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Re: Social Orders of Life
Debashish Banerji (hal_computer@earthlink.net) wrote:
: In article <3ei7gn$jj4@ucunix.san.uc.edu>, ptbast@wpi.edu(Pete Bastien) says:
: >
: >More importantly the division in the social order has had an
: >effect on the religion of the people. Some western traditions
: >deny that this is so and so have made attempts to minimize
: >the effects. Is this also the case in the eastern traditions?
: >Or more precisely, is the social division mirrored by a
: >religious (possibly spiritual) division?
: >
The answer was not directly given by the quote from Sri Aurobindo, but
from my understanding of the quote, Sri Aurobindo seems to say that
traditionally or historically there has been a division in society
and that it was considered that this division was also religious and
spiritual in nature. In otherwords, Sri Aurobindo reiterates well known
information. Sri Aurobindo then say that the basis for this division is
inadequate to reflect reality, and that several additional qualities
must be considered. And finally, in the "perfect man", all of these
qualifications do not matter.
Or to answer the question, traditionally social division was reflected
in the religious division, but the division does not have to affect the
spiritual.
[Please note that I have done some formating on the quote that was not
in the original. This was done for my own attempt at understanding the
the quote.]
: I quote from Sri Aurobindo (The Synthsis of Yoga, Chapter XV under the
: Yoga of Self Perfection - Soul-Force and the Fourfold Personality, page
: 714, Centenary edition, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press):
: "The Godhead, the spirit manifested in Nature appears in a sea of infinite
: quality, Ananta-guna.
:
: But the executive or mechanical Prakriti is of the
: threefold guna,
: Sattwa,
: Rajas,
: Tamas,
: and the Ananta-guna, the spiritual play of infinite quality,
: modifies itself in this mechanical nature into the type of these
: three gunas.
I understand these to be the four "powers" or attributes of a person's
true nature. These four powers is what makes a person what they truly
are and that anything external to these powers does not really affect
the "soul-force".
: And in the soul-force in man this Godhead
: in Nature represents itself as a fourfold effective power, caturvyuha,
: a Power for knowledge,
: a Power for strength,
: a Power for mutuality and active and productive relation and interchange,
: a Power for works and labour and service, and its presence casts all
: human life into a nexus and inner and outer operation of these four things.
:
Now in this sentence Sri Aurobindo states the historic fact that society
was ordered into four caste and that it was thought that the caste was
a description of the four powers. And that the four powers were determined
by birth into a persons caste. In other words, the caste, and therefore
birth, determined the magnitude of each of the four powers. Furthermore,
this division of society was reflected in the religious/spiritual world
as an "evolutionary" process. I personally would not use evolutionary to
describe the process, and would use the term progressionary. Why I choose
this term vice the other is that evolutionary implies a genetic change
rather than one of personal change.
: The ancient thought of India, conscious of this fourfold type of
: active human personality and nature, built out of it the four types of the
: Brahmana,
: Kshatriya,
: Vaishya and
: Sudra,
: each with its spiritual turn, ethical ideal, suitable
: upbringing, fixed function in society and place in the evolutionary
: scale of the spirit.
:
Here Sri Aurobindo says, in a nutshell, that such a system is too
simplistic and doesn't match reality. But the traditional or historic
opinion and analysis should not be lightly abandoned since there is some
merit to the case of such a division. So the solution is to modify the
necessary attributes but addition of personality, character, temperament,
soul-type (which is not defined), soul-forces (see the four powers),
and free spiritual Shakti.
: As always tends to be the case when we too much
: externalize and mechanize the more subtle truths of our nature, this
: became a hard and fast system inconsistent with the freedom and
: variability and complexity of the finer developing spirit in man.
:
: Nevertheless the truth behind it exists and is one of some considerable
: importance in the perfection of our power of nature; but we have to take
: it in its inner aspects, first, personality, character, temperament,
: soul-type, then the soul-force which lies behind them and wears these
: forms, and lastly the play of the free spiritual Shakti in which they
: find their culmination and unity beyond all modes.
:
: For the crude
: external idea that a man is born as a Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya or
: Sudra and that alone, is not a psychological truth of our being. The
: psychological fact is that there are these four active powers and
: tendencies of the Spirit and its executive Shakti within us and the
: predominance of one or the other in the more well-formed part of our
: personality gives us our main tendencies, dominant qualities and
: capacities, effective turn in action and life.
:
In this final 70+ word sentence, Sri Aurobindo seem to says that all of
these qualification do not matter in the "perfect man", since this
man will be able to modify the quantities of the previous qualities.
Is this then saying that the perfect man will transcend his own qualities?
: But they are more or
: less present in all men, here manifest, there latent, here developed,
: there subdued and depressed or subordinate, and in the perfect man will
: be raised up to a fullness and harmony which in the spiritual freedom
: will burst out into the free play of the infinite quality of the spirit
: in the inner and outer life and in the self-enjoying creative play of
: the Purusha with his and the world's Nature-Power."
