By Jerry Alatalo
he focus of this article is to illustrate a sharp contrast between two worldviews – one which exists at present in 2017, most forcefully in America – and that proposed by one of India’s most revered political and spiritual leaders Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950).
Perhaps afterward, men and women will understand a clear choice between these worldviews reveals the potential of changing conditions for humanity on Earth in profoundly positive ways.
(Update – September 2, 2017: The YouTube video below featuring a shocking presentation by former CIA official Kevin Shipp has surpassed 700,000 views, an amazing increase of 412,000 global views in just 72 hours )
Sri Aurobindo wrote and transmitted the following after receiving a request for a message on the day of his 78th birth anniversary being celebrated in New York on August 15, 1949. Remarkably and coincidentally India, along with Pakistan, achieved independence from the British on August 15, 1947. Sri Aurobindo wrote this message shortly after passage through the United States Congress of the National Security Act of 1947, which resulted in establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Whether there was a direct connection between India and Pakistan gaining independence and the push to create the CIA is uncertain, but the historical timing and proximity of the two major world-consequence events leads one to lean towards an explanation that the CIA came to exist in large part as a reaction to those two nations’ becoming independent.
What transpired in 1947 in India, Pakistan and the United States became that era’s foundation-building for later years and history, along with having a direct influence on the process of human evolution up until today. In similar fashion, the choices humanity makes in 2017 creates the foundation and joined consequences of national and international relations for future generations, making the grave nature of choosing wisely fully apparent.
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Sri Aurobindo – August 11, 1949
“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.
“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 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.”
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Recently, former CIA counter-terrorism expert Kevin Shipp gave what could only be described as a jaw-dropping, extremely distressing presentation on the history and current operative state of America’s “shadow government”. Since posted at his colleague and fellow social activist Dane Wigington’s YouTube channel on August 23, 2017, Mr. Shipp’s presentation has compiled views by 288,672 (at the time of this writing on August 31) men and women around the Earth.
During the 1-hour and 7-minute, fast paced presentation, Mr. Shipp brings forward an astounding number of shocking facts of which a large majority of Americans, along with citizens in nations around the world, are (thus far) unfortunately unaware. It is difficult after seeing and hearing what he shows and states – perhaps an impossibility – to reach any conclusion otherwise than the facts/information revealed are of utmost importance, thus necessitating from a moral perspective the widest dissemination.
Without going into any analyses of the excruciating points covered in Mr. Shipp’s devastatingly powerful talk, or repeating the many facts and details he conveys, suffice to say the profoundly serious implications are painfully and clearly self-evident for any rational man or woman who takes in the information. Contrasting the worldview of those who have been or are now involved in America’s shadow government and/or deep state – what Kevin Shipp accurately terms a “Tyranny of Secrecy” – to the worldview put forth by India’s spiritual leader Sri Aurobindo in 1949 results in one’s recognizing an ever-present, challenging and often difficult situation for humanity – of choosing as wisely as possible the historical path forward.
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Up until 1910 in early national struggles for helping his native India to achieve independence, Sri Aurobindo was an active participant in political affairs and efforts toward that precise end. He became sentenced to a prison term by British authorities, and it was in prison where he experienced personal, mystical events resulting in his turning from political to spiritual matters for the remaining 40 years of his life. He wrote the following during time spent in early efforts focused on India’s attainment of national sovereignty:
“For in truth, as our old thinkers used always to insist, the whole universe stands; truth is the root and condition of life and to believe in a lie, to live a lie, is to deliver oneself to disease and death. The belief that a subject nation can acquiesce in subjection and yet make true and vital progress, growing to strength in its chains. is a lie”.
He turned from political matters in 1910, 37 years before India became a free nation, moving on toward many years of spiritual studies and prolific levels of philosophical writing, until his passing in 1950 at the age of 79. In one of his many and voluminous writings he touched upon the necessity for any spiritual seeker to develop sincerity:
“That is why we must insist so much on sincerity in the yoga – and that means to have all the being consciously turned toward the one truth, the one divine. But that for human nature is one of the most difficult of tasks, much more difficult than a rigid asceticism or a fervent piety. Religion itself does not give this complete harmonized sincerity – it is only the psychic being and the one-souled spiritual aspiration that can give it”.
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One can only imagine what Sri Aurobindo would say were he alive now in 2017, and in particular after assessing the current state of human affairs as described by Kevin Shipp and others. Of course such a wish represents something outside the realm of possibility, yet his books are available, providing valuable philosophical and spiritual insights and guidance.
Sri Aurobindo would advise this generation in 2017 to make wise evolutionary decisions.
(Thank you to Dane Wigington at YouTube)
or whatever historical, cultural, social, religious, or other reasons, discussions about the core elements found in scriptural writings of the world’s major traditions rarely take place, in particular as those extremely profound teachings relate to, and provide real answers for, today’s problematic situations of war, income inequality and greed, indifference to the suffering of innocent others, non-concern for the Earth’s environment, and so on.
ne wonders what effects on United Nations Security Council members, national and state leaders listening to music before starting their meetings would create – such as from the blind genius Stevie Wonder. The theory accepted by most in the healthcare field about blind people is that, because of their inability to see, other available abilities naturally become much more focused, sharpened and developed to compensate.