{"id":1188,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:09","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1188"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:09","slug":"15-reason-and-religion-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\/15-reason-and-religion-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-15_ Reason and Religion .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n
\n


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

\n\t\t
\n\t\tReason
\nand Religion<\/span><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/b>IT <\/b> WOULD<\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nseem then that reason
\nis an insufficient, often an inefficient, even a stumbling and at its best a
\nvery partially <\/font> <\/span>
\nenlightened guide for humanity in that great <\/font> <\/span>
\nendeavour
\nwhich is the real heart of human progress and the inner justification of our
\nexistence as souls, minds and bodies upon the earth. For that endeavour is not
\nonly the effort to survive and make a place for ourselves on the earth as the
\nanimals do, not only having made to keep it and develop its best vital and
\negoistic or communal use for the efficiency and enjoyment of the <\/font> <\/span>
\n,<\/font><\/span> individual, the family or the collective ego,
\nsubstantially as is done by the animal families and colonies, in beehive or
\nant-hill f for example, though in the larger, many-sided way of reasoning:,
\nanimals; it is also, and much more characteristically of our human as
\ndistinguished from our animal element, the endeavour\u00a0 <\/span>to arrive at a harmonised inner and outer perfection, and, as we
\nfind in the end, at its highest height, to culminate in the discovery of the
\ndivine Reality behind our existence and the complete and ideal Person within us
\nand the shaping of human life in that image. But if that is the truth, then
\nneither the Hellenic ideal of an all-round philosophic, aesthetic, moral and
\nphysical culture governed <\/font> <\/span>
\nby the enlightened reason of man and led by the wisest
\nminds of a free society, nor the modern ideal of an efficient culture and
\nsuccessful economic civilisation governed by the collective reason and
\norganised knowledge of mankind can be either the highest or the widest goal of
\nsocial development.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The Hellenic ideal was roughly expressed in the old Latin
\nmaxim, a sound mind in a sound body. And by a sound body<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe ancients meant a healthy and beautiful body
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>well-fitted
\nfor the rational use and enjoyment of life. And by a sound mind they meant a
\nclear and balanced reason and <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nan enlightened and
\nwell-trained mentality, <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\ntrained in the<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-115<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nsense of ancient not of modern education. It was not to be packed with
\nall available information and ideas, cast in the mould of science and a
\nrational utility and so prepared for the efficient performance of social and
\ncivic needs and duties, for a professional avocation or for an intellectual
\npursuit; rather it was to be cultured in all its human capacities intellectual,
\nmoral, aesthetic, trained to use them rightly and to range freely,
\nintelligently and flexibly in all questions and in all practical matters of
\nphilosophy, science, art, politics and social living. The ancient Greek mind
\nwas philosophic, aesthetic and political; the modern mind has been scientific,
\neconomic and utilitarian. The ancient ideal laid stress on soundness and beauty
\nand sought to build up a fine and rational human life; the modern lays very
\nlittle or no stress on beauty, prefers rational and practical soundness, useful
\nadaptation, just mechanism and seeks to build up a well-ordered, well-informed
\nand efficient human life. Both take it that man is partly a mental, partly a
\nphysical being with the mentalised physical life for his field and reason for his
\nhighest attribute and his highest possibility. But if we follow to the end the
\nnew vistas opened by the most advanced tendencies of a subjective age, we shall
\nbe led back to a still more ancient truth and ideal that over- tops both the
\nHellenic and the modem levels. For we shall then seize the truth that man is a
\ndeveloping spirit trying here to find and fulfil itself in the forms of mind,
\nlife and body; and we shall perceive luminously growing before us the greater
\nideal of a deeply conscious, self-illumined, self-possessing, self-mastering
\nsoul in a pure and perfect mind and body. The wider field it seeks will be, not
\nthe mentalised physical life with which man has started, but a new
\nspiritualised life inward and outward, by which the perfected internal figures
\nitself in a perfected external living. Beyond man’s long intelligent effort
\ntowards a perfected culture and a rational society there opens the old
\nreligious and spiritual ideal, the hope of the kingdom of heaven within us and
\nthe city of God upon earth.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But if the soul is the true sovereign and if its spiritual
\nself- finding, its progressive largest widest integral fulfilment by the power
\nof the spirit are to be accepted as the ultimate secret of our evolution, then
\nsince certainly the instinctive being of man below<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>Page-116<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\nreason is not the means of attaining that high
\nend and since we find that reason also is an insufficient light and power,
\nthere must be a superior range of being with its own proper powers, <\/font> <\/span>
\n– libe<\/font><\/span>rated soul-faculties, a spiritual will and
\nknowledge higher than the reason and intelligent will, <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nby
\nwhich alone an entire conscious <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nself-fulfilment can become
