Contemporary Crisis of Humanity and Search for its Solutions - Contemporary crisis of humanity and Search for its solutions

Contemporary Crisis of Humanity
and Search for its Solutions

Acceleration of wheels of change ─ not necessarily of true progress ─ has been a striking feature of our times. That last century had been an unquiet age of gigantic ferment, chaos of ideas and inventions, clash of enormous forces, creation, catastrophe and dissolution amid the formidable agony and tension of the body and soul of humankind. During this period, the age of reason reached its highest pinnacles and widest amplitudes. Rationalistic and experimental science, armed with efficient technology, registered phenomenal developments. The result was, however, a mixture of good and evil for humanity. For, while new heights of excellence were experienced by it, it also got dwarfed as never before. A series of rivalries among nations dominated the scene; two stupendous world devastating wars swept over the globe and they were accompanied or followed by revolutions with far-reaching consequences. A League of Nations was formed, but

broke down after some time; the United Nations Organisation came to be built, but its deficiencies and weaknesses are forcing leaders to think of radical changes in its Constitution and working; even its replacement by World-State, which may be a boon or a curse, depending upon how it is constituted, has also come to be conceived and may become inevitable under certain possible circumstances. Asymmetrical relations among nations have created tensions between the North and the South, and they tend to be aggravated. Armaments have been piled up in huge quantities and although they have recently been reduced or restrained, military expenditures are being ruthlessly planned at the cost of many important priorities. And science still continues to minister ingeniously to the art of collective massacre. Environment has come to be vastly disturbed and, in spite of warnings and wise talks, it continues to be alarmingly ruined. Expensive life styles have been fashioned and advocated, and men, women and children are being increasingly led to isolated and divided lives. Multiplying complexities of the inner and outer life have been turning into complications and unresolved dilemmas; and chaos of views of life, each with only relative validity, has been shaking, for good or evil, foundations erected by ethical systems and religions. Individualism, the

child of Reason and Revolt, which at one stage encouraged discovery of the inner realms of ends, has been overtaken by egoism and selfish indulgence of impulses and passions.

This and much more has led humanity to a state of crisis of serious or even unprecedented proportions. We can, however, discern two major imperatives which seem to be pressing themselves for their fulfilment. The first is visible in a continuous pressure of events towards the unity of the entire humanity. With the unprecedented shrinking of Space and Time, there is an irresistible drive towards economic, administrative, legislative and social centralisation and there is an emerging need of unification of regions, continents, and even of establishment of a single World-State. It is being increasingly felt that the world can become safe and prosperous only if human unity can come to be built up. The second imperative that seems to have asserted itself is to impress upon humankind that unity, peace and lasting welfare can come about only if human nature can be radically changed. What exactly this would mean or entail is a matter of research and experimentation, but there is a growing feeling that, at the minimum level, human way of feeling, thinking and acting should be based upon a new foundation of universal wideness, voluntary optimism and unfailing

goodwill. In a significant statement made in 1967, U Thant, the then Secretary-General of the United Nations Organisation, expressed quite clearly these two imperatives. He had stated:

“That a fraction of the amounts that are going to be spent in 1967 on arms could finance economic, social, national and world programmes to an extent so far unimaginable is a notion within the grasp of the man in the street. Men, if they unite, are now capable of foreseeing and, to a certain point, determining the future of human development. This, however, is possible if we stop fearing and harassing one another and if together we accept, welcome and prepare the changes that must inevitably take place.  If this means a change in human nature, well, it is high time we worked for it; what must surely change is certain political attitudes and habits man has.”[1]

As a matter of fact almost from the beginning of the last century, themes of the ideal of human unity as also that of the necessity of change of human nature, had seized the movements of the resurgence of Asia and intellectual idealism of Europe. Asiatic peoples had begun to make bold and clear claims to equality and independence and they had behind them centuries of inner culture and discovery of spiritual knowledge, which if applied to life, could serve as

effective means of the change of human nature. In Europe, the contest between Capital and Labour had entered into a crucial phase, and the Great First World War became memorable for the Russian Revolution that burst out even when that war was centered on the goal of the downfall of Germany. This Revolution was a sign that a phase of civilisation had begun to pass and the Time-Spirit was preparing a new phase and a new order. There was, at that time, a possibility of the realisation of the larger human hope of as a result of the evolution of the socialistic society and the resurgence of Asia.  Unfortunately, the turn of events belied the bright hopes.

Socialism soon turned into state socialism, and while it brought in greater equality and a closer association into human life, it remained confined only to a material change. It missed many other needed things and even aggravated the mechanical burden of humanity and crushed more heavily towards the earth its spirit. The resurgence of Asia, in spite of its glorious moments of achievements, meant eventually only a redressing or shifting of international balance. It became quite dormant, and in spite of greater preparations, it has still not been able to provide the required condition of the step forward which is the one thing needful.  It is also note worthy that the international policy of labour

had carried a promise of an international comity of free nations. But over a period of its development, the spirit of internationalism came to be overcome by the power of national egoism. It became clear that mere idealism of internationalism is not enough; what is truly important is the spiritual change that would make internationalism a vital need of lives of nations and of the entire humanity.

