Globalisation in the Light of Sri Aurobindo’s Vision of the Ideal of Human Unity

Globalisation in the Light of Sri Aurobindo’s Vision of the Ideal of Human Unity-I

“Globalisation” is an attractive word; for it evokes in us a noble sentiment of “one earth” and of humankind as one race born of one common Mother Earth; it raises in us a beam of the ideal of human unity and of universal fraternity. But when we examine the current phenomenon of globalisation, we find that it is a growing network spreading over the whole globe in which the old forces of competition and resultant asymmetrical relations constitute the central network of action and reaction. Here globality is the globality of market forces that are free to develop hegemony of dominant and rich nations. We do not find here global relations of cooperation, even of friendliness. This is no manifestation of global consciousness in which unity and oneness predominate.

At its root, contemporary globalisation is a result of the material circumstances where scientific discoveries have made our earth so small that its vastest kingdoms seem now no more than the provinces of a single country. Considering that the human intellect has at present been so much mechanised that it is likely to push forward the tide of globalisation through mechanical means and through social and political adjustments. This is where we can foresee the perils of the coming day, unless normative consciousness of humanity intervenes in a decisive way.

Globalisation can not be arrested; mechanical means for their operations and rapid advancements have been set to work, and there is no agency of wisdom which has yet come to the surface to control and to guide; and, in reality, wisdom can not become mechanical and can not translate itself into any artificial agency. If, therefore, perils of globalisation are to be avoided, efforts have to be made to effect a great change in the heart and mind of the human race; people have to awake to wisdom in time and accept the difficult process of inner change, even though external adjustments will also need to be effected. The truth behind globalisation is, indeed, that of the ideal unity of the human race, but to bring forth that truth and to make it operative, we seem to be in need of a deeper study of the issues and of a greater opening to profounder means and remedies.

At this juncture, we are impelled to think afresh of globality, global consciousness and the ideal of human unity. For globalisation can be turned into a favourable circumstance if we consciously strive at the concrete manifestation of unity of the human race, which has always been latent and secretly operative. It can even be said that the ideal of human unity seems to be making its way to the front of our consciousness because this is the opportune moment when that ideal can be actualised.

Globalisation in the Light of Sri Aurobindo’s Vision of the Ideal of Human Unity-II

Four factors have combined together to generate the present phenomenon of globalisation. Firstly, there is the amazing triumph of science and technology which have been applied on a large scale to the production of services and goods and their transportation across the globe. Secondly, social, political, commercial and industrial institutions have tended towards standardisation, mechanisation and even dehumanisation in the processes of management, governance and even in human relationship, thirdly, there has been a grim battle between the ideals of capitalism, socialism and consumerism which stands today at a point of disequilibrium that tilts heavily towards privatisation and capitalistic forces that favour the growth of multinationals and expansions of markets that promote multiplication of physical and vital wants, consumerism and motivations of economic security, competitive methods of enrichment, and profit-making. And, fourthly, science and philosophy, the two great magnets that uplift the powers of Reason towards greater heights of the truth, beauty and goodness, have tended towards the denials that emerge from materialism resulting in refusals to inquire into claims of ethical and spiritual domains. The general climate that rules the globe today is that of the pull of humanity downward towards the confinement to the demands of physical and vital life.

In 6 terms of the history of civilisation, humankind is turning more and more decisively and globally, not only towards philistism but even a kind of barbarism where the barbarian can roam about the world taking full advantages of civilisation that has been created so far by the past achievements of culture of reason, ethics, aesthetics and religious and spiritual pursuits. This is a kind of invasion of barbarism that aims at physical stability in what seems to be a hostile world. In the past history has witnessed the floods of the overpowering invasions that have devastated the cultures that had reached some kind of climatic points of achievements. In the present stage of history, on account of the fact that science has reached such a triumph of knowledge and its application that the invasion of the barbarians from outside, except in terms of terrorism and allied forms, may become impossible. But the point is the invasion form the barbarian from within, from the circle of civilised world itself. And this peril, -- the peril of the monstrous barbarian controlling the civilised world on a global scale, -- needs to be combated if the future is to be saved form the suffocations and sufferings that afflict the inner spirit when it is denied its natural upward urge towards its highest cultural fulfilment.

