{"id":1195,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:11","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1195"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:11","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:11","slug":"20-the-infrarational-age-of-the-cycle-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\/20-the-infrarational-age-of-the-cycle-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-20_The Infrarational Age of the Cycle.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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

The Infrarational Age of
\nthe Cycle<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n                                I<\/b><\/font><\/span>N
\n<\/font><\/b>SPIRITUALITY
\nthen would lie our ultimate, our only hope for the perfection whether of the
\nindividual or of the communal man; not the spirit which for its sepa<\/font>rate satisfaction turns<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>away<\/font> <\/font> <\/span>
\nfrom
\nthe earth and her works, but <\/font> <\/span>that greater
\nspirit which surpasses and yet accepts and fulfils them. A spirituality that
\nwould take up into itself man’s rationalism, aestheticism, ethicism, vitalism,
\ncorporeality, his aspiration towards knowledge, his attraction towards beauty,
\nhis need of love, his urge towards perfection, his demand for power and
\nfullness of life and being, a spirituality that would reveal to these
\nill-accorded forces their divine sense and the conditions of their godhead,
\nreconcile them all to each other, illumine to the vision of each the way which
\nthey now tread in half-lights and shadows, in blindness or with a deflected
\nsight, is a power which even man’s too self-sufficient reason can accept or may
\nat least be brought one day to accept as sovereign and to see in it its own
\nsupreme light, its own infinite source. For that reveals itself surely in the
\nend as the logical ultimate process, the inevitable development and
\nconsummation of all for which man is individually and socially striving. A
\nsatisfying evolution of the nascent spirituality still raw and inchoate in the
\nrace is the possibility to which an age of subjectivism is a first glimmer of
\nawakening or towards which it shows a first profound potentiality of return. A
\ndeeper, wider, greater, more spiritualised subjective understanding of the
\nindividual and communal self and its life and a growing reliance on the
\nspiritual light and the spiritual means for the final solution of its problems
\nare the only way to a true social perfection. The free rule, that is to say,
\nthe predominant lead, control and influence of the developed spiritual man –
\nnot the half-spiritualised priest, saint or prophet or the raw religionist<\/font> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>is our hope for a divine guidance of the race.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-171<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n      A spiritualised society
\ncan alone bring about a reign of individual harmony and communal happiness; or,
\nin words which, though liable to abuse by the reason and the passions, are
\nstill the most expressive we can find, a new kind of theocracy, the kingdom of
\nGod upon earth, a theocracy which shall be the government of mankind by the
\nDivine in the hearts and minds of men.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Certainly, this will not come about
\neasily, or, as men have always vainly hoped from each great new turn and
\nrevolution of politics and society, by a sudden and at once entirely satisfying
\nchange and magical transformation. The advance, however it comes about, will be
\nindeed of the nature of a miracle, as are all such profound changes and immense
\ndevelopments; for they have the appearance of a kind of realised impossibility.
\nBut God works all his miracles by an evolution of secret possibilities which
\nhave been long prepared, at least in their elements, and in the end by a rapid
\nbringing of all to a head, a throwing together of the elements so that in their
\nfusion they produce a new form and name of things and reveal a new spirit.
\nOften the decisive turn is preceded by an apparent emphasizing and raising to
\ntheir extreme of things which seem the very denial, the most uncompromising
\nopposite of the new principle and the new creation. Such an evolution of the
\nelements of a spiritualised society is that which a subjective age makes at
\nleast possible, and if at the same time it raises to the last height of active
\npower things which seem the very denial of such a potentiality, that need be no
\nindex of a practical impossibility of the new birth, but on the contrary may be
\nthe sign of its approach or at the lowest a strong attempt at achievement.
\nCertainly, the whole effort of a subjective age may go wrong; but this happens
\noftenest when by the insufficiency of its materials, a great crudeness of its
\nstarting-point and a hasty shallowness or narrow intensity of its inlook into
\nitself and things it is foredoomed to a fundamental error of self-knowledge. It
\nbecomes less likely when the spirit of the age is full of freedom, variety and
\na many-sided seeking, a persistent effort after know- ledge and perfection in
\nall the domains of human activity; that can well convert itself into an intense
\nand yet flexible straining after the infinite and the divine on many sides and
\nin many aspects. In such circumstances, though a full advance may<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-172<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\npossibly not be made, a
\ngreat step forward can be predicted.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>We have seen that there are necessarily
\nthree stages of the social evolution or, generally, of the human evolution in
\nboth individual and society. Our evolution starts with an infrarational stage
\nin which men have not yet learned to refer their life and action in its
\nprinciples and its forms to the judgment of the clarified intelligence; for
\nthey still act principally out of their instincts, impulses, spontaneous ideas,
\nvital intuitions or else obey a customary response to desire, need and
\ncircumstance, – it is these things that are canalised or crystallised in their
\nsocial institutions. Man proceeds by various stages out of these beginnings
\ntowards a rational age in which his intelligent will more or less developed becomes
\nthe judge, arbiter and presiding motive of his thought, feeling and action, the
\nmoulder, destroyer and re-creator of his leading ideas, aims and intuitions.
