Need of a multidisciplinary approach to solve riddle of evolutionary crisis and India's mission in it.

 

 

Need of a multidisciplinary approach to solve riddle of evolutionary crisis and India's mission in it.

Dr. Narendra Joshi

Globalization is a decisive force of our times. Entire world is connecting, communicating, competing with each other as never before. However, while stupendous progress in Science, Technology, Economics and Management has brought humanity together, the individuals are painfully isolated, as societies are crumbling and families are divided. This is no way a cooperative, fulfilling, complimenting unification, rather it is just the opposite of it. The forced mechanical means of the operations of Globalization, pursued to massive scale and minutest perfection have made entire mankind not more powerful but immensely vulnerable. This has brought us to a situation of evolutionary crisis as human minds and souls are hardly ready for such a radical change and its catastrophic repercussions. Wisdom cannot become mechanical or translate into any artificial agency. To avoid peril of this force, great change is needed in heart and mind of the race. To try to change institutions and isms without changing the consciousness behind it is a vain chimera.

Thus we are brought to the core issue of changing consciousness. However, the modern world is still not clear what consciousness is and is gripped in a deep rooted materialistic and reductionist paradigm even while studying and experimenting with consciousness. Moreover, so far there is no force apparently visible which can control, guide and elevate these material forces so that globalization in external world can be an aid for the age old ideal of the Human Unity : The ideal of human unity which will have a perfect man in a perfect society leading to spiritual growth and emancipation of both.

This was not just foreseen but even proclaimed by the genius of India, from the Vedas to Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo. To recover the ancient wisdom and its modern restatement in all its richness, splendour and depth is the first thing needed. To understand, redefine  and apply this Wisdom with intellectual Strength, and utmost Perfection to successfully strategize and plan how to face and conquer the evolutionary crisis is its second stage. To bring beauty and Harmony in all the apparent paradoxes or opposites like freedom and order, individual and aggregate, inner and outer, reason and intuition, Intellect and emotions, Spiritual growth and Material well being, Pursuit of Ethics and Pursuit of Beauty… and so on is the essential part of this stage. To deal in real world with faith in the self, faith in  this work, and faith in the Power that is behind this work with sincerity, tenacity, originality and creativity, with the wisdom from the past human cycles, giving new forms to the ancient spirit, maintaining the same rhythm, is its third and the most challenging stage. This has to be done in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and applications in diverse fields like religion, anthropology, history, archeology, architecture, iconography, literature, painting, folk arts, music, dance and drama, polity, economics, sociology, medicine, science and technology, ..everything human mind can think of and heart can feel for has to be a way of exploring this evolutionary progress of consciousness.

Thus the need of a project like India on the March.

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Keywords: Evolution of Consciousness, Globalization and multidisciplinary crisis today, India -Her mission and destiny in the march of nations, The Human Cycle and The Ideal of Human Unity, evolutionary patterns.

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Concept of the project:

 

India of all the nations has clung to her ancient ideal of ennobling the entire race by spiritual wisdom ‘krunvanto vishwam aryam.’ India is far more than a nation state, she is the Mother Shakti and is “neither dead nor has she spoken her last creative word.” No doubt, She has undergone remarkable changes over Time but there is a “characteristic soul” which remained constant. This soul has evolved in a spiral of evolution of consciousness and expressed the One in innumerable ways over the centuries. In the pursuit of the One and its expression through Beauty and Delight she has conferred immortality to her Sanatana dharma which guided the race.

   History books are often based on the major political events of a particular province or state or nation. A historical account of the development of a culture too is often measured with the parameters of the political stability and general state of contentment of the people of a particular region. It means that the political condition of a geographical unit decides its history and culture. For example, in India it is said that the political stability and prosperity under the reign of Maurya kings made it the Golden Age of the Nation. Art, culture, trade all prospered under such kings who could hold the nation or province together for a long time. Similar growth is seen in the Elizabethan age when poets like Shakespeare and Marlowe took birth and gave a whole new push to the literary creation of the English people. Many such examples can be quoted to support this point.

