PART III: THE PROBLEM OF COLLECTIVE LIFE
UNITY OF MANKIND, A SPIRITUAL NECESSITY
UNITY OF MANKIND, A SPIRITUAL NECESSITY
The subject may be fittingly begun by referring to one or two facts which have hitherto escaped the public notice. The term " Co-existence " which is now extensively used in international politics was first used by Sri Aurobindo in the postscript chapter to his book " The Ideal of Human Unity. " He wrote : " If much of the unease, the sense of inevitable struggle, the difficulty of mutual toleration and economic accommodation still exists, it is rather because the idea of using the ideological struggle as a means for world domination is there and keeps the nations in a position of mutual apprehension and preparation for armed defence and of attack than because the coexistence of the two ideologies is impossible."¹
The second point to which the attention of the reader may be drawn is the possibility of Chinese aggression about which he wrote in 1949 when, probably, the visit of Chou-En- lai and the Panchashila declaration made almost everyone feel that a new era of co-operation had dawned between India and China after practical isolation of fifteen hundred years. He wrote :
" In Asia a more perilous situation has arisen, standing sharply across the way to any possibility of a continental unity of the peoples of this part of the world, in the emergence of communist China. This creates a gigantic block which could easily englobe the whole of Northern Asia in a combination between two enormous communist Powers, Russia and China, and would over-shadow with a threat of absorption
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¹The ideal of Human Unity, P. 387
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South-Western Asia and Tibet and might be pushed to overrun all up to the whole frontier of India, menacing her security and that of Western Asia with the possibility of an invasion and an overwhelming military force to an unwanted ideology, political and social institutions and dominance of this militant mass of communism whose push might easily prove irresistible."²
Everyone in India is able to understand and accept philosophy and Yoga as legitimate fields for Sri Aurobindo's work, though, it must be added, many people fail to understand his Yoga because it has no external renunciation like the orthodox paths. But the greatest difficulty is encountered by Indians in regard to his ideals of collective life and international unity. What has a Yogi to do with these things ? It is likely that his two books on the subjects of collective life, The Human Cycle and The ideal of Human Unity will appeal more easily to European minds.
Sri Aurobindo tackles the problem of man's destiny on earth and the nature of perfection man can attain. He finds that all the problems, difficulties, imperfections in man's life arise out of man's ignorance. The word " Ignorance " is to be understood in the sense given to it in Indian culture. Our ancient culture recognises two kinds of Knowledge: Vidya and Avidya. Vidya is the Knowledge of the Self, identity with our real Being, with One that is the World, with the Supreme. Avidya means Ignorance which includes all the branches of intellectual knowledge.
If an Omnipresent Reality, the One, is the truth of life then one would expect harmony, love and delight everywhere in life; on the contrary, division, disharmony, conflict and suffering are more in evidence. The question is : how to eliminate them from life. Also can the Omnipresent Reality, of which Sri Aurobindo speaks as the highest and dynamic
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² The Ideal of Human Unity, P. 395.
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truth, help us in the solution of this problem?
In answer it may be said that the all-pervading principle of unity is all the time active whether man is conscious about it or not. Even then, the question how the division and disharmony did arise remains to be answered. It is true that in all the operations of the present mental consciousness of man the element of duality and division is present. But man is not bound to remain confined to his mental conscious- ness; it is possible for him to rise to a Truth-consciousness; which is now beyond - and above the Mind. It is the Rit- Chiti - Truth - Consciousness - of the Veda, to which Sri Aurobindo has given the name Supermind. In the Supermind, Unity is the law and therefore harmony is the dynamic consequence of its working. Man's destiny is to rise to that plane and bring its Light and Power into his nature which would enable him to solve all his problems.
It is necessary that the t ego ' in man should be replaced by the new Consciousness. Most of our philosophers thought ignorance to be an individual problem whereas to Sri Aurobindo, it is a collective problem; in fact, it is a cosmic problem. Very often it is seen that the ignorance of the collectivity is far more dangerous than that of the individual. The Indian Puranas speak of the Asuras and Rakshasas, the titans, who symbolise the inordinate ignorance of the collectivities. The abnormal ambition of an individual may harm himself and a few persons around him but a nation outstripping the limits of normal ambition creates world wars with all the horrible consequences.
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. Unfortunately, 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 part in it. History is the gradual revelation of the Soul of the collective being of man.
It is true, history was regarded at one time as the chronicle of dynasties of kings and a story of their conquests and defeats. Then it became the story of peoples, their growth and evolution. The economic interpretation of history then came and the philosophy of history began to to be attempted. Spengler in his book, " Decline of the West " tried to read the working of " Destiny " in history. He takes a pluralistic view of history which makes Dr. S. K. Maitra put the question : " Is history destiny without destination ? " Sri Aurobindo gives us the reorientation of the philosophy of history. Spengler equates time with destiny and sees history as a cyclic movement of about two thousand years after which the dominating culture must petrify itself into civilization, gradually decline, and die. Sri Aurobindo posits a spiritual principle, the collective soul in place of destiny and sees history moving towards the fulfilment of the collective spirit of man. Man's destiny, according to him, is to attain divine life on earth i. e. to attain and manifest the Truth- Consciousness which would take the place of his mental consciousness and recreate life, individual and collective, in the mould of that higher reality.
That brings in the question of the place of collective life in Sri Aurobindo's vision. He affirms the Omnipresent Reality as the basis of the universal manifestation. That Reality occupies three positions, or is. triple in its view of man: (1) the Transcendental, (2) the Universal, (3) the Individual. Collective life of man is the manifestation of the Universal aspect of the Reality and the perfection of man's collective life has, therefore, a place in his scheme of integral human perfection. The divinity in the individual when realised in the collectivity and made dynamic would lead it to collective perfection.
It is the universal aspect of the Omnipresent Reality which is behind the drive for collective expression in Nature. Life is the field for the working out of this impulse and it takes two lines in the human being. One is the creation of a distinct individual, say, an ego-centre, from physical, vital and mental elements and second is the creation of greater and greater, larger and larger units of collective life.
But the drive towards collective living is not confined to the human race; the animal and the insect world have the same trend : the bee-hive and the ant-hill are typical examples of perfectly organised societies. The difference is that in the lower kingdom there is no individuality except perhaps functional individualisations of the groups into workers and fighters etc. In the case of man his collective life is seen to be evolutionary, starting from small units and tending to create ever larger aggregates.
It is important to note that the first unit of collective life, the family, was not based on economic but on strong psychological elements in man's nature. It has slowly gone on evolving larger aggregates that assimilated the smaller ones destroying what could not be assimilated. Today man has attained to the nation as the largest unit of collective life.
In some of the social philosophies the opposition between the individual and the collective life is accepted as basic: Hence in all the applications of these outlooks the individual is pitted against the group. It is argued that the individual is only a temporary cell of the collective body and therefore not entitled to independent self-fulfilment. The collectivity being eternal, it is by living and sacrificing for it that the individual has his fulfilment.
Sri Aurobindo's vision does not accept 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 state of man and can be, at most, transitional. No collective perfection can result by crushing the individual. On the contrary, it is the individual alone that can contribute- to the advance and perfection of collective life.