Much hope, however, lies in the fact that despite numerous setbacks, the need for unity of humankind continues to persist. The idea of internationalism has grown in humanity and it is at work on our minds and influences from above, our actions. It is also pressing itself to be turned into something more than an idea so that it may become a central motive and a fixed part of human nature as also of human organisation. It is remarkable that the First Great War gave birth to a League of Nations. It is true that the conception of this League was not happy or well-inspired, and it was destined to collapse. But that such an organised endeavour should be launched and proceed on its way for some time without an early breakdown was in itself an event of capital importance. The defects of the League arose directly from the conditions of the world at that time. Its composition proved that it was an oligarchy of big

powers, each drawing behind it a retinue of small States. The absence of America and the position of Russia had helped to make the final ill-success of this venture a natural consequence. However, the significance of the League was that even when it failed, it could not be allowed to remain without a sequel. Accordingly, the League of Nations disappeared, but the force of idea remained active behind the succeeding years, including the terrible years of the Second World War. That War stirred the deeper depths of humanity and its leaders, and the United Nations Organisation came into existence. Today, this Organisation stands in the forefront of the world and struggles towards some kind of secure permanence and success. It is also significant that many defects of the League of Nations have been avoided in the Constitution of the UNO. And yet, one major defect remains because of the preponderant place that has been assigned to the five great Powers in the Security Council; and this defect has been clinched by the power of veto given to these Powers. That in recent years there is a serious demand from some quarters to get this defect removed is a significant development. For, to leave this defect unmodified prolongs a malaise and absence of harmony and smooth working. In critical situations, this defect generates wide-spread feeling of futility.

But apart from this defect, the real danger to the ideal of human unity lay in the division of peoples in two camps which tended to be natural opponents. Survival of these two camps for more than forty years, and that too, in the condition of a continuous cold war, prevented any major progress towards the growth of the inner spirit of internationalism. At the same time, the fact that this cold war did not generate into a hot war must be noted as truly remarkable. It is also a matter that gives comfort to the anxious mind and heart of humanity.

It was, of course, envisaged as a possibility that if the design of using ideological struggle as a means for world domination could come to be weakened or eliminated, then co-existence of two ideologies in the world could not be at all out of question. And, as a matter of fact, the world moved towards a greater development of the principle of State control over the life of the community and created a considerable force of balance of power through the movement of non­-alignment. On the other hand, capitalism itself got modified by virtue of the welfare policies adopted by the powers of the free world. Nevertheless, tensions remained, overwhelming frictions continued to occur and it was only when USSR collapsed and Eastern European countries asserted their independence, adopting market

economy that the world has ceased to be bi-polar and we ^.find ourselves today in a new situation.

Has the climate for the human unity become more favourable under the new situation? When we ask this question, however, it must be remembered that a greater social or political unity is not necessarily a boon in itself; it is only worth pursuing in so far as it provides a means and framework for a better, richer, more happy and puissant individual and collective life. Looking at the past examples of large aggregates such as we find under the Roman Empire and others, we are likely to conclude that if there were to come about today a social, administrative and political unification of humanity, the organisation would be so massive and tremendous that both individual and regional life would become crushed and dwarfed. And this would mean for humanity, after perhaps one first outburst of satisfied and joyous activity, a long period of mere conservation, increasing stagnancy and ultimate decay. Therefore, the unity which is to be pursued as an imperative of the present state of humanity must be under other conditions and with safeguards which will keep the human race intact in its roots of vitality and its oneness will be kept richly diverse.

The great beneficial consequence of the recent

collapse of USSR is that the world has ceased to be bi­polar, and consequently, the danger of the outbreak of world conflict has greatly disappeared. Another salutary consequence which has arisen is the collapse of oppressive system of state socialism. This has reduced greatly the peril of the coming into being that form of the World-State under which State machinery could suppress freedom of speech and thought. Had this form not disappeared, and if an all-regulating socialistic World-State were to be established, freedom of thought under such a regime would necessarily have meant criticism not only of the details, but of the very principles of the existing state of things. The World­ State could not have afforded to tolerate for long this criticism or even its possibility. Ultimately, the State would have imposed strict regulation of the mental life and extended it to the totality of life. The necessary consequence would have been a static order of society, since without the freedom of the individual, a society cannot remain progressive. We may note that a salutary form of world government must respect and encourage the freedom of the individual, and this form has now gained a new force. This is the third important consequence. For, with the break-up of the Soviet Union, several of its constituents have emerged as new independent and sovereign states.

This event re-affirms the psychological and moral principle of self-­determination, which was originally announced by Russia itself during the early phase of the Revolution when its idealism was fresh and sincere. Under the pressure of the need to resort to the principle of government by force, a contradictory element was brought in. This endangered the progress of nationalism, and the principle of free choice for each nation to choose its own line of development and association. It is true that the component States of Sovietic Russia were allowed a certain cultural, linguistic, and some other kind of autonomy, but in other matters they had come to be, in fact, governed by the force of a highly centralised autocracy of the Labourite despotism. That freedom, which was put aside or crushed earlier, has now emerged, and this is bound to provide added force and strength to the movement towards the free world union in which the principle of free self-determination must be a preliminary movement.

The modern world has, however, grown increasingly commercial in character. A powerful impulsion of our times is towards the industrialising of the human race and the perfection of the life of society as an economic and productive organism. The European idealism which was manifest, to some extent, in Communism could not be sustained in the

Socialist Soviet Union. Marxian principle itself proceeded on the premise that the reign of socialism has to be preceded by an age of bourgeois capitalism and should seize upon its work and organisation in order to turn it to its own uses and modify it by its own principles and methods. It intended, indeed, to substitute Labour as the Master instead of Capital. But this meant merely a change from one side of the economism to the other. The story of eight decades of the development of USSR did not impel change from domination of economism to the domination of some other and higher motive of human life. And now, when the socialistic economy has fallen and is being rapidly replaced by market economy, basic economism will remain unaltered, except that the capitalistic competition will become more unbridled than ever before.

This competition and the goals it seeks to satisfy constitute the uppermost subjects all over the world. The futuristic studies of today are concentrated on issues of economic activity, latest technologies of communication and processing of information, developing markets and commercial competition among USA, Japan, EEC, China, and newly industrialising countries like Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. If science were not developed as it has today, if modern warfare did not

require the high level of scientific and technological efficiency as today, the present situation could have witnessed a fresh invasion from the primitive peoples so as to subvert and destroy our weary and crisis-ridden civilisation. But while that peril stands eliminated, the real peril that we are faced today is the resurgence of the barbarian in ourselves, in civilised people, and this is what we see all around us.