\npossible to the human being. We must remember that our aim of self-fulfilment
\nis an integral un- folding of the Divine within us, a complete evolution of the
\nhidden divinity in the individual soul and the collective life. Otherwise we
\nmay simply come back to an old idea of individual and social living which had
\nits greatness, but did not provide all the conditions of our perfection. That
\nwas the idea of a spiritualised typal society. It proceeded upon the
\nsupposition that each man has his own peculiar nature which is born from and
\nreflects one element of the divine nature. The character of each individual,
\nhis ethical type, his training, his social occupation, his spiritual
\npossibility must be formed or developed within the conditions of that peculiar
\nelement; the perfection he seeks in this life must be according to its law. The
\ntheory of ancient Indian culture – its practice, as is the way of human
\npractice, did not always correspond to the theory – worked upon this
\nsupposition. It divided man in society into the fourfold order – an at once
\nspiritual, psychic, ethical and economic order <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nof
\nthe <\/font> <\/span>
\nBrahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya andthe Shudra,
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\npractically,
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n.<\/font><\/span>the <\/font> <\/span>
\nspiritual and intellectual man, the dynamic man of will, the
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nvital, hedonistic and economic man, the material man; the whole society
\norganised in these four constituent classes represented the complete image of
\nthe creative and active. Godhead.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>A different division of the typal society
\nis quite possible. But whatever the arrangement or division, the typal principle
\ncannot be the foundation of an ideal human society. Even according to the Indian
\ntheory it does not belong either to the periods of man’s highest attainment or
\nto the eras of his lowest possibility; it is neither the principle of his ideal
\nage, his age of the perfected Truth, Satyayuga, Kritayuga, in which he lives
\naccording to .some high and profound realisation of his divine possibility, nor
\nof his iron age, the Kaliyuga, in which he collapses towards the life of the
\ninstincts, impulses and desires, with<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Page-117<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\nthe reason degraded into a servant of this nether life of man. This too
\nprecise order is rather the appropriate principle of the intermediate ages of
\nhis cycle in which he attempts to maintain some imperfect form of his true law,
\nhis dharma, <\/i>by will-power and force of character in the Treta, by law,
\narrangement and fixed convention in the Dwapara.1<\/sup> <\/font><\/span>
\n  The type is not the integral
\nman, it is the fixing and emphasising of the generally prominent part of his
\nactive nature. But each man contains in himself the whole divine potentiality
\nand therefore the Shudra cannot be rigidly confined within his Shudrahood, nor
\nthe Brahmin in his Brahminhood, but each contains within himself the
\npotentialities and the need of perfection of his other elements of a divine
\nman- hood. In the Kali age these potentialities may act in a state of crude
\ndisorder, the anarchy of our being which covers our confused attempt at a new
\norder. In the intermediate ages the principle of order may take refuge in a
\nlimited perfection, suppressing some elements to perfect others. But the law of
\nthe Satya age is the large development of the whole truth of our being in the
\nrealisation of a spontaneous and self-supported spiritual harmony. That can
\nonly be realised by the evolution, in the measure of which our human capacity
\nin its enlarging cycles becomes capable of it, of the spiritual ranges of our
\nbeing and the unmasking of their inherent light and power, their knowledge and
\ntheir divine capacities.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>We shall better understand what may be this higher being
\nand those higher faculties, if we look again at the dealings of the reason with
\nthe trend towards the absolute in our other faculties, in the divergent
\nprinciples of our complex existence. Let us study especially its dealings with
\nthe suprarational in them and the infrarational, the two extremes between which
\nour intelligence is some sort of mediator. The spiritual or suprarational is
\nalways turned at its heights towards the Absolute; in its extension, living in
\nthe luminous infinite, its special power is to realise the infinite in the
\nfinite, the eternal unity in all divisions and differences. Our spiritual
\nevolution ascends therefore through the relative to the absolute, through the
\nfinite to the infinite, through<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n1 <\/span><\/sup>Therefore
\nit is said that Vishnu is the King in the Treta, but in the Dwapara the arranger
\nand codifier of the knowledge and the law.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Page-118<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nall divisions to oneness. Man in his spiritual
\nrealisation begins to find and seize hold on the satisfying intensities of the
\nabsolute in the relative, feels the large and serene presence of the infinite
\nin the finite, discovers the reconciling law of a perfect unity in all
\ndivisions and differences. The spiritual will in his outer as f in his inner
\nlife and formulation must be to effect a great reconci<\/font><\/span>liation between the secret and
\neternal reality and the finite <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nappearances of a world which
\nseeks to express and in expressing seems to deny it. Our highest faculties then
\nwill be those which make <\/font> <\/span>
\nthis possible because they have in them the intimate
\nlight<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nand power and joy by which these things can be grasped
\nin <\/font> <\/span>
\ndirect knowledge and experience, realised and made
\nnormally and permanently effective in will, communicated to our whole nature.
