{"id":1149,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:55","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1149"},"modified":"2013-12-02T12:09:36","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T20:09:36","slug":"18-the-suprarational-ultimate-of-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\/18-the-suprarational-ultimate-of-life-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-18_The\u00a0Suprarational\u00a0Ultimate of Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n
\n


\nCHAPTER <\/font><\/b>
\nXVI<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe   <\/span>Suprarational  <\/span>Ultimate of 
\n<\/span>Life<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n                    
\n<\/font> <\/span>         <\/font> <\/span>
\nI<\/span><\/font>N <\/font> <\/span><\/b>
\nALL<\/span><\/font> the higher powers of his life man may be said to be seeking, blindly
\nenough, for God. To get at the Divine and Eternal in himself and the world and
\nto harmonise them, to put his being and his life in tune with the Infinite
\nreveals itself in these parts of his nature as his concealed aim and his
\ndestiny. He sets out to arrive at his highest and largest and most perfect self,
\nand the moment he at all touches upon it, this self in him appears to be one
\nwith some great Soul and Self of Truth and Good and Beauty in the world to which
\nwe give the name of God. To get at this as a spiritual presence is the aim of
\nreligion, to grow into harmony with its eternal nature of light, love, strength
\nand purity is the aim of ethics, to enjoy and mould ourselves into the harmony
\nof its eternal beauty and delight is the aim and consummation of our aesthetic
\nneed and nature, <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nto know<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nand to be according to its eternal principles of truth is <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe
\nend of science and philosophy and of all our insistent drive towards knowledge<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n     
\n<\/font> <\/span>But
\nall this seems to be something above our normal and usual being; it is something
\ninto which we strive to grow, but it does not seem to be the normal stuff, the
\nnatural being or atmosphere of the individual and the society in their ordinary
\nconsciousness and their daily life. That life is practical and not idealistic;
\nit is concerned not with good, beauty, spiritual experience, the higher truth,
\nbut with interests, physical needs, desires, vital necessities. This is real to
\nit, all the rest is a little shadowy; this belongs to its ordinary labour, all
\nthe rest to its leisure; this to the stuff of which it is made, all the rest to
\nits parts of ornament and <\/font> <\/span>
\ndispensable improvement. To all that rest society gives
\na <\/font> <\/span>
\nplace, but its heart is not there. It accepts
\nethics as a bond and an influence, but it does not live for ethical good; its
\nreal gods are vital need and utility and the desires of the body. If it governs<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/font>Page-145<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nits life partly by ethical laws because otherwise vital need, desire,
\nutility in seeking their own satisfaction through many egoistic individuals
\nwould clash among themselves and destroy their own aims, it does not feel called
\nupon to make its life entirely ethical. It concerns itself still less with
\nbeauty; even if it admits things beautiful as an embellishment and an amusement,
\na satisfaction and pastime of the eye and ear and mind, nothing moves it
\nimperatively to make its life a thing of beauty. It allows religion a fixed
\nplace and portion, on holy days, in the church or temple, at the end of life
\nwhen age and the approach of death call the <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nattention forcibly<\/font><\/span> away <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nfrom this life to
\nother life, at fixed times <\/font> <\/span>
\nin the week or the day when it thinks it right for a
\nmoment to pause in the affairs of the world and remember God; but to make the
\nwhole of life a religion, a remembering of God and a seeking after him, is a
\nthing that is not really done even in societies which like the Indian erect
\nspirituality as their aim and principle. It admits philosophy in a still more
\nremote fashion; and if nowadays it eagerly seeks after science, that is because
\nscience helps prodigiously the satisfaction of its vital desires, needs and
\ninterests: but it does not turn to seek after an entirely scientific life any
\nmore than after an entirely ethical life. A more complete effort in any one of
\nthese directions it leaves to the individual, to the few, and to individuals of
\na special type, the saint, the ethical man, the artist, the thinker, the man of
\nreligion; it gives them a place, does some homage to them, assigns some room to
\nthe things they represent, but for itself it is content to follow mainly after
\nits own inherent principle of vital satisfaction, vital necessity and utility,
\nvital efficiency.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n      <\/font> <\/span>
\nThe reason is that here we get to
\nanother power of our being which is different from the ethical, aesthetic,
\nrational and religious, – one which, even if we recognise it as lower in the
\nscale, still insists on its own reality and has not only the right to exist but
\nthe right to satisfy itself and be fulfilled. It is indeed the primary power, it
\nis the base of our existence upon earth, it is that which the others take as
\ntheir starting-point and their foundation. This is the life-power in us, the
\nvitalistic, the dynamic nature. Its whole principle and aim ‘is to be, to assert
\nits existence, to increase, to expand, to possess and to enjoy: its native terms<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-146<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nare growth of being, pleasure and power. Life itself here is Being at
\nlabour in Matter to express itself in terms of conscious force; human life is
\nthe human being at labour to impress himself on the material world with the
\ngreatest possible force and intensity and extension. His primary insistent aim
\nmust be to live and make for himself a place in the world, for himself and his
\nspecies, secondly, having made it to possess, produce and enjoy with an
\never-widening scope, and finally to spread himself over all the earth-life and
\ndominate it; this is and must be his first practical business. <\/i>That is
\nwhat the Darwinians have tried to express by their notion of the struggle for
\nlife. But the struggle is not merely to last and live, but to increase, enjoy
\nand possess: its method includes and uses not only <\/i>a principle and
\ninstinct of egoism, but a concomitant principle and instinct of association.
