{"id":146,"date":"2013-07-13T01:26:12","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=146"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:26:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:12","slug":"37-our-ideal-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16\/37-our-ideal-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","title":{"rendered":"-37_Our Ideal.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nOur
\nIdeal<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n                    <\/font><\/span>W<\/font><\/span><\/b>E
\nBELIEVE<\/font> in the constant progression of humanity and we hold that that
\nprogression is the working out of a Thought in Life which sometimes manifests
\nitself on the surface and sometimes sinks below and works behind the mask of
\nexternal forces and interests. When there is this lapse below the surface,
\nhumanity has its periods of apparent retrogression or tardy evolution, its long
\nhours of darkness or twilight during which the secret Thought behind works out
\none of its phases by the pressure
\nmainly of economic, political and personal interests <\/span>ignorant of any
\ndeeper aim within. When the thought returns to the surface, humanity has its
\nperiods of light and of rapid efflorescence, its dawns and splendid springtides;
\nand according to the depth, vitality, truth and self-effective energy of the
\nform of Thought that emerges is the importance of the stride forward that it
\nmakes during these Hours of the Gods in our terrestrial manifestation.<\/p>\n

 
\n There
\nis no greater error than to suppose, as the \u201cpractical\u201d man is wont to do,
\nthat thought is only a fine flower and ornament of life and that political,
\neconomic and personal interests are the important and effective motors of human
\naction. We recognise that this is a world of life and action and developing
\norganism; but the life that seeks to guide itself only by vital and material
\nforces is a slow, dark and blundering growth. It is an attempt to approximate
\nman to the method of vegetable and animal existence. The earth is a world of
\nLife and Matter, but man is not a vegetable nor an animal; he is a spiritual and
\na thinking being who is set here to shape and use the animal mould for higher
\npurposes, by higher motives, with a more divine instrumentation.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n Therefore
\nby his very nature he serves the working of a Thought within him even when he is
\nignorant of it in his surface self. The practical man who ignores or despises
\nthe deeper life of the Idea, is yet serving that which he ignores or despises.
\nChar-\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-308<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

lemagne
\nhewing a chaotic Europe into shape with his sword was preparing the reign of the
\nfeudal and Catholic interpretation of human life with all that that great though
\nobscure period of humanity has meant for the thought and spiritual development
\nof mankind. But it is when the Thought emerges and guides life that man grows
\ntowards his full humanity, strides forward on his path and begins to control the
\ndevelopment of Nature in his destiny or at least to collaborate as a conscious
\nmind and spirit with That which controls and directs it.<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The progress of humanity has therefore been a constant revolution with
\nits rhythm of alternate darkness and light, but both the day and the night have
\nhelped to foster that which is evolving. The periods have not been the same for
\nall parts of the globe. In the historic ages of the present cycle of
\ncivilisation the movement has been almost entirely centred in the twin
\ncontinents of Asia and Europe. And there it has been often seen that when Asia
\nwas moving through the light, Europe was passing through one of her epochs of
\nobscurity and on the other hand the nights of Asia\u2019s repose or stagnation have
\ncorresponded with the days of Europe\u2019s mental vigour and vital activity.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>But the fundamental difference has been that Asia has served
\npredominantly (not exclusively) as a field for man\u2019s spiritual experience and
\nprogression; Europe has been rather a work- shop for his mental and vital
\nactivities. As the cycle progressed, the Eastern continent has more and more
\nconverted itself into a storehouse of spiritual energy sometimes active and
\nreaching forward to new development, sometimes conservative and quiescent. Three
\nor four times in history a stream of this energy has poured out upon Europe, but
\neach time Europe has rejected wholly or partially the spiritual substance of the
\nafflatus and used it rather as an impulse to fresh intellectual and material
\nactivity and progress.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The first attempt was the filtering of Egyptian, Chaldean and Indian
\nwisdom through the thought of the Greek philosophers from Pythagoras to Plato
\nand the Neo-Platonists; the result was the brilliantly intellectual and
\nunspiritual civilisation of Greece and Rome. But it prepared the way for the
\nsecond attempt when Buddhism and Vaishnavism, filtered through the Semitic tem-\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-309<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n