HOME
THE NATURE OF THE UNITY
This Unity is called the ' Omnipresent Reality' by Sri Aurobindo in his book the Life Divine. " The same can be expressed in old formula of the Upanishad, ' All this, indeed, is the Brahman, the Infinite.' But our actual experience based on our sense-evidence and mind is not that of the Omnipresent Reality but of infinite multiplicity and everywhere we perceive disharmony and division and conflict This is due .to the separative action of the Mind which introduces the element of error in all human knowledge; each individual instead of functioning as one centre of the Universal Soul, acts and behaves as if it was the centre of the cosmos. Instead of experiencing itself as one centre of the Omnipresent Reality it acts as a separate individuality. "
And yet the mental knowledge acquired by the ego- consciousness is not absolutely false; it is a partial or distorted view, behind which the unity is present and active. Let us take Matter, for instance. All Matter is one in its essential constitution but the objects it gives rise to are innumerable and infinitely various.
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In the same way. Energy is one, yet there are many forms of it, like heat, light, electricity, etc. Life is one but there are so many types of it and each type further deploys itself in innumerable forms. Mind, as an instrument of knowledge is one, yet each mind is separate and has so many different states. Humanity as a race is one and is composed of so many nationalities. Seed is one yet sprouts in a thousand different ways giving rise to an infinite variety of the same kind. Unity in the midst of an infinitely varied diversity may be said to be the plan of the universe. The many that we see are the self- multiplication of the One. It is the self extension of the Omnipresent Reality.
The Omnipresent Reality is Infinite, but the infinite is not the sum or multiplication of finite things. It is that which is the All and more. The Veda expresses it by saying : adhyatishthat dasangulam-" It pervades the whole universe and ten fingers' measure remained over. " In spite of all apparent divisions it is the occult, Secret Identical but the " Identical is not immutable. " The Identical is not " a monotone of changeless sameness incapable of variation." The unity of the Ultimate Reality, the true, dynamic unity of Sachchidananda, is not a monotony, an incapacity to assume innumerable variations, its infinity is not incapable of assuming multiple self-formations.
Thus, existence is One but its unity is infinite, universal- transcendental. There is, in fact, " infinite multiplicity of the One and eternal unity of the many " at work. Oneness is everywhere ; differentiation is everywhere; oneness is the basic security, multiplicity is the same Oneness " finding itself infinitely." It is " reality an inexhaustible diverse display of Unity." The drive towards multiplicity which is variation ' on the basis of unity is so strong that no two leaves of the same tree are completely identical and men are identified by variations in their finger-marks. As we observed above, the unity gives to the universe the basic security: for without it, it would be heading for disorganisation, dissolution and anarchy; and the multiplicity gives field for the eternal play of oneness which keeps the universe fresh and beautiful.
But still, mind constantly feels duality, a constant opposition between two mutually contradictory elements in life : good and evil, God and Satan, Light and Darkness, Matter and Spirit, conscient and inconscicnt, form and formless, infinite and finite, these appear to the mind to be fundamental and therefore eternal antinomies. But it is the nature of Mind that is responsible for setting up these trenchant divisions and oppositions; Mind divides the One, the infinite Reality for its own convenience and then, instead of seeing the divisions as complimentaries, takes them for mutually exclusive realities as if they had dividing walls between them. In order to assure ourselves about the soundness of this metaphysical position let us look at the working of universal Energy. Taking the problem of dualities created by the mind, c. g. Matter and Spirit-the opposition between them tends to become less and less as we ascend in the scale of evolution, Matter giving rise to more and more conscious physical organisations; and we then discover that even the Inconscient in its machanical operations seems to behave as if it has a will of its own, an inherent knowledge in its very constitution.
At the first surface view of the plane of life we find not only division but conflict, struggle, distinction, struggle for existence, as it was once called, almost the prevailing law. But that is only one side of it; the elements of co-operation, sympathy, service and even sacrifice are not wanting. If there are in life ego-asserting and ego-expanding impulses no less are there ego-exceeding and ego-destroying impulses also at work.
At this point it is necessary to look at life and find out whether it is anti-divine in its ultimate constitution. Is it committed to remain for ever what it is at present ? In case it is anti-divine and inexorably condemned to its present state,
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it is futile to apply any spiritual remedy however successful it may be in case of exceptional individuals. The question really is that of the possibility of the collective life of man.
Leaving aside the attainment of the Divine or any great spiritual Truth, the question may be asked : does Life really care even for high ideals ? Is it concerned with Truth, with God, with Beauty, with any high ideal ? If we observe the working of Life we find it is rather concerned with physical (needs, desires, vital instincts, greed, ambitions, impulses. These are real to it; the rest is shadowy. It is true that society gives these ideals a place in its life, but its heart is not there e. g. ethics has a place in collective life but no society lives for ethics. It is for the satisfaction of vital needs, utility, and desires of the body that a society lives. Society lives for desire, neither for religion nor for beauty. Only special individuals follow these high things - the saint, the ethical man, the artist, the thinker. Life seems to devote itself to efficiency in satisfying its vital desires.
Life is a power of Being and its impulse is not merely to last but to assert, increase, expand, possess, to enjoy: it seeks growth, power, pleasure. " Collective life has come into being from the dynamic character of Life."³ It has brought into play two contradictory tendencies : mutual strife and assistance, competition and co-operation. European culture has given to the world the practical, dynamic man, the vital man.
Life in a society consists of three kinds of activities:
( 1 ) Domestic and social life, ( 2 ) Economic activity as producer and consumer, ( 3 ) Political status and action.
In Asia these were regarded as first but not the chief business of man in society.
But the main question is : What is the aim of society ? Does it exist only for satisfying the practical and vitalistic
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³ Human Cycle.
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impulses of man ? Is it for giving comfort and for securing economic and political efficiency of the group life ? Modern collective life organised as the nation has two gods, ( 1 ) Life and (2) Practical Reason organised under the name of Science.
But life is much more intensely individualistic, for family,. society etc. are only a means for greater satisfaction of th& individual vital being. Society, or any collective unit, however large, is only the larger ego for the individual.
The relation of the vital being of man to the higher activities of collective life is one of opposition. In fact, the individual's vital being has to be subjected to discipline in order to maintain society.
If the collective life presses too much the vital being of the individual, it may go on strike, discourage life itself as. seems to have happened in case of Buddhism in India.
Life in the collectivity is Infra-Rational in the beginning, even religion and ethics of primitive societies are infra- rational. Then a stage comes when it becomes rational i. e. Reason tries to organise and govern life.
Whenever Reason has tried to do it in the past it has not succeeded. It is because Life is not merely Mind or reason; Life is "the imprisoned supra-rational "4 and therefore Reason cannot succeed in governing it completely and permanently. Take Love for instance; it is not an element that can be governed by Reason; in fact, it is not rational in its origin and working. It holds infinite possibilities within itself. Not only is there love of man and woman but also there is maternal and filial love, love of comrades, of country, of humanity. Love seeks only its Absolute in life. Even economics is not merely the seeking for satisfaction of personal desires and comforts but is meant to remove poverty and squalor from mankind when it would seek its true aim. If Nature has ego-affirming instincts so she has ego-enlarging and ego-exceeding instincts
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4.Human Cycle.
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and movements also; there are love, sympathy, self-denial, self-sacrifice.
Therefore it seems that " there is the pressure of an infinite on human life which will not allow it to remain too long in any formation." Life seeks the Absolute and not the rational. Reality is already there working in Life as Cosmic Self or Spirit and it can be discovered by the individual here. As its summit the Reality is the eternal and infinite Being.
