{"id":1143,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:53","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1143"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:53","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:53","slug":"23-the-spiritual-aim-and-life-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\/23-the-spiritual-aim-and-life-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-23_The Spiritual Aim and Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\n\t\tCHAPTER
\nXXI<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font>The Spiritual Aim and Life<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t          A <\/font>
\n\t\tSOCIETY<\/font> founded upon spirituality will differ
\nin two essential points from the normal human society which begins from and
\nends with the lower nature. The normal human society starts from the gregarious
\ninstinct modified by a diversity and possible antagonism of interests, from an
\nassociation and clash of egos, from a meeting, combination, conflict of ideas,
\ntendencies and principles; it tries first to patch up an accommodation of converging
\ninterests and a treaty of peace between discords, founded on a series of
\nimplied contracts, natural or necessary adjustments which become customs of the
\naggregate life, and to these contracts as they develop it gives the name of
\nsocial law. By establishing, as against the interests which lead to conflict,
\nthe interests which call for association and mutual assistance, it creates or
\nstimulates sympathies and habits of helpfulness that give a psychological
\nsupport and sanction to its mechanism of law, custom and contract. It justifies
\nthe mass of social institutions and habitual ways of being which it thus
\ncreates by the greater satisfaction and efficiency of the physical, the vital
\nand the mental life of man, in a word, by the growth and advantages of civilisation.
\nA good many losses have indeed to be written off as against these gains, but
\nthose are to be accepted as the price we must pay for civilisation.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The normal
\nsociety treats man essentially as a physical, vital and mental being. For the
\nlife, the mind, the body are the three terms of existence with which it has
\nsome competence to deal. It develops a system of mental growth and efficiency,
\nan intellectual, aesthetic and moral culture. It evolves the vital side of
\nhuman life and creates an ever-growing system of economic efficiency and vital
\nenjoyment, and this system becomes more and more rich, cumbrous and complex as
\ncivilisation develops. Depressing by its mental and vital overgrowth the
\nnatural<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page \u2013 208<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

vigour of the physical and animal man, it tries to set
\nthe balance it by systems of physical culture, a cumbrous science of !bits and
\nremedies intended to cure the ills it has created and as much amelioration as it can manage of the
\nartificial forms of living that are necessary to its social system. In the end,
\nhowever, experience shows that society
\ntends to die by its own development, a sure sign that there is some radical
\ndefect in its system, a certain proof that its idea of man and its method of
\ndevelopment do not correspond to all the reality of the human being and to the
\naim of life which that reality imposes.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>There is then a radical defect
\nsomewhere in the process of human civilisation; but where is its seat and by
\nwhat issue shall we come out of the
\nperpetual cycle of failure? Our civilised development of life ends in an
\nexhaustion of vitality and a refusal of Nature to lend her support any further
\nto a continued advance l1’on these lines;
\nour civilised mentality, after disturbing the balance of the human system to
\nits own greater profit, finally discovers that it has exhausted and destroyed
\nthat which fed it and loses its power of healthy action and productiveness. It
\nis found that civilisation has created many more problems than it can solve, has
\nmultiplied excessive needs and desires the satisfaction of which it has not
\nsufficient vital force to sustain, has developed a jungle of claims and
\nartificial instincts in the midst of which life loses its way and has no longer
\nany sight of its aim. The more advanced minds begin to declare civilisation a
\nfailure and society begins to feel that they are right. But the remedy proposed is either a halt or even a
\nretrogression, which means in the end more confusion, stagnation and decay, or a
\nreversion to "Nature" which is impossible or can only come about by a
\ncataclysm and disintegration of society; or even a cure is aimed at by carrying
\nartificial remedies to their acme, by more and more Science, more and more
\nmechanical devices, a more scientific organisation of life, which means that
\nthe engine shall replace life, the arbitrary logical reason substitute itself
\nfor complex Nature and man be saved by machinery. As well say that to carry a
\ndisease to its height is the best way to its cure.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>It may be
\nsuggested on the contrary and with some chance of knocking at the right door
\nthat the radical defect of all our sys-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page \u2013 209<\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\ntems is their
\ndeficient development of just that which<\/font><\/span> society has most neglected, the spiritual element, the soul in man<\/span> which
\nis his true being. Even to have a healthy body, a strong vitality and an active
\nand clarified mind and a field for their action and enjoyment, carries man no
\nmore than a certain distance; afterwards he flags and tries for want of a real
\nself-finding, a satisfying aim for his action and progress. These three things
\ndo not make the sum of a complete manhood; they are means to an ulterior end
\nand cannot be made for ever an aim in themselves. Add a rich emotional life
\ngoverned by a well-ordered ethical standard, and still there is the savour of
\nsomething left out, some supreme good which these things mean, but do not in
\nthemselves arrive at, do not discover till they go beyond themselves. Add a
\nreligious system and a wide-spread spirit of belief and piety, and still you
\nhave not found the means of social salvation. All these things human society
\nhas developed, but none of them has saved it from disillusionment, weariness
\nand decay. The ancient intellectual cultures of Europe ended in disruptive
\ndoubt and sceptical impotence, the pieties of Asia in stagnation and decline.
