What is it that we have accomplished and what is yet to be accomplished? We have measured the distances between the stars but whatever creates a distance between human hearts still eludes us. We have mapped the continents, but the inner topography of our human nature is something that still escapes our understanding. We have calculated the lifespan of the sun but the beginning of our soul’s aspiration and its grand fulfilment is still hidden from our sight. We have unravelled the mystery of time but have no idea of the timeless eternal. Space we have covered, but have not discovered the being from which space is born. In short, we have analysed, studied and mastered the outer field, but the inner fields of our nature and the whole subjective side of human existence remains a disputed territory. We can manipulate the external world and material forces, but the inner world and its psychological forces remain unconquered and mysterious to us.
We hope that the coming decades will witness an increasing turn of man’s gaze within to explore, understand and map these uncharted territories.
But will our journey end with that? No, we must return with this inner knowledge once again to the outer field and re-conquer the material world, not any longer through the manipulation of matter by material force alone, but by the power of the spirit within. It is then that the task man has set himself will be accomplished. When we have understood that it is our own ‘will’, secret in our depths, that arranges and can change the circumstances of life, then we would have taken the first step toward true mastery. When we have discovered that we are not tools of nature or ignorant, helpless subjects of fate, but its lord and master; then we shall find release from the curse of restlessness and dissatisfaction that haunts human life and turns it into a defeated victory. Then we truly know that, “A deathbound littleness is not all we are.“1
1Sri Aurobindo. Savitri. Pondicherry; Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1970, p. 46.
