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I have been asked to send on this occasion of
the fifteenth August a message to the West, but what I have to say
might be delivered equally as a message to the East. It has been
customary to dwell on the division and difference between these two
sections of the human family and even oppose them to each other;
but, for myself I would rather be disposed to dwell on oneness and
unity than on division and difference. East and West have the same
human nature, a common human destiny, the same aspiration after a
greater perfection, the same seeking after something higher than
itself, something towards which inwardly and even outwardly we move.
There has been a tendency in some minds to dwell on the spirituality
or mysticism of the East and the materialism of the West; but the
West has had no less than the East its spiritual seekings and,
though not in such profusion, its saints and sages and mystics, the
East has had its materialistic tendencies, its material splendours,
its similar or identical dealings with life and Matter and the world
in which we live. East and West have always met and mixed more or
less closely, they have powerfully influenced each other and at the
present day are under an increasing compulsion of Nature and Fate to
do so more than ever before.
There is a common hope, a common destiny, both spiritual and
material, for which both are needed as co-workers. It is no longer
towards division and difference that we should turn our minds, but
on unity, union, even oneness necessary for the pursuit and
realisation of a common ideal, the destined goal, the fulfilment
towards which Nature in her beginning obscurely set out and must in
an increasing light of knowledge replacing her first ignorance
constantly persevere.
But what shall be that ideal and that goal? That depends on our
conception of the realities of life and the supreme Reality.
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Here we have to take into account that there has been, not any
absolute difference but an increasing divergence between the
tendencies of the East and the West. The highest truth is truth of
the Spirit; a Spirit supreme above the world and yet immanent in the
world and in all that exists, sustaining and leading all towards
whatever is the aim and goal and the fulfilment of Nature since her
obscure inconscient beginnings through the growth of consciousness
is the one aspect of existence which gives a clue to the secret of
our being and a meaning to the world. The East has always and
increasingly put the highest emphasis on the supreme truth of the
Spirit; it has, even in its extreme philosophies, put the world away
as an illusion and regarded the Spirit as the sole reality. The West
has concentrated more and more increasingly on the world, on the
dealings of mind and life with our material existence, on our
mastery over it, on the perfection of mind and life and some
fulfilment of the human being here: latterly this has gone so far as
the denial of the Spirit and even the enthronement of Matter as the
sole reality. Spiritual perfection as the sole ideal on one side, on
the other, the perfectibility of the race, the perfect society, a
perfect development of the human mind and life and man’s material
existence have become the largest dream of the future. Yet both are
truths and can be regarded as part of the intention of the Spirit in
world-nature; they are not incompatible with each other: rather
their divergence has to be healed and both have to be included and
reconciled in our view of the future.
The Science of the West has discovered evolution as the secret of
life and its process in this material world; but it has laid more
stress on the growth of form and species than on the growth of
consciousness: even, consciousness has been regarded as an incident
and not the whole secret of the meaning of the evolution. An
evolution has been admitted by certain minds in the East, certain
philosophies and Scriptures, but there its sense has been the growth
of the soul through developing or successive forms and many lives of
the individual to its own highest reality. For if there is a
conscious being in the form, that being can hardly be a temporary
phenomenon of consciousness; it must
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be a soul fulfilling itself and this fulfilment can only take place if there is
a return of the soul to earth in many successive lives, in many successive
bodies.
The process of evolution has been the development from and in
inconscient Matter of a subconscient and then a conscious Life, of
conscious mind first in animal life and then fully in conscious and
thinking man, the highest present achievement of evolutionary
Nature. The achievement of mental being is at present her highest
and tends to be regarded as her final work; but it is possible to
conceive a still further step of the evolution: Nature may have in
view beyond the imperfect mind of man a consciousness that passes
out of the mind’s ignorance and possesses truth as its inherent
right and nature. There is a truth-consciousness as it is called in
the Veda, a supermind, as I have termed it, possessing Knowledge,
not having to seek after it and constantly miss it. In one of the
Upanishads a being of knowledge is stated to be the next step above
the mental being; into that the soul has to rise and through it to
attain the perfect bliss of spiritual existence. If that could be
achieved as the next evolutionary step of Nature here, then she
would be fulfilled and we could conceive of the perfection of life
even here, its attainment of a full spiritual living even in this
body or it may be in a perfected body. We could even speak of a
divine life on earth; our human dream of perfectibility would be
accomplished and at the same time the aspiration to a heaven on
earth common to several religions and spiritual seers and thinkers.
The ascent of the human soul to the supreme Spirit is that soul’s
highest aim and necessity, for that is the supreme reality; but
there can be too the descent of the Spirit and its powers into the
world and that would justify the existence of the material world
also, give a meaning, a divine purpose to the creation and solve its
riddle. East and West could be reconciled in the pursuit of the
highest and largest ideal, Spirit embrace Matter and Matter find its
own true reality and the hidden Reality in all things in the Spirit.
11-8-49
Sri Aurobindo
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