\nHuman life is moved by two equally powerful impulses, one of individualistic
\nself-assertion, the other of collective self-assertion; it works by strife, but
\nalso by mutual assistance and united effort; it uses two diverse convergent
\nforms of action, two motives which seem to be contradictory but are in fact
\nalways coexistent, competitive endeavour and co-operative endeavour. It is from
\nthis character of the dynamism of life that the whole structure of human society
\nhas come into being, and it is upon the sustained and vigorous action of this
\ndynamism that the continuance, energy and growth of all human societies depends.
\nIf this life-force in them fails and these motive-powers lose in vigour, then
\nall begins to languish, stagnate and finally move towards disintegration.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n         
\n<\/font> <\/span>The modern
\nEuropean idea of society is founded upon the primary and predominant part played
\nby this vital dynamism in the formation and maintenance of society; for the
\nEuropean, ever since the Teutonic mind and temperament took possession of
\nwestern Europe, has been fundamentally the practical, dynamic and kinetic man,
\nvitalistic in the very marrow of his thought and being. All else has been the
\nfine flower of his life and culture, this has been its root and stalk, and ill
\nmodern times this truth of his temperament, always there, has come aggressively
\nto the surface and triumphed over the traditions of Christian piety and
\nLatinistic culture. This triumphant emergence and<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-147<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nlead of the vital man and his motives has been the whole significance of
\nthe great economic and political civilisation of the nineteenth century. Life in
\nsociety consists, for the practical human instincts, in three activities, the
\ndomestic and social life of man,<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nsocial in the sense of his customary relations with
\nothers in the community both as an individual and as a member of one family
\namong many,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nhis economic
\nactivities as a producer, wealth-getter and consumer and his political status
\nand action. Society is the organisation of these three things and,
\nfundamentally, it is for the practical human being nothing more. Learning and
\nscience, culture, ethics, aesthetics, religion are assigned their place as aids
\nto life, for its guidance and betterment, for its embellishment, for the
\nconsolation of its labours, difficulties and sorrows, but they are no part of
\nits very substance, do not figure among its essential objects. Life itself is
\nthe only object of living.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n        <\/font> <\/span>
\nThe ancients held a
\ndifferent, indeed a diametrically opposite view. Although they recognised the
\nimmense importance of the primary activities, in Asia the social most, in Europe
\nthe political, – as every society must which at all means to live and flourish,
\n– yet these were not to them primary in the higher sense of the word; they were
\nman’s first business, but not his chief business. The ancients regarded this
\nlife as an occasion for the development of the rational, the ethical, the
\naesthetic, the spiritual being. Greece and Rome laid stress on the three first
\nalone. Asia went farther, made these also subordinate and looked upon them as
\nstepping-stones to a spiritual consummation. Greece and Rome were proudest of
\ntheir art, poetry and philosophy and cherished these things as much as or even
\nmore than their political liberty or greatness. Asia too exalted these three
\npowers and valued inordinately her social organisation, but valued much more
\nhighly, exalted with a much greater intensity of worship her saints, her
\nreligious founders and thinkers, her spiritual heroes. The modern world has been
\nproudest of its economic organisation, its political liberty, order and
\nprogress, the mechanism, comfort and ease of its social and domestic life, its
\nscience, but science most in its application to practical life, most for its
\ninstruments and conveniences, its railways, tele-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-148<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ngraphs, steamships and its other thousand and one discoveries, countless
\ninventions and engines which help man to master the physical world. That marks
\nthe whole difference in the attitude.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span>On this a great deal hangs; for if the practical and vitalistic
\nview of life and society is the right one, if society merely or principally
\nexists for the maintenance, comfort, vital happiness and political and economic
\nefficiency of the species, then our idea that life is a seeking for God and for
\nthe highest self and that society too must one day make that its principle,