Indeed, there are behind the contemporary globalisation higher and nobler motives at work, the most important of which is the drive towards the fulfilment of the dream of humanity to arrive at a form of organisation that would foster united family of humanity in a state of perpetual progress, prosperity and multi-layered happiness that comes form constant ascension from height to greater heights. These nobler and higher motives that have inspired the ideal of human unity and brought about the birth of noble and momentous institutions such as those of United Nations and its international agencies do not, however, seem to be strong enough to meet the present perilous situation that confronts us today. We need to study the reasons for this so that we may arrive at better propositions of solutions than what has been offered to us so far.

Globalisation in the Light of Sri Aurobindo’s Vision of the Ideal of Human Unity-III

Human history may, in a sense, be perceived as a multi-layered and complex struggle to harmonise the claims of the individual and those of the collectivity. The development of this struggle seems to be cyclic or spiral rather than linear in character. This has also to be seen in terms of the evolution of the human species and the laws of that evolution. For these laws follow the curve of the development of the faculties of the body, life and mind in which the concern for the physical base and infusion of the developing and developed powers of life and mind in a very zigzag swinging curve of advance appears to be predominant. There is, what we may call, the laws of ascent and integration, as a result of which the relationships between the individual and the collectivity are being built up in such a way that as soon as lower gates of achievement reach a point of maturity they tend to higher grades of achievement in a gradual manner so as to interweave the lower and the higher in a complex series of harmony of conflicting claims. If we study these laws, we find that evolution is a continuous process and humanity is one of the crucial links is the process that seems to lead humanity to levels of progression that lead the development of the mind to that which lies beyond the mind and even higher grades of consciousness that are appropriate to the spirit, and its wider, deeper and higher domains.

The evolutionary study of humanity ahs its origin in the Darwinian theory, but it has found developments in the writings of philosophers like Bergson, Alexander, Smutts, Whitehead and Teilhard de Chardin. But the most elaborate and comprehensive study is to be found in the writings of Sri Aurobindo, particularly, in his The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, The Human Cycle and The Ideal of Human Unity. In one of the important passages of Nature that has so far evolved Life in Matter and Mind in Matter, Sri Aurobindo writes:

“The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious cooperation she wills to work out the superman, the god. Or shall we not say, rather, to manifest God? For if evolution is the progressive manifestation by Nature of that which slept or worked in her, involved, it is also the overt realisation of that which she secretly is. We cannot then, bid her pause at a given stage of her evolution, nor have we the right to condemn with the religionist as perverse and presumptuous or with the rationalist as a disease or hallucination any intention she may evince or effort she may make to go beyond. If it be true that Spirit is involved in Matter and apparent Nature is secret God, then the manifestation of the divine in himself and the realisation of God within and without are the highest and most legitimate aim possible to man upon earth.”¹

According to Sri Aurobindo, the evolution of human being in regard to the development of human faculties and those that are beyond human limitations is conducted by a conscious effort of the human mind, and it is not confined to a conscious progression of the nature, but is accompanied by an attempt to break the laws of the Governance and extend the human being inward into the secret principle of the present being and the outward into cosmic being as well as upward towards a higher principle.

Secondly, this evolution takes into account, the sense of freedom that emerges along with the development of self-consciousness, and with the process of rational and normative consciousness. The evolutionary process is, therefore, marked by alternative possibilities which can even be perilous, as in any great adventure. Evolution as conceived by Sri Aurobindo is a great adventure of consciousness, and considers the operation of a free to cooperative will on the part of the human being to be a necessary component for the human being to arrive at a higher development which may be salutary for the satisfaction of fulfilment that can come from the highest manifestation of the secret spiritual consciousness.

It is against this background that the conflict between the individual and the collectivity need to be understood.

