{"id":1136,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:50","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1136"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:50","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:50","slug":"05-the-coming-of-the-subjective-age-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15\/05-the-coming-of-the-subjective-age-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-05_The Coming of the Subjective Age.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\n\t\tCHAPTER <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t
\nIII<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t
\n\t\tThe Coming of the
\nSubjective Age<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nTHE<\/font> <\/span>
\ninherent aim and
\neffort and justification, the psychological seed-cause, the whole tendency of
\ndevelopment of an individualistic age of mankind, all go back he one dominant
\nneed of rediscovering the substantial truths of life, thought and action which
\nhave been overlaid by falsehood of conventional standards no longer alive to
\nthe<\/font><\/span>,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nof the ideas from which their conventions
\nstarted. It <\/font> <\/span>d seem at first that the shortest way would be to return le original
\nideas themselves for light, to rescue the kernel heir truth from the shell of
\nconvention in which it has become encrusted. But to this course there is a
\ngreat practical de; and there is another which reaches beyond the surface jugs,
\nnearer to the deeper principles of the development of the soul in human
\nsociety. The recovery of the old original now travestied by convention is open
\nto the practical disadva<\/font><\/span>ntage<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>that
\nit tends after a time to restore force to the conven<\/font><\/span>tions which the Time-Spirit
\nis seeking to outgrow and, when the deeper truth-seeking tendency slackens in
\nits e, the conventions may help re-establish their sway. They revive, modified,
\nno doubt, but still powerful; a new encrustation sets in, the truth of things
\nis overlaid by a more complex falsity. And even if it were otherwise, the need
\nof a developing humanity is not to return always to its old ideas. Its need is
\nto progress to a larger fulfilment in which, if the old is at all taken up, it
\nmust be transformed and exceeded. For the underlying truth of things is
\nconstant and eternal, but its mental figures, its life forms, its physical
\nembodiments call constantly for growth and change.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>It is this principle and necessity of
\nthings that justify an age of individualism and rationalism and make it,
\nhowever short it may be, an inevitable period in the cycle. A temporary reign<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 21<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof the critical reason largely destructive in its action is an imperative need
\nfor human progress. In India, since the great Buddhistic upheaval of the
\nnational thought and life, there has been a series of recurrent attempts to
\nrediscover the truth of the soul and life and get behind the veil of stifling
\nconventions; but these have been conducted by a wide and tolerant spiritual
\nreason, a plastic soul-intuition and deep subjective seeking, insufficiently
\nmilitant and destructive. Although productive of great internal and considerable
\nexternal changes, they have never succeeded in getting rid of the predominant
\nconventional order. The work of a dissolvent and destructive intellectual
\ncriticism, though not entirely absent from some of these movements, has never
\ngone far enough; the constructive force, insufficiently aided by the
\ndestructive, has not been able to make a wide and free space for its new
\nformation. It is only with the period of European influence and impact that
\ncircumstances and tendencies powerful enough to enforce the beginnings of a new
\nage of radical and effective revaluation of ideas and things have come into
\nexistence. The characteristic power of these influences has been throughout –
\nor at any rate till quite recently<\/font> – rationalistic, utilitarian and individualistic. It has compelled the
\nnational mind to view everything from anew, searching and critical standpoint,
\nand even those who seek to preserve the present or restore the past are obliged
\nunconsciously or half- consciously to justify their endeavour from the novel
\npoint of view and by its appropriate standards of reasoning. Throughout the
\nEast, the subjective Asiatic mind is being driven to adapt itself to the need
\nfor changed values of life and thought. It has been forced to turn upon itself
\nboth by the pressure of western knowledge and by the compulsion of a quite
\nchanged life-need and life-environment. What it did not do from within, has
\ncome on it as a necessity from without and this externality has carried with it
\nan immense advantage as well as great dangers. The individualistic age is,
\nthen, a radical attempt of mankind to discover the truth and law both of the
\nindividual being and of the world to which the individual belongs. It may
\nbegin, as it began in Europe, with the endeavour to get back, more especially
\nin the sphere of religion, to the original truth which conven-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 22<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ntion has overlaid, defaced or distorted; but from that
\nfirst step it must proceed to others and in the end to a general questioning of
\nthe foundations of thought and practice in all the Spheres of human life and
\naction. A revolutionary reconstruction of religion, philosophy, science, art
\nand society is the last inevitable outcome. It proceeds at first by the light
\nof the individual mind and reason, by its demand on life and its experience of
\nlife; but it must go from the individual to the universal For the effort of the
\nindividual soon shows him that <\/font> <\/span>
\nhe<\/font><\/span>
\ncannot securely discover the truth and law of his own
\nbeing without discovering some universal law and truth to which he relate it.
