{"id":1246,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1246"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:32","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:32","slug":"12-the-evolution-of-the-spiritual-man-vol-19-the-life-divine-volume-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/19-the-life-divine-volume-19\/12-the-evolution-of-the-spiritual-man-vol-19-the-life-divine-volume-19","title":{"rendered":"-12_The Evolution of the Spiritual Man.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\n
\nC<\/font>HAPTER<\/font>
\nXXIV<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Evolution of the Spiritual Man<\/font><\/span> <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nEven as men
\ncome to Me, so I accept them. It is my path that men<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n follow from all sides….
\nWhatever form the worshipper chooses to<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n worship with faith, I set in him firm
\nfaith in it, and with that faith<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n he puts his yearning into his adoration and
\ngets his desire <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\ndispensed by Me. But limited is that fruit. Those whose
\nsacrifice<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n is to the gods, to elemental spirits, reach the gods, reach the<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n elemental spirits, but those whose sacrifice is to Me, to Me they
\n<\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\ncome.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nGita<\/font><\/i>.1<\/sup><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nIn these there
\nis not the Wonder and the Might; the truths occult <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nexist not for the mind of
\nthe ignorant.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nRig Veda<\/font><\/i>.2<\/sup> <\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nAs a seer
\nworking out the occult truths and their discoveries of <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nknowledge, he brought
\ninto being the seven Craftsmen of heaven<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n and in the light of day they spoke and
\nwrought the things of their<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n wisdom.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nRig Veda.3<\/sup><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nSeer-wisdoms,
\nsecret words that speak their meaning to the seer.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nRig Veda<\/font><\/i>.4<\/sup><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nNone knows the
\nbirth of these; they know each other’s way of be-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\ngetting: but the Wise perceives
\nthese hidden mysteries, even that<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n which the great Goddess, the many-hued
\nMother, bears as her<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n teat of knowledge.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nRig Veda.<\/font><\/i>5<\/font><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n


\nMade certain of
\nthe meaning of the highest spiritual knowledge, <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\npurified in their being.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nMundaka<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/i> Upanishad.<\/i>6<\/sup><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nHe strives by
\nthese means and has the knowledge: in him this spirit <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nenters into its supreme
\nstatus…. Satisfied in knowledge, having<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n built up their spiritual being, the Wise,
\nin union with the spiritual <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nself, reach the Omnipresent everywhere and enter
\ninto the All.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nMundaka<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/i> Upanishad<\/i>.7<\/sup><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n      <\/span>I<\/font><\/b><\/span>n the earliest stages of evolutionary Nature we
\nare met by the dumb secrecy of her inconscience<\/span>;
\nthere is no revelation of any significance or purpose in her works, no hint <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n       1
\n<\/font> <\/span><\/sup>IV. 11; VII.
\n21-23; IX. 25.     <\/span>2<\/sup> VII. 61. 5.      <\/span>3<\/sup> IV. 16. 3.<\/span>  4<\/span><\/sup><\/font> IV. 3.
\n16.   <\/span>5<\/sup>
\nVII. 56. 2, 4.   <\/span>6<\/sup> III.
\n2. 6. 7<\/sup> III. 2.
\n4, 5.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n848<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

of any other principles of being than that first
\nformulation which is her immediate preoccupation and seems to be for ever her
\nonly business: for in her primal works Matter alone appears, the sole dumb and
\nstark cosmic reality. A Witness of creation, if there had been one conscious
\nbut uninstructed, would only have seen appearing out of a vast abyss of an
\napparent non-existence an Energy busy with the creation of Matter, a material
\nworld and material objects, organising<\/span> the infinity
\nof the Inconscient<\/span> into the scheme of a boundless
\nuniverse or a system of countless universes that stretched around him into
\nSpace without any certain end or limit, a tireless creation of nebulae and
\nstar-clusters and suns and planets, existing only for itself, without a sense
\nin it, empty of cause or purpose. It might have seemed to him a stupendous
\nmachinery without a use, a mighty meaningless movement, an aeonic<\/span>
\nspectacle without a witness, a cosmic edifice without an inhabitant; for he
\nwould have seen no sign of an indwelling Spirit, no being for whose delight it
\nwas made. A creation of this kind could only be the outcome of an inconscient<\/span> Energy or an illusion-cinema, a shadow-play or
\npuppet-play of forms reflected on a superconscient<\/span>
\nindifferent Absolute. He would have seen no evidence of a soul and no hint of
\nMind or Life in this immeasurable and interminable display of Matter. It would
\nnot have seemed to him possible or imaginable that there could at all be in
\nthis desert universe for ever inanimate and insensible an outbreak of teeming
\nlife, a first vibration of something occult and incalculable, alive and
\nconscious, a secret spiritual entity feeling its way towards the surface. <\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>But
\nafter some aeons<\/span>, looking out once more on that vain
\npanorama, he might have detected in one small corner at least of the universe
\nthis phenomenon, a corner where Matter had been prepared, its operations
\nsufficiently fixed, organised<\/span>, made stable, adapted
\nas a scene of a new development,\u2014the phenomenon of a living Matter, a Life in
\nthings that had emerged and become visible: but still the Witness would have
\nunderstood nothing, for evolutionary Nature still veils her secret. He would
\nhave seen a Nature concerned only with establishing this outburst of Life, this
\nnew creation, but Life living for itself with no significance in it,\u2014a wanton
\nand abundant creatrix<\/span> busy
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n849<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

scattering the seed of her new power and
\nestablishing a multitude of its forms in a beautiful and luxurious profusion
\nor, later, multiplying endlessly genus and species for the pure pleasure of
\ncreation: a small touch of lively colour<\/span> and movement
\nwould have been flung into the immense cosmic desert and nothing more. The
\nWitness could not have imagined that a thinking mind would appear in this
\nminute island of life, that a consciousness could awake in the Inconscient<\/span>, a new and greater subtler vibration come to
\nthe surface and betray more clearly the existence of the submerged Spirit. It
\nwould have seemed to him at first that Life had somehow become aware of itself
\nand that was all; for this scanty new-born mind seemed to be only a servant of
\nlife, a contrivance to help life to live, a machinery for its maintenance, for
\nattack and defence<\/span>, for certain needs and vital
\nsatisfactions, for the liberation of life-instinct and life-impulse. It could
\nnot have seemed possible to him that in this little life, so inconspicuous amid
\nthe immensities, in one sole species out of this petty multitude, a mental
\nbeing would emerge, a Mind serving Life still but also making Life and Matter
\nits servants, using them for the fulfilment<\/span> of its
\nown ideas, will, wishes,\u2014a mental being who would create all manner of
\nutensils, tools, instruments out of Matter for all kinds of utilities, erect
\nout of it cities, houses, temples, theatres, laboratories, factories, chisel
\nfrom it statues and carve cave-cathedrals, invent architecture, sculpture,
\npainting, poetry and a hundred crafts and arts, discover the mathematics and
\nphysics of the universe and the hidden secret of its structure, live for the
\nsake of Mind and its interests, for thought and knowledge, develop into the
\nthinker, the philosopher and scientist and, as a supreme defiance to the reign
\nof Matter, awake in himself to the hidden Godhead, become the hunter after the
\ninvisible, the mystic and the spiritual seeker. <\/span><\/p>\n

         <\/span>But
\nif after several ages or cycles the Witness had looked again and seen this
\nmiracle in full process, even then perhaps, obscured by his original experience
\nof the sole reality of Matter in the universe, he would still not have
\nunderstood; it would still seem impossible to him that the hidden Spirit could
\nwholly emerge, complete in its consciousness, and dwell upon the earth as the
\nself-knower and world-knower, Nature’s ruler and
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n850<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

possessor. \u201cImpossible!\u201d he might say, \u201call that
\nhas happened is nothing much, a little bubbling of sensitive grey stuff of
\nbrain, a queer freak in a bit of inanimate Matter moving about on a small dot
\nin the Universe.\u201d On the contrary, a new Witness intervening at the end of the
\nstory, informed of the past developments but unobsessed<\/span>
\nby the deception of the beginning, might cry out, \u201cAh, then, this was the
\nintended miracle, the last of many,\u2014the Spirit that was submerged in the Inconscience<\/span> has broken out from it and now inhabits,
\nunveiled, the form of things which, veiled, it had created as its
\ndwelling-place and the scene of its emergence.\u201d But in fact a more conscious
\nWitness might have discovered the clue at an early period of the unfolding,
\neven in each step of its process; for at each stage Nature’s mute secrecy,
\nthough still there, diminishes; a hint is given of the next step, a more
\novertly significant preparation is visible. Already, in what seems to be inconscient<\/span> in Life, the signs of sensation coming towards
\nthe surface are visible; in moving and breathing Life the emergence of
\nsensitive Mind is apparent and the preparation of thinking Mind is not entirely
\nhidden, while in thinking Mind, when it develops, there appear at an early
\nstage the rudimentary strivings and afterwards the more developed seekings<\/span> of a spiritual consciousness. As plant-life
\ncontains in itself the obscure possibility of the conscious animal, as the
\nanimal-mind is astir with the movements of feeling and perception and the
\nrudiments of conception that are the first ground for man the thinker, so man
\nthe mental being is sublimated by the endeavour<\/span> of
\nthe evolutionary Energy to develop out of him the spiritual man, the fully
\nconscious being, man exceeding his first material self and discoverer of his
\ntrue self and highest nature. <\/span><\/p>\n

But if this is to be
\naccepted as the intention in Nature, there are two questions that put
\nthemselves at once and call for a<\/span><\/p>\n

definitive answer,\u2014first, the exact nature of
\nthe transition from mental to spiritual being and, when that is given, the
\nprocess and method of the evolution of the spiritual out of the mental man. It
\nwould at first sight seem evident that as each gradation emerges not only out
\nof its precedent grade but in it, as Life emerges in Matter and is largely
\nlimited and deter-
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
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\n