Human history may be considered as a long story of the sway of developing consciousness between three principles preoccupation of human idealism, -- the complete single development of the human being himself, the perfectibility of the in which individual, a full development of the collective being, the perfectibility of the society, and, more pragmatically restricted, the perfect or best possible relation of individual with individual and society and of community with community. Hence, we find in history that sometimes an exclusive or dominant emphasis is laid down on the individual, sometimes on the collectivity and society, sometimes on a right and balanced relations between the individual and the collective human whole. According to one ideal, freedom and growth of perfection of the individual is to be held up as a true objective on our existence. This ideal is sometimes conceived as that of a mere free self-expression of the personal being or as self-governed whole of complete mind, fine and ample life and perfect body, or a spiritual perfection and liberation. In the perspective of this view, society is conceived only as a filed of activity and growth for the individual mind and serves best its function when it gives as far as possible a wide room, ample means, a sufficient freedom or guidance of development to his thought, his action, his growth, his possibility of fullness or being. The opposite ideal gives the collective life the first or sole importance; the existence, the growth of the rare is of in this view; the individual is expected to live for the society or fore the mankind or even, he is only a cell of the society, he has no other use or purpose or birth, no other meaning of his presence in Nature, no other foundation. Or, it is sometimes held that the nation, the society, the community is a collective being, revealing its soul in its culture, power of life, ideal, institutions, or its ways of self-expression. In this context, the individual life has to cast itself in that mould, serving the power of life, consent only to exist as an instrument for the maintenance and efficient existence. In a third ideal, the perfection of man lies in his ethical and social relations with other human beings; his social being and his love for society, for others, for his utility to the race. In this view, the society exists for the service of all, to give them their right or relations, education, training, economical opportunity, right frame of life.

Sri Aurobindo in his survey of world history points out that in the ancient cultures, the greatest emphasis was laid on the community and fitting of the individual into the community. Even than, however, there grew up an ideal of a perfectly individual and it has found that the idea of the spiritual individual was dominant in ancient India, although the society was of extremely importance and its moulding to individual had to pass first to the social states of the physical, vital, mental being with a satisfaction of interest, desire, pursuit of knowledge and right living – kama, moksha and dharma – before he could reach fitness for the truer realise of free spiritual existence (moksha). in contrast, Sri Aurobindo finds in recent times the whole stress has fallen on the life of the race, to search for a perfect society, and rather than to concentrate on the right organisation and scientific mechanisation of the life of mankind as a whole. Under this circumstance, the individual is now tends to be more regarded only as a member of the collectivity, a unity of the race whose existence must be subordinated and the total interest of the organised society, and much less or not at all as a mental or spiritual being with his own right and pure existence. Again, under the same circumstances, the modern State erects its godheads and demands its bodies, subjugation, and his immolation. The individual is than required to form this exorbitant is the rights of his ideals, his ideas, but personality is conscient.

The conflict between the individual and the collectivity seems at this stage to have reached the stage of an acute conflict of standards, which Globalisation is not a normative movement; under the present material circumstances, fashioned and propelled by scientific and technological advancement, it is an inevitable movement. To think, therefore, of ethics facing globalisation is to invite normative injunction of invoking moral law, if any, in the workings of human aggregates. And this needs a detailed study of history of social and political institutions, of social and political morals, and of morality, religious and spiritual that seem to have influenced the growth of human civilisation than culture. A detailed study of relevant factors is hardly available, but two works that stand out in the depth of luminosity are The Human Cycle, and The Ideal of Human Unity, -- both written by Sri Aurobindo, (1872-1950). We may briefly turn to them, just to get a glimpse and guidance that they provide.

Globalisation in the Light of Sri Aurobindo’s Vision of the Ideal of Human Unity-IV

According to Sri Aurobindo, the unity of mankind is a part of Nature’s eventual scheme and must come about. He, however, points out that it must meet other conditions and with safe-guards which will keep the race intact in the roots of its vitality, richly diverse in its oneness.

In the study of the past of the humanity, he finds that the interesting periods of human life, the scenes in which it has been most richly lived and has left behind it the most precious fruits were precisely those ages and countries in which humanity was able to organise itself in little independent centres, but infused into a single unity. Three such moments in human history to which modern Europe owes two-third of its civilisation where, firstly, the religious life of the conjures of tribes which call itself Israel and, subsequently, of the little Nation of the Jews; secondly, the many-sided life of the small Greek city states; and thirdly, the similar, though more restricted artistic and intellectual life of medieval Italy. Similarly, as far as Asia is concerned, no age was so rich in energy, so well worth living in, so productive of the best and the most enduring fruits as the heroic period of India when she was divided into small kingdoms, many of them no larger than a modern district. The second best period of India, according to Sri Aurobindo, came afterwards in larger, but still comparatively small, nations and kingdoms like those of Pallavas, Chalukyas, Pandyas, Cholas and Cheras.

