Integral view of culture

INTEGRAL VIEW OF CULTURE
Sri Aurobindo’s Approach

Dr RAM NATH SHARMA

Ever since the dawn of human culture, its progression and retrogression have been recurrent processes. Culture has been an essential ingredient of human environment. It distinguishes the human environment from animal environment which is purely biological and physical. That man is a rational animal primarily means that man is a cultural being. In this connection, it was rightly remarked by Socrates that an unexamined life is not worth living. The primary function of reason is to examine human life, to provide it a style, a pattern, a coherence among means and ends. This leads to better adjustment in the human situation. Man does not live. He lives with other human beings, animals and the natural world around. Therefore, his life is not passed in a vacuum. While he has to live he has also to adjust with others. His rights and duties are correlated.

To adjust with other human beings man has to communicate and reciprocate. In other words, human life is not possible without social relationship. It is precisely these relationships which have been called society. The relationships are organised by the social institutions. The social institutions are of various types, political, economic, educational, religious and of course primarily social. Among social institutions family and marriage are the most im­portant. All these are the vehicles of cultural values which are preserved from generation to generation. So long as the structure of vehicles of culture remains intact human life is well organised and also progressing. But this cannot be a permanent state of affairs. As the human society grows, the old cultural forms become out­moded. This happens first in the life of some persons or groups and then in the life of the masses. This creates a cultural crisis, which obviously, requires creation and adoption of new forms of culture. If this happens a crisis is passed over, cultural change occurs and new values are established.

Philosophical Approach to Culture

The above picture is painted by a philosophical approach to culture. Such is the approach of Sri Aurobindo. As distinguished from the anthropological approach which is characterised by analysis of facts, the philosophical approach to culture is more synthetic, more synoptic. In the global forms of human culture Sri Aurobindo analyses the components of culture and he shows a hierarchy in them. The hierarchy is the same as prescribed by the principle of evolution in Nature. In evolution the physical, the vital and the mental are the progressive stages everywhere. Man is a mental being who retains the physical and the vital elements. He has a pre-­rational past and a supra-rational future. He is a growing being. Obstacles in this growth create crisis. The crisis of growth, according to Sri Aurobindo, is the root cause of cultural crisis and its solution lies in removing the impediments and forging ahead. In other words, a cultural crisis is the crisis of consciousness. The universe, according to Sri Aurobindo, is the play of Consciousness-force. Cultural evolution, its crisis and solutions are stages of this play. Consciousness starts on infra-rational stage. This is the stage of modern human consciousness. Reason has the value of controlling and governing the infra-rational elements but as Sri Aurobindo has repeatedly pointed out, reason is the helper and reason itself becomes the bar. Before coming to the present rational culture human beings experimented with ethical and aesthetic culture. As man is a complex being, no one-sided culture can survive. That· is the reason why Barbarism with all its physical and vital vigour, could not rule in any part of the world for a long time. Culture always took over Barbarism. A one-sided culture always, reacted in favour of its opposite. This dialectial and spiral process always led to more integral forms of culture. However, the see-saw between culture and civilization on the one hand and a one-sided and a multi-sided culture on the other hand, still continues.

The interpretation of the nature and the components of culture has been variously presented by different thinkers. This has obviously resulted in prescription of different solutions. Sri Aurobindo’s ap­proach, in his philosophy of culture, as everywhere else, is evolu­tionary and integral. He points out various stages in the, cycle of human culture. He analyses the advantages as well as the disadvan­tages of various types of culture, ethical, aesthetic and rational. He distinguishes between the objective and subjective views of culture and tries to develop an integral view. In the field of means of cultural evolution also after the assessment of the value of education, ethics, religion, Sri Aurobindo suggests Yoga as the best means of cultural evolution. This yoga, however, is not individual but social and even cosmic. It is the ascent of human race to supramental level and the descent of the supramental upon earth. This means of cultural evolution has been developed by Sri Aurobindo as a new weapon not only for individual development but primarily for social develop­ment.
By this analysis of cultural history of mankind Sri Aurobindo has shown that inwardly cultural growth is the growth of con­sciousness. This growth requires heightening, widening and transcen­dence. Human consciousness has been always aspiring after more integral and total freedom. This ideal was achieved by some strong individual great men in different societies at different times. It could never be realised on a mass scale. The present condition does not justify the hope that this will be ever possible. Philosophy of culture, however, as philosophy in general, is based upon the inherent logic. Logical coherence justifies passage from the known to the unknown. Therefore Sri Aurobindo has speculated about the future of mankind. He calls it the gnostic culture, a fuller realisation of the gnosis to which man has always aspired. The value of gnostic culture is obvious but its possibility is not so much guaranteed. In line with his evolutionary logic however, Sri Aurobindo speculates that the gnostic culture will be certainly realised in future. Samuel Alexander argues in his magnum opus ‘Space, Time and Deity’ that as the deity of deities evolved in the past the animal from plant and man from animal, so the deity in man will be realised and the establish­ment of the kingdom of God on earth is a logical certainty. Arguing with the same logic Sri Aurobindo has described the gnostic culture in details. The critics can however lay the charge of Utopianism upon this speculation. This speculative tendency has been chara­cteristic of philosophers of culture from Plato to Sri Aurobindo, with all its limitation.

