I have published six books, sponsored by
Auroville, compiling from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and am
presently working on the seventh one. The aim of the ongoing research is to
present the vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on the ideal society, as
well as their path of integral transformation of the individual as the outcome
of Integral Yoga, which alone can make that vision real. Some contents of the
article below are reproduced from the introductions I wrote to Immortal
Crossroads
Sri Aurobindo saw history unfolding in cycles, where
the symbolic or intuitive age is followed by the typal age of ethical and
philosophic ideals. In
Whenever spiritual aspiration and lofty ideals that
spring from the source of life dry up, civilization becomes sick, affecting
both the individual and the collective. It is at this historical juncture that
the voice of reason takes over and the age of individualism and reason begins.
At its inception this movement is lead by avant-garde individuals, heralding
the advent of a new paradigm. Tearing down obsolete injunctions and
commandments, the role of the avant-garde—its sacred duty, swadharma!—is to expose both the senescent religious beliefs that
have turned hollow and lifeless, as well as the decayed society that can no
longer contain the evolutionary demands of the humanity. Yet the intellect,
whose real function is to engage in critical analysis and organizational
methodology, has neither the capacity of vision nor the effective power to
induce the required historical overturn, even in the brightest human minds. A
more subjective and intuitive instrumentation that opens to higher ranges of
mind and being is needed.
The transition from the present materialistic, commercial age to the subjective spiritual age that embraces spirit as completely as it embraces matter is the crossroads that humanity has reached. What Sri Aurobindo refers to as the ‘philistine’ or the ‘sensational man’ has reached titanic dimensions that allow, and even promote, excesses that not so long ago were unimaginable, and are accompanied with unmistakable signs of vital decomposition and chaos: the present era is coming to an end. Are we fostering one more pralaya? Or will a new world order and society follow, where science and technology will give way to knowledge, mass exploitation will be replaced by universal concern for the well being of each and all, yet still within the boundaries of secular pursuits and goals? Or will it be a divinely inspired order of life, where nothing less than realization of the Supreme Being will satiate one’s unquenchable thirst? The choice is ours. How we answer this question will determine the nature of future humanity.
Along with the age long belief in a coming regeneration
or palingenesis, there are also scattered memories of an ancestral golden age
or satyayuga, prior to the tyranny of
the mental being. According to most traditions the primeval golden age took the
form of communal agricultural societies that were predominantly matriarchal.
With the advent of a male order of society, still largely prevalent today, the
struggle for power and supremacy, along with war and conquest, began. As the
worship of female deities shifted to male gods, a new set of archetypal
patterns began to govern life. At the same time the ancient goddess-oriented
patterns fell into the unconscious, conditioning from there the human psyche in
an unconscious way, which deeply affects individuals and societies. But as the
values of the millennia old patriarchally-oriented societies crumble,
individuals, divided between their feminine and masculine selves, begin to seek
conscious psychological reconciliation between these two archetypal principles.
This process commences with individual psychological discipline and, from
there, the newly emerging contents spread to society.
As the changing God-image manifests in individuals and
society, this necessarily translates into the way we see and relate to our
fellow human beings; eventually using religion and the spiritual quest as an
incubator that implicates society as well. In
Originally of pagan Celtic origin but subsequently
Christianized and spreading to various countries of medieval
With the advent of the enlightenment or age of reason,
at whose apex was the ultimate triumph of physical science, the Western dream
of a just, humane society shifted from a pious inclination to intellectual
idealism. But reason was not always pure and later on became mixed with strains
of romanticism, and afterwards positivism and scientism. This influenced the
way the ideal society was envisaged, changing according to the zeitgeist [The Spirit of the Age and its Society]—whether
the ideal was democracy, socialism, communism, or anarchism. The dream-like
vision of the so called utopian socialists was followed by that of Marx and his
followers and, simultaneously, the anarchists’; the new society was eventually
brought about with the aid of socio-political machinery, or revolution.
We entered the modern, and now post-modern eras and a
new paradigm, by now fast exhausting itself, for it harbors the seeds of its
own dissolution. None of the above political structures, all based on reason,
can answer the age-long quest for an ideal society, which can only be brought
about from within, by individuals in search of inward perfection while striving
for wholeness, ideally, in a societal apparatus conducive to the inner quest.
And this is where Sri Aurobindo departs from the vision
of the German historian K Lamprecht (1856-1915), from whom he had borrowed the
postulate of the historical cycles of society, but also from Marx, whose
ultimate vision is anarchy: no State, no police, no social classes, no family
etc. True, Marx foresaw that this may happen without the need for any outward
revolution, believing that capitalism will collapse destroyed by its own
intrinsic contradictions. We seem indeed to be getting close to that fatal
point. But what Marx failed to point out was that only a profound change from
within can free humanity from greed, ambition, ruthless struggle for power and
inhuman exploitation. Unless this radical change takes place all attempts to
change society, by whatever means and political system, are doomed to fail.
This is not surprising. Sri Aurobindo has observed that
democracy, socialism, communism and anarchy, in their pure form, belong to the
realm of Ideas. Although by turning to reason as social creator there have been
attempts to translate these ideas into political realities, all of them were
only a pale reflection of the real thing, and ultimately failed or are on the
course of failure. We are still a largely barbarian and infrarational humanity,
as Sri Aurobindo calls it, without access to those higher regions of pure
ideas; in whatever way we try to adapt them to the reality of the human
condition, the outcome is short lived and even the loftiest ideals are
ultimately perverted. The world’s past and its history-to-date is the mirror of
the present state of affairs.
