{"id":1202,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:14","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1202"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:14","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:14","slug":"24-the-necessity-of-the-spiritual-trasnformation-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\/24-the-necessity-of-the-spiritual-trasnformation-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-24_The Necessity of the Spiritual Trasnformation.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\n\t\tCHAPTER
\nXXII<\/font><\/span><\/b>
\n<\/font>
\nThe
\nNecessity of the Spiritual Trasnformation<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n<\/font>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>OUR normal conduct
\nof life, whether the individual or the social, is actually governed by the
\nbalance between two complementary powers, – first, an implicit will central to
\nthe life and inherent in the main power of its action and, secondly, whatever
\nmodifying will can come in from the Idea in mind – for man is a mental being –
\nand operate through our as yet imperfect mental instruments to give this
\nLife-Force a conscious orientation and a conscious method. Life normally finds
\nits own centre in our vital and physical being, in its cravings and its needs,
\nin its demand for persistence, growth, expansion, enjoynent, in its reachings
\nafter all kinds of power and possession and activity and splendour and
\nlargeness. The first self-direction of this Life-Force, its first orderings of
\nmethod are instinctive and either entirely or very largely subconscient and magnificently
\nautomatic. The ease, spontaneity, fine normality, beauty, self-satisfaction,
\nabundant vital energy and power of the subhuman life of Nature up to the animal
\nis due to its entire obedience to this instinctive and automatic urge. It is a
\nvague sense of this truth and of the very different and in this respect
\ninferior character of human life that makes the thinker, when dissatisfied with
\nour present conditions, speak of a life according to Nature as the remedy for
\nall our ills. An attempt to find such a rule in the essential nature of man has
\ninspired many revolutionary conceptions of ethics and society and individual
\nself-development down to the latest of the kind, the strangely inspired
\nvitalistic philosophy of Nietzsche. The common defect of these conceptions is
\nto miss the true character of man and the true law of his being, his Dharma.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Nietzsche’s idea that to develop the superman
\nout of our<\/span> present very
\nunsatisfactory manhood is our real business, is in<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-218<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

itself an absolutely sound teaching. His formulation of
\nour aim, \u201cto become become ourselves", "to exceed ourselves",
\nimplying, as it , that man has not yet found all his true self, his true nature
\nby which he can successfully and spontaneously live, could not be bettered. But
\nthen the question of questions is there, what is our self, and what is our real
\nnature? What is that which is growing in us, but into which we have not yet
\ngrown? It is something divine, is the answer, a divinity Olympian, Apollonian,
\nDionysiac, which the reasoning and consciously willing animal, man, is
\nlabouring more or less obscurely to become. Certainly, it is all t; but in what
\nshall we find the seed of that divinity and what is the poise in which the
\nsuperman, once self-found, can abide be secure from lapse into this lower and
\nimperfect manhood? is it the intellect and will, the double-aspected buddhi <\/i>of the Indian psychological
\nsystem? But this is at present a thing so perplexed, divided against itself, so
\nuncertain of everything it gains, up to certain point indeed magically creative
\nand efficient but, when has been said and done, in the end so splendidly
\nfutile, so at war with and yet so dependent upon and subservient to our lower
\nnature,<\/span> that even if in it there
\nlies concealed some seed of the tire divinity, it can hardly itself be the seed
\nand at any rate gives no such secure and divine poise as we are seeking.