\ncannot stand. Modem society, at any rate in its self-conscious aim, is far
\nenough from any such endeavour; whatever may be the splendour of its
\nachievement, it acknowledges only two gods, life and practical reason organised
\nunder the name of science. Therefore on this great primary thing, this
\nlife-power and its manifestations, we must look with special care to see what it
\nis in its reality as well as what it is in its appearance. Its appearance is
\nfamiliar enough; for of that is made the very stuff and present form of our
\neveryday life. Its main ideals are the physical good and vitalistic well being
\nof the individual and the community, the entire satisfaction of the desire for
\nbodily health, long life, comfort, luxury, wealth, amusement, recreation, a
\nconstant and tireless expenditure of the mind and the dynamic life-force in
\nremunerative work and production and, as the higher flame-spires of this
\nrestless and devouring energy, creations and conquests of various kinds, wars,
\ninvasions, colonisation, discovery, commercial victory, travel, adventure, the
\nfull possession and utilisation of the earth. All this life still takes as its
\ncadre the old existing forms, the family, the society, the nation; and it has
\ntwo impulses, individualistic and collective.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n                 <\/font><\/span>The
\nprimary impulse of life is individualistic and makes family, social and national
\nlife a means for the greater satisfaction of the vital individual. In the family
\nthe individual seeks for the satisfaction of his vital instinct of possession,
\nas well as for the joy of companionship, and for the fulfilment of his other
\nvital instinct of self-reproduction. His gains are the possession of wife,
\nservants, house, wealth, estates, the reproduction of much of him- self in the
\nbody and mind of his progeny and the prolongation of his activities, gains and
\npossessions in the life of his children;<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-149<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nincidentally he enjoys the vital and physical pleasures and the more
\nmental pleasures of emotion and affection to which the domestic life gives
\nscope. In society he finds a less intimate but a larger expansion of himself and
\nhis instincts. A wider field of companionship, interchange, associated effort
\nand production, errant or gregarious pleasure, satisfied emotion, stirred
\nsensation and regular amusement are the advantages which attach him to social
\nexistence. In the nation and its constituent parts he finds a means for the play
\nof a remoter but still larger sense of power and expansion. If he has the force,
\nhe finds there fame, pre- eminence, leadership, or at a lower pitch the sense of
\nan effective action on a small or a large scale, in a reduced or a magnified
\nfield of public action; if he cannot have this, still he can feel a share of
\nsome kind, a true portion or fictitious image of participation, in the pride,
\npower and splendour of a great collective activity and vital expansion. In all
\nthis there is primarily at work the individualist principle of the vital
\ninstinct in which the competitive side of that movement of our nature associates
\nwith the co- operative but predominates over it. Carried to an excess this
\npredominance creates the ideal of the arrivist, to whom family, society and
\nnation are not so much a sympathetic field as a ladder to be climbed, a prey to
\nbe devoured, a thing to be conquered and dominated. In extreme cases the
\nindividualist turn isolates itself from the companion motive, reverts to a
\nprimitive antisocial feeling and creates the nomad, the adventurer, the ranger
\nof wilds, or the pure solitary,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nsolitary not from any intellectual or spiritual
\nimpulse, but because society, once an instrument, has become a prison and a
\nburden, an oppressive cramping of his expansion, a denial of breathing-space and
\nelbow-room. But these cases grow rarer, now that the ubiquitous tentacles of
\nmodern society take hold everywhere; soon there will be no place of refuge left
\nfor either the nomad or the solitary, not even perhaps Saharan deserts or the
\nsecure remoteness of the Himalayas. Even, it may be, the refuge of an inner
\nseclusion may be taken from us by a collectivist society intent to make its
\npragmatic, economic, dynamic most of every individual "cell" of the organism.<\/font><\/span>
\n       <\/span>For
\nthis growing collectivist or co-operative tendency embodies the second instinct
\nof the vital or practical being in man.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-150<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nIt shows itself first in the family ideal by which the individual
\nsubordinates himself and finds his vital satisfaction and practical account, not
\nin his own predominant individuality, but in the life of a larger vital ego.