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

mined in its self-expression by its material
\nconditions, as Mind emerges in Life-in-Matter and is similarly limited and
\ndetermined in its self-expression by life-conditions and material conditions,
\nso Spirit too must emerge in a Mind embodied in Life-in-Matter and must be
\nlargely limited and determined by the mental conditions in which it has its
\nroots as well as the life-conditions, the material conditions of its existence
\nhere. It might even be maintained that, if there has been any evolution of the
\nspiritual in us, it is only as a part of the mental evolution, a special
\noperation of man’s mentality; the spiritual element is not a distinct or
\nseparate entity and cannot have an independent emergence or a supramental<\/span> future. The mental being can develop a spiritual
\ninterest or preoccupation and may evolve perhaps in consequence a spiritual as
\nwell as an intellectual mentality, a fine soul-flower of his mental life. The
\nspiritual may become a predominant trend in some men just as in others there is
\na predominant artistic or pragmatic trend; but there can be no such thing as a
\nspiritual being taking up and transforming the mental into the spiritual
\nnature. There is no evolution of the spiritual man; there is only an evolution
\nof a new and possibly a finer and rarer element in a mental being. This then is
\nwhat has to be brought out,\u2014the clear distinction between the spiritual and the
\nmental, the nature of this evolution and the factors which make it possible and
\ninevitable that there should be this emergence of the Spirit in its true
\ndistinct character, not remaining, as it now for the most part is in its
\nprocess or seems to be in its way of appearance, a subordinate or a dominating
\nfeature of our mentality, but defining itself as a new power which will finally
\novertop the mental part and replace it as the leader of the life and nature. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is quite true that to
\na surface view Life seems only an operation of Matter, Mind an activity of
\nLife, and it might seem to follow that what we call the soul or spirit is only
\na power of mentality, soul a fine form of Mind, spirituality a high activity of
\nthe embodied mental being. But this is a superficial view of things due to the
\nthought’s concentrating on the appearance and process and not looking at what
\nlies behind the process. One might as well on the same lines have <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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

concluded that electricity is only a product or
\noperation of water and cloud matter, because it is in such a field that
\nlightning emerges; but a deeper inquiry has shown that both cloud and water have,
\non the contrary, the energy of electricity as their foundation, their
\nconstituent power or energy-substance: that which seems to be a result is,\u2014in
\nits reality, though not in its form,\u2014the origin; the effect is in the essence
\npre-existent to the apparent cause, the principle of the emergent activity
\nprecedent to its present field of action. So it is throughout evolutionary
\nNature; Matter could not have become animate if the principle of Life had not
\nbeen there constituting Matter and emerging as a phenomenon of Life-in-Matter;
\nLife-in-Matter could not have begun to feel, perceive, think, reason, if the
\nprinciple of Mind had not been there behind life and substance, constituting it
\nas its field of operation and emergent in the phenomenon of a thinking life and
\nbody: so too spirituality emerging in Mind is the sign of a power which itself
\nhas founded and constituted life, mind and body and is now emerging as a
\nspiritual being in a living and thinking body. How far this emergence will go,
\nwhether it will become dominant and transform its instrument, is a subsequent
\nquestion; but what is necessary first to posit is the existence of Spirit as
\nsomething else than Mind and greater than Mind, spirituality as something other
\nthan mentality and the spiritual being therefore as something distinct from the
\nmental being: Spirit is a final evolutionary emergence because it is the
\noriginal involutionary<\/span> element and factor. Evolution
\nis an inverse action of the involution: what is an ultimate and last derivation
\nin the involution is the first to appear in the evolution; what was original
\nand primal in the involution is in the evolution the last and supreme
\nemergence.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is true again that it
\nis difficult for man’s mind to distinguish entirely the soul or self or any
\nspiritual element in him from the mental and vital formation in which it makes
\nits appearance; but that is only so long as the emergence is not complete. In
\nthe animal mind is not quite distinct from its own life-matrix and life-matter;
\nits movements are so involved in the life-movements that it cannot detach
\nitself from them, cannot <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
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\n

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

stand separate and observe them; but in man mind
\nhas become separate, he can become aware of his mental operations as distinct
\nfrom his life-operations, his thought and will can disengage themselves from
\nhis sensations and impulses, desires and emotional reactions, can become
\ndetached from them, observe and control them, sanction or cancel their
\nfunctioning: he does not as yet know the secrets of his being well enough to be
\naware of himself decisively and with certitude as a mental being in a life and
\nbody, but he has that impression and can take inwardly that position. So too at
\nfirst soul in man does not appear as something quite distinct from mind and
\nfrom mentalised<\/span> life; its movements are involved in
\nthe mind-movements, its operations seem to be mental and emotional activities;
\nthe mental human being is not aware of a soul in him standing back from the
\nmind and life and body, detaching itself, seeing and controlling and moulding<\/span> their action and formation: but, as the inner
\nevolution proceeds, this is precisely what can, must and does happen,\u2014it is the
\nlong-delayed but inevitable next step in our evolutionary destiny. There can be
\na decisive emergence in which the being separates itself from thought and sees
\nitself in an inner silence as the spirit in mind, or separates itself from the
\nlife-movements, desires, sensations, kinetic impulses and is aware of itself as
\nthe spirit supporting life, or separates itself from the body-sense and knows
\nitself as a spirit ensouling<\/span> Matter: this is the
\ndiscovery of ourselves as the Purusha<\/span>, a mental being
\nor a life-soul or a subtle self supporting the body. This is taken by many as a
\nsufficient discovery of the true self and in a certain sense they are right;
\nfor it is the Self or Spirit that so represents itself in regard to the
\nactivities of Nature, and this revelation of its presence is enough to
\ndisengage the spiritual element: but self-discovery can go farther, it can even
\nput aside all relation to form or action of Nature. For it is seen that these
\nselves are representations of a divine Entity to which mind, life and body are
\nonly forms and instruments: we are then the Soul looking at Nature, knowing all
\nher dynamisms in us, not by mental perception and observation, but by an
\nintrinsic consciousness and its direct sense of things and its intimate exact
\nvision, able therefore by its emergence <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
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\n

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to put a close control on our nature and change it.
\nWhen there is a complete silence in the being, either a stillness of the whole
\nbeing or a stillness behind unaffected by surface movements, then we can become
\naware of a Self, a spiritual substance of our being, an existence exceeding
\neven the soul-individuality, spreading itself into universality, surpassing all
\ndependence on any natural form or action, extending itself upward into a
\ntranscendence of which the limits are not visible. It is these liberations of
\nthe spiritual part in us which are the decisive steps of the spiritual
\nevolution in Nature. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is only through these
\ndecisive movements that the true character of the evolution becomes evident;
\nfor till then there are only preparatory movements, a pressure of the psychic
\nEntity on the mind, life and body to develop a true soul-action, a pressure of
\nthe Spirit or Self for liberation from the ego, from the surface ignorance, a
\nturning of the mind and life towards some occult Reality,\u2014preliminary
\nexperiences, partial formulations of a spiritualised<\/span>
\nmind, a spiritualised<\/span> life, but no complete change,
\nno probability of an entire unveiling of the soul or self or a radical
\ntransformation of the nature. When there is the 
\n<\/span>decisive emergence, one sign of it is the status or action in us of an
\ninherent, intrinsic, self-existent consciousness which knows itself by the mere
\nfact of being, knows all that is in itself in the same way, by identity with
\nit, begins even to see all that to our mind seems external in the same manner,
\nby a movement of identity or by an intrinsic direct consciousness which
\nenvelops, penetrates, enters into its object, discovers itself in the object,
\nis aware in it of something that is not mind or life or body. There is, then,
\nevidently a spiritual consciousness which is other than the mental, and it
\ntestifies to the existence of a spiritual being in us which is other than our
\nsurface mental personality. But at first this consciousness may confine itself
\nto a status of being separate from the action of our ignorant surface nature,
\nobserving it, limiting itself to knowledge, to a seeing of things with a
\nspiritual sense and vision of existence. For action it may still depend upon
\nthe mental, vital, bodily instruments, or it may allow them to act according to
\ntheir own nature and itself remain satisfied with self-experience <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
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\n

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and self-knowledge, with an inner liberation, an
\neventual freedom: but it may also and usually does exercise a certain
\nauthority, governance, influence on thought, life-movement, physical action, a
\npurifying uplifting control compelling them to move in a higher and purer truth
\nof themselves, to obey or be an instrumentation of an influx of some diviner
\nPower or a luminous direction which is not mental but spiritual and can be recognised<\/span> as having a certain divine character,\u2014the
\ninspiration of a greater Self or the command of the Ruler of all being, the Ishwara<\/span>. Or the nature may obey the psychic entity’s
\nintimations, move in an inner light, follow an inner guidance. This is already
\na considerable evolution and amounts to a beginning at least of a psychic and
\nspiritual transformation. But it is possible to go farther; for the spiritual
\nbeing, once inwardly liberated, can develop in mind the higher states of being
\nthat are its own natural atmosphere and bring down a supramental<\/span>
\nenergy and action which are proper to the Truth-Consciousness; the ordinary
\nmental instrumentation, life-instrumentation, physical instrumentation even,
\ncould then be entirely transformed and become parts no longer of an ignorance
\nhowever much illumined, but of a supramental<\/span> creation
\nwhich would be the true action of a spiritual Truth-Consciousness and
\nKnowledge. <\/span><\/p>\n

At first this truth of
\nthe spirit and of spirituality is not self-evident to the mind; man becomes
\nmentally aware of his soul as something other than his body, superior to his
\nnormal mind and life, but he has no clear sense of it, only a feeling of some
\nof its effects on his nature. As these effects take a mental form or a
\nlife-form, the difference is not firmly and trenchantly drawn, the
\nsoul-perception does not acquire a distinct and assured independence. Very
\ncommonly indeed, a complex of half-effects of the psychic pressure on the
\nmental and vital parts, a formation mixed with mental aspiration and vital
\ndesires, is mistaken for the soul, just as the separative<\/span>
\nego is taken for the self, although the self in its true being is universal as
\nwell as individual in its essence,\u2014or just as a mixture of mental aspiration
\nand vital enthusiasm and ardour<\/span> uplifted by some kind
\nof strong or high belief or self-dedication or altruistic eagerness is mistaken
\nfor spirituality. But this vagueness and these confusions are <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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inevitable as a temporary stage of the evolution
\nwhich, because ignorance is its starting-point and the whole stamp of our first
\nnature, must necessarily begin with an imperfect intuitive perception and an
\ninstinctive urge or seeking without any acquired experience or clear knowledge.
\nEven the formations which are the first effects of the perception or urge or
\nthe first indices of a spiritual evolution, must inevitably be of this
\nincomplete and tentative nature. But the error so created comes very much in
\nthe way of a true understanding, and it must therefore be emphasised<\/span>
\nthat spirituality is not a high intellectuality, not idealism, not an ethical
\nturn of mind or moral purity and austerity, not religiosity or an ardent and
\nexalted emotional fervour<\/span>, not even a compound of all
\nthese excellent things; a mental belief, creed or faith, an emotional
\naspiration, a regulation of conduct according to a religious or ethical formula
\nare not spiritual achievement and experience. These things are of considerable
\nvalue to mind and life; they are of value to the spiritual evolution itself as
\npreparatory movements disciplining, purifying or giving a suitable form to the
\nnature; but they still belong to the mental evolution,\u2014the beginning of a
\nspiritual realisation<\/span>, experience, change is not yet
\nthere. Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our
\nbeing, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an
\ninner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter into contact with the
\ngreater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also our own
\nbeing, to be in communion with It and union with It, and a turning, a
\nconversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration,
\nthe contact, the union, a growth or waking into a new becoming or new being, a
\nnew self, a new nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, the creative
\nConsciousness-Force in our earth existence has to lead forward, in an almost
\nsimultaneous process but with a considerable priority and greater stress of the
\ninferior element, a double evolution. There is an evolution of our outward
\nnature, the nature of the mental being in the life and body, and there is
\nwithin it, pressing forward for self-revelation because with the emergence of
\nmind that revelation is becoming possible, a preparation at least, even the
\nbeginning of an evolution of our<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\nner being, our occult subliminal and spiritual
\nnature. But Nature’s major preoccupation must necessarily be still and for a
\nlong time the evolution of mind to its greatest possible range, height,
\nsubtlety; for only so can be prepared the unveiling of an entirely intuitive
\nintelligence, of Overmind<\/span>, of Supermind<\/span>,
\nthe difficult passage to a higher instrumentation of the Spirit. If the sole
\nintention were the revelation of the essential spiritual Reality and a
\ncessation of our being into its pure existence, this insistence on the mental
\nevolution would have no purpose: for at every point of the nature there can be
\na breaking out of the Spirit and an absorption of our being into it; an
\nintensity of the heart, a total silence of the mind, a single absorbing passion
\nof the will would be enough to bring about that culminating movement. If
\nNature’s final intention were other-worldly, then too the same law would hold;
\nfor everywhere, at any point of the nature, there can be a sufficient power of
\nthe other-worldly urge to break through and away from the terrestrial action
\nand enter into a spiritual elsewhere. But if her intention is a comprehensive
\nchange of the being, this double evolution is intelligible and justifies
\nitself; for it is for that purpose indispensable. <\/span><\/p>\n