\nThe infrarational, on the other hand, has its origin and basis in the obscure
\ninfinite of the Inconscient; it wells up in instincts and impulses, which are
\nreally the crude and more or less haphazard intuitions of a subconscient
\nphysical, vital, emotional and sensational mind and will in us. Its struggle is
\ntowards definition, towards self-creation, towards finding some finite order
\n<\/font> <\/span>of its obscure
\nknowledge and tendencies. But it has also <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe
\ninstinct and force of the infinite from which it proceeds; it contains obscure,
\nlimited and violent velleities that move it to grasp <\/font> <\/span>
\nat the intensities of the
\nabsolute and pull them down or <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nsome <\/font> <\/span>
\ntouch of them into
\nits finite action: but because it proceeds<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nby ignorance and
\nnot by knowledge, it cannot truly succeed in this more vehement endeavour. The
\nlife of the reason and intelligent<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>side it takes up
\nand enlightens the life of the instincts and impulses and helps it to find on a
\nhigher plane the finite order for which it gropes. On the other side it looks
\nup towards the absolute, looks out towards the infinite, looks in towards the
\nOne, but without being able to grasp and hold their realities; for it is’ able
\nonly to consider them with a sort of derivative and <\/font> <\/span>
\n.<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nremote
\nunderstanding, because it moves in the relative and, <\/font> <\/span>
\nitself
\nlimited and definite, it can act only by definition, division and limitation.
\nThese three powers of being, the suprarational, rational and infrarational are
\npresent, but with an infinitely varying prominence in all our activities.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-119<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nThe limitations of the
\nreason become very strikingly, very characteristically, very nakedly apparent
\nwhen it is confronted with that great order of psychological truths and
\nexperiences which we have hitherto kept in the background<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>the religious being of man and
\nhis religious life. Here is a realm at which the intellectual reason gazes with
\nthe bewildered mind of a foreigner who hears a language of which the words and
\nthe spirit are un- intelligible to him and sees everywhere forms of life and
\nprinciples of thought and action which are absolutely strange to his
\nexperience. He may try to learn this speech and understand this strange and
\nalien life; but it is with pain and difficulty, and he cannot succeed unless he
\nhas, so to speak, unlearned himself and become one in spirit and nature with
\nthe natives of this celestial empire. Till then his efforts to understand and
\ninterpret them in his own language and according to his own notions end at the
\nworst in a gross misunderstanding and deformation. The attempts of the positive
\ncritical reason to dissect the phenomena of the religious life sound to men of
\nspiritual experience like the prattle of a child who is trying to shape into
\nthe mould of his own habitual notions the life of adults or the blunders of an
\nignorant mind which thinks fit to criticise patronisingly or adversely the
\nlabours of a profound thinker or a great scientist. At the best even this
\nfutile labour can extract, can account for only the externals of the things it
\nattempts to explain; the spirit is missed, the inner matter is left out, and as
\na result of that capital omission even the account of the externals is left
\nwithout real truth and has only an apparent correctness.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The unaided intellectual reason
\nfaced with the phenomena of the religious life is naturally apt to adopt one of
\ntwo attitudes, both of them shallow in the extreme, hastily presumptuous and
\nerroneous. Either it views the whole thing as a mass of superstition, a
\nmystical nonsense, a farrago of ignorant barbaric survivals,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>that was the extreme spirit of
\nthe rationalist now happily, though not dead, yet much weakened and almost
