________________
90
TULSI-PRAJNA
methods is an arduous and a sluggish process. Institutions are inherently conservative in nature and they are bound to inject a mechanical character" and the elements of impresonality in the society.
As to Sri Aurobindo, the ideal of a perfect or good society, to Gandhi also is a pure spiritual anarchy with no outer restraints imposed on man's authentic existence in society. The beauty of Sri Aurobindo's and Gandhi's thought is that both accept the creativity of man as a truth-force in society and so provide scope for the syathesis of modernity with the tradition and do not perceive a dialectics of tradition and modernity as inherently contradictory; their dialectics of change is a symbiotic dialectics which does not generate class conflicts but grows into unity, peace and harmony. But in the name of modernization, to both Sri Aurobindo and Gandhi, the extravaganza of science and technology which could reverse the order of the priorities of man's life-goals is not acceptable. The notion of spiritual anarchy as is generally construed, is not a concept of nihilism or destruction, rather it is a notion which corresponds to what Lannoy 20 calls the classless, stateless and decentralised democracy based on local and individual initiative." The objective of spiritual anarchy is not to dislodge order but to establish a true or authentic order which is not imposed by any outside means or superficial majority consensus unsubscribed to by the individuals in their private lives, but through the realization of truth emanating from within their own consciousness. Erich Heller21 has rightly observed that in fact we have become prisoners of our own intellectual freedoom, an amorphous mass of victims to our sense of rational order" which is not worth living with. By "true order" he means that order which embodies the incalculable and unpredictable, transcending our rational grasp..."
In fact, in terms of the inner logic of the ideas advanced by Mahatma Gandhi and the system of thought offered by Sri Aurobindo even the concept of society would be different from the Durkheimian notion of society as a 'conscience collective'. To them the notion of society is more an extension of man's authentic subjectivity or true consciousness rather than man being understood in terms of a "collective consciousness'-a reality sui-generis, independent of the psychic reality of man.
Thus through this logic, it would be more appropriate to conceive of society as a spirited unity of self-consciousness, full of truthforce" or "soul-force" rather than as mechanical.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org