This, however, imposes a
\ndifficult and slow spiritual advance: for, first, the spiritual emergence has
\nto wait at each step for the instruments to be ready; next, as the spiritual
\nformation emerges, it is mixed inextricably with the powers, motives, impulses
\nof an imperfect mind, life and body,\u2014there is a pull on it to accept and serve
\nthese powers, motives and impulses, a downward gravitation and perilous
\nmixture, a constant temptation to fall or deviation, at least a fettering, a
\nweight, a retardation; there is a necessity to return upon a step gained in
\norder to bring up something of the nature which hangs back and prevents a
\nfarther step; finally, there is, by the very character of mind in which it has
\nto work, a limitation of the emerging spiritual light and power and a compulsion
\non it to move by segments, to follow one line or another and leave altogether
\nor leave till later on the achievement of its own totality. This hampering,
\nthis obstacle of the mind, life and body,\u2014the heavy inertia and persistence of
\nthe body, the turbid passions of the life-part, the obscurity and doubting incertitudes<\/span>, denials, other-formulations of the mind,\u2014
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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is an impediment so great and intolerable that
\nthe spiritual urge becomes impatient and tries rigorously to quell these
\nopponents, to reject the life, to mortify the body, to silence the mind and
\nachieve its own separate salvation, spirit departing into pure spirit and
\nrejecting from it altogether an undivine<\/span> and obscure
\nNature. Apart from the supreme call, the natural push of the spiritual part in
\nus to return to its own highest element and status, this aspect of vital and
\nphysical Nature as an impediment to pure spirituality is a compelling reason
\nfor asceticism, for illusionism, for the tendency to other-worldliness, the
\nurge towards withdrawal from life, the passion for a pure and unmixed Absolute.
\nA pure spiritual absolutism is a movement of the self towards its own supreme
\nselfhood, but it is also indispensable for Nature’s own purpose; for without it
\nthe mixture, the downward gravitation would make the spiritual emergence
\nimpossible. The extremist of this absolutism, the solitary, the ascetic, is the
\nstandard-bearer of the spirit, his ochre robe is its flag, the sign of a
\nrefusal of all compromise,\u2014as indeed the struggle of emergence cannot end by a
\ncompromise, but only by an entire spiritual victory and the complete surrender
\nof the lower nature. If that is impossible here, then indeed it must be
\nachieved elsewhere; if Nature refuses submission to the emerging spirit, then
\nthe soul must withdraw from her. There is thus a dual tendency in the spiritual
\nemergence, on one side a drive towards the establishment at all cost of the
\nspiritual consciousness in the being, even to the rejection of Nature, on the
\nother side a push towards the extension of spirituality to our parts of nature.
\nBut until the first is fully achieved, the second can only be imperfect and
\nhalting. It is the foundation of the pure spiritual consciousness that is the
\nfirst object in the evolution of the spiritual man, and it is this and the urge
\nof that consciousness towards contact with the Reality, the Self or the Divine
\nBeing that must be the first and foremost or even, till it is perfectly
\naccomplished, the sole preoccupation of the spiritual seeker. It is the one
\nthing needful that has to be done by each on whatever line is possible to him,
\nby each according to the spiritual capacity developed in his nature. <\/span><\/p>\n

In considering the
\nachieved course of the evolution of the spiritual being, we have to regard it
\nfrom two sides,\u2014a <\/span><\/p>\n

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consideration of the means, the lines of
\ndevelopment utilised<\/span> by Nature and a view of the
\nactual results achieved by it in the human individual. There are four main
\nlines which Nature has followed in her attempt to open up the inner being,\u2014religion,
\noccultism, spiritual thought and an inner spiritual realisation<\/span>
\nand experience: the three first are approaches, the last is the decisive avenue
\nof entry. All these four powers have worked by a simultaneous action, more or
\nless connected, sometimes in a variable collaboration, sometimes in dispute
\nwith each other, sometimes in a separate independence. Religion has admitted an
\noccult element in its ritual, ceremony, sacraments; it has leaned upon
\nspiritual thinking, deriving from it sometimes a creed or theology, sometimes
\nits supporting spiritual philosophy,\u2014the former, ordinarily, is the occidental
\nmethod, the latter the oriental: but spiritual experience is the final aim and
\nachievement of religion, its sky and summit. But also religion has sometimes
\nbanned occultism or reduced its own occult element to a minimum; it has pushed
\naway the philosophic mind as a dry intellectual alien, leaned with all its
\nweight on creed and dogma, pietistic emotion and fervour<\/span>
\nand moral conduct; it has reduced to a minimum or dispensed with spiritual realisation<\/span> and experience. Occultism has sometimes put
\nforward a spiritual aim as its goal, and followed occult knowledge and
\nexperience as an approach to it, formulated some kind of mystic philosophy: but
\nmore often it has confined itself to occult knowledge and practice without any
\nspiritual vistas; it has turned to thaumaturgy or mere magic or even deviated
\ninto diabolism. Spiritual philosophy has very usually leaned on religion as its
\nsupport or its way to experience; it has been the outcome of realisation<\/span> and experience or built its structures as an
\napproach to it: but it has also rejected all aid,\u2014or all impediment,\u2014of
\nreligion and proceeded in its own strength, either satisfied with mental
\nknowledge or confident to discover its own path of experience and effective
\ndiscipline. Spiritual experience has used all the three means as a
\nstarting-point, but it has also dispensed with them all, relying on its own
\npure strength: discouraging occult knowledge and powers as dangerous lures and
\nentangling obstacles, it has sought only the pure truth of the spirit;
\ndispensing with philosophy, it has <\/span><\/p>\n

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arrived instead through the heart’s fervour<\/span> or a mystic inward spiritualisation<\/span>;
\nputting behind it all religious creed, worship and practice and regarding them
\nas an inferior stage or first approach, it has passed on, leaving behind it all
\nthese supports, nude of all these trappings, to the sheer contact of the
\nspiritual Reality. All these variations were necessary; the evolutionary endeavour<\/span> of Nature has experimented on all lines in order
\nto find her true way and her whole way towards the supreme consciousness and
\nthe integral knowledge. <\/span><\/p>\n

For each of these means
\nor approaches corresponds to something in our total being and therefore to
\nsomething necessary to the total aim of her evolution. There are four
\nnecessities of man’s self-expansion if he is not to remain this being of the
\nsurface ignorance seeking obscurely after the truth of things and collecting
\nand systematising<\/span> fragments and sections of
\nknowledge, the small limited and half-competent creature of the cosmic Force
\nwhich he now is in his phenomenal nature. He must know himself and discover and
\nutilise<\/span> all his potentialities: but to know himself
\nand the world completely he must go behind his own and its exterior, he must
\ndive deep below his own mental surface and the physical surface of Nature. This
\nhe can only do by knowing his inner mental, vital, physical and psychic being and
\nits powers and movements and the universal laws and processes of the occult
\nMind and Life which stand behind the material front of the universe: that is
\nthe field of occultism, if we take the word in its widest significance. He must
\nknow also the hidden Power or Powers that control the world: if there is a
\nCosmic Self or Spirit or a Creator, he must be able to enter into relation with
\nIt or Him and be able to remain in whatever contact or communion is possible,
\nget into some kind of tune with the master Beings of the universe or with the
\nuniversal Being and its universal will or a supreme Being and His supreme will,
\nfollow the law It gives him and the assigned or revealed aim of his life and
\nconduct, raise himself towards the highest height that It demands of him in his
\nlife now or in his existence hereafter; if there is no such universal or
\nsupreme Spirit or Being, he must know what there is and how to lift himself to
\nit out of his present imperfection and impotence. This approach is the aim of  <\/span>reli<\/span>– <\/span><\/p>\n

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gion<\/span><\/span>: its purpose is to link
\nthe human with the Divine and in so doing sublimate the thought and life and
\nflesh so that they may admit the rule of the soul and spirit. But this
\nknowledge must be something more than a creed or a mystic revelation; his
\nthinking mind must be able to accept it, to correlate it with the principle of
\nthings and the observed truth of the universe: this is the work of philosophy,
\nand in the field of the truth of the spirit it can only be done by a spiritual
\nphilosophy, whether intellectual in its method or intuitive. But all knowledge
\nand endeavour<\/span> can reach its fruition only if it is
\nturned into  <\/span>experience and has become a
\npart of the consciousness and its established operations; in the spiritual
\nfield all this religious, occult or philosophical knowledge and endeavour<\/span> must, to bear fruition, end in an opening up of
\nthe spiritual consciousness, in experiences that found and continually
\nheighten, expand and enrich that consciousness and in the building of a life
\nand action that is in conformity with the truth of the spirit: this is the work
\nof spiritual realisation<\/span> and experience. <\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>In
\nthe very nature of things all evolution must proceed at first by a slow
\nunfolding; for each new principle that evolves its powers has to make its way
\nout of an involution in Inconscience<\/span> and Ignorance.
\nIt has a difficult task in pulling itself out of the involution, out of the
\nhold of the obscurity of the original medium, against the pull and strains, the
\ninstinctive opposition and obstruction of the Inconscience<\/span>
\nand the hampering mixture and blind obstinate retardations of the Ignorance.
\nNature affirms at first a vague urge and tendency which is a sign of the push
\nof the occult, subliminal, submerged reality towards the surface; there are
\nthen small half-suppressed hints of the thing that is to be, imperfect
\nbeginnings, crude elements, rudimentary appearances, small, insignificant,
\nhardly recognisable<\/span> quanta. Afterwards there are
\nsmall or large formations; a more characteristic and recognisable<\/span>
\nquality begins to show itself, first partially, here and there or in a low
\nintensity, then more vivid, more formative; finally, there is the decisive
\nemergence, a reversal of the consciousness, the beginning of the possibility of
\nits radical change: but still much has to be done in every direction, a long
\nand difficult growth towards perfection lies before the evolutionary
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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endeavour<\/span><\/span>. The thing done has not
\nonly to be confirmed, secured against relapse and the downward gravitation, against
\nfailure and extinction, but opened out into all the fields of its
\npossibilities, its totality of entire self-achievement, its utmost height,
\nsubtlety, riches, wideness; it has to become dominant, all-embracing,
\ncomprehensive. This is everywhere the process of Nature and to ignore it is to
\nmiss the intention in her works and get lost in the maze of her procedure. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is this process that
\nhas taken place in the evolution of religion in the human mind and
\nconsciousness; the work done by it for humanity cannot be understood or
\nproperly appreciated if we ignore the conditions of the process and their
\nnecessity. It is evident that the first beginnings of religion must be crude
\nand imperfect, its development hampered by mixtures, errors, concessions to the
\nhuman mind and vital part which may often be of a very unspiritual character.
\nIgnorant and injurious and even disastrous elements may creep in and lead to
\nerror and evil; the dogmatism of the human mind, its self-assertive narrowness,
\nits intolerant and challenging egoism, its attachment to its limited truths and
\nstill greater attachment to its errors, or the violence, fanaticism, militant
\nand oppressive self-affirmation of the vital, its treacherous action on the
\nmind in order to get a sanction for its own desires and propensities, may very
\neasily invade the religious field and baulk religion of its higher spiritual
\naim and character; under the name of religion much ignorance may hide, many
\nerrors and an extensive wrong-building be permitted, many crimes even and
\noffences against the spirit be committed. But this chequered<\/span>
\nhistory belongs to all human effort and, if it were to count against the truth
\nand necessity of religion, would count also against the truth and necessity of
\nevery other line of human endeavour<\/span>, against all
\nman’s action, his ideals, his thought, his art, his science. <\/span><\/p>\n

