{"id":1135,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:49","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1135"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:49","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:49","slug":"65-the-unseen-power-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15\/65-the-unseen-power-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-65_The Unseen Power .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\nThe Unseen Power<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n                                
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nA<\/font><\/span> WAR has ended, a world has perished
\nin the realm of thought and begun to disappear in the order of outward Nature.
\nThe war that has ended, was fought in physical trenches, with shel1 and shot,
\nwith machine-gun and tank and aeroplane, with mangling of limbs and crash of
\nphysical edifices and rude uptearing of the bosom of our mother earth; the new
\nwar, or the old continued in another form, that is already beginning, will be
\nfought more with mental trenches and bomb- proof shelters, with reconnaissances
\nand batteries and moving machines of thought and word, propaganda and parties
\nand programmes, with mangling of the desire-souls of men and of nations, crash
\nof many kinds of thrones and high-built institutions and strong uptearing of
\nthe old earth of custom which man has formed as a layer over the restless
\nmolten forces of evolutionary Nature. The old world that is shaken outwardly in
\nits bases and already crumbling in some of its parts, is the economical and
\nmaterialistic civilisation which mankind has been forming for the last few
\ncenturies from once new materials now growing rapidly effete pieced out with
\nbroken remnants of antiquity and the middle ages. The period of military
\nconflict just at an end came to breach that which thought had already been
\nsapping, an era of revolutions has opened which is likely to complete the ruin
\nand prepare the building of a new structure. In this struggle the question arises
\nto the thinking man, what Power or what Powers are expressing their will or
\ntheir strivings in this upheaval? and we, what power or powers shall we serve?
\nto what thing inward or superhuman, since outward thrones and systems are but
\nas leaves driven before the storm-wind of the breath of Time, shall we owe
\nallegiance? what or whom is it that we shall fight to enthrone?<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Men fight
\nfor their personal or communal or national interests or for ideas and
\nprinciples of which they make watchwords and battle-cries. But the largest
\nhuman interests are only means
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-588<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

