26-06-2013
The Social Structure – the Individual Brick
Sri Aurobindo says the Indian tradition poured over human nature over long periods of differing phases of civilised existence before they settled on the three qualities of Sattwa, Rajas, Tamas. Human nature remains a mystery except for Shakespeare. Human capacities, talents, abilities are of a lesser order though the gunas play an effective shaping or steadying role. Let us consider them as a separate independent entity. At once it strikes us that the individual faculties have a collective as well as personal element. All of them are ultimately organisations of energy of varying intensities and structures.
Like a riverbed that permits an enormous amount of seepage that fills in the ground layers, before any stream appears on the riverbed, human collective too allows a good part of the population to dissolve in its formation as a social entity. Our quest confines itself to the layers above the surface. Our real concern is with the cream. Society is an exacting taskmaster when the formed individual comes to it for acceptance. Even at primary levels of social survival, in hundreds of ways minutely society insists on its requirements. Society watches the movement of her members at all points of their interaction. It is a silent observation that automatically classifies men into grades, categories, types, etc. Below a certain level society does not allow its members to fall. Falling so, they fall out once for all. Native talents coupled with values of responsibilities organises itself at several levels of fitness of average, above average and below average. This occurs at the personal, family, and professional levels. At the personal level, one survives. At the family level, man qualifies to be an average citizen. At the professional level he matures as a citizen of mark.
All such people fill up the social ballast. At each level some endeavour to move up. Physical energy, vital interest, mental understanding come together to forge ahead. The little spiritual awakening that is there sometimes provides the spark for the Man to perform. In normal periods Man endeavours his best to preserve what he has already. Only in buoyant periods, especially if they are transitions, Men activate themselves. When the social aspiration for progress is most intense, a very small number come forward to innovate, try for a little new way of life. They are the pioneers in every walk of life. To build a house of a new design will be considered a minor revolution. What capacities Man has are ones that will preserve the present. Imagine when trade reared its head for the first time, how the pioneers should have felt and what was involved in it. In our own time the shift from salaried employment to self-employment occupies that revolutionary zone.
Let us go back to the early days of original idea of trade. The idea of selling and buying was a new conception. Obviously only a few persons or one person should have conceived of it. The revolutionary effort on the part of the rest was to have endorsed it without opposing it. Passing through the birth of trade cursorily for purposes of handling social structures in their formation, we must consider the need for movement. Movement to another place with goods would have needed the protection of a good many people. Should trade come to stay, all her ways should have come to stay. They are trust, handing over the goods, ensuring the quality and quantity, the legal tender of the coins received, capacity to count the money, absence of deceit, etc.
In any work or profession, personnel of different levels rise and occupy a hierarchy. Each level is differently organised. The leader, the assistant, the strong man, the worker, those who bring up the rear come into existence. In growing societies, even if the growth is very little, say trade expanding to a few more towns, newer, higher capacities arise. All these are supplied by those established experienced personnel who find in themselves the spiritual spark. It is seen as memory or a loud voice that commands, capacity to order men into an organised functioning, to think of new concepts or strategies. What we ultimately call Individuality will form out of their front runners. If this is the formation from inside, from outside our view sees the society demanding and imposing manners in a hundred ways. Unless one qualifies with manners, he falls out. There are those who, without the compulsion of the society, offer formed manners collected inside as a personal possession. They, of course, will lead life at that level, however small and narrow that zone is. Man’s manners, behavior, character, Personality are to be thus studied in detail before we pass on to wider principles of existence or newer ways of life.
To illustrate each level with one example will be a long narration though the inner character of the skill at various levels is the same. One can think of a surgeon at his minor or major work, or a lawyer presenting his case, auditor with his balance sheet or a pupil in the class trying to follow the teacher. Each will be a narrative of human energy organising into a skill, pouring through the existing habits, forging newer shades of a fresh skill. Whatever it is, in whomsoever it is, it is a live organisation of energy organising itself into an attitude. Doing so, he finds himself inwardly active, live as we say. Once formed, it serves as a basis for his routine existence.
Formation of a skill, creation of an attitude, organising a value are all different exercises. Our real concern is not any of these at any of these fundamental levels. It is beyond personality in the zone of Individuality. At lower levels these skills, etc. possess the Man. As he rises he gradually frees himself from them and reverses the process by his possessing them for his own evolutionary purpose. For one emerging in Individuality, there will be no example to follow. It will all be an adventure waiting on the moment to reveal itself in the movement. To make that discussion one of clarity, we have to consider in detail several of these faculties in several stages. At each level, each movement, even the most routine will be one of new creation from a higher point of view. Into such an effort go new conceptions, newer perceptions and newest sensation. Only at the level of sensation work gets completed.
In our ordinary work, we rarely see there are frequently moments of creation, newly creating energies, self-fashioning of forms, sudden emergence of inspiration, partly contributing to the work. With the presence of such movements, being creative, the work is interesting and instinctively expands. The inspired individual inspired by a visionary mission suddenly finds himself a dynamo of activities. Social existence is a creative existence. Social formation is the formation of a live organism. Social functioning, though perceived as a dull monotonous routine, contains in it strong threads of original skill formations. For us the flower is fine, the leaf is dull. For a finer perception the leaf is as fine as the flower. Individuality is the finest of human flowers out of the social branch that is full of twigs and flowers. Seeing, we do not see, says HE. We stand before the Infinite but see the finite due to the lack of subtlety.
The story of the birth of individuality told by able creative personalities will be the best story mankind has so far written. Once begun, the audience will not agree to a terminus. By the time the author finishes, the story will be found telling itself finding its own social voice. One must be able to know its plot, characters, events, Life-Responses, movements and Mission.
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