{"id":3511,"date":"2013-07-13T01:49:03","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3511"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:49:03","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:49:03","slug":"09-the-ideal-law-of-social-development-vol-the-human-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/the-human-cycle\/09-the-ideal-law-of-social-development-vol-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-09_The Ideal law of Social Development.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\nCHAPTER VII<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nTHE IDEAL LAW OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nT<\/font>HE<\/b> true law of our development and the entire object
\nof our social existence can only become clear to us when we have
\ndiscovered not only, like modern Science, what man has been in
\nhis past physical and vital evolution, but his future mental and
\nspiritual destiny and his place in the cycles of Nature. This is the
\nreason why the subjective periods of human development must
\nalways be immeasurably the most fruitful and creative. In the
\nothers he either seizes on some face, image, type of the inner
\nreality Nature in him is labouring to manifest or else he follows a mechanical
\nimpulse or shapes himself in the mould of her external influences; but here in his subjective return inward he gets
\nback to himself, back to the root of his living and infinite possibilities, and the potentiality of a new and perfect self-creation
\nbegins to widen before him. He discovers his real place in Nature
\nand opens his eyes to the greatness of his destiny. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nExistence is an infinite and therefore indefinable and illimitable Reality which figures itself out in multiple values of
\nlife. It begins, at least in our field of existence, with a material
\nfigure of itself, a mould of firm substance into which and upon
\nwhich it can build,\u2014worlds, the earth, the body. Here it stamps
\nfirmly and fixes the essential law of its movement. That law is
\nthat all things are one in their being and origin, one in their general law of existence, one in their interdependence and the universal <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 68<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n pattern of their relations; but each realises this unity of
\npurpose and being on its own lines and has its own law of variation by which it enriches the universal existence. In Matter
\nvariation is limited; there is variation of type, but, on the whole,
\nuniformity of the individuals of the type. These individuals
\nhave a separate movement, but yet the same movement; subject
\nto some minute differences, they adhere to one particular pattern
\nand have the same assemblage of properties. Variety within the
\ntype, apart from minor unicities of detail, is gained by variation
\nof group sub-types belonging to one general kind, species and sub-species of the same genus. In the development of Life, before
\nmind has become self-conscious, the same law predominates; but,
\nin proportion as life grows and still more when mind emerges,
\nthe individual also arrives at a greater and more vital power of
\nvariation. He acquires the freedom to, develop according, no
\ndoubt, to the general law of Nature and the general law of his
\ntype, but also according to the individual law of his being. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nMan, the mental being in Nature, is especially
\ndistinguished from her less developed creatures by a greater power
\nof individuality, by the liberation of the mental consciousness
\nwhich enables him finally to understand more and more himself
\nand his law of being and his development, by the liberation of
\nthe mental will which enables him under the secret control of
\nthe universal Will to manage more and more the materials and
\nlines of his development and by the capacity in the end to go
\nbeyond himself, beyond his mentality and open his consciousness into that from which mind, life and body proceed. He can
\neven, however imperfectly at present, get at his highest to some
\nconsciousness of the Reality which is his true being and possess
\nconsciously also, as nothing else in terrestrial Nature can possess,
\nthe Self, the Idea, the Will which have constituted him and can
\nbecome by that the master of his own nature and increasingly,
\nnot as now he is, a wrestler with dominant circumstance but the <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 69<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nmaster of Nature. To do this, to arrive through mind and beyond
\nmind at the Self, the Spirit which expresses itself in all Nature
\nand, becoming one with it in his being, his force, his consciousness, his will, his knowledge, to possess at once humanly and
\ndivinely\u2014according to the law and nature of human existence,
\nbut of human existence fulfilled in God and fulfilling God in the
\nworld\u2014both himself and the world is the destiny of man and the
\nobject of his individual and social existence.* <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis is done primarily through the individual man; for this
\nend man has become an individual soul, that the One may find
\nand manifest Himself in each human being. That end is not
\nindeed achieved by the individual human being in his unaided
\nmental force. He needs the help of the secret Divine above his
\nmentality in his superconscient self; he needs the help also of the
\nsecret Divine around him in Nature and in his fellow-men.