\nThis ideal played a great part in the old aristocratic views of life; it was
\nthere in the ancient Indian idea of the kula <\/i>and the kuladharma, <\/i>
\nand in later India it was at the root of the joint-family system which made the
\nstrong economic base of mediaeval Hinduism. It has taken its grossest Vaishya
\nform in the ideal of the British domestic Philistine, the idea of the human
\nindividual born here to follow a trade or profession, to marry and procreate a
\nfamily, to earn his living, to succeed reasonably if not to amass an efficient
\nor ostentatious wealth, to enjoy for a space and then die, thus having done the
\nwhole business for which he came into the body and performed all his essential
\nduty in <\/font> <\/span>life, –<\/font> for this apparently was the end unto
\nwhich man with all
\nhis divine possibilities was born! But whatever form it
\nmay take, however this grossness may be refined or toned down, whatever ethical
\nor religious conceptions may be superadded, always the family is an essentially
\npractical, vitalistic and economic creation. It is simply a larger vital ego, a
\nmore complex vital organism that takes up the individual and englobes him in a
\nmore effective competitive and co-operative life unit. The family like the
\nindividual accepts and uses society for its field and means of continuance, of.<\/font> vital satisfaction
\nand well-being, of aggrandisement and enjoyment. But this life unit also, this
\nmultiple ego can be induced by the co-operative instinct in life to subordinate
\nits egoism to the claims of the society and trained even to sacrifice itself at
\nneed on the communal altar. For the society is only a still larger vital
\ncompetitive and co-operative ego that takes up both the individual and the
\nfamily into a more complex organism and uses them for the collective
\nsatisfaction of its vital needs, claims, interests, aggrandisement, well-being:
\nenjoyment. The individual and family consent to this exploitation for the same
\nreason that induced the individual to take on himself the yoke of the family,
\nbecause they find their account in this wider vital life and have the instinct
\nin it of their own larger growth, security and satisfaction. The society, still
\nmore than the family, is essentially economic in its aims and in its very
\nnature. That accounts for the predomi-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-151<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nnantly economic and materialistic character of modern ideas of Socialism;
\nfor these ideas are the full rationalistic flowering of this instinct of
\ncollective life. But since the society is one competitive unit among many of its
\nkind, and since its first relations with the others are always potentially
\nhostile, even at the best competitive and not co-operative, and have to be
\norganised in that view, a political character is necessarily added to the social
\nlife, even predominates for a time over the economic and we have the nation or
\nState. If we give their due value to these fundamental characteristics and
\nmotives of collective existence, it will seem natural enough that the
\ndevelopment of the collective and co- operative idea of society should have
\nculminated in a huge, often a monstrous overgrowth of the vitalistic, economic
\nand political ideal of life, society and civilisation.
\n<\/font>
\n       
\n<\/font> <\/span>What
\naccount are the higher parts of man’s being, those finer powers in him that more
\nopenly tend to the growth of his divine nature, to make with this vital instinct
\nor with its gigantic modern developments? Obviously, their first impulse must be
\nto take hold of them and dominate and transform all this crude life into their
\nown image; but when they discover that here is a power apart, as persistent as
\nthemselves, that it seeks a satisfaction per se <\/i>and accepts their impress
\nto a certain extent, but not altogether <\/font> <\/span>
\nand,
\nas it were, unwillingly, partially, unsatisfactorily, <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> what <\/font> <\/span>
\nthen? We often find that ethics and religion especially, when they find
\nthemselves in a constant conflict with the vital instincts, the dynamic
\nlife-power in man, proceed to an attitude of almost complete hostility and seek
\nto damn them in idea and repress them in fact. To the vital instinct for wealth
\nand well-being they oppose the ideal of a chill and austere poverty; to the
\nvital instinct for pleasure the ideal not only of self-denial, but of absolute
\nmortification; to the vital instinct for health and ease the ascetic’s contempt,
\ndisgust and neglect of the body; to the vital instinct for incessant action and
\ncreation the ideal of calm and inaction, passivity, contemplation; to the vital
\ninstinct for power, expansion, domination, rule, conquest the ideal of humility,
\nself-abasement, submission, meek harmlessness, docility in suffering; to the
\nvital instinct of sex on which depends the continuance of the species, the ideal
\nof an unreproductive chastity and celibacy; to the<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-152<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsocial and family instinct the anti-social ideal of the ascetic, the
\nmonk, the solitary, the world-shunning saint. Commencing with discipline and
\nsubordination they proceed to complete mortification, which means when
\ntranslated the putting to death of the vital instincts, and declare that life
\nitself is an illusion to be shed from the soul or a kingdom of the flesh, the
\nworld and the devil, – accepting thus the claim of the unenlightened and
\nundisciplined life itself that it is not, was never meant to be, can never
\nbecome the kingdom of God, a high manifestation of the Spirit.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n         <\/font> <\/span>
\nUp to a certain
\npoint this recoil has its uses and may easily even, by tapasyli, <\/i>by the
\nlaw of energy increasing through compression, develop for a time a new vigour in
\nthe life of the society, as happened in India in the early Buddhist centuries.
