SRI AUROBINDO’S
Realizing the Ideal of Human Unity
N.
A. PALKHIVALA
August
15 is the birthday of free
He
had an unshakable faith in the future of this great country. Having predicted
the eventual independence of
Sri Aurobindo in the
same independence declaration gave expression to his vision of the ideal of
human unity being realized. “Nature is slow and patient in her methods. She
takes up ideas and half carries them out, then drops them by the wayside to
resume them in some future era with a better combination. She tempts humanity,
her thinking instrument, and tests how far it is ready for the harmony she has
imagined; she allows and incites man to attempt and fail, so that he may learn
and succeed better another time.” He foresaw a world union providing a fairer,
brighter and nobler life for all mankind. That unification of the human world
is under way; the momentum is there and it must inevitably increase and
conquer. “A catastrophe may intervene, and interrupt or destroy what is being
done, but even then the final result is sure. For, unification is a necessity
of nature, an inevitable movement. Its necessity for the nations is also clear,
for without it the freedom of the small nations may be at any moment in peril
and the life even of the large and powerful nations insecure.” He wanted
developments such as dual or multilateral citizenship, interchange or fusion of
cultures, nationalism having fulfilled itself must lose its militancy and
should no longer find the international outlook incompatible with
self-preservation. The European Common Market today seems to be a partial fulfilment of Sri Aurobindo’s
prediction.
Sri
Aurobindo’s philosophy, while it reached the summit
of human thought, was expressed in words which are within the comprehension of
any thinking man. His message to students was memorable. “There are times in a
nation’s history when providence places before it one work, one aim, to which
everything else, however high and noble in itself, has to be sacrificed. Such a
time has now arrived for our motherland when nothing is dearer than her
service, when everything else is to be directed to that end. If you will study,
study for her sake; train yourselves body and mind and soul for her service.
You will earn your living that you may live for her sake. You will go abroad to
foreign lands that you bring back knowledge with which you may do service to
her. Work that she may prosper. Suffer that she may rejoice. All is contained
in that one single advice.”
According
to Sri Aurobindo, the task free India has set before herself is spiritual. He
believed in Dharma as a mighty law of life, a great principle of human
evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has to
be the guardian, exemplar and missionary. He wanted the spirit of Dharma to
enter into and mould our society, our politics, our literature, our science,
our individual character and aspirations. At the same time, he wanted India to
benefit from the developments in the West. “India can best develop herself and serve
humanity by being herself and following the law of her own nature. This does
not mean, as some narrowly and blindly suppose, the rejection of everything new
that comes to us in the stream of time or happens to have been first developed
or powerfully expressed by the West. Such an attitude would be intellectually
absurd, physically impossible and, above all, un-spiritual; true spirituality
rejects no new light, no added means or materials of our human
self-development.”
The
core of Sri Aurobindo’s political philosophy is that
the State exists for the individual and not the individual for the State. In
his own words “There is no guarantee that the ruling body represents the best
minds of the nation or its noblest aims or its highest instincts.”
Ideal Government
Sri
Aurobindo expressed his views about the ideal form of Government in the
following words: The Government is for the people. It must provide for
stability as well as progress. Stability may be achieved by unity and
co-operative action, and progress by free individual growth. The Government
should be run by people who are selfless, unegoistic,
scrupulously honest and capable. Their allegiance
should be to the whole country; they should serve the interests of the whole
country and not of any party. If the present Constitution does not permit such
men, irrespective of parties, to be in the Government, then the Constitution
should be changed.”
Sri
Aurobindo expressed his firm conviction that it is the energy of the individual
which is the really effective agent of collective progress. When the state
helps the individual to fulfil himself in freedom, it
serves a positively useful end. “But,” he warned, “what we are now tending
towards is such an increase of organized State power...as well either eliminate
free individual effort altogether or leave it dwarfed and cowed into
helplessness.”
His
philosophy regarding the ideal system of education may be summed up as follows:
Firstly, it is important that society refuses to give exclusive importance to success,
career and money, and that it insists instead on the paramount need of the full
and real development of the student by contact with the spirit and the growth
and manifestation of the truth of the being in the body, life and mind.
Secondly,
the Country must give top priority to the needs of education, organize
the whole life of the nation as a perpetual process of education. Thirdly, the
country must make full and wise use of all the modern techniques of
communications such as cinema, television, books, pictures and magazines for
spreading the ideal of perfection.
Fourthly,
permanent exhibitions and museums should be organized all over the country,
even in villages, which could be the centres of
stimulating knowledge, including the inner significance and goal of evolution.
Fifthly, the teachers must grow into real examples of perfection that is aimed
at. Finally, the country as a whole should engage itself in the activity of the
discovery and realization of its true mission.
Above
all, Sri Aurobindo believed that if India was to survive and do her appointed
work in the world, the first necessity was that the youth of India should learn
to think on all subjects, to think independently, fruitfully, going to the
heart of things, not stopped by their surface, free of prejudgments, shearing
sophism and prejudice asunder as with a sharp sword, smitting
down obscurantism of all kinds as with the mace of Bhima.
Perfect Society
The greatest contribution of Sri Aurobindo to philosophy is the vast body of his writings which deal with the adventure of consciousness, man’s striving to reach the supramental. He believed that the next step in evolution would raise man to a higher and larger consciousness which would offer the solution for the problems which have perplexed and vexed him since he first began to think and to dream of individual perfection and a perfect society. Sri Aurobindo knew that the difficulties in the way of attaining the super mind are more formidable than in any other field of endeavour, but difficulties were made to be overcome and if the supreme will is there, they will be overcome. He further believed that this evolution must proceed through a growth of the spirit and the inner consciousness. The initiative here can come from India and, although the scope must be universal, the central movement would have to be in our country.
Sri Aurobindo said that this transformation of the
human race would come about in a luminous moment which will look like a
miracle. Even when the first decisive change is reached, it is certain that all
humanity will not be able to rise to that level. This endeavour
to be in the supramental sphere will be a supreme and
difficult labour even for the individual, but much
more for the human race generally. Nevertheless, it would be a transformation
and a beginning far beyond anything yet attained.
It
is a measure of pathetic apathy of our nation that the works of Sri Aurobindo
are not studied throughout the length and breadth of India. The words of wisdom
from the writings of this great spirit deserve to be taught in every school and
college.
No
other thinker of modern times has tried so much, dared so much, or seen so
vividly the pattern of the human cycle down the ages and in the aeons of existence that lie ahead. His life-work will
always remain a feasting presence, full of light.
–By courtesy, All India Radio