We are not grateful that the third World War has not broken out and that prospects of peace have became brighter; we are, however, engrossed with understanding the new equations between economic change and military preparedness. We are not worried about building the defences of peace in the minds of men, and secure true foundations of human unity; ─ is it not the task given away to UNESCO so that we can indulge in the freedom to do something else? And what is that something else if not questions of economic concerns and financial gains? We are not grappling issues of knowledge and wisdom, but we are getting absorbed in the problems of power shift which are caused by "softnomics", the technologies which are related to software that produces and processes information and knowledge with ever-increasing speed. In other words, we are interested in knowledge to the extent to which it gets related to money-making. What is our centre of

gravity? It is the economic social ultimate ─ an ideal material organisation of civilisation and comfort, the use of reason and science and education for the channelisation of a utilitarian rationality which will create mechanisms and systems for vital and material satisfactions surrounded by luxuries of intellectual and aesthetic pastimes.

The contemporary crisis of humanity arises from this centre of gravity; humanity is slipping more and more into the mire of this pit. While its inner soul feels mutely the agony of this plunge and wants to be uplifted and liberated, it is unable to assist itself and to break its chains.

There is a deeper reason for this, and we may try to understand it.

II

Since the last five hundred years, humanity has been living in the Age of Reason. In previous cycles of human history, there have been periods where intellect dominated, but they never reached the sweep, pitch and intensity as our modern Age of cultivating, subtilising and fathoming the applications of our rational faculties. The Age of Reason is, therefore, of special significance, particularly when

we realise that the human being is distinguishable from other species by virtue of its Reason. We can expect from this Age those results which the human beings can obtain at their maximum level of development. And, indeed, during this period, rationalism flourished uninhibitedly and produced results of highest excellence. But it also showed quite decisively what it can accomplish and what it cannot. Two articles of faith, underlying the march of Reason, came to be fully tested and disproved. The first article was the faith that Reason can arrive at Truth and can arrive at it with certainty. At the end of its march, it has come to declare that the concept of Truth has rather limited and relative meaning in terms of rationality, and that what can be known by Reason will always be circumscribed within the limits of varying degrees of probability. The second was that Reason can, with its capacity to observe, know and govern impartially, apply itself to human life and arrive at the right relationship between the individual and collectivity. Reason also erected in this connection three great ideals of progress, ─ Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, ─ and dreamt of their harmonious fulfilment in a rational order of society.

At the end of its march in our own times, Reason has now demonstrated, particularly with the collapse

of the socialist experiment in USSR, that Reason can neither harmonise the individual and the collectivity nor can it synthesise freedom, equality and brotherhood. It is seen that Reason can succeed only in limited rule of Law over uneasy springs of freedom and a narrow rule of efficient organisation by imposing on concerned a heavy hand of compulsion and uniformity. It has proved that Reason as a governor of society can secure freedom only by overriding the demands of equality, and if it attempts to secure equality, it is obliged to strangulate freedom. As for fraternity, the highest that Reason could achieve is temporary comradeship and pragmatic or utilitarian cooperation.

Having reached this end of the road, Reason now stands bereft of any agenda; its fundamental search seems to have ended; its basic experimentation seems to have come to a close; it can only turn now in expanding or contracting circles of probabilities in the field of knowledge and those of compromises in the field of practical life. It can, of course, take another course if it can choose to become sufficiently revolutionary and institute an inquiry into those ulterior sources from which its articles of faith regarding Truth and certainty and the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity sprang into its ken and sustained its long journey, which, even when

declared to be unrealisable, keep on knocking and calling us insistently for their fulfilment.

But this is more a question of choice, of will, of a deliberate effort. It is easy to refuse, and to find reasons for the refusal. For it may be argued that all articles of faith, even of Reason, invite a return to the domain of religion or of the supra-rational against which Reason had declared an open revolt at the very commencement of its march into the modern age. Or else, it may be argued that the deliverances of the supra­rational create for the mental thought antinomies which are insoluble and therefore unacceptable. We, therefore, hear the cacophony of declarations that, the supra-rational is non-existent or unreal and that the best counsel for reason is to limit its activities to the practical and immediate problems of their material existence in the universe.

What is the consequence? Reason by itself cannot long maintain the race in its progress; it is the inner spiritual necessity, the push from what is there yet unrealised that maintains the progressive or evolutionary stress, the spiritual nisus. But if that is refused or renounced, there is bound to occur a crisis. The contemporary crisis of humanity is a crisis of this kind. It is not a sociological, political or economic crisis; it is what Sri Aurobindo calls

an evolutionary crisis.

An evolutionary crisis can occur only at an extremely crucial moment of the life of a species. It is when a certain level of consciousness has effected an ascent to the next level of consciousness, integrated the powers and activities of the lower consciousness into those of the higher level of consciousness, when the integrated powers have achieved acute subtilisation and refinement, then the moment arrives for taking a leap into the still higher level of consciousness. If at that moment there is obstruction or failure to secure the necessary push, a crisis sets in which continues to concentrate on the issue of the next ascent until the necessary conditions are created which would facilitate the ascent or mutation of the species. Or else, if there is repeated failure, the concerned species gives place to a new species and gets itself either extinct or relapses into a certain type of fixed movement, bereft of a nisus for a higher ascent or mutation. With humanity today such a point of crisis has been reached;^­ this is evidenced by the fact that its highest faculty of Reason has accomplished the tasks of maximum possible integration, subtilisation and amplitude of multi-sided development; having reached this stage of accomplishment, its limitations have been made bare and acknowledged; it is very clear that the

deeper powers lying behind Reason are in need of a surge, and they are being blocked by the achieved circuit of grooves set up by Reason. It is only if Reason consents to allow deeper powers to rise to a new stage of the ascent of consciousness, that further progress of humanity could be possible.