\nOf the universe he is a part; in all but his deepest spirit he is its subject,
\na small cell in that tremendous organic mass: his substance is drawn from its
\nsubstance and by the law its life the law of his life is determined and
\ngoverned. From a new view and knowledge of the world must proceed his new view
\nand knowledge of himself, of his power and capacity and limitations, of his
\nclaim on existence and the high road and the distant immediate goal of his
\nindividual and social destiny.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nIn
\nEurope and in modern times this has taken the form of a clea<\/font><\/span>r<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nand potent
\nphysical Science: it has proceeded by the discov<\/font><\/span>ery<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nof the laws of the physical universe and the economic
\nand soci<\/font><\/span>ological conditions of human life as determined by the physical being
\nof man, his environment, his evolutionary history, physical and vital, his
\nindividual and collective need. But after a time it must become apparent that
\nthe knowledge of the physical wor1d is not the whole of knowledge; it must
\nappear that man mental as well as a physical and vital being and even much more
\nessentially mental than physical or vital. Even though his psychology is
\nstrongly affected and limited by his physical being environment, it is not at
\nits roots determined by them, but constantly reacts, subtly determines their
\naction, effects even their new-shaping by the force of his psychological demand
\non life. His economic state and social institutions are themselves governed by
\nhis psychological demand on the possibilities, circumstances, tendencies
\ncreated by the relation between the mind and soul of humanity and its life and
\nbody. Therefore to find the truth of things and the law of his being in
\nrelation to that truth<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Page \u2013 23<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nhe must go deeper and fathom the subjective secret of
\nhimself and things as well as their objective forms and surroundings. This he
\nmay attempt to do for a time by the power of the critical and analytic reason
\nwhich has already carried him so far; but not for very long. For in his study
\nof himself and the world he cannot but come face to face with the soul in
\nhimself and the soul in the world and find it to be an entity so profound, so
\ncomplex, so full of hidden secrets and powers that his intellectual reason
\nbetrays itself as an insufficient light and a fumbling seeker: it is
\nsuccessfully analytical only of superficialities and of what lies just behind
\nthe superficies. The need of a deeper knowledge must then turn him to the
\ndiscovery of new powers and means within himself. He finds that he can only
\nknow himself entirely by becoming actively self-conscious and not merely
\nself-critical, by more and more living in his soul and acting out of it rather
\nthan floundering on surfaces, by putting himself into conscious harmony with
\nthat which lies behind his superficial mentality and psychology and by
\nenlightening his reason and making dynamic his action through this deeper light
\nand power to which he thus opens. In this process the rationalistic ideal
\nbegins to subject itself to the ideal of intuitional knowledge and a deeper
\nself awareness; the utilitarian standard gives way to the aspiration towards
\nself-consciousness and self-realisation; the rule of living according to the
\nmanifest laws of physical Nature is replaced by the effort towards living
\naccording to the veiled Law and Will and Power active in the life of the world
\nand in the inner and outer life of humanity.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nAll
\nthese tendencies, though in a crude, initial and ill-developed form, are
\nmanifest now in the world and are growing from day to day with a significant rapidity.
