Finding Auroville

In a recent post about parochial thinking, I had written about how on the path of self-realization, one’s thinking becomes less insular and more expansive, and how this expansion of the scope of thinking will have to include a deepening and broadening of our “social and sociological conceptualization and understanding” and “of critical and creative thinking in terms of sociological possibilities and potentialities”. In this post I will elaborate on this theme a little more.

In another recent post on mental and emotional intelligence, I had written about how despite the sophistication that has been achieved by the mental faculty of humans through the evolutionary process , this faculty is still under the influence of our vital emotions, desires, attachments, fears and insecurities. Emotional intelligence, which includes an understanding of one’s vital emotions and those of others, signifies “a deepening and widening of mental intelligence, or of a facet of mental intelligence, so that the mind moves beyond thinking just about itself and begins to think about acting for the benefit of others and ultimately humanity as a whole”. In this way the increase in emotional intelligence tracks the movement away from “the domination of the rajasic and tamasic qualities of the vital and the physical in an individual to the domination of the sattwic qualities” of the mental as it attempts to escape from the grasp of the vital ego and move towards true altruism. All this happens within the purview of material nature, and it is only with the dissolution of the ego that truly selfless behavior begins and material nature is transcended. This increase in emotional intelligence also parallels the discussion about the intellectual religion of humanity and progressive thought, and how despite the mind and progressive thought being able to conceptualize the attainment of harmony, equality and unity in humanity, it is only with the jump to the spiritual religion of humanity and the dissolution of the ego that this harmony, equality and unity can actually be realized.

All this points to the idea that as the mind moves from insular, self-centered rajasic and tamasic tendencies to wider sattwic thought which encompasses altruism and the betterment of others, our scope of thinking and attention widens to include more people and groups. As this happens, our thinking will have to include a deepening of our understanding of society and sociology, of how societies and cultures work, of the motivations that lie behind individual and group interactions. We will have to deepen our understanding of social and sociological systems at various scales, from the global all the way to the local. This will not necessarily have to be an overly scholarly understanding of sociology or social systems, but our basic understanding of and familiarity with them will have to deepen. As the mental sattwic attributes of humanity get progressively ignited, we as individuals develop a deep sense of empathy and fraternity with humanity in general, seeing all people as part of a collective and singular whole, and we start to realize that the differences between groups lies only at the surface. Deep down all of humanity is one. We then begin to become interested, to one degree or another, in one way or another, in the workings of different parts of human society. As we begin to feel this sense of affinity and oneness with the whole of human society, a natural curiosity develops about humanity and its diversity. This does not mean that everyone will become interested in understanding societies, cultures and sociology, but as humanity deepens its sense of fraternity with humanity, the general level of sociological understanding will invariably deepen as well. The general level of sociological intelligence will increase.

This sociological intelligence will also include an ability to conceptualize, both emotionally as well as practically, how, as human society moves into the future, it can evolve into a fundamentally more loving, compassionate, peaceful and egalitarian collectivity, despite how distant that seems to be in the present moment. So this sociological intelligence will also include creative sociological imaginations to move towards these fundamental sociological aspirations.

Initially, this sociological intelligence and sociological imagination will be at the mental and intellectual level, part of the progressive and sattwic thinking of humanity as it tries to conceptualize and realize a better world. In many ways this is already happening, and has been happening for a long time, with humanity using its intellectual capacities to try and imagine and move towards a better collective future in a myriad of ways, but with these attempts always thwarted by the workings of individual and collective egos in society. As and when the human collective will move towards the dissolution of its individual and collective egos, this sociological intelligence and imagination will further deepen and widen, with humanity able to think of more ways to reach unity and harmony, and more avenues towards this aspiration becoming viable and possible to move along. As humanity moves along the path of self-realization and of truly selfless thought and action, this sociological intelligence and imagination will move from the mental plane to the intuitive plane beyond the mental, where the mode of thinking of humanity will transform to a more intuitive mode of functioning, and where the spontaneous cooperation of spiritual anarchy will start to become more and more of a possibility and more and more of a reality. Sri Aurobindo describes the intuitive mind, which is an intermediate stage between the current mental faculties of humanity and the supermind of the Divine consciousness, as follows:

