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Growth Online > Knowledge Base > Personal/Spiritual Growth > Connecting to Spirit > The Human Aspiration
Light, Freedom, Immortality Sri Aurobindo in the chapter 'The Human Aspiration' of The Life Divine says that Man's deepest aspiration is for God, Light, Freedom, and Immortality. Light we can say is the ultimate possibilities/the infinity of the Mind to perceive endless prospects and ultimate truths of existence. Freedom is the ultimate possibilities/the infinity of the Soul which enables us to become anything we choose. Immortality is the ultimate possibilities/the infinity of the Body, which enables us to live physically in this life forever without the need for further rebirth.
Inevitability of Realizing our Human Aspiration, Divine Life on Earth Sri Aurobindo says that the human aspiration to realize God, Light, Freedom, and Immortality is inevitable, as it is the Divine's intention. He also indicates that a Divine Life on Earth is inevitable for that was Its original purpose in extending itself to a universe of forms.
The Human Aspiration Sri Aurobindo begins The Life Divine by telling us that the earliest preoccupation of Man is for God, Light, Freedom, and Immortality. And yet he also tells us that we have failed to realize it, mainly because Life/Nature itself is the very contradiction of those qualities. However, that should not deter us from seeking it. He explains that though Her ways are difficult, She is moving forward toward progress and evolution through these contradictory and conflicting means. Thus, from a higher perspective, Nature' and Her ways should be looked upon as a necessary if limited means of bringing about evolution and progress on earth.
Light, Freedom, and Immortality that We Aspire For Becoming God, we move from our current humanity to our highest consciousness at all planes, culminating in becoming a Divine being incarnate. Light is to go beyond our current limited mentality, preoccupied by sense and the needs of the lower nature, preventing us from seeing the vastly wider truth of things. Freedom is the ability to overcome our limited perception of what we can become in life, determined greatly by the prevailing view of the herd; discovering our truest self in the depths of our being, in our Soul, where we experience ultimate individuality, and therefore perceive ultimate possibility. Immortality is to overcome the limitations of the current form of the human body that is subject to illness, decay, and death, replacing it with a divine body in which we can live as long as we so choose.
Through Spiritualized Mind Beyond the Surface View, We Overcome Our
Divided Nature & Fulfill our Human Aspiration
He says that when we rise beyond the surface, sense oriented aspect of mind to higher levels of mentality -- including rational mind and better still to spiritualized mind of vision and intuition (culminating in the plane of Supermind) -- we develop a truer view of life, reconciling things that appear in opposition, perceiving them as true complements. Or to put it another way, this movement in consciousness from the surface to the depths enables us to shed our divided nature, perceive the oneness and unity of all things, enabling us to become whole and thereby fulfill our human aspiration. [When we withdraw from the surface visual, auditory, and other sense inputs, and instead move to a deeper consciousness, culminating in soul, we rise to spiritualized mind, where we see the necessity of both parts of any dual pair, of every opposite or contradictory element as necessary for the forward movement and progress of life.]
Fulfilling the “Business Aspiration” The Business Aspiration for total, unending success, fulfillment, and enjoyment can be thought of as the equivalent to The Human Aspiration for God, light, love, and immortality that Sri Aurobindo describes in the opening chapter of The Life Divine. He tells us there that we have not fulfilled the Human Aspiration because of our divided nature -- essentially a lack of harmony in the parts of our being and an essential Ignorance born of creation. We can overcome this by overcoming the contradictions of who we are and create a new, higher harmony.
Likewise, we can deduce
that if a business or
organization fails or
otherwise has serious
problems, it is due to a
similar disharmony, in
its particular parts,
structures, and view.
And like the limited
human, the firm can
overcome its division by
finding its own higher
harmony, reminding us
again of Sri Aurobindo’s
famous dictum that all
problems in life are
problems of harmony.
Where is the lack of
harmony in business? In
The Vital Corporation
Garry Jacobs and Robert
Macfarlane say that
there are five engines
of growth --
technology/product/service,
organization, people,
market, and capital.