and instruments which some Force greater than
\nthemselves breaks or uses in its inconscient impulse or else for its conscious
\npurposes; ideas and principles are births of our minds which are born, reign
\nand pass away<\/span> and they are mere
\nwords unless they express some power of our being and of world-being which
\nfinds in them a mental self-expression. Something there is greater than our
\nthoughts and desires, something more constant and insistent which lasts and
\ngrows beyond and yet by their changings. If no such thing were, then all this
\nhuman effort would be a vain perturbation, the life of man only the busy
\ninstinctive routine of the hive and the ant-hill on a little higher scale, but
\nwith more useless suffering in it and less economy and wisdom, and our thought
\na vain glittering of imaginations weaving out involuntarily a web like that of
\nold legend that is spun and respun only to be undone and again undone and of
\nreasonings that build a series of intellectual and practical conventions which
\nwe represent to ourselves as the truth and the right, making the fallacies of
\nour minds a substitute for wisdom:’ and the fallacies of our social living a
\nsubstitute for happiness. For this is certain that nothing we form and no
\noutward system we create can last beyond its appointed or else its possible
\ntime. As this great materialistic civilisation of Europe to which the high
\nglowing dawn of the Renaissance gave its brilliant birth and the dry brazen afternoon
\nof nineteenth- century rationalism its hard maturity, is passing away and the
\nbosom of earth and the soul of man heave a sigh of relief at its going, so
\nwhatever new civilisation we construct after this evening of the cycle, yuga-sandhy<\/i>\u00e4,
\n<\/i>on which we are entering, – for those are surely mistaken who think it is
\nalready the true dawn, –<\/span> will
\nalso live its time and collapse fiercely or decay dully, – unless indeed there
\nis that eternal Spirit in things and he should have found in its key-note the
\nfirst sounds of the strain of his real harmony, in which case it may be the
\nfirst of an ascending series of changes to the creation of a greater humanity.
\nOtherwise, all this vast clash and onset of peoples and world-wide bloodshed
\nwould be only a fortuitous nightmare, and the happiest known age of nation or
\nmankind only the pleasant dream of a moment. Then the old-world gospel which
\nbade us look upon human life as a vanity of vanities, would be the only wisdom.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-589<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But with
\nthat creed the soul of man has never remained contented and still less can we
\nat the present day live in it, because this intuition of a greater Power than
\nour apparent selves in the workings of the world is now growing upon the race
\nand the vast sense of an unaccomplished aim in the urge of life is driving it
\nto an unprecedented effort of human thought and energy. In such a moment even
\nthe hugest calamities cannot exhaust the life or discourage its impetus, but
\nrather impel it to a new \u00e9lan of endeavour; for the flames of thought rise
\nhigher than the flames of the conflagration that destroys and see in it a
\nmeaning and the promise of a new creation. In the destruction that has been
\neffected, in the void that has been left, the mind sees only more room for hope
\nto grow and a wide space that the Spirit who builds in Time has cleared for his
\nnew structure. For who that has eyes at all to see cannot see this, that in
\nwhat has happened, immense Powers have been at work which nourish a vaster
\nworld- purpose than the egoistic mind of individual or nation could mete with
\ntheir yard-measure of narrow personal idea or communal interest and for which
\nthe motives and passions of governments and peoples were only tools or
\nopportunities? When the autocrats and the war-lords of the east and the centre
\nresolved to dare this huge catastrophe in order to seize from it the crown of
\ntheir ambitions, when they drove madly to the precipice of an incalculable
\nworld-conflict, they could have no inkling that within four years or less their
\nthrones would have fallen, themselves be slain or flee into exile and all for
\nwhich they stood be hastening into the night of the past; only that which
\nimpelled them foresaw and intended it. Nor were the peoples who staggered
\nunwillingly over the brink of war, more enlightened of the secret purpose:
\ndefence of what they were and possessed, wrath at a monstrous aggression which
\nwas a menace to their ordered European civilisation, drove their will and
\ninflamed their resolution. Yet to convict that civilisation of error and prepare
\nanother era of humanity was the intention of the Force that has given them
\nvictory, its voice echoed confusedly in their thought and growing clearer in
\nthe minds of those who entered later with a deliberate and conscious will into
\nthe struggle.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Great has
\nbeen the havoc and ruin, immense the suffering,<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-590<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

thick the blood-red cloud of darkness enveloping the
\nworld, heavy the toll of life, bottomless the expenditure of treasure and human
\nresources, and all has not yet been worked out, the whole ‘price has not yet
\nbeen paid; for the after-effects of the war are likely to be much greater than
\nits present effects, and much that by an effort of concentration has resisted
\nthe full shock of the earthquake, will fall in the after-tremblings. Well might
\nthe mind of a man during the calamity, aware of the Power that stood over the
\nworld wrapped in this tempest, repeat the words of Arjuna on the field of
\nKurukshetra, –<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

"When is seen this Thy fierce and astounding form,
\nthe three worlds are all in pain and suffer, 0 Thou mighty Spirit\u2026. Troubled
\nand in anguish is the soul within me as I look upon Thee and I find no peace or
\ngladness.. .. As is the speed of many rushing waters racing towards the ocean,
\nso all these heroes of the world of men are entering into Thy many mouths of
\nflame. As a swarm of<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page \u2013 591<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

moths with ever-increasing speed fall to their
\ndestruction into a fire that someone has kindled, so now the nations with ever
\n– increasing speed are entering into Thy jaws of doom. Thou lickest the regions
\nall around with Thy tongues and Thou art swallowing up all the nations in Thy
\nmouths of burning; all the world is filled with the blaze of Thy energies;
\nfierce and terrible are Thy lustres and they burn us, 0 Vishnu. Declare to me
\nwho art Thou that comest to us in this form of fierceness; salutation to Thee,
\n0 Thou great Godhead, turn Thy heart to grace. I would know who art Thou who
\nwast from the beginning, for I know not the will of Thy workings."<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>If the
\nfirst answer might seem to come in the same words that answered the appeal of
\nArjuna, "I am the Time-Spirit, destroyer of the world, arisen
\nhuge-statured for the destruction of the nations",<\/font><\/p>\n


