{"id":1168,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1168"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:02","slug":"25-conditions-for-the-coming-of-a-spiritual-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\/25-conditions-for-the-coming-of-a-spiritual-age-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-25_Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\nCHAPTER
\nXXIII<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n
\nConditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age<\/span><\/font><\/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>       A
\nCHANGE of this kind, the change from the
\nmental and vital to the spiritual order of life, must necessarily
\n<\/font> be accomplished in the individual and in a
\ngreat number<\/font><\/span> of individuals before
\nit can lay any effective hold upon the community. The Spirit in humanity
\ndiscovers, develops, builds into form in the individual man: it is through the
\nprogressive and formative individual that it offers the discovery and the
\nchance of a new self-creation to the mind of the race. For the communal mind
\nholds things subconsciently at first or, if consciously, then in a confused
\nchaotic manner: it is only through the individual mind that the mass can arrive
\nat a clear knowledge and creation of the thing it held in its subconscient
\nself, Thinkers, historians, sociologists who belittle the individual and would
\nlike to lose him in the mass or think of him chiefly as a cell, an atom, have
\ngot hold only of the obscurer side of the truth f of Nature’s workings in
\nhumanity. It is because man is not like the material formations of Nature or
\nlike the animal, because she intends in him a more and more conscious
\nevolution, that individuality is so much developed in him and so absolutely
\nimportant and indispensable. No doubt what comes out in the individual and
\nafterwards moves the mass, must have been there already in the universal Mind
\nand the individual is only an instrument for its manifestation, discovery,
\ndevelopment; but he is an indispensable instrument and an instrument not merely
\nof subconscient Nature, not merely of an instinctive urge that moves the mass,
\nbut more directly of the Spirit of whom that Nature is itself the instrument
\nand the matrix of his creations. All great changes therefore find their first
\nclear and effective power and their direct shaping force in the mind and "
\nspirit of an individual or of a limited number of individuals.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-231<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

The mass follows, but unfortunately in a very imperfect
\nand confused fashion which often or even usually ends in the failure or
\ndistortion of the thing created. If it were not so, mankind could have advanced
\non its way with a victorious’ rapidity instead of with the lumbering
\nhesitations and soon exhausted rushes that seem to be all of which it has yet
\nbeen capable.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Therefore if the spiritual change
\nof which we have been speaking is to be effected, it must unite two conditions
\nwhich have to be simultaneously satisfied but are most difficult to bring
\ntogether. There must be the individual and the individuals who are able to see,
\nto develop, to re-create themselves in the image of the Spirit and to
\ncommunicate both their idea and its power to the mass. And there must be at the
\nsame time a mass, a society, a communal mind or at the least the constituents
\nof a group-body, the possibility of a group-soul which is capable of receiving
\nand effectively assimilating, ready to follow and effectively arrive, not
\ncompelled by its own inherent deficiencies, its defect of preparation to stop
\non the way or fall back before the decisive change is made. Such a simultaneity
\nhas never yet happened, although the appearance of it has sometimes been
\ncreated by the ardour of a moment. That the combination must happen some day is
\na certainty, but none can tell how many attempts will have to be made and how
\nmany sediments of spiritual experience will have to be accumulated in the subconscient mentality of the communal human being before the soil is ready.