In the course of history, Sri Aurobindo finds that even when there developed the organisation of nations, kingdoms and empires, it was a groupments of smaller nations which have had the most intense life and not the huge State and colossal empires. His conclusion is that collective life, when it diffuses itself in very vast spaces, seems to loose intensity and productiveness. As illustrations, he points out that Europe has lived in England, France, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, the small states of Germany, -- not in the huge mass of the Holy Roman or the Russian Empire. He also notices that in the organisation of nations and kingdoms, those which have had the most vigorous life have gained it by a sort of artificial concentration of the vitality into some head, centre or capital, London, Paris, Rome.

Taking the example of the Roman Empire, which provides a historical illustration of an organisation of unity which transcended the limits of a nation, he discerns its advantages and disadvantage. The advantages of unity that was forged by that great Empire were its admirable organisation, peace, widespread security, order, and material well-being. But the disadvantages arose from its tendency to centralise, to impose union, as a result, the individual, the city, the region had to sacrifice their independent life and they became mechanical parts – a machine. The organisation was great and admirable, but the individual dwindled and life lost its colour, richness, variety, freedom and victorious impulse towards creation. Eventually, therefore, Roman Empire declined and failed; the huge mechanism of centralisation and union brought about smallness and feebleness of the individual; mechanisation prevailed and the Empire lost even its conservative vitality and died of an increasing stagnation.

The question that Sri Aurobindo raises is as to what is likely to happen if there were social, administrative and political unification of mankind, such as some have begun to dream now a days and this question is immediately relevant, if we are to raise it in the context of the current globalisation. Sri Aurobindo’s reply is that a tremendous organisation would be needed and that under this organisation both the individual and the regional life would be crushed, dwarfed, deprived of their necessary freedom, and this would mean for humanity, after perhaps one first outburst of satisfied and joyous activity, a long period of mere conservation, increasing stagnancy and ultimate decay. Sri Aurobindo’s conclusion is that a greater social and political unity is not necessarily a boon in itself, but it is only worth pursuing in so far as it provides a means and a framework for a better, richer, more happy and puissant individual and collective life. It is against this conclusion that Sri Aurobindo makes a study of the meaning of the contemporary rise of the ideal of human unity and the conditions that must be satisfied under the which that ideal can be realised without hurting the roots of the vitality of human life and that would ensure rich diversity consistent with inner oneness.

In the first place, Sri Aurobindo makes a detailed study of the imperfection of the past aggregate and examines the interrelationship between the group and the individual. Next, he examines the idea of the state and finds its inadequacy and concludes that it is quite improbable that in the present conditions of the race, a healthy unity of mankind can be brought about by State machinery, whether it be a grouping of powerful and organised State enjoying carefully regulated legalised relations with each other or part substitution a single World-State. He admits that such an external or administrative unity may be intended in the near future of mankind in order to accustom the race to the idea of a commune life to its habit, to its possibility. But he points out that it cannot really be healthy, durable or beneficial overall the principle line of human destiny unless something be developed, more profound, internal and real.

Will humankind be obliged to repeat the experience of ancient world and to pass through confusion and anarchy? Sri Aurobindo’s answer is that it ought to be possible for us to avoid that kind of experience by subordinating mechanical means to our true development through a moralised and even a spiritualised humanity in its inner soul and not only in its outward life and body.