\n
\n                      
\nkālo’smi loka-ksaya-krt pravrddhah<\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0                      <\/font><\/span>lokān
\nsamāhartum iha pravrttal,<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and the voice the same to those who would shrink back hesitating from participation
\nin the devastating struggle and massacre, "Even without thee all these
\nshall cease to be who stand in the opposing hosts, for already have I slain
\nthem in my foreseeing will; know thyself to be an instrument only of an end
\npredestined", –<\/span> still in
\nthe end it is the Friend of man, the Charioteer of his battle and his journey
\nwho appears in the place of the form of destruction and the outcome of all the
\nruin is the dharmarajya, <\/i>the kingdom of the Dharma. To humanity as to
\nthe warrior of Kurukshetra the concluding message has been uttered,
\n"Therefore arise, destroy the foe, enjoy a rich and happy kingdom."
\nBut the kingdom of what Dharma? It is doubtful enough whether as the nations
\nwere blind to the nature of the destruction that was coming, they may not be at
\nleast purblind to the nature of the construction that is to be created. An
\nincrease of mechanical freedom to be lavished or doled out according to the
\nneeds, interests, hesitations of the old-world forces that still remain erect,
\na union effected by a patchwork of the remnants of the past and the unshaped
\nmaterials of the future, a credit and debit account<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-592<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

with fate writing off so much of the evil and error of
\nthe past as can no longer be kept and writing up as good capital, – with some
\ndiminutions by way of acquitment of conscience, part payment of overdue debts,
\n– all that has not been hopelessly destroyed, an acceptance of the change
\nalready effected by the tempest or made immediately inevitable and a new system
\nof embankments to prevent the further encroachments of the flood, is not likely
\nto put a successful term to the cataclysm. Even if a short-sighted sagacity
\ncould bring this about for a time by a combined effort of successful and
\norganised egoisms making terms with the powerful Idea-forces that are abroad as
\nthe messengers of the Time-Spirit, still it would be only an artificial check
\nleading to a new upheaval in the not distant future. A liquidation of the old
\nbankrupt materialistic economism which will enable it to set up business again
\nunder a new name with a reserve capital and a clean ledger, will be a futile
\nattempt to cheat destiny. Commercialism has no doubt its own Dharma, its ideal
\nof utilitarian justice and law and adjustment, its civilisation presided over
\nby the sign of the Balance, and its old measures being now annulled, it is
\neager enough to start afresh with a new system of calculated values. But a dharmarājya
\n<\/i>of the half-penitent Vaishya is not to be the final consummation of a time
\nlike ours pregnant with new revelations of thought and spirit and new creations
\nin life, nor is a golden or rather a copper-gilt age of the sign of the Balance
\nto be the glorious reward of this anguish and travail of humanity. It is surely
\nthe kingdom of another and higher Dharma that is in preparation.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>What that
\nDharma is we can only know if we know this Power whose being and whose thought
\nare at work behind all that we attempt and suffer, conceive and strive for. A
\nformer humanity conceived of it as a creative Divinity or almighty Power high
\nabove man and his being and his effort or of a pantheon or hierarchy of
\nuniversal Powers who looked upon and swayed the labour and passion and thought
\nof the race. But the system of cosmic deities lacked a base and a principle of
\nunity in their workings and above it the ancients were obliged to conceive of a
\nvague and ineffable Divinity, the unknown God to whom they built a nameless
\naltar, or a Necessity with face of sphinx and<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-593<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