\nFor the chances of success are always less powerful in a difficult upward
\neffort affecting the very roots of our nature than the numerous possibilities
\nof failure. The initiator himself may be imperfect, may not have waited to
\nbecome entirely the thing that he has seen. Even the few who have the
\napostolate in their charge may not have perfectly assimilated and shaped it in
\nthemselves and may hand on the power of the Spirit still farther diminished to
\nthe many who will come after them. The society may be intellectually, vitally,
\nethically, temperamentally unready, with the result that the final acceptance
\nof the spiritual idea by the society may be also the beginning of its
\ndebasement and distortion and of the consequent departure or diminution of the
\nSpirit. Any or all of these things<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-232<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

may happen, and the result will be, as has so often
\nhappened in the past, that even though some progress is made and an important
\nchange effected, it will not be the decisive change which can alone re-create
\nhumanity in a diviner image.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>What then
\nwill be that state of society, what that readiness of the common mind of man
\nwhich will be most favourable to this change, so that even if it cannot at once
\neffectuate itself, it may at least make
\nfor its ways a more decisive preparation <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>than has been hitherto possible? For that seems the most important
\nelement, since it is that, it is the unpreparedness, the unfitness of the
\nsociety or of the common mind of man which is always the chief stumbling-block. It is the readiness of this <\/span>common mind which is of the first importance; for
\neven if the<\/span> condition of society and the principle and rule that govern
\nsociety are opposed to the spiritual change, even if these belong almost wholly
\nto the vital, to the external, the economic, the mechanical order, as is
\ncertainly the way at present with human "<\/span>
\nmasses, yet if the common human mind
\nhas begun to admit <\/span>the ideas proper to the higher order that is in the
\nend to be, and the heart of man has begun to be stirred by aspirations born of
\nthese ideas, then there is a hope of some advance in ":<\/span> the not distant
\nfuture. And here the first essential sign must be <\/span>the growth of the
\nsubjective idea of life, – the idea of the soul, the inner being, its powers,
\nits possibilities, its growth, its expression and the creation of a true,
\nbeautiful and helpful environment for it as the one thing of first and last
\nimportance. The signals must be there that are precursors of a subjective age
\nin humanity’s thought and social endeavour.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>These ideas are likely first to
\ndeclare their trend in philosophy, in psychological thinking, in the arts,
\npoetry, painting, sculpture, music, in the main idea of ethics, in the
\napplication of subjective principles by thinkers to social questions, even
\nperhaps, though this is a perilous effort, to politics and economics, that hard
\nrefractory earth matter which most resists all but a gross utilitarian
\ntreatment. There will be new unexpected departures of science or at least of
\nresearch, –<\/span> since to such a turn
\nin its most fruitful seekings the orthodox still deny the name of science.
\nDiscoveries will be made that thin the<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-233<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

walls between soul and matter; attempts there will be to
\nextend exact knowledge into the psychological and psychic realms with a
\nrealisation of the truth that these have laws of their own which are other than
\nphysical, but not the less laws because they escape the’ external senses and
\nare infinitely plastic and subtle. There will be a labour of religion to reject
\nits past heavy weight of dead matter and revivify its strength in the fountains
\nof the Spirit. These are sure signs, if not of the thing to be, at least of a
\ngreat possibility of it, of an effort that will surely be made, another
\nendeavour perhaps with a larger sweep and a better equipped intelligence
\ncapable not only of feeling but of understanding the Truth that is demanding to
\nbe heard. Some such signs we can see at the present time although they are only
\nincipient sporadic and have not yet gone far enough to warrant a confident
\ncertitude. It is only when these groping beginnings have found that for which
\nthey are seeking, that it can be successfully applied to the remoulding of the life
\nof man. Till then nothing better is likely to be achieved than an inner
\npreparation and, for the rest, radical or revolutionary experiments of a
\ndoubtful kind with the details of the vast and cumbrous machinery under which
\nlife now groans and labours.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>A subjective
\nage may stop very far short of spirituality; for the subjective turn is only a
\nfirst condition, not the thing itself, not the end of the matter. The search
\nfor the Reality, the true self of man, may very easily follow out the natural
\norder described by the Upanishad in the profound apologue of the seekings of
\nBhrigu, son of Varuna. For first the seeker found the ultimate reality to be
\nMatter and the physical, the material being, the external man our only self and