A prototype
of the ideal society: Ancient
The East followed another way, prior to the separation
between religion and spirituality, traceable back thousands of years to Vedic
and Upanishadic times in India—and to Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism
elsewhere in the Orient. In extolling the virtues of ancient
I wrote in the introduction to The Gnostic Cycle—Towards the Supermind, my second book on the
ideal society compiling from Sri Aurobindo:
Believed to have been composed and orally transmitted
6,000 years ago, the Rig-Veda is considered by some the oldest sruti or revealed scripture of the world.
In the hymn of the puruşasukta we
find the earliest hint of the ideal society, whose fourfold order was born out
of the head, arms, thighs and feet of the Universal Spirit, virāt puruşa. The principles symbolised
by its limbs corresponded to human prototypes. In order: the brāhmaņa, the learned and religious
being; the kşatriya, the warrior and
ruler; the vaiśya or trader; the śudra or labourer. The sense of honour
and self-giving by which all performed their duties towards society was common
to all varņas or social classes, each
endowed with specific ethic qualities. The work individuals executed to serve
communal life at the best of their capacities was determined by one’s innate
way of being, swabhāva; and this in
turn determined one’s economic function or
The Bhagavad-Gita stressed one more factor: the
intrinsic nature of the individual, determined by one’s prevalent guņa. The three guņas, corresponding to principles, are: sattva, knowledge, spirituality; rajas, energy, strength; tamas,
conservatism. These universal forces, whose influence may vary according to
one’s stages of life and experience, are the drive behind human personality and
behaviour, and apply to the collective being as well. Yet, the teachings of the
Lord go further. As perfection demands the synthesis of the three guņas’ highest aspects, so it demands
the synthesis as well of that of the four varņas.
Therefore, every individual should host within him/herself the highest values
proper to the priest and the king, to the savant and the warrior. At the same
time, those proper to the producer and to the labourer, to the trader and to the
servant.
Of a paramount importance was also the individual’s
spiritual predisposition, adhikāra,
which determined the right to choose one’s specific Path; this accounted for
that freedom of spiritual pursuit that made Bharat Mata unique. An individual perfection
that demands the perfection of the whole, and vice versa, was the ideal
fostered by ancient India, whose crown was abiding oneness with the Self: the
journey back to one’s original state, the sahaja or natural state of Selfhood.
This was the sole hierarchy, in ancient
The virāt puruşa
or Cosmic Being, by its sacrifice giving birth to the human being and society,
is but an allegory of that we truly are: divine. That spiritualised society
worshipped the Supreme Being as indissolubly one with its creative Power, the
Mahashakti, whilst the seed of the fourfold order of society can be traced back
as well to the four aspects of the Divine Mother in the play of earthly
manifestation. Life ought to be an unfolding of those four cosmic principles.
Maheswari, Knowledge and Wisdom. Mahakali, Power and Strength. Mahalakshmi,
Harmony and Rhythm. Mahasaraswati, Work and Perfection. As these aspects
correspond to the intrinsic perfection of the four varņas, so they stand for that perfection which each individual, as
a whole, should strive for. Within us these manifest as quest for knowledge, as
battle within oneself and with the forces that oppose light, as application of
skill and, finally, as self-giving. The preponderance of one or more of these
powers shapes our natural predisposition. However, as for the guņas and the varņas, perfection demands the integration of the four of them to
our fragmented personalities, to be harmoniously re-unified under the guidance
of the individual soul-force. Known in Integral Yoga as the psychic being, it
corresponds to the caitya puruşa of
Indian tradition.
I also wrote, “Yoga soars above the highest ideals that
have been the beacon of humanity in its long journey: where space and time
dissolve, and all that is, or not yet, is Oneness. The state Sri Aurobindo
calls ‘divine’, ‘waking samadhi’, akin to the samadhişţa of the “Bhagavad-Gita”, is the crown of all spiritual
paths. This is the real journey, back to the one ineffable Existence, where
division ceases, fragmentation, and each and all are the one Reality.”
The legacy of
Bharat Mata: perfection in life and society
Individually, the summit of the spiritual quest is the
merging into the one Reality: what we truly are. But does integral perfection
reject life, ultimately implying the obliteration of society? The fourfold
order of society is an ancient one, reproduced over and again all over the
planet. But in ancient
One’s swadharma
streamed out of the varņa to which
one belonged by inner predisposition or swabhāva;
not because of heredity, as in the degenerated caste system (which in
contemporary India has been declared illegal but still holds tight)—but because
of truth of being. Chaturvarņya was
not established for the purposes of political, social, or economic domination
of one class over others, as keeps happening all over the world, or to enthrone
a religious or intellectual hierarchy of power over others—but to the seeking
of perfection via one’s varņa, which
enhances the individual’s potential for serving society. Referring to Manu the
legislator, Sri Aurobindo pointed out that even the king could be killed “like
a rabid dog”, if he betrayed the people and the dharma. Ultimately,
independently from whatever
Moksha or Self realization was the one pursuit, of
which dharma was the ethical vehicle
presiding over the least detail so that nothing escaped. Even ageing and one’s
inner growth into maturity and wisdom, under the all encompassing embrace of
the individual and collective dharma,
served that goal, turning mundane occurrences and profane elements into a quest
for the sacred. The āshrama system
beautifully served that purpose by focusing upon the four stages of development
of human life. In succession: the student or brahmacarya; the householder or gŗhastha;
the forest-dweller or vānaprastha;
and finally the renunciate or sannyāsa.
The perfection to be achieved through one’s
Perfected individuals harbor all soul-types, to be
reunified according to one’s nature and lead by God within. This is the legacy
of immortal