SPRING 1976 Vol
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Mt. Tremper, N. Y. 12457 Collaboration u publuhed quarterly by Ma~ri, a Sri Aurobindo center. All quotation, from the publuhed writiryp of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are protected by International Copyright laao. SPRING 1976 Vol. 11, No. 3 The unity of humanity is an underlying and existing fact. But the external union of man kind depends on man's goodwill and sincerity. -The Mother The ideal of human unity long cherished by a few city-state, the nation and finally to the world-state spiritual visionaries, religious founders, and thinkers is now attempting to form itself through the United Na now filtering down among a larger number of aspiring tions; he traces also the development of many coun mankind. At the same time, the forces of division are tries through various phases of growth-tribal, feudal, seen at work everywhere, separating nations and monarchic-aristocratic, democratic-republican, soci peoples throughout the world. Still, the ideal burns alistic and communistic. Sri Aurobindo projects the brightly and the light it casts reveals all the more future evolution of man and the steps he might take clearly the fact of division. But unity is an essential to reach the spiritual goal which is the magnet of all truth and division is a falsehood of the nature. From his strivings. ,The realization of human unity is the the essential unity all diversity springs. Diversity, too, next step on this path. is a truth of being, and the task is to find the key to We present in this issue passages from the works of unity in diversity. both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother dealing with In his major sociological works, The Human Cycle; human unity, in the hope that they will shed some The Ideal of Human Unity; War and Self-Determina light on the direction man might look for solutions tion, Sri Aurobindo has given a luminous view of the and encourage a fuller reading of the works from history of the evolutionary development of man the which they are extracted. social being from the family through the clan, the THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY Sri Aurobindo Nothing is more obscure to humanity or less seized of toil, tears and blood; the century that enjoys with by its understanding, whether in the power that moves out having fought for it turns away as from a puerile it or the sense of the aim towards which it moves, than illusion and is ready to renounce the depreciated gain its own communal and collective life. Sociology does as the price of some new good. And all this happens not help us, for it only gives us the general story of because our whole thought and action with regard to the past and the external conditions under which com our collective life is shallow and empirical; it does not munities have survived. History teaches us nothing; it seek for, it does not base itself on a firm, profound is a confused torrent of events and personalities or a and complete knowledge. The moral is not the vanity kaleidoscope of changing institutions. We do not seize of human life, of its ardours and enthusiasm and of the real sense of all this change and this continual the ideals it pursues, but the necessity of a wiser, streaming forward of human life in the channels of larger, more patient search after its true law and aim. Time. What we do seize are current or recurrent Today the i ,eal of human unity is more or less phenomena, facile generalisations, partial ideas. We vaguely making its way to the front of our conscious talk of democracy, aristocracy and autocracy, collec ness. The emergence of an ideal in human thought is tivism and individualism, imperialism and nationalism, always the sign of an intention in Nature, but not al the State and the commune, capitalism and labour; we ways of an intention to accomplish; sometimes it indi advance hasty generalisations and make absolute sys cates only an attempt which is predestined to tem tems which are positively announced today only to be porary failure. For Nature is slow and patient in her abandoned perforce tomorrow; we espouse causes and methods. She takes up ideas and half carries them out, ardent enthusiasms whose triumph turns to an early then drops them by the wayside to resume them in disillusionment and then forsake them for others, per some future era with a better combination. She tempts haps for those that we have taken so much trouble to humanity, her thinking instrument, and tests how far destroy. For a whole century mankind thirsts and it is ready for the harmony she has imagined; she al battles after liberty and earns it with a bitter expense lows and incites man to attempt and fail, so that he may learn and succeed better another time. Still, the presence and aid its self-manifestation. But where the ideal, having once made its way to the front of cult of these idols seeks to usurp the place of the spirit thought, must certainly be attempted, and this ideal and makes demands inconsistent with its service, they of human unity is likely to figure largely among the should be put aside. No injunctions of old creeds, re determining forces of the future; for the intellectual ligious, political, social or cultural, are valid when they and material circumstances of the age have prepared go against its claim. Science even, though it is one of and almost impose it, especially the scientific dis the chief modern idols, must not be allowed to make coveries which have made our earth so small that its claims contrary to its ethical temperament and aim .... vastest kingdoms seem now no more than the War, capital punishment, the taking of human life, provinces of a single country. [ from The Ideal of cruelty of all kinds whether committed by the indi Human Unity, pp. 261-262.) vidual, the State or society, not only physical cruelty, the degradation of any human being or any class of human beings under whatever specious plea or in what A religion of humanity may be either an intellec ever interest, the oppression and exploitation of man tual and sentimental ideal, a living dogma with intel by man, of class by class, of nation ~y nation and all lectual, psychological and practical effects, or else a those habits of life and institutions of society of a spiritual aspiration and rule of living, and partly the similar kind which religion and ethics formerly tol sign, partly the cause of a change of soul in humanity. erated or even favoured in practice, whatever they The intellectual religion of humanity already to a cer might do in their ideal rule or creed, are crimes against tain extent exists, partly as a conscious creed in the the religion of humanity, abominable to its ethical minds of a few, partly as a potent shadow in the con mind, forbidden by its primary tenets, to be fought sciousness of the race. It is the shadow of a spirit that against always, in no degree to be tolerated. Man must is yet unborn, but is preparing for its birth. This be sacred to man regardless of all distinctions of race, material world of ours, besides its fully embodied creed, colour, nationality, status, political or social things of the present, is peopled by such powerful advancement. The body of man is to be respected, shadows, ghosts of things dead and the spirit of things made immune from violence and outrage, fortified by yet unborn. The ghosts of things dead are very science against disease and preventable death. The life troublesome actualities and they now abound, ghosts of man is to be held sacred, preserved, strengthened, of dead religions, dead arts, dead moralities, dead ennobled, uplifted. The heart of man is to be held political theories, which still claim either to keep their sacred also, given scope, protected from violation, rotting bodies or to animate partly the existing body from suppression, from mechanisation, freed from be of things. Repeating obstinately their sacred formulas littling influences. The mind of man is to be released of the past, they hypnotise backward-looking minds from all bonds, allowed freedom and range and oppor and daunt even the progressive portion of humanity. tunity, given all its means of self-training and self But there are too those unborn spirits which are still development and organised in the play of its powers unable to take a definite body, but are already mind for the service of humanity. And all this too is not to born and exist as influences of which the human mind be held as an abstract or pious sentiment, but given is aware and to which it now responds in a desultory full and practical recognition in the persons of men and confused fashion. The religion of humanity was and nations and mankind. This, speaking largely, is mind-born in the eighteenth century ... of the ra the idea and spirit of the intellectual religion of tionalist thinkers who brought it forward as a substi humanity .... tute for the formal spiritualism of ecclesiastical Chris But still in order to accomplish all its future, this tianity. It tried to give itself a body in Positivis~, idea and religion of humanity has to make itself more which was an attempt to formulate the dogmas of this explicit, insistent and categorically imperative. For religion, but on too heavily and severely rationalistic a otherwise it can only work with clarity in the minds basis for acceptance even by an Age of Reason.