Reading of the Foreword

III

Nature cannot be deceived

Sri Aurobindo opines that the intelligent mind and the best intellectual reason and science of man "are not the sole disposers of our future". There is an inner or deeper mind behind our external mind capable of supra-cognitive knowledge. Likewise behind our unsure and fluctuating will-power, there is a greater unseen Power, a Universal Will, a universal Force or Law is there. This Law supplies us a framework for action but also evolves and brings "out of the thing in being the thing that is to be". (SABCL 15, pg.578) In other words, it determines the advent of the futuristic human being.

The modern mind of course has little faith on God but believes fully in Nature. But as God cannot be deceived, Nature too cannot be deceived. Mankind is already paying a heavy ecological price for deceiving Nature and this gets tied up with the psychology of man.

Nature always enforces her law and she acts out in accordance with the spirit and character of energy that the human being puts forward. And we are especially in an age when this issue has become very important and mankind is put to question. Questions have arisen on our hopes, ideals and aspirations and have been presented not merely to our intelligence but to the spirit of our being and action. "In this fateful examination it is not skill and cleverness , machinery and organisation which will ultimately prevail, -- that was the faith which Germany professed, and we know how it ended, -- but the truth and sincerity of our living."(Ibid)

Sri Aurobindo believes that it is not impossible for man to realise his ideals but he must proceed in his inner realms at first before the execution occurs in the outer reality. The changes which the age of reconstruction demands will surely come but would depend upon the spirit that governs mankind at the time of execution.

Date of Update: 30-Jun-25