\nmoribund, – or it patronises religion, tries to explain its origins, to get rid
\nof it by the process of explaining it away; or it labours gently or forcefully
\nto reject or correct its superstitions, crudities, absurdities, to purify it
\ninto an abstract nothingness or persuade<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-120<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nit to purify itself in the light of the reasoning intelligence; or it
\nallows it a role, leaves it perhaps for the edification of the ignorant, admits
\nits value as a moralising influence or its utility to the State for keeping the
\nlower classes in order, even perhaps tries to invent that strange chimera, a
\nrational religion.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe former attitude has on its
\npositive side played a powerful part in the history of human thought, has even
\nbeen of a considerable utility in its own way – we shall have to note briefly
\nhereafter how and why – to human progress and in the end even to religion; but
\nits intolerant negations are an arrogant falsity, as the human mind has now
\nsufficiently begun to perceive. Its mistake is like that of a foreigner who
\nthinks everything in an alien country absurd and inferior because these things
\nare not his own ways of acting and thinking and cannot be cut out by his own
\nmeasures or suited to his own standards. So the thorough going rationalist asks
\nthe religious spirit, if it is to stand, to satisfy the material reason and
\neven to give physical proof of its truths, while the very essence of religion
\nis the discovery of the immaterial Spirit and the play of a supraphysical
\nconsciousness. So too he tries to judge religion by his idea of its
\nexternalities, just as an ignorant and obstreperous foreigner might try to
\njudge a civilisation by the dress, outward colour of life and some of the most
\nexternal peculiarities in the social manners of the inhabitants. That in this
\nhe errs in company with certain of the so-called religious themselves, may be
\nhis excuse, but cannot be the justification of his ignorance. The more moderate
\nattitude of the rational mind has also played its part in the history of human
\nthought. Its attempts to explain religion have resulted in the compilation of
\nan immense mass of amazingly ingenious perversions, such as certain
\npseudo-scientific attempts to form a comparative Science of Religion. It has
\nbuilt up in the approved modern style immense facades of theory with stray
\nbricks of misunderstood facts for their material. Its mild condonations of
\nreligion have led to superficial phases of thought which have passed quickly away
\nand left no trace behind them. Its efforts at the creation of a rational
\nreligion, perfectly well-intentioned, but helpless and unconvincing, have had
\nno appreciable effect and have failed like a dispersing cloud, <\/font>
\nchinniibhram
\niva nasyati.<\/font><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-121<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nThe deepest heart, the
\ninmost essence of’ religion, apart from its outward machinery of creed, cult,
\nceremony and symbol, is the search for God and the finding of God. Its
\naspiration is to discover the Infinite, the Absolute, the One, the Divine, who
\nis all these things and yet no abstraction but a Being. Its work is a sincere
\nliving out. of the true and intimate relations between man and God, relations
\nof unity, relations of difference, relations of an illuminated knowledge, an
\necstatic love and delight, an absolute surrender and service, a casting of
\nevery part of our existence out of its normal status into an uprush of man
\ntowards the Divine and a descent of the Divine into man. All this has nothing
\nto do with the realm of reason or its normal activities; its aim, its sphere,
\nits process is suprarational. The knowledge of God is not to be gained by
\nweighing the feeble arguments of reason for or against his existence: it is to
\nbe gained only by a self-transcending and absolute consecration, aspiration and
\nexperience. Nor does that experience proceed by anything like rational
\nscientific experiment or rational philosophic thinking. Even in those parts of
\nreligious discipline which seem most to resemble scientific experiment, the
\nmethod is a verification of things which exceed the reason and its timid scope.