perament,
\nentered Europe in the form of Christianity. Christianity came within an ace of
\nspiritualising and even of asceticising the mind of Europe; it was baffled by
\nits own theological deformation in the minds of the Greek fathers of the Church
\nand by the sudden flooding of Europe with a German barbarism whose temperament
\nin its merits no less than in its defects was the very anti-type both of the
\nChristian spirit and the Graeco-Roman intellect.<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The Islamic invasion of Spain and the southern coast of the
\nMediterranean-curious as the sole noteworthy example of Asia- tic culture using
\nthe European method of material and political irruption as opposed to a peaceful
\ninvasion by ideas-may be regarded as a third attempt. The result of its meeting
\nwith Graecised Christianity was the reawakening of the European mind in feudal
\nand Catholic Europe and the obscure beginnings of
\nmodem thought and science.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The fourth and last attempt which is as yet only in its slow initial
\nstage is the quiet entry of Eastern and chiefly of Indian thought into Europe
\nfirst through the veil of German metaphysics, more latterly by its subtle
\ninfluence in reawakening the Celtic, Scandinavian and Slavonic idealism,
\nmysticism, religionism, and the direct and open penetration of Buddhism,
\nTheosophy, Vedantism, Bahaism and other Oriental influences in both Europe and
\nAmerica.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>On the other hand, there have been two reactions of Europe upon Asia;
\nfirst the invasion of Alexander with his aggressive Hellenism which for a time
\nheld Western Asia, created echoes and reactions in India and returned through
\nIslamic culture upon mediaeval Europe; secondly, the modern onslaught of
\ncommercial, political, scientific Europe upon the moral, artistic and spiritual
\ncultures of the East.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The new features of this mutual interpenetration are, first, that the two
\nattacks have synchronised and, secondly, that they have encountered in each case
\nthe extreme exaggeration of their opposites. Intellectual and materialistic
\nEurope found India, the Asia of Asia, the heart of the world’s spiritual life,
\nin the last throes of an enormous experiment, the thought of a whole nation
\nconcentrated for centuries upon the pure spiritual existence to\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-310<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n

the
\nexclusion of all real progress in the
\npractical and mental life <\/span>of the race. The entering stream of Eastern
\nthought found in Europe the beginning
\nof an<\/span> era which rejected
\nreligion, philo<\/span>sophy and psychology, \u2014<\/span>
\nreligion as an emotional delusion, philosophy, the pure essence of the mind, as
\na barren thought-weaving, \u2014<\/span>
\nand resolved to devote the whole intellectual faculty of man to a study of the
\nlaws of material Nature and of man\u2019s bodily, social, economic and political
\nexistence and to build thereon a superior civilisation.<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>That stupendous effort is over; it has not yet frankly declared its
\nbankruptcy, but it is bankrupt. It is sinking in a cataclysm as gigantic and as
\nunnatural as the attempt which gave it birth. On the other hand, the exaggerated
\nspirituality of the Indian effort has also registered a bankruptcy; we have seen
\nhow high individuals can rise by it, but we have seen also how Iowa race can
\nfall which in its eagerness to seek after God ignores His intention in humanity.
\nBoth the European and the Indian attempt were admirable, the Indian by its
\nabsolute spiritual sincerity, the European by its severe intellectual honesty
\nand ardour for the truth; both have accomplished miracles; but in the end God
\nand Nature have been too strong for the Titanism of the human spirit and for the
\nTitanism of the human intellect.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The salvation of the human race lies in a more sane and integral
\ndevelopment of the possibilities of mankind in the individual and in the
\ncommunity. The safety of Europe has to be sought in the recognition of the
\nspiritual aim of human existence, otherwise she will be crushed by the weight of
\nher own unillumined knowledge and soulless organisation. The safety of Asia lies
\nin the recognition of the material mould and mental conditions in which that aim
\nhas to be worked out, otherwise she will sink deeper into the slough of despond,
\nof a mental and physical incompetence to deal with the facts of life and the
\nshocks of a rapidly changing movement. It is not any exchange of forms that is
\nrequired, but an interchange of regenerating impulses and a happy fusion and
\nharmonising.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The synchronism and mutual interpenetration of the two great currents of
\nhuman effort at such a crisis in the history of\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-311<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

the
\nrace is full of hope for the future of humanity, but full also of possible
\ndangers. The hope is the emergence of a new and better human life founded on a
\ngreater knowledge, a pursuit of the new faculties and possibilities opening out
\nbefore us and a just view of the problem which the individual, the society, the
\nrace have to solve. Mankind has been drawn together by the developments of
\nmaterial science and for good or evil its external future is henceforth one; its
\ndifferent parts no longer develop separately and in independence of each other.
\nThere opens out at the same time the possibility that by the development and
\npractice of the science and the life of the soul it may be made one in reality
\nand by an internal unity.<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The idea by which the enlightenment of Europe has been governed is the
\npassion for the discovery of the Truth and Law that constitutes existence and
\ngoverns the process of the world, the attempt to develop the life and
\npotentialities of man, his ideals, institutions, organisation by the knowledge
\nof that Law and Truth and the confidence that along this line lies the road of
\nhuman progress and perfection.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The idea is absolutely just and we accept it entirely; but its
\napplication has been erroneous. For the Law and Truth that has to be discovered
\nis not that of the material world \u2014<\/span>
\nthough this is required, nor even of the mental and physical \u2014<\/span>
\nthough this is indispensable, but the Law and Truth of the Spirit on which all
\nthe rest depends. For it is the power of the Self of things that expresses
\nitself in their forms and processes.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The message of the East to the West is a true message, \u201cOnly by finding
\nhimself can man be saved,\u201d and \u201cwhat shall it profit a man though he gain
\nthe whole world, if he lose his own soul.\u201d The West has heard the message and
\nis seeking out the law and truth of the soul and the evidences of an inner
\nreality greater than the material. The danger is that with her passion for
\nmechanism and her exaggerated intellectuality she may fog herself in an external
\nand false psychism, such as we see arising in England and America, the homes of
\nthe mechanical genius, or in intellectual, unspiritual and therefore erroneous
\ntheories of the Absolute, such as have run their course in critical and
\nmetaphysical Germany.\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-312<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n