            Contrary to the above discussion it has also been argued that histories are often subjective. In the old times kings patronized historians to write their life or political history. Therefore, many a time we see even tyrant kings being glorified. Perhaps another historian from the enemy side notes the atrocities of such a king and the posterity knows them as cruel rulers. However, the point we are driving at is what is the lesson learnt from such subjective histories? Even if we consider them as factual data to draw our conclusions, how does contribute to our oneness?

            In schools history is taught as a subject in which the student is required to remember the dates and events alone. What is the lesson that such a history teaches us? If we place the entire history of a nation before us, is there any pattern that we observe? Is there any lesson that we can learn and benefit from for our future? Seen from a different perspective surely there is a pattern that emerges before our eyes and there is a lesson which will grow obvious when we study this pattern. It is also true that such a pattern will help us anticipate the future trend of the world and contribute to it more positively and actively in it. From such a study we may not only get the information of the past events but also get a completely new perspective to see the world events in a new light. What then is this perspective? What is that pattern? How do we study such a pattern?

           Sri Aurobindo, the great yogi of the modern times has given to humanity a new vision to see the past, work in the present and prepare for the future. Unlike many futurists he does not see the dark future of humanity. With his yogic vision he sees an evolutionary pattern in the rise and fall of each culture, nation and individual and the beautiful future which is yet hidden behind the dark clouds of present maladies.

           So this evolutionary march of consciousness of humanity in various disciplines of knowledge. Each one would have their own parameters to study the evolutionary phenomenon and see the past and present in the light of this pattern.

Hence it is not just for understanding of the past, but more for planning and preparing for the present and the future. WE should not be fatally hypnotised by our past glory or get depressed by our eventual fall, rather we need to see the eternal Light that is still shining, albeit at times needing a blowing away of ash of inertia and blind imitation, and pointing from that hoary past and is capable of guiding our future. Finding the essential soul, the spirit of the things and the events and the ideas, retaining the rhythms and the evolution of better forms to express more powerfully the same eternal spirit has to be our aim.  Following are some of the undercurrents of the ideas which are to be sought while studying the history of several areas of human activity and seeking with multidisiciplinary and transdisciplinary approach:

1. To know which of the ideas or ideas of the past are to be taken forward for future and which to be discarded for the ideal of human unity and evolution of the entire mankind.

2. To trace the Nature’s method of transcending and transforming the lower by higher in its march, To retain even the earlier species, ideas, ideals,  forms and even institutions when evolving above them in the spiral curve of evolution of consciousness.

3. Thus also to see how Nature leaves an ideal partly used in earlier cycle and only to return it in some subsequent cycle: To pick it up again, develop it and even massify it in new yuganukul form.

4. To see a pattern or paradigm in this entire plethora of details which rules and persists. We have seen a dominance all over world of reductionist, Cartesian, Descartian pradigm for last few centuries after the age of Reason started and marked its presence and spread with explosive developments in Science, Technology, Communication and Management. However recently This paradigm has been found a glaring failure all over and yet there is no alternate in sight. The age old and proven paradigm of India has assumed enormous importance now and can be a solution provided we are able to redefine it as per needs of Time.   

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The Evolution of Consciousness Approach

 

The pattern mentioned above are the trends or milestones of evolution of consciousness given by Sri Aurobindo in his various writings. To understand this a little deeply we have to remember certain assumptions based on Sri Aurobindo’s works:

Evolution need not be linear. Usually it is spiral.

This evolution is not the outer development of forms and structures.