III

At this stage, it seems opportune to consider criticality of certain fundamental issues that modern development of science has raised by their impact upon society. For we see today a humanity, satiated but not satisfied by victorious analysis of Nature, preparing to confront squarely the choice for a better and nobler future. To equip ourselves adequately, lest we might falter or make any fatal error, is perhaps our most important and urgent task.

Science has flourished in ancient and medieval ages, both in the East and the West, but the modern phenomenon of Science, which began and developed in West and only at a later stage entered the East, has a distinguishing feature that it emerged out of the revolt of individualism against the conventional order of the medieval age. Individualism began in Europe with an endeavour to get back, more

especially in the sphere of religion, to the original truth which conventions had overlaid, defaced or distorted.

But this was only the first step and it proceeded to others and culminated in a general questioning of the foundations of thought and practice in all the spheres of human life and action. In this process of questioning, scientific and subsequently technological progress played a major role.

The revolt of individualism was aided enormously by the Renaissance which gave back to Europe the free curiosity of the Greek mind and its search for first principles and rational laws. At the same time, Europe received back also the Roman's large practicality and his sense of the ordering of life in harmony with a robust utility and the just principles of things. Judaeo-Christian discipline also contributed to the passion, moral and almost religious fervour with which the Greek and Roman tendencies were pursued. At first, there was the fervent questioning of the mediation of the priesthood between God and the soul and the substitution of the Papal authority for the authority of the scripture. At the later stage, there was the questioning of the scripture itself and then all supernaturalism and supra-rational truth no less outward creed and

institute. In politics, there was the questioning of the divine rights, established privileges, sanctified tyrannies and their oppressive power. In social order there was the questioning of stereotyped reign of convention, fixed disabilities, fixed privileges, the self-regarding arrogance of the high, and the blind prostration of the law.

At first, the movement of religious freedom took its stand on a limited but subsequently on an absolute right of the individual experience and illumined reason to determine the true sense of inspired scripture and the true Christian ritual and order of the Church. It was, however, realised that the unrestrained use of individual illumination or judgment without any outer standard or any generally recognisable source of truth is a perilous experiment. There was, therefore, a search for a general standard of truth and also for some principle of social order founded on a universally recognisable truth of things. The answer was found in the discoveries of physical science.

The first part of the answer was that physics demonstrated a truth of things which depended upon no doubtful scripture or fallible authority, and that that truth was written by the Mother Nature in her eternal book for all to read who had patience to

observe and intellectual honesty to judge. There was no room, it contended, for erratic self-will in the realm of laws, principles, fundamental facts of the world and of our being which all could verify at once for themselves and which must, therefore, satisfy and guide the free individual judgment.

The second part of the answer was that science provided a standard, a norm of knowledge, a rational basis of life, a clear outline and sovereign means for the progress and perfection of the individual and the race. Here was, it contended, verifiable science which can govern and organise human life by a law, a truth of things, an order and principles observable and verifiable by all, to which all can freely and must rationally subscribe.

This answer constituted the culminating movement, the irresistible victory of science in the nineteenth century of Europe. This answer was preceded by two centuries of preparation, during which the method of scientific induction was evolved and a new scientific outlook on the world was developed. In the eighteenth century one could discern four ingredients of the scientific outlook, viz.,

1. Statement of fact should be based on observation, not on unsupported authority;

2. The inanimate world is a self-acting, self ­perpetuating system, in which all changes conform to material laws;
3. The earth is not the centre of the universe, and probably Man is not its purpose (if any); and
4. The concept of purpose is scientifically useless.

This scientific outlook, which also came to be called `mechanistic outlook', undermined authority and bestowed sovereignty to observation and verification, and it affirmed the autonomy of the physical world, following Galileo and Newton who, between them, proved that all the movement of the planets, and of dead matter on the earth, proceed according to the laws of physics, and once started, will continue indefinitely. Although Newton still thought that a creator was necessary to get the process going, he conceded that after that He left it to work according to its own laws, requiring no mind in the process. The eighteenth century materialists went one step farther and contended that all causes are material and that mental occurrences are inoperative by­ products. In this view of the universe, teleology was dislodged, and man was reduced to insignificance, particularly when the earth itself, man's home, came to be seen as a small particle in the Milky Way, an assemblage of about 300,000

million stars, which itself is only one of 30 million such known assemblages.

The victory of the physical science was, however, largely due to its application, its technique and technology. Gunpowder was discovered during the late Middle Ages, and since then the authority of States has increased, and throughout it has been mainly improvement in weapons of war that has made the increase possible. Another important discovery made during the Middle Ages was that of mariner's compass, which made possible the age of discovery. Three important developments that resulted were the opening of the New World to the white colonists, the conquest of India by the British, and important contacts between Europe and China. Through the enormous increase of sea-power Western Europe came to dominate the world.

The next stage of technological progress was marked by the discovery of steam power and its resultant operation in transport. Steam was one of the most important elements in the industrial revolution. Steamers and railways produced large-scale effects after the middle of the nineteenth century, when Middle West of America could open up and when its grain came to feed the industrial populations of England and New England. The

resultant prosperity was largely responsible for the sunshine and optimism of the Victorian era. It is important to observe that the early age of steam and industrial revolution was marked by unspeakable misery both in England and America. Machinery caused human beings to be treated as machines; children were required to work twelve to sixteen hours a day, and they were often beaten up to keep them from falling asleep while at work; and yet many failed to keep awake and rolled into the machinery, by which they were mutilated or killed. Handicraftsmen were thrown out of work by the machines, and their fate was intensely miserable. Effects of machinery were equally disastrous with United States. However, the subsequent stages of industrial revolution were not attended with the same kind and degree of evils because of the plunder of colonies as also because of the abolition of slavery and growth of democracy.

