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A Global Humanity
A GLOBAL view of humanity is becoming more and more insistent, unavoidable and inevitable. It is being forced upon the normal consciousness of mankind so that the ordinary life itself has to be conducted and lived according to the demands of that view. It is this that humanity is one, that mankind as a whole is a single organism. Even like an individual being, the collective being too is a unit, a close knit living unit. As the individual has different parts and limbs, organs and systems, so is humanity composed of nations and races, cultures and religions. And as the parts of the "body natural" do not exist by themselves, independently of one another, each for its own sake without regard for others, so do the various human aggregates that form the "body politic" live and move intimately together, for a common purpose in a united functioning. There is an aim, a goal to which' humanity moves in obedience to a cosmic purpose, in accordance with a cosmic law. The principle of evolution has given an expression of formula to this cosmic law and purpose, although it is more or less an outward expression and in reference to an outward phenomenon. The different limbs of an organism are held together and they work together harmoniously. The whole world, as we are finding it today, is indissolubly one. There is an inter. relation and interaction that compel them all to stand together or fall together. This is, however, a static unity and harmony, a harmony that is in the being, in essence. For in the outward working there is always a play of discord – quarrels and rivalries, competition and conflict, struggle and Page – 232 battle. Indeed this seems to be the rule, the other seems more an ideal than a fact. The unity that is found actually is rather the unity of a locked fight. Within the individual the same thing is there. There is a maladjustment among the organs and limbs, not only physically but also psychologically. But all the same beyond and beside this play of discord there is an inherent and overruling unity and harmony which creates the personality or individuality of the human person. The characteristic of the human person is his forward-looking gaze-he has a purpose in life. This is exactly the dynamic element, the something more that is needed for the fulfilment of the organic unity. This element is what we know as the principle of progress which is the psychological name for evolution. In other words, there is in man and in the world not only a static unity and harmony in essence, but a progressive unity and harmony in manifestation. The individual moves towards the health and growth of the body and mind and the spirit. If one life is not sufficient for the purpose, as some seers declare, several lives are at the disposal of the individual to achieve it. In what sense can the same or something similar be said of the collective or group life? There is the view, an old-world view, of eternal recurrence. That is to say, creation is ever the same; it goes through a cycle of changes, but the cycles repeat ad infinitum. There is no progress, no forward movement towards a more and more perfection. Indeed, the cycle of creation is a closed circle. The idea of progress was very much in vogue at one time. It was born under the auspices of Romantic Idealism; it was fostered and strengthened by youthful, Science in the first enthusiasm of her early discoveries, especially that of the fact of biological evolution. There has, however, been a setback since, when it was found that the original picture of evolution – the emergence and growth of species in the course of a few thousand years is far from being true, that evolution means not thousands but millions of years. And when archaeologists discovered that men could build hygienic cities, run democratic states, discuss and argue acutely on recondite problems of life and philosophy, women knew the use of ornaments and jewels of consummate beauty and craftsmanship in epochs when they were expected to be no more than wild denizens of the cave Page -233 or the forest, the belief in human progress, at least along a steady straight line, was very much shaken. Yet an imperious necessity of the idea, almost as an inevitable ingredient of human consciousness, always exists and constantly makes its presence felt. If recurrence is the law of creation, this idea with its will to fruition is also a recurrent phenomenon. A modern form of it has been given a very dynamic drive in the Marxian gospel. A socio-economic progress, however, is and can be only a part, in fact, a result of a wider and deeper progress. We say then that the fraternity and unity of mankind has been a constant dream and aspiration, a settled ideal. And in the circumstances of today it is becoming more and mace evident that the idea is a secret fact of existence and that there is an overwhelming urge in Nature to bring it out and establish it as a manifest and concrete reality. If we review the history of mankind once again, not measuring it by its centuries but by its millenniums, not by its apparent habits and outward forms but by inner forces and attitudes, we shall discover that it is the story of the unfoldment of a collective fulfilment, of an ascension in grades of consciousness towards an ever higher and vaster truth and reality. Viewed as a progressive growth of consciousness and transformation of nature, man's advance has been marked out in a few very definite stages. The first was the purely animal man – Pasu – when man lived merely as a physical being, concerned solely about his body. Then came the Pisacha, the man of vital urges in their crudest form, the man of ignorant passions and dark instincts who has been imaged in the popular mind as the ghoul. At the next stage, with a further release of the consciousness, when the larger vital impulses come into play man becomes the Rakshasa, the demon. Egoistic hunger for possession, enjoyment, enlarged and increased appetite are his characteristics. Next came the Asura, the Titan, the egoistic mental man in his earlier avatar seeking to emerge out of the purely vital nature. Ambition and pride are his guiding spirit. Prometheus is his prototype. There are still two higher types which have been established in the human consciousness and in the world atmosphere as dynamic ideals, if not as common concrete facts of the material Page -234 world. The first is the ethical man, who seeks to govern his life according to some principles of light and purity, such, for example, as unselfishness, altruism, chivalry, self-abnegation, rectitude, truthfulness etc. He is the Sattwic man, as known in India. There is