Religion has opened
\nitself to denial by its claim to determine the truth by divine autho<\/span> rity<\/span>, by inspiration, by a
\nsacrosanct and infallible sovereignty given to it from on high; it has sought
\nto impose itself on human thought, feeling, conduct without discussion or
\nquestion. This is an excessive and premature claim, although imposed in a way
\non the religious idea by the imperative <\/span><\/p>\n

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and absolute character of the inspirations and
\nilluminations which are its warrant and justification and by the necessity of
\nfaith as an occult light and power from the soul amidst the mind’s ignorance,
\ndoubts, weakness, incertitudes<\/span>. Faith is
\nindispensable to man, for without it he could not proceed forward in his
\njourney through the Unknown; but it ought not to be imposed, it should come as
\na free perception or an imperative direction from the inner spirit. A claim to
\nunquestioned acceptance could only be warranted if the spiritual effort had
\nalready achieved man’s progression to the highest Truth-Consciousness total and
\nintegral, free from all ignorant mental and vital mixture. This is the ultimate
\nobject before us, but it has not yet been accomplished, and the premature claim
\nhas obscured the true work of the religious instinct in man, which is to lead
\nhim towards the Divine Reality, to formulate all that he has yet achieved in
\nthat direction and to give to each human being a mould of spiritual discipline,
\na way of seeking, touching, nearing the Divine Truth, a way which is proper to
\nthe potentialities of his nature. <\/span><\/p>\n

The wide and supple
\nmethod of evolutionary Nature providing the ampl<\/span> est<\/span> scope and preserving the true intention of the
\nreligious seeking of the human being can be recognised<\/span>
\nin the development of religion in India, where any number of religious
\nformulations, cults and disciplines have been allowed, even encouraged to
\nsubsist side by side and each man was free to accept and follow that which was
\ncongenial to his thought, feeling, temperament, build of the nature. It is
\nright and reasonable that there should be this plasticity, proper to
\nexperimental evolution: for religion’s real business is to prepare  <\/span>man’s mind, life and bodily existence for the
\nspiritual consciousness to take it up; it has to lead him to that point where
\nthe inner spiritual light begins fully to emerge. It is at this point that
\nreligion must learn to subordinate itself, not to insist on its outer
\ncharacters, but give full scope to the inner spirit itself to develop its own
\ntruth and reality. In the meanwhile it has to take up as much of man’s
\nmentality, vitality, physicality as it can and give all his activities a turn
\ntowards the spiritual direction, the revelation of a spiritual meaning in them,
\nthe imprint of a spiritual refinement, the beginning of a spiritual character.
\nIt is in this attempt
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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that the errors of religion come in, for they
\nare caused by the very nature of the matter with which it is dealing, \u2014 that
\ninferior stuff invades the very forms that are meant to serve as intermediaries
\nbetween the spiritual and the mental, vital or physical consciousness, and
\noften it diminishes, degrades and corrupts them: but it is in this attempt that
\nlies religion’s greatest utility as an intercessor between spirit and nature.
\nTruth and error live always together in the human evolution and the truth is
\nnot to be rejected because of its accompanying errors, though these have to be
\neliminated,\u2014often a difficult business and, if crudely done, resulting in
\nsurgical harm inflicted on the body of religion; for what we see as error is
\nvery frequently the symbol or a disguise or a corruption or malformation of a
\ntruth which is lost in the brutal radicality<\/span> of the
\noperation,\u2014the truth is cut out along with the error. Nature herself very
\ncommonly permits the good corn and the tares and weeds to grow together for a
\nlong time, because only so is her own growth, her free evolution possible. <\/span><\/p>\n

Evolutionary Nature in
\nher first awakening of man to a rudimentary spiritual consciousness must begin
\nwith a vague  <\/span>sense of the Infinite and
\nthe Invisible surrounding the physical being, a sense of the limitation and
\nimpotence of human mind and will and of something greater than himself concealed
\nin the world, of Potencies beneficent or maleficent which determine the results
\nof his action, a Power that is behind the physical world he lives in and has
\nperhaps created it and him, or Powers that inform and rule her movements while
\nthey themselves perhaps are ruled by the greater Unknown that is beyond them.
\nHe had to determine what they are and find means of communication so that he
\nmight propitiate them or call them to his aid; he sought also for means by
\nwhich he could find out and control the springs of the hidden movements of Nature.
\nThis he could not do at once by his reason because his reason could at first
\ndeal only with physical facts, but this was the domain of the Invisible and
\nneeded a supraphysical<\/span> vision and knowledge; he had
\nto do it by an extension of the faculty of intuition and instinct which was
\nalready there in the animal. This faculty, prolonged in the thinking being and mentalised<\/span>, must have <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nbeen more sensitive and active in early man, though
\nstill mostly on a lower scale, for he had to rely on it largely for all his
\nfirst necessary discoveries: he had to rely also on the aid of subliminal
\nexperience; for the subliminal too must have been more active, more ready to
\nupsurge in him, more capable of formulating its phenomena on the surface,
\nbefore he learned to depend completely on his intellect and senses. The
\nintuitions that he thus received by contact with Nature, his mind systematised<\/span> and so created the early forms of religion.
\nThis active and ready power of intuition also gave him the sense of supraphysical<\/span> forces behind the physical, and his instinct
\nand a certain subliminal or supernormal experience of supraphysical<\/span>
\nbeings with whom he could somehow communicate turned him towards the discovery
\nof effective and canalising<\/span> means for a dynamic utilisation<\/span> of this knowledge; so were created magic and
\nthe other early forms of occultism. At some time it must have dawned on him
\nthat he had something in him which was not physical, a soul that survived the
\nbody; certain supernormal experiences which became active because of the
\npressure to know the invisible, must have helped to formulate his first crude
\nideas of this entity within him. It would only be later that he began to realise<\/span> that what he perceived in the action of the
\nuniverse was also there in some form within him and that in him also were
\nelements that responded to invisible powers and forces for good or for evil; so
\nwould begin his religio<\/span>-ethical formations and his
\npossibilities of spiritual experience. An amalgam of primitive intuitions,
\noccult ritual, religio<\/span>-social ethics, mystical
\nknowledge or experiences symbolised<\/span> in myth but with
\ntheir sense preserved by a secret initiation and discipline is the early, at
\nfirst very superficial and external stage of human religion. In the beginning
\nthese elements were, no doubt, crude and poor and defective, but they acquired
\ndepth and range and increased in some cultures to a great amplitude and
\nsignificance. <\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>But
\nas the mental and life development increased,\u2014for that is Nature’s first
\npreoccupation in man and she does not hesitate to push it forward at the cost
\nof other elements that will need to be taken up fully hereafter,\u2014there is a
\ntendency
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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towards intellectualisation<\/span>,
\nand the first necessary intuitive, instinctive and subliminal formations are
\noverlaid with the structures erected by a growing force of reason and mental
\nintelligence. As man discovers the secrets and processes of physical Nature, he
\nmoves more and more away from his early recourse to occultism and magic; the
\npresence and felt influence of gods and invisible powers recedes as more and
\nmore is explained by natural workings, the mechanical procedure of Nature: but
\nhe still feels the need of a spiritual element and spiritual factors in his
\nlife and therefore keeps for a time the two activities running together. But
\nthe occult elements of religion, though still held as beliefs or preserved but
\nalso buried in rites and myths, lose their significance and diminish and the intellectual
\nelement increases; finally, where and when the intellectualising<\/span>
\ntendency becomes too strong, there is a movement to cut out everything but
\ncreed, institution, formal practice and ethics. Even the element of spiritual
\nexperience dwindles and it is considered sufficient to rely only on faith,
\nemotional fervour<\/span> and moral conduct; the first
\namalgam of religion, occultism and mystic experience is disrupted, and there is
\na tendency, not by any means universal or complete but still pronounced or visible,
\nfor each of these powers to follow its own way to its own goal in its own
\nseparate and free character. A complete denial of religion, occultism and all
\nthat is supraphysical<\/span> is the last outcome of this
\nstage, a hard dry paroxysm of the superficial intellect hacking away the
\nsheltering structures that are refuges for the deeper parts of our nature. But
\nstill evolutionary Nature keeps alive her ulterior intentions in the minds of a
\nfew and uses man’s greater mental evolution to raise them to a higher plane and
\ndeeper issues. In the present time itself, after an age of triumphant
\nintellectuality and materialism, we can see evidences of this natural
\nprocess,\u2014a return towards inner self-discovery, an inner seeking and thinking,
\na new attempt at mystic experience, a groping after the inner self, a
\nreawakening to some sense of the truth and power of the spirit begins to
\nmanifest itself; man’s search after his self and soul and a deeper truth of
\nthings tends to revive and resume its lost force and to give a fresh life to
\nthe old creeds, erect new faiths or <\/span><\/p>\n