Apart from the question of various possibilities that may be adopted by the contemporary world in which the forces of centralisation are likely to become more and more powerful, Sri Aurobindo makes a detailed study of Nature’s law in our progress, that of unity and diversity and of law and liberty. He concludes that their ideal must be “to develop the individual and all individuals to their full capacity, to develop the community and all communities to the full expression of that many-sided existence and potentiality which their differences were created to express, and to evolve the united life of mankind to its full common capacity and satisfaction, not by suppression of the fullness of life of the individual or the smaller commonalty, but by full advantage taken of the diversity which they develop.”²

Sri Aurobindo maintains that human society progresses really and vitally in principle as law becomes the child of freedom, and it reach its perfection when, man having learned to know and becomes spiritually one with his fellow men, the spontaneous law of the society exists only as the outward mode of his self-governed inner liberty.

Sri Aurobindo then proceeds to suggest the principle of the ideal unification of mankind. This would mean, he points out, a system in which, as a first rule of commune and harmonious life, the human peoples would be allowed to form their own groupings according to their natural divisions of locality, race, culture, economic convenience and not according to the more violent accidents of history or the egoistic will of powerful nations whose policy it must always be to compel the smaller or less timely organised to serve their interests as dependents or obey their commands as subjects.

During the course of his study, Sri Aurobindo examines the idea of a league of nations and arrives at the concept of a free world union but warns that the idea of a world federation, if by that we understood the Germanic or the American form would equally be inappropriate to the greater diversity and freedom of national development which this type of world union would hold as one of its cardinal principle. He concludes:

“Rather some kind of confederation of the peoples for common human ends, for the removal of all causes of strife and difference, for interrelation and the regulation of mutual aid and interchange, yet leaving to each unit a full internal freedom and power of self-determination, would be the right principle of this unity.”³

In arriving at the implication of this principle of unity, Sri Aurobindo emphasises the need for intellectual and psychological change. Only such an inner change, he points out, could alone give some chance of durability to unification. The saving power needed, he points out, is a new psychological factor which at once make a united life necessary for humanity and force it to respect the principle of freedom. That new psychological factory is what he calls a spiritual religion of humanity. In his own words,

“A spiritual religion of humanity is the hope of the future. By this is not meant what is ordinarily called a universal religion, a system, a thing of creed and intellectual belief and dogma and outward rite. Mankind has tried unity by that means; it has failed and deserved to fail, because there can be no universal religious system, one in mental creed and vital form. The inner spirit is indeed one, but more than any other the spiritual life insists on freedom and variation in its self-expression and means of development. A religion of humanity means the growing realisation that there is a secret of 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-men will become the leading principle of all our life, not merely a principle of co-operation but a deeper brotherhood, a real and an inner sense of unity and equality and a common life. There must be the realisation by the individual that only in the life of his fellow-men is his own life complete. There must be the realisation by the race that only on the free and full life of the individual can its own perfection and permanent happiness be founded.”⁴

Crisis of Civilisation and Beyond

Crisis of Civilisation and Beyond-I

We are getting absorbed in the problems of power shift which are caused by “softnomics”, the technologies which are related to software that produces and processes information and knowledge with ever-increasing speed. In other words; we are interested in knowledge to the extent to which it gets related to money-making. What is our centre of gravity? It is the economic social ultimate -- an ideal material organisation of civilisation and comfort, the use of reason and science and education for the channelisation of a utilitarian rationality which will create mechanisms and systems for vital and material satisfactions surrounded by luxuries of intellectual and aesthetic pastimes.

The contemporary crisis of humanity arises from this centre of gravity; humanity is slipping more and more into the mire of this pit. While its inner soul feels mutely the agony of this plunge and wants to be uplifted and liberated, it is unable to assist itself and to break its chains.

There is a deeper reason for this, and we may try to understand it.