also a still higher category, where consciousness endeavours to go beyond mind, enters into the consciousness of the Spirit; then we have the spiritual man, the saint and the sage. Beyond lie the supra-mental domains formed of the consciousness of the gods. Man, individually and collectively, has passed and is passing through these steps of evolution. The last one is his goal at the present stage. To be a saint, seer or sage is not enough for man. He must be a god. Indeed when he has succeeded to be a god then only would it be possible for him to become what a saint or a seer or sage has to be in order to fulfil himself totally and integrally. The human race as a whole is progressing along the same line towards the same consummation. That is the secret purpose and end of Nature, to evolve a growing developing material form housing, embodying higher and wider ranges of consciousness, integrating all elements into a more and more intimate and inviolable unity and harmony. ' This progress towards ever higher and wider consciousness means also in man's social or collective life the formation of larger and larger aggregates, unification of mankind in ever widening groups. From man the solitary animal, through the family, the clan, the tribe to the nation the race has been increasing the circle of its sympathy and kinship. The birth of the modern nation out of regional and local groupings is a triumph of the emerging consciousness in humanity pointing to another signal and supreme triumph, the emergence of the global sense hi man that is to bind humanity as a single indissoluble indivisible unity in actual life. The aggregates are meant to express, apart from the growing unity, a diversity of achievements in the collective consciousness marking and enriching that unity. The highest, the largest aggregate attained at the present moment is as I have said, that of the nation, the lower and lesser aggregates have been subsumed under it. The principle of integration in its. graded course is precisely this that the new unity absorbs the Page -235 previous lesser units as its components, some find their place in it in a transmuted form and function – those that are of use in the new disposition – others that had truth only for the past disappear or remain as vestiges of an extinct reality. The clan and the tribe have practically disappeared as living realities; the family has been maintaining itself still as a functioning unit, but it has considerably changed its features and in recent times it has been undergoing revolutionary transmutations. The rigours of the system prevailing in the old world have all but gone, they have been reduced to the minimum; the system has become more or less a mere outline, the substance and the details have become very vague and fluid. It may come out with quite a new connotation in the not very distant future. The nation, then, as the living unit of aggregation today, is on the move again towards a yet more enlarged aggregate. Empire was a blind and violent attempt at this greater aggregation. The Commonwealth of more recent times was a conscious, deliberate and healthier endeavour towards the same goal. The various trials with regard to a league of nations is also a conscious and deliberate, although somewhat groping experiment in the same line. Man's attempt to surpass himself and establish a superhuman race is a conscious and deliberate process and the attempt can be successful only through such an willed discipline, sÄdhanÄ. In the same way, a supranational human unity will be possible as a parallel eventuality to the same process of individual discipline. Humanity is evolving and developing the various groupings to manifest fundamental aspects of its cosmic person. Ancient Egypt, for example, brought us in contact with an occult world and a subliminal consciousness. We know also of the nature of the Hebraic genius, the moral fervour, the serious, almost grim spirit of Righteousness that formed and even now forms a major strain in the European or Christian culture and civilisation. The famous "sweetness and light" of the Hellenic mind supplied the other strain. The Roman genius for law and government is a well-known commonplace of history. Well-known also India's spirituality. All these modes of consciousness are elements – forces, energies and personalities – that build up the godhead of humanity. Peoples and races in Page -236 the past were the scattered limbs of the godhead-scattered and isolated from one another, because of the original unconsciousness and sharp egocentricity out of which Nature started its course of evolution. The disjecta membra are being collected together by a growing consciousness. Such then is the destiny of man and mankind-man to rise to higher heights of consciousness beyond mental reason that are not governed by the principle of division, separation, antithesis but by the principle of unity, identity, mutuality and totality. In other words, he will take his seat in the status of his soul, his inner and inmost being, his divine personality where he is one with all beings and with the world. This is a rare and difficult realisation for man as he is today, but tomorrow it will be his normal nature. The individual will live in his total being and therefore in and through other individuals; as a consequence the nature too in each will undergo a divine transmutation, a marvellous sea-change. Humanity as a race will then present the figure of a homogeneous unit – it will be a unity of many diversified elements, not simply, however, a composition of discrete individuals, but of varied aggregations of individuals – even as the body is not merely composed of cells, but also these cells are collected in aggregates forming various limbs and systems, each again with its own identity and function. Indeed, the cosmic or global humanity is very likely to be pyramidal in structure-not a flat and level construction. There will be an overall harmony and integration containing a rich variety of gradations – gradations of consciousness, as even now there are: only the whole will be more luminous, that is to say, more. conscious and more concordant; for at the top, on the higher levels, new lights will show themselves and men embodying those lights. They will radiate and spread out, infiltrate into the lower ranges something of their enlightenment and harmony and happiness which will bring about a global purification and a new dispensation; even the material world, the vegetable and mineral domains too may be taken up into this luminous consummation and earth become the Garden of Eden that it once was, suffused with a new glory. Page-237
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