\nTherefore say, not the intellect and will, but that supreme thing in us yet
\nhigher than the Reason, the spirit, here concealed behind the tings of our
\nlower nature, is the secret seed of the divinity and ill be, when discovered
\nand delivered, luminous above the mind, the wide ground upon which a divine
\nlife of the human being can be with security founded.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>When we speak
\nof the superman, we speak evidently of Something abnormal or supernormal to our
\npresent nature, so much so that the very idea of it becomes easily alarming and
\nrepugnant to our normal humanity. The normal human does not desire to be called
\nout from its constant mechanical round to scale what may seem to it impossible
\nheights and it loves still less the prospect of being exceeded, left behind and
\ndominated,- although the object of a true supermanhood is not exceeding and
\ndomination for its own sake but precisely the opening of our normal humanity to
\nsomething now beyond itself that is yet its<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>219<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

own destined perfection. But mark that this thing which
\nwe
\nhave called normal humanity, is itself something abnormal in Nature, something
\nthe like and parity of which we look around in vain to discover; it is a rapid
\nfreak, a sudden miracle. Abnormality in Nature is no objection, no necessary
\nsign of imperfection, but may well be an effort at a much greater perfection.
\nBut this perfection is not found until the abnormal can find its own secure
\nnormality, the right organisation of its life in its own kind and power and on
\nits own level. Man is an abnormal who has not found his own normality, –<\/span> he may imagine he has, he may appear
\nto be normal in his own kind, but that normality is only a sort of provisional
\norder; therefore, though man is in- finitely greater than the plant or the
\nanimal, he is not perfect in his own nature like the plant and the animal. This
\nimperfection is not a thing to be at all deplored, but rather a privilege and a
\npromise, for it opens out to us an immense vista of self-development and
\nself-exceeding. Man at his highest is a half-god who has risen up out of the
\nanimal Nature and is splendidly abnormal in it, but the thing which he has
\nstarted out to be, the whole god, is something so much greater than what he is
\nthat it seems to him as abnormal to himself as he is to the animal. This means
\na great and arduous labour of growth before him, but also a splendid crown of
\nhis race and his victory. A kingdom is offered to him beside which his present triumphs in the realms of mind<\/span> or over external Nature will appear only as a rough
\nhint and a<\/span> poor beginning.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>What
\nprecisely is the defect from which all his imperfection springs? We have already indicated it, – that has indeed<\/span> been
\nthe general aim of the preceding chapters, – but it is necessary to state it
\nnow more succinctly and precisely. We see that at first sight man seems to be a
\ndouble nature, an animal nature of the vital and physical being which lives
\naccording to its instincts, impulses, desires, its automatic orientation and
\nmethod and with that a half-divine nature of the self-conscious intellectual,
\nethical, aesthetic, intelligently emotional, intelligently dynamic being who is
\ncapable of finding and understanding the law of his own action and consciously
\nusing and bettering it, a reflecting mind that understands Nature, a will that
\nuses, elevates, perfects<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-220<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Nature, a sense that intelligently enjoys Nature. The
\naim of the animal part of us is to increase vital possession and enjoyment; the aim of the semi-divine part of us is also to grow, possess and enjoy, but
\nfirst to possess and enjoy intelligently, aesthetically, ethically, by the
\npowers of the mind much more than by the powers of the life and body, and,
\nsecondly, to possess and enjoy, not so much the vital and physical except in so
\nfar as that is necessary as a foundation and starting-point, a preliminary
\nnecessity or condition, a standing-ground and basis, but things intellectual, ethical
\nand aesthetic, and to grow not so much in the outward
\nlife, except in so far as that is necessary to the security, ease and dignity
\nof our human existence, but in the true, the good and the beautiful. This is
\nthe manhood of man, his unique distinction and abnormality in the norm of this
\ninconscient material Nature.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>This means