Crisis of Civilisation and Beyond-II

Since the last five hundred years, humanity has been living in the Age of Reason. In previous cycles of human history, there have been periods where intellect dominated, but they never reached the sweep, pitch- and intensity as our modern Age of cultivating, subtilising and fathoming the applications of our rational faculties. The Age of Reason is, therefore, of special significance, particularly when we realise that the human being is distinguishable from other species by virtue of its Reason. We can expect from this Age those, results which the human beings can obtain at their maximum level of development. And, indeed, during this period, rationalism flourished uninhibitedly and produced results of highest excellence. But it also showed quite decisively what it can accomplish and what it cannot. Two articles of faith, underlying the march of Reason, came to be fully tested and disproved. The first article was the faith that Reason can arrive at Truth and can arrive at it with certainty. At the end of its march, it has come to declare that the concept of Truth has rather limited and relative meaning in terms what can be known by Reason will always be circumscribed within the limits of varying degrees of probability. The second was that Reason can, with its capacity to observe, know and govern impartially, apply itself to human life and arrive at the right relationship between the individual and collectivity. Reason also erected in this connection three great ideals of progress, -- Liberty, and dreamt of their harmonious fulfillment in a rational order of society. At the end of its march in our own century, Reason has now demonstrated, particularly with the collapse of the socialist experiment in USSR, that Reason can neither harmonise the individual and the collectivity nor can it synthesise freedom, equality and brotherhood. It is seen that Reason can succeed only in establishing a limited rule of Law over, uneasy springs of freedom and a narrow rule of efficient organisation by imposing on all concerned a heavy hand of compulsion and uniformity. It has proved that Reason as a governor of society can secure freedom only by overriding the demands of equality, and if it attempts to secure equality, it is obliged to strangulate freedom. As for fraternity, the highest that Reason could achieve was temporary comradeship and pragmatic or utilitarian cooperation. Having reached this end of the road, Reason now stands bereft of any agenda; its fundamental search seems to have ended; its basic experimentation seems to have come to a close; it can only turn now in expanding or contracting circles of probabilities in the field of knowledge and those of compromises in the field of practical life. It can, of course, take another course if it can choose to become sufficiently revolutionary and institute an inquiry into those ulterior sources from which its articles of faith regarding Truth and certainty and the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity sprang into: its ken and sustained its long journey, which, even when declared to be unrealisable, keep on knocking and calling us insistently for their fulfilment.

But this is more a question of choice, of will, of a deliberate effort. It is easy to refuse, and to find reasons for the refusal. For it may be argued that all articles of faith, even of Reason, invite a return to the domain of religion or of the supra-rational against which Reason had declared an open revolt at the very commencement of its march into the modern age. Or else, it may be argued that the deliverances of the supra-rational create for the mental thought antinomies which are insoluble and therefore unacceptable. We, therefore, hear the cacophony of declarations that the supra-rational is non-existent or unreal and that the best counsel for reason is to limit its activities to the practical and immediate problems of their material existence in the universe.

What is the consequence? Reason by itself cannot long maintain the race in its progress; it is the inner spiritual necessity, the push from what is there yet unrealised that maintains the progressive or evolutionary stress, the spiritual nisus. But if. that is refused or renounced, there is bound to occur a crisis. The contemporary crisis of humanity is a crisis of this -kind. It is not a sociological, political or economic crisis; it is what Sri Aurobindo calls an evolutionary crisis.

An evolutionary crisis can occur only at an extremely crucial moment of. the life of a species. It is when a certain level of consciousness has effected an 'ascent to the next level of consciousness, integrated the powers and activities of the lower consciousness into those of the higher level of consciousness, when the integrated powers have achieved acute subtilisation and refinement, then the moment arrives for taking a leap into the still higher level of consciousness. If at that moment there is obstruction or failure to secure the necessary push, a crisis sets in which continues to concentrate on the issue of the next ascent until the necessary conditions are created which would facilitate the ascent or mutation of the species. Or else, if there is repeated failure, the concerned species gives place to a new species and gets itself either extinct or relapses into a certain type of fixed movement, bereft of a nisus for a higher ascent or mutation. With humanity today such a point of crisis has been reached; this is evidenced by the fact that its highest faculty of Reason has accomplished the tasks of maximum possible integration, subtilisation and amplitude of multi-sided development; having reached this stage of accomplishment, its limitations have been made bare and acknowledged; it is very clear that the deeper powers lying behind Reason are in need of a surge, and they are being blocked by the achieved circuit of grooves set up by Reason. It is only if Reason consents to allow deeper powers to rise to a new stage of the ascent of consciousness, that further progress of humanity could be possible.

Socio-Cultural Perspectives of India

Socio-Cultural Perspectives of India

India of today has a special psychological climate, which we need to explore and understand.

