Man is the Architect
of His Own Fortune
[This has been proofread against the original handwritten
manuscript with corrections made for Folio.—Ed]
Man is the architect of his own fortune.
Man is the architect of his own fortune. That is an old well
known English maxim and the good fortune that the man has
evolved out for him at the present moment can be amply verified
as soon as we receive our morning newspapers. The sample good
news that we are receiving now in every morning are as follows:
(1) Bihar Government Deny starvation death. (A.B.P. 23.45)
(2) Rice selling at 55 and salt at 80/- per (?).
(3) People living on cotton & Potato leaves.
(4) 600 Viet Minh Troops Taken Prisoner.
(5) 500 mounds of food burnt in granary.
(6) Famine conditions in such and such places.
(7) Progressive decontrol urged in Conferences.
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(8) Recovery of Abducted women.
(9) (?) on woes of Refugees.
(10) High Government official Arrested.
(11) Government Crisis in Britain.
(12) Troops Patrolling Streets of Cooch Behar
(13) Mob attacks ____'s House and injures son.
(14) Congress Office Raided
(15) Rationing Official Assaulted
(16) Present Administration (?) and compared with past
(17) 30,000 Nepalese migrate to India.
(18) Persian students defy Government Ban.
(19) Mile long procession in Sympathy with Killed oil
workers.
(20) Red offensive Imminent.
(21) Principal Garg Killed by examinees
(22) Daring Robbery at Lloyds Bank.
(23) Rs. 12 lakhs taken away.
(24) Baroda Ex-Rulers Submission to President.
Thoughtful men must now seriously think how we are
marching towards the progressive way of human civilization.
The influence of modern civilizing process, by the highests(?) of
planning commissions, is gradually leading us to a destination
summarised as follows:
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(1) Destruction of Faith, Truthfulness, cleanliness,
Forgiveness, Mercy, Longevity, Strength and Memory.
(2) Accumulation of vast wealth is the standard of
recognition for one's parentage, behavior and good qualities.
(3) Black-market in every business deal.
(4) Sexuality in conjugal love.
(5) Only a piece of thread on the body marks the sign of
Brahmanism.
(6) Only a red garment as the sign of a sannyås .
(7) No justice in the law Court without money.
(8) Impartinance as the sign of education.
(9) Poverty means dishonesty.
(10) Pride means honesty.
(11) Acceptance by contract means marriage.
(12) Keeping long hairs means beauty.
(13) Exaggeration means truthfulness.
(14) Filling the stomach means self-realization.
(15) Providing the wife & children means ability.
(16) Religiosity means to acquire some extraordinary name &
fame.
When we have produced such a glorious sample of human
civilization, certainly democracy will mean nothing but
accumulating a large number of votes by hook or crook and then
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capture the political power. As a result of such unruly(unholy?)
election heads of political power, will be by nature merciless,
greedy and bestowed with the qualities of the plunderers. The
unfortunate voters who have not much discriminating power as
victimized by the chain of modern civilizing process become
subjected to the plundering process of the political heads in the
matter of their hearth and home.
These unfortunate people being too much harrassed by
governmental taxes and famine, are forced to accept cotton and
potato or other leaves as foodstuff. They become forced to accept
meat and flesh instead of grains and vegetables and they are
obliged to assimilate hydrogenated injurious oil in place milk and
ghee. By such eating process they are attacked with cholera,
typhoid, dysentry and tuberculosis to meet an end of miserable
life.
They are subjected to the pangs of winter and summer, rains
and sun besides hunger, thirst, disappointment, frustration. Thus
they have to make a sad end of life by over anxiety due to all
round scarcity.
That is the sum and substance of the advancement of
material civilization. Undoubtedly we have produced by dint of
advancement of having the motors, the radios, the cinemas, the
railways, the airways, the (? ), the medicines, the toilets, the big
buildings, the big mills, agricultural implements, big offices, (?),
hodgepodge philosophers, industrialists, poets, scientists,
politicians, iron men, statesmen and what not but the net result
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is no food, no clothing, no shelter, no peace.
Will any thinking and sober man with any sense of human
reasoning call this status of human life as civilized? We think
not. This unrestricted material progress of civilization must be
checked if humanity has to exist at all and the big brains who
pose to lead the people in general must now try to understand
and recognise that matter is not all in all but it is subordinate to
the spirit.
The matter is produced of inferior nature while the spirit is
born of a superior nature. The living being whatever it may be is
the particle of that spirit qualitatively one & equal with the
Supreme Spirit. The living entities are parts & parcels of the
Supreme Spirit. The ideology of material civilization must be
changed into the ideology of spiritual civilization. Material
civilization is based on the ideology of unsatiable desire for sense
gratification which leads to anger when such sense gratification
remains unsatisfied and from anger it turns to bewilderment
which again turns into loss of memory. This loss of memory is
complete destruction of spiritual consciousness which is the
highest type of ignorance.
Leaders of material ideology came and gone after having
enjoyed this material earth for a limited period. The material
bodies of such leaders of ideology under various big big names
are now turned into worms, stools or ashes and such materialistic
leaders who fought so much on their different ideologies did not
know what should be permanent basis of civilization. Most of
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them have gone to the lowest status of the kingdom of hell due
to their unholy action of public nuisance. Such leader falsely
thinks that this material world is now enjoyed by him and
afterwards it shall be enjoyed by his generations without
knowing what he is and what are his (?). Such false sense of
proprietorship arises out of (?) ignorance by loss of memory of
spiritual consciousness.
By falsely accepting this material body as the real self the
foolish people engage themselves in the gross materialistic
activities resulting in the conditions mentioned above but later
on he goes away under the laws of higher authority leaving both
the material world and material body behind them. They leave
behind only a historical narration of their transient life without
any (?) tangible benefit for the human being. The mother earth
when the leaders and kings wanted to exploit laughs at these
leaders and kings when she sees that the leaders and kings
cannot go away but the earth remains where she is.
Dr. S.P. Mookerjee rightly observed in his address at Sri
Aurobindo Memorial Convention (dated 24.4.51) as follows:
"These spiritual efforts of the great master often defy common
understanding. Yet the call of the times was never so imperious
at it is now. What India is suffering from today is not so much
poverty of the means of material existence. She is suffering
much more from the bankruptcy of her spiritual resources. Her
spirit has stooped low and is even now stooping low—not to
conquer but to encompass a moral tragedy too terrible to
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contemplate.
"The Government moves in the same vicious circle. Moral
standards are at discount. High purpose is resumed exclusively as
an adornment of pontifical pronouncement from high offices.
The same(?) is virtually littered with the debris of the spiritual
achievements of a people that was once great."