\nspirit. Next he fixed on Life as the Reality and the vital being as the self
\nand spirit; in the third essay on Mind and the mental being; only afterwards
\ncould he get beyond the superficial subjective through the supramental
\nTruth-Consciousness to the eternal, the blissful, the ever creative Reality of
\nwhich these are the sheaths. But humanity may not be as persistent or as
\nplastic as the son of Varuna, the search may stop short anywhere. Only if it is
\nintended that he shall now at last arrive and discover, will the Spirit break
\neach insufficient formula as soon as it has<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-234<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

shaped itself and compel the thought of man to press
\nforward to a larger discovery and in the end to the largest and most luminous
\nof all. Something of the kind has been happening but only in a very external
\nway and on the surface. After the material formula which governed the greater
\npart of the nineteenth century had burdened man with the heaviest servitude to
\nthe machinery of the outer material life that he has ever yet been called upon
\nto bear, the first attempt to break through, to get to the living reality in
\nthings and away from the mechanical idea of life and living and society, landed
\nus in that surface vitalism which had already begun to govern thought before
\nthe two formulas inextricably locked together lit up and flung themselves on
\nthe lurid pyre of the World War. The vital elan brought us no deliverance, but
\nonly used the machinery already created with a more feverish insistence, a
\nvehement attempt to live more rapidly, more intensely, an inordinate will to
\nact and to succeed, to enlarge the mere force of living, to pile up a gigantic
\nefficiency of life. It could not have been otherwise even if this vitalism had
\nbeen less superficial and external, more truly subjective. To live, to act, to
\ngrow, to <\/font> increase the vital force, to
\nunderstand, utilise and fulfil the<\/font><\/span> intuitive
\nimpulse of life are not things evil in themselves: rather they are excellent
\nthings, if rightly followed and rightly used, that is to say, if they are
\ndirected to something beyond the mere vitalistic impulse and are governed by
\nthat within which is higher than Life. The Life-power is an instrument, not an
\naim; it is in the upward scale the first great subjective supra- physical
\ninstrument of the Spirit and the base of all action and endeavour. But a
\nLife-power that sees nothing beyond itself, nothing to be served except its own
\norganised demands and impulses, will be very soon like the force of steam
\ndriving an engine without the driver or an engine in which the locomotive force
\n<\/font>
\nhas made the driver its servant and not
\nits controller<\/font><\/span>. It can only add
\nthe uncontrollable impetus of a high-crested or broad-based Titanism, or it may
\nbe even a nether flaming demonism, to the Nature forces of the material world
\nwith the intellect as its servant, an impetus of measureless unresting
\ncreation, appropriation, expansion which will end in something<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-235<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nviolent, huge and "colossal", foredoomed in its very nature to excess
\nand ruin, because light is not in it ‘nor the soul’s truth nor the sanction of
\nthe gods and their calm eternal will and knowledge.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But beyond
\nthe subjectivism of the vital self there is the possibility of a mental and
\neven a psychic subjectivism which would at first perhaps, leaning upon the already
\nrealised idea of the soul as Life in action but correcting it, appear as a
\nhighly mentalised pragmatism, but might afterwards rise to the higher idea of
\nman as a soul that develops itself individually and collectively in the life
\nand body through the play of an ever- expanding mental existence. This greater
\nidea would realise that the elevation of the human existence will come not
\nthrough material efficiency alone or the complex play of his vital and dynamic
\npowers mastering through the aid of the intellect the energies of physical
\nNature for the satisfaction of the life- instincts, which can only be an
\nintensification of his present mode of existence, but through the greatness of
\nhis mental and psychic being and a discovery bringing forward an organisation
\nof his vast subliminal nature and its forces. It would see in life an
\nopportunity for the joy and power of knowledge, for the joy and power of
\nbeauty, for the joy and power of the human will mastering not only physical
\nNature, but vital and mental Nature. It might discover her secret yet
\nundreamed-of mind- powers and life-powers and use them for a freer liberation
\nof man from the limitations of his shackled bodily life. It might arrive at new
\npsychic relations, a more sovereign power of the idea to realise itself in the
\nact, inner means of overcoming obstacles of distance and division which would
\ncast into insignificance even the last miraculous achievements of material
\nScience. A development of this kind is far enough away from the dreams of the mass
\nof men, but there are certain pale hints and presages of such a possibility and
\nideas which lead to it are already held by a great number who are perhaps in
\nthis respect the yet unrecognised vanguard of humanity. It is not impossible