There is at first the emerging international or global layer of influences which have penetrated deeply into a large number of institutions and modes of our developing life patterns. These influences bear real stamp of the European Renaissance which, in turn, had succeeded in the revival of the ancient Greek culture. The Greek culture was an amazing efflorescence of the development of the faculties of the body, life or mind under the supervening influences of the powers of the reason and its three-fold character: rational, aesthetic and ethical. The pursuit of the ideals of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, which were greatly emphasized by Plato had remained the driving forces of the Greek and the later Greco-Roman culture, and they have become living forces since renaissance, of modern Europe and the entire modern world. These three ideals are more readily admitted by the modern mind, including the modern Indian mind. In the Renascent Europe, the rebirth of the powers of the Reason has generated not only multisided culture of the physical, vital, aesthetic, ethical, or rationalistic pursuits, but the most striking and predominant and unprecedented advancement that has been achieved in the field of Science and Technology. The application of rationality to social and political life has resulted in the erection of 3 great ideals: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, and the greatest experiments in social and political life has since been dominated by democratic, socialistic and communistic movements, -- as can be seen through the history of parliamentary democracy in England, France and even Europe and U.S.A. The communistic experiments lays great emphasis on the ideal of equality has also prominently influenced the entire world during the last two centuries. The application of Science to Technology has been the main spring of the industrial revolution, the nuclear revolution, and electronic revolution. It is these three revolutions which have accentuated competitive individualism and capitalisms as also great wars, cold war and continuing conflicts among the contemporary multipolar world. The globalization is today immensely facilitated by the electronic revolution.

The contemporary Indian climate cannot be properly understood without taking into account the great ideals of Greek culture, the renascent European emphasis on Reason and the consequent phenomenon of ever advancing march of Science, and the emergence of the global life under the inspiring force of the ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

But this is not enough. The study of Greek culture will show that, despite the shining experiments of the pursuit of the rationalistic, aesthetic, and the ethical culture, the conflict between the ethical and the aesthetic and the conflict between the rationalistic and the ethical tendencies were not resolved, and while these ideals have come into the forefront in the modern world, they still need to be pursued farther until rational, ethical, aesthetic can be reconciled. At the heart of the contemporary Indian psychological climate, there is today the great problem of finding a synthesis in which the rationalistic ideal of truth, the aesthetic ideal of beauty and the ethical ideal of the good can be reconciled.

It has also to be understood that the ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, which came to be greatly proclaimed by the French revolution, and which have traveled all over the modern world, found their place in the very preamble of the Constitution of India and in various institutions. Political, social, economic and cultural, ─ are still struggling in the modern world for their reconciliation and synthesis. An intense struggle of these three ideals is also at the heart of the contemporary psychological climate of India.

But we need to go farther and deeper. The India of the ages continues to live, and during the last two hundred years the entire past of history seems to have been repeated in a summary form so that the most important elements of that past have become living forces of the contemporary India. “Go back to the Vedas” was greatly proclaimed in the 19th century under the influence of Dayanand Saraswati; “Go back to the Upanishads” was greatly proclaimed during the same 19th century by the leaders of Brahmo Samaj, Devindra Nath Tagore, Keshav Chandra Sen and others, “Go back to the ancient Indian wisdom” also came to be proclaimed by the Theosophical society, “Realize God, realize the Divine Mother, and realize the truths of all religions and realize God in action”, this great message came to be proclaimed by Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, and go back to the Vedas, Upanishads, the Gita, came to be proclaimed by Tilak, Gandhi, Tagore and Sri Aurobindo. The new tide of Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism, of Advaita and of Bhakti movement are also visible with striking force in the contemporary Indian climate. And in this climate the conflict among religions, which had become sharp when Islam came to India, which has been persistently confronted and repeatedly repaired, has also come forward and caused not only the partition of India but still persists as a kind of a deep malaise in the very heart of India.

All this recent history of India obliges us to rediscover India. Unfortunately, during the last sixty years the Indian leadership, too busy with pressing problems of shaping independent India under the weight of the unreconciled ideals of the truth, beauty and goodness and the unreconciled ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity has reached a point of hollowness in which only two concerns weigh most weightily, ─ concern for increasing tide for capitalism and increasing weight of the politics of the vote.

