Crisis of Capitalism, Socialism and Sri Aurobindo (3)

• 1. India is not to follow the west – Sri Aurobindo ;
• 2. Sri Aurobindo and Capitalism ;
• 3. Crisis of Capitalism, Socialism and Sri Aurobindo

1. Sri Aurobindo, India’s seer, sage and saint, was in line with the Great Teachers of the world who have illumined the pages of spiritual history of mankind since time immemorial. Fate seems to have marked him out for the high and noble calling of being the guide and teacher of humanity in general and his fellowmen in particular in their heaven-ward ascent. Sri Aurobindo represents what India stands for.
2. One westerner who has read Sri Aurobindo says of him thus: “Make Sri Aurobindo a compulsory part of education in India ! Without Sri Aurobindo, India is speechless and defenseless in the comity of nations for what this country is doing today in the eyes of the western world. In spiritual context, no soul – awakened one or not so awakened – is higher than the other. In the 21st century, without Sri Aurobindo …. India has no future !”
3. Unfortunately, we rate our standing with the western eye. Here is another westerner who has read his “Life Divine” and expresses his amazement at what Sri Aurobindo was, and puts him alongside the great human mind – Albert Einstein – in these words: “Albert Einstein of human and cosmic consciousness ! Sri Aurobindo, a contemporary of Sage Gandhi, helped to compliment Gandhi’s works and message to India and the World. Whilst Sri Gandhi preached non-violence and world peace, Sri Aurobindo also left his philosophy to serve humanity evolution. If Martin Buber were alive, I would recommend him to read it in addition to his own “I and Thou”. I am indeed humbled by my rating. I can only say it is meant for sharing with patrons how dearly I treasure it, the rating is not meant to rate the sage Sri Aurobindo and his “Life Divine” — for example, how does an elementary student rate Einstein’s works? Starting from the very first page, I wonder how the written meta-materials could have originated from a homo sapiens mind. …. Occasionally he quotes, he mentions Names, it is not an extension of any sacred texts, be it Hinduism or others; it is not a set of spiritual practice based on mystical symbolism e.g. Kabbalah. They are simply words emancipating from the Author, like crystal clear waters flowing naturally in a steady moving stream, with calmness, serenity and vitality, glistening with cosmic light of jnana. …. It is not an exaggeration if it takes you a lifetime to read.” 
4. Today India is on the drive of Capitalism with full speed. Do we get any guidance from Sri Aurobindo on this Capitalism and on the concerns it raises and the anxieties it causes to the human society?
5. Sri Aurobindo, the great sage, writing in the dominant materialist age, takes mankind to mystic queries about life and death and resolves them with penetrating depth of mind that human can ever conceive. But he does not limit himself to the “other worldliness”, as Yogis commonly do. He delves with an equal depth into the vital issues of human society that have been agitating human mind in our own times and the struggle between Capital and Labor and an outcome that this struggle would produce.
6. He says that Socialism is not an accident of history. He foresees an inevitability of its appearance on the world stage in the way of Nature’s working through convulsions and violence as nothing but an unfolding and ripening into fullness of the self-consciousness of social being.
7. He cautions mankind that you cannot stop its appearance forever – it is inevitable; but you can veto this Nature’s way of working through social convulsions by willingly choosing its appearance in a different form – the form of free groupings of peoples in accord with their race and culture for their spiritual and material progress, and without any mutual incompatibilities.
8. Such a form of free groupings of peoples is an ideal of human unity – ideal within the nation states and ideal within an eventual world state, as and when it takes place in the evolutionary course of social being. Let us quote him.
9. We quote Sri Aurobindo from his book “Ideal of Human Unity” on pages 428-29 and 463-502 where he says that if the mechanical or state principle is followed by humanity (that is, if the inner spiritual principle is not followed by them) for the unification of humanity, then, the great struggle between Capital and Labor might become rapidly world-wide; that it would precipitate the inevitable step (of forcibly coming into being of Socialism by violence) or present the crisis, which would bring about the transformation of nation states into the world state of a socialist kind; that the socialistic, scientific, humanitarian thinkers were able to detect the trend of such tendencies and to dream of nation states transforming into a socialistic world state; that such speculation (by those thinkers) may seem chimerical and utopian but in reality it is nothing of the kind; and, that in essence (but not necessarily in form) such results are not only the logical outcome, but the inevitable practical last end of the incipient urge towards human unity. 
10. Sri Aurobindo says: “In almost all current ideas of the first step towards international organisation, it is taken for granted that the nations will continue to enjoy their separate existence and liberties and leave only to international action the prevention of war, the regulation of dangerous disputes, …
11. “It is impossible that the development should stop there; … Science, thought and religion, the three great forces which in modern times tend increasingly to override national distinctions and point the race towards unity of life and spirit, would become more impatient of national barriers, hostilities and divisions and their powerful influence to the change.”