\nBut beyond a certain point it tends, not really to kill, for that is impossible,
\nbut to discourage along with the vital instincts the indispensable life-energy
\nof which they are the play and renders them in the end inert, feeble, narrow,
\nunelastic, incapable of energetic reaction to force and circumstance. That was
\nthe final result in India of the age-long pressure of Buddhism and its
\nsupplanter and successor, Illusionism. No society wholly or too persistently and
\npervadingly dominated by this denial of the life dynamism can flourish and put
\nforth its possibilities of growth and perfection. For from dynamic it becomes
\nstatic and from the static position it proceeds to stag- nation and
\ndegeneration. Even the higher being of man, which finds its account in a
\nvigorous life dynamism, both as a fund of force to be transmuted into its own
\nloftier energies and as a potent channel of. connection with the outer life,
\nsuffers in the end by this failure and contradiction. The ancient Indian ideal
\nrecognised this truth and divided life into four essential and in- dispensable
\ndivisions, artha, klima, dharma, moksa, <\/i>vital interests, satisfaction of
\ndesires of all kinds, ethics and religion, and liberation or spirituality, and
\nit insisted on the practice and development of all. Still it tended not only to
\nput the last forward as the goal of all the rest, which it is, but to put it at
\nthe end of life and its habitat in another world of our being, rather than here
\nin life, as the supreme status and formative power on the physical plane. But
\nthis rules out the idea of the kingdom of God on earth, the perfectibility of
\nsociety and of man in society, the evolution of a<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n <\/font><\/span>Page-153<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nnew and diviner race, and without one or ot4er of these no universal
\nideal can be complete. It provides a temporary and occasional, but not an
\ninherent justification for life; it holds out no illumining fulfilment either
\nfor its individual or its collective impulse.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n         <\/font> <\/span>
\n.Let us then look
\nat this vital instinct and life dynamism in its own being and not merely as an
\noccasion for ethical or religious development and see whether it is really
\nrebellious in its very nature to the Divine. We can see at once that what we
\nhave described is the first stage of the vital being, the infrarational, the
\ninstinctive; this is the crude character of its first native development and
\npersists even when it is trained by the growing application to it of the
\nenlightening reason. Evidently it is in this natural form a thing of the earth,
\ngross, earthy, full even of hideous uglinesses and brute blunders and jarring
\ndiscords; but so also is the infrarational stage in ethics, in aesthetics, in
\nreligion. It is true too that it presents a much more enormous difficulty than
\nthese others, more fundamentally and obstinately resists elevation, because it
\nis the very province of the infrararational, a. first formulation of
\nconsciousness out of the Inconscient, nearest to it in the scale of being. But
\nstill it has too, properly looked at, its rich elements of power, beauty,
\nnobility, good, sacrifice, worship, divinity; here too are high-reaching gods,
\nmasked but still resplendent. Until recently, and even now, reason in the garb
\nno longer of philosophy, but of science, has increasingly proposed to take up
\nall this physical and vital life and perfect it by the sole power of
\nrationalism, by a knowledge of the laws of Nature, of sociology and physiology
\nand biology and health, by collectivism, by State education, by a new
\npsychological education and a number of other kindred means. All this is well in
\nits own way and in its limits, but it is not enough and can never come to a
\ntruly satisfying success. The ancient attempt of reason in the form of a high
\nidealistic, rational, aesthetic, ethical and religious culture achieved only an
\nimperfect discipline of the vital man and his instincts, sometimes only a
\npolishing, a gloss, a clothing. and mannerising of the original uncouth savage.
\nThe modern attempt of reason in the form of a broad and thorough rational,
\nutilitarian, and efficient instruction<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-154<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand organisation of man and his life is not succeeding any better for all
\nits insistent but always illusory promise of more perfect results in the future.
\nThese endeavours cannot indeed be truly successful if our theory of life is
\nright and if this great mass of vital energism contains in itself the imprisoned
\nsuprarational, if it has, as it then must have, the instinctive reaching out for
\nsome thing divine, absolute and infinite which is concealed in its blind
\nstrivings. Here too reason must be overpassed or surpass  <\/span>itself and become a passage to the
\nDivine.
\n<\/font>
\n       
\n   
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nThe first mark
\nof the suprarational, when it intervenes to take up any portion of our being, is
\nthe growth of absolute ideals; and since life is Being and Force and the divine
\nstate of being is unity and the Divine in force is God as Power taking
\npossession, the absolute vital ideals must be of that nature. Nowhere are they
\nwanting. If we take the domestic and social life of man, we find hints of them
\nthere in several forms; but we need only note, however imperfect and dim the
\npresent shapes, the strivings of love at its own self-finding, its reachings
\ntowards its absolute<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n– <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe absolute love of man and
\nwoman, the absolute maternal or paternal, filial or fraternal love, the love of
\nfriends, the love of comrades, love of country, love of humanity. These ideals
\nof which the poets have sung so persistently, are not a mere glamour and
\nillusion, however the egoisms and discords of our instinctive, infrarational way
\nof living may seem to contradict them. Always crossed by imperfection or
\nopposite vital movements, they are still divine possibilities and can be made a
\nfirst means of our growth into a spiritual unity of being with being. Certain
\nreligious disciplines have understood this truth, have taken up these relations
\nboldly and applied them to our soul’s communion with God; and by a converse
\nprocess they can, lifted out of their present social and physical formulas,
\nbecome for us, not the poor earthly things they are now, but deep and beautiful
\nand wonderful movements of God in man fulfilling himself in life. All the
\neconomic development of life itself takes on at its end the appearance of an
\nattempt to get rid of the animal squalor and bareness which is what obligatory
\npoverty really means, and to give to man the divine ease and leisure of the
\ngods. It is pursued in a wrong way, no doubt, and with many ugly circumstances,
\nbut<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-155<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nstill the ideal is darkly there. Politics itself, that apparent game of
\nstrife and deceit and charlatanism, can be a large field of absolute idealisms.
