Chapter One: The Passing of War?

Sri Aurobindo writes this chapter written towards the end of World War 1. He explains that the progress of humanity proceeds through two ways:

(a) A series of imaginations, and

(b) A train of illusions.

Each of them contains a certain truth.

The Chit-Shakti or Consciousness-Force gets translated into Will and Knowledge which works out our affairs that gets translated as imaginations which are then reflected in the soul of mankind.

The illusion is the shape given to that reflection by the deceptive intellect in the constraints of Space and Time.

But there is an interesting twist. "Human imaginations are often fulfilled to the letter; our illusions on the contrary find the truth behind them realised most unexpectedly, at a time, in ways under circumstances far other than those we had fixed for them". (SABCL 15, pg.582)

The human being has all sorts of illusions ranging from the petty to the grandest. The greatest illusions are those that cluster around "a perfected society, a perfected race, a terrestrial millennium." (Ibid) Every time a new idea comes and inspires the masses, after some time it betrays the hope generated. Actually no change of ideas, no belief in God or Prophets, no science or philosophy or social system can bring about the fulfillment of the highest ideal. Sri Aurobindo opines that because man is not a machine but a sufficiently complex being, nothing can be done unless there is an entire change which encompasses every part of his being. Only then he can be liberated from discords and imperfections.

Militarism and Commercialism

He cites that one of the illusions incidental to this great hope is the expectation aroused at the passing of World War 1. The first illusion was the new gospel that the extension of commerce would be the extinction of war.

This 1920 statement is echoed after a hundred years when US President Donald Trump claimed that he stopped the recent 2025 Indo-Pak conflict from "going nuclear" by threatening to impose tariffs and refusing to do any trade deals if they did not agree to a cease-fire ! This statement has been challenged but nevertheless reveals the mind-set of what Sri Aurobindo described as a biune duality of militarism and commercialism (vide infra).

Commercialism was considered to be the natural enemy of militarism. William Schurz, former head of Thunderbird School of Global Management had commented, "Borders frequented by trade seldom need soldiers". It was believed that "Gold-hunger or commodity-hunger would drive out earth-hunger". (Ibid, pg.583)Though globalization has actually made the world more expensive.

Sri Aurobindo however cautioned, "Actually this very reign of commercialism, this increase of production and interchange, this desire for commodities and markets and this piling up of a huge burden of unnecessary necessities has been the cause of half the wars that have since afflicted the human race".

The idea that trade prevents conflicts has been challenged by latest research which today finds that while bilateral trade can lower war probability, global trade openness can paradoxically increase it by reducing dependence on specific countries. (AI overview) Besides, wars often seem to stimulate economies and open new markets. And commercial profit from arms production (which is the biggest business in the world) stimulates military ventures.

Sri Aurobindo gives a warning as early as 1920: "And now we see militarism and commercialism united in a loving clasp, coalescing into a sacred biune duality of national life and patriotic aspiration and causing and driving by their force the most irrational, the most monstrous and nearly cataclysmic, the hugest war of modern and indeed of all historic times." (Ibid)

Date of Update: 30-Sep-25