{"id":3030,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:30","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3030"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:30","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:30","slug":"24-the-necessity-of-the-spiritual-transformation-vol-25-the-human-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/25-the-human-cycle\/24-the-necessity-of-the-spiritual-transformation-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-24_The Necessity of the Spiritual Transformation.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tChapter XXII <\/font> <\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Necessity of the Spiritual
\nTransformation <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tO<\/font>UR NORMAL<\/b> conduct of life, whether the individual or the social, is actually governed by the balance between two complementary powers,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 first, an implicit will central to the life and inherent in the main power of its
\naction and, secondly, whatever modifying will can come in from the Idea in mind
\n\t\t\t\u2014 for man is a mental being \u2014 and operate
\nthrough our as yet imperfect mental instruments to give this life force a conscious orientation and a conscious method. Life
\nnormally finds its own centre in our vital and physical being, in its cravings and its needs, in its demand for persistence, growth,
\nexpansion, enjoyment, in its reachings after all kinds of power and possession and activity and splendour and largeness. The
\nfirst self-direction of this Life-Force, its first orderings of method are instinctive and either entirely or very largely subconscient
\nand magnificently automatic: the ease, spontaneity, fine normality, beauty, self-satisfaction, abundant vital energy and power
\nof the subhuman life of Nature up to the animal is due to its entire obedience to this instinctive and automatic urge. It is a
\nvague sense of this truth and of the very different and in this respect inferior character of human life that makes the thinker,
\nwhen dissatisfied with our present conditions, speak of a life according to Nature as the remedy for all our ills. An attempt to
\nfind such a rule in the essential nature of man has inspired many revolutionary conceptions of ethics and society and individual
\nself-development down to the latest of the kind, the strangely inspired vitalistic philosophy of Nietzsche. The common defect
\nof these conceptions is to miss the true character of man and the true law of his being, his Dharma. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNietzsche’s idea that to develop the superman out of our present
\n\t\t\tvery unsatisfactory manhood is our real business, is in itself an
\n\t\t\tabsolutely sound teaching.  <\/p>\n

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His formulation of our aim,
\n“to become ourselves”, “to exceed ourselves”, implying, as it does, that man has not yet found all his true self, his true nature
\nby which he can successfully and spontaneously live, could not be bettered. But then the question of questions is there, what
\nis our self, and what is our real nature? What is that which is growing in us, but into which we have not yet grown? It is
\nsomething divine, is the answer, a divinity Olympian, Apollonian, Dionysiac, which the reasoning and consciously willing
\nanimal, man, is labouring more or less obscurely to become. Certainly, it is all that; but in what shall we find the seed of
\nthat divinity and what is the poise in which the superman, once self-found, can abide and be secure from lapse into this lower
\nand imperfect manhood? Is it the intellect and will, the doubleaspected buddhi
\n<\/i>of the Indian psychological system? But this
\nis at present a thing so perplexed, so divided against itself, so uncertain of everything it gains, up to a certain point indeed
\nmagically creative and efficient but, when all has been said and done, in the end so splendidly futile, so at war with and yet so
\ndependent upon and subservient to our lower nature, that even if in it there lies concealed some seed of the entire divinity, it can
\nhardly itself be the seed and at any rate gives us no such secure and divine poise as we are seeking. Therefore we say, not the
\nintellect and will, but that supreme thing in us yet higher than the Reason, the spirit, here concealed behind the coatings of our
\nlower nature, is the secret seed of the divinity and will be, when discovered and delivered, luminous above the mind, the wide
\nground upon which a divine life of the human being can be with security founded.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen we speak of the superman, we speak evidently of something
\n\t\t\tabnormal or supernormal to our present nature, so much so that the
\n\t\t\tvery idea of it becomes easily alarming and repugnant to our normal