\nthat man has developed a new power of being, – let us call it a new soul-power,
\nwith the premiss that we regard the life and the body also as a soul-power, –
\nand the being who\u00a0 <\/span>has done that is
\nunder an inherent obligation not only to look at the world and revalue all in
\nit from this new elevation, but to compel his whole nature to obey this power
\nand in a way reshape itself in its mould, and even to reshape, so far as he
\ncan, his environmental life into some image of this greater truth and law. In
\ndoing this lies his svadharma, his true rule and way of being, the c.<\/span> way of his perfection and his real
\nhappiness. Failing in this, he fails in the aim of his nature and his being,
\nand has to begin again until he finds the right path and arrives at a
\nsuccessful turning-point, a decisive crisis of transformation. Now this is
\nprecisely what man has failed to do. He has effected something, he has passed a
\ncertain stage of his journey. He has laid some yoke of the intellectual,
\nethical, aesthetic rule on his vital and physical parts and made it impossible
\nfor himself to be content with or really to be the mere human animal. But more
\nhe has not been able to do successfully. The transformation of his life into
\nthe image of the true, the good and the beautiful seems as far off as ever; if ever he comes near to some
\nimperfect form of it,<\/span> –<\/span> and <\/span>even then it is only done by a
\nclass or by a number of individuals with some reflex action on the life of the
\nmass, –<\/span> he slides back from it
\nin a general decay of his life, or else stumbles on from it<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\tPage-221<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ninto some bewildering upheaval out of which he comes with new gains indeed but
\nalso with serious losses. He has never arrived at any great turning-point, any
\ndecisive crisis of transformation.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The main
\nfailure, the root of the whole failure indeed, is that he has not been able to
\nshift upward what we have called the implicit will central to his life, the
\nforce and assured faith inherent in its main power of action. His central will
\nof life is still situated in his vital and physical being, its drift is towards
\nvital and physical enjoyment, enlightened indeed and checked to a certain
\nextent in its impulses by the higher powers, but enlighten- ed only and very
\npartially, not transformed, -checked, not dominated and uplifted to a higher
\nplane. The higher life is still only a thing superimposed on the lower, a
\npermanent intruder upon our normal existence. The intruder interferes constantly
\nwith the normal life, scolds, encourages, discourages, lectures, manipulates,
\nreadjusts, lifts up only to let fall, but has no power to transform, alchemise,
\nre-create. Indeed it does not seem itself quite to know where all this effort
\nand uneasy struggle is meant to lead us, – sometimes it thinks, to a quite
\ntolerable human life on earth, the norm of which it can never successfully fix,
\nand sometimes it imagines our journey is to another world whither by a
\nreligious life or else an edifying death it will escape out of all this pother
\nand trouble of mortal being. Therefore these two elements live together in a
\ncontinual, a mutual perplexity, made perpetually uneasy, uncomfortable and
\nineffectual by each other, somewhat like an ill-assorted wife and husband,
\nalways at odds and yet half in love with or at least necessary to each other,
\nunable to beat out a harmony, yet condemned to be joined in an unhappy leash
\nuntil death separates them. All the uneasiness, dissatisfaction,
\ndisillusionment, weariness, melancholy, pessimism of the human mind comes from
\nman’s practical failure to solve the riddle and the difficulty of his double
\nnature.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>We have said that this failure is
\ndue to the fact that this higher power is only a mediator, and that thoroughly
\nto trans- form the vital and physical life in its image is perhaps not
\npossible, but at any rate not the intention of Nature in us. It may be urged
\nperhaps that after all individuals have succeeded in effecting<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-222<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsome figure of transformation, have led entirely ethical or artistic
\nintellectual lives, even shaped their life by some ideal of the true, the good
\nand the beautiful, and whatever the individual done, the race too may and
\nshould eventually succeed in doing; for the exceptional individual is the
\nfuture type, the forerunner. But to how much did their success really amount?
