rjon Fri 12 Jan 2007 03:32 PM PST Hi RY, Thank you for your continuing illuminations re SA's profound teachings! A question arose as I read SA's sentences you quote above... SA's insight: "...God is pent in the mire.., but that very fact imposes a necessity to break through that prison to a consciousness which is ever rising towards the heights..." raises for me the question whether the rise of "technocapiltalism" (one of SCIY's favorite whipping boys) could be interpreted as a disguised opportunity that "imposes a necessity to break through that prison..."?
RY Deshpande Sat 13 Jan 2007 06:49 AM PST Sorry Ron, this will be a little longish reply. Can technocapitalism be an opportunity for shaping the future in any decisive way? I wonder. Such a claim by the protagonists of science in moulding society is not all that new; it has been made in its arrogance at every stage after the Industrial Revolution. It was not very long ago, just a century ago, and it happens all along, that the top physicists and savants were saying that they were at the finis line of the last discovery and what would remain to be done would be only tying up the loose ends. Materialism in its strident days was very sure of it. However, it didn’t happen. In fact, can it happen at all? Came quantum mechanics and shattered all the old dreams. But the unforgiving thing is, those very fallacious dreams have reappeared in other garbs. The theory-of-everything today forebodes nothing much different from the earlier cozy feeling of understanding all that has to be understood, man the master of nature and builder of humanity. That itself makes me suspicious of science coming to the aid of ailing we. This is in physics, the prince of science, and the problem of social issues, and deeply more of social transformation, of shaping the destinies is far more complex than it can even be conceptualised. What happened to Socrates? And to Christ to whom we offered the flower of suffering? To Priscillian of Avilla in 385? To Giordano Bruno in 1600 who became a martyr to the cause of free thought? And so on. When in 313 Constantine hoped to unite the Empire, there also grew heresies in the Church itself. In the process, the king imposed decisions. This went on increasing afterwards. The fallacy was the use of Religion for the consolidation of the State. The false start was already made. Today we won’t be enacting much of a different drama in imposing Reason on the soul of mankind. Propagation of democracy or capitalism more or less belongs to the same mindset. And then Reason itself is sacrificed at the altar of Religion. Just last week a prominent daily carried a letter of a very learned doctor; in the context of the Saddam hanging, according to him, his religion prescribes nothing but death for the killer, and there cannot be any other argument. Science has brought rewards no doubt, but rewards are always there, everywhere. But can the rewards in certain domains justify its methodology and its applications in every human occupation? One might like it to be so, but one’s insistence will amount to another kind of dogmatism. The basic human psychological factors, be they individual or collective, have to be scrutinised and handled by going into their sources rather than probe them by external means such as the much-vaunted scientific methodology which belongs to another province altogether. It will be fatal to make a fetish of technocapitalism as the guide of human destinies. The problem of mire Savitri speaks of is far deeper than these means can even reach it, come anywhere closer to it; they are not even scratching its surface. Its solution will be far yet beyond them. What are we, when confronted with such a situation? The answer is, we are a strange irrational product of the mire itself, a compromise between the beast and god. (Savitri, 343) What change can we then really bring about? A mystic deep attempt has to begin. We dream of bridging the gulf between man’s mind and God’s, hope to translate heaven into a human shape; but someone else has to come and confront Time and Circumstance, and accomplish it. (See Savitri, p. 353) Here are “gods disfigured by pangs of birth”. Not the human soul, the soul that is too weak to bear the Infinite’s weight, but the divine Shakti alone can do it. Savitri herself speaks who she is, she who can change things here. She asserts triumphantly: (Savitri, pp. 648-49) My mind is a torch lit from the eternal sun... Sri Aurobindo's insight: "...God is pent in the mire.., but that very fact imposes a necessity to break through that prison to a consciousness which is ever rising towards the heights..." You ask: Could this itself be interpreted as a disguised opportunity that "imposes a necessity to break through that prison..."? If it were such an opportunity, Sri Aurobindo would have certainly explored it fully, instead of engaging himself in the “severe and painful” work. And the agony the Mother was experiencing when she was busy with the transformation of the cells of the body. The situation is so daunting that it looks to be totally beyond man’s best effort to succeed in it. Man can be a conscious helper in the process, and that is what is expected of him, but the radical transformation is beyond his capacity and capability. If it were so, it would make the coming of the Avatar superfluous. RYD
No comments:
Post a Comment