The next stage of the technological progress was connected with electricity and telegraphy, and oil and the internal combustion engine. A major sociological effect was the increasing tendency towards centralisation, since in large organisations detailed control from a centre became much more possible than it had formerly been. Telegraph, power stations and long pipe lines generated hugeness of

organisations, control from above, mechanisation of human relationship and loss of creativity and of joy of soul in work.

Big organisations also came to influence politics in a very big way; but the development of flying had perhaps most significant effect on international politics and on the power of the governments. It is instructive to observe that only great Powers can afford a large air force, and no small Power can stand out against a great Power which has secure air supremacy.

The discovery of atomic power and the technologies of the power have been the themes of the greatest concern for the entire human race, particularly since the holocaust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even today, when the world has tended to become multipolar and programmes of total disarmament are being seriously proposed, the threats of possible fatal errors cannot be ruled out, and as long as war continues to be a possibility, the presence of atomic weapons will remain a continuous source of disequilibrium of our planetary existence. On the other hand, when we think of peaceful uses of atomic energy, we are obliged to underline that these uses, particularly in the field of power, will carry further the processes of

concentration and centralisation and this will intensify the adverse effect of industrialisation.

We have also to take note of the development in biological sciences and their actual and potential technologies. Moreover, constantly diminishing gap between a scientific discovery and its large scale application gives us the measure of the rate of the speed of change in the external and internal life of individuals, societies and nations. As against 112 years taken to develop practical applications of the discovery of the principles of photography, only two years separated the discovery from the production of solar batteries. Drastic accelerations have taken place also in travelling and communication. Progress in electronics is the basis of a revolution comparable to the invention of writing. Scientific discoveries are multiplying with ever-increasing speed and they are producing tumultuous impact, good and evil, on society at all levels.

There is a dream or a promise that science would be able to abolish poverty in the world, to reduce drudgery and excessive hours of labour, and to increase health, comfort and happiness. It is, however, acknowledged that certain conditions will have to be fulfilled before this dream could be realised. The first condition is that population should

not increase too fast or that it should now become stable more or less at the level at which it is at present. The second condition is that individualism that aims at self ­determination and integral development should grow to such an extent that it would be able to counteract various forms of slavery and serfdom and exploitation that may grow, particularly under the influence of the rich and powerful sections of society. Not merely democracy as it is today, ─ which is really plutocracy ─ but real democracy that ensures high degree of synthesis of liberty, equality and fraternity, must spread all over the world. The third condition is related to the fact that both agriculture and industry depend upon irreplaceable materials and sources of energy. It is, of course, argued that science will discover new sources as the need arises. At the same time it is conceded that the world has been living on capital, and this capital is not unlimited; even new sources are not likely to be unlimited. The fourth condition is that, since in the ultimate analysis, industry depends upon agriculture, food-producing regions should be free from famines and such other calamities, ─ a condition which is not very easy to guarantee. And the fifth condition is that the ideal of human unity should be actualised to such a degree that there could be not only a world government but

also a highly federal and decentralised form of that government, ─ a condition not unrealisable but realisable only by an unprecedented effort on the part of humanity to change of human nature and to creation of collective forms of living that would synthesise liberty and order with diminishing use of the forces and powers of compulsion.

Consideration of these conditions should lead us also to realise as to what would happen to the world if it is devoid of science and technology. This realisation would enable us to draw up a more balanced evaluation of contributions of science and technology.

First and foremost, we must note that Science is an assertion of the mental being and supremacy of intelligence. As against barbarism and philistinism, science is the affirmation of civilisation and culture. As against the earlier periods of rational, ethical or aesthetic cultures which were overrun by irresistible tides of barbarism, science has equipped the civilised world with weapons of organisation and aggression and self-defence which cannot be successfully utilised by any barbarous people, unless they acquire knowledge which only science can give and thus they cease to be barbarous.

Science has affirmed the virtues of impartiality

and of ever-widening quest of knowledge. It has taught that ignorance must be removed wherever it is found. This has also enhanced the cause of education, and the objective of education for all has spread all over the world. Education has, in turn, underlined the need for scientific frame of mind and declared that nations can only achieve their own renewal and yet retain their national features by integrating science into the traditional cultures, and by integrating universal thoughts into their own national life. In sum, science has enlarged for good the intellectual horizon of the human race, and raised, sharpened and intensified powerfully the general intellectual capacity of humankind.

A closer study will, however, show that science is a manifestation of the dual operation of Reason, dispassionate and interested. In its dispassionate movement science pursues truth for the sake of truth and knowledge for the sake of knowledge; in this movement, science is performing its natural function; it is exercising its highest right. In the work of the scientist labouring to add something to the stock of our ascertainable knowledge, there is a perfect purity and satisfaction. It may even be said that even if there is any individual error or limitation, it will not matter; for the collective and progressive knowledge of the race can be trusted to get rid of the error.