\nEither they impoverished the vital and physical life in them in order to give
\nplay to one element of their being, lived a one-sided and limited existence, or
\nelse they arrived at a compromise by which, while the higher life was given
\ngreat prominence, the lower was still allowed to graze in its own field under
\nthe eye more or less strict or the curb more or less indulgent of the higher
\npower or powers: in itself, in its own instincts and demands it remained
\nunchanged. There was a dominance, but not a transformation
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Life cannot be entirely rational,
\ncannot conform entirely the ethical or the aesthetic or the scientific and
\nphilosophic mentality; mind is not the destined archangel of the
\ntransformation. All appearances to the contrary are always a trompe-I’ail, an <\/i>intellectual, aesthetic
\nor ethical illusion. Dominated, repressed life may be, but it reserves its
\nright; and though individuals a class may establish this domination for a time
\nand impose me simulacrum of it upon the society, Life in the end circumvents
\nthe intelligence; it gets strong elements in it – for always there are traitor
\nelements at work – to come over to its side and establishes its instincts,
\nrecovers its field; or if it fails in this, has its revenge in its own decay
\nwhich brings about the decay the society, the disappointment of the perennial
\nhope. So Much so, that there are times when mankind perceives this fact and,
\nrenouncing the attempt to dominate the life-instinct, determines to use the
\nintelligence for its service and to give it light its own field instead of\u00a0 <\/span>enslaving it to a higher but chimerical
\nideal.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Such a
\nperiod was the recent materialistic age, when the intellect of man seemed
\ndecided to study thoroughly Life and Matter, to admit only that, to recognise
\nmind only as an instrument of Life and Matter, and to devote all its knowledge
\nto a tremendous expansion of the vital and physical life, its practicality, its
\nefficiency, its comfort and the splendid ordering of its<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-223<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

instincts of production, possession and enjoyment. That
\nwas the character of the materialistic, commercial, economic age of mankind, a
\nperiod in which the ethical mind persisted painfully, but with decreasing
\nself-confidence, an increasing self-questioning and a tendency to yield up the
\nfortress of the moral law to the life-instinct, the aesthetic instinct and
\nintelligence flourished as a rather glaring exotic ornament, a sort of rare
\norchid in the button-hole of the vital man, and reason became the magnificent
\nservant of Life and Matter. The titanic development of the vital Life which
\nfollowed is ending as the Titans always end; it lit its own funeral pyre in the
\nconflagration of a world-war, its natural upshot, a struggle between the most
\n"efficient" and "civilised" nations for the possession and
\nenjoyment of the world, of its wealth, its markets, its available spaces, an
\ninflated and plethoric commercial expansion, largeness of imperial size and
\nrule. For that is what the Great War signified and was in its real origin,
\nbecause that was the secret or the open intention of all pre-war diplomacy and
\ninternational politics; and if a nobler idea was awakened at least for a time,
\nit was only under the scourge of Death and before the terrifying spectre of a
\ngigantic mutual destruction. Even so the awakening was by no means complete,
\nnor everywhere quite sincere, but it was there and it was struggling towards
\nbirth even in Germany, once the great protagonist of the vitalistic philosophy
\nof life. In that awakening lay some hope of better things. But for the moment
\nat least the vitalistic aim has once more raised its head in a new form and the
\nhope has, dimmed in a darkness and welter in which only the eye of faith can
\nsee chaos preparing a new cosmos.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The first result of this imperfect
\nawakening seemed likely to be a return to an older ideal, with a will to use
\nthe reason and the ethical mind better and more largely in the ordering of
\nindividual, of national and of international life. But such an attempt, though
\nwell enough as a first step, cannot be the real and final solution;’ if our
\neffort ends there, we shall not arrive. The solution lies, we have said, in an
\nawakening to our real, because our highest self and nature, – that hidden self which we are not yet, but
\nhave to become and which is not the strong and enlightened vital Will hymned by
\nNietzsche, but a spiritual self and spiritual nature that<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-224<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

will use the mental being which we already are, but the
\nmental g spiritualised, and transform by a spiritual ideality the aim action of
\nour vital and physical nature. For this is the formula an in his highest
\npotentiality, and safety lies in tending Ids our highest and not in resting
\ncontent with an inferior potentiality. To follow after the highest in us may
\nseem to be to dangerously, to use again one of Nietzsche’s inspired
\nexpressions, but by that danger comes victory and security. To in or follow
\nafter an inferior potentiality may seem safe, nal, comfortable, easy, but it
\nends badly, in some futility l a mere circling, down the abyss or in a stagnant
\nmorass. our right and natural road is towards the summits.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>We have then to return to the
\npursuit of an ancient secret which man, as a race, has seen only obscurely and
\nfollowed , lamely, has indeed understood
\nonly with his surface mind not in its heart of meaning, – and yet in following
\nit lies social no less than his individual salvation, – the ideal of the
\nkingdom of God, the secret of the reign of the Spirit over mind life and body.