\nModern society has discovered a new principle of survival, progress, but the
\naim of that progress it has never discovered,-un<\/span>less the aim is always more knowledge, more equipment,
\nconvenience and comfort, more enjoyment, a greater and still greater complexity
\nof the social economy, a more and more cumbrously opulent life. But these
\nthings must lead in the end where the old led, for they are only the same thing
\non a larger scale; they lead in a circle, that is to say, nowhere; they do not
\nescape from the cycle of birth, growth, decay and death, they do not really
\nfind the secret of self-prolongation by constant self-renewal which is the principle of immortality, but only seem
\nfor a moment to<\/span> find it by the illusion of a series of experiments each
\nof which ends in disappointment. That
\nso far has been the nature of modern <\/span>progress. Only in its new turn
\ninwards, towards a greater subjectivity now only beginning, is there a better
\nhope; for by that turning it may discover that the real truth of man is to be
\nfound in his soul. It is not indeed certain that a subjective age wi11 lead us there, but it gives us the possibility, can
\nturn in that direction, if used rightly, the more inward movement.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page \u2013 210<\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>It will be
\nsaid that this is an old discovery and that it governed the old societies under
\nthe name of religion. But that was only an appearance. The discovery was there,
\nbut was made for the life of the individual only, and even for him looked beyond the earth for its fulfilment and
\nat earth only as the place of his preparation for a solitary salvation or
\nrelease from the burden of life. Human society itself never seized on the
\ndiscovery of the soul as a means for the discovery of the law of own being or
\non a knowledge of the soul’s true nature and need and its fulfilment as the
\nright way of terrestrial perfection. If we look at the old religions in their
\nsocial as apart from their individual aspect, we see that the use society made
\nof them was only of their most unspiritual or at any rate of their less
\nspiritual parts. It made use of them to give an august, awful and would-be
\neternal sanction to its mass of customs and institutions; it made them a veil
\nof mystery against human questioning and a shield of darkness against the
\ninnovator. So far as it saw in religion a means of human salvation and
\nperfection, it laid hands upon it at once to mechanise it, to catch the human
\nsoul and bind it on the wheels of a socio-religious machinery, to impose on it
\nin the place of spiritual freedom an imperious yoke and an iron prison. It
\nsaddled upon the religious life of man a Church, a priesthood and a mass of
\nceremonies and set over it a pack of watchdogs under the name of creeds and
\ndogmas, dogmas which one had to accept and obey under pain of condemnation to
\neternal hell by an eternal judge beyond, just as one had to accept and to obey
\nthe laws of society on pain of condemnation to temporal imprisonment or death
\nby a mortal judge below. This false socialisation of religion has been always
\nthe chief cause of its failure to regenerate mankind.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>For nothing
\ncan be more fatal to religion than for its spiritual element to be crushed or
\nformalised out of existence by its outward aids and forms and machinery. The falsehood
\nof the old social use of religion is shown by its effects. History has
\nexhibited more than once the coincidence of the greatest religious fervour and
\npiety with darkest ignorance, with an obscure squalor arid long vegetative
\nstagnancy of the mass of human life, with the unquestioned reign of cruelty,
\ninjustice and oppression, or with<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-211<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

an organisation of the most ordinary, unaspiring and
\nunraised existence hardly relieved by some touches of intellectual or
\nhalf-spiritual light on the surface, the end of all this a wide spread revolt
\nthat turned first of all against the established religion as the key-stone of a
\nregnant falsehood, evil and ignorance. It is another sign when the too
\nscrupulously exact observation of a socio-religious
\nsystem and its rites and forms, which by the<\/span> very fact of this misplaced
\nimportance begin to lose their sense and true religious value, becomes the law
\nand most prominent aim of religion rather than any spiritual growth of the