But what we actually see here is the Inconscient Energy, a void, out of which Existence comes. This Existence does the work of supreme Intelligence in Matter and in Life. It seems, therefore, that the Inconscient is only a mask assumed by the Spirit that is involved in it and it imposes the law of difficult emergence on the process of slow unfolding of the Spirit. It begins from Matter in which the law of fragmentation in the form of atom seems to reign; it organises Life round a cell, and a Mind round an ego, and must in time pass from Mind to the Spirit.
The working of the Universal Energy shows that man is not the final product of evolution, that he is a transitional being, he is more than himself, he contains within him a higher than human-a divine-potentiality. The drive of the Universal Energy points to a level of consciousness beyond Mind, what the Vedic Seers call - Rit-chiti, Truth-Consciousness. The bringing down of this Truth-Consciousness would make individual and collective perfection possible. The indispensable item in collective perfection is the attainment of human unity. Is the time now ripe for it ?
The primary unit of collective life is the family. Then the class, the tribe, the race, the nation gradually came into being. It is evident that Nature begins with small aggregates and develops them in the process. The Nation is so far the largest attained unit of collective life. What is a nation ? Is it a mere geographical unit of land, or merely a sum of
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smaller units like the family and society etc.? All these really are parts of the nation, instruments for the evolution of the- collective soul. " Each nation is a Shakti, or power of the evolving spirit of humanity and lives by the principle it embodies. " Where such national consciousness awakens,.. the nation is able to regenerate itself even from adverse,. external conditions like foreign domination. Italy, Greece and Poland were under foreign domination but subsequently- freed themselves as the result of awakened national consciousness. When Ireland and India launched the movement for political freedom the demand was not based on economic or political rights only but on the need of freedom to express ' the national soul. ' The collective consciousness awoke under the name of ' Bharat-Shakti ' or ' Bharat-Mata 'when the national movement started in India.
The collective life of nations has been dominated by the vital-ego of the collectivity, not by its deeper soul. It is in Europe that the nation-units were first organised and all of them were dominated by economic greed and political ambition. The organisation of the nation-unit took place round the vital-ego of the collective egos culminating in two devastating World Wars. If the vital-ego leads the nation hardly any other result is to be expected.
Yet, paradoxical though it may sound, universal Nature is pressing forward to the unity of mankind not withstanding the two World-Wars. The only unit of collective life that remains to be achieved is mankind. Once the unity of mankind is attained a major step will have been taken towards human perfection. Three factors seem to be driving towards that culmination : ( 1 ) Scientific progress that has reduced time and space and helped in removing outer barriers between man and man (2) Drive towards. economic unification throughout mankind : collective life today, all over the world, centres round economy; far greater economic interchange is taking place between nations today
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than at any other time in history. It is planned economic interchange on a gigantic scale. Such economic unification needs peace and peace may bring unity nearer. ( 3 ) Increasing stress on socialism, - what is called " Socialist' Pattern " in the organisation of collective life - throughout the world. These are external means making for unity of mankind.
Bertrand Russell in his broadcasts from London-" Living in an atomic age " proposes that by a rational utilisation of the atom-energy it is possible to solve the problems of humanity. He seems to think that the problem is only external, touching only the economic life of man. I am afraid he oversimplifies the problem. Tracing man's evolution up to now he puts it in three heads: ( 1 )Man Vs. Nature, ( 2 ) Man Vs. Man, ( 3 ) Man divided in his own self, a state of a psychological dichotomy.
The first of these, Man Vs. Nature, is only a half truth. Nature is not always antagonistic to man. Tagore is more correct when he says that the effort to divide man and Nature- is artificial like that of dividing the plant from the flower, and is therefore wrong. It is Nature that supports man giving him food, water and air, and even when she seems to oppose man it is to bring out the potential powers of man which might lead him to conquer her. There are, besides,. many problems over and above economics and politics.
Russel's third point about the self-division of man's consciousness into two parts betrays, I am afraid, very poor knowledge of human personality. It is far from true to say that man projects " Sin " from within himself on to the enemy. The enemy is not sin personified, at least no soldier ever thinks in that way.
After the two World Wars there have been efforts to , create larger than nation-units of collective life, e. g. (1 ) The British Commonwealth ( 2 ) The French entante ( 3 ) the vague formation of the Arab League.
But in the day-to-day flow of events one hardly sees signs
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that might encourage optimism about the ideal of human unity. The difficulties seem to be Himalayan. The highest realised unit of international unity, the U. N. 0., is divided into two ideological camps and cold-war is already in progress in Korea and Berlin; China is divided into two parts; Laos is the battle-ground for the two rival powers; German unification is not yet in sight - after 15 years. Tibet is swallowed by China, India's borders are threatened by China and Pakistan; Portugal and India, South Africa and the free world have very little in harmony. Last but not least, the U. N. O. 's initial policy in Congo has not born fruit.
Unity of mankind seems as far away as ever. But on the other hand signs that indicate the progress towards human unity are not altogether wanting.
The second point to which the attention of the reader may be drawn is the possibility of Chinese aggression about which he wrote in 1949 when, probably, the visit of Chou-En- lai and the Panchashila declaration made almost everyone feel that a new era of co-operation had dawned between India and China after practical isolation of fifteen hundred years. He wrote :
" In Asia a more perilous situation has arisen, standing sharply across the way to any possibility of a continental unity of the peoples of this part of the world, in the emergence of communist China. This creates a gigantic block which could easily englobe the whole of Northern Asia in a combination between two enormous communist Powers, Russia and China, and would over-shadow with a threat of absorption
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¹The ideal of Human Unity, P. 387
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South-Western Asia and Tibet and might be pushed to overrun all up to the whole frontier of India, menacing her security and that of Western Asia with the possibility of an invasion and an overwhelming military force to an unwanted ideology, political and social institutions and dominance of this militant mass of communism whose push might easily prove irresistible."²
Everyone in India is able to understand and accept philosophy and Yoga as legitimate fields for Sri Aurobindo's work, though, it must be added, many people fail to understand his Yoga because it has no external renunciation like the orthodox paths. But the greatest difficulty is encountered by Indians in regard to his ideals of collective life and international unity. What has a Yogi to do with these things ? It is likely that his two books on the subjects of collective life, The Human Cycle and The ideal of Human Unity will appeal more easily to European minds.
Sri Aurobindo tackles the problem of man's destiny on earth and the nature of perfection man can attain. He finds that all the problems, difficulties, imperfections in man's life arise out of man's ignorance. The word " Ignorance " is to be understood in the sense given to it in Indian culture. Our ancient culture recognises two kinds of Knowledge: Vidya and Avidya. Vidya is the Knowledge of the Self, identity with our real Being, with One that is the World, with the Supreme. Avidya means Ignorance which includes all the branches of intellectual knowledge.
If an Omnipresent Reality, the One, is the truth of life then one would expect harmony, love and delight everywhere in life; on the contrary, division, disharmony, conflict and suffering are more in evidence. The question is : how to eliminate them from life. Also can the Omnipresent Reality, of which Sri Aurobindo speaks as the highest and dynamic
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² The Ideal of Human Unity, P. 395.
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truth, help us in the solution of this problem?
