The Status of Inanimation in Neohumanism

Anandanagar

Evolution is the process from the inanimate to the animate.

A stone has no power of action nor the sensation of mind because there has been no manifestation of mind in the stone at all.

Trees and plants are more animate than the stone.

• There is activity in them.

They:

• grow
• draw the vital juice from the earth
• maintain their species by creating seeds in their own bodies
• enjoy and suffer pleasure and pain when taken care of or hurt

We see in them the manifestation of consciousness, for mind has awakened in them.

Thus progressing on the path of mental development, we see in humanity its greatest manifestation.

Just as evolution takes place from the subtle to the crude, similarly the unit entity reverts step by step from the crude to the subtle, towards the same Absolute Consciousness from whence it came. It is just like the waves of the sea, rippling back from whence they have come.

(Subháśita Saḿgraha II, 50 Shrii Shrii Anandamurtijii)

Neohumanism includes within its scope not only human beings and animate creatures, such as plants and animals, but all inanimate entities as well, for the scope of Neohumanism extends down to the smallest particles of sub-atomic matter.

Neohumanism is newly-explained humanism.

“Humanism” and “humanity” have been very popular words for the last century, but only human beings have come within the scope of humanism and humanity.

This explanation [of the concept] is not sufficient – it cannot quench the thirst of the developing human society. Why should the love and affection of developed human minds be restricted to human beings only?

Why should it not include all living beings, including plant life? This is the new explanation of humanism – Neohumanism – for within Neohumanism the entire animate world is included.

But what is the status of inanimation [the inanimate world] in Neohumanism?

Fundamentally there is hardly any difference between the world of animation and the world of inanimation. Some people explain that when there is a characteristic of movement within a structure it is animate, otherwise it is inanimate.

But this explanation is not sufficient, because there is a characteristic of movement within both animate and inanimate objects. Others say that if the source of this internal characteristic of movement is the unit mind, it is animation, otherwise it is inanimation. But this is not a perfect interpretation either.

Even within inanimate objects as minute as the atom and smaller particles, there are still smaller particles that maintain their structural unity and struggle against their internal and external fissiparous tendencies.

If the scope of Neohumanism is extended in this way from an extensive scope to an intensive scope, then we should go deeper into matter – not only into composite structures of animation and inanimation, but within the subtlest and smallest assembling structures.(1) And within the smallest assembling structures, where the point is nadir, the assembling body is the perfect status. But that perfect status can be reached only theoretically, never in the realm of practicality.

So in Neohumanism our movement, our progress, must be not only extensive – that is, bringing within its scope the whole world of animation; it should also be intensive, a never-ending movement from the imperfect world of humanism to the perfect world of the unit assembling body, to the original primordial phase of perfection.

And that golden day is sure to come when that perfect stage of structure, that is, unit existence in the intra-atomic world, will be reached, when human intuition will realize that the essence in the sub-atomic world is pure Consciousness.