But the difficulties and faults arise when science turns to its interested operations and tries to apply its discoveries and inventions to life situations. For there it becomes the plaything of forces over which it has little control. Science then becomes subject to what it studies and the servant and counsellor of the forces in whose obscure and ill-understood struggle it intervenes. This is the reason why the balance sheet of science is a mixed one, and in many respects the negative aspects outweigh the positive ones. While, on the one hand, science has made discoveries which have served a practical humanitarianism, it has, on the other hand, supplied monstrous weapons to egoism and mutual destruction; while, on the one hand, it has made a gigantic efficiency of organisation utilisable for the economic and social amelioration of the nations, it has, on the other hand, placed the same efficiency of organisation in the hands of national rivalries for mutual aggression, ruin and slaughter; while, on the one hand, it has given rise to a large rationalistic altruism, it has, on the other hand, justified a godless egoism, vitalism, vulgar will to power and success; while, on the one hand, it has drawn mankind together and given it a new hope, it has, on the other hand, crushed it with the burden of a monstrous commercialism. Actually, this commercialism, which

can be called another kind of barbarism, ─ economic barbarism, ─ ­marks a terrible regression that has sunk humanity in mud of desire and hunger on a massive scale. For it makes the satisfaction of wants and desires and the accumulation of possessions its standard and aim. Its concept of the ideal man is not that of the cultured or noble or thoughtful or moral or spiritual; but the successful man. To this barbarism, the opulent plutocrat and the successful mammoth capitalist and organiser of industry are the supermen, and it is to them that this barbarism assigns the actual power to rule the society. Pursuit of vital success, satisfaction, productiveness, accumulation, possession, enjoyment, comfort, convenience for their own sake ─ ­these are essential ingredients of economic barbarism. To the barbaric economic man, beauty is a nuisance, art and poetry a frivolity or a means of advertisement. His idea of civilisation is comfort, his idea of morality social respectability, and his idea of politics the encouragement of industrialisation, opening of markets and exploitation.

It is not surprising that increasing number of sensitive and refined thinkers in recent decades have come to equate science and technology with domination and violence. They have attempted to show how science has become a Reason of State and

how development has become a passport to politics of power and success. Some of them have focused their attention on the way in which development is projected in India and developing countries, and they have brought out quite vividly the perils of plunder, propaganda and violence to which masses of people are being subjected in the name of science and development. Promises and presuppositions of scientific method have also come to be questioned. We also find new trends of thought which advocate new philosophies of growth. The ideals of limits of growth and the use of technology to control have gained increasing currency, the ideal of the ‘small is beautiful’ has achieved wide appeal. There is a growing awareness that all is not well with science, particularly with technology, that things cannot be allowed to develop unchecked and unchallenged, that fundamental issues of humanity's future are involved, and that we are required to consider urgently as to how to deal with our present state of society and how it can be transformed, with, without or in spite of science and technology, into a better and truer state of inter­related existence of individuals, societies and nations.

According to one trend of thought, the basic character of science and scientific method developed during the last three hundred and fifty years is quite

sound and that science has proved itself as the only means of ascertainable knowledge; consequently, it is maintained, that while there is no room to question the nature and presupposition of science, there is a great need to effect major operations of change in human attitudes, passions and character of feeling, thinking and acting. It has, for instance, been contended that science is knowledge and knowledge is power, but power for evil just as much as for good. The conclusion that is drawn is that unless human beings increase in wisdom as much as in knowledge, increase of knowledge will be increase in sorrow. It has been suggested that the things that humanity must avoid are cruelty, envy, greed, competitiveness, suspicions, fear, lust for power, hatred, intolerance. As for the means by which humanity can be induced to avoid them, there are no convincing suggestions. It has, for instance, been contended that love of power will be curbed when all serious military force is concentrated in the international army, that competition will be effectively regulated by law and mitigated by governmental controls, that fear will disappear when war is no longer to be expected, that hate and malevolence can be lessened by general prevalence of peace and material prosperity, by change in propaganda, by active instruction in schools in the evils of old times and the advantages

of the new system, as also by increasing awareness that the alternative to wise and self-controlled life is radioactive disintegration.

It is not necessary here to enter into any debate to show that these contentions and suggestions can be contested. It has, for instance, been argued that the presuppositions and character of science have tended to be materialistic and mechanistic and that they can be and need to be rejected. It has also been argued that the growth of wisdom and changes in the human nature cannot be brought about merely by ordinary kind of education and training or by changes in structural or material conditions of mankind, that deeper psychological methods will be required, and that, in the ultimate analysis, human nature can be changed only by the uncovering of moral and spiritual force inherent in the depths of human personality.

IV

This brings us sharply to the theme which has recently come to be discussed prominently, the theme of science and spirituality. This theme is quite complex and we do not have the space to discuss it even briefly. We may, therefore, limit ourselves only to an outline statement of only two or three aspects.

First of all, we may consider the relationship between science and materialism. It is true that the first tendencies of science have been materialistic; scientific explanations of the universe were for a long time mechanistic, which laid emphasis on inexorable and rigid laws, leaving no room for freedom or intelligent purpose; and the indubitable triumphs of science have been confined to the knowledge of the physical universe and the body and the physical life. But, fundamentally, this materialism has been an expression of the mind turning its gaze upon its vital and physical frame and environment to know and conquer and dominate Life and Matter. From the point of view of advancing knowledge, there was a need to know the processes of Life and Matter so that they can rightly be transcended. It may even be said that the perfection of the physical sciences was a prior necessity and had to be the first field for the training of the mind of man in his new endeavour to know Nature and possess his world.