Evolution in its essence is not the development of a more and more organized body or a more and more efficient life—these are only its machinery and outward circumstance. Evolution is the strife of a Consciousness somnambulised in Matter to wake and be free and find and possess itself and all its possibilities to the very utmost and widest, to the very last and highest. (Sri Aurobindo, CWSA 12: 166)

Essentially the study of the progressive unfoldment of consciousness in Matter, Life and Mind is what this project aims to take up in detail. Consciousness grows out of Matter and expresses itself in different forms and ways through Life and Mind. It is left to us to observe those forms and study the patterns of evolution in each discipline. These shows need of studying the harmony of opposites in each case as given below and also need of establishing interrelations and harmony among the different two prong approaches as well.

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The Rhythm of Evolution

As Sri Aurobindo puts it:

“The emergence of an ideal in human thought is always the sign of an intention in Nature, but not always of an intention to accomplish; sometimes it indicates only an attempt which is predestined to temporary failure. For Nature is slow and patient in her methods. She takes up ideas and half carries them out, then drops them by the wayside to resume them in some future era with a better combination. She tempts humanity, her thinking instrument, and tests how far it is ready for the harmony she has imagined; she allows and incites man to attempt and fail, so that he may learn and succeed better another time. Still the ideal, having once made its way to the front of thought, must certainly be attempted, and this ideal of human unity is likely to figure largely among the determining forces of the future; for the intellectual and material circumstances of the age have prepared and almost impose it, especially the scientific discoveries which have made our earth so small that its vastest kingdoms seem now no more than the provinces of a single country.” (The Ideal of Human Unity : The Turn towards Unity: its Necessity and Dangers.)

The emphasis on Aesthetics and pursuit of beauty. The ideal emerged and was expressed in stones, paintings, in clay and even in literature. Later it even led to extremes of hedonism and then was discarded by an opposite of ascetic and ethical emphasis. Today we can see its emergence and dominance once again. Even if we see that lot of corrections are needed in its tilt to commercialization, utilitarianism and at times even vulgarization, the ideal has taken hold of the race and with masses getting more and more conscious of pursuit of beauty, and technology aiding its expression, variation and mass production, we can see Nature’s intention to take it forward. Similarly we can see the ideal of seeking Knowledge in ancient age. Its fall eventually after prolific progress in all fields and then its neglect and downfall in inertia and conventionalism. Today the ideal has been again picked up in the spiral of evolution and with democratization of education, world wide web of information technology and Knowledge management and it has been the weapon for the humanity to march ahead. Being a double aged weapon, we need to be again taking clues from the eternal wisdom to have discrimination between real and unreal knowledge, Knowledge and Ignorance.    

            We have to remember another dimension of this evolution that the ideas, concepts developments in the society have been complementary. For example, the six systems of Indian Philosophy or the schools of Indian Aesthetics all developed in order to complete or complete the previous one. However, in them there could be an avant garde visionary who gave a vision, developed it and again left it for posterity to adapt it.

            It may also be noted that although many previous developments are integrated in the advanced society, not all of them find a harmonious existence in future. It is because either they are not suitable for the Time-Spirit or have become out-dated to go forward. But the one’s that looked not suitable will be assimilated in the future because a greater consciousness is yet to come who would have the assimilative capacity. Therefore, this study would aim at seeing the complementary developments of various aspects and stages of human society and highlight what is it that could be fit to go to the future.

 

“Sri Aurobindo sees evolution primarily as an ongoing evolution of consciousness. He holds that the human mind is much too imperfect a type of consciousness to be the final resting point of nature, and that just as life developed out of matter, and mind out of life, a still higher form of consciousness is bound to develop out of the present stage of mind.” (Sri Aurobindo’s evolutionary ontology of consciousness. Matthijs Cornelissen)

 

The evolutionary march is cyclic and spiral and not linear and logical. It is zig zag and swinging to and fro. It includes ascent and integration both. The ascent also has transformation of the lower. The evolution of human species and the laws of that evolution follow development of faculties of body, life and mind, of physical base and infusion of powers from above.