\nFinally, if our analysis and forecast are correct, the human evolution must
\nmove through a subjective towards a suprarational or spiritual age in which he
\nwill develop progressively a greater spiritual, supra-intellectual and
\nintuitive, perhaps in the end a more than intuitive, a gnostic consciousness.
\nHe will be able to perceive a higher divine end, a divine sanction, a divine
\nlight of guidance for all he seeks to be, think, feel and do, and able, too,
\nmore and more to obey and live in this larger light and power. That will not be
\ndone by any rule of infrarational religious impulse and ecstasy, such as
\ncharacterised or rather darkly illumined the obscure confusion and brute
\nviolence of the Middle Ages, but by a higher spiritual living for which the
\nclarities of the reason are a necessary preparation and into which they too
\nwill be taken up, transformed, brought to their invisible source.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>These stages or periods are much more
\ninevitable in the psychological evolution of mankind than the Stone and other
\nAges marked out by Science in his instrumental culture, for they depend not on
\noutward means or accidents, but on the. very nature of his being. But we must
\nnot suppose that they are naturally exclusive and absolute in their nature, or
\ncomplete in their tendency or fulfilment when they come, or rigidly marked off
\nfrom each other in their action or their time. For they not only arise out of
\neach other, but may be partially developed<\/font> \u00a0<\/span>in<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-173<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\neach other and they may
\ncome to co-exist in different parts of the earth at the same time. But,
\nespecially, since man as a whole is always a complex being, even man savage or
\ndegenerate, he cannot be any of these things exclusively or absolutely,<\/font> <\/font> <\/span>
\n– so long <\/font> <\/span>
\nas he has not exceeded himself, has not developed into
\nthe superman, has not, that is to say, spiritualised and divinised his whole
\nbeing. At his animal worst he is still some kind of thinking or reflecting
\nanimal: even the infrarational man cannot be utterly infrarational, but must
\nhave or tend to have some kind of play more or less evolved or involved of the
\nreason and a more or less crude suprarational element, a more or less disguised
\nworking of the spirit. At his lucid mental best, he is still not a<\/font> <\/font> \u00a0<\/font><\/span><\/i><\/span>pure
\nmental being, a pure intelligence ; even the most perfect intellectual is not
\nand cannot be wholly or merely rational,<\/font>
\n<\/font> <\/span>–<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>there are vital urges that he cannot exclude, visits
\nor touches of a light from above that are not less suprarational because he
\ndoes not recognise their source. No god, but at his highest a human being
\ntouched with a ray of the divine influence, man’s very spirituality, however
\ndominant, must have, while he is still this imperfectly evolved human, its
\nrational and infrarational\u00a0 <\/span>tendencies
\nand elements. And as with the psychological life of individuals, so must it be
\nwith the ages of his communal existence; these may be marked off from each
\nother by the predominant play of one element, its force may overpower the
\nothers or take them into itself or make some compromise, but an exclusive play
\nseems to be neither intended nor possible.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Thus an infrarational period of human
\nand social development need not be without its elements, its strong elements of
\nreason and of spirituality. Even the savage, whether he be primitive or
\ndegenerate man, has some coherent idea of this world and the beyond; a theory
\nof life and a religion. To us with our more advanced rationality his theory of
\nlife may seem incoherent, because we have lost its point of view and its
\nprinciple of mental associations. But it is still an act of reason, and within
\nits limits he is capable of a sufficient play of thought both ideative and
\npractical, as well as a clear ethical idea and motive, some aesthetic notions
\nand an understood order of society poor and barbarous to our view, but well
\nenough contrived and put together to<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-174<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ns<\/font><\/span>erve the simplicity of its objects. Or again we may
\nnot realise the element of reason in a primitive theory of life or of
\nspirituality in a barbaric religion, because it appears to us to be made up of
\nsymbols and forms to which a superstitious value is attached by these
\nundeveloped minds. But this is because the reason at this stage has an
\nimperfect and limited action and the element of spirituality is crude or
\nundeveloped and not yet self-conscious; in order to hold firmly their workings
\nand make them real and concrete to his mind and spirit primitive man has to
\ngive them shape in symbols and forms to which he clings with a barbaric awe and
\nreverence, because they alone can embody for him his method of self-guidance in
\nlife. For the dominant thing in him is his infrarational life of instinct,
\nvital intuition and impulse, mechanical custom and tradition, and it is that to
\nwhich the rest of him has to give some kind of primary order and first
\nglimmerings of light. The unrefined reason and unenlightened spirit in him
\ncannot work for their own ends; they are bond-slaves of his infrarational
\nnature.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>At a higher stage of development or of a
\nreturn towards a fuller evolution, – for the actual savage in humanity is
\nperhaps not the original primitive man, but a relapse and reversion to- wards
