The Next Stage in the Human Progress🌏

✨️Deepawali Greetings✨️

In The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo writes that “to hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition.” This is our guiding light for the latest issue of Renaissance.

The Next Stage in the Human Progress

(Editorial - Beloo Mehra)

Sri Aurobindo, the Avatar of the Future, has opened the possibility for the transmutation of earthly existence. He assures us that the present existence composed of the particles of entities such as ignorance and sorrow and incapacity will be one day replaced by one with entities of light and joy and love, of peace and strength and wideness. But at present humanity is going through an evolutionary crisis. It expresses itself at all levels, individual, communal, national and global. And it can be adequately addressed only by going beyond the mental consciousness which necessitates an inward and upward movement.

The Evolutionary Crisis and Human Destiny

(Sri Aurobindo)

Editor's Note: In this second issue of the series on ‘The New Ideal: Some Socio-Cultural Perspectives’, our exploration begins with revisiting some profound excerpts from Sri Aurobindo's work The Life Divine. Here he describes in detail the evolutionary crisis that humanity is facing today, a crisis expressing itself in the variety of social-cultural-economic challenges we see today. After a sweeping analysis of the various means through which humanity has so far tried to address these challenges, he declares that only a spiritual solution, a radical change of human consciousness, will bring the humanity out of this crisis.

The selected excerpts are from the chapter titled 'The Divine Life'.

PART 1

PART 2

Science and Spirituality: An Unnecessary Antimony and a Harmonious Reconciliation – I

(Jugal Kishore Mukherjee)

Editor’s Note: We feature a long essay by Jugal Kishore Mukherji, in several parts. This was first published in the special issue of Mother India (1968, Vol. XX, No. 10-11) which commemorated the 25th anniversary of Sri Aurobindo International Center of Education (SAICE). The issue featured several important articles by SAICE teachers.

In part 1 of the essay featured here, the author points out that it is not so much spirituality and Yoga as the accredited credal religions that historically clashed with the spirit and findings of Science. He also briefly discusses the difference between spirituality and religion.

We shall be serializing this important essay in subsequent issues.