\n\t\t\thumanity. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThe normal human does not desire to be called out from its constant
\n\t\t\tmechanical round to scale what may seem to it impossible heights and
\n\t\t\tit loves still less the prospect of being exceeded, left behind and
\n\t\t\tdominated,  
\n\t\t\t\u2014 although the object of a true supermanhood is not exceeding and domination for its own sake but precisely the opening of our
\nnormal humanity to something now beyond itself that is yet its own destined perfection. But mark that this thing which we have
\ncalled normal humanity, is itself something abnormal in Nature, something the like and parity of which we look around in vain
\nto discover; it is a rapid freak, a sudden miracle. Abnormality in Nature is no objection, no necessary sign of imperfection,
\nbut may well be an effort at a much greater perfection. But this perfection is not found until the abnormal can find its own
\nsecure normality, the right organisation of its life in its own kind and power and on its own level. Man is an abnormal who has
\nnot found his own normality, \u2014 he may imagine he has, he may appear to be normal in his own kind, but that normality is only
\na sort of provisional order; therefore, though man is infinitely greater than the plant or the animal, he is not perfect in his own
\nnature like the plant and the animal. This imperfection is not a thing to be at all deplored, but rather a privilege and a promise,
\nfor it opens out to us an immense vista of self-development and self-exceeding. Man at his highest is a half-god who has risen up
\nout of the animal Nature and is splendidly abnormal in it, but the thing which he has started out to be, the whole god, is something
\nso much greater than what he is that it seems to him as abnormal to himself as he is to the animal. This means a great and arduous
\nlabour of growth before him, but also a splendid crown of his race and his victory. A kingdom is offered to him beside which
\nhis present triumphs in the realms of mind or over external Nature will appear only as a rough hint and a poor beginning. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhat precisely is the defect from which all his imperfection springs? We have already indicated it,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 that has indeed been
\nthe general aim of the preceding chapters, \u2014 but it is necessary to state it now more succinctly and precisely.   <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\tWe see that at first sight man seems to be a double nature, an
\n\t\t\t\tanimal nature of the vital and physical being which lives
\n\t\t\t\taccording to its instincts, impulses, desires, its automatic
\n\t\t\t\torientation and method, and with that a half-divine nature of
\n\t\t\t\tthe self-conscious intellectual, ethical, aesthetic,
\n\t\t\t\tintelligently emotional, intelligently dynamic
\nbeing who is capable of finding and understanding the law of his own action and consciously using and bettering it, a reflecting
\nmind that understands Nature, a will that uses, elevates, perfects Nature, a sense that intelligently enjoys Nature. The aim of the
\nanimal part of us is to increase vital possession and enjoyment; the aim of the semi-divine part of us is also to grow, possess and
\nenjoy, but first to possess and enjoy intelligently, aesthetically, ethically, by the powers of the mind much more than by the powers of the life and body, and, secondly, to possess and enjoy, not so much the vital and physical except in so far as that is necessary
\nas a foundation and starting-point, a preliminary necessity or condition, a standing-ground and basis, but things intellectual,
\nethical and aesthetic, and to grow not so much in the outward life, except in so far as that is necessary to the security, ease and
\ndignity of our human existence, but in the true, the good and the beautiful. This is the manhood of man, his unique distinction
\nand abnormality in the norm of this inconscient material Nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis means that man has developed a new power of being,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 let us call it a new soul-power, with the premiss that we regard the life and the body also as a soul-power,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 and the being who
\nhas done that is under an inherent obligation not only to look at the world and revalue all in it from this new elevation, but
\nto compel his whole nature to obey this power and in a way reshape itself in its mould, and even to reshape, so far as he can,
\nhis environmental life into some image of this greater truth and law. In doing this lies his
\nsvadharma<\/i>, his true rule and way of
\nbeing, the way of his perfection and his real happiness. Failing in this, he fails in the aim of his nature and his being, and
\nhas to begin again until he finds the right path and arrives at a successful turning-point, a decisive crisis of transformation.