\nthat behind the confused morning voices of the hour a light of this kind, still
\nbelow the horizon, may be waiting to ascend with its splendours.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-236<\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Such a turn
\nof human thought, effort, ideas of life, if it took hold of the communal mind,
\nwould evidently lead to a profound, revolution throughout the whole range of
\nhuman existence. It would give it from the first a new tone and atmosphere, a
\nloftier spirit, wider horizons, a greater aim. It might easily develop a
\nScience which would bring the powers of the physical world into a real and not
\nonly a contingent and mechanical subjection and open perhaps the doors of other
\nworlds. It might develop an achievement of Art and Beauty which would make the
\ngreatness of the past a comparatively little thing and would save the world
\nfrom the astonishingly callous reign of utilitarian ugliness that even now
\nafflicts it. It would open up a closer and freer inter- change between hum3;n
\nminds and, it may well be hoped, a kindlier interchange between human hearts
\nand lives. Nor need its achievements stop here, but might proceed to greater
\nthings of which these would be only the beginnings. This mental and psychic
\nsubjectivism would have its dangers, greater dangers even than those that attend a vitalistic subjectivism, because
\nits powers of action also would be greater, but it would have what vitalistic
\nsubjectivism has not and cannot easily have, the chance of a detecting
\ndiscernment, strong safeguards and a powerful liberating light.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Moving with
\ndifficulty upward from Matter to Spirit, this is perhaps a necessary stage of
\nman’s development. This was one principal reason of the failure of past
\nattempts to spiritualise mankind, that they endeavoured to spiritualise at once
\nthe material man by a sort of rapid miracle, and though that can be done, the
\nmiracle is not likely to be of an enduring character if it overleaps the stages
\nof his ascent and leaves the intervening levels untrodden and therefore
\nunmastered. The endeavour may succeed with individuals, – Indian thought would say
\nwith those who have made themselves ready in a past existence, – but it must fail with the mass. When it
\npasses beyond the few, the forceful miracle of the Spirit flags; unable to
\ntransform by inner force, the new religion tries to save by machinery, is en-
\ntangled in the mechanical turning of its own instruments, loses the spirit and
\nperishes quickly or decays slowly. That is the fate which overtakes all
\nattempts of the vitalistic, the intellectual<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-237<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

and mental, the spiritual endeavour to deal with
\nmaterial man through his physical mind chiefly or alone; the endeavour is
\noverpowered by the machinery it creates and becomes the slave and victim of the
\nmachine. That is the revenge which our material Nature, herself mechanical,
\ntakes upon all such violent endeavours; she waits to master them by their
\nconcessions to her own law. If mankind is to be spiritualised, it must first in
\nthe mass cease to be the material or the vital man and become the psychic and
\nthe true mental being. It may be questioned whether such a mass progress or
\nconversion is possible; but if it is not, then the spiritualisation of mankind
\nas a whole is a chimera. <\/font>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>From this
\npoint of view it is an excellent thing, a sign of great promise, that the wheel
\nof civilisation’ has been following its past and present curve upward from a so
\nlid physical know- ledge through a successive sounding of higher and higher
\npowers that mediate between Matter and Spirit. The human intellect in modem
\ntimes has been first drawn to exhaust the possibilities of materialism by an
\nimmense dealing with life and the world upon the basis of Matter as the sole
\nreality, Matter as the Eternal, Matter as the Brahman, annam brahma. <\/i>Afterwards it had begun to turn towards the
\nconception of existence as the large pulsation of a great evolving Life, the
\ncreator of Matter, which would have enabled it to deal with our existence on
\nthe basis of Life as the original reality, Life as the great Eternal, <\/font> pr<\/font><\/i>`<\/font><\/span>ano
\nbrahma. <\/font> <\/i>And already it has in germ, in preparation a third conception, the
\ndiscovery of a great self-expressing and self-finding inner Mind other than our
\nsurface mentality as a master-power of existence, that should lead towards a
\nrich attempt to deal with our possibilities and our ways of living on the basis
\nof Mind as the original reality, the great Eternal, mano brahma. <\/i>It will also be a sign of promise if these conceptions
\nsucceeded each other with rapidity, with a large but swift evocation of the
\npossibilities of each level; for that would show that there is a readiness in
\nour subconscient Nature and that we need not linger in each stage for
\ncenturies.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>But still a subjective age of
\nmankind must be an adventure full of perils and uncertainties as are all great
\nadventures of the race. It may wander long before it finds itself or may not
\nfind<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-238<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

itself at all and swing back to a new repetition of the