\nindividual and the race. And a great sign too of this failure is when the
\nindividual is obliged to flee from society in order to find room for his
\nspiritual growth; when, finding human life given over to the unregenerated
\nmind, life and body and the place of spiritual freedom occupied by the bonds of
\nform, by Church and Shastra, by some law of the Ignorance, he is obliged to
\nbreak away from all these to seek for
\ngrowth into the spirit in the monastery, on <\/span>the mountain-top, in the
\ncavern, in the desert and the forest. When there is that division between life
\nand the spirit, sentence of condemnation is passed upon human life. Either it
\nis left to circle in its routine or it is decried as worthless and unreal, a
\nvanity of vanities, and loses that confidence in itself and inner faith in the
\nvalue of its terrestrial aims, sraddhii, <\/i>without
\nwhich it cannot come to anything. For the spirit of man must strain towards the
\nheights; when it loses its tension of endeavour, the race must become immobile
\nand stagnant or even sink towards darkness and the dust. Even where life
\nrejects the spirit or the spirit rejects life, there may be a self-affirmation
\nof the inner being; there may even be a glorious crop of saints and hermits in
\na forcing-soil of spirituality, but unless the race, the society, the nation is
\nmoved towards the spiritualisation of life or move forward led by the light of <\/i>an ideal, the end must be littleness,
\nweakness and stagnation. Or the race has to turn to the intellect for rescue,
\nfor some hope or new ideal, and arrive by a circle through an age of
\nrationalism at a fresh effort towards the restatement of spiritual truth and a
\nnew attempt to spiritualise human life.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The true and full spiritual aim in
\nsociety will regard man not<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-212<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

as a mind, a life and a body, but as a soul incarnated
\nfor a divine fulfilment upon earth, not only in heavens beyond, which after it
\nneed not have left if it had no divine business here in the world of physical,
\nvital and mental nature. It will therefore regard the life, mind and body
\nneither as ends in themselves, sufficient for their own satisfaction, nor as
\nmortal members full of disease which have only to be dropped off for the
\nrescued spirit to flee away into its own pure regions, but as first instruments
\nof the soul, the yet imperfect instruments of an unseized diviner purpose. It
\nwill believe in their destiny and help them to believe in themselves, but for
\nthat very reason in their highest and not only in their lowest or lower
\npossibilities. Their destiny will be in its view, to spiritualise themselves so
\nas to grow into visible members of the spirit, lucid means of its
\nmanifestation, themselves spiritual, illumined, more and more conscious and
\nperfect. For, accepting the truth of man’s soul as a thing entirely divine in
\nits essence, it will accept also the possibility of his whole being becoming
\ndivine in spite of Nature’s first patent contradictions of this possibility,
\nher darkened denials of this ultimate certitude, and even with these as a
\nnecessary earthly starting-point. And as it wm regard man the individual, it
\nwill regard too man the collectivity as a soul-form of the Infinite, a
\ncollective soul myriadly embodied upon earth for a divine fulfilment in its
\nmanifold relations and its multitudinous activities. Therefore it will hold
\nsacred all the different parts of man’s life which correspond to the parts of
\nhis being, all his physical, vital, dynamic, emotional, aesthetic, ethical,
\nintellectual, psychic evolution, and see in them instruments for a growth
\ntowards a diviner living. It will regard every human society, nation, people or
\nother organic aggregate from the same standpoint, subsouls, as it were, means
\nof a complex manifestation and self-fulfilment of the Spirit, the divine
\nReality, the conscious Infinite in man upon earth. The possible godhead of man
\nbecause he is inwardly of one being with God will be its one solitary creed and
\ndogma.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>But it will not seek to enforce
\neven this one uplifting dogma by an external compulsion upon the lower members
\nof man’s natural being; for that is nigraha,
\n<\/i>a repressive contraction of the nature which may lead to an apparent
\nsuppression of the evil,<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-213<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