As soon as lower elements achieve a certain point of maturity, they tend to higher grades of achievements in a gradual manner so as to interweave lower and higher in a complex series of harmony of conflicting claims. Evolution is  a continuous process and humanity is a crucial link in it. Beyond mind are higher, deeper, wider ranges of consciousness which must be attained. As animal is a living laboratory to evolve to man the mental being, similarly, man is living and thinking laboratory for Nature to raise higher than man. 

Sri Aurobindo states:

“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.” ( The Life Divine )

Now onwards the evolution is not confined to unconscious progression of Nature. It is conscious effort, aspiration from human being and grace from the Divine which accelerate this process. There is sense of freedom that comes with deviation of Self consciousness, and with process of rational and normative Consciousness. That bring the element of chance or alternate possibilities, some of which can be perilous as well . hence Sri Aurobindo terms this as a great adventure of consciousness. Free will is must in this process and not any sort of determinism. There has been three preoccupations of individual and collective :

1. Complete development of the individual being

2. Complete development of the collective being

3. Perfectability of the society.

4. Or best possibilities of the individual and collective relations : individual with individual’ individual with collectivity, collectivity with other collectivities.

There fore there can be different extremes in this pursuit:

 

One is individual is all important and collectivity is only filed or structure for individual’s growth.

Other is collective whether society, race, nation is all important and individual is just a instrument, a consumable, a cog for the collective growth. The soul of a collective is in its culture power of life, ideal and institutes and ways of expression.. and individual has to do cast in that mould for its own survival. 

The second one was more common in almost all ancient cultures. However in India there was a special balance in two in the concept of Siddha , Bhagwata or Mukta, which means an individual by the virtue of his will Tapas can raise to the heights of God, can be God. Though the first three stages of life namely student and celibate, householder, recluse were within and with the aid of society and its meticulous structure, the forth was stage of Sanayasi, the liberated who was super social. Thus was given a multilayered multistaged structure of four stages of life, four ashrams, four varnas, and three gunas, with four purusharthas…dharma, Artha, Kaam , Moksh to help every one to grow , to evolve as per his or her swabhava, swadharma, samskara and adhikara…

 

As per Sri Aurobindo, a stage of acute conflict of standards pushes /presses us to search for unifying and harmonizing knowledge. An individual is key to evolutionary movement. It is only individual which becomes conscious of reality and his relation to collectivity. India’s allegiance is to the truth, the Self, the Spirit, the Divine,..which is in him and in all. He is not to subordinate to mass , rather he has to help and be helped by other individuals and community in this process.

An individual’s allegiance to use Sri Aurobindo’s own words,

“..must be to the Truth, the Self, the Spirit, the Divine which is in him and in all; not to subordinate or lose himself in the mass, but to find and express that truth of being in himself and help the community and humanity in its seeking for its own truth and fullness of being must be his real object of existence.”

 

“Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy of the Ideal of Human Unity” – Kireet Joshi

The above essay has originally appeared in a book “Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays”, 2003, pp. 111-135, which contains many other essays worth reading.

 

India moves upto spiritual freedom, which is also spiritual oneness. And therefore even a Siddha or Mukta or a incaranation also moves and turns back after enlightenment to serve the god in mankind, to raise all who are still in delusion : Shivobhave Jeevseva.

 

According to Sri Aurobindo : At present Humanity is undergoing an evolutionary crisis….

“At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny; for a stage has been reached in which the human mind has achieved in certain directions an enormous development while in others it stands arrested and bewildered and can no longer find its way. A structure of the external life has been raised up by man’s ever-active mind and life-will, a structure of an unmanageable hugeness and complexity, for the service of his mental, vital, physical claims and urges, a complex political, social, administrative, economic, cultural machinery, an organised collective means for his intellectual, aesthetic and material satisfaction. Man has created a system of civilisation which has become too big for his limited mental capacity and understanding and his still more limited spiritual and moral capacity to utilise and manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and its appetites. …A greater whole-being, whole-knowledge, whole-power is needed to weld all into a grater unity of whole-life.” Book Two, Chapter Twenty-Eight, "The Life Divine" (Part 5 of 6)

 

Two forces which can help are , Internationalism and the religion of humanity. However the force of internationalism may be contradicting another truth and force that is nationalism and this can block the move to internationalism unless nation soul idea and spiritual universal idea of India takes the lead.