\ncycle.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The true
\nsecret can only be discovered if in the third stage, in an age of mental
\nsubjectivism, the idea becomes strong of the Mind itself as no more than a
\nsecondary power of the Spirit’s working and of the Spirit as the great Eternal,
\nthe original and, in spite of the many terms in which it is both expressed and
\nhidden, the sole reality, <\/font>
\nayam <\/font> <\/i>\u00e2<\/font><\/span>tm<\/font><\/i>\u00e2<\/font><\/span> brahma. <\/font> <\/i>
\nThen only will the real, the
\ndecisive endeavour begin and life and the world be studied, known, dealt with
\nin all directions as the self-finding and self-expression of the Spirit. Then
\nonly will a spiritual age of mankind be possible. To attempt any adequate
\ndiscussion of what that would mean, and in an inadequate discussion there is no
\nfruit, would need another volume or two of essays; for we should have to
\nexamine a knowledge which is rare and nowhere more than initial. It is enough
\nto say that a spiritual human society would start from and try to realise three
\nessential truths of existence which all Nature seems to be an. attempt to hide
\nby their opposites and which therefore are as yet for the mass of mankind only
\nwords and dreams, God, freedom, unity. Three things which are one, for you
\ncannot realise freedom and unity unless you realise God, you cannot possess
\nfreedom and unity unless you possess God, possess at once your highest self and
\nthe self of all creatures. The freedom and unity which otherwise go by that
\nname, are simply attempts of our subjection and our division to get away from
\nthemselves by shutting their eyes while they turn somersaults around their own
\ncentre. When man is able to see God and to possess him, then he will know real
\nfreedom and arrive at real unity, never otherwise. And God is only waiting to
\nbe known, while man seeks for him everywhere and creates images of the Divine,
\nbut all the while truly finds, effectively erects and worships images only of
\nhis own mind-ego and life-ego. When this ego pivot is abandoned and this
\nego-hunt ceases, then man gets his first real chance of achieving spirituality
\nin his inner and outer life. It will not be enough, but it will be a
\ncommencement, a true gate and not a blind entrance.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>A spiritualised society would live like its spiritual individuals,
\nnot in the ego, but in the spirit, not as the collective ego, but as the
\ncollective soul. This freedom from the egoistic stand-<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-239<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

point would be its first and most prominent characteristic.
\nBut the elimination of egoism would not be brought about, as it is now proposed
\nto bring it about, by persuading or forcing the individual to immolate his
\npersonal will and aspirations and his precious and hard-won individuality to
\nthe collective will, aims and egoism of the society, driving him like a victim
\nof ancient sacrifice to slay his soul on the altar of that huge and shapeless
\nidol. For that would be only the sacrifice of the smaller to the larger egoism,
\nlarger only in bulk, not necessarily greater in quality or wider or nobler,
\nsince a collective egoism, result of the united egoisms of all, is as little a
\ngod to be worshipped, as flawed and often an uglier and more barbarous fetish
\nthan the egoism of the individual. What the spiritual man seeks is to find by
\nthe loss of the ego the Self which is one in all and perfect and complete in
\neach and by living in that to grow into the image of its perfection, – individually, be it noted, though with an all
\nembracing universality of his nature and its conscious circumference. It is
\nsaid in the old Indian writings that while in the second age, the age of Power,
\nVishnu descends in the King, and in the third, the age of balance, as the
\nlegislator or codifier, in the age of the Truth he descends as Yajna, that is
\nto say, as the Master of works manifest in the heart of his creatures. It is
\nthis kingdom of God within, the result of the finding of God not in a distant
\nheaven but within ourselves, of which the state of society in an age of the
\nTruth, spiritual age, would be the result and the external figure.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Therefore a society which was even
\ninitially spiritualised, would make the revealing and finding of the divine
\nSelf in man the whole first aim of all its activities, its education, its
\nknowledge, its science, its ethics, its art, its economical and political
\nstructure. As it was to some extent in the ancient Vedic times with the
\ncultural education of the higher classes, so it would be then with all
\neducation. It would embrace all knowledge in its scope, but would make the
\nwhole trend and aim and the permeating spirit not mere worldly efficiency, but
\nthis self-developing and self-finding. It would pursue physical and psychical
\nscience not in order merely to know the world and Nature in her processes and
\nto use them for material human ends, but to know<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-240<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

through and in and under and over all things the Divine
\nin the world and the ways of the Spirit
\nin its masks and behind them, It would make it the aim of ethics not to
\nestablish a rule of\u00a0 <\/span>action whether