hands of bronze to whom the gods themselves had to give
\nan ignorant obedience, and it left the life of man at once the victim of an
\ninscrutable fate and the puppet of superhuman caprices. That to a great extent
\nhe is, so long as he lives in his vital ego and is the servant of his own
\npersonal ideas and passions. Later religions gave a name and some body of form
\nand quality to the one unknown Godhead and proclaimed an ideal law which they
\ngave out as his word and scripture. But the dogmatism of a partial and unlived
\nknowledge and the external tendencies of the human mind darkened the
\nilluminations of religion with the confusions or error and threw over its face
\nstrange masks of childish and cruel superstitions. Religion too by putting God
\nfar above in distant heavens made man too much of a worm of the earth, little
\nand vile before his Creator and admitted only by a caprice of his favour to a
\ndoubtful salvation in superhuman worlds. Modern thought seeking to make a clear
\nriddance of these past conceptions had to substitute something else in its
\nplace, and what it saw and put there was the material law of Nature and the
\nbiological law of life of which human reason was to be the faithful exponent
\nand human science the productive utiliser and profiteer. But to apply the
\nmechanical blindness of the rule of physical Nature as the sole guide of
\nthinking and seeing man is to go against the diviner law of his being and maim
\nhis higher potentiality. Material and vital Nature is only a first form of our
\nbeing and to overcome and rise beyond its formula is the very sense of a human
\nevolution. Another and greater Power than hers is the master of this effort,
\nand human reason or human science is not that Godhead, but can only be at best
\none and not the greatest of its ministers. It is not human reason and human
\nscience which have been working out their ends in or through the tempest that
\nhas laid low so many of their constructions. A greater Spirit awaits a deeper
\nquestioning to reveal his unseen form and his hidden purpose.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Something
\nof this truth we have begun to see dimly, in the return to more spiritual
\nnotions and in the idea of a kingdom of God to be built in the life of
\nhumanity. On the old sense of a Power in the universe of which the world that
\nwe live in is the field, is supervening the nearer perception of a Godhead in
\nman,<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-594<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

the unseen king of whom the outer man is the veil and
\nof whom, our mind and life can be the servants and living instruments and our
\nperfected souls the clear mirrors. But we have to see more lucidly and in the
\nwhole before we can know this Godhead. There are three powers and forms in
\nwhich the Being who is at\u00a0 <\/span>work in
\nthings presents himself to our vision. There is first the form of him that we
\nbehold in the universe, but that or at least what we see of it in the
\nappearances of things, is not the whole truth of him; it is indeed only a first
\nmaterial shape and vital foundation which he has offered for the starting-point
\nof our growth, an initial sum of preliminary realisations from which we have to
\nproceed and to transcend them. The next form is that of which man alone here
\nhas the secret, for in him it is progressively revealing itself in a partial
\nand always incomplete accomplishing and unfolding. His thoughts, his ideals,
\nhis dreams, his attempts at a high self-exceeding are the clues by which he
\nattempts to discover the Spirit, the moulds in which he tries to seize the form
\nof the Divinity. But they too are only a partial light and not the whole form
\nof the Godhead. Something waits beyond which the human mind approaches in a
\nshapeless aspiration to an ineffable Perfection, an infinite Light, an infinite
\nPower, an infinite Love, a universal Good and Beauty. This is not something
\nthat is not yet in perfect being, a God who is becoming or who has to be
\ncreated by man; it is the Eternal of whom this infinite ideal is a mental
\nreflection. It is beyond the form of the universe and these psychological
\nrealisations of the human being and yet it is here too in man and subsists
\nsurrounding him in all the powers of the world he lives in. It is both the
\nSpirit who is in the universe and the invisible king in man who is the master
\nof his works. It develops in the universe through laws which are not complete
\nhere or not filled in in their sense and action until humanity shall have fully
\nevolved in its nature the potentialities of the mind and spirit. It works in
\nman, but through his individual and corporate ego so long as he dwells within
\nthe knot of his present mentality. Only when his race knows God and lives in
\nthe Divine, will the ideal sense of his strivings begin to unfold itself and
\nthe kingdom be founded, <\/font> riijyam samrddham.<\/font><\/i>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>When we try
\nto build our outer life in obedience to our<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 595<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