\nNow this is precisely what man has failed to do. He has effected something, he has passed a certain stage of his journey. He has
\nlaid some yoke of the intellectual, ethical, aesthetic rule on his vital and physical parts and made it impossible for himself to be
\ncontent with or really to be the mere human animal. But more he has not been able to do successfully.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t The transformation of his life into the image of the true, the
\n\t\t\tgood and the beautiful seems
\nas far off as ever; if ever he comes near to some imperfect form of it, \u2014 and even then it is only done by a class or by a number of
\nindividuals with some reflex action on the life of the mass, \u2014 he slides back from it in a general decay of his life, or else stumbles
\non from it into some bewildering upheaval out of which he comes with new gains indeed but also with serious losses. He
\nhas never arrived at any great turning-point, any decisive crisis of transformation. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe main failure, the root of the whole failure indeed, is that he has not been able to shift upward what we have called
\nthe implicit will central to his life, the force and assured faith inherent in its main power of action. His central will of life is
\nstill situated in his vital and physical being, its drift is towards vital and physical enjoyment, enlightened indeed and checked to
\na certain extent in its impulses by the higher powers, but enlightened only and very partially, not transformed,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 checked, not
\ndominated and uplifted to a higher plane. The higher life is still only a thing superimposed on the lower, a permanent intruder
\nupon our normal existence. The intruder interferes constantly with the normal life, scolds, encourages, discourages, lectures,
\nmanipulates, readjusts, lifts up only to let fall, but has no power to transform, alchemise, re-create. Indeed it does not seem itself
\nquite to know where all this effort and uneasy struggle is meant to lead us, \u2014 sometimes it thinks, to a quite tolerable human life
\non earth, the norm of which it can never successfully fix, and sometimes it imagines our journey is to another world whither
\nby a religious life or else an edifying death it will escape out of all this pother and trouble of mortal being. Therefore these
\ntwo elements live together in a continual, a mutual perplexity, made perpetually uneasy, uncomfortable and ineffectual by each
\nother, somewhat like an ill-assorted wife and husband, always at odds and yet half in love with or at least necessary to each other,
\nunable to beat out a harmony, yet condemned to be joined in an unhappy leash until death separates them. All the uneasiness, dissatisfaction, disillusionment, weariness, melancholy, pessimism of the human mind comes from man’s practical failure to solve
\nthe riddle and the difficulty of his double nature.
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\n\t\t\tWe have said that this failure is due to the fact that this
\nhigher power is only a mediator, and that thoroughly to transform the vital and physical life in its image is perhaps not
\npossible, but at any rate not the intention of Nature in us. It may be urged perhaps that after all individuals have succeeded in
\neffecting some figure of transformation, have led entirely ethical or artistic or intellectual lives, even shaped their life by some
\nideal of the true, the good and the beautiful, and whatever the individual has done, the race too may and should eventually
\nsucceed in doing; for the exceptional individual is the future type, the forerunner. But to how much did their success really
\namount? Either they impoverished the vital and physical life in them in order to give play to one element of their being, lived a
\none-sided and limited existence, or else they arrived at a compromise by which, while the higher life was given great prominence,
\nthe lower was still allowed to graze in its own field under the eye more or less strict or the curb more or less indulgent of
\nthe higher power or powers: in itself, in its own instincts and demands it remained unchanged. There was a dominance, but
\nnot a transformation. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLife cannot be entirely rational, cannot conform entirely to
\nthe ethical or the aesthetic or the scientific and philosophic mentality; mind is not the destined archangel of the transformation.
\nAll appearances to the contrary are always a trompe l’oeil<\/i>, an intellectual, aesthetic or ethical illusion. Dominated, repressed
\nlife may be, but it reserves its right; and though individuals or a class may establish this domination for a time and impose some
\nsimulacrum of it upon the society, Life in the end circumvents the intelligence; it gets strong elements in it
\n\t\t\t\u2014 for always there
\nare traitor elements at work \u2014 to come over to its side and reestablishes its instincts, recovers its field; or if it fails in this, it
\nhas its revenge in its own decay which brings about the decay of the society, the disappointment of the perennial hope. So much
\nso, that there are times when mankind perceives this fact and, renouncing the attempt to dominate the life-instinct, determines
\nto use the intelligence for its service and to give it light in its own field instead of enslaving it to a higher but chimerical ideal.