In answer it may be said that the all-pervading principle of unity is all the time active whether man is conscious about it or not. Even then, the question how the division and disharmony did arise remains to be answered. It is true that in all the operations of the present mental consciousness of man the element of duality and division is present. But man is not bound to remain confined to his mental conscious- ness; it is possible for him to rise to a Truth-consciousness; which is now beyond - and above the Mind. It is the Rit- Chiti - Truth - Consciousness - of the Veda, to which Sri Aurobindo has given the name Supermind. In the Supermind, Unity is the law and therefore harmony is the dynamic consequence of its working. Man's destiny is to rise to that plane and bring its Light and Power into his nature which would enable him to solve all his problems.
It is necessary that the t ego ' in man should be replaced by the new Consciousness. Most of our philosophers thought ignorance to be an individual problem whereas to Sri Aurobindo, it is a collective problem; in fact, it is a cosmic problem. Very often it is seen that the ignorance of the collectivity is far more dangerous than that of the individual. The Indian Puranas speak of the Asuras and Rakshasas, the titans, who symbolise the inordinate ignorance of the collectivities. The abnormal ambition of an individual may harm himself and a few persons around him but a nation outstripping the limits of normal ambition creates world wars with all the horrible consequences.
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. Unfortunately, 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 part in it. History is the gradual revelation of the Soul of the collective being of man.
It is true, history was regarded at one time as the chronicle of dynasties of kings and a story of their conquests and defeats. Then it became the story of peoples, their growth and evolution. The economic interpretation of history then came and the philosophy of history began to to be attempted. Spengler in his book, " Decline of the West " tried to read the working of " Destiny " in history. He takes a pluralistic view of history which makes Dr. S. K. Maitra put the question : " Is history destiny without destination ? " Sri Aurobindo gives us the reorientation of the philosophy of history. Spengler equates time with destiny and sees history as a cyclic movement of about two thousand years after which the dominating culture must petrify itself into civilization, gradually decline, and die. Sri Aurobindo posits a spiritual principle, the collective soul in place of destiny and sees history moving towards the fulfilment of the collective spirit of man. Man's destiny, according to him, is to attain divine life on earth i. e. to attain and manifest the Truth- Consciousness which would take the place of his mental consciousness and recreate life, individual and collective, in the mould of that higher reality.
That brings in the question of the place of collective life in Sri Aurobindo's vision. He affirms the Omnipresent Reality as the basis of the universal manifestation. That Reality occupies three positions, or is. triple in its view of man: (1) the Transcendental, (2) the Universal, (3) the Individual. Collective life of man is the manifestation of the Universal aspect of the Reality and the perfection of man's collective life has, therefore, a place in his scheme of integral human perfection. The divinity in the individual when realised in the collectivity and made dynamic would lead it to collective perfection.
It is the universal aspect of the Omnipresent Reality which is behind the drive for collective expression in Nature. Life is the field for the working out of this impulse and it takes two lines in the human being. One is the creation of a distinct individual, say, an ego-centre, from physical, vital and mental elements and second is the creation of greater and greater, larger and larger units of collective life.
But the drive towards collective living is not confined to the human race; the animal and the insect world have the same trend : the bee-hive and the ant-hill are typical examples of perfectly organised societies. The difference is that in the lower kingdom there is no individuality except perhaps functional individualisations of the groups into workers and fighters etc. In the case of man his collective life is seen to be evolutionary, starting from small units and tending to create ever larger aggregates.
It is important to note that the first unit of collective life, the family, was not based on economic but on strong psychological elements in man's nature. It has slowly gone on evolving larger aggregates that assimilated the smaller ones destroying what could not be assimilated. Today man has attained to the nation as the largest unit of collective life.
In some of the social philosophies the opposition between the individual and the collective life is accepted as basic: Hence in all the applications of these outlooks the individual is pitted against the group. It is argued that the individual is only a temporary cell of the collective body and therefore not entitled to independent self-fulfilment. The collectivity being eternal, it is by living and sacrificing for it that the individual has his fulfilment.
Sri Aurobindo's vision does not accept 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 state of man and can be, at most, transitional. No collective perfection can result by crushing the individual. On the contrary, it is the individual alone that can contribute- to the advance and perfection of collective life.
HOME
THE NATURE OF THE UNITY
This Unity is called the ' Omnipresent Reality' by Sri Aurobindo in his book the Life Divine. " The same can be expressed in old formula of the Upanishad, ' All this, indeed, is the Brahman, the Infinite.' But our actual experience based on our sense-evidence and mind is not that of the Omnipresent Reality but of infinite multiplicity and everywhere we perceive disharmony and division and conflict This is due .to the separative action of the Mind which introduces the element of error in all human knowledge; each individual instead of functioning as one centre of the Universal Soul, acts and behaves as if it was the centre of the cosmos. Instead of experiencing itself as one centre of the Omnipresent Reality it acts as a separate individuality. "
And yet the mental knowledge acquired by the ego- consciousness is not absolutely false; it is a partial or distorted view, behind which the unity is present and active. Let us take Matter, for instance. All Matter is one in its essential constitution but the objects it gives rise to are innumerable and infinitely various.
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In the same way. Energy is one, yet there are many forms of it, like heat, light, electricity, etc. Life is one but there are so many types of it and each type further deploys itself in innumerable forms. Mind, as an instrument of knowledge is one, yet each mind is separate and has so many different states. Humanity as a race is one and is composed of so many nationalities. Seed is one yet sprouts in a thousand different ways giving rise to an infinite variety of the same kind. Unity in the midst of an infinitely varied diversity may be said to be the plan of the universe. The many that we see are the self- multiplication of the One. It is the self extension of the Omnipresent Reality.
The Omnipresent Reality is Infinite, but the infinite is not the sum or multiplication of finite things. It is that which is the All and more. The Veda expresses it by saying : adhyatishthat dasangulam-" It pervades the whole universe and ten fingers' measure remained over. " In spite of all apparent divisions it is the occult, Secret Identical but the " Identical is not immutable. " The Identical is not " a monotone of changeless sameness incapable of variation." The unity of the Ultimate Reality, the true, dynamic unity of Sachchidananda, is not a monotony, an incapacity to assume innumerable variations, its infinity is not incapable of assuming multiple self-formations.
Thus, existence is One but its unity is infinite, universal- transcendental. There is, in fact, " infinite multiplicity of the One and eternal unity of the many " at work. Oneness is everywhere ; differentiation is everywhere; oneness is the basic security, multiplicity is the same Oneness " finding itself infinitely." It is " reality an inexhaustible diverse display of Unity." The drive towards multiplicity which is variation ' on the basis of unity is so strong that no two leaves of the same tree are completely identical and men are identified by variations in their finger-marks. As we observed above, the unity gives to the universe the basic security: for without it, it would be heading for disorganisation, dissolution and anarchy; and the multiplicity gives field for the eternal play of oneness which keeps the universe fresh and beautiful.