\nprimitiveness, – the infrarational stage of society may arrive at a very lofty
\norder of civilisation. It may have great intuitions of the ‘meaning or general
\nintention of life, admirable ideas of the arrangement of life, a harmonious,
\nwell-adapted, durable and serviceable social system, an imposing religion which
\nwill not be without its profundities, but in which symbol and ceremonial will
\nform the largest portion and for the mass of man will be almost the whole of
\nreligion. In this stage pure reason and pure spirituality will not govern the
\nsociety, or move large bodies of men, but will be represented, if at all, by
\nindividuals at first few, but growing in number as these two powers increase in
\ntheir purity and vigour and attract more and more votaries.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>This may well lead to an age, if the development of reason is
\nstrongest, of great individual thinkers who seize on some idea of life and its
\norigins and laws and erect that into a philosophy, of critical minds standing
\nisolated above the mass who judge life, not yet with a luminous largeness, a
\nminute flexibility of under-<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-175<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nstanding or a clear and comprehensive
\nprofundity, but still with power of intelligence, insight, acuteness, perhaps
\neven a pre-eminent social thinker here and there who, taking advantage of some
\ncrisis or disturbance, is able to get the society to modify or reconstruct
\nitself on the basis of some clearly rational and intelligent principle. Such an
\nage seems to be represented by the traditions of the beginnings of Greek civilisation,
\nor rather the beginnings of its mobile and progressive period. Or if
\nspirituality predominates, there will be great mystics capable of delving into
\nthe profound and still occult psychological possibilities of our nature who
\nwill divine and realise the truth of the self and spirit in man and even though
\nthey keep these things secret and imparted only to a small number of initiates,
\nmay yet succeed in deepening with them the crude forms of the popular life.
\nEven such a development is obscurely indicated in the old traditions of the
\nmysteries. In prehistoric India we see it take a peculiar and unique turn which
\ndetermined the whole future trend of the society and made Indian civilisation a
\nthing apart and of its own kind in the history of the human race. But these
\nthings are only a first beginning of light in the midst of a humanity\u00a0 <\/span>which is still infrarational as well as
\ninfra-spiritual and, even when it under- goes the influence of these
\nprecursors, responds only obscurely to their inspirations and without any
\nclearly intelligent or awakened spiritual reception of what they impart or
\nimpose. It still turns everything into infrarational form and disfiguring
\ntradition and lives spiritually by ill-understood ceremonial and disguising
\nsymbol. It feels obscurely the higher things, tries to live them in its own
\nstumbling way, but it does not yet understand; it cannot lay hold either on the
\nintellectual form or the spiritual heart of their significance.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nAs reason and spirituality
\ndevelop, they begin to become a larger and more diffused force, less intense
\nperhaps, but wider and more effective on the mass. The mystics become the
\nsowers of the seed of an immense spiritual development in which whole classes
\nof society and even men from all classes seek the light, as happened in India
\nin the age of the Upanishads. The solitary individual thinkers are replaced by
\na great number of writers, poets, thinkers, rhetoricians, sophists, scientific
\ninquirers, who<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-176<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\npour out a profuse flood of acute speculation and inquiry
\nstimulating the thought-habit and creating<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>even in the mass a gene<\/font><\/span>ralised
\nactivity of the intelligence,<\/font> <\/font> <\/span>
\n– as
\nhappened in Greece in the <\/font> <\/span>age of the
\nsophists. The spiritual development, arising uncurbed <\/font>
\nby reason<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nin an infrarational society,
\nhas often a tendency to out<\/font><\/span>run at first
\nthe rational and intellectual movement. For the greatest\u00a0 <\/span>illuminating force of the infrarational man,
\nas he develops, is an inferior intuition, an instinctively intuitional sight
\narising out of the force of life in him, and the transition from this to an
\nintensity of inner life and the growth of a deeper spiritual intuition which
\noutleaps the intellect and seems to dispense with it, is an easy passage in the
\nindividual man. But for humanity at large this movement cannot last; the mind
\nand intellect must develop to their fullness so that the spirituality of the
\nrace may rise securely upward upon a broad basis of the developed lower nature
\nin man, <\/font>the
\nintelligent mental being. Therefore we see<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>that the reason<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>in <\/font> <\/span>its growth either does away
\nwith the distinct spiritual tendency for a time, as in ancient Greece, or
\naccepts it but spins out around its first data and activities a vast web of the
\nworkings of the intelligence, so that, as in India, the early mystic seer is replaced
\nby the philosopher-mystic, the religious thinker and even the philosopher pure
\nand simple.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>For a time the new growth and impulse may
\nseem to take possession of a whole community as in Athens or in old Aryan
\nIndia. But these early dawns cannot endure in their purity, so long as the race