\nEverything in Nature is an occasion for him to develop his
\ndivine potentiality, an occasion which he has a certain relative
\nfreedom to use or to misuse, although in the end both his use and
\nmisuse of his materials are overruled in their results by the universal Will so as to assist eventually the development of his law
\nof being and his destiny. All life around him is a help towards the divine
\npurpose in him; every human being is his fellow- worker and assists him whether by association and union or by
\nstrife and opposition. Nor does he achieve his destiny as the
\nindividual Man for the sake of the individual soul alone,\u2014a
\nlonely salvation is not his complete ideal,\u2014but for the world also
\nor rather for God in the world, for God in all as well as above all
\nand not for God solely and separately in one. And he achieves it <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n* It may be said that since man is a mental being limited by the mind,
\nlife and body, this development and organisation of a power beyond mind, a
\nsupramental power, would be the creation of a new superhuman race and that
\nthe use of the words human and humanly would no longer be in place. This is
\nno doubt true, but the possibility for the race still remains, if not <\/b> for all in the
\nsame degree or at the same time, yet in an eventual fulfilment. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 70<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nby the stress, not really of his separate individual Will, but of
\nthe universal Will in its movement towards the goal of its cycles. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe object of all society should be, therefore,, and must
\nbecome, as man grows conscious of his real being, nature and
\ndestiny and not as now only of a part if it, first to provide the
\nconditions of life and growth by which individual Man,\u2014not
\nisolated men or a class or a privileged race, but all individual men
\naccording to their capacity,\u2014and the race through the growth of
\nits individuals may travel towards this divine perfection. It must
\nbe, secondly, as mankind generally more and more grows near to
\nsome figure of the Divine in life and more and more men arrive
\nat it,\u2014for the cycles are many and each cycle has its own figure
\nof the Divine in man,\u2014to express in the general life of mankind,
\nthe light, the power, the beauty, the harmony, the joy of the Self
\nthat has been attained and that pours itself out in a freer and
\nnobler humanity. Freedom and harmony express the two necessary principles of variation and oneness,\u2014freedom of the individual, the group, the race, coordinated harmony of the individual’s
\nforces and of the efforts of all individuals in the group, of all
\ngroups in the race, of all races in the kind\u2014and these are the two conditions of
\nhealthy progression and successful arrival. To realise them and to combine them has been the obscure or half-
\nenlightened effort of mankind throughout its history,\u2014a task
\ndifficult indeed and too imperfectly seen and too clumsily and
\nmechanically pursued by the reason and desires to be satisfactorily achieved until man grows by self-knowledge and self-mastery
\nto the possession of a spiritual and psychical unity with his
\nfellow-men. As we realise more and more the right conditions,
\nwe shall travel more luminously and spontaneously towards our
\ngoal and, as we draw nearer to a clear sight of our goal, we shall
\nrealise better and better the right conditions. The Self in man
\nenlarging light and knowledge and harmonising will with light
\nand knowledge so as to fulfil in life what he has seen in his in<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 71<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ncreasing vision and idea of the Self, this is man’s source and law
\nof progress and the secret of his impulse towards perfection. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nMankind upon earth is one foremost self-expression of the
\nuniversal Being in His cosmic self-unfolding; he expresses, under
\nthe conditions of the terrestrial world he inhabits, the mental
\npower of the universal existence. All mankind is one in its
\nnature, physical, vital, emotional, mental and ever has been in
\nspite of all differences of intellectual development ranging from
\nthe poverty of the Bushman and negroid to the rich cultures of
\nAsia and Europe, and the whole race has, as the human totality,
\none destiny which it seeks and increasingly approaches in the
\ncycles of progression and retrogression it describes through the
\ncountless milleniums of its history. Nothing which any individual race or nation can triumphantly realise, no victory of their
\nself-aggrandisement, illumination, intellectual achievement or
\nmastery over the environment has any permanent meaning or
\nvalue except in so far as it adds something or recovers something or preserves something for this human march. The purpose
\nwhich the ancient Indian scripture offers to us as the true object
\nof all human action, lokasangraha,<\/i> the holding together of the
\nrace in its cyclic evolution, is the constant sense, whether we
\nknow or know it not, of the sum of our activities. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut within this general nature and general destiny of mankind each individual human being has to follow the common
\naim on the lines of his own nature and to arrive at his possible
\nperfection by a growth from within. So only can the race itself
\nattain to anything profound, living and deep-rooted. It cannot be
\ndone brutally, heavily, mechanically in the mass; the group-self
\nhas no right to regard the individual as if he were only a cell of
\nits body, a stone of its edifice, a passive instrument of its collective life and growth. Humanity is not so constituted. We miss
\nthe divine reality in man and the secret of the human birth if we
\ndo not see that each individual man is that Self and sums up all <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 72<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nhuman potentiality in his own being. That potentiality he has
\nto find, develop, work out from within. No State or legislator
\nor reformer can cut him rigorously into a perfect pattern; no
\nChurch or priest can give him a mechanical salvation; no order,
\nno class life or ideal, no nation, no civilisation or creed or ethical,
\nsocial or religious Shastra can be allowed to say to him permanently, "In this way of mine and thus far shalt thou act and grow
\nand in no other way and no farther shall thy growth be permitted." These things may help him temporarily or they may
\ncurb and he grows in proportion as he can use them and then
\nexceed them, train and teach his individuality by them but assert it always in
\nthe end in its divine freedom. Always he is the traveller of the cycles and his road is forward. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nTrue, his life and growth are for the sake of the world, but
\nhe can help the world by his life and growth only in proportion
\nas he can be more and more freely and widely his own real self.
