Page 29 - NAMAH-Jul-2024

Namah The Ascent of Man — Unity and Diversity

the process of navigating and adapting life around ideas and ideologies.
through these challenges, we grow more
conscious, discover new possibilities and It is the Asura in man, whose life is centred
powers, grow in our fund of knowledge around the mind and hence he believes himself
in a graded manner just as a child goes to be the most superior of all. Ambitious and
from class to class during its schooling. This arrogant, the Asura takes up the Passu and the
itself creates several layers of humanity or Raakssasa and brings it under control of the
sub-species with different degrees of inner intellectual mind. Ordinarily, this is what
development. In the course of this evolution, is generally considered as the most evolved
not only our psychology and sociological human type. He is the image of a civilised
behaviour, but even the physiognomy, undergoes man who has discarded the previous savage
a series of changes that are meant to reflect the stages and arming himself with the intellect
inner evolution. Until this point, human kind lives to stamp his individual and group ego
is still labouring in a state that is sub-human, onto the rest of mankind.
so to say, closer to the animal kind, though
a bit more evolved due to the emergence of The Evolution of man
speech. His emotions and reasoning are only
slightly greater in degree than the animal, However, evolution does not stop here. Man,
though the scope and field of its application proper evolves as he brings out not only a
is enhanced and enlarged. He is, to use the sharper intellect but a discerning intellect
ancient Indian language of the mystics who known as buddhi. Buddhi is not just reason
observed the different evolutionary types of alone, for a rudimentary reason can be felt
s
a
humanity, pasu (more like an animal), vanara even in the animal. Buddhi is reason with an
(the first human transmuted from an ape), ability to distinguish between the true from
pissaaca (the man driven by vital instincts), the false. It is the beginning of an early moral
pramaatha (the humanity living in sensation and better still, an ethical sense. The Asura
and emotions). may have a brilliant intellect but he uses it
to justify the Raakssasa and the Passu in him.
But a stage comes when man grows conscious He has no moral or ethical sense to guide his
enough to participate in the evolutionary process actions. His only concern in action is to win by
through schools and new learning, through might, to impose his will and ideology upon
quest and seeking, through a conscious others by force. His religion, if he has any, is
effort to study and understand. It is by that which approves of and aggrandises his
engaging with this conscious process individual or collective ego. His God is akin
of learning, discovering, understanding and to him, a frightening power who is quick to
empowering oneself, that man grows more slay and punish and reward, appeased by
and more conscious. He evolves disciplines human or animal sacrifice. The Asura and
such as Science, Philosophy, Art. He develops Raakssasa are the original brutes, identified
the sense of a self, which is yet centred around not with their outer qualifications, wealth
his bodily needs and vital passions and or position but by their inner qualities (or
hungers. Next, he grows into an intellectual their lack thereof). His cult is the expansion
kind who lives in a mental ego centring his of the empire of the ego with its ostentatious

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