\nsupplementary to the social law or partially corrective of it, the social law
\nthat is after all only the rule, often clumsy
\nand ignorant, of the biped pack, the human herd, but to develop the divine
\nnature in the human being. It would make it the aim of Art not merely to
\npresent images of the subjective and objective world, but to see them with the
\nsignificant and creative vision that goes behind their appearances and to
\nreveal the Truth and Beauty of which things visible to us and invisible are the
\nforms, the masks or the symbols and significant figures.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>A spiritualised society would treat
\nin its sociology the individual, from the saint to the criminal, not as units
\nof a social problem to be passed through some skilfully devised machinery , and either flattened into the social mould or
\ncrushed out of it, but as souls suffering and entangled in a net and to be
\nrescued, souls growing and to be encouraged to grow, souls grown and from whom
\nhelp and power can be drawn by the lesser spirits who are not yet adult. The
\naim of its economics would be not to create a huge engine of production,
\nwhether of the competitive or the co-operative kind, but to give to men – not
\nonly to some but to all men each in his highest possible measure – the joy of work
\naccording to their own nature and free leisure to grow inwardly, as well as a
\nsimply rich and beautiful life for all. In its politics it would not regard the
\nnations within the scope of their own internal life as enormous State machines
\nregulated and armoured with man living for the sake of the machine and
\nworshipping it as his God and his larger self, content at the first call to
\nkill others upon its altar and to bleed there himself so that the machine may
\nremain intact and powerful and be made ever larger, more complex, more
\ncumbrous, more mechanically efficient and entire. Neither would it be content
\nto maintain these nations or States in their mutual relations as noxious
\nengines meant to discharge poisonous gas upon each other in peace and to rush in
\ntimes of clash upon each other’s armed hosts and unarmed millions, full of
\nbelching shot and men missioned to murder like hostile tanks in a modern
\nbattlefield. It would re-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-241<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

gard the peoples as group-souls, the Divinity concealed
\nand to be self-discovered in its human collectivities, group-souls meant like
\nthe individual to grow according to their own nature and by that growth to help
\neach other, to help the whole race in the one common work of humanity. And that
\nwork would be to find the divine Self in the individual and the collectivity
\nand to realise spiritually, mentally, vitally, materially its greatest,
\nlargest, richest and deepest possibilities in the inner life of all and their
\nouter action and nature.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>For it is
\ninto the Divine within each man and each people that the man and the nation
\nhave to grow; it is not an external idea or rule that has to be imposed on them
\nfrom without. Therefore the law of a growing inner freedom is that which will
\nbe most honoured in the spiritual age of mankind. True it is that so long as
\nman has not come within measurable distance of self- knowledge and has not set
\nhis face towards it, he cannot escape from the law of external compulsion and
\nall his efforts to do so must be vain. He is and always must be, so long as
\nthat lasts, the slave of others, the slave of his family, his caste, his clan,
\nhis Church, his society, his nation; and he cannot but be that and they too
\ncannot help throwing their crude and mechanical compulsion on him, because he
\nand they are the slaves of their own ego, of their own lower nature. We must
\nfeel and obey the compulsion of the Spirit if we would establish our inner
\nright to escape other compulsion; we must make our lower nature the willing
\nslave, the conscious and illumined instrument or the ennobled but still
\nself-subjected portion, consort or partner of the divine Being within us, for
\nit is that subjection which is the condition of our freedom, since spiritual
\nfreedom is not the egoistic assertion of our separate mind and life but
\nobedience to the Divine Truth in ourself and our members and in all around us.
\nBut we have, even so, to remark that God respects the freedom of the natural
\nmembers of our being and that he gives them room to grow in their own nature so
\nthat by natural growth and not by self-extinction they may find the Divine in
\nthemselves. The subjection which they finally accept, complete and absolute,
\nmust be a willing subjection of recognition and aspiration to their own source
\nof light and power and their highest being.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-242<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Therefore even in the unregenerated state we find that
\nthe healthiest, the truest, the most living growth and action is that which
\narises in the largest possible freedom and that all excess of compulsion is
\neither the law of a gradual atrophy or a tyranny varied or cured by outbreaks
\nof rabid disorder. And as soon as man comes to know his spiritual self, he does
\nby that discovery, often even by the very seeking for it, as ancient thought
\nand religion saw, escape from the outer law and enter into the law of freedom.