But still, mind constantly feels duality, a constant opposition between two mutually contradictory elements in life : good and evil, God and Satan, Light and Darkness, Matter and Spirit, conscient and inconscicnt, form and formless, infinite and finite, these appear to the mind to be fundamental and therefore eternal antinomies. But it is the nature of Mind that is responsible for setting up these trenchant divisions and oppositions; Mind divides the One, the infinite Reality for its own convenience and then, instead of seeing the divisions as complimentaries, takes them for mutually exclusive realities as if they had dividing walls between them. In order to assure ourselves about the soundness of this metaphysical position let us look at the working of universal Energy. Taking the problem of dualities created by the mind, c. g. Matter and Spirit-the opposition between them tends to become less and less as we ascend in the scale of evolution, Matter giving rise to more and more conscious physical organisations; and we then discover that even the Inconscient in its machanical operations seems to behave as if it has a will of its own, an inherent knowledge in its very constitution.
At the first surface view of the plane of life we find not only division but conflict, struggle, distinction, struggle for existence, as it was once called, almost the prevailing law. But that is only one side of it; the elements of co-operation, sympathy, service and even sacrifice are not wanting. If there are in life ego-asserting and ego-expanding impulses no less are there ego-exceeding and ego-destroying impulses also at work.
At this point it is necessary to look at life and find out whether it is anti-divine in its ultimate constitution. Is it committed to remain for ever what it is at present ? In case it is anti-divine and inexorably condemned to its present state,
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it is futile to apply any spiritual remedy however successful it may be in case of exceptional individuals. The question really is that of the possibility of the collective life of man.
Leaving aside the attainment of the Divine or any great spiritual Truth, the question may be asked : does Life really care even for high ideals ? Is it concerned with Truth, with God, with Beauty, with any high ideal ? If we observe the working of Life we find it is rather concerned with physical (needs, desires, vital instincts, greed, ambitions, impulses. These are real to it; the rest is shadowy. It is true that society gives these ideals a place in its life, but its heart is not there e. g. ethics has a place in collective life but no society lives for ethics. It is for the satisfaction of vital needs, utility, and desires of the body that a society lives. Society lives for desire, neither for religion nor for beauty. Only special individuals follow these high things - the saint, the ethical man, the artist, the thinker. Life seems to devote itself to efficiency in satisfying its vital desires.
Life is a power of Being and its impulse is not merely to last but to assert, increase, expand, possess, to enjoy: it seeks growth, power, pleasure. " Collective life has come into being from the dynamic character of Life."³ It has brought into play two contradictory tendencies : mutual strife and assistance, competition and co-operation. European culture has given to the world the practical, dynamic man, the vital man.
Life in a society consists of three kinds of activities:
( 1 ) Domestic and social life, ( 2 ) Economic activity as producer and consumer, ( 3 ) Political status and action.
In Asia these were regarded as first but not the chief business of man in society.
But the main question is : What is the aim of society ? Does it exist only for satisfying the practical and vitalistic
______________
³ Human Cycle.
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impulses of man ? Is it for giving comfort and for securing economic and political efficiency of the group life ? Modern collective life organised as the nation has two gods, ( 1 ) Life and (2) Practical Reason organised under the name of Science.
But life is much more intensely individualistic, for family,. society etc. are only a means for greater satisfaction of th& individual vital being. Society, or any collective unit, however large, is only the larger ego for the individual.
The relation of the vital being of man to the higher activities of collective life is one of opposition. In fact, the individual's vital being has to be subjected to discipline in order to maintain society.
If the collective life presses too much the vital being of the individual, it may go on strike, discourage life itself as. seems to have happened in case of Buddhism in India.
Life in the collectivity is Infra-Rational in the beginning, even religion and ethics of primitive societies are infra- rational. Then a stage comes when it becomes rational i. e. Reason tries to organise and govern life.
Whenever Reason has tried to do it in the past it has not succeeded. It is because Life is not merely Mind or reason; Life is "the imprisoned supra-rational "4 and therefore Reason cannot succeed in governing it completely and permanently. Take Love for instance; it is not an element that can be governed by Reason; in fact, it is not rational in its origin and working. It holds infinite possibilities within itself. Not only is there love of man and woman but also there is maternal and filial love, love of comrades, of country, of humanity. Love seeks only its Absolute in life. Even economics is not merely the seeking for satisfaction of personal desires and comforts but is meant to remove poverty and squalor from mankind when it would seek its true aim. If Nature has ego-affirming instincts so she has ego-enlarging and ego-exceeding instincts
_____________________
4.Human Cycle.
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and movements also; there are love, sympathy, self-denial, self-sacrifice.
Therefore it seems that " there is the pressure of an infinite on human life which will not allow it to remain too long in any formation." Life seeks the Absolute and not the rational. Reality is already there working in Life as Cosmic Self or Spirit and it can be discovered by the individual here. As its summit the Reality is the eternal and infinite Being.
But what we actually see here is the Inconscient Energy, a void, out of which Existence comes. This Existence does the work of supreme Intelligence in Matter and in Life. It seems, therefore, that the Inconscient is only a mask assumed by the Spirit that is involved in it and it imposes the law of difficult emergence on the process of slow unfolding of the Spirit. It begins from Matter in which the law of fragmentation in the form of atom seems to reign; it organises Life round a cell, and a Mind round an ego, and must in time pass from Mind to the Spirit.
The working of the Universal Energy shows that man is not the final product of evolution, that he is a transitional being, he is more than himself, he contains within him a higher than human-a divine-potentiality. The drive of the Universal Energy points to a level of consciousness beyond Mind, what the Vedic Seers call - Rit-chiti, Truth-Consciousness. The bringing down of this Truth-Consciousness would make individual and collective perfection possible. The indispensable item in collective perfection is the attainment of human unity. Is the time now ripe for it ?
The primary unit of collective life is the family. Then the class, the tribe, the race, the nation gradually came into being. It is evident that Nature begins with small aggregates and develops them in the process. The Nation is so far the largest attained unit of collective life. What is a nation ? Is it a mere geographical unit of land, or merely a sum of
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smaller units like the family and society etc.? All these really are parts of the nation, instruments for the evolution of the- collective soul. " Each nation is a Shakti, or power of the evolving spirit of humanity and lives by the principle it embodies. " Where such national consciousness awakens,.. the nation is able to regenerate itself even from adverse,. external conditions like foreign domination. Italy, Greece and Poland were under foreign domination but subsequently- freed themselves as the result of awakened national consciousness. When Ireland and India launched the movement for political freedom the demand was not based on economic or political rights only but on the need of freedom to express ' the national soul. ' The collective consciousness awoke under the name of ' Bharat-Shakti ' or ' Bharat-Mata 'when the national movement started in India.
The collective life of nations has been dominated by the vital-ego of the collectivity, not by its deeper soul. It is in Europe that the nation-units were first organised and all of them were dominated by economic greed and political ambition. The organisation of the nation-unit took place round the vital-ego of the collective egos culminating in two devastating World Wars. If the vital-ego leads the nation hardly any other result is to be expected.
Yet, paradoxical though it may sound, universal Nature is pressing forward to the unity of mankind not withstanding the two World-Wars. The only unit of collective life that remains to be achieved is mankind. Once the unity of mankind is attained a major step will have been taken towards human perfection. Three factors seem to be driving towards that culmination : ( 1 ) Scientific progress that has reduced time and space and helped in removing outer barriers between man and man (2) Drive towards. economic unification throughout mankind : collective life today, all over the world, centres round economy; far greater economic interchange is taking place between nations today
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than at any other time in history. It is planned economic interchange on a gigantic scale. Such economic unification needs peace and peace may bring unity nearer. ( 3 ) Increasing stress on socialism, - what is called " Socialist' Pattern " in the organisation of collective life - throughout the world. These are external means making for unity of mankind.
