confined to the perpetual conflict between the individual and the collectivity, within the circle of the ego and its dualities, and the evolutionary stress in humanity will have to be denied its urge to complete what is ...
... expressions that can be appreciated and welcomed by all without any distinction of race, caste or creed. No doubt, the poet also is a man and every man is endowed with individual as well as collective traits. Life and conduct, social laws and customs, culture and education, that is to say, the materials from which literary themes are derived differ in different climes and times. Every language has its... compass of his surrounding and time as vast and gigantic. The universe, the universal does not get a chance to be reflected in him. He can at best be a poet of a particular sect, of a group or limited collectivity. So we find in literature another ideal which seeks to remove all the mist, the narrow horizon of the heart and emotions and stand supported by the mind and intelligence. And this ideal aims... be discerned in the literature of every country. As human life has two aspects – the natural and the spiritual – even so every literature has a popular and a classical style. The natural or the physical life is the foundation, and it supplies all necessary elements. But man's duty and .his fulfilment consist in building up the spiritual life on this basis, and to mould the natural elements into the ...
... help can succour and alleviate, but nothing or very little more is possible. It is true that the spiritual tendency has been to look more beyond life than towards life. It is true also that the spiritual change has been individual and not collective; its result has been successful in the man, but unsuccessful or only indirectly operative in the human mass. The spiritual evolution of Nature is still... dynamically diffusive character can be expected or any attempt at collective spiritual life,—such attempts have been made, but mostly as a field of protection for the growth of the individual's spirituality,—acquire a successful permanence. For till then the individual must be preoccupied with his own problem of entirely changing his mind and life into conformity with the truth of the spirit which he is achieving... desires and passions and the needs 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 ...
... methods in the school at Calcutta. It is not that European culture has done India no good. Far from it. Some great and eternal values like freedom, value of the individual, need of organising collective economic life for general progress—these are elements that are bound to lead men to progress. Today when the world wants to be free and India has secured her freedom let us shake ourselves free... even true that this Vital being in man, his being of life-force, can and often does create great art. In all true artistic creation this vital element is needed to give life to it. It draws its material not merely from the great ocean of life around but with the help of imagination it can create powerful, new forms which have a great appeal for life. There is a plane of higher vital being, a higher vital... turmoil and strife of life there is a harmony trying to express itself. This harmony is not merely a harmony on the life-plane, though life is its most important field for expression. This harmony is spiritual; some glimpse of it the poet had when he spoke of "the music of the 'spheres'." It belongs to a supreme spiritual plane, but its aim is to manifest itself here on our life-plane. Art is one medium ...
... desire. Dharma, the higher law, has nowhere been brought more than partially into this outer side of life, and in politics to a very minimum extent; for the effort at governing political action by ethics is usually little more than pretence. The coordination or true union of the collective outward life with Moksha, the liberated spiritual existence, has hardly even been conceived or attempted, much less... spiritualizing them. However in the application of spirituality to the political and social life, there were great difficulties. As already seen, the master idea that has governed the life, culture, social ideals of the Indian people has been the seeking of man for his true spiritual self; and it looked upon life as the frame and means for that discovery and for man's ascent from the ignorant natural... could not in the outward life go beyond certain very partial realizations and very imperfect attempts. All that she could manage to do was to create a general spiritualising symbolism, a small amount of infiltration of the greater aspiration into the routine life; it gave a certain cast to the communal life, and created institutions favourable to the spiritual idea. But it could go no ...
... the individual transformation, a new earth and heaven, a city of God, a divine descent upon earth, a reign of the spiritually perfect, a kingdom of God not only within us but outside, in a collective human life. However obscure may have been some of the forms taken by this aspiration, the indication they contain of the urge of the occult spiritual being within to emergence in earth-nature is unmistakable... their descendants: but still such a development within the type is imaginable. The progress of Nature from Matter to Life, from Life to Mind, may be conceded: but there is no proof yet that Matter developed into Life or Life-energy into Mind energy; all that can be conceded is that Life has manifested in Matter, Mind in living Matter. For there is no sufficient proof that any vegetable species developed... grades of form and consciousness as its machinery. The first by itself would mean only a cosmic evolution; for the individual would be a quickly perishing instrument, and the race, a more abiding collective formulation, would be the real step in the progressive manifestation of the cosmic Inhabitant, the universal Spirit: rebirth is an indispensable condition for any long duration and evolution of the ...
... needs which the not-self can supply to it: it must learn to know in some way all that surrounds it so as to be able to master it and make it as far as possible a servant to the individual and collective human life and ego. The body provides our consciousness with the gates of the senses through which it can establish the necessary communication and means of observation and action upon the world, upon... from its self-absorbed Inconscience. This first crude mechanical action of an inherent absorbed conscious energy opens in the primary forms of life into submental life-vibrations that imply an involved sensation; there is a seeking for growth, light, air, life-room, a blind feeling out, which is still internal and confined within the immobile being, unable to formulate its instincts, to communicate,... tion is possible, and also this simultaneous separation and partial identification, because these things are becomings of our being, determinations of our mind stuff and mind energy, of our life stuff and life energy; but, since they are only a small part of us, we are not bound to be identified Page 544 and occupied,—we can detach ourselves, separate the being from its temporary becoming ...
... his ideal of human beings evolved beyond themselves and transformed into supramental ones leading a collective divine life on earth of unity-in-diversity and illumined dynamism. How it could be a brake is not quite clear. Is it because such a life would mark a supreme height of energy-organization and thus flout the second law of ... super-organism charged with super-consciousness — the famous "Omega Point" in which progressive evolution goes past "reflective" individuality to a "co-reflective" collectivity. Here the developing character Sri Aurobindo mentions of the successive creation becomes relevant to the issue of a planned or unplanned universe. Not that... realisation of that which she secretly is." 44 In that case, we should accept the "Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Consciousness. And then there seems to be little objection to a farther step in the series and the admission ...
... itself is quite outside the province in which I can make or give decisions. On all matters concerning the sadhana or life in the sadhana I can or may recommend or say Yes or No,— your poetry or your music I regard as part of the sadhana, part of your own and the collective Yoga life, but Charlie Chaplin and the City Lights are so outside it that I am unable to say anything about it whatever. ... printer. There is one in the English translation—for I stood aghast before a "hand of empty dreams"—and this singular hand was plural! It took me a minute to discover that the Devil's own had turned a collective band into a plural hand. "A hand of empty dreams"—how gloriously poetic and modernistically full of a meaningless significance! The Mother says that, if you want, you can come to her for a short... your vital was willing to recognise imperfections, to throw away any wrong attitude—e.g., the desire for mere fame, and to be dedicated and perfect. Divinisation of life means, in fact, a greater art of life; for the present art of life produced by ego and ignorance is something comparatively mean, crude and imperfect (like the lower forms of art, music and literature which are yet more attractive ...
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