\nAnd their emergence and greater dominance means the transition from the
\nrationalistic and utilitarian period of human development which individualism
\nhas created to a greater subjective age of society. The change began by a rapid
\nturning of the current of thought into large and profound movements
\ncontradictory of the old intellectual stan- dards, a swift breaking of the old
\ntables. The materialism of the nineteenth century gave place first to a novel
\nand profound vitalism which has taken various forms from Nietzsche’s theory of
\nthe<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 24<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nWill to be and Will to Power
\nas the root and law of life to the new pluralistic and pragmatic philosophy
\nwhich is pluralistic because it has its eye fixed on life rather than on the
\nsoul and pragmatic because it seeks to interpret being in the terms of force
\nand action rather than of light and knowledge. These tendencies of thought,
\nwhich had until yesterday a profound influence on the life and thought of
\nEurope prior to the outbreak of the Great war, especially in France and
\nGermany, were not a mere superfic<\/font><\/span>ial
\nrecoil from intellectualism to life and action,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> although their application
\nby lesser minds they often assumed that aspect; they were an attempt to read
\nprofoundly and live by the life<\/font><\/span>-Soul<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>of
\nthe universe and. tended to be deeply psychological <\/font> <\/span>
\n.d subjective <\/font> <\/span>
\nin their method. From behind them, arising
\nin the void<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>created by the
\ndiscrediting of the old rationalistic intellectua<\/font><\/span>lism, there has begun to
\narise a new Intuitionalism, not yet early aware of its own drive and nature,
\nwhich seeks through forms and powers of Life for that which is behind Life and
\nsometimes even lays as yet uncertain hands on the sealed doors of <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe<\/font><\/span> Spirit<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The art, music and literature of the
\nworld, always a sure index of the vital tendencies of the age, have also
\nundergone a found revolution in the direction of an ever-deepening
\nsubjectivism. The great objective art and literature of the past no longer
\ncommands the mind of the new age. The first tendency was, in thought so in literature,
\nan increasing psychological vitalism which sought to represent penetratingly
\nthe most subtle psychological impulses and tendencies of man as they started to
\nsurface in his emotional, aesthetic and vitalistic cravings and activties.
\nComposed with great skill and subtlety but without real insight into the law of
\nman’s being, these creations seldom behind the reverse side of our surface
\nemotions, sensations actions which they minutely analysed in their details but
\nwithout any wide or profound light of knowledge; they were perhaps more
\nimmediately interesting but ordinarily inferior as to the old literature which
\nat least seized firmly and with a large and powerful mastery on its province.
\nOften they described malady of Life rather than its health and power, or the
\nriot revolt of its cravings, vehement and therefore impotent and<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 25<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nunsatisfied, rather than its dynamis of
\nself-expression and self-possession. But to this movement which reached its
\nhighest creative power in Russia, there succeeded a turn towards a more truly
\npsychological art, music and literature, mental, intuitional, psychic rather
\nthan vitalistic, departing in fact from a superficial vitalism as much as its
\npredecessors departed from the objective mind of the past. This new movement
\nlargely aimed like the new philosophic Intuitionalism at a real rending of the
\nveil, the seizure by the human mind of that which does not overtly express
\nitself, the touch and penetration into the -hidden soul of things. Much of it
\nwas still infirm, unsubstantial in its grasp on what it pursued, rudimentary in
\nits forms, but it initiated a decisive departure of the human mind from its old
\nmoorings and pointed the direction in which it is being piloted on a momentous
\nvoyage of discovery, the discovery of a new world within which must eventually
\nbring about the creation of a new world without in life and society. Art and
\nliterature seem definitely to have taken a turn towards a subjective search
\ninto what may be called the <\/font> <\/span>
\nhidden inside of things and<\/font><\/span> <\/span>
\naway<\/font><\/span> from the rational
\nand objective canon or nature.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nAlready in
\nthe practical dealing with life there are advanced progressive tendencies which
\ntake their inspiration from this profounder subjectivism. Nothing indeed has yet
\nbeen firmly accomplished, all is as yet tentative initiation and the first
\nfeeling out towards a material shape for this new spirit. The dominant
\nactivities of the world, the great recent events such as the enormous clash of
\nnations in Europe and the stirrings and changes within the nations which
\npreceded and followed it, were rather the result of a confused half struggle
\nhalf effort at accommodation between the old intellectual and materialistic and
\nthe new still superficial subjective and vitalistic impulses in the West. The
\nlatter unenlightened by a true inner growth of the soul were necessarily
\nimpelled to seize upon the former and utilise them for their unbridled demand
\nupon life; the world was moving towards a monstrously perfect organisation of the
\nWill-to-live and the Will-to-power and it was this that threw itself out in the
\nclash of War and has now found or is finding new forms of life for itself which