but not to a real and healthy growth of the good; it
\nwill rather hold up this creed and ideal as a light and inspiration to all his
\nmembers to grow into the godhead from within themselves, to become freely
\ndivine. Neither in the individual nor in the society will it seek to imprison,
\nwall in, repress, impoverish, but to let in the widest air and the highest
\nlight. A large liberty will be the law of a spiritual society and the increase
\nof freedom a sign of the growth of human society towards the possibility of
\ntrue spiritualisation. To spiritualise in this sense a society of slaves,
\nslaves of power, slaves of authority, slaves of custom, slaves of dogma, slaves
\nof all sorts of imposed laws which they live under rather than live by them,
\nslaves internally of their own weakness, ignorance and passions from whose
\nworst effect they seek or need to be protected by another and external slavery,
\ncan never be a successful endeavour. They must shake off their fetters first in
\norder to be fit for a higher freedom. Not that man has not to wear many a yoke in his progress upward; but
\nonly the<\/span> yoke which he accepts because it represents, the more perfectly
\nthe better, the highest inner law of his nature and its aspiration, will be
\nentirely helpful to him. The rest buy their good results at a heavy cost and
\nmay retard as much as or even more than they accelerate his progress.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The spiritual
\naim will recognise that man as he grows in his being must have as much free
\nspace as possible for all its members to grow in their own strength, to find
\nout themselves and their potentialities. In their freedom they will err,
\nbecause experience comes through many errors, but each has in itself a divine
\nprinciple and they will find it out, disengage its presence, significance and
\nlaw as their experience of themselves deepens and increases. Thus true
\nspirituality will not lay a yoke upon science and philosophy or compel them to
\nsquare their conclusions with any statement of dogmatic religious or even of
\nassured spiritual truth, as some of the old religions attempted, vainly,
\nignorantly, with an unspiritual obstinacy and arrogance. Each part of man’s
\nbeing has its own dharma <\/i>which it
\nmust follow and will follow in the end, put on it what fetters you please. The
\nDharma of science, thought and philosophy is to seek for truth by the intellect
\ndispassionately, without prepossession and prejudg-<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-214<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

ment, with no other first propositions than the law of
\nthought and observation itself imposes. Science and philosophy are not bound to
\nsquare their observations and conclusions with any current ideas of religious
\ndogma or ethical rule or aesthetic prejudice. In the end, if left free in their
\naction, they will find the unity of Truth with Good and Beauty and God and give
\nthese a greater meaning than any dogmatic religion or any formal ethics or any
\nnarrower aesthetic idea can give us. But meanwhile they must be left free even
\nto deny God and Good and Beauty if they will, if their sincere observation of
\nthings so points them. For all these rejections must came round in the end of
\ntheir circling and return to a larger truth of the things they refuse. Often we
\nfind atheism both in individual and society a necessary passage to deeper
\nreligious and spiritual truth; one has sometimes to \\deny Gad in order to find him; the finding is inevitable at the
\nend of all earnest scepticism and denial.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The same law holds
\ngood in Art; the aesthetic being of man rise similarly an its own curve towards
\nits diviner possibilities. the highest aim of the aesthetic being is to find
\nthe Divine through beauty; the highest Art is that which by an inspired use of
\nsignificant and interpretative form unseals the doors of the spirit. But in
\norder that it may come to do this greatest thing largely and sincerely, it must
\nfirst endeavour to see and depict an and Nature and life far their awn sake, in
\ntheir awn characteristic truth and beauty; far behind these first characters
\nlies always the beauty of the Divine in
\nlife and man and Nature and it <\/span>is through their just transformation that
\nwhat was at first veiled by them has to. be revealed. The dogma that Art must
\nbe religious or not be at all, is a false dogma, just as is the claim that it
\nmust be subservient to. ethics or utility or scientific truth or philosophic