\nIt is because they have never quite lost hold ~s secret, never disowned it in
\nimpatience for a lesser victory, the older Asiatic nations have survived so
\npersistently and now, as if immortal, raise their faces towards a new dawn;
\nthey have fallen asleep, but they have not perished. It is true they have for a time failed in life, where the
\nEuropean nations<\/span> who trusted to the flesh and the intellect have
\nsucceeded; that success, speciously complete but only for a time, has always
\nturned into a catastrophe. Still Asia had failed in life, had fallen in the
\ndust, and even if the dust in which she was .g was sacred, as the modern poet
\nof Asia has declared,- ugh the sacredness may be doubted, – still the dust is
\nnot the proper place for man, nor is to lie prostrate in it his right human
\nattitude. Asia temporarily failed not because she followed after things
\nspiritual, as some console themselves by saying, – as if Spirit could be at all
\na thing of weakness or a cause of weakness- but because she did not follow
\nafter the Spirit sufficiently, did not learn how entirely to make it the master
\nof life. Her mind either made a gulf and a division between life and the spirit
\nor else rested in a compromise between them and accepted<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-225<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

as final socio-religious systems founded upon that
\ncompromise. So to rest is perilous; for the call of the Spirit more than any
\nother demands that we shall follow it always to the end, and the end is neither
\na divorce and departure nor a compromise, but a conquest of all by the Spirit
\nand that reign of the seekers after perfection which, in the Hindu religious
\nsymbol, the last Avatar comes to accomplish.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>This truth
\nit is important to note, for mistakes made on the path are often even more
\ninstructive than the mistakes made by a turning aside from the path. As it is
\npossible to superimpose the intellectual, ethical or aesthetic life or the sum
\nof their motives upon the vital and physical nature, to be satisfied with a
\npartial domination or a compromise, so it is possible to superimpose the
\nspiritual life or some figure of strength or ascendency of spiritual ideas and
\nmotives on the mental, vital and physical nature and either to impoverish the
\nlatter, to impoverish the vital and physical existence and even to depress the
\nmental as well in order to give the
\nspiritual an easier domination, or else<\/span> to make a compromise and leave
\nthe lower being to its pasture on condition of its doing frequent homage to the
\nspiritual existence, admitting to a certain extent, greater or less, its
\ninfluence and formally acknowledging it as the last state and the finality of
\nthe human being. This is the most that human society has ever done in the past,
\nand though necessarily that must be a stage of the journey, to rest there is to
\nmiss the heart of the matter, the one thing needful. Not a humanity leading its
\nordinary life, what is now its normal round, touched by spiritual influences,
\nbut a humanity aspiring whole-heartedly to a law that is now abnormal to it
\nuntil its whole life has been elevated into spirituality, is the steep way that
\nlies before man towards his perfection and the transformation that it has to
\nachieve.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The secret
\nof the transformation lies in the transference of our centre of living to a
\nhigher consciousness and in a change of our main power of living. This will be
\na leap or an ascent even more momentous
\nthan that which Nature must have at one<\/span> time made from the vital mind of the animal to the thinking<\/span> mind still
\nimperfect in our human intelligence. The central will implicit in life must be
\nno longer the vital will in the life and the body,<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-226<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

but the spiritual will of which we have now only rare
\nand dim intimations and glimpses. For now it comes to us hardly disclosed,
\nweakened, disguised in the mental Idea; but it is in its own nature supramental
\nand it is its supramental power and truth that we have somehow to discover. The
\nmain power of our living must be no longer the inferior vital urge of Nature which
\nis already accomplished in us and can only whirl upon its rounds about the
\nego-centre, but that spiritual force of which we sometimes hear and speak but
\nhave not yet its inmost secret. For that is still retired in our depths and
\nwaits for our transcendence of the ego and the discovery of the true individual