\nshow better its governing idea and motive. The Asuric<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 26<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nor <\/font> <\/span>
\neven Rakshasic character of the recent world-collision
\nwas due to this formidable combination of a falsely enlightened vitalastic
\nmotive-power with a great force of servile intelligence and reasoning
\ncontrivance subjected to it as instrument and the genius of an accomplished
\nmaterialistic Science as its Djinn, its <\/font>giant worker of
\nhuge, gross and soulless miracles. The War was bursting of the explosive force
\nso created and, even though <\/span>
\nstrewed the world with ruins, its after results may
\nwell have<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\np<\/font><\/span>repared the collapse, as they have
\ncertainly produced a disintegrating chaos or at least poignant disorder, of the
\nmonstrous combination which produced it, and by that salutary ruin are emptying
\nthe field of human life of the principal obstacles to a truer development
\ntowards a higher goal.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nBehind it
\nall the hope of the race lies in those infant and as et subordinate tendencies
\nwhich carry in them the seed of a new subjective and psychic dealing of man
\nwith his own being, with s fellow-men and with the ordering of his individual
\nand social life.<\/font> <\/span>
\nThe characteristic note of
\nthese tendencies may be seen in<\/font><\/span> le new ideas about the
\neducation and upbringing of the child that became strongly current in the
\npre-war era. Formerly, education was merely a mechanical forcing of the child’s
\nnature into arbitrary grooves of training and knowledge in which his individual
\nsubjectivity was the last thing considered, and his family upbringing was a
\nconstant repression and compulsory shaping of his habits, his thoughts, his
\ncharacter into the mould fixed for tm by the conventional ideas or individual
\ninterests and ideals, the teachers and parents. The discovery that education
\nmust a bringing out of the child’s own intellectual and moral capacities to
\ntheir highest possible value and must be based on psychology of the
\nchild-nature was a step forward towards a more healthy because a more
\nsubjective system; but it still fell short because it still regarded him as an
\nobject to be handled and mou<\/font><\/span>lded<\/span> <\/span>by the teacher, to be educated. But<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nat least there was a g<\/font><\/span>limmering of the realisation that each human being is
\na self-developing soul and that the business of both parent and teacher is to<\/font>
\nenable and to help
\nthe child to educate himself, to develop own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and
\npractical capacities to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 27<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\npressured into form like an inert plastic material. It
\nis not yet realised what this soul is or that the true secret, whether with
\nchild or man, is to help him to find his deeper self, the real psychic entity
\nwithin. That, if we ever give it a chance to come forward, and still more if we
\ncall it into the foreground as "the leader of the march set in our
\nfront," will itself take up most of the business of education out of our
\nhands and develop the capacity of the psychological being towards a realisation
\nof its potentialities of which our present mechanical view of life and man and
\nexternal routine methods of dealing with them prevent us from having any
\nexperience or forming any conception. These new educational methods are on the
\nstraight way to this truer dealing. The closer touch attempted with the
\npsychical entity behind the vital and physical mentality and an increasing
\nreliance on its possibilities must lead to the ultimate discovery that man is
\ninwardly a soul and a conscious power of the Divine and that the evocation of
\nthis real man within is the right object of education and indeed of all human
\nlife if it would find and live according to the hidden Truth and deepest law of
\nits own being. That was the knowledge which the ancients sought to express
\nthrough religious and social symbolism, and subjectivism is a road of return to
\nthe lost knowledge. First deepening man’s inner experience, restoring perhaps
\non an unprecedented scale insight and self-knowledge to the race, it must end
\nby revolutionising his social and collective self-expression.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nMeanwhile,
\nthe nascent subjectivism preparative of the new age has shown itself not so
\nmuch in the relations of individuals or in the dominant ideas and tendencies of
\nsocial development, which are still largely rationalistic and materialistic and
\nonly vaguely touched by the deeper subjective tendency, but in the new
\ncollective self-consciousness of man in that organic mass of his life which he
\nhas most firmly developed in the past, the nation. It is here that it has
\nalready begun to produce powerful results whether as a vitalistic or as a
\npsychical subjectivism, and it is here that we shall see most clearly what is
\nits actual drift, its deficiencies, its dangers as well as the true purpose and
\nconditions of a subjective age of humanity and the goal towards which the
\nsocial cycle, entering this phase, is intended to arrive in its wide
\nrevolution.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 28<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER III The Coming of the Subjective Age   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 THE inherent aim and effort and justification, the psychological seed-cause, the whole tendency of development…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","wpcat-25-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}