Bertrand Russell in his broadcasts from London-" Living in an atomic age " proposes that by a rational utilisation of the atom-energy it is possible to solve the problems of humanity. He seems to think that the problem is only external, touching only the economic life of man. I am afraid he oversimplifies the problem. Tracing man's evolution up to now he puts it in three heads: ( 1 )Man Vs. Nature, ( 2 ) Man Vs. Man, ( 3 ) Man divided in his own self, a state of a psychological dichotomy.
The first of these, Man Vs. Nature, is only a half truth. Nature is not always antagonistic to man. Tagore is more correct when he says that the effort to divide man and Nature- is artificial like that of dividing the plant from the flower, and is therefore wrong. It is Nature that supports man giving him food, water and air, and even when she seems to oppose man it is to bring out the potential powers of man which might lead him to conquer her. There are, besides,. many problems over and above economics and politics.
Russel's third point about the self-division of man's consciousness into two parts betrays, I am afraid, very poor knowledge of human personality. It is far from true to say that man projects " Sin " from within himself on to the enemy. The enemy is not sin personified, at least no soldier ever thinks in that way.
After the two World Wars there have been efforts to , create larger than nation-units of collective life, e. g. (1 ) The British Commonwealth ( 2 ) The French entante ( 3 ) the vague formation of the Arab League.
But in the day-to-day flow of events one hardly sees signs
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that might encourage optimism about the ideal of human unity. The difficulties seem to be Himalayan. The highest realised unit of international unity, the U. N. 0., is divided into two ideological camps and cold-war is already in progress in Korea and Berlin; China is divided into two parts; Laos is the battle-ground for the two rival powers; German unification is not yet in sight - after 15 years. Tibet is swallowed by China, India's borders are threatened by China and Pakistan; Portugal and India, South Africa and the free world have very little in harmony. Last but not least, the U. N. O. 's initial policy in Congo has not born fruit.
Unity of mankind seems as far away as ever. But on the other hand signs that indicate the progress towards human unity are not altogether wanting.
1. During the second World-War Mr. Churchill actually had proposed common citizenship between France and England. It was symptomatic of the drive towards unity of mankind. The very fact that it was put with all seriousness during a great crisis in the nation's life shows the direction towards which nations must move to solve problems of collective life and if the idea could be entertained during a War far more easy it should be to make it a success duing peace.
2. The unique fact of Indian political independence ushers in some new factors in international politics and contributes to the growth of collective life towards human unity. The Indian political movement has stressed the importance of ethical ideals; economical and political factors have been subordinated to them. It has put a new non-violent instrument in the hands of unarmed nations struggling to be free.
Another fact worth noting is the influence which free India exerts in international life, quite disproportion- ate to her economic and military strength. It seems that the age of economic and military domination is passing from international life, and slowly, ethical ideals e. g. justice, equality, freedom, self-determination etc. are taking the place.
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3. Up to the end of the 17th century nations defeated in War bad to face the ruin not only of their political life but had to pay the victors the penalty of the War. The economic life of the vanquished was ruined for generations. After the two World-Wars there has been a radical change in that attitude. The shattered life of the defeated nation has to be helped to stand on its own feet by economic help from the victors. And now, the idea of helping even the underdeveloped nations to make economic progress has become a dynamic factor in international life. It may be that it is due to enlightened self-interest or to the fear that the poor nations would offer easy ground for communism, but the fact is significant of the growing feeling of unity of mankind.
4. Moreover, the recent withdrawal of French and British armies from the Suez-Canal region without firing a shot indicates how powerful imponderable forces (like world opinion ) have now become. It is a sign of the increasing dynamic character which the unity of mankind is gradually achieving.
The Bhoodan movement sponsored by Vinoba Bhave, is a practical effort to live the religion of humanity in actual conditions of life in India. It puts into practice the motto : "The whole humanity is one family"—in short, " One World " is its inspiring ideal. That in a conservative country like England the movement of Vinoba should have found an echo under the leadership of intellectuals like Russel shows how the level of international life is rising from military and economic factors to ethical ideals. Values in international life are being transformed. The whole trend brings human unity nearer.
HOME
THE POSSIBLE FORM OF UNITY OF MANKIND
The question of the form that the unity of mankind is likely to take has been dealt with by Sri Aurobindo. The
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efforts to establish empires in the past were crude efforts at realising unity of mankind by force. As it was brute force on which they depended for their success, they were foredoomed to failure, lacking the psychological basis. They were cruds attempts, the first serious and conscious attempt for establishing unity of mankind was made after the first World-War and it to ok the form of the League of Nations. Its constitution and procedure lacked all the elements necessary to bring about real international unity. It insisted on unanimity as a rule which reduced its power of effective action and as Russia and America did not, join it, it lacked the representative character also. It was an oligarchy of four or five Big Powers that used the League to further their own policies The principle of equality of nations was not accepted. Then is no reason to be sorry for the League's failure—as it represented the ambitions of Imperial nations and not the aspirations of humanity.
THE U. N. 0.
After the second World—War the need of some machinery to prevent such Wars and to solve other international problems was acutely felt and the U. N. 0. was born. It is divided into two main parts : Political and Social and Cultural. The second part seems the more important of the two so far as evoking of psychological factors for promoting human unity is concerned.
The constitution of the U. N. O. is not perfect, particularly because the oligarchic element is present in the right of the veto reserved for the five Big Powers. It had some justification at the time of the start because of the great sacrifices the five nations had made in winning the War and they might have rightly feared being outvoted in a house where all the votes were equal. But after four or five years of running the U. N. 0. the voluntary surrender of the veto by one
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or more of the great powers would have gone a long way in creating the psychological atmosphere necessary for the real unity of mankind. If international unity has any meaning all the nations participating in the U. N. 0. should be free and equal—irrespective of their size and power. The inherent strength of a nation would make itself felt without such artificial devices. The veto is artificial and keeps alive inequality and breeds bitterness.
Unfortunately the U .N .O. got split up into two ideological camps and each group got busy with canvassing support for its stand in the U. N. O. Unity of mankind, peace and security with justice, disarmament, promotion of one world citizenship etc. which are the real concern of the U. N. O. were left aside or given a secondary place. India has tried to create an independent block based on non-aligned attitude and as a result conditions are created in the U. N. O. where the smaller nations can express their opinion freely. A ground of fearlessness, equality and freedom is necessary to bring about the real unity of mankind.
HOME
POSSIBILITY OF A WORLD STATE
We have seen. that the nation unit, when well established, organises its life under a state. The question then arises as to the form which the unity of mankind would take. Would it be a world state ? Recently Lord Attlee has said that time is ripe for a world state. It is high time that sovereignty of nations was restricted and an international authority, effective enough to carry out the decisions of the United Nations was brought into being.
Sri Aurobindo envisaging the possibilities saw several' forms which world-union could assume. The first business of such an organisation would be to establish uniformity of control in international life—a thing very badly needed at the present time. Two principles are fundamental to any such.
