-016_Panacea Of ^^ISMS^^.htm PANACEA OF "ISMS" COMMUNISM Communism cannot save humanity. For if it means the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, well, a healthy normal society will not bear or tolerate it long—no Dictatorship, whether of one or of many, is likely to endure or bring in the millennium. In that sense communism is only a fascismo of small people fighting against a fascismo of big people. A society is not normally made up of proletarians only: it does not consist merely of lotus-eaters nor does it consist of hewers of wood and drawers of water (peasants and labourers) alone. Even a proletariate society will slowly and inevitably gravitate towards a stratification of its own. In its very b

PART II TOWARDS A NEW SOCIETY THE IDEALS OF HUMAN UNITY The unification of humanity is also a thing decreed. For it is the goal towards which Nature is proceeding slowly but inevitably, bringing into play factors and forces that work out that consummation. Man is a gregarious animal, a social being. He forms groups and collectivities and lives as a member among others with whom he is related and connected in various ways. These groupings are the units round which man's life crystallises and develops, the nuclei of a growing, an increasingly complex and unified organism. The earliest and the most persistent unit is the family: it may be called

APPENDIX SRI AUROBINDO'S VIEWS ON THE SECOND WORLD WAR* You have said that you have begun to doubt whether it was the Mother's War and ask me to make you feel again that it is. I affirm again to you most strongly that this is the Mother's War. You should not think of it as a fight for certain nations against others or even for India. It is a struggle for an ideal that has to establish itself on earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realise itself fully and against a darkness and false-hood that are trying to overwhelm the earth and mankind in the immediate future. It is the forces behind the battle that have to be seen and not this or that superficial ci

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL A leading Nationalist has opined that he does not understand the " slogan " of viewing the nation against a background of internationalism. We can only say that the patriot has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing always like the old guards attached to the old regime who do not see how much water has flown below their feet while they stood gazing at the sky or shut themselves up in their ivory tower. Well, a village headman could in the same way assert that he does not know and cares not to know how to look upon his village against the background of the whole nation: still the village exists only in and through the life of the nation. Even

THREE DEGREES OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION Declaration of Rights is a characteristic modem phenomenon. It is a message of liberty and freedom, no doubt,—of secular liberty and freedom—things not very common in the old world; and yet, at the same time, it is a clarion that calls for and prepares strife and battle. If the conception of Right has sanctified the individual or a unit collectivity, it has also, pari passu, developed a fissiparous tendency in human organization. Society based on or living by the principle of Rights becomes naturally and inevitably a competitive society. Where man is regarded as nothing more— and, of course, nothing less—than a bun

THE BASIC UNITY There is one unity which cannot be denied to India, because Nature has given it and man cannot withdraw or annul it. It is the geographical, the physical unity. It is so clearly and indelibly marked that it has always been looked upon as a definite unit by all outside its boundaries; one may call in question the cultural unity, if one chooses, one may be sceptic about the spiritual unity, but the unity of the body leaps to the eyes, even as the clear contour of a living organism. As we know, however, an individual human frame may contain many personalities, many Jekyls and Hydes may lodge in the same physical tenement, even so, the physical unity that is India m

-001_Author^s Note.htm AUTHORS NOTE All the essays included in this volume were written during the war years (1940-1945). Some of them dealt with situations directly arising out of the war and so they carry certain points of emphasis which are no longer valid, at least to the same extent, under changed circumstances of today. Still they are of interest and may help in some way to formulate one's ideas regarding the future and are therefore reprinted. These are mostly editorial notes and comments contributed to the Advent Acknowledgement is due to All-India Radio, Delhi, from where the first essay, in an abridged form was broadcast on December 4, 1942. 'New World-Conditions' was pu

Published by Sri Aurobindo Circle Bombay First Edition, 1946 All Rights Reserved Imprimerie de Sri Aurobindo Ashra Pondichéry

THE MESSAGE OF THE ATOMIC BOMB The moralist—the Christian moralist particularly—has dubbed the atomic bomb as the Devil's engine; while the practical politician retorts that the accursed machine has cut short the war, saved more lives on the whole and reduced the extent and duration of suffering and agony. In any case the new weapon is so radical and devastating in its effectiveness that even politicians do not seem to be without a qualm and heart-burning, not in the moral but in the physical and nervous sense. The atom bomb is a bombshell not upon your enemies alone, but it is a boomerang likely to turn back upon yourself, upon the whole of humanity and human ci

INDEPENDENCE AND ITS SANCTION Independence is not a gift which one can receive from another, it is a prize that has to be won. In the words of the poet Bhasa, used in respect of empire, we can say also of liberty; Talloke na tu yācyate na tu punardīnāya dīyate it is not a thing to be got for the mere asking, nor is it a thing to be made over to a weakling. The lead Sri Aurobindo gave in this connection has not, sad to say, sufficiently attracted the attention of our people. Indeed what he suggested was exactly, under the circumstances, the best way to acquire the necessary fitness, organised strength, capacity, the might and consequently the r