\nEven in those parts of religious knowledge which seem most to resemble
\nintellectual operations, the illuminating faculties are not imagination, logic
\nand rational judgment, but revelations, inspirations, intuitions, intuitive
\ndiscernments that leap down to us from a plane of suprarational light. The love
\nof God is an infinite and absolute feeling which does not admit of any rational
\nlimitations and does not use a language of rational worship and adoration; the
\ndelight in God is that peace and bliss which passes all understanding. The
\nsurrender to God is the surrender of the whole being to a suprarational light,
\nwill, power and love and his service takes no account of the compromises with
\nlife which the practical reason of man uses as the best part of its method in
\nthe ordinary conduct of mundane existence. Wherever religion really finds
\nitself, wherever it opens itself to its own spirit,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthere is plenty of that sort of religious practice
\nwhich is halting, imperfect, half-sincere, only half-sure of itself and in
\nwhich reason can get in a word,<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nits
\nway is absolute and its fruits are ineffable.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-122<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>Reason
\nhas indeed a part to play in relation to this highest field of our religious
\nbeing and experience, but that part is quite secondary and subordinate. It
\ncannot lay down the law for the religious life, it cannot determine in its own
\nright the system of divine knowledge; it cannot school and lesson the divine
\nlove and delight; it cannot set bounds to spiritual experience or lay its yoke
\nupon the action of the spiritual man. Its sole legitimate sphere is to explain
\nas best it can, in its own language and to the rational and intellectual parts
\nof man, the truths, the experiences, the laws of our suprarational and
\nspiritual existence. That has been the work of spiritual philosophy in the East
\nand<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n– much <\/font> <\/span>
\nmore crudely and
\nimperfectly done – of theology in the West, a work of great importance at
\nmoments like the present when the intellect of mankind after a long wandering
\nis again turning towards the search for the Divine. Here there must inevitably
\nenter a part of those operations proper to the intellect, logical reasoning,
\ninferences from the data given by rational experience, analogies drawn from our
\nknowledge of the apparent facts of existence, appeals even to the physical
\ntruths of science, all the apparatus of the intelligent mind in its ordinary
\nworkings. But this is the weakest part of spiritual philosophy. It convinces
\nthe rational mind only where the intellect is already predisposed to belief,
\nand even if it convinces, it cannot give the true knowledge. Reason is safest
\nwhen it is content to take the profound truths and experiences of the spiritual
\nbeing and the spiritual life, just as <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nthey <\/font> <\/span>
\nare given to it, and throw them into such form, order and
\n<\/font> <\/span>language as will
\nmake them the most intelligible or the least unintelligible to the reasoning
\nmind. Even then it is not quite safe, for it is apt to harden the order into an
\nintellectual system and to present the form as if it were the essence. And, at
\nbest, it has to use a language which is not the very tongue of the suprarational
\ntruth but its inadequate translation and, since it is not the ordinary tongue
\neither of the rational intelligence, it is open to non-understanding or
\nmisunderstanding by the ordinary reason of mankind. It is well-known to the
\nexperience of the spiritual seeker that even the highest philosophising cannot
\ngive a true inner knowledge, is not the spiritual light, does not open the
\ngates of experience. All it can do is to address the consciousness<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-123<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nof man through his intellect and, when it has done, to say, "I have
\ntried to give you the truth in a form and system which will make it
\nintelligible and possible to you; if you are intellectually convinced or
\nattracted, you can now seek the real knowledge, but you must seek it by other
\nmeans which are beyond my province."<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But there is another level of the religious life in which
\nreason might seem justified in interfering more independently and entitled to
\nassume a superior role. For as there is the suprarational life in which
\nreligious aspiration finds entirely what it seeks, so too there is also the
\ninfrarational life of the instincts, impulses, sensations, crude emotions,
\nvital activities from which all human aspiration takes its beginning. These too
\nfeel the touch of the religious sense in man, share its needs and experience,
\ndesire its satisfactions. Religion includes this satisfaction also in its
\nscope, and in what is usually called religion it seems even to be the greater
\npart, sometimes to an external view almost the whole; for the. supreme purity
\nof spiritual experience does not appear or is glimpsed only through this mixed
\nand turbid current. Much impurity, ignorance, superstition, many doubtful
\nelements must form as the result of this contact and union of our highest
\ntendencies with our lower ignorant nature. Here it would seem that reason has
\nits legitimate part; here surely it can intervene to enlighten, purify,
\nrationalise the play of the instincts and impulses. It would seem that a
\nreligious reformation, a movement to substitute a "pure" and rational
\nreligion for one that is largely infrarational and impure, would be a distinct
\nadvance in the religious development of humanity. To a certain extent this may
\nbe, but, owing to the peculiar nature of the religious being, its entire urge
\ntowards the suprarational, not without serious qualifications, nor can the
\nrational mind do anything here that is of a high positive value.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Religious forms and systems
\nbecome effete and corrupt and have to be destroyed, or they lose much of their
\ninner sense and become clouded in knowledge and injurious in practice, and in
\ndestroying what is effete or in negating aberrations reason has played an
\nimportant part in religious history. But in its endeavour to get rid of the
\nsuperstition and ignorance which have attached themselves to religious forms
\nand symbols, intellectual<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Page-124<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nreason unenlightened by spiritual knowledge
\ntends to deny and, so far as it can, to destroy the truth and the experience
\nwhich was contained in them. Reformations which give too much to reason and are
\ntoo negative and protestant, usually create religions which lack in wealth of
\nspirituality and fullness of religious emotion; they are not opulent in their
\ncontents; their form and too often their spirit is impoverished, bare and cold.