\nin whose universality we shall be united with all others. To transfer <\/i>from the vital being, the instrumental
\nreality in us, to the spirit, <\/i>the
\ncentral reality, to elevate to that height our will to be and our power of
\nliving is the secret which our nature is seeking to discover. All that we have
\ndone hitherto is some half successful effort to transfer this will and power to
\nthe mental plane; our highest endeavour and labour has been to become the mental
\nbeing and to live in the strength of the Idea. But the mental idea in us is
\nalways intermediary and instrumental; always it depends on something other than
\nit for its ground of action and therefore though
\nit can follow for a time after its own separate satisfaction, it cannot rest
\nfor ever satisfied with that alone. It must either gravitate downwards and
\noutwards towards the vital and physical life or it must elevate itself inwards
\nand upwards towards the Spirit.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>And that must
\nbe why in thought, in art, in conduct, in life we are always divided between
\ntwo tendencies, one idealistic, le other realistic. The latter very easily
\nseems to us more real, ,ore solidly founded, more in touch with actualities
\nbecause it lies upon a reality which is patent, sensible and already
\naccomplished; the idealistic easily seems to us something unreal, fantastic,
\nunsubstantial, nebulous, a thing more of thoughts and words than\u00a0 <\/span>of live actualities, because it is trying to
\nembody a reality not yet accomplished. To a certain extent we are perhaps
\nright; for the ideal, a stranger among the actualities of our physical
\nexistence, is in fact a thing unreal until it has either in some way reconciled
\nitself to the imperfections of our<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-227<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

outer life or else has found the greater and purer
\nreality for which it is seeking and imposed it on our outer activities; till
\nthen it hangs between two worlds and has conquered neither the upper light nor
\nthe nether darkness. Submission to the actual by a compromise is easy;
\ndiscovery of the spiritual truth and the transformation of our actual way of
\nliving is difficult; but it is precisely this difficult thing that has to be
\ndone, if man is to find and fulfil his true nature. Our idealism is always the
\nmost rightly human thing in us, but as a mental idealism it is a thing
\nineffective. To be effective it has to convert itself into a spiritual realism
\nwhich shall lay its hands on the’ higher reality of the Spirit and take up for
\nit this lower reality of our sensational, vital and physical nature.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>This upward
\ntransference of our will to be and our power of life we have, then, to make the
\nvery principle of our perfection. That will that power must choose between the
\ndomination of the vital part in us and the domination of the Spirit. Nature can
\nrest in the round of vital being, can produce there
\na sort of perfection, but that is the perfection of an arrested
\ndevelopment satisfied with its own limits. This she can manage in the plant and
\nthe animal, because the life and the body are there at once the instrument and
\nthe aim; they do not look beyond themselves. She cannot do it in man because
\nhere she has shot up beyond her physical and vital basis; she has developed in
\nhim the mind which is an outflowering of the life towards the light of the
\nSpirit, and the life and the body are now instrumental and no longer their own
\naim. Therefore the perfection of man cannot consist in pursuing the unillumined
\nround of the physical life. Neither can it be found in the wider \\ rounds of the mental being; for that also is
\ninstrumental ~ and tends towards something
\nelse beyond it, something whose power indeed works in it, but whose larger
\ntruth is superconscient to its present intelligence, supramental. The perfection
\nof man lies in the unfolding of the ever-perfect sprit.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The lower
\nperfection of Nature in the plant and the animal comes from an instinctive, an
\nautomatic, a subconscient obedience in each to the vital truth of its own
\nbeing. The<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-228<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

higher perfection of the spiritual life will come by a
\nspontaneous obedience of spiritualised
\nman to the truth of his own realised bei<\/span>ng, when he has become himself,
\nwhen he has found his own real nature. For this spontaneity will not be
\ninstinctive and subconscient, it will be intuitive and fully, integrally
