Harmony of mind, body and spirit in Sri Aurobindo’s “Is India Civilized”

Sri Aurobindo ranks high among the greatest personalities of modern India. He was a multifaceted genius, being a politician, social critic, educationalist, philosopher, man of letters etc. The essay “Is India Civilized” was originally serialized in the quarterly Arya from December 1918 to February 1919. It was basically a response to the attack of William Archer, a British critic, on Indian civilization.

Aurobindo begins by stating unequivocally how a culture or civilization may be evaluated. The true happiness in this world is the terrestrial aim of man, and true happiness lies in the finding and maintenance of a natural harmony of spirit, mind and body. According to Aurobindo happiness is the main goal of human life.

          In Aurobindo’s scheme of things, a human being possesses at least three levels of being – the physical, the mental and the spiritual. And what is more important, without a natural harmony between these three levels, we can never be really happy.

It also means that any country or society, which caters only to the body and the mind but leaves out the spirit, cannot achieve true happiness. A society which nourishes the spirit may attain very high levels of material prosperity. Our very nature is such that we cannot be truly happy until we have the opportunity to strive for perfection.

Pointing the western progress, he says a progress, targeting only on material element is not true progress. Only through the harmony of mind, body and spirit a person or a society can really achieve progress and happiness.