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World
War III
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Two stupendous and world-devastating wars have swept over
the globe and have been accompanied or followed by revolutions
with far-reaching consequences which have altered the
political map of the earth and the international balance,
the once fairly stable equilibrium of five continents,
and changed the whole future. A third still more disastrous
war with a prospect of the use of weapons and other scientific
means of destruction far more fatal and of wider reach
than any ever yet invented, weapons whose far-spread use
might bring down civilisation with a crash and whose effects
might tend towards something like extermination on a large
scale, looms in prospect; the constant apprehension of
it weighs upon the mind of the nations and stimulates
them towards further preparations for war and creates
an atmosphere of prolonged antagonism, if not yet of conflict,
extending to what is called “cold war” even
in times of peace. But the two wars that have come and
gone have not prevented the formation of the first and
second considerable efforts towards the beginning of an
attempt at union and the practical formation of a concrete
body, an organised instrument with that object: rather
they have caused and hastened this new creation. The League
of Nations came into being as a direct consequence of
the first war, the U.N.O. similarly as a consequence of
the second world-wide conflict. If the third war which
is regarded by many if not by most as inevitable does
come, it is likely to precipitate as inevitably a further
step and perhaps the final outcome of this great world-endeavour.
Nature uses such means, apparently opposed and dangerous
to her intended purpose, to bring about the fruition of
that purpose. As in the practice of the spiritual science
and art of Yoga one has to raise up
the psychological possibilities which are there in the
nature and stand in the way of its spiritual perfection
and fulfilment so as to eliminate them, even, it may be,
the sleeping possibilities which might arise in future
to break the work that has been done, so too Nature acts
with the world-forces that meet her on her way, not only
calling up those which will assist her but raising too,
so as to finish with them, those that she knows to be
the normal or even the unavoidable obstacles which cannot
but start up to impede her secret will. This one has often
seen in the history of mankind; one sees it exampled today
with an enormous force commensurable with the magnitude
of the thing that has to be done. But always these resistances
turn out to have assisted by the resistance much more
than they have impeded the intention of the great Creatrix
and her Mover.
....
....The
thesis we have undertaken to establish of the drive of
Nature towards larger agglomerations and the final establishment
of the largest of all and the ultimate union of the world's
peoples still remains unaltered: this is evidently the
line which the future of the human race demands and which
conflicts and perturbations, however immense, may delay,
even as they may modify greatly the forms it now promises
to take, but are not likely to prevent; for a general
destruction would be the only alternative destiny of mankind.
But such a destruction, whatever the catastrophic possibilities
balancing the almost certain beneficial results, hardly
limitable in their extent, of the recent discoveries and
inventions of Science, has every chance of being as chimerical
as any early expectation of final peace and felicity or
a perfected society of the human peoples. We may rely,
if on nothing else, on the evolutionary urge and, if on
no other greater hidden Power, on the manifest working
and drift or intention in the World-Energy we call Nature
to carry mankind at least as far as the necessary next
step to be taken, a self-preserving next step: for the
necessity is there, at least some general recognition
of it has been achieved and of the thing to which it must
eventually lead the idea has been born and the body of
it is already calling for its creation. We have indicated
in this book the conditions, possibilities, forms which
this new creation may take and those which seem to be
most desirable without dogmatising or giving prominence
to personal opinion; an impartial consideration of the
forces that work and the results that are likely to ensue
was the object of this study. The rest will depend on
the intellectual and moral capacity of humanity to carry
out what is evidently now the one thing needful.
We
conclude then that in the conditions of the world at present,
even taking into consideration its most disparaging features
and dangerous possibilities, there is nothing that need
alter the view we have taken of the necessity and inevitability
of some kind of world-union; the drive of Nature, the
compulsion of circumstances and the present and future
need of mankind make it inevitable. The general conclusions
we have arrived at will stand and the consideration of
the modalities and possible forms or lines of alternative
or successive development it may take. The ultimate result
must be the formation of a World-State and the most desirable
form of it would be a federation of free nationalities
in which all subjection or forced inequality and subordination
of one to another would have disappeared and, though some
might preserve a greater natural influence, all would
have an equal status. A confederacy would give the greatest
freedom to the nations constituting the World-State, but
this might give too much room for fissiparous or centrifugal
tendencies to operate; a federal order would then be the
most desirable. All else would be determined by the course
of events and by general agreement or the shape given
by the ideas and necessities that may grow up in the future.