 
\n<\/span>The idea by which the illumination of Asia has been, governed is the firm
\nknowledge that truth of the Spirit is the sole real truth, the belief that the
\npsychological life of man is an instrument for attaining to the truth of the
\nSpirit and that its laws must be known and practised with that aim paramount,
\nand the attempt to form the external life of man and the institutions of society
\ninto a suitable mould for the great endeavour.<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>This idea, too, is absolutely just and we accept it entirely. But in its
\napplication, and in India most, it has deviated into a divorce between the
\nSpirit and its instruments and a disparagement and narrowing of the mental and
\nexternal life of the race. For it is only on the widest and richest
\nefflorescence of this instrumental life that the fullest and most absolute
\nattainment of the spiritual can be securely based. This knowledge the ancients
\nof the East possessed and practised; it has been dimmed in know- ledge
\nand lost in practice by their descendants.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The message the West brings to the East is a true message. Man also is
\nGod and it is through his developing manhood that he approaches the godhead;
\nLife also is the Divine, its progressive expansion is the self-expression of the
\nBrahman, and to deny Life is to diminish the Godhead within us. This is the
\ntruth that returns to the East from the West translated into the language of the
\nhigher truth the East already possesses; and it is an ancient knowledge. The
\nEast also is awaking to the message. The danger is that Asia may accept it in
\nthe European form, forget for a time her own law and nature and either copy
\nblindly the West or make a disastrous amalgam of that which she has in its most
\ninferior forms and the crudenesses which are invading her.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The problem of thought therefore is to find out the right idea and the
\nright way of harmony; to restate the ancient and eternal spiritual truth of the
\nSelf so that it shall re-embrace, permeate, dominate, transfigure the mental and
\nphysical life; to develop the most profound and vital methods of psychological
\nself-discipline and self-development so that the mental and psychical life of
\nman may express the spiritual life through the utmost possible expansion of its
\nown richness, power and complexity; and to seek for the means and motives by
\nwhich his external life, his society and his institutions may remould themselves
\npro-\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-313<\/p>\n

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

\n

gressively
\nin the truth of the spirit and develop towards the utmost possible harmony of
\nindividual freedom and social unity.<\/p>\n

             
\nThis
\nis our ideal and our search. Throughout the world there are plenty of movements
\ninspired by the same drift, but there is room for an effort of thought which
\nshall frankly acknowledge the problem in its integral complexity and not be
\nrestrained in the flexibility of its search by attachment to any cult, creed or
\nextant system of philosophy.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n The
\neffort involves a quest for the Truth that underlies existence and the
\nfundamental Law of its self-expression in the universe,<\/span> \u2014 the
\nwork of metaphysical philosophy and religious thought; the sounding and
\nharmonising of the psychological methods of discipline by which man purifies and
\nperfects himself, <\/span>\u2014 the work
\nof psychology, not as it is understood in Europe, but the deeper practical
\npsychology called in India Yoga and the application of our ideas to the problems
\nof man’s social and collective life.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n Philosophy
\nand religious thought based on spiritual experience must be the beginning and
\nthe foundation of any such attempt; for they alone go behind appearances and
\nprocesses to the truth of things. The attempt to get rid of their supremacy must
\nalways be vain. Man will always think and generalise and try to penetrate behind
\nthe apparent fact, for that is the imperative law of his awakened consciousness;
\nman will always turn his generalisations into a religion, even though it be only
\na religion of positivism or of material Law. Philosophy is the intellectual
\nsearch for the fundamental truth of things; religion is the attempt to make the
\ntruth dynamic in the soul of man. They are essential to each other; a religion
\nthat is not the expression of philosophic truth, degenerates into superstition
\nand obscurantism, and a philosophy which does not dynamise itself with the
\nreligious spirit is a barren light, for it cannot get itself practised. But
\nagain neither of these get their supreme value unless raised into the spirit and
\ncast into life.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n What
\nthen shall be our ideal? Unity for the human race by an inner oneness and not
\nonly by an external association of interests; the resurgence of man out of the
\nmerely animal and economic life or the merely intellectual and aesthetic into
\nthe glories<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-314<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

of
\nthe spiritual existence; the pouring of the power of the spirit into the
\nphysical mould and mental instrument so that man may develop his manhood into
\nthat true supermanhood which shall exceed our present state as much as this
\nexceeds the animal state from which Science tells us that we have issued. These
\nthree are one; for man\u2019s unity and man’s self-transcendence can come only by
\nliving in the Spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-315<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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