\n   <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tSuch a period was the recent materialistic age, when the intellect of man seemed decided to study thoroughly Life and
\nMatter, to admit only that, to recognise mind only as an instrument of Life and Matter, and to devote all its knowledge
\nto a tremendous expansion of the vital and physical life, its practicality, its efficiency, its comfort and the splendid ordering
\nof its instincts of production, possession and enjoyment. That was the character of the materialistic, commercial, economic
\nage of mankind, a period in which the ethical mind persisted painfully, but with decreasing self-confidence, an increasing selfquestioning and a tendency to yield up the fortress of the moral law to the life-instinct, the aesthetic instinct and intelligence
\nflourished as a rather glaring exotic ornament, a sort of rare orchid in the button-hole of the vital man, and reason became the
\nmagnificent servant of Life and Matter. The titanic development of the vital Life which followed, is ending as the Titans always
\nend; it lit its own funeral pyre in the conflagration of a worldwar, its natural upshot, a struggle between the most “efficient”
\nand “civilised” nations for the possession and enjoyment of the world, of its wealth, its markets, its available spaces, an inflated
\nand plethoric commercial expansion, largeness of imperial size and rule. For that is what the great war signified and was in its
\nreal origin, because that was the secret or the open intention of all pre-war diplomacy and international politics; and if a nobler
\nidea was awakened at least for a time, it was only under the scourge of Death and before the terrifying spectre of a gigantic
\nmutual destruction. Even so the awakening was by no means complete, nor everywhere quite sincere, but it was there and it
\nwas struggling towards birth even in Germany, once the great protagonist of the vitalistic philosophy of life. In that awakening
\nlay some hope of better things. But for the moment at least the vitalistic aim has once more raised its head in a new form and
\nthe hope has dimmed in a darkness and welter in which only the eye of faith can see chaos preparing a new cosmos. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe first result of this imperfect awakening seemed likely to be a return to an older ideal, with a will to use the reason
\nand the ethical mind better and more largely in the ordering of individual, of
\n\t\t\tnational and of international life.  <\/p>\n

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But such an attempt, though well enough as a first step, cannot be the real
\nand final solution; if our effort ends there, we shall not arrive. The solution lies, we have said, in an awakening to our real,
\nbecause our highest self and nature, \u2014 that hidden self which we are not yet, but have to become and which is not the strong
\nand enlightened vital Will hymned by Nietzsche, but a spiritual self and spiritual nature that will use the mental being which
\nwe already are, but the mental being spiritualised, and transform by a spiritual ideality the aim and action of our vital and
\nphysical nature. For this is the formula of man in his highest potentiality, and safety lies in tending towards our highest and
\nnot in resting content with an inferior potentiality. To follow after the highest in us may seem to be to live dangerously, to
\nuse again one of Nietzsche’s inspired expressions, but by that danger comes victory and security. To rest in or follow after an
\ninferior potentiality may seem safe, rational, comfortable, easy, but it ends badly, in some futility or in a mere circling, down
\nthe abyss or in a stagnant morass. Our right and natural road is towards the summits.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe have then to return to the pursuit of an ancient secret which
\n\t\t\tman, as a race, has seen only obscurely and followed after lamely,
\n\t\t\thas indeed understood only with his surface mind and not in its
\n\t\t\theart of meaning, \u2014 and yet in following it lies his social no less
\n\t\t\tthan his individual salvation, \u2014 the ideal of the kingdom of God,
\n\t\t\tthe secret of the reign of the Spirit over mind and life and body.
\n\t\t\tIt is because they have never quite lost hold of this secret, never
\n\t\t\tdisowned it in impatience for a lesser victory, that the older
\n\t\t\tAsiatic nations have survived so persistently and can now, as if
\n\t\t\timmortal, raise their faces towards a new dawn; for they have fallen
\n\t\t\tasleep, but they have not perished. It is true that they have for a
\n\t\t\ttime failed in life, where the European nations who trusted to the
\n\t\t\tflesh and the intellect have succeeded; but that success, speciously
\n\t\t\tcomplete but only for a time, has always turned into a catastrophe.
\n\t\t\tStill Asia had failed in life, she had fallen in the dust, and even
\n\t\t\tif the dust in which she was lying was sacred, as the modern poet of
\n\t\t\tAsia has declared, \u2014 though the sacredness may be doubted, \u2014 still
\n\t\t\tthe dust is not the proper place for man, nor is to lie prostrate in
\n\t\t\tit his right human attitude. <\/p>\n

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\nAsia temporarily failed not because she followed after things spiritual, as some console themselves by saying,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 as if
\nthe spirit could be at all a thing of weakness or a cause of weakness, \u2014 but because she did not follow after the spirit sufficiently, did not learn how entirely to make it the master of life. Her mind either made a gulf and a division between life and the
\nSpirit or else rested in a compromise between them and accepted as final socio-religious systems founded upon that compromise.
\nSo to rest is perilous