\nconscious. It will be a glad obedience to a spontaneous principle of spiritual
\nlight, to the force of <\/i>a unified and
\nintegralised highest truth, largest beauty, good, power, joy, love, oneness. The
\nobject this force acting in life will and must be as in all life growth,
\npossession, enjoyment, but a growth which is a divine manifestation, a
\npossession and enjoyment spiritual and of the spirit in things, – an enjoyment
\nthat will use, but will not depend on the mental, vital and physical symbols of
\nour living. Therefore this will not be a limited perfection of arrested
\ndevelopment dependent on the repetition of the same forms and the same round of
\nactions, any departure from which becomes a peril and a disturbance. It will be
\nan illimitable perfection capable of endless variation in its forms, – for the ways of the spirit are countless and
\nendless, – but securely the same in all
\nvariations, one but multitudinously infinite.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Therefore,
\ntoo, this perfection cannot come by the mental idea dealing with the Spirit as
\nit deals with life. The idea in und seizing upon the central will in Spirit and
\ntrying to give this higher force a conscious orientation and method in
\naccordance with the ideas of the intellect is too limited, too darkened, too
\npoor a force to work this miracle. Still less can it come if we chain the
\nSpirit to some fixed mental idea or system of religious cult, intellectual
\ntruth, aesthetic norm, ethical rule, practical action, way of vital and
\nphysical life, to a particular arrangement of forms and actions and declare all
\ndeparture from that a peril and a disturbance or a deviation from spiritual
\nliving. That was the mistake made in Asia and the cause of its arrested
\ndevelopment and decline; for this is to subject the higher to the lower
\nprinciple and to bind down the self-disclosing Spirit to a provisional and
\nimperfect compromise with mind and the vital nature. Man’s true freedom and
\nperfection will come when the Spirit within bursts through the forms of mind
\nand life and, winging above to its own gnostic fiery height of ether,<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>229<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

turns upon them from that light and flame to seize them
\nand transform into its own image.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>In fact,
\nas we have seen, the mind and the intellect are not the key-power of our
\nexistence. For they can only trace out a round of half-truths and uncertainties
\nand revolve in that unsatisfying circle. But concealed in the mind and life, in
\nall the action of the intellectual, the aesthetic, the ethical, the dynamic and
\npractical, the emotional, sensational, vital and physical being, there is a
\npower that sees by identity and intuition and gives to all these things such
\ntruth and such certainty and stability as they are able to compass. Obscurely
\nwe are now beginning to see something of this behind all our science and
\nphilosophy and all our other activities. But so long as this power has to work
\nfor the mind and life and not for itself, to work in their forms and not by its
\nown spontaneous light, we cannot make any great use of this discovery, cannot
\nget the native benefit of this inner Daemon. Man’s road to spiritual super-
\nmanhood will be open when he declares boldly that all he has yet developed,
\nincluding the intellect of which he is so rightly and yet so vainly proud, are
\nnow no longer sufficient for him, and that to uncase, discover, set free this
\ngreater Light within shall be henceforward his pervading preoccupation. Then
\nwill his philosophy, art, science, ethics, social existence, vital pursuits be
\nno longer an exercise of mind and life, done for them- selves, carried in a
\ncircle, but a means for the discovery of a greater Truth behind mind and life
\nand for the bringing of its power into our human existence. We shall be on the
\nright road to become ourselves, to find our true law of perfection, to live our
\ntrue, satisfied existence in our real being and divine nature.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-230<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XXII The Necessity of the Spiritual Trasnformation \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 OUR normal conduct of life, whether the individual or the social, is actually governed by the…<\/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-1202","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\/1202","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=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}