\nNor are they really rational; for they live not by their reasoning and dogma
\nwhich to the rational mind is as irrational as that of the creeds they replace,
\nstill less by their negations, but by their positive quantum of faith and
\nfervour which is suprarational in its whole aim and has too its infrarational
\nelements. If these seem less gross to the ordinary mind than those of less
\nself-questioning creeds, it is often because they are more timid in venturing
\ninto the realm of suprarational experience. The life of the instincts and
\nimpulses on its religious side cannot be satisfyingly purified by reason, but
\nrather by being sublimated, by being lifted up into the illuminations of the
\nspirit. The natural line of religious development proceeds always by
\nillumination; and religious. reformation acts best when either it reilluminates
\nrather than destroys old forms or, where destruction is necessary, replaces
\nthem by richer and not by poorer forms, and in any case when it purifies by
\nsuprarational illumination, not by rational enlightenment. A purely rational
\nreligion could only be a cold and bare Deism, and such attempts have always
\nfailed to achieve vitality and permanence; for they act contrary to the dharma,
\n<\/i>the natural law and the spirit of religion. If reason is to play any
\ndecisive <\/font> <\/span>part, it must be an intuitive rather than an intellectual
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nreason, touched always by spiritual intensity and insight. For it tt1ust
\nbe remembered that the infrarational also has behind it a secret truth which
\ndoes not fall within the domain of the reason and is not wholly amenable to its
\njudgments. The heart has its knowledge, the life has its intuitive spirit
\nwithin it, its intimations, divinations, outbreaks and upflamings of a Secret
\nEnergy, a divine or at least semi-divine aspiration and outreaching which <\/font> <\/span>
\n,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe eye of intuition alone can fathom and only
\nintuitive speech <\/font> <\/span>
\nor symbol can shape or utter. To root out these
\nthings from <\/font> <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>religion
\nor to purge religion of any elements necessary for its<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-125<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ncompleteness because the forms are defective or obscure, without having
\nthe power to illuminate them from within or the patience to wait for their illumination
\nfrom above or without replacing them by more luminous symbols, is not to purify
\nbut to <\/font> <\/span>
\npauperise.<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nBut the relations of the
\nspirit and the reason need not be, as they too often are in our practice,
\nhostile or without any point of contact. Religion itself need not adopt for its
\nprinciple the formula "I believe because it is impossible" or
\nPascal’s "I believe because it is absurd". What is impossible or
\nabsurd to the unaided reason, becomes real and right to the reason lifted
\nbeyond itself by the power of the spirit and irradiated by its light. For then
\nit is dominated by the intuitive mind which is our means of passage to a yet
\nhigher principle of knowledge. The widest spirituality does not exclude or
\ndiscourage any essential human activity or faculty, but works rather to lift
\nall of them up out of their imperfection and groping ignorance, transforms them
\nby its touch and makes them the instruments of the light, power and joy of the
\ndivine being and the divine nature.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-126<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XIII Reason and Religion   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 IT WOULD seem then that reason is an insufficient, often an inefficient, even a stumbling and at…<\/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-1188","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\/1188","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=1188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}