\nideas; Art may make use of these things as elements, but it has its own svadharma, <\/i>essential law, and it will
\nrise to the widest spirituality by following out its own natural line with no
\nother yoke than the intimate law of its own being.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Even with
\nthe lower nature of man, though here we are naturally led to suppose that
\ncompulsion is the only remedy, the spiritual aim will seek for a free self-rule
\nand development from within rather than a repression of his dynamic and vital
\nbeing from<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-215<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

without. All experience shows that man must be given a
\ncertain freedom to stumble in action as well as to err In knowledge so long as
\nhe does not get from within himself his freedom from wrong movement and error;
\notherwise he cannot grow. Society for its own sake has to coerce the dynamic
\nand vital man, but coercion only chains up the devil and alters at best his
\nform of action into more mitigated and civilised movements; it does not and
\ncannot eliminate him. The real virtue of the dynamic and vital being, the Life
\nPurusha, can only come by his finding a higher law and spirit for his activity
\nwithin himself; to give him that, to illuminate and transform and not to
\ndestroy his impulse is the true spiritual means of regeneration.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Thus spirituality will respect the
\nfreedom of the lower members, but it will not leave them to themselves; it will
\npresent to them the truth of the spirit in themselves, translated into their
\nown fields of action, presented in a light which illumines all their activities
\nand shows them the highest law of their own freedom. It will not, for instance,
\nescape from scientific materialism by a barren contempt for physical life or a
\ndenial of Matter, but pursue rather the sceptical mind into its own
\naffirmations and denials and show it there the Divine. If it cannot do that, it
\nis proved that it is itself unenlightened or deficient, because one-sided, in its
\nlight. It will not try to slay the vitality in man by denying life, but will
\nrather reveal to life the divine in itself as the principle of its own
\ntransformation. If it cannot do that, it is because it has itself not yet
\nwholly fathomed the meaning of the creation and the secret of the Avatar.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The
\nspiritual aim will seek to fulfil itself therefore in a full- ness of life and
\nman’s being in the individual and the race which will be the base for the
\nheights of the spirit, – the base becoming in the end of one substance with the
\npeaks. It will not proceed by a scornful neglect of the body, nor by an ascetic
\nstarving of the vital being and an utmost bareness or even squalor as the rule
\nof spiritual living, nor by a puritanic denial of art and beauty and the
\naesthetic joy of life, nor by a neglect of science and philosophy as poor,
\nnegligible or misleading intellectual pursuits, – though the temporary utility
\neven of these exaggerations as against the opposite excesses need not be
\ndenied; it will be all things to all, but<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-216<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

all it will be at once their highest aim and meaning and
\nthe most all-embracing expression of themselves in which all they are and seek
\nfor will be fulfilled. It will aim at establishing in society le true inner
\ntheocracy, not the false theocracy of a dominant Church or priesthood, but that
\nof the inner Priest, Prophet and king. It will reveal to man the divinity in
\nhimself as the Light, strength, Beauty, Good, Delight, Immortality that dwells
\nwithin and build up in his outer life also the kingdom of God which is first
\ndiscovered within us. It will show man the way to seek for e Divine in every
\nway of his being, <\/font> sarvabhiivena<\/font><\/i>, (Gita<\/font><\/span><\/i> )<\/font>
\n<\/font> <\/i>and
\nso find it ld live in it, that however – even in all kinds of ways – he ‘yes and acts,
\nhe shall live and act in that,1<\/sup> 
\nin the Divine, in the spirit, in the eternal Reality of his being.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1
\n\t\t<\/font><\/sup>Gita. <\/font> <\/span>
\n\t\tSarvathii vartamiino’pi sa yogi mayi variate<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>217<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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