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develop independently of sectarian religions.
\nThe intellect itself, having reached near to the natural limits of the capacity
\nof physical discovery, having touched its bedrock and found that it explains
\nnothing more than the outer process of Nature, has begun, still tentatively and
\nhesitatingly, to direct an eye of research on the deeper secrets of the mind
\nand the life-force and on the domain of the occult which it had rejected a
\npriori, in order to know what there may be in it that is true. Religion itself
\nhas shown its power of survival and is undergoing an evolution the final sense
\nof which is still obscure. In this new phase of the mind that we see beginning,
\nhowever crudely and hesitatingly, there can be detected the possibility of a
\npressure towards some decisive turn and advance of the spiritual evolution in
\nNature. Religion, rich but with a certain obscurity in her first infrarational<\/span> stage, had tended under the overweight of the
\nintellect to pass into a clear but bare rational interspace<\/span>;
\nbut it must in the end follow the upward curve of the human mind and rise more
\nfully at its summits towards its true or greatest field in the sphere of a suprarational<\/span> consciousness and knowledge. <\/span><\/p>\n

If we look at the past,
\nwe can still see the evidences of this line of natural evolution, although most
\nof its earlier stages are hidden from us in the unwritten pages of prehistory.
\nIt has been contended that religion in its beginnings was nothing but a mass of
\nanimism, fetishism, magic, totemism<\/span>, taboo, myth,
\nsuperstitious symbol, with the medicine-man as priest, a mental fungus of
\nprimitive human ignorance, \u2014 later on at its best a form of Nature-worship. It
\ncould well have been so in the primitive mind, though we have to add the
\nproviso that behind much of its beliefs and practices there may have been a
\ntruth of an inferior but very effective kind that we have lost with our
\nsuperior development. Primitive man lives much in a low and small province of
\nhis life-being, and this corresponds on the occult plane to an invisible Nature
\nwhich is of a like character and whose occult powers can be called into
\nactivity by a knowledge and methods to which the lower vital intuitions and
\ninstincts may open a door of access. This might be formulated in a first stage
\nof religious belief and practice which would
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be occult after a crude inchoate fashion in its
\ncharacter and interests, not yet spiritual; its main element would be a calling
\nin of small life-powers and elemental beings to the aid of small life-desires
\nand a rude physical welfare.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

But this primitive
\nstage,\u2014if it is indeed such and not, in what we still see of it, a fall or a
\nvestige, a relapse from a higher knowledge belonging to a previous cycle of civilisation<\/span> or the debased remnants of a dead or obsolete
\nculture,\u2014can have been only a beginning. It was followed, after whatever
\nstages, by the more advanced type of religion of which we have a record in the
\nliterature or surviving documents of the early civilised<\/span>
\npeoples. This type, composed of a polytheistic belief and worship, a cosmology,
\na mythology, a complexus<\/span> of ceremonies, practices,
\nritual and ethical obligations interwoven sometimes deeply into the social
\nsystem, was ordinarily a national or tribal religion intimately expressive of
\nthe stage of evolution of thought and life reached by the community. In the
\nouter structure we still miss the support of a deeper spiritual significance,
\nbut this gap was filled in in<\/span> the greater more
\ndeveloped cultures by a strong background of occult knowledge and practices or
\nelse by carefully guarded mysteries with a first element of spiritual wisdom
\nand discipline. Occultism occurs more often as an addition or superstructure,
\nbut is not always present; the worship of divine powers, sacrifice, a surface
\npiety and social ethics are the main factors. A spiritual philosophy or idea of
\nthe meaning of life seems at first to be absent, but its beginnings are often
\ncontained in the myths and mysteries and in one or two instances fully emerge
\nout of them so that it assumes a strong separate existence. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is possible indeed
\nthat it is the mystic or the incipient occultist who was everywhere the creator
\nof religion and imposed his secret discoveries in the form of belief, myth and practice
\non the mass human mind; for it is always the individual who receives the
\nintuitions of Nature and takes the step forward dragging or drawing the rest of
\nhumanity behind him. But even if we give the credit of this new creation to the
\nsubconscious mass mind, it is the occultist and mystic element in that mind
\nwhich created it and it must have found individuals through
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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whom it could emerge; for a mass experience or
\ndiscovery or expression is not the first method of Nature; it is at some one
\npoint or a few points that the fire is lit and spreads from hearth to hearth,
\nfrom altar to altar. But the spiritual aspiration and experience of the mystics
\nwas usually casketed in secret formulas and given only to a few initiates; it
\nwas conveyed to the rest or rather preserved for them in a mass of religious or
\ntraditional symbols. It is these symbols that were the heart’s core of religion
\nin the mind of an early humanity. <\/span><\/p>\n

Out of this second stage
\nthere emerged a third which tried to liberate the secret spiritual experience
\nand knowledge and put it at the disposal of all as a truth that could have a
\ncommon appeal and must be made universally available. A tendency prevailed, not
\nonly to make the spiritual element the very kernel of the religion, but to
\nrender it attainable to all the worshippers by an exoteric teaching; as each
\nesoteric school had had its system of knowledge and discipline, so now each
\nreligion was to have its system of knowledge, its creed and its spiritual
\ndiscipline. Here, in these two forms of the spiritual evolution, the esoteric
\nand the exoteric, the way of the mystic and the way of the religious man, we
\nsee a double principle of evolutionary Nature, the principle of intensive and
\nconcentrated evolution in a small space and the principle of expansion and
\nextension so that the new creation may be generalised<\/span>
\nin as large a field as possible. The first is the concentrated dynamic and
\neffective movement; the second tends towards diffusion and status. As a result
\nof this new development, the spiritual aspiration at first carefully treasured
\nby a few became more generalised<\/span> in mankind, but it
\nlost in purity, height and intensity. The mystics founded their endeavour<\/span> on a power of suprarational<\/span>
\nknowledge, intuitive, inspired, revelatory and on the force of the inner being
\nto enter into occult truth and experience: but these powers are not possessed
\nby men in the mass or possessed only in a crude, undeveloped and fragmentary
\ninitial form on which nothing could be safely founded; so for them in this new
\ndevelopment the spiritual truth had to be clothed in intellectual forms of
\ncreed and doctrine, in emotional forms of worship and in a simple but
\nsignificant ritual. At the same time <\/span><\/p>\n

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the strong spiritual nucleus became mixed,
\ndiluted, alloyed; it tended to be invaded and aped by the lower elements of
\nmind and life and physical nature. It was this mixture and alloy and invasion
\nof the spurious, this profanation of the mysteries and the loss of their truth
\nand significance, as well as the misuse of the occult power that comes by
\ncommunication with invisible forces, that was most dreaded by the early mystics
\nand prevented by secrecy, by strict discipline, by restriction to the few fit
\ninitiates. Another untoward result or peril of the diffusive movement and the
\nconsequent invasion has been the intellectual formalisation<\/span>
\nof spiritual knowledge into dogma and the materialisation<\/span>
\nof living practice into a dead mass of cult and ceremony and ritual, a mechanisation<\/span> by which the spirit was bound to depart in
\ncourse of time from the body of the religion. But this risk had to be taken,
\nfor the expansive movement was an inherent necessity of the spiritual urge in
\nevolutionary Nature. <\/span><\/p>\n

Thus came into being the
\nreligions which rely mainly or in the mass on creed and ritual for some
\nspiritual result, but yet hold because of their truth of experience, the
\nfundamental inner reality that was initially present in them and persists so
\nlong as there are men to continue or renew it, a means for those who are
\ntouched by the spiritual impulse to realise<\/span> the
\nDivine and liberate the spirit. This development has led farther to a division
\ninto two tendencies, catholic and protestant, one a tendency towards some
\nconservation of the original plastic character of religion, its many-sidedness
\nand appeal to the whole nature of the human being, the other disruptive of this
\ncatholicity and insistent on a pure reliance on belief, worship and conduct
\nsimplified so as to make a quick and ready appeal to the common reason, heart
\nand ethical will. This turn has tended to create an excessive rationalisation<\/span>, a discrediting and condemnation of most of
\nthe occult elements which seek to establish a communication with what is
\ninvisible, a reliance on the surface mind as the sufficient vehicle of the
\nspiritual endeavour<\/span>; a certain dryness and a
\nnarrowness and paucity of the spiritual life have been a frequent consequence.
\nMoreover, the intellect having denied so much, cast out so much,
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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has found ample room and opportunity to deny
\nmore until it denies all, to negate spiritual experience and cast out
\nspirituality and religion, leaving only intellect itself as the sole surviving
\npower. But intellect void of the spirit can only pile up external knowledge and
\nmachinery and efficiency and ends in a drying up of the secret springs of
\nvitality and a decadence without any inner power to save the life or create a
\nnew life or any other way out than death and disintegration and a new beginning
\nout of the old Ignorance. <\/span><\/p>\n

It would have been
\npossible for the evolutionary principle to have preserved its pristine
\nwholeness of movement while pressing on, by an expansion and not a disruption
\nof the wiser ancient harmony, to a greater synthesis of the principle of
\nconcentration and the principle of diffusion. In India, we have seen, there has
\nbeen a persistence of the original intuition and total movement of evolutionary
\nNature. For religion in India limited itself by no one creed or dogma; it not
\nonly admitted a vast number of different formulations, but contained
\nsuccessfully within itself all the elements that have grown up in the course of
\nthe evolution of religion and refused to ban or excise any: it developed
\noccultism to its utmost limits, accepted spiritual philosophies of all kinds,
\nfollowed to its highest, deepest or largest outcome every possible line of
\nspiritual realisation<\/span>, spiritual experience,
\nspiritual self-discipline. Its method has been the method of evolutionary
\nNature herself, to allow all developments, all means of communication and
\naction of the spirit upon the members, all ways of communion between man and
\nthe Supreme or Divine, to follow every possible way of advance to the goal and
\ntest it even to its extreme. All stages of spiritual evolution are there in man
\nand each has to be allowed or provided with its means of approach to the
\nspirit, an approach suited to its capacity, adhikara<\/span>. Even the primitive forms that survived were not banned
\nbut were lifted to a deeper significance, while still there was the pressure to
\nthe highest spiritual pinnacles in the rarest supreme ether. Even the exclusive
\ncredal type of religion was not itself excluded; provided its affinity to the
\ngeneral aim and principle was clear, it was admitted into the infinite variety
\nof the general order. But this plasticity sought to support itself on a fixed religio<\/span>-social system, <\/span><\/p>\n