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constitution; one, freedom or self-determination and second feeling of unity with mankind. Will the world state be unitary or federal ? In order that it may succeed it is best if it is a loose federation based on the ideal of unity and on the need of preserving peace and working out plans for the well-being and progress of humanity. It would be something like the British Common wealth — a federation of diverse nations with common aims and conventions but without any rigid constitution,
The drive of universal Nature is towards human unity and if man can move in harmony with the intention of Nature much waste of time, energy and material could be avoided. The first task of such an international organisation would be to make peace secure in the world. That might require control of national armaments or complete or partial disarmament. The idea of one world, one humanity, would have to be stressed frequently till it gets established and becomes a common part of the psychology of the majority of mankind. That is a very difficult task. The sovereignty of nation states might present it with a formidable resistance.
Unity of mankind and sovereignty of each nation are two things which are not compatible. Nations will have to reduce their sovereignty to a considerable extent. It might even be questioned whether the Nation Unit will remain when unity of mankind has become a dynamic. factor in international life. But it is possible that before the world-state comes into existence effectively the national egoism will try to create situations of world's strife an thus put off the day of realisation of world unity. Patriotism in the sense of narrow national egoism can be a great obstacle in the path of the unity. It is also possible that the world unity may be attained externally, mechanically, i.e. without any life in it. Such a thing is not possible. Nation' might come together by a sort of compromise of interest
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and it might lead only to the rise of a constitution for execution without an impelling sense of unity behind. Such a World-State may concentrate all powers in its hands and may dictate unity under compulsion to the nations. A World-State which is a centre of military or economic power would not only wield dictatorial powers over the nations but would hardly leave room for the freedom of mind. In fact lacking all moral and spiritual elements it would be a titanic mechanical constitution in which there will be hardly any room for the experiments of the type carried on by a Gandhi or a Vinoba.
Such a World-State would have to control the life of the whole world and in order to arrive at such a control it might be obliged to become too unwieldy, too red-tape and lack creative elements. The greater the State, the greater would be the complexity of the constitution and the need of multiple rules. An example may make this point clear. The small city-States of Greece have exhibited greater creative power than many great nations and some empires; so also the small republics of ancient India or Small States under Kings were more creative than extensive Indian Empires.
One could ask the question in face of all these difficulties : Is it that the unity of mankind is not going to be attained or even if it is attained would it only be a half success almost amounting to failure ? Perhaps the prospect is not so bleak, but it is necessary to take count of all the contingent factors and possibilities and the difficulties when we think about the problem. The crux of the difficulty is that a radical change is necessary in human nature if the unity of mankind is to be truly established. As Sri Aurobindo says, the question is of converting an animal collectivity into a divine one. Man has failed to live his religion in his life but if mankind today can make a religion of human unity and live it in its life then the unity of mankind would
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be attained much sooner. The world is already one; mankind is one —unity of mankind is not to be created; it is already there; only man has to become conscious of it and make it a living reality in his thoughts and actions.
We have used the word " religion of mankind " but religion is not to be understood in the narrow sense of an external social religion. It is a kind of spiritual religion that is meant. In the last century some thinkers and poet! had accepted this spiritual religion of humanity. It was s microscopic minority at that time. It was that which inspired that poem of Leigh Hunt — " Abuben Adam may his tribe increase... .Rose one day from a deep dream of peace." The idea in the poem is that the lover of humanity is foremost amongst the lovers of God. The same idea is embodied in the verse of Yoga Vasistha :
"By whatever means to satisfy a human being is the highest worship of God". So long as the inner unity is tho felt all efforts at political, economic, and cultural unitnot mankind - all external efforts should be continued till yth inner unity is attained. Sri Aurobindo in " The Ideal of Human Unity " has given the following conception of the religion of mankind.
"A religion of humanity means the growing realisation that there is a secret Spirit, a divine Reality, in which we are all one, that humanity is its highest present vehicle on earth, that the human race and the human being are the means by which it will progressively reveal itself here. It implies a growing attempt to live out this knowledge and bring about a kingdom of this divine Spirit upon earth. By its growth within us oneness with our fellow-man will become the leading principle of all our life, not merely a principle of co-operation but a deeper brotherhood, a real and inner sense of unity and equality and a common life. There must be the realisation by the race that only on the free and the full life of the individual can its own perfection and permanent happiness be founded. There must be too a discipline and a way of salvation in accordance with this religion, that is to say, a means by which it can be developed by each man within himself so that it may be developed in the life of the race.
"But still in order to accomplish all its future, this idea and religion of humanity has to make, itself more explicit, insistent and categorically imperative. For otherwise it can only work with clarity in the minds of the few and with the mass it will only be a modifying influence, but will not be the rule of human life. And so long as that is so, it cannot entirely prevail over its principal enemy. That enemy, the enemy of all real religion, is human egoism, the egoism of the individual, the egoism of the class and nation. But the higher hope of humanity lies in the growing number of men who will realise this truth and seek to develop it in themselves so that when the mind of man is ready to escape from its mechanical bent,—perhaps when it finds that its mechanical solutions are all temporary and disappointing, —the truth of the Spirit may step in and land humanity to the path of its highest possible happiness and perfection."
Another fact worth noting is the influence which free India exerts in international life, quite disproportion- ate to her economic and military strength. It seems that the age of economic and military domination is passing from international life, and slowly, ethical ideals e. g. justice, equality, freedom, self-determination etc. are taking the place.
Page - 64
3. Up to the end of the 17th century nations defeated in War bad to face the ruin not only of their political life but had to pay the victors the penalty of the War. The economic life of the vanquished was ruined for generations. After the two World-Wars there has been a radical change in that attitude. The shattered life of the defeated nation has to be helped to stand on its own feet by economic help from the victors. And now, the idea of helping even the underdeveloped nations to make economic progress has become a dynamic factor in international life. It may be that it is due to enlightened self-interest or to the fear that the poor nations would offer easy ground for communism, but the fact is significant of the growing feeling of unity of mankind.
4. Moreover, the recent withdrawal of French and British armies from the Suez-Canal region without firing a shot indicates how powerful imponderable forces (like world opinion ) have now become. It is a sign of the increasing dynamic character which the unity of mankind is gradually achieving.
The Bhoodan movement sponsored by Vinoba Bhave, is a practical effort to live the religion of humanity in actual conditions of life in India. It puts into practice the motto : "The whole humanity is one family"—in short, " One World " is its inspiring ideal. That in a conservative country like England the movement of Vinoba should have found an echo under the leadership of intellectuals like Russel shows how the level of international life is rising from military and economic factors to ethical ideals. Values in international life are being transformed. The whole trend brings human unity nearer.
HOME
THE POSSIBLE FORM OF UNITY OF MANKIND
The question of the form that the unity of mankind is likely to take has been dealt with by Sri Aurobindo. The
Page - 65
efforts to establish empires in the past were crude efforts at realising unity of mankind by force. As it was brute force on which they depended for their success, they were foredoomed to failure, lacking the psychological basis. They were cruds attempts, the first serious and conscious attempt for establishing unity of mankind was made after the first World-War and it to ok the form of the League of Nations. Its constitution and procedure lacked all the elements necessary to bring about real international unity. It insisted on unanimity as a rule which reduced its power of effective action and as Russia and America did not, join it, it lacked the representative character also. It was an oligarchy of four or five Big Powers that used the League to further their own policies The principle of equality of nations was not accepted. Then is no reason to be sorry for the League's failure—as it represented the ambitions of Imperial nations and not the aspirations of humanity.
THE U. N. 0.