\nTrue, he has to use the ideals, disciplines, systems of cooperation
\nwhich he finds upon his path; but he can only use them well,
\nin their right way and to their right purpose if they are to his life
\nmeans towards something beyond them and not burdens to be
\nborne by him for their own sake or despotic controls to be obeyed
\nby him as their slave or subject; for though laws and disciplines
\nstrive to be the tyrants of the human soul, their only purpose
\nis to be its instruments and servants and when their use is over
\nthey have to be rejected and broken. True it is, too, that he has
\nto gather in his material from the minds and lives of his fellowmen around him and to make the most of the experience of humanity’s past ages and not confine himself in a narrow mentality; but this he can only do successfully by making all this his own
\nthrough assimilation of it to the principle of his own nature and
\nthrough its subservience to the forward call of his enlarging future. The liberty claimed by the struggling human mind for the
\nindividual is no mere egoistic challenge and revolt, however egoistically<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 73<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n or with one-sided exaggeration and misapplication it may
\nsometimes be advanced; it is the divine instinct within him, the
\nlaw of the Self, its claim to have room and the one primary condition for its natural self-unfolding. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIndividual man belongs not only to humanity in general, his
\nnature is not only a variation of human nature in general, but
\nhe belongs also to his race-type, his class-type, his mental, vital,
\nphysical, spiritual type in which he resembles some, differs from
\nothers. According to these affinities he tends to group himself
\nin Churches, sects, communities, classes, coteries, associations
\nwhose life he helps, and by them he enriches himself and the
\nlife of the large economic, social and political group or society to
\nwhich he belongs. In modern times this society is the nation. By
\nhis enrichment of the national life, though not in that way only,
\nhe helps the total life of humanity. But it must be noted that he
\nis not limited and cannot be limited by any of these groupings; he is not merely the noble, merchant, warrior, priest, scholar,
\nartist, cultivator or artisan, not merely the religionist or the
\nworldling or the politician. Nor can he be limited by his nationality; he is not merely the Englishman or the Frenchman, the
\nJapanese or the Indian; if by a part of himself he belongs to the
\nnation, by another he exceeds it and belongs to humanity. And
\neven there is a part of him, the greatest, which is not limited by
\nhumanity; he belongs by it to God and to the world of all beings
\nand to the godheads of the future. He has indeed the tendency
\nof self-limitation and subjection to his environment and group,
\nbut he has also the equally necessary tendency of expansion and
\ntranscendence of environment and groupings. The individual
\nanimal is dominated entirely by his type, subordinated to his
\ngroup when he does group himself; individual man has already
\nbegun to share something of the infinity, complexity, free variation of the Self we see manifested in the world. Or at least he
\nhas it in possibility, even if there be as yet no sign of it in his <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 74<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\norganised surface nature. There is here no principle of a mere
\nshapeless fluidity; it is the tendency to enrich himself with the
\nlargest possible material constantly brought in, constantly assimilated and changed by the law of his individual nature into stuff
\nof his growth and divine expansion. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThus the community stands as a mid-term and intermediary
\nvalue between the individual and humanity and it exists not
\nmerely for itself, but for the one and the other and to help them
\nto fulfil each other. The individual has to live in humanity as
\nwell as humanity in the individual; but mankind is or has been
\ntoo large an aggregate to make this mutuality a thing intimate
\nand powerfully felt in the ordinary mind of the race, and even
\nif humanity becomes a manageable unit of life, intermediate
\ngroups and aggregates must still exist for the purpose of mass differentiation and the concentration and combination of varying
\ntendencies in the total human aggregate. Therefore the community has to stand for a time to the individual for humanity even
\nat the cost of standing between him and it and limiting the reach
\nof his universality and the wideness of his sympathies. Still the
\nabsolute claim of the community, the society or the nation to
\nmake its growth, perfection, greatness the sole object of human
\nlife or to exist for itself alone as against the individual and the
\nrest of humanity, to take arbitrary possession of the one and
\nmake the hostile assertion of itself against the other, whether
\ndefensive or offensive, the law of its action in the world,\u2014-and
\nnot, as it unfortunately is, a temporary necessity,\u2014this attitude
\nof societies, races, religions, communities, nations, empires is
\nevidently an aberration of the human reason, quite as much as
\nthe claim of the individual to live for himself egoistically is an
\naberration and the deformation of a truth. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe truth deformed into this error is the same with the
\ncommunity as with the individual. The nation or community is
\nan aggregate life that expresses the Self according to the general <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 75<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nlaw of human nature and aids and partially fulfils
\nthe development and the destiny of mankind by its own development and
\nthe pursuit of its own destiny according to the law of its being and the nature
\nof its corporate individuality. It has like the individual the right to be itself, and its just claim, as against any
\nattempt at domination by other nations or of attack upon its
\nseparate development by any excessive tendency of human uniformity and regimentation, is to defend its existence, to insist on
\nbeing itself, to persist in developing according to the secret Idea
\nwithin it or, as we say, according to the law of its own nature.
