Freedom, Equality, Fraternity are the dreams man has nurtured since long. How can we realize them?
Freedom first, – but can Freedom be realised simply by doing whatever one feels like? Such a freedom would be limited by its impact upon the freedom of others. It is like the freedom of the animal which has no social restrictions or moral norms and yet is the most bound of all. True freedom therefore is the child of self-mastery of which even the most developed mind is inherently incapable. But what the mind cannot do, the Spirit accomplishes with a masterly ease. Therefore this dream of man cannot be fulfilled until he takes to the spiritual curve of his evolution and traverses it fully.
Equality next, – but no parliament, government or rule of law can ensure. At best it will pay a lip-service, at worst it will commit the greatest inequalities in the name of ensuring Equality. For equality is not a flattening of all before the State machinery. Humanity is not only variegated in its constitution but also stratified in terms of its inner evolution. To treat all identically is not equality but a standardisation. Even at the most basic level of material creation standardisation fails for various reasons. The problem only becomes more and more complex and acute as creation climbs through the ladder of evolution towards man. Man cannot be standardised, he can only be ennobled and lifted towards the heights of an ideal. True equality therefore would be to provide equal opportunities for growth and evolution rather than putting all in the same slot. This too cannot be achieved without engaging in conscious spiritual evolution where alone shines the light of the Ideal untarnished by the mind and its limited vision.
Fraternity is the key to achieve both in a mutual harmony. But all our efforts to create fraternity on religious, ideological and other grounds have failed so far. For here too the key lies in human ascension out of the limiting and dividing mind into the oneness of the Spirit. The great difficulty here is religion when it focuses on the outward aspects identifying God with a set of outer rituals and external marks. The secular ideologies that seek to create brotherhood fare no better. They dispense with outer marks but cannot bridge the inner divide of mental views and opinions and fixed beliefs where the problem lies. They either try to appease different sections or else blur their distinctions in a standardised uniformity giving rise to worst intolerance. The answer does not lie either in uniformity nor in a blind accommodation of diversity without discovering the true basis of Unity in diversity. Especially Fraternity is not something that can be imposed from outside or accepted as a cult by the mind. It is a thing of the heart and it is only by awakening the heart to the oneness of the Spirit that this can be realised.
The one hope of man, if he ever must realise this dream, lies in our spiritual ascension, the ascent of our consciousness beyond the Mind. Without this these ideals will either remain sterile dreams to goad us without any power to realise them or mere euphemism to cover up our inability or a lip service to fool others. Something in us perhaps understands this, something in us is perhaps even ready to engage in this higher ascension beyond Man. The fulfilment of our hope lies there and not in an enshrinement of these words as a Holy grail in the constitution or in using them as slogans to deceive the world. And since something in man wants it, it will be so one day sanctioned by the forces that weave the web of Fate.
‘Earth’s winged chimaeras are Truth’s steeds in Heaven,
The impossible God’s sign of things to be.’ [Savitri:52]