\nWhat of patriotism,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nnever mind the often
\nugly instincts from which it starts and which it still obstinately preserves,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nbut in its aspects
\nof worship, self-giving, discipline, self-sacrifice? The great political ideals
\nof man, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, apart from the selfishnesses they
\nserve and the rational and practical justifications with which they arm
\nthemselves, have had for their soul an ideal, some half-seen truth of the
\nabsolute and have carried with them a worship, a loyalty, a loss of self in the
\nidea which have made men ready to suffer and die for them. War and strife
\nthemselves have been schools of heroism; they have preserved the heroic in man,
\nthey have created the <\/font> k<\/font><\/i><\/span>s<\/font><\/span>atriyiilJ,
\ntyaktajivitiilJ, <\/font> <\/span> <\/i>
\nof the Sanskrit epic
\nphrase, the men of power and courage who have abandoned their bodily life for a
\ncause; for without heroism man cannot grow into the Godhead. Courage, energy and
\nstrength are among the very first principles of the divine nature in action. All
\nthis great vital, political, economic life of man with its two powers of
\ncompetition and co- operation is stumbling blindly forward towards some
\nrealisation of power and unity,<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nin two divine directions, therefore. For the Divine in
\nlife is Power possessed of self-mastery, but also of mastery of His world, and
\nman and mankind too move towards conquest of their world, their environment. And
\nagain in the Divine fulfilment there is and must be oneness, and the ideal of
\nhuman unity however dim and far-off is coming slowly into sight. The competitive
\nnation-units are feeling, at times, however feebly as yet, the call to cast
\nthemselves into a greater unified co- operative life of the human race.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n      
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nNo doubt all is still moving, however touched by dim lights from above, on a
\nlower half rational half  <\/span>
\ninfrarational  <\/span>level, clumsily, coarsely, in ignorance
\nof itself and as yet with little nobility of motive. All is being worked out
\nvery crudely by the confused clash of life-forces and the guidance of ideas that
\nare half-lights of the intellect, and the means proposed are too mechanical and
\nthe aims too material; they miss the truth that the outer life result can only
\nendure if it is founded on inner realities. But so life in the past has moved
\nalways and must at first move.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-156<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nFor life organises itself at first round the ego motive and the instinct
\nof ego-expansion is the earliest means by which men have come into contact with
\neach other; the struggle for possession has been the first crude means towards
\nunion, the aggressive assertion of the smaller self the first step towards a
\ngrowth into the larger self. All has been therefore a half-ordered confusion of
\nthe struggle for life corrected by the need and instinct of association, a
\nstruggle of individuals, clans, tribes, parties, nations, ideas, civilisations,
\ncultures, ideals, religion, each affirming itself each compelled into contact,
\nassociation, struggle with the others. For while Nature imposes the ego as a
\nveil behind which she labours out the individual manifestation <\/i>of the
\nspirit, she also <\/i>puts a compulsion on it <\/i>to grow in being until it
\ncan <\/i>at last <\/i>expand or merge into the larger self <\/i>in which
\nit
\n<\/i>meets, harmonises with itself, comprehends in its own consciousness, becomes
\none with the rest of existence. To assist in this growth Life-Nature’ throws up
\nin itself ego-enlarging, ego-exceeding, even ego- destroying instincts and
\nmovements which combat and correct the smaller self-affirming instincts and
\nmovements,<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nshe enforces <\/font> <\/span>
\non her human instrument
\nimpulses of love, sympathy, self-denial, self-effacement, self-sacrifice,
\naltruism, the drive towards universality in mind and heart and life, glimmerings
\nof an obscure unanimism that has not yet found thoroughly its own true light and
\nmotive-power. Because of this obscurity these powers, unable to affirm their own
\nabsolute, to take the lead or dominate, obliged to compromise with the demands
\nof the ego, even to become themselves a form of egoism, are impotent also to
\nbring harmony and transformation to life. Instead of peace they seem to bring
\nrather a sword; for they increase the number and tension of conflict of the
\nunreconciled forces, ideas, impulses of which the individual human consciousness
\nand the life of the collectivity are the arena. The ideal and practical reason
\nof man labours to find amidst all this the right law of life and action; it
\nstrives by a rule of moderation and accommodation or selection and rejection or
\nby the dominance of some chosen ideas or powers to reduce things to harmony, to
\ndo consciously what Nature through natural selection and instinct has achieved
\nin <\/i>her animal kinds, an automatically ordered and settled form and norm of<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-157<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ntheir existence. But the order, the structure arrived at by the reason is
\nalways partial, precarious and temporary. It is disturbed by a pull from below
\nand a pull from above. For these powers that life throws up to help towards the
\ngrowth into a larger self, a wider being, are already reflections of something
\nthat is beyond reason, seeds of the spiritual, the absolute. There is the
\npressure on human life of an Infinite which will not allow it to rest too long