\nThis right it must assert not only or even principally for its own
\nsake, but in the interests of humanity. For the only things that
\nwe can really call our rights are those conditions which are necessary to our free and sound development, and that again is our
\nright because it is necessary to the development of the world and
\nthe fulfilment of the destiny of mankind. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nNor does this right to be oneself mean with the nation or
\ncommunity any more than with the individual that it should
\nroll itself up like a hedgehog, shut itself up in its dogmas, prejudices, limitations, imperfections, in the form and mould of its
\npast or its present achievement and refuse mental or physical
\ncommerce and interchange or spiritual or actual commingling
\nwith the rest of the world. For so it cannot grow or perfect itself.
\nAs the individual lives by the life of other individuals, so does
\nthe nation by the life of other nations, by accepting from them
\nmaterial for its own mental, economic, physical life; but it has
\nto assimilate this material, subject it to the law of its own nature,
\nchange it into stuff of itself, work upon it by its own free will
\nand consciousness, if it would live securely and grow soundly.
\nTo have the principle or rule of another nature imposed upon
\nit by force or a de-individualising pressure is a menace to its
\nexistence, a wound to its being, a fetter upon its march. As the
\nfree development of individuals from within is the best condition<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 76<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n for the growth and perfection of the community, so the free
\ndevelopment of the community or nation from within is the best
\ncondition for the growth and perfection of mankind. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThus the law for the individual is to perfect his
\nindividuality by free development from within, but to respect and to aid
\nand be aided by the same free development in others. His law is
\nto harmonise his life with the life of the social aggregate and to pour himself
\nout as a force for growth and perfection on humanity. The law for the community or nation is equally to perfect
\nits corporate existence by a free development from within, aiding
\nand taking full advantage of that of the individual, but to respect
\nand to aid and be aided by the same free development of other
\ncommunities and nations. Its law is to harmonise its life with
\nthat of the human aggregate and to pour itself out as a force for
\ngrowth and perfection on humanity. The law for humanity is to
\npursue its upward evolution towards the finding and expression
\nof the Divine in the type of mankind, taking full advantage of
\nthe free development and gains of all individuals and nations
\nand groupings of men, to work towards the day when mankind
\nmay be really and not only ideally one divine family, but even
\nthen, when it has succeeded in unifying itself, to respect, aid
\nand be aided by the free growth and activity of its individuals
\nand constituent aggregates. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nNaturally, this is an ideal law which the imperfect human
\nrace has never yet really attained and it may be very long before
\nit can attain to it. Man, not possessing, but only seeking to find
\nhimself, not knowing consciously, obeying only in the rough subconsciously or halt-consciously the urge of the law of his own
\nnature with stumblings and hesitations and deviations and a
\nseries of violences done to himself and others, has had to advance
\nby a tangle of truth and error, right and wrong, compulsion and
\nrevolt and clumsy adjustments, and he has as yet neither the
\nwideness of knowledge nor the flexibility of mind nor the purity <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 77<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof temperament which would enable him to follow the law of
\n\t\t\tliberty and harmony rather than the law of discord and regimentation, compulsion and adjustment and strife. Still it is the very
\nbusiness of a subjective age when knowledge is increasing and
\ndiffusing itself with an unprecedented rapidity, when capacity
\nis generalising itself, when men and nations are drawn close together and partially united though in an inextricable, confused
\nentanglement of chaotic unity, when they are being compelled
\nto know each other and impelled to know more profoundly
\nthemselves, mankind. God and the world and when the idea of
\nself-realisation for men and nations is coming consciously to the
\nsurface,\u2014it is the natural work and should be the conscious hope
\nof man in such an age to know himself truly, to find the ideal
\nlaw of his being and his development and, if he cannot even
\nthen follow it ideally owing to the difficulties of his egoistic nature, still to hold it before him and find out gradually the way
\nby which it can become more and more the moulding principle
\nof his individual and social existence. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 78<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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