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which it permeated with the principle of a
\ngraded working out of the human nature turned at its height towards a supreme
\nspiritual endeavour<\/span>; this social fixity, which was
\nperhaps necessary at one time for unity of life if not also as a settled and
\nsecure basis for the spiritual freedom, has been on one side a power for
\npreservation but also the one obstacle to the native spirit of entire
\ncatholicity, an element of excessive crystallisation<\/span>
\nand restriction. A fixed basis may be indispensable, but if settled in essence,
\nthis also must be in its forms capable of plasticity, evolutionary change; it
\nmust be an order, but a growing order. <\/span><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the
\nprinciple of this great and many-sided religious and spiritual evolution was
\nsound, and by taking up in itself the whole of life and of human nature, by encouraging
\nthe growth of intellect and never opposing it or putting bounds to its freedom,
\nbut rather calling it in to the aid of the spiritual seeking, it prevented the
\nconflict or the undue predominance which in the Occident led to the restriction
\nand drying up of the religious instinct and the plunge into pure materialism
\nand secularism. A method of this plastic and universal kind, admitting but
\nexceeding all creeds and forms and allowing every kind of element, may have
\nnumerous consequences which might be objected to by the purist, but its great
\njustifying result has been an unexampled multitudinous richness and a more than
\nmillennial persistence and impregnable durability, generality, universality,
\nheight, subtlety and many-sided wideness of spiritual attainment and seeking
\nand endeavour<\/span>. It is indeed only by such a
\ncatholicity and plasticity that the wider aim of the evolution can work itself
\nout with any fullness. The individual demands from religion a door of opening
\ninto spiritual experience or a means of turning towards it, a communion with
\nGod or a definite light of guidance on the way, a promise of the hereafter or a
\nmeans of a happier supraterrestrial<\/span> future; these
\nneeds can be met on the narrower basis of credal belief and sectarian cult. But
\nthere is also the wider purpose of Nature to prepare and further the spiritual
\nevolution in man and turn him into a spiritual being; religion serves her as a
\nmeans for pointing his effort and his ideal in that direction and providing
\neach one who is ready with the possibility of taking a step upon the way
\ntowards it. This end she serves by <\/span><\/p>\n

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the immense variety of the cults she has
\ncreated, some final, standardised<\/span> and definitive,
\nothers more plastic, various and many-sided. A religion which is itself a
\ncongeries of religions and which at the same time provides each man with his
\nown turn of inner experience, would be the most in consonance with this purpose
\nof Nature: it would be a rich nursery of spiritual growth and flowering, a vast
\nmultiform school of the soul’s discipline, endeavour<\/span>,
\nself-realisation<\/span>. Whatever errors Religion has
\ncommitted, this is her function and her great and indispensable utility and
\nservice,\u2014the holding up of this growing light of guidance on our way through
\nthe mind’s ignorance towards the Spirit’s complete consciousness and
\nself-knowledge. <\/span><\/p>\n

Occultism is in its
\nessence man’s effort to arrive at a knowledge of secret truths and
\npotentialities of Nature which will lift him out of slavery to his physical
\nlimits of being, an attempt in particular to possess and organise<\/span>
\nthe mysterious, occult, outwardly still undeveloped direct power of Mind upon
\nLife and of both Mind and Life over Matter. There is at the same time an endeavour<\/span> to establish communication with worlds and
\nentities belonging to the supraphysical<\/span> heights,
\ndepths and intermediate levels of cosmic Being and to utilise<\/span>
\nthis communion for the mastery of a higher Truth and for a help to man in his
\nwill to make himself sovereign over Nature’s powers and forces. This human
\naspiration takes its stand on the belief, intuition or intimation that we are
\nnot mere creatures of the mud, but souls, minds, wills that can know all the
\nmysteries of this and every world and become not only Nature’s pupils but her
\nadepts and masters. The occultist sought to know the secret of physical things
\nalso and in this effort he furthered astronomy, created chemistry, gave an
\nimpulse to other sciences, for he utilised<\/span> geometry
\nalso and the science of numbers; but still more he sought to know the secrets
\nof supernature<\/span>. In this sense occultism might be
\ndescribed as the science of the supernatural; but it is in fact only the
\ndiscovery of the supraphysical<\/span>, the surpassing of the
\nmaterial limit,\u2014the heart of occultism is not the impossible chimera which
\nhopes to go beyond or outside all force of Nature and make pure phantasy<\/span> and arbitrary miracle omnipotently<\/span>
\neffective. What seems to us supernatural is in fact either a spon<\/span>– <\/span><\/p>\n

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taneous irruption of the phenomena of
\nother-Nature into physical Nature or, in the work of the occultist, a
\npossession of the knowledge and power of the higher orders or grades of cosmic
\nBeing and Energy and the direction of their forces and processes towards the
\nproduction of effects in the physical world by seizing on possibilities of
\ninterconnection and means for a material effectuality. There are powers of the
\nmind and the life-force which have not been included in Nature’s present systematisation<\/span> of mind and life in matter, but are
\npotential and can be brought to bear upon material things and happenings or
\neven brought in and added to the present systematisation<\/span>
\nso as to enlarge the control of mind over our own life and body or to act on
\nthe minds, lives, bodies of others or on the movements of cosmic Forces. The modern
\nadmission of hypnotism is an example of such a discovery and systematised<\/span> application,\u2014though still narrow and limited,
\nlimited by its method and formula,\u2014of occult powers which otherwise touch us
\nonly by a casual or a hidden action whose process is unknown to us or
\nimperfectly caught by a few; for we are all the time undergoing a battery of
\nsuggestions, thought-suggestions, impulse-suggestions, will-suggestions,
\nemotional and sensational suggestions, thought-waves, life-waves that come on
\nus or into us from others or from the universal Energy, but act and produce
\ntheir effects without our knowledge. A systematized endeavour<\/span>
\nto know these movements and their law and possibilities, to master and use the
\npower or Nature-force behind them or to protect ourselves from them would fall
\nwithin one province of occultism: but it would only be a small part even of
\nthat province; for wide and multiple are the possible fields, uses, processes
\nof this vast range of little-explored Knowledge.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

In modern times, as physical
\nScience enlarged its discoveries and released the secret material forces of
\nNature into an action governed by human knowledge for human use, occultism
\nreceded and was finally set aside on the ground that the physical alone is real
\nand Mind and Life are only departmental activities of Matter. On this basis,
\nbelieving material Energy to be the key of all things, Science has attempted to
\nmove towards a control of mind and life processes by a knowledge of the
\nmaterial instrumentation <\/span><\/p>\n

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and process of our normal and abnormal mind and
\nlife functionings<\/span> and activities; the spiritual is
\nignored as only one form of mentality. It may be observed in passing that if
\nthis endeavour<\/span> succeeded, it might not be without
\ndanger for the existence of the human race, even as now are certain other
\nscientific discoveries misused or clumsily used by a humanity mentally and morally
\nunready for the handling of powers so great and perilous; for it would be an
\nartificial control applied without any knowledge of the secret forces which
\nunderlie and sustain our existence. Occultism in the West could be thus easily
\npushed aside because it never reached its majority, never acquired ripeness and
\na philosophic or sound systematic foundation. It indulged too freely in the
\nromance of the supernatural or made the mistake of concentrating its major
\neffort on the discovery of formulas and effective modes for using supernormal
\npowers. It deviated into magic white and black or into a romantic or thaumaturgic<\/span> paraphernalia of occult mysticism and the
\nexaggeration of what was after all a limited and scanty knowledge. These
\ntendencies and this insecurity of mental foundation made it difficult to defend
\nand easy to discredit, a target facile and vulnerable. In Egypt and the East
\nthis line of knowledge arrived at a greater and more comprehensive endeavour<\/span>: this ampler  <\/span>maturity can be seen still intact in the
\nremarkable system of the Tantras<\/span>; it was not only a
\nmany-sided science of the supernormal but supplied the basis of all the occult
\nelements of religion and even developed a great and powerful system of spiritual
\ndiscipline and self-realisation<\/span>. For the highest
\noccultism is that which discovers the secret movements and dynamic supernormal
\npossibilities of Mind and Life and Spirit and uses them in their native force
\nor by an applied process for the greater effectivity<\/span>
\nof our mental, vital and spiritual being. <\/span><\/p>\n

Occultism is associated
\nin popular idea with magic and magical formulae and a supposed mechanism of the
\nsupernatural. But this is only one side, nor is it altogether a superstition as
\nis vainly imagined by those who have not looked deeply or at all at this covert
\nside of secret Nature-Force or experimented with its possibilities. Formulas
\nand their application, a mechanisation<\/span> of latent
\nforces, can be astonishingly effective in the occult use of <\/span><\/p>\n

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mind-power and life-power just as it is in
\nphysical Science, but this is only a subordinate method and a limited
\ndirection. For mind and life forces are plastic, subtle and variable in their
\naction and have not the material rigidity; they need a subtle and plastic
\nintuition in the knowledge of them, in the interpretation of their action and
\nprocess and in their application,\u2014even in the interpretation and action of
\ntheir established formulas. An overstress on mechanisation<\/span>
\nand rigid formulation is likely to result in sterilisation<\/span>
\nor a formalised<\/span> limitation of knowledge and, on the
\npragmatic side, to much error, ignorant convention, misuse and failure. Now
\nthat we are outgrowing the superstition of the sole truth of Matter, a swing
\nbackward towards the old occultism and to new formulations, as well as to a
\nscientific investigation of the still hidden secrets and powers of Mind and a
\nclose study of psychic and abnormal or supernormal psychological phenomena, is
\npossible and, in parts, already visible. But if it is to fulfil<\/span>
\nitself, the true foundation, the true aim and direction, the necessary
\nrestrictions and precautions of this line of inquiry have to be rediscovered;
\nits most important aim must be the discovery of the hidden truths and powers of
\nthe mind-force and the life-power and the greater forces of the concealed
\nspirit. Occult science is, essentially, the science of the subliminal, the
\nsubliminal in ourselves and the subliminal in world-nature, and of all that is
\nin connection with the subliminal, including the subconscient<\/span>
\nand the superconscient<\/span>, and the use of it as part of
\nself-knowledge and world-knowledge and for the right dynamisation<\/span>
\nof that knowledge. <\/span><\/p>\n

An intellectual approach
\nto the highest knowledge, the mind’s possession of it, is an indispensable aid
\nto this movement of Nature in the human being. Ordinarily, on our surface,
\nman’s chief instrument of thought and action is the reason, the observing, understanding
\nand arranging intellect. In any total advance or evolution of the Spirit, not
\nonly the intuition, insight, inner sense, the heart’s devotion, a deep and
\ndirect life-experience of the things of the Spirit have to be developed, but
\nthe intellect also must be enlightened and satisfied; our thinking and
\nreflecting mind must be helped to understand, to form a reasoned and systematised<\/span> idea of the goal, the method, the principles
\nof this
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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highest development and activity of our nature
\nand the truth of all that lies behind it. Spiritual realisation<\/span>
\nand experience, an intuitive and direct knowledge, a growth of inner
\nconsciousness, a growth of the soul and of an intimate soul-perception, soul-vision
\nand a soul-sense, are indeed the proper means of this evolution: but the
\nsupport of the reflective and critical reason is also of great importance; if
\nmany can dispense with it, because they have a vivid and direct contact with
\ninner realities and are satisfied with experience and insight, yet in the whole
\nmovement it is indispensable. If the supreme truth is a spiritual Reality, then
\nthe intellect of man needs to know what is the nature of that original Truth
\nand the principle of its relations to the rest of existence, to ourselves and
\nthe universe. The intellect is not capable by itself of bringing us into touch with
\nthe concrete spiritual reality, but it can help by a mental formulation of the
\ntruth of the Spirit which explains it to the mind and can be applied even in
\nthe more direct seeking: this help is of a capital importance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our thinking mind is
\nconcerned mainly with the statement of general spiritual truth, the logic of
\nits absolute and the logic of its relativities, how they stand to each other or
\nlead to each other, and what are the mental consequences of the spiritual theorem
\nof existence. But besides this understanding and intellectual statement which
\nis its principal right and share, the intellect  <\/span>seeks to exercise a critical control; it may
\nadmit the ecstatic or other concrete spiritual experiences, but its demand is
\nto know   <\/span>on what sure and well-ordered truths of being
\nthey are founded. Indeed, without such a truth known and verifiable, our reason
\nmight find these experiences insecure and unintelligible, might draw back from
\nthem as possibly not founded on truth or else distrust them in their form, if
\nnot in their foundation, as affected by an error, even an aberration of the
\nimaginative vital mind, the emotions, the nerves or the senses; for these might
\nbe misled, in their passage or transference from the physical and sensible to
\nthe invisible, into a pursuit of deceiving lights or at least to a misreception<\/span> of things valid in themselves but marred by a
\nwrong or imperfect interpretation of what is experienced or a confusion and
\ndisorder of the true spiritual values. If <\/span><\/p>\n