Integral Perspective of present Cultural crisis

Sri Aurobindo is neither a reactionary nor a conservative. With the grasp and vision of a yogi, he sees the merits, the limitations as well as the failures of the present civilization, shows the philosophical as well as psychological meaning of its past progression, diagnoses the diseases, visualises the future possibilities and sounds the timely clarion of warning so that man may successfully overcome the present crisis and realize his destiny of serving the purpose of Nature on earth.

Sri Aurobindo has presented an integral vision of human nature, an integral philosophy of history and an integral method of social and individual development. This constitutes an integral Philosophy of culture with an integral ideal of cultural development based on an inner analysis of the psychology of social development. This again, is the basis of Sri Aurobindo’s speculations about the future of man. Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation of the present crisis of human civilization is more integral and subtle than that of the moralists, scientists, economists, politicians, philosophers, psychologists and historians, as the Yogic vision characteristically presents a view far more integral, deeper and wider than all others. Sri Aurobindo has looked into the present problems, not only in their psychological and historical meanings but also in the perspective of the inner purpose of Nature, the inherent nisus in her evolutionary process.

According to Sri Aurobindo, the spiritual principle transforms the whole man and governs his mind, life as well as body. The descent of the higher or the ascent of the lower into it does not negate but fulfils the latter. This principle is of considerable im­portance in Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy of culture. His philosophy of culture is a spiritual philosophy of affirmation. The life of the spirit shall not be the life of physical, vital or mental frustration, deficiency or incapacity but or more and more enjoyment, growth and activity of the body, the vital being and the mind. While the urges of all these are faltering, blind, ignorant and conflicting on the mental level, in Spirit they become harmonious, purified, enligh­tened and smooth in working.

The spiritual ideal of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy of culture, however loftyit may appear, is what every human being actually sees in his life though generally blindly and confusedly and through wrong methods. We have to readily agree with the proposition that if man must live, he must live more and more fully, since this is pre­cisely what all of us seek in our own way. “But few know clearly, what living more fully means and that is the reason of man’s constant fai­lures to live fully. Now, if man would learn his past failures, he should realize that to live fully means to be universally and finally to be divinely. Thus even for the survival, growth and pleasure of his body, life and mind, man should transcend his present level to reach the realm of spirit through gradual and persistent ascent.

The nature of this spirituality has been generally missed by other philosophers of culture. It has been often confused with higher intellectuality, idealism, morality, austerity, religiosity and exalted emotional fervour. It is neither of these, nor even a compound of all these. “Spirituality”, according to Sri Aurobindo; “is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being; to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter into contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which in­habits also our own being, to be in communion with it and union with it, and a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact, the union, a growth or waking into a new becoming or new being, a new self, a new nature.”             (The Life Divine)

Sri Aurobindo is not satisfied with the utilitarian compromises, partial remedies, the see-saw of progression and regression. He realized, more than any other thinker, the crisis which the human race is facing at present. He interpreted this crisis not by its overt signs but with a vision into its meaning, with reference to the great forces working not only behind man but in the whole of the cosmos. He realised the gravity of the situation more than the pessimist philosophers of history or society. And yet he is more optimistic than even the meliorists, the pragmatists, a Russell or a Gandhi. This robust optimism is not the idealism of a divine and religious soul. It is based on his practical solution of the problem, a remedy surer and more comprehensive than that of others, as it is based on ultimate metaphysical truths.