Krunvanto Vishwam Aryan,

Ettdeshe prasutasya sakashat …

To awaken soul in man, to make him live by soul and not by ego is the inner meaning of religion. To this religion of humanity is progressing. Here again Sanatana Dharma, the mother of religion to use term by Swami Vivekananda is going to be the religion of humanity as that which is eternal can only be universal and vice versa.

“As a part of this crisis, and as an aid to the higher choice that can be made by humanity, Sri Aurobindo perceives two important phenomena of the modern world which present a great sign of hope. These two phenomena are those of internationalism and of religion of humanity. But these two phenomena need to be understood in their inner implications. For internationalism seems to oppose the truth and force of nationalism, and this opposition can be fatal to a harmonious transition to a new world of harmony. There is today a sentiment helped and stimulated by the trend of forces that favours the creation of an international world organisation that may ultimately result in a possible form of unification. This sentiment is a cosmopolitan and international sentiment. At one stage, it came to be presented concretely in the conception of the League of Nations. As Sri Aurobindo points out, this conception was not well inspired in its form or destined to have a considerable longevity or a supremely successful career. But the very fact that this idea was presented and even manifested in a concrete form, even though for a short term, was in itself an event of capital importance and meant the ushering in of a new era in world history.” ( Kireet Joshi )

If this is not solution then there is no solution. If this is not the way then there is no other way. The terrestrial evolution must pass beyond man and the form of life must be born that is nearer to the divine.

Sri Aurobindo affirms forcefully:

“… if this is not the solution, then there is no solution; if this is not the way, then there is no way for the human kind. Then the terrestrial evolution must pass beyond man as it has passed beyond the animal and a greater race must come that will be capable of the spiritual change, a form of life must be born that is nearer to the divine. After all there is no logical necessity for the conclusion that the change cannot begin at all because its perfection is not immediately possible. A decisive turn of mankind to the spiritual ideal, the beginning of a constant ascent and guidance towards the heights may not be altogether impossible, even if the summits are attainable at first only by the pioneer few and far-off to the tread of the race. And that beginning may mean the descent of an influence that will alter at once the whole life of mankind in its orientation and enlarge for ever as did the development of his reason and more than any development of the reason, its potentialities and all its structure.”

The End of the Curve of Reason

Philosophy of Supermind and Contemporary Crisis, http://www.kireetjoshiarchives.com/sri-aurobindo-and-mother/philosophy-of-supermind-and-contemporary-crisis/sri-aurobindos-philosophy-of-human-development-of-contemporary-crisis/&page=72

 

 

A decisive turn, a constant ascent to the heights even if the ascent is possible only for few now and not for race is the inevitable turn to the future and in that process India’s march to her destiny is going to play a key role.

 

References:

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, CWSA, Volume 21,22, Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Sri Aurobindo, The Human cycle, The Ideal of Human unity, CWSA Volume 25,Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Sri Aurobindo, The Reniassance in India and other essays, CWSA Volume 20,Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human , CWSA 12,Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy of the Ideal of Human Unity” – Kireet Joshi,  originally appeared in a book “Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays”, 2003, pp. 111-135

Philosophy of Supermind and Contemporary Crisis, http://www.kireetjoshiarchives.com/sri-aurobindo-and-mother/philosophy-of-supermind-and-contemporary-crisis/sri-aurobindos-philosophy-of-human-development-of-contemporary-crisis/&page=72

Sri Aurobindo’s evolutionary ontology of consciousness. Matthijs Cornelissen, www.ipi.com

Nolini Kanta Gupta Works, Volume 1: The March of Civilisation (full section), Volume 3: Part Two:, Vol 4, 5

 

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