\n<\/font>
\n <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>A spiritual
\nage of mankind will perceive this truth. It will not try to make man perfect by
\nmachinery or keep him straight by tying up all his limbs. It will not present
\nto the member of the society his higher self in the person of the policeman,
\nthe official and the corporal, nor, let us say, in the form of a socialistic
\nbureaucracy or a Labour Soviet. Its aim will be to diminish as soon and as far
\nas possible the element of external compulsion in human life by awakening the
\ninner divine compulsion of the Spirit within and all the preliminary means it
\nwill use will have that for its aim. In the end it will employ chiefly if not
\nsolely the spiritual compulsion which even the spiritual individual can
\nexercise on those around him, – <\/font>and how much more<\/font><\/span> should a spiritual society be able to do it, –
\nthat which awakens within us in spite of all inner resistance and outer denial
\nthe compulsions of the Light, the desire and the power to grow through one’s
\nown nature into the Divine. For the perfectly spiritualised society will be one
\nin which, as is dreamed by the spiritual anarchist, all men will be deeply
\nfree, and it will be so because the preliminary condition will have been
\nsatisfied. In that state each man will be not a law to himself, but the <\/i>law, the divine Law, because he will
\nbe a soul living in the Divine and not an ego living mainly if not entirely for
\nits own interest and purpose. His life will be led by the law of his own divine
\nnature liberated from the ego.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/font><\/span>Nor will that mean a breaking up of all
\nhuman society into the isolated action of individuals; for the third word of
\nthe Spirit is unity. The spiritual life is the flower not of a featureless but
\na conscious and diversified oneness. Each man has to grow into the Divine
\nwithin himself through his own individual being, therefore is a certain growing
\nmeasure of freedom a necessity of<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-243<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

the being as it develops and perfect freedom the sign
\nand the condition of the perfect life. But also, the Divine whom he thus sees
\nin himself, he sees equally in all others and as the same Spirit in all.
\nTherefore too is a growing inner unity with others a necessity of his being and
\nperfect unity the sign and condition of the perfect life. Not only to see and
\nfind the Divine in oneself, but to see and find the Divine in all, not only to
\nseek one’s own individual liberation or perfection, but to seek the liberation
\nand perfection of others is the complete law of the spiritual being. If the
\ndivinity sought were a separate godhead within oneself and not the one Divine,
\nor if one sought God for oneself alone, then indeed the result might be a
\ngrandiose egoism, the Olympian egoism of a Goethe or the Titanic egoism
\nimagined by Nietzsche, or it might be the isolated self-knowledge or asceticism
\nof the ivory tower or the Stylites pillar. But he who sees God in all, will
\nserve freely God in all with the service of love. He will, that is to say, seek
\nnot only his own freedom, but the freedom of all, not only his own perfection, but
\nthe perfection of all. He will not feel his individuality perfect except in the
\nlargest universality, nor his own life to be full life except as it is one with
\nthe universal life. He will not live either for himself or for the State and
\nsociety, for the individual ego or the collective ego, but for something much
\ngreater, for God in himself and for the Divine in the universe.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The
\nspiritual age will be ready to set in when the common mind of man begins to be
\nalive to these truths and to be moved or desire to be moved by this triple or
\ntriune Spirit. That will mean the turning of the cycle of social development
\nwhich we have been considering out of its incomplete repetitions on a new
\nupward line towards its goal. For having set out, according to our supposition,
\nwith a symbolic age, an age in which man felt a great Reality behind all life
\nwhich he sought through symbols, it will reach an age in which it will begin to
\nlive in that Reality, not through the symbol, not by the power of the type or
\nof the convention or of the individual reason and intellectual will, but in our
\nown highest nature which will be the nature of that Reality fulfilled in the
\nconditions –<\/span> <\/font> not necessarily the same as now<\/font><\/span>– of terrestrial existence. This is what the
\nreligions have seen with<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-244<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

a more or less adequate intuition, but most often as in
\na glass darkly, that\u00a0 <\/span>which\u00a0 <\/span>they called the kingdom of God on earth,
\n– his kingdom within in men’s spirit and
\ntherefore, for the one is the material result of the effectivity of the other,
\nhis kingdom without in the life of the peoples.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-245<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XXIII Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0       A CHANGE of this kind, the change from the mental and vital to…<\/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-1168","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\/1168","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=1168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}