"Supramental Consciousness and Human Evolution"
SOCIOLOGICAL CHANGE:
We created governments…we created legal structures…we created management systems….we created family units and frameworks. All of these are being loosened up and even being brought to a point where they appear to prevent further growth. …. Again, we find other legal institutions, management institutions, always involving a dominance of a fixed rigid structure, being broken apart. The most dramatic of these, and immediately around us today, is the change in the economic system - the collapse of capitalism itself…
About this, Sri Aurobindo said, “This pralaya is not a physical destruction, but a psychological change.” A psychological destruction of past structures and values; and the most obvious of these are the institutions built by mind. We organised human life in certain ways. We created governments……we created legal structures…we created management systems….we created family units and frameworks. All of these are being loosened up and even being brought to a point where they appear to prevent further growth. Governments, which were the means by which we organised our security as a nation, are today the greatest resistance to change; sources of corruption and sources of persistence of the past. Almost everybody feels oppressed by governments, all over the world! That itself shows that there is going to be a sudden change. It might be dramatic or it might be gradual, we can’t say, but there is going to be a change and a radical change in the way governments exist. They have become obsolete in the way they have been running.
Again, we find other legal institutions, management institutions, always involving a dominance of a fixed rigid structure, being broken apart. The most dramatic of these, and immediately around us today, is change in the economic system - the collapse of capitalism itself - because the present framework of capitalism is also based on a falsehood. It is based on money being represented negatively.
Money, as you know, is a power of the Divine in manifestation. The power of plenitude, wealth and being in the world manifested primarily as a vital power. The physical tokens are only representative. Money doesn’t exist as paper or as gold coin or as a bank account number. It exists as a force of which there is a representation in numbers. Since the number is not the money, but represents it, it is possible to play with numbers. The present banking system, in the form it is developed today, maybe about three hundred years ago built itself on debt. Wealth is created every time someone borrowed money, and now, the bank includes that as its assets – future asset.
If you think about it rationally, there is a fixed amount of money in the world, and yet everybody has to pay back interest on it. What happens if you continue long enough? Eventually, all the money will be sucked into one source by the fact of interest payment, and what you have created in the first place didn’t exist as money. The bank didn’t have the money it lent you. In fact, it has money because you have borrowed and it will get it back, so it can declare that as it’s a future asset. That’s how the banks work. So, it creates suction, a negative suction which sucks out money into concentrated areas, and the whole system collapses. We had a similar collapse, mostly in the USA and Europe, in the thirties, but now we have a collapse which is eventually spreading to the rest of the world. The system itself needs to undergo a change.
Economic frameworks will undergo a change. The exchange rates, the speculation on exchange rates, the speculation on money that will be made, which is itself treated as money and sold off as money or investments, all of this eventually has to collapse, because it is hollow… it is virtual. All of these have to go.
At present, we are told that actual money is one sixth of the speculative money which we call ‛virtual money’- money which doesn’t exist but is treated as actual numbers. So, even a small fluctuation in the speculative money can wipe out the entire amount of actual money, since that is six times greater. That whole ‛six time’s greater portion’ has to collapse eventually. So, these are all unsustainable frameworks which we developed. They worked for us for a while, but they have to break down eventually, as they are false in their bases.
It’s the same error we make in our relationship with the environment, in the financial system. If you have a lake or trees here, they are not treated as assets in your balance sheet. If you cut that tree, that log now is an asset on your balance sheet. If our financial system treats only destroyed Nature as an asset and ignores the living Nature, then obviously, all of the financial processes will tend to destroy Nature to increase their asset base. Again, these are the values which are so intrinsic to the human mindset today, because they have been around for a few hundred years now. But these were not so in our indigenous sustainable lifestyles all over the world. All these are also changing. The institutions are changing. The economies will go through a painful period of collapse or a new formation. Mindsets, ethics, morality are changing.
When the Mother started the physical training program in the Ashram, she made it a point to ensure that the women participated equally with the men. The first time she created the dress for women to perform their physical activities, one of the boldest girls was asked to wear it and stand before everybody. There was a kind of shock, “Oh! Are we going to wear this also?” At that time, she was wearing long-sleeved shirts and trousers like outfit. Later, the Mother made it into half-sleeved shirt and shorts, equal for boys and girls. It was radical at that time. That was around the time when there was still a struggle for women to be allowed to vote in many parts of the world. But she was radically ahead and she worked on it. There is an incident which I came to hear recently…while playing tennis; she would encourage the women also to play with her.
She however faced a practical difficulty. She would look and point to some people and ask one of her attendants, “Who is this person?” The attendant noticed that she would ask more often about the women than the men. So, she asked the Mother, “Why is it that you have difficulty making out who they are?” The Mother explained, “When I’m looking at a person, it’s not so much the physical sight. I’m also seeing their psychological form, and most of the women are still unformed in their individuality. So, I can’t make out very clearly who they are.”
Now, this is happening in the fifties. Then, she commented to that attendant, “But now that I’m here, all this will change.” So, her effort was clearly concentrated on bringing about these radical changes, and we are speaking not just of human values, perceptions and relationships, but of the very nature of consciousness.
You will see in the most traditional societies, women are held back, suppressed. The individuality is not allowed to form too much, but that’s how the families maintained their stability. The men were more individualised, women less so, and there was obviously the dominance of men.
Sri Aurobindo even suggests that, in the past, there have been civilisations where the women were more powerful than men and the men subservient …and he says, “In future, Nature could play with that possibility again.” If he says that, then generally, it indicates it is going to happen in some form or the other. But all of these were things which are destined to change, because they belong to a past and a false consciousness, and are contrary to what the Supramental is bringing.
What does the Supramental bring as far as gender is concerned? It is the simple statement that the Mother made to one of the girls who was complaining about some exercises. She said, very sharply, “For God’s sake, can’t you just stop thinking whether you are a girl or a boy, and try to be a human being!”