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reason finds itself obliged to admit the
\ndynamics of occultism, there too it will be most concerned with the truth and
\nright system and real significance of the forces that it sees brought into
\nplay; it must inquire whether the significance is that which the occultist
\nattaches to it or something other and perhaps deeper which has been
\nmisinterpreted in its essential relations and values or not given its true
\nplace in the whole of experience. For the action of our intellect is primarily
\nthe function of understanding, but secondarily critical and finally organising<\/span>, controlling and formative. <\/span><\/p>\n

The means by which this
\nneed can be satisfied and with which our nature of mind has provided us is
\nphilosophy, and in this field it must be a spiritual philosophy. Such systems
\nhave arisen in numbers in the East; for almost always, wherever there has been
\na considerable spiritual development, there has arisen from it a philosophy
\njustifying it to the intellect. The method was at first an intuitive seeing and
\nan intuitive expression, as in the fathomless thought and profound language of
\nthe Upanishads, but afterwards there was developed a critical method, a firm
\nsystem of dialectics, a logical organisation<\/span>. The later
\nphilosophies were an intellectual account1 <\/sup>or a logical
\njustification of what had been found by inner realisation<\/span>;
\nor they provided, themselves, a mental ground or a systematised<\/span>
\nmethod for realisation<\/span> and experience.2 <\/sup>In
\nthe West where the syncretic<\/span> tendency of the
\nconsciousness was replaced by the analytic and separative<\/span>,
\nthe spiritual urge and the intellectual reason parted company almost at the
\noutset; philosophy took from the first a turn towards a purely intellectual and
\nratiocinative explanation of things. Nevertheless, there were systems like the
\nPythagorean, Stoic, and Epicurean, which were dynamic not only for thought but
\nfor conduct of life and developed a discipline, an effort at inner perfection
\nof the being; this reached a higher spiritual plane of knowledge in later
\nChristian or Neo-pagan thought-structures where East and West met together. But
\nlater on the intellectualisation<\/span> became complete and
\nthe connection of philosophy with life and its energies or spirit and its
\ndynamism was either cut or confined to the little that the metaphysical<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

1<\/span><\/sup> E.g., the Gita<\/span>.
\n2<\/sup> E.g., the Yoga philosophy of Patanjali<\/span>.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

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idea can impress on life and action by an abstract
\nand secondary influence. Religion has supported itself in the West not by philosophy
\nbut by a credal theology; sometimes a spiritual philosophy emerges by sheer
\nforce of individual genius, but it has not been as in the East a necessary
\nadjunct to every considerable line of spiritual experience and endeavour<\/span>. It is true that a philosophic development of
\nspiritual thought is not entirely indispensable; for the truths of spirit can
\nbe reached more directly and completely by intuition and by a concrete inner
\ncontact. It must also be said that the critical control of the intellect over spiritual
\nexperience can be hampering and unreliable, for it is an inferior light turned
\nupon a field of higher illumination; the true controlling power is an inner
\ndiscrimination, a psychic sense and tact, a superior intervention of guidance
\nfrom above or an innate and luminous inner guidance. But still this line of
\ndevelopment too is necessary, because there must be a bridge between the spirit
\nand the intellectual reason: the light of a spiritual or at least a spiritualised<\/span> intelligence is necessary for the fullness of
\nour total inner evolution, and without it, if another deeper guidance is
\nlacking, the inner movement may be erratic and undisciplined, turbid and mixed
\nwith unspiritual elements or one-sided or incomplete in its catholicity. For
\nthe transformation of the Ignorance into the integral Knowledge the growth in
\nus of a spiritual intelligence ready to receive a higher light and canalise<\/span> it for all the parts of our nature is an
\nintermediate necessity of great importance. <\/span><\/p>\n

But none of these three
\nlines of approach can by themselves entirely fulfil<\/span>
\nthe greater and ulterior intention of Nature; they cannot create in mental man
\nthe spiritual being, unless and until they open the door to spiritual
\nexperience. It is only by an  <\/span>inner realisation<\/span> of what these approaches are seeking after, by
\nan overwhelming experience or by many experiences building up an inner change,
\nby a transmutation of the consciousness, by a liberation of the spirit from its
\npresent veil of mind, life and body that there can emerge the spiritual being.
\nThat is the final line of the soul’s progress towards which the others are
\npointing and, when it is ready to disengage itself from the preliminary
\napproaches, then the real work has begun and the turning-point of the change <\/span><\/p>\n

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is no longer distant. Till then all that the
\nhuman mental being has reached is a familiarity with the idea of things beyond
\nhim, with the possibility of an other-worldly movement, with the ideal of some
\nethical perfection; he may have made too some contact with greater Powers or
\nRealities which help his mind or heart or life. A change there may be, but not
\nthe transmutation of the mental into the spiritual being. Religion and its
\nthought and ethics and occult mysticism in ancient times produced the priest
\nand the mage, the man of piety, the just man, the man of wisdom, many high
\npoints of mental manhood; but it is only after spiritual experience through the
\nheart and mind began that we see arise the saint, the prophet, the Rishi<\/span>, the Yogi, the seer, the spiritual sage and the
\nmystic, and it is the religions in which these types of spiritual manhood came into
\nbeing that have endured, covered the globe and given mankind all its spiritual
\naspiration and culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>When
\nspirituality disengages itself in the consciousness and puts on its distinctive
\ncharacter, it is only at first a small kernel, a growing tendency, an
\nexceptional light of experience amidst the great mass of normal unenlightened
\nhuman mind, vitality, physicality which forms the outer self and engrosses our
\nnatural preoccupation. There are tentative beginnings and a slow evolution and
\nhesitating emergence. An earlier first preliminary form of it creates a certain
\nkind of religiosity which is not the pure spiritual temperament, but is of the
\nnature of mind or life seeking or finding in itself a spiritual support or
\nfactor; in this stage man is mostly preoccupied with the utilisation<\/span>
\nof such contacts as he can get or construct with what is beyond him to help or
\nserve his mental ideas or moral ideals or his vital and physical interests; the
\ntrue turn to some spiritual change has not come. The first true formations take
\nthe shape of a spiritualisation<\/span> of our natural
\nactivities, a permeating influence on them or a direction: there is a
\npreparatory influence or influx in some part or tendency of the mind or life,\u2014a
\nspiritualised<\/span> turn of thought with uplifting
\nilluminations, or a spiritualised<\/span> turn of the
\nemotional or the aesthetic being, a spiritualised<\/span>
\nethical formation in the character, a spiritualised<\/span>
\nurge in some life-action or other dynamic vital movement of the nature. An awareness
\ncomes perhaps of an <\/span><\/p>\n

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inner light, of a guidance or a communion, of a
\ngreater Control than the mind and will to which something in us obeys; but all is
\nnot yet recast in the mould of that experience. But when these intuitions and
\nilluminations grow in insistence and canalize themselves, make a strong inner
\nformation and claim to govern the whole life and take over the nature, then
\nthere begins the spiritual formation of the being; there emerges the saint, the
\ndevotee, the spiritual sage, the seer, the prophet, the servant of  <\/span>God, the soldier of the spirit. All these take
\ntheir stand on one part of the natural being lifted up by a spiritual light,
\npower or ecstasy. The sage and seer live in the spiritual mind, their thought
\nor their vision is governed and moulded<\/span> by an inner
\nor a greater divine light of knowledge; the devotee lives in the spiritual
\naspiration of the heart, its self-offering and its seeking; the saint is moved
\nby the awakened psychic being in the inner heart grown powerful to govern the
\nemotional and vital being; the others stand in the vital kinetic nature driven
\nby a higher spiritual energy and turned by it towards an inspired action, a God-
\ngiven work or mission, the service of some divine Power, idea or ideal. The
\nlast or highest emergence is the liberated man who has realised<\/span>
\nthe Self and Spirit within him, entered into the cosmic consciousness, passed
\ninto union with the Eternal and, so far as he still accepts life and action,
\nacts by the light and energy of the Power within him working through his human
\ninstruments of Nature. The largest formulation of this spiritual change and
\nachievement is a total liberation of soul, mind, heart and action, a casting of
\nthem all into the sense of the cosmic Self and the Divine Reality.1 <\/sup>The
\nspiritual evolution of the individual has then found its way and thrown up its
\nrange of Himalayan eminences and its peaks of highest nature. Beyond this
\nheight and largeness there opens only the supramental<\/span>
\nascent or the incommunicable Transcendence.<\/span><\/p>\n

This then has been up
\ntill now the course of Nature’s evolution of the spiritual man in the human
\nmental being, and it may be questioned what is the exact sum of this
\nachievement and its actual significance. In the recent reaction towards the life
\nof the mind in Matter, this great direction and this rare change have <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/span><\/sup> This is the essence of the spiritual
\nideal and realisation<\/span> held before us by the Gita<\/span>.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nbeen stigmatised<\/span> as no
\ntrue evolution of consciousness but rather a sublimated crudity of ignorance
\ndeviating from the true human evolution, which should be solely an evolution of
\nlife-power, the practical physical mind, the reason governing thought and
\nconduct and the discovering and organising<\/span>
\nintelligence. In this epoch religion was pushed aside as an out-of-date superstition
\nand spiritual realisation<\/span> and experience discredited
\nas a shadowy mysticism; the mystic in this view is the man who turns aside into
\nthe unreal, into occult regions of a self-constructed land of chimeras and
\nloses his way there. This judgment proceeds from a view of things which is itself
\nbound to pass into discredit, because it depends ultimately on the false
\nperception of the material as alone real and the outward life as alone of
\nimportance. But apart from this extreme materialistic view of things, it can be
\nand is still held by the intellect and the physical mind eager for human life-fulfilment<\/span>,\u2014and that is the prevalent mentality, the
\ndominant modern trend,\u2014that the spiritual tendency in humanity has come to very
\nlittle; it has not solved the problem of life nor any of the problems with
\nwhich humanity is at grips. The mystic either detaches himself from life as the
\nother-worldly ascetic or the aloof visionary and therefore cannot help life, or
\nelse he brings no better solution or result than the practical man or the man
\nof intellect and reason: by his intervention he rather disturbs the human
\nvalues, distorts them with his alien and unverifiable light obscure to the
\nhuman understanding and confuses the plain practical and vital issues life puts
\nbefore us. <\/span><\/p>\n