A world-union of this kind would have the greatest chances
of long survival or permanent existence. This is a mutable
world and uncertainties and dangers might assail or trouble
for a time; the formed structure might be subjected to
revolutionary tendencies as new ideas and forces nneir
effect on the general mind of humanity, but the essential
step would have been taken and the future of the race
assured or at least the present era overpassed in which
it is threatened and disturbed by unsolved needs and difficulties,
precarious conditions, immense upheavals, huge and sanguinary
world-wide conflicts and the threat of others to come.
The ideal of human unity would be no longer an unfulfilled
ideal but an accomplished fact and its preservation given
into the charge of the united human peoples. Its future
destiny would lie on the knees of the gods and, if the
gods have a use for the continued existence of the race,
may be left to lie there safe.
-
Sri Aurobindo
—
Complete Chapter —
You
said that if there were a third world war, it would
be the end of the present civilisation. Would the terrestrial
condition be affected favourably by it or adversely?
Listen.
Would you ask whether a fatal illness is favourable to health
or not? It is exactly that. A civilisation, whatever it
may be, is the result of very long efforts to become conscious
of oneself, of Nature, and to master this Nature and draw
the best possible advantage from it. We were saying a while
ago that the training of the physical being consists in
preparing an instrument so that the Divine may manifest
Himself. A civilisation prepares an instrument so that the
Divine may manifest in that instrument. The more slowly,
carefully, minutely the civilisation is worked out, and
succeeds in conquering the laws of Nature, the more favourable
is the instrument to the manifestation of the Divine. That
is why we also have this idea of the prolongation of life,
it is to be able to perfect the instrument so as to manifest
the divine Force which wants to manifest. Otherwise, it
would evidently be much easier, as soon as the body became
a little ill or a little old or incapable of reacting as
it did when young, to do what one does with an old torn
dress—one throws it away and gets another. Unfortunately,
it is not like that. All the fruit of the work, all the
accumulated effort to become conscious is lost. If, for
instance, this civilisation we have built, which in a way
has so considerably mastered the forces of Nature, which
has succeeded in understanding laws of an altogether unique
order and has accumulated so many experiences of all kinds
to reach self-understanding and self-expression, if all
this disappeared, it would be necessary, naturally, to begin
all over again. And then, for a new-born child, how many
years of slow and insipid education are needed for its brain
to be ready to express even a simple general idea, for its
movements to be conscious instead of being absolutely unconscious,
how many years! For a civilisation, how many years would
be necessary simply to get back all that is lost? There
have been many civilisations on the earth, there are scientists
trying to rediscover what has been, but nobody can say with
certitude exactly what was there: the major part of these
civilisations is completely lost (I am speaking of civilisations
preceding this one which for us is historical) . Well, if
thousands of years are yet needed to begin another, obviously...In
any case, for our external human consciousness, it is a
loss of time. But we are told that the Work to be done,
the promised Realisation is going to take place now. It
is going to take place now because the framework of this
civilisation seems to be favourable as a platform or a base
for building up. But if this civilisation is destroyed,
upon what are we going to build? First a foundation platform
must be made in order to be able to build. If five or ten
thousand years are still needed to make this platform, this
proves that it is not now that things will be done—they
will be done, that is well understood, they will be done,
but... How many lives have you all had? What do you remember
of your past lives? What is the good of all the efforts
you have made in your past lives to perfect yourselves,
to try to understand yourselves, to master yourselves a
little, simply to make use of the instrument which has been
given to you? What remains to you of all that? Will you
tell me? Who here can tell me that he is consciously profiting
by the experiences of his past lives—unconsciously
there is something which remains but not much—but consciously?...No
one will answer?
No,
precisely, one has the impression that after having lived
so long, one is only beginning to know a very little.
Yes,
exactly, it is just like that. This is because the farther
one goes, the more does one realise that there is everything
to understand and everything to learn. And consequently,
if one has behind him some sixty years, it is nothing. One
would like to have hundreds and hundreds of years before
one to be able to do the work. It is like that, you are
all little children, you see, so the years seem to you long,
because you have not lived much; but you will see, the more
one advances, the more does one realise that there is a
long road in front, long, very long, and one would not like
to have to begin all over again, for it is so much more
time lost.
17
April 1951
- The Mother
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