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I. Introduction
Ten years before, in November 1989, when the Berlin Wall had come down, leading to the unification of Germany, the world had a mixed reaction – of a
great celebration and of a sulking condemnation. In the light of Sri Aurobindo, it was a moment of jubilation, for, it was the beginning of a world unity, the fulfilment of His fourth dream.
On a day, when
another nation, India, had been divided into two – India & Pakistan – Sri Aurobindo, while rejecting the partition as a permanent feature, had written about His five dreams, which are more in the nature of
prophecies:
1. Independence of India
2. Rise of Asia in material wealth
3. Overflowing of India’s spirituality into Asia and the world
4. Unification of mankind
5. The coming of a new species of supramental beings beyond Man
It was therefore His fourth dream, that of the unification of mankind, the world unity, that was being realised in the breaking down of the
Berlin Wall, which was a psychological symbol of the world’s division into confronting East and West.
II. Socio-political Evolution
back to topic “Dr. Ananda Reddy in Berlin”
Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) – a political revolutionary turned into a spiritual revolutionary - realised the Vedantic experience of the universe as a
becoming of a Supreme Consciousness, the Divine Consciousness. This Consciousness reveals itself through many evolutionary lines. In the socio-political line of evolution, we see the growth of man from an individual
to family and clan, to village, to city state, to nation, to world union. At each level of the progress of man’s inner consciousness, a new body was taken up. When man was at the level of physical consciousness, the
outer form was that of the family, the clan; when man developed the egoistic hunger for possession, enjoyment, increased appetite for basic instincts, the outer body of his consciousness was the city and the city
state. But when man’s consciousness turned into that of an egoistic mental man with ambition and pride, the outer body was that of the nation. The elite of humanity, under the influence of higher principles of
ethics and religion, paved the way for an international spirit, which, as it grows more and more spiritual, is trying to find a new body – that of a world unity.
III. Nation – soul
Just as a human individual has a soul, an inner central divine element, so too each group – be it a village, a city state or a nation – has its own
soul, a conscious being directly connected to the Supreme Divine consciousness. A nation is not formed by its geographical boundaries alone, nor is it the sum total of the people living within its national
boundaries. It is a conscious soul, a collective personality of which ‘the individuals are as its cells’. And each soul – be it that of the individual or the nation – knows its ‘purpose, its destiny, the role it has
to play in the divine scheme as the divine instrument’. (NKG 3/98) ‘Even like the soul of a man, the nation’s soul is behind all the movements that form the external life, supporting, building, guiding its
political, economic, social or cultural make-up’. (Ibid.)
In this light, Germany’s nation soul, is one of those great souls which is akin to the nation-soul of India, in its deep quest of for inner knowledge and
wisdom. Unlike many nation-souls, it has always tried to live on the border lines of spirituality expressing itself through great works of wisdom and through deep symphonies of music. There is no nation known as
much as Germany for its pursuit of perfection in matter – perfection is one of the primary attributes of the Divine’s Expressive Consciousness. Its uniqueness has to be maintained for the future of the world.
IV. Blunder / Resurrection of Nation
Often times, there are critical periods in the growth of a nation when its very existence is in peril, in danger, because of some blunders and it takes
a wrong curve. Germany seemed to have denied its soul in its recent past and landed up in a terrible tragedy, the after effects of which are still very alive in the subconscious of the nation.
That was a time -
the times of pre-war and war - when, it seems, the nation-soul of Germany had withdrawn, leaving the body to suffer and to disintegrate into parts. And as result it was divided and occupied by different countries.
But soon enough, within a short span, the nation-soul of Germany came back as it were and there was a national resurrection, a new birth – and of this reincarnation of the German nation-soul the unification was the
first sign.
India too suffers its blunder of rejecting the Cripps’ Proposal – it was split into two nations. The soul of India will not accept this partition as good and permanent. India’s soul is also moving
towards the unification of its body, though its new body may take a new political form. German reunification is an inspiration and a hope for India’s reunification.
A new body needs a new ideal and a new vision
of the future in which it shall contribute. The German nation-soul has to find a new spiritual vision, of which it is innately capable, which will not only cleanse the past, but impel it towards a greater future.
