The New Man

Nolini Kanta Gupta

The New Man will be Master – and not slave. He will be master, first, of himself and then of the world. Man as he actually is, is but a slave. He has no personal voice or choice; the determining soul, the Ishwara, in him is sleep-bound and hushed. He is a mere plaything in the hands of nature and circumstances. Therefore it is that Science has become his supreme Dharmashastra; for science seeks to teach us the moods of Nature and the methods of propitiating her. Our actual ideal of man is that of the cleverest slave. But the New Man will have found himself and by and according to his inner will, mould and create his world. He will not be in awe of Nature and in an attitude of perpetual apprehension and hesitation, but will ground himself on a secret harmony and union that will declare him as the lord. We will recognize the New Man by his very gait and manner, by a certain kingly ease and dominion in every shade of his expression.

Not that this sovereign power will have anything to do with aggression or over-bearingness. It will not be a power that feels itself only by creating an eternal opponent – Erbfeind – by coming in constant clash with a rival, that seeks to gain victory by subjugating. It will not be Nietzschean “will to power,” which is, at best, a supreme Asuric power. It will rather be a Divine Power, for the strength it will exert and the victory it will achieve will not come from the ego – it is the ego which requires an object outside and against to feel and affirm itself – but it will come from a higher personal self which is one with the cosmic soul and therefore with other personal souls. The Asura, in spite of, or rather, because of his aggressive vehemence betrays a lack of the sovereign power that is calm and at ease and self-sufficient. The Devic power does not assert but simply accomplishes; the forces of the world act not as its opponent but as its instrument. Thus the New Man shall affirm his individual sovereignty and do so to perfection by expressing through it his unity with the cosmic powers, with the infinite godhead. And by being Swarat, Self-Master, he will become Samrat, world-master. (Nolini Kanta Gupta was a revolutionary, linguist, scholar, critic, poet, philosopher and a man of deep spiritual realisation. Author of nearly 60 books he was a Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram.)