The governing climate of India revolves around the daily and seasonal battles of the march of reforms that are centered on increasing the prosperity of India under the banner of competitive capitalism, the daily and periodical battles of vote banks which can only be fuelled or dimmed by appeal to castes, communalist forces and competing sops in favour or against populist and opportunistic measures. Added to these two forces is the tremendous tide of the philosophy of materialism. Students of India are being largely counseled and encouraged to seek from their education what they can gain through individual competition and success through the tide of expanding capitalistic markets in India and the world, and they are counseled and encouraged by materialism that is ruling not only over the job-market but which is also ruling over the intellectual world in which they live on account of studies in science, technology and business and vocational courses, where the philosophy of materialism is the ruling Sovereign, ─ either in its explicit form or in the forms of agnosticism, scepticism, or through intellectual fashions which advocate facile ways of scoffing at religion and spirituality and the realm of values which can be dismissed by taking recourse to relativism and post modernistic refusal to enquire or to limit enquiry only up to the boundaries where questions can be raised which require no imperativeness to find answers.

Added to the materialism that pervades the modern scientific movement and the capitalistic utilities of technologies is the force of the materialism that is growing powerfully in India through the increasing tide of materialistic communism. This materialism is armed with a wider base of its spectrum, which not only rests on the materialistic bias of science but also a fairly detailed analysis of history, which concentrates with great convincingness on the story of class struggle, even while ignoring the enormously complex factors with profounder history of the world revealed to us, when we have the patience and the profundity of enquiring into the meaning of human civilization.

This is the picture of Socio-political perspectives that we can draw in brief terms, and as we can see, there is, as yet, no stock-taking in which the total perspective of the Indian climate can be grasped. Much that is visible here in these broad terms is discomforting to many idealists who are striving to develop and dwell with all that they think is great and glorious in the multisided expression of the inner spirit of India; there is much in this picture which can breed cynicism and pessimism in the minds of those in the prismatic light of narrower horizons of dreamlands; there is much in this picture that is inspiring, there is much in this picture that seems to open up paths towards greater prosperity, and greater advancement that they think will be inevitable if you just march ahead in the times that are opening up today; there is much that is bewildering and confusing, and there is much that seems to invite imminent loss and defeat of Indian spirit and even rude shocks that can come, if the competing imperialistic forces of today succeeds in subjecting India ideologically, economically and even politically. All these moods, ─ optimistic, cynical, pessimistic, even defeatist impart their special effects on the contemporary psychology of Indian climate.

Are we summarizing in our current decade the great confusion and even darkness that fell upon India in the 18th century, soon after the death of Aurangzeb? The need of the hour at that time was: no division, but union. But division prevailed, and India came to be subjugated perilously. Today, too, the need of the hour is: no division, but union, and this need, even though pressing upon leadership, is falling upon deaf ears. Are we on the way to a period of fresh subjugation? What is the record of India in matters of foreign relationships since we attained independence? The countries surrounding India are either hostile or on different or on the verge of growing unfriendliness. In Asia, as a whole the position of India is precarious. Powers in Europe are, by large, favorable to India, but they have no fundamental stake in what is happening or what can happen to India; roads to greater friendship with America are being built but there are formidable thorns in the road. The greatest weakness, however, that India has not been able during the last sixty years to nurture the renaissance and resurgence which had begun to take birth during the years that prepared the freedom struggle and during the first few decades of that great struggle.

The true hope can be built only if India recovers its spirit, only if renaissance and resurgence begins to assert itself and comes to be nourished by many forces which are capable but yet drowned or downcast by the prevailing confused and bewildered conditions that dominate our psychological climate. “Resurgent India” need not remain a rhetoric slogan, but a new spirit can be poured into it, and we can build strong foundations for voluntary optimism, and India of today can rapidly be put on the road to realize, sooner than later, of a truly vibrant resurgent India.

Notes

1. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - I: The Human Aspiration

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2. Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle: Nature's Law in Our Progress - Unity in Diversity, Law and Liberty

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3. Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle: The Conditions of a Free World-Union

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4. Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle: Summary and Conclusion

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