After the second World—War the need of some machinery to prevent such Wars and to solve other international problems was acutely felt and the U. N. 0. was born. It is divided into two main parts : Political and Social and Cultural. The second part seems the more important of the two so far as evoking of psychological factors for promoting human unity is concerned.
The constitution of the U. N. O. is not perfect, particularly because the oligarchic element is present in the right of the veto reserved for the five Big Powers. It had some justification at the time of the start because of the great sacrifices the five nations had made in winning the War and they might have rightly feared being outvoted in a house where all the votes were equal. But after four or five years of running the U. N. 0. the voluntary surrender of the veto by one
Page - 66
or more of the great powers would have gone a long way in creating the psychological atmosphere necessary for the real unity of mankind. If international unity has any meaning all the nations participating in the U. N. 0. should be free and equal—irrespective of their size and power. The inherent strength of a nation would make itself felt without such artificial devices. The veto is artificial and keeps alive inequality and breeds bitterness.
Unfortunately the U .N .O. got split up into two ideological camps and each group got busy with canvassing support for its stand in the U. N. O. Unity of mankind, peace and security with justice, disarmament, promotion of one world citizenship etc. which are the real concern of the U. N. O. were left aside or given a secondary place. India has tried to create an independent block based on non-aligned attitude and as a result conditions are created in the U. N. O. where the smaller nations can express their opinion freely. A ground of fearlessness, equality and freedom is necessary to bring about the real unity of mankind.
HOME
POSSIBILITY OF A WORLD STATE
We have seen. that the nation unit, when well established, organises its life under a state. The question then arises as to the form which the unity of mankind would take. Would it be a world state ? Recently Lord Attlee has said that time is ripe for a world state. It is high time that sovereignty of nations was restricted and an international authority, effective enough to carry out the decisions of the United Nations was brought into being.
Sri Aurobindo envisaging the possibilities saw several' forms which world-union could assume. The first business of such an organisation would be to establish uniformity of control in international life—a thing very badly needed at the present time. Two principles are fundamental to any such.
Page - 67
constitution; one, freedom or self-determination and second feeling of unity with mankind. Will the world state be unitary or federal ? In order that it may succeed it is best if it is a loose federation based on the ideal of unity and on the need of preserving peace and working out plans for the well-being and progress of humanity. It would be something like the British Common wealth — a federation of diverse nations with common aims and conventions but without any rigid constitution,
The drive of universal Nature is towards human unity and if man can move in harmony with the intention of Nature much waste of time, energy and material could be avoided. The first task of such an international organisation would be to make peace secure in the world. That might require control of national armaments or complete or partial disarmament. The idea of one world, one humanity, would have to be stressed frequently till it gets established and becomes a common part of the psychology of the majority of mankind. That is a very difficult task. The sovereignty of nation states might present it with a formidable resistance.
Unity of mankind and sovereignty of each nation are two things which are not compatible. Nations will have to reduce their sovereignty to a considerable extent. It might even be questioned whether the Nation Unit will remain when unity of mankind has become a dynamic. factor in international life. But it is possible that before the world-state comes into existence effectively the national egoism will try to create situations of world's strife an thus put off the day of realisation of world unity. Patriotism in the sense of narrow national egoism can be a great obstacle in the path of the unity. It is also possible that the world unity may be attained externally, mechanically, i.e. without any life in it. Such a thing is not possible. Nation' might come together by a sort of compromise of interest
Page - 68
and it might lead only to the rise of a constitution for execution without an impelling sense of unity behind. Such a World-State may concentrate all powers in its hands and may dictate unity under compulsion to the nations. A World-State which is a centre of military or economic power would not only wield dictatorial powers over the nations but would hardly leave room for the freedom of mind. In fact lacking all moral and spiritual elements it would be a titanic mechanical constitution in which there will be hardly any room for the experiments of the type carried on by a Gandhi or a Vinoba.
Such a World-State would have to control the life of the whole world and in order to arrive at such a control it might be obliged to become too unwieldy, too red-tape and lack creative elements. The greater the State, the greater would be the complexity of the constitution and the need of multiple rules. An example may make this point clear. The small city-States of Greece have exhibited greater creative power than many great nations and some empires; so also the small republics of ancient India or Small States under Kings were more creative than extensive Indian Empires.
One could ask the question in face of all these difficulties : Is it that the unity of mankind is not going to be attained or even if it is attained would it only be a half success almost amounting to failure ? Perhaps the prospect is not so bleak, but it is necessary to take count of all the contingent factors and possibilities and the difficulties when we think about the problem. The crux of the difficulty is that a radical change is necessary in human nature if the unity of mankind is to be truly established. As Sri Aurobindo says, the question is of converting an animal collectivity into a divine one. Man has failed to live his religion in his life but if mankind today can make a religion of human unity and live it in its life then the unity of mankind would
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be attained much sooner. The world is already one; mankind is one —unity of mankind is not to be created; it is already there; only man has to become conscious of it and make it a living reality in his thoughts and actions.
We have used the word " religion of mankind " but religion is not to be understood in the narrow sense of an external social religion. It is a kind of spiritual religion that is meant. In the last century some thinkers and poet! had accepted this spiritual religion of humanity. It was s microscopic minority at that time. It was that which inspired that poem of Leigh Hunt — " Abuben Adam may his tribe increase... .Rose one day from a deep dream of peace." The idea in the poem is that the lover of humanity is foremost amongst the lovers of God. The same idea is embodied in the verse of Yoga Vasistha :
"By whatever means to satisfy a human being is the highest worship of God". So long as the inner unity is tho felt all efforts at political, economic, and cultural unitnot mankind - all external efforts should be continued till yth inner unity is attained. Sri Aurobindo in " The Ideal of Human Unity " has given the following conception of the religion of mankind.
"A religion of humanity means the growing realisation that there is a secret Spirit, a divine Reality, in which we are all one, that humanity is its highest present vehicle on earth, that the human race and the human being are the means by which it will progressively reveal itself here. It implies a growing attempt to live out this knowledge and bring about a kingdom of this divine Spirit upon earth. By its growth within us oneness with our fellow-man will become the leading principle of all our life, not merely a principle of co-operation but a deeper brotherhood, a real and inner sense of unity and equality and a common life. There must be the realisation by the race that only on the free and the full life of the individual can its own perfection and permanent happiness be founded. There must be too a discipline and a way of salvation in accordance with this religion, that is to say, a means by which it can be developed by each man within himself so that it may be developed in the life of the race.
"But still in order to accomplish all its future, this idea and religion of humanity has to make, itself more explicit, insistent and categorically imperative. For otherwise it can only work with clarity in the minds of the few and with the mass it will only be a modifying influence, but will not be the rule of human life. And so long as that is so, it cannot entirely prevail over its principal enemy. That enemy, the enemy of all real religion, is human egoism, the egoism of the individual, the egoism of the class and nation. But the higher hope of humanity lies in the growing number of men who will realise this truth and seek to develop it in themselves so that when the mind of man is ready to escape from its mechanical bent,—perhaps when it finds that its mechanical solutions are all temporary and disappointing, —the truth of the Spirit may step in and land humanity to the path of its highest possible happiness and perfection."
Page - 71 Document: Home > E-Library > Works Of Disciples > A B Purani > Sri Aurobindo-Some Aspects Of His Vision > The Problem Of Collective Life
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