ego, our interests, our passions or our vital needs
\nonly or else in a form of our vital needs served and enlarged by our intellect,
\nbut not enlightened with a greater spiritual meaning, we are living within the
\nlaw of the first cosmic formulation. It is as insistent Rudra that the unseen
\nPower meets us there, the Master of the evolution, the Lord of Karma, the King
\nof justice and judgment, who is easily placated with sacrifice and effort, for
\neven to the Asura and Rakshasa, the Titan and the giant he gives the fruit of
\ntheir tapasya, <\/i>but who is swift also to wrath and every time that man
\noffends against the law, even though it be in ignorance, or stands stiff in his
\nego against the urge of the evolution or provokes the rebound of Karma, he
\nstrikes without mercy; through strife and stumblings, through passioning and
\nyearning and fierce stress of will and giant endeavour, construction and
\ndestruction, slow labour of evolution and rushing speed of revolution Rudra
\nworks out the divine purpose. When on the contrary we seek to shape our life by
\nthe Ideal, it is the severe Lord of Truth who meets us with his questioning.
\nThen in so far as we work in the sincerity of the inner truth, we shall live in
\nan increasing harmony of the result of a divine working. But if the measures of
\nour ideal are false or if we cast into the balance the unjust weight of our egoism
\nand hypocrisy and self-deceiving or if we misuse the truth for our narrower
\nends, if we turn it into a lie or a convention or an outward machinery without
\nthe living soul of the truth in it, then we must pay a heavy reckoning. For as
\nbefore we fell into the terrible hand of Rudra, so now we fall into the subtler
\nmore dangerous noose of Varuna. Only if we can see the Truth and live in it,
\nshall our aspiration be satisfied. Then it is the Master of Freedom, the Lord
\nof Love, the Spirit of unity who shall inform the soul of the individual and
\ntake up the world’s endeavour. He is the great Liberator and the strong and
\ngentle founder of Perfection.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>It is the
\nwrath of Rudra that has swept over the earth and the track of his foot-prints
\ncan be seen in these ruins. There has come as a result upon the race the sense
\nof having lived in many falsehoods and the need of building according to an
\nideal. Therefore we have now to meet the question of the Master of Truth. Two
\ngreat words of the divine Truth have forced themselves in-<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 596<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\nsistently on our minds through the crash of the ruin and
\nthe breath of the tempest and are now the leading words of the hoped-for
\nreconstruction, – freedom and unity. But everything depends, first, upon the
\ntruth of our vision of them, secondly, upon the sincerity with which we apply
\nit, last and especially on the inwardness of our realisation. Vain will be the
\nmechanical construction of unity, if unity is not in the heart of the race and
\nif it be made only a means for safeguarding and organising our interests; the
\nresult will then be only, as it was in the immediate past, a fiercer strife and
\nnew outbreaks of revolution and anarchy. No paltering mechanisms which have the
\nappearance but not the truth of freedom, will help us; the new structure,
\nhowever imposing, will only become another prison and compel a fresh struggle
\nfor liberation. The one safety for man lies in learning to live from within
\noutward, not depending on institutions and machinery to perfect him, but out of
\nhis growing inner perfection availing to shape a more perfect form and frame
\nof life; for by this inwardness we shall best be able both to see the truth of
\nthe high things which we now only speak with our lips and form into outward
\nintellectual constructions, and to apply their truth sincerely to all our
\noutward living. If we are to found the kingdom of God in humanity, we must
\nfirst know God and see and live the diviner truth of our being in ourselves;
\notherwise how shall a new manipulation of the constructions of the reason and
\nscientific systems of efficiency which have failed us in the past, avail to
\nestablish it? It is because there are plenty of signs that the old error
\ncontinues and only a minority, leaders perhaps in light, but not yet in action,
\nare striving to see more clearly, inwardly and truly, that we must expect as
\nyet rather the last twilight which divides the dying from the unborn age than
\nthe real dawning. For a time, since the mind of man is not yet ready, the old
\nspirit and method may yet be strong and seem for a short while to prosper; but
\nthe future lies with the men and nations who first see beyond both the glare
\nand the dusk the gods of the morning and prepare themselves to be’ fit
\ninstruments of the Power that is pressing towards the light of a greater ideal.<\/font><\/span><\/h1>\n


\nPage-597<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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