And such a vision of the Unification of Mankind, the World Unity in which each nation soul has to contribute its note in the world-orchestra, is to be found in Sri Aurobindo and His integral philosophy applicable
both on the individual and the collective levels.
V. Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo is not one more philosopher that India has produced in modern times; He is neither one more religious guru that India throws up every
other decade. His is a consciousness that goes beyond the barriers of religion, caste, creed, nationality and the philosophies of materialism, absolutism, socialism or secularism. His experience of a supreme dynamic
Divine Consciousness is too high to be trapped in these temporal and manmade divisions; his understanding of life is too deep and vast to be bound by the divisions of race and religion.
Realising the Divine
Absolute in its Transcendental, Universal and Individual aspects as the Impersonal and the Personal, as the universal Godhead, and as the individual soul in man, Sri Aurobindo’s posits that the world is only an
extension, a becoming of the Divine Absolute and not a Maya or illusion.
This becoming goes through the process of Involution and Evolution. Involution is the Descent of the Divine into the inconscient. Evolution
is the ascent of the Divine Consciousness, hid in the Inconscient, to the Divine origin through different stages and steps of the evolution: Matter – Life – Mind. This evolutionary nisus will not stop with man who
is a very imperfect. Man is really God in the making, says Sri Aurobindo. So, nature is utilising man only as a living laboratory ‘in whom and with whose consciousness co-operation’ she will work out a higher and
divine consciousness, and whom, for the lack of a better word, Sri Aurobindo calls the ‘Superman’.
He is not the Superman of Nietzsche – who is only a combination of Christ and Caesar, a combination of the
higher potentials in Man. Sri Aurobindo’s Superman is as different in consciousness as Man is to the animal. This is not a difference in gradation, which seems to be the case of Nietzsche’s Superman, there is a
difference in species – as high a leap as there was from Life to Mind. Nietzsche’s superman is only an extension of human consciousness, whereas Sri Aurobindo’s superman is a new step in the eternal evolution of the
Divine Consciousness.
In fact, Sri Aurobindo is the harbinger of this new Supramental Consciousness. His aim and effort has been to liberate mankind as a whole from its ignorance and suffering, war and struggle –
both on the physical and the psychological levels. So, realising that no religious teachings or expressions of the past and the present have the vision and the power to transform man and mankind, he took recourse to
a new level of Divine Dynamic Consciousness – the supramental Consciousness and Force –to effectuate and realise His dreams and prophecy.
VI. Effects of the New Consciousness
Since 1956, the year of the Descent of this Dynamic Force, things in the human consciousness have changed rapidly. Technology knows no bounds now;
frontiers of micro-biology are on the verge of cloning a human body and space-journey has become a part of tourist’s itinerary. Along with the expansion of these outer horizons, the young, in age and spirit, are
trying out new inner adventures in the quest of a new consciousness that is beyond Man. They seem to have heard the Call of the New Consciousness, but they are not yet sure of the source. A few have found the origin
of this call in Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual vision of mankind and in His Integral Philosophy. And they drifted to Auroville, the City of the Future, which is being built on spiritual foundations and not on the basis
of any creed or religion or nationalism. Indeed, Sri Aurobindo was avowedly against being cast into a new religion! With the increase of such pioneers of the spiritual adventures and aggregates of such individual
persons, there will be a change in the psychology of nations – each nation shall move towards the ‘supra-nation’, or a Federation of Nations, the World Unity. For, the supramental consciousness needs as its outer
form the body of a World Federation just as the mental consciousness crystallised itself in the nation-soul.
VII. New Advent
The advent of this world unity and the birth of the new man is in the very nature of things inevitable. Evolutionary forces did not take the permission
of the chimpanzee to bring forth Man. So, now the evolutionary forces will not halt at the transitory stage of Man. A new force has come and is silently pushing the world towards greater harmony and unity, although
its results will be palpable more only in the next decades.
‘Thus shall the earth open to divinity…
Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
The spirit shall take up the human play,
This earthly life become the life divine.’
(Savitri – Sri Aurobindo)
And each one of us can participate in the coming of this New World – being wherever we are – in Germany or in India. Only, let us unload
ourselves of our past – so that we may walk fearlessly, freely and full of faith towards our common divine destiny.
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