Alleviating the Greater Part of Human Suffering

In the opening chapter of The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo sets forth the proposition that “… all problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony.” We can see the reality of this statement both in the way we respond internally to circumstances, events and our reactions to them, as well as in the way we, collectively, address our common human needs and relate to the environment within which we live.

The Mother takes up both of these levels in her discussion about how to organise and harmonise both our inner process and the relations of nations and communities with one another. The imbalance inwardly comes from over-emphasis on either the physical, vital or mental levels without an offsetting view that tries to find the common need and meet it appropriately, and without the core focus of the needed psychic being connection to the Divine.

We can see everywhere around us at the level of society the impact of imbalance and the disruptions, disharmony and suffering this causes. There is an enormous imbalance of access to resources, income inequality, and energy usage. Certain societies create more waste and pollution, including development of greenhouse gases, while other societies suffer the greatest impact and are thus subject to famine, drought, flooding, and dislocations due to fighting over limited resources, or mass migrations caused by the underlying imbalances and the fights and wars they cause.

We see also in our relation to the environment that we are upsetting the harmony of the atmosphere, the temperature of the oceans, and the mix of toxic pollution that is systematically destroying the ocean environment and the food chain dependent on it, as well as creating further disruptions on the societal and individual human levels.

If we can begin to put everything in its right place and create a balance, find ways to equitably provide humanity access to the resources available, and work to restore harmony and balance in our environment, we can begin to solve the problems that create and accentuate human suffering.

The Mother writes: “You may be five years old or twenty, fifty or sixty and yet transform yourself in this way by putting everything before this inner light. You will see that the elements which do not conform with your ideal are not generally elements which you have to throw wholly out of yourself (there are a few of this kind); they are simply things not in their place. If you organise everything — your feelings, your thoughts, your impulses, etc. — around the psychic centre which is the inner light, you will see that all inner discord will change into a luminous order.”

“It is quite evident that if a similar procedure were adopted by a nation or by the earth, most of the things which make men unhappy would disappear, for the major part of the world’s misery comes from the fact that things are not in their place. If life were organised in such a way that nothing was wasted and each thing was in its place, most of these miseries would not exist any longer. An old sage has said: ‘There is no evil. There is only a lack of balance. There is nothing bad. Only things are not in their place.’ “

“If everything were in its place, in nations, in the material world, in the actions and thoughts and feelings of individuals, the greater part of human suffering would disappear.”

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Living Within: The Yoga Approach to Psychological Health and Growth, Exercises for Growth and Mastery, Self-Observation and Self-Organisation, pp. 126-131