When any is out of
balance or lacking
relative to another, it
creates significant
disharmony. E.g. if
sales push is high, but
employees producing them
are stressed, then there
will be disharmony
between those two parts.
Wherever we overcome
that, we create harmony
and therefore fulfill
the Business Aspiration
(paralleling the Human
Aspiration) with its
infinitely positive
propensities.
There are many ways to
look at the
cross-sections of
business and determine
the disharmonies that
cause businesses to
stress or fail or not
sustain themselves. One
other approach,
described in Garry
Jacobs and Fred Harmon’s
earlier book, The
Vital Difference,
presents the company as
having an inner soul,
(i.e. a Psychic Center),
consisting of its
deepest purpose,
motives, and values, and
then several concentric
rings emanating from it,
signifying different
aspects of the
organizations,
culminating in an outer
circle that are the most
identifiable physical
activities of the firm.
If there is disharmony
amongst these rings,
there will be
commensurate problems,
preventing the Business
Aspiration from being
fulfilled.
We can also look at the
cosmic determinates that
emanate from
Satchitananda --
including Knowledge,
Silence, Harmony, Power,
Creativity, Goodness,
Beauty, Love,
Timelessness, Infinity,
and Delight -- and see
across or among these
which are missing or are
in contradiction in the
organization. E.g. there
may be good intention
towards people in the
company (Goodness and
Harmony), but there is
little psychological
strength amongst
leadership to weather
the storm of competitors
or recession. In other
words, there is lack of
internal psychological
Power.
Thus, the contradiction
presents itself and must
be resolved at that
level. One of the
central themes of the
chapter on the Human
Aspiration from
The Life Divine is
that Nature’s method of
progress is through
contradiction, which can
only be resolved through
a Higher Harmony.
In these and other ways
we can determine why the
“Business Aspiration” is
unfulfilled in any firm
or organization. Sri
Aurobindo says it is due
to our Divided Nature --
i.e. the contradictions
in the company, which
are indicated through
these various views of
the organization.
The solution then is
Harmony between the
divided parts. Then the
Business Aspiration
(mirroring its Human
Aspiration counterpart)
can be fulfilled -- as
there will be deep and
abiding enjoyment,
fulfillment, affection,
creativity, success, and
wealth in the firm, that
goes on indefinitely and
infinitely, which
parallels the
Immortality sought in
its Human Aspiration
equivalent that Sri
Aurobindo addresses in
The Life Divine. ---------- (Response to above essay) A reader raised a question that in essence asks whether we can have good things (only) happen without the bad, avoiding Nature's way of progress through contradictions (i.e. both positive and negative, pleasure and pain, etc.). I answered as follows: Life progresses through good and bad things, positive and negative. If you relate a negative that comes your way to a corresponding lack of consciousness on your part, and then change it, causing you to grow and evoke positive life response, then the negative certainly serves as an instrument of positive change. (If you also see how that negative circumstance and people are necessary in the flow of life to enable positive progress, you will perceive something even greater: the Marvel of existence.) As for only doing good things (only) in the first place, it depends on what you mean by “good.” Good in the human sense is to serve our intentions, our desires, our needs, our ego, which means that this good can be positive or negative. Good in the spiritual sense however, i.e. the higher “Good,” is to do what is spiritually right – such as practicing self-givingness, nonreaction, higher organization, adoption of higher attitudes and values within the context of what you aspire for (from something wholesome you want to achieve, all the way up to aspiring for the divine to increasingly enter into your life). Thus, we can see that the normal, human good has the shadow of negatives, while the higher Good is self-existent, and produces no opposition and negative. We can learn from both. From the former, we can learn to understand what generated the negative in us and change it. From the latter we can embark on a spiritual path of never ending growth, evolution, and transformation, enabling us to realize within us spiritual qualities of peace, wisdom, light, power, creativity, love, bliss, infinity, and timelessness. I.e. the fulfillment of the deepest Human Aspiration.
See Chapter of The Life Divine: The Human Aspiration
Also See Entries for Spiritual Aspiration
Also See Entries on Human Intention
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