If modern Materialism, it may be urged, were simply an unintelligent acquiescence in the material life, the advance might be indefinitely delayed. But we find that the latest trends are highly significant of a freer future. For as the outposts of scientific knowledge come more and more to be set on the

borders that divide the material from the immaterial, so also the highest achievements of practical science are those which tend to simplify and reduce to the vanishing-point the machinery by which the greater effects are produced. Wireless telegraphy is a signal for a new orientation, since the sensible physical means for the intermediate transmission of the physical force is removed, preserving it only at the points of impulsion and reception. It is also being increasingly acknowledged that materialism can be maintained only by ignoring or explaining away a vast field of evidence and experience which contradicts it. The arbitrariness of the materialistic premises is also being admitted in disguised or explicit forms. At one time it was confidently asserted that the physical senses are our sole means of knowledge and that reason, therefore, cannot escape beyond their domain. But today it is being acknowledged more and more widely that physical senses cannot give any disproof of anything that may be lying beyond their domain, if any, and that therefore there is no warrant to assert that physical senses are the only means of knowledge. In other words, physical senses cannot find any justification for the universal sweep contained in the orthodox premises of materialism. There is also today an overwhelming view among philosophers of science

that the function of science is to describe the processes of Nature and not to venture on what may or may not be lying behind the observable and measurable processes. Science, it has been urged, is precluded from making metaphysical or ontological affirmations or negations. It is even being maintained by many, if not most, that the so-called metaphysical statements of materialism or idealism or of any other school of thought are literally non-sensical.

Even in the domain of explanations of processes of Nature, the latest trends show the loosening of the orthodox rigidity. The old insistence on law is being supplemented by the perception of chance at work, particularly in those aspects of the phenomena where there are undeniable but unaccountable freak and fantasy. Even the concept of law has undergone a radical change. It has been admitted that laws do not describe any inevitable or necessary connections between events or phenomena, but only repetitions of the same rhythms of action, which begin at random by a general chance.  It is increasingly acknowledged that a theory of mechanical Necessity by itself does not elucidate the free play of the endless unaccountable variations which are visible in the evolution.

The attempt to explain phenomena is reaching

now a breaking-point; the rigid insistence on finding material explanations of phenomena is becoming more and more difficult to sustain. Even in regard to the development of the tree out of a seed, there is the difficulty of discovering how the life and form of the tree come to be implied in the substance or energy of the seed. Again, when it is asserted that genes and chromosomes explain hereditary transmissions, not only of physical but of psychological variations, the question as to how psychological variations can be contained and transmitted in the inconscient material vehicle remains an unanswered mystery. Or while it is being expounded, as a cogent account of Nature-process, that a play of electrons, of atoms and their resultant molecules, cells, glands, chemical secretions, and physiological processes manages by their activity on the nerves and brain of a Shakespeare or a Plato to produce a Hamlet or a Symposium or a Republic, we fail to discover or appreciate how such material movements could have composed these highest points of thought and literature. It is becoming increasingly clear that the formulae of Science are formulae of a Cosmic Magician, which can explain nothing or everything; and in that situation, the idea of explanation itself is undergoing at present a severe critical examination. Is it not enough, it is being asked, that processes are

described? Is there any justifiable meaning in seeking explanations?

What is the net effect of all this for materialism? The answer is complex. The orthodox theory of mechanistic materialism has been overpassed. The idea of causal necessity that had denied freedom in the universe has ceased to dominate the realm of science. Materialism as an ontological theory is no more in the field; the last fort of materialism as an ontological theory and as a sociological theory was Marxism ─ and that, too, has now received a serious blow. And yet, all this has not amounted to the denial of materialism. Materialism is still lingering in subtle forms. While Matter is no more placed as the ultimate reality, there have emerged formidable methodologies of analysis or empiricism which do away with any conception of ultimate reality, thus preventing the formulation of any possible theory of Spirit as an alternative to crumbling theory or theories of materialism. At the same time, the climate has greatly changed. Science has become less rigid, and it is unable to reject a priori any claim of supra-physical experience. This does not mean that Science has come to accept the realm of supra-physical experience; but when pressed to do so, it does not deny it outright. It stands thus in a middle position, and from there, it is able to throw the ball

in the court of the advocates of the supra-physical and the spiritual with a demand to come up with clinching evidence. This is where the conflict between science and spirituality stands today.

In the meantime, several theories are emerging which tend to weaken the sting of materialism or the outlook that is still fixed on Matter with some kind of exclusive concentration. First, both physics and biology seem to concede that while it is not their business to come up with any ultimate or final explanation of the universe, there seems to be a great deal even in the processes of the universe which are mysterious and in regard to which not any laws but some kind of magical chance could be the only possible answer. But if theory of chance is pressed far enough, it becomes clear that in its very nature it can be put forward not as an inevitable or clinching theory but only as a possible plausible theory. This clearly opens up the possibility of other alternative theories and gives room for the consideration of those theories which are based upon experiences of the supra-physical or spiritual realities. We may also observe that in the field of biology, while the Darwinian theory of evolution by random chance, natural selection, struggle for existence and survival of the fittest is still surviving, powerful trends have emerged to challenge it through such theories as

those of vitalism of Bergson, emergent evolution of Alexander, holism of Smutts, ingressive idealism of Whitehead, and spiritual evolution of Teillard de Chardin. In India, Sri Aurobindo’s theory of supramental evolution is a formidable answer to Darwinism and to materialism in general.

A major difficulty involved in a possible dialogue between science and spirituality lies in the insistence laid by physical sciences on the application of their methods on all sciences, can be overcome, if we accept that the criterion that all truths, supra-physical and physical must be founded on experiment,─ even when the subject matters are not physical in character. The scientific method is so conceived that no evidence could be accepted of a fact unless it is objective and physical in character; even if the fact be very apparently supra-physical, this method refuses to accept it as such unless it is totally unexplainable by any other imaginable hypothesis or conceivable conjecture. But it should be evident that this demand for physical valid proof of a supra-physical fact is irrational and illogical. For the method of knowledge should be appropriate to the object of knowledge. If the nature of the object is itself supra­physical, would it be reasonable to demand that it should be physical and should be scrutinisable by means of physical senses? The