But this is not the
\nstandpoint from which the true significance of the spiritual evolution in man
\nor the value of spirituality can be judged or assessed; for its real work is
\nnot to solve human problems on the past or present mental basis, but to create a
\nnew foundation of our being and our life and knowledge. The ascetic or
\nother-worldly tendency of the mystic is an extreme affirmation of his refusal
\nto accept the limitations imposed by material Nature: for his very reason of
\nbeing is to go beyond her; if he cannot transform her, he must leave her. At
\nthe same time the spiritual man has not stood back altogether from the life of
\nhumanity; for the sense of unity with all beings, the stress of a universal
\nlove and compassion, the will to spend the energies <\/span><\/p>\n

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for the good of all creatures,1<\/sup> are
\ncentral to the dynamic out-flowering of the spirit: he has turned therefore to
\nhelp, he has guided as did the ancient Rishis<\/span> or the
\nprophets, or stooped to create and, where he has done so with something of the
\ndirect power of the Spirit, the results have been prodigious. But the solution
\nof the problem which spirituality offers is not a solution by external means,
\nthough these also have to be used, but by an inner change, a transformation of
\nthe consciousness and nature.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

If no decisive but only
\na contributory result, an accretion of some new finer elements to the sum of
\nthe consciousness, has been the general consequence and there has been no
\nlife-transformation, it is because man in the mass has always deflected the
\nspiritual impulsion, recanted from the spiritual ideal or held it only as a
\nform and rejected the inward change. Spirituality cannot be called upon to deal
\nwith life by a non-spiritual method or attempt to cure its ills by the
\npanaceas, the political, social or other mechanical remedies which the mind is
\nconstantly attempting and which have always failed and will continue to fail to
\nsolve anything. The most drastic changes made by these means change nothing;
\nfor the old ills exist in a new  <\/span>form:
\nthe aspect of the outward environment is altered, but man remains what he was;
\nhe is still an ignorant mental being misusing or not effectively using his
\nknowledge, moved by ego and governed by vital desires and passions and the needs
\nof the body, unspiritual and superficial in his outlook, ignorant of his own
\nself and the forces that drive and use him. His life-constructions have a value
\nas expressions of his individual and collective being in the stage to which
\nthey have reached or as a machinery for the convenience and welfare of his
\nvital and physical parts and a field and medium for his mental growth, but they
\ncannot take him beyond his present self or serve as a machinery to transform
\nhim; his and their perfection can only come by his farther evolution. Only a
\nspiritual change, an evolution of his being from the superficial mental towards
\nthe deeper spiritual consciousness, can make a real and effective difference.
\nTo discover the spiritual being in himself is the main <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

1<\/span><\/sup> Gita<\/span>. The
\nBuddhist elevation of universal compassion, karunā<\/span>
\nand sympathy (vasudhaiva<\/span> kutumbakam<\/span>,
\nthe whole earth is my family), to be the highest principle of action, the
\nChristian emphasis on love indicate this dynamic side of the spiritual being. <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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business of the spiritual man and to help others
\ntowards the same evolution is his real service to the race; till that is done,
\nan outward help can succour<\/span> and alleviate, but
\nnothing or very little more is possible. <\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>It
\nis true that the spiritual tendency has been to look more beyond life than
\ntowards life. It is true also that the spiritual change has been individual and
\nnot collective; its result has been successful in the man, but unsuccessful or
\nonly indirectly operative in the human mass. The spiritual evolution of Nature
\nis still in process and incomplete,\u2014one might almost say, still only
\nbeginning,\u2014and its main preoccupation has been to affirm and develop a basis of
\nspiritual consciousness and knowledge and to create more and more a foundation
\nor formation for the vision of that which is eternal in the truth of the spirit.
\nIt is only when Nature has fully confirmed this intensive evolution and
\nformation through the individual that anything radical of an expanding or
\ndynamically diffusive character can be expected or any attempt at collective
\nspiritual life,\u2014such attempts have been made, but mostly as a field of
\nprotection for the growth of the individual’s spirituality,\u2014acquire a successful
\npermanence. For till then the individual must be preoccupied with his own
\nproblem of entirely changing his mind and life into conformity with the truth
\nof the spirit which he is achieving or has achieved in his inner being and
\nknowledge. Any premature attempt at a large-scale collective spiritual life is
\nexposed to vitiation by some incompleteness of the spiritual knowledge on its
\ndynamic side, by the imperfections of the individual seekers and by the
\ninvasion of the ordinary mind and vital and physical consciousness taking hold
\nof the truth and mechanising<\/span>, obscuring or corrupting
\nit. The mental intelligence and its main power of reason cannot change the
\nprinciple and persistent character of human life, it can only effect various mechanisations<\/span>, manipulations, developments and
\nformulations. But neither is mind as a whole, even spiritualised<\/span>,
\nable tochange<\/span> it; spirituality liberates and
\nillumines the inner being, it helps mind to communicate with what is higher
\nthan itself, to escape even from itself, it can purify and uplift by the inner
\ninfluence the outward nature of individual human beings: but so long as it has
\nto work in the human mass through <\/span><\/p>\n

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mind as the instrument, it can exercise an
\ninfluence on the earth-life but not bring about a transformation of that life.
\nFor this reason there has been a prevalent tendency in the spiritual mind to be
\nsatisfied with such an influence and in the main to seek fulfilment<\/span>
\nin other-life elsewhere or to abandon altogether any outward-going endeavour<\/span> and concentrate solely on an individual spiritual
\nsalvation or perfection. A higher instrumental dynamis<\/span>
\nthan mind is needed to transform totally a nature created by the Ignorance. <\/span><\/p>\n

Another objection to the
\nmystic and his knowledge is urged, not against its effect upon life but against
\nhis method of the discovery of Truth and against the Truth that he discovers.
\nOne objection to the method is that it is purely subjective, not true independently
\nof the personal consciousness and its constructions, not verifiable. But this
\nground of cavil has no great value: for the object of the mystic is
\nself-knowledge and God-knowledge, and that can only be arrived at by an inward
\nand not by an outward gaze. Or it is the supreme Truth of things that he seeks,
\nand that too cannot be arrived at by an outward inquiry through the senses or
\nby any scrutiny or research that founds itself on outsides and surfaces or by
\nspeculation based on the uncertain data of an indirect means of knowledge. It
\nmust come by a direct vision or contact of the consciousness with the soul and
\nbody of the Truth itself or through a knowledge by identity, by the self that
\nbecomes one with the self of things and with their truth of power and their
\ntruth of essence. But it is urged that the actual result of this method is not
\none truth common to all, there are great differences; the conclusion suggested
\nis that this knowledge is not truth at all but a subjective mental formation.
\nBut this objection is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of spiritual
\nknowledge. Spiritual truth is a truth of the spirit, not a truth of the
\nintellect, not a mathematical theorem or a logical formula. It is a truth of
\nthe Infinite, one in an infinite diversity, and it can assume an infinite
\nvariety of aspects and formations: in the spiritual evolution it is inevitable
\nthat there should be a many-sided passage and reaching to the one Truth, a
\nmany-sided seizing of it; this many-sidedness is the sign of the approach of
\nthe soul to a living reality, not to an abstraction or
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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a constructed figure of things that can be petrified
\ninto a dead or stony formula. The hard logical and intellectual notion of truth
\nas a single idea which all must accept, one idea or system of ideas defeating
\nall other ideas or systems, or a single limited fact or single formula of facts
\nwhich all must recognise<\/span>, is an illegitimate
\ntransference from the limited truth of the physical field to the much more
\ncomplex and plastic field of life and mind and spirit. <\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>This
\ntransference has been responsible for much harm; it brings into thought
\nnarrowness, limitation, an intolerance of the necessary variation and
\nmultiplicity of viewpoints without which there can be no totality of
\ntruth-finding, and by the narrowness and limitation much obstinacy in error. It
\nreduces philosophy to an endless maze of sterile disputes; religion has been
\ninvaded by this misprision and infected with credal dogmatism, bigotry and
\nintolerance. The truth of the spirit is a truth of  <\/span>being and consciousness and not a truth of
\nthought: mental ideas can only represent or formulate some facet, some mind-translated
\nprinciple or power of it or enumerate its aspects, but to know it one has to
\ngrow into it and be it; without that growing and being there can be no true
\nspiritual knowledge. The fundamental truth of spiritual experience is one, its consciousness
\nis one, everywhere it follows the same general lines and tendencies of
\nawakening and growth into spiritual being; for these are the imperatives of the
\nspiritual consciousness. But also there are, based on those imperatives, numberless
\npossibilities of variation of experience and expression: the centralisation and
\nharmonisation of these possibles, but also the intensive sole following out of
\nany line of experience are both of them necessary movements of the emerging spiritual
\nConscious-Force within us. Moreover, the accommodation of mind and life to the
\nspiritual truth, its expression in them, must vary with the mentality of the
\nseeker so long as he has not risen above all need of such accommodation or such
\nlimiting expression. It is this mental and vital element which has created the
\noppositions that still divide spiritual seekers or enter into their differing
\naffirmations of the truth that they experience. This difference and variation
\nis needed for the freedom of spiritual search and spiritual growth: <\/span><\/p>\n

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to overpass differences is quite possible, but
\nthat is most easily done in pure experience; in mental formulation the
\ndifference must remain until one can exceed mind altogether and in a highest
\nconsciousness integralise<\/span>, unify and harmonise<\/span> the many-sided truth of the Spirit.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

In the evolution of the
\nspiritual man there must necessarily be many stages and in each stage a great
\nvariety of individual formations of the being, the consciousness, the life, the
\ntemperament, the ideas, the character. The nature of instrumental mind and the
\nnecessity of dealing with the life must of itself create an infinite variety
\naccording to the stage of development and the individuality of the seeker. But,
\napart from that, even the domain of pure spiritual self-realisation<\/span>
\nand self-expression need not be a single white monotone, there can be a great
\ndiversity in the fundamental unity; the supreme Self is one, but the souls of
\nthe Self are many and, as is the soul’s formation of nature, so will be its
\nspiritual self-expression. A diversity in oneness is the law of the
\nmanifestation; the supramental<\/span> unification and
\nintegration must harmonise<\/span> these diversities, but to
\nabolish them is not the intention of the Spirit in Nature. <\/span><\/p>\n

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CHAPTER XXIV  The Evolution of the Spiritual Man      Even as men come to Me, so I accept them. It is my path that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-19-the-life-divine-volume-19","wpcat-27-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246","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=1246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}