12. (We may be allowed to interject here a note in between these quotes. What a sight of Sri Aurobindo into the future! “religion, thought, science – the three great forces”! “religion, thought, science – the three great forces working towards the unification of mankind in the world state”!! “The force of religion” – the world Ummah of Islamic religion under one Caliph; Daesh or ISI ; terrorist organizations working around the world; Christian religion working around the world for conversion and a world state of Christians. !! “The force of thought” – United Nations Organization as a seed of world state; democratic world movements like open society, world-wide human rights; communist international, communist revolutionary movements in different countries around the world, including Naxalite movement in India. !! “The force of science” – world-wide internet grid; GPS, YouTube; Facebook breaking national barriers; atom bombs, missiles breaking national boundaries; world-wide integrated communication and transport working for unification of mankind. !!)
13. The quote from Sri Aurobindo continues – “The great struggle between Capital and Labor might become rapidly world-wide, arrive at such an international organisation as would precipitate the inevitable step or even present the actual crisis which would bring about the transformation. 
14. “Already there are at work not only ideas but forces, all the more powerful for being forces of the future and not established powers of the present, which may succeed in subordinating nationalism to themselves far earlier than we can at present conceive. …
15. “If the principle of World-state is carried to its logical and to its extreme consequences, the result will be a process analogous to …. The spirit of the centralisation will be a strong unitarian idea and the principle of uniformity enforced for the greatest practical convenience and the result a rationalised mechanism of human life and activities throughout the world with justice, universal well-being, economy of effort and scientific efficiency as its principle objects. ….
16. “The commercial interests of humanity at large would be given the first place; the independent proclivities and commercial ambitions or jealousies of this or that nation would be compelled to subordinate themselves to the human good.
17. “The ideal of mutual exploitation would be replaced by the ideal of a fit and proper share in the united economic life of the race….
18. “This then  is the extreme possible form of a World State, the form dreamed of by the socialistic, scientific, humanitarian thinkers who represent the modern mind at its highest point of self-consciousness and are therefore able to detect the trend of its tendencies, though to the half-rationalised mind of the ordinary man whose view does not go beyond the day and its immediate morrow, their speculations may seem to be chimerical and utopian.
19. “In reality they are nothing of the kind; in their essence, not necessarily in their form, they are, as we have seen, not only the logical outcome, but the inevitable practical last end of the incipient urge towards human unity, if it is pursued by a principle of mechanical unification, — that is to say, by the principle of the State.
20. “It is for this reason that we have found it necessary to show the operative principles and necessities which have underlain the growth of the unified and finally socialistic nation-State, in order to see how the same movement in international unification must lead to the same results by an analogous necessity of development.
21. “The State principle leads necessarily to uniformity, regulation, mechanisation; its inevitable end is socialism.
22. “There is nothing fortuitous, no room for chance in political and social development, and the emergence of socialism was no accident or a thing that might or might not have been, but the inevitable result contained in the very seed of the State idea. …..
23. “The races of Asia, even the most organised, have always been peoples rather than nations in the modern sense. ……..
24. “Which then of these two major possibilities would be preferable?
25. “To answer that question we have to ask ourselves, what would be the account of gain and loss for the life of the human race which would result from the creation of a unified World-State. ……
26. “This result can only be avoided if an opposite force interposes and puts in its veto, as happened in Asia where the State idea, although strongly affirmed within its limits, could never go in its realisation beyond a certain point, because the fundamental principle of the national life was opposed to its full intolerant development. ….
27. “The World-State must now either be brought about by a mutual understanding or by the force of circumstances and a series of new and disastrous shocks…….
28. “A new order is demanded by the new conditions and, so long as it is not created, there will be a transitional era of continued trouble or recurrent disorders, inevitable crises through which Nature will effect in her own violent way the working out of the necessity which she has evolved.
29. “There may be in the process a maximum of loss and suffering through the clash of national and imperial egoisms or else a minimum, if reason and goodwill prevail.
30. “To that reason two alternative possibilities and therefore two ideals present themselves, a World-State founded upon the principle of centralisation and uniformity, a mechanical and formal unity, or a world-union founded upon the principle of liberty and variation in a free and intelligent unity.
31. “These two ideals and possibilities we have successively to consider…”
32. On pages 428-29 of this book, Sri Aurobindo says: “In principle, then, the ideal unification of mankind would be a system in which, as a first rule of common and harmonious life, the human peoples would be allowed to form their own groupings according to their natural divisions of locality, race, culture, economic convenience and not according to the more violent accidents of history …
33. “The first principle of human unity, groupings being necessary, should be a system of free and natural groupings which would leave no room for internal discord, mutual incompatibilities and repression and revolt as between race and race or people and people.”
34. We ask: can India walk on this path? Will India walk on this path? Can India take the lead in this matter to show a path to the rest of the world?
35. Will this ideal of human unity ever be inscribed on the banner of Indian politics?
36. Only the future will be able to answer these questions but the words of Sri Aurobindo can be overlooked by us at our own peril – because a Yogi in him tells us that Nature is free to work in its own way to meet the demand of time.