occult, psychic and spiritual sciences have developed various kinds of evidence of the existence of other planes of being and communication with them. They include objectivisation to the outer sense, subtle-sense contacts, mind contacts, life contacts, contacts through the subliminal in special states of consciousness exceeding our ordinary range. It is normally argued that subjective experience or subtle-sense images can easily be deceptive, since we have no recognised method or standard of verification and a too great tendency to admit the extraordinary and miraculous or supra-natural at its face value or on the ground of belief. This argument has a great force, and it may be conceded that belief by itself is not evidence of reality, and that it must base itself on something more valid before one can accept it. All truth, supra­physical or physical, must be founded not on mental belief alone, but on experience, ─ but in each case experience must be of the kind, physical, occult or spiritual, which is appropriate to the order of truths into which we are empowered to enter; their validity and significance must be scrutinised, but according to their own law and by a consciousness which can enter into them and not according to the law of another domain. In any field of experience, error is not the prerogative of the inner subjective or

occult parts of us; even where physical and subjective methods are employed, there is room for error. Mere liability to error cannot be a reason for ignoring a important domain of experience. As in physical sciences, so in the supra-physical sciences, it is a reason for scrutinising it and finding out its own true standards and its characteristic appropriate and valid means of verification. It is important to observe that the very basis of our objective experience is our subjective being; hence it is not probable that only its physical objectivisations are true and the rest unreliable. The supra-physical consciousness, when rightly interrogated, is a witness to truth and its testimony is confirmed again and again even in the physical and objective field; that testimony cannot, then, be disregarded when it calls our attention to things within us or to things that belong to planes or worlds of a supra-physical experience.

Consciousness is the great underlying fact, the universal witness for whom the world is a field. To that witness, the worlds and their objects appeal for their reality and for the one world or the many, for the physical equally with the supra-physical, we have no other evidence that they exist. In the development of the western thought, two contemporary movements have brought out forcefully the

significance of consciousness and subjective experience, namely, phenomenology and existentialism. Unfortunately, they are still circumscribed within a narrow field of subjective experience, and their data have not been wide enough so as to constitute a science of consciousness which can be placed at the same level as the sciences of the physical universe. The question is whether there is or there can be a science of supra-physical data, the scientific character of which is as great as that of the sciences of the physical data. Often we seem to be hesitant to answer this question, and often our claim for spiritual knowledge and its validity is sought to be authenticated on the basis of only a few examples of intuitions, divinations, inspirations, or random but radical experiences of the soul and the spirit. It does not occur to us that Indian culture has developed over millennia a multi-sided science through the pursuit of which faculties which lie above the ranges of physical senses and rational intelligence can be developed. This science has developed assured methods resulting from the principles, powers and processes that govern experiences and realisation of the highest possible objects of knowledge. This science is, what Swami Vivekananda called, science par-excellence. This is Indian yoga, developed and matured by Rishis and yogins of the Veda and the

Upanishads and still further perfected in an unbroken chain throughout the history of India right up to our own times. This yoga has been looked upon as practical psychology and yogic methods have something of the same relation to the customary psychological workings of man as has the scientific handling of the natural force of electricity or of steam to the normal operations of steam and of electricity. And they, too, are formed upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiment, practical analysis and constant result. Indeed, yoga is a science ─ an intuitive science ─ which deals with the ranges of psychological and spiritual being and discovers greater secrets of physical, psycho-physical and other higher worlds. As in the physical sciences, so in yoga, the object is an assured method of personal discovery or living repetition and possession of past discovery and a working out of all the things found.

Spirituality is thus not a matter merely of sporadic or occasional experience, but a matter of authentic possession of knowledge and effective power of realisation and action. It is on the basis of this science that we can bridge the gulf that seems to be existing between science and spirituality. It is on the basis of the yogic knowledge that one can confidently hope to seek enlargement of physical

sciences and also to develop the required power of transformation of human limitations, human passions, human ignorance and all the frailties which are found in human nature. The dreams of science can came true, the developments of science can be guided properly, the evil uses to which the scientific knowledge normally becomes subject in its application can also be prevented or cured, provided that humanity consents to undertake a great effort that yoga demands. Indeed, mere ethical control, rational control or social control are not enough; even religious piety and religious life of ritualistic worship is not enough; spirituality transcends the limitations of ethics and religion and opens our mind and heart and our total being to the light and power by the infusion of which human nature can begin to be changed, converted and transformed. Science has so far produced its own effects on society, the time has come now when society needs to awaken and produce effects on science and technology.

In order, however, that the thesis presented here can attain a greater convincingness, we need to indicate what have been the main lines of development of yoga from the earliest stages to the present day and to lay down with scientific rigour the main contents of the knowledge that Yoga provides to us. This would mean that we should undertake a

laborious task of writing a universal history of yoga, eastern and western, a task that would be truly gigantic. But it can be said that the latest trends in yoga have been so radical that in the new yoga of Sri Aurobindo, which has come to be called Integral Yoga, we find the proposal of the inevitability of the manifestation of the Supramental Spirit in Matter. A close study of the Integral Yoga will show how confident humankind can be of finding a true solution, not only of the conflict between Science and Spirituality, but also of the conflicts in other fields which constitute the contemporary crisis of humanity as a whole.

To describe the processes and results of the Integral Yoga would mean writing a huge volume, but it would be enough, if what is written here can serve as an invitation for an ardent seeker of today to study the new and unprecedented theme of Integral Yoga.

“The individual is indeed the key of the evolutionary movement; for it is the individual who finds himself, who becomes conscious of the Reality. The movement of the collectivity is a largely subconscious mass movement; it has to formulate and express itself through the individuals to become conscious: its general mass consciousness is always less evolved than the consciousness of its most developed individuals, and it progresses in so far as it accepts their impress or develops what they develop. The individual does not owe his ultimate allegiance either to the State which is a machine or to the community which is a part of life and not the whole of life: his allegiance must be to the Truth, the Self, the Spirit, the Divine which is in him and in all…”

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p.1086-87