A Dream

There should be somewhere on earth a place which no nation could claim as its own; where all human beings of goodwill who have a sincere aspiration could live freely as citizens of the world and obey one single authority, that of the supreme truth; a place of peace, concord and harmony where all the fighting instincts of man would be used exclusively to conquer the causes of his sufferings and miseries, to surmount his weaknesses and ignorance, to triumph over his limitations and incapacities; a place where the needs of the spirit and the concern for progress would take precedence over the satisfaction of desires and passions, the search for pleasure and material enjoyment. In this place, children would be able to grow and develop integrally without losing contact with their Souls; education would be given not for passing examinations or obtaining certificates and posts but to enrich existing faculties and bring forth new ones. In this place, titles and positions would be replaced by opportunities to serve and organise; the bodily needs of each one would be equally provided for, and intellectual, moral and spiritual superiority would be expressed in the general organisation not by an increase in the pleasures and powers of life but by increased duties and responsibilities. Beauty in all its artistic forms, painting, sculpture, music, literature, would be equally accessible to all; the ability to share in the joy it brings would be limited only by the capacities of each one and not by social or financial position. For in this ideal place money would no longer be the sovereign lord; individual worth would have a far greater importance than that of material wealth and social standing. There, work would not be a way to earn one’s living but a way to express oneself and to develop one’s capacities and possibilities while being of service to the community as a whole; which, for its own part, would provide for each individual’s subsistence and sphere of action. In short, it would be a place where human relationships, which are normally based almost exclusively on competitions and strife, would be replaced by relationships of emulation in doing well, of collaboration and real brotherhood.

The earth is certainly not ready to realize such an ideal, for mankind does not yet possess sufficient knowledge to understand and adopt it nor the conscious force that is indispensable in order to execute it; that is why I call it a dream. 
–Courtesy, Sri Aurobindo Action.

FOOT PRINTS

Sir, Selwyn Clarke, (1893-1976) the Governor General of Hong Kong, was taken prisoner of war by the Japanese and was subjected to repeated torture and even condemned to death. But somehow he survived till the end of the war and returned to England in 1947. However, he got himself posted again to Hong Kong. He was such a noble and rancourless soul that he refused to give evidence against the Japanese accused of war crimes. His plea was, ‘The victors are not proper judges of their own cause”. He was gracious enough to dedicate his book of members, aptly called “foot­prints” to his Japanese interpreter. If this is not Gandhian “Ahimsa”, nothing else is.