\nin any formulation,<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nnot at least until it has delivered out of itself that which shall be its own
\nself-exceeding and self-fulfilment.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n       <\/font> <\/span>
\nThis process of life through a
\nfirst obscure and confused effort of self-finding is the inevitable result of
\nits beginnings; for life began from an involution of the spiritual truth of
\nthings in what seems to be its opposite. Spiritual experience tells us that
\nthere is a Reality which supports and pervades all things as the Cosmic Self and
\nSpirit, can be discovered by the individual even here in the terrestrial
\nembodiment as his own self and spirit, and is, at its summits and in its
\nessence, an infinite and eternal Being, Consciousness and Bliss of existence.
\nBut what we seem to see as the source and beginning of the material universe is
\njust the contrary – it wears to us the aspect of a Void, an infinite of Non-
\nExistence, an indeterminate Inconscient, an insensitive blissless Zero out of
\nwhich everything has yet to come. When it begins to move, evolve, create, it
\nputs on the appearance of an inconscient Energy which delivers existence out of
\nthe Void in the form of an infinitesimal fragmentation, the electron – or
\nperhaps some still more impalpable minute unit, a not yet discovered, hardly
\ndiscoverable infinitesimal, then the atom, the molecule, and out of this
\nfragmentation builds up a formed and concrete universe in the void of its
\ninfinite. Yet we see that this unconscious Energy does at every step the works
\nof a vast and minute Intelligence fixing and combining every possible device to
\nprepare, manage and work out the paradox and miracle of Matter and the awakening
\nof a life .and a spirit in Matter; existence grows out of the Void,
\nconsciousness emerges and increases out of the Inconscient an ascending urge
\ntowards pleasure, happiness, delight, divine bliss and ecstasy is inexplicably
\nborn
\n<\/i>out of an insensitive Nihil. These phenomena already betray<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-158<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe truth, which we discover when we grow aware in our depths, that the
\nInconscient is only a mask and within it is the Upanishad’s "Conscient in
\nunconscious things". In the beginning, says the Veda, was the ocean of  <\/span>inconscience and out of it That One arose into
\nbirth by his greatness,<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font> by the might of his self-
\nmanifesting Energy.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n              
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nBut the Inconscient, if a mask, is an effective mask of the Spirit; it imposes
\non the evolving life and soul the law of a difficult emergence. Life and
\nconsciousness, no less than Matter, obey in their first appearance’ the law of
\nfragmentation. Life organises itself physically round the plasm, the cell,
\npsycho- logically round the small separative fragmentary ego. Consciousness
\nitself has to concentrate its small beginnings in a poor surface formation and
\nhide behind the veil of this limited surface existence the depths and infinities
\nof its own being. It has to grow slowly in an external formulation till it is
\nready to break the crust between this petty outer figure of ourselves, which we
\nthink to be the whole, and the concealed self within us. Even the spiritual
\nbeing seems to obey this law of fragmentation and manifests as a unit in the
\nwhole a spark of itself that evolves into an individual psyche. It is this
\nlittle ego, this fragmented consciousness, this concealed soul-spark on which is
\nimposed the task of meeting and striving with the forces of the universe,
\nentering into contact with all that seems to it not itself, increasing under the
\npressure of inner and outer Nature till it can become one with all existence. It
\nhas to grow into self-knowledge and world- knowledge, to get within itself and
\ndiscover that it is a spiritual being, to get outside of itself and discover its
\nlarger truth as the cosmic Individual, to get beyond itself and know and live in
\nsome supreme Being, Consciousness and Bliss of existence. For this immense task
\nit is equipped only with the instruments of its original Ignorance. Its limited
\nbeing is the cause of all the difficulty, discord, struggle, division that mars
\nlife. The limitation of its consciousness, unable to dominate or assimilate the
\ncontacts of the universal Energy, is the cause of all its suffering, pain and
\nsorrow. Its limited power of consciousness formulated in an ignorant will unable
\nto grasp or follow the right law of its life and action is the cause of all its
\nerror, wrong-doing and evil.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-159<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nThere is no other true cause; for all apparent causes are themselves
\ncircumstance and result of this original sin of the being. Only when it rises
\nand widens out of this limited separative consciousness into the oneness of the
\nliberated spirit, can it escape from these results of its growth out of the
\nInconscience.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n         
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nIf we see this as the truth behind life, we can understand at once why it has
\nhad to follow its present curve of ignorant self- formulation. But also we see
\nwhat through it all it. is obscurely seeking, trying to grasp and form, feeling
\nout for in its own higher impulses and deepest motives, and why these are in it-
\n<\/font><\/span>useless, perturbing and chimerical if it
\nwere only an animal product of inconscient Nature,- these urgings towards
\nself-discovery, mastery, unity, freedom from its lower self, spiritual release.