\nis not ready. There is a crystallisation, a lessening of the first impetus, a
\nnew growth of infrarational forms in which the thought or the spirituality is
\novergrown with, inferior accretions or it is imbedded in the form and may even
\ndie in it, while the tradition of the living knowledge, the loftier life and
\nactivity remains the property of the higher classes, or a highest class. The
\nmultitude remains infrarational in its habit of mind, though perhaps it may still
\nkeep in capacity an enlivened intelligence or a profound or subtle spiritual
\nreceptiveness as its gain from the past. So long as the hour of the rational
\nage has not arrived, the irrational period of society cannot be left behind;
\nand that arrival can only be when not a class or a few, but the multitude has
\nlearned to think, to exercise its intelligence<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-177<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nactively<\/font> –<\/font> it matters not
\nat first however imperfectly<\/font> – upon their<\/font><\/span> life, their needs, their rights; their duties, their aspirations
\nas human beings. Until then we have as the highest possible development a mixed
\nsociety, infrarational in the mass, but saved for civilisation by a higher
\nclass whose business it is to seek after the reason and the spirit, to keep the
\ngains of mankind in these fields, to add to them, to enlighten and raise with
\nthem as much as possible the life of the whole.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>At this point we see that Nature in
\nher human mass tends to move forward slowly on her various lilies of active
\nmind and life towards a greater application of reason and spirituality which
\nshall at last bring near the possibility of a rational and, eventually, a
\nspiritual age of mankind. Her difficulties proceed from two sides. First, while
\nshe originally developed thought and reason and spirituality by exceptional
\nindividuals, now she develops them in the mass by exceptional communities or
\nnations, – at least in the relative sense of a nation governed, led and
\nprogressively formed and educated by its intellectually or spiritually cultured
\nclass or classes. But the exceptional nation touched on its higher levels by a
\ndeveloped reason or spirituality or both, as were Greece and later Rome in
\nancient Europe, India, China and Persia in ancient Asia, is surrounded or
\nneighboured by enormous masses of the old infrarational humanity and endangered
\nby this menacing proximity; for until a developed science comes in to redress
\nthe balance, the barbarian has always a greater physical force and unexhausted
\nnative power of aggression than the cultured peoples. At this stage the light
\nand power of civilisation always collapses in the end before the attack of the
\nouter darkness. Then ascending Nature has to train the conquerors more or less
\nslowly, with long difficulty and much loss and delay to develop among
\nthemselves what their incursion has temporarily destroyed or impaired. In the
\nend humanity gains by the process; a greater mass of the nations is brought in,
\na larger and more living force of progress is applied, a starting-point is
\nreached from which it can move to richer and more varied gains. But a certain
\nloss is always the price of this advance.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But even within the communities
\nthemselves reason and spirituality at this stage are always hampered and
\nendangered by<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-178<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nexisting in a milieu and
\natmosphere not their own. The elite, the classes in charge of these powers are
\nobliged to throw them into forms which the mass of human ignorance they lead
\nand rule will accept, and both reason and spirituality tend to be stifled by
\nthese forms, to get stereotyped, fossilised, void of life, bound up from their
\nnatural play. Secondly, since they are after all part of the mass, these higher
\nenlightened elements are them- selves much under the influence of their infrarational parts and do not, except in individuals, arrive at the entirely
\nfree play of the reason or the free light of the spirit. Thirdly, there is
\nalways the danger of these elements gravitating downward to the ignorance below
\nor even collapsing into it. Nature guards herself by various devices for
\nmaintaining the tradition of intellectual and spiritual activity in the
\nfavoured classes; here she makes it a point of honour for them to preserve and
\npromote the national culture, there she establishes a preservative system of
\neducation and discipline. And in order that these things may not degenerate
\ninto mere traditionalism, she brings in a series of intellectual or spiritual
\nmovements which by their shock revivify the failing life and help to bring
\nabout a broadening and an enlarging and to drive the dominant reason or
\nspirituality deeper down into the infrarational mass. Each movement indeed
\ntends to petrify after a shorter or longer activity, but a fresh shock, a new
\nwave arrives in time to save and regenerate. Finally, she reaches the point
\nwhen, all immediate danger of relapse overcome, she’ can proceed to her next
\ndecisive advance in the cycle of social evolution. This must take the form of
\nan attempt to universalise first of all the habit of reason and the application
\nof the intelligence and intelligent will to life. Thus is instituted the
\nrational age of human society, the great endeavour to bring the power of the
\nreason and intelligence to bear on all that we are and do and to organise in
\ntheir light and by their guiding force the entire existence of the <\/font>
\nrace.<\/font><\/span> <\/p>\n

\nPage-179<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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