The problem of this conversion [from mind to supermind] resolves itself at first into a passage through a mediary status and by the help of the one power already at work in the human mind which we can recognise as something supramental in its nature or at least in its origin, the faculty of intuition, a power of which we can feel the presence and the workings and are impressed, when it acts, by its superior efficiency, light, direct inspiration and force, but cannot understand or analyse it as we understand or analyse the workings of our reason. The reason understands itself, but not what is beyond it,—of that it can only make a general figure or representation; the supermind alone can discern the method of its own workings. The power of intuition acts in us at present for the most part in a covert manner secret and involved in or mostly veiled by the action of the reason and the normal intelligence; so far as it emerges into a clear separate action, it is still occasional, partial, fragmentary and of an intermittent character. It casts a sudden light, it makes a luminous suggestion or it throws out a solitary brilliant clue or scatters a small number of isolated or related intuitions, lustrous discriminations, inspirations or revelations, and it leaves the reason, will, mental sense or intelligence to do what each can or pleases with this seed of succour that has come to them from the depths or the heights of our being.

The Intuitive Mind, The Synthesis of Yoga

The promise of the process of self-realization, of the dissolution of the ego, of the transformation of consciousness is a new, deeper, wider way of thinking (to use an old term for a new think) that is completely selfless and completely devoid of the influence of the self-centeredness of individuated thinking. The deepening and widening of sociological intelligence will simultaneously be a sign that humanity is on the path of this transformation, and one of the factors that will help lead collective humanity towards the transformation. And as the transformation of consciousness takes place, this sociological intelligence will itself transform, as will other forms of human intelligence, to a fundamentally different intuitive and selfless process.

The development of this sociological intelligence and imagination as a component of the development of the intellectual religion of humanity is part of the assemblage of reasons why spiritual philosophers such as Sri Aurobindo, The Mother and Jiddu Krishnamurti (though Krishnamurti would vehemently disagree with the term spiritual being associated with him!) laid so much stress on changing our educational systems. The current educational systems that exist around the world aim at self-centered learning, with the intention of developing skills that will be used competitively to gain personal material advantages in society. Instead, an educational system that is aimed at broadening the focus of our attention from the self to the wider collective will also aim at developing faculties such as emotional intelligence and sociological intelligence. Of course for such an educational system to thrive it needs to be situated in a wider social milieu that values this broader thinking, and caters to the basic needs of individuals so that at least the base needs and motivations for self-centeredness are removed. Such social and educational systems are essential for humanity to move towards spirituality and intuitiveness, and for the intellectual religion of humanity (what we can call intellectual humanism) to develop towards the spiritual religion of humanity (spiritual humanism).

What is always important to remember and reiterate is the need for completely objective and selfless motives when dealing with these themes. When the development of emotional intelligence and sociological intelligence occurs within the mental, intellectual plane that is under the control of the vital ego, they are always susceptible to be misused for personal material gain in one form or another. If such material aims are the purpose of developing emotional and sociological intelligence, this development will always be superficial, limited and flawed, and will never lead to the betterment of humanity that is the true aim of such development. It is only with truly selfless and objective motives that the betterment of humanity can be effectuated. This, as stated many times before, is the difference between intellectual humanism and spiritual humanism. Intellectual humanism, despite its lofty aspirations, will always be tripped up by self-centered and self-serving base motivations. Spiritual humanism, with the self-centeredness of the vital ego removed, will develop emotional and sociological intelligence in material nature solely for the betterment of humanity, and to move humanity towards a fundamentally more loving, compassionate, egalitarian, peaceful and united future. Emotional and sociological intelligence in this light will be an essential part of humanity’s toolkit as we move towards this future.

In Auroville, instead of constantly trying to “protect the community” and maintain it as an isolated bubble that outsiders can only visit as tourists, we should develop this expansive, inclusive and selfless idea of human collectivity and community. We should work towards the deepening of emotional and sociological intelligence in a completely selfless, unindividuated and de-centered (to borrow a term from Krishnamurti) way. This will give us a better sense of selfless sociological imagination and the ability to conceptualize a truly, fundamentally better future for humanity, which in turn will assist us as a collective in our progress along the paths of self-realization towards a spiritualized future, creating a cascading effect of collective movement towards the Divine consciousness. The key to all this, as usual, is the pursuit of the dissolution of the ego, both individually and collectively.