\nEvolving out of its first involved condition in Matter and in plant life,
\neffecting a first imperfect organised consciousness in the animal, it arrives in
\nman, the mental being, at the possibility of a new, a conscious evolution which
\nwill bring it to its goal and at a certain stage of his development it wakes in
\nhim the over- mastering impulse to pass on from mental to spiritual being. Life
\ncannot arrive at its secret ultimates by following its first infrarational
\nmotive forces of instinct and desire: for all here is a groping and seeking
\nwithout finding, a field of brief satisfactions, stamped with the Inconscient’s
\nseal of insufficiency and impermanence. But neither can human reason give it
\nwhat it searches after; for reason can only establish half lights and a
\nprovisional order. Therefore with man as he is the upward urge in life cannot
\nrest satisfied always; its evolutionary impulse cannot stop short at this
\ntransitional term, this half achievement. It has to aim at a higher reach of
\nconsciousness, deliver out of life and mind something that is still latent and
\ninchoate.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n             
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nThe ultimates of life are spiritual and only in the full light of the liberated
\nself and spirit can it achieve them. That full light is not intellect or reason,
\nbut a knowledge by inner unity and identity which is the native self-light of
\nthe fully developed spiritual consciousness – and, preparing that, on the way to
\nit, a knowledge by intimate inner contact with the truth of things and beings
\nwhich is intuitive and born of a secret oneness. Life seeks for self-knowledge;
\nit is only by the light of the spirit that<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-160<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nit can find it. It seeks for a luminous guidance and mastery of its own
\nmovements; it is only when it finds within itself this inner self and spirit and
\nby it or in obedience to it governs its own steps that it can have the illumined
\nwill it needs and the unerring leadership. For it is so only that the blind
\ncertitudes of the instincts and the speculative hypotheses and theories and the
\nexperimental and inferential certitudes of reason can be replaced by the seeing
\nspiritual certitudes. Life seeks the fulfilment of its instincts of love and
\nsympathy, its yearnings after accord and union; but these are crossed by
\nopposing instincts and it is only the spiritual consciousness with its realised
\nabiding oneness that can abolish these oppositions. Life seeks for full growth
\nof being, but it can attain to it only when the limited being has found in
\nitself its own inmost soul of existence and around it its own wider self of
\ncosmic consciousness which can feel the world and all being in itself and as
\nitself. Life seeks for power; it is only the power of the spirit and the power
\nof this conscious oneness that can give it mastery of itself and its world. It
\nseeks for pleasure, happiness, bliss; but the infrarational forms of these
\nthings are stricken with imperfection, fragmentariness, impermanence and the
\nimpact of their opposites. Moreover infrarational life still bears some stamp of
\nthe Inconscient in an underlying insensitiveness, a dullness of fiber, a
\nweakness of vibratory response,<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nit cannot attain to true happiness or bliss and
\nwhat it <\/font> <\/span>
\ncan obtain of pleasure it cannot support for long or bear or keep any extreme
\nintensity of these things. Only the spirit has the secret of an unmixed and
\nabiding happiness or ecstasy, is capable of a firm tenseness of vibrant response
\nto it, can attain and justify a spiritual pleasure or joy of life as one form of
\nthe infinite and universal delight of being. Life seeks a harmonious fulfillment
\nof all its powers, now divided and in conflict, all its possibilities, parts,
\nmembers; it is only in the consciousness of the one Self and Spirit that that is
\nfound, for there they arrive at their full truth and their perfect agreement in
\nthe light of the integral self-existence.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n     <\/font> <\/span>There is then a suprarational ultimate of
\nLife no less than a suprarational Truth, Good and Beauty. The endeavour to reach
\nit is the spiritual meaning of this seeking and striving Life-Nature.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-161<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XVI The   Suprarational  Ultimate of  Life                                 IN ALL the higher powers of his life man may be said to be seeking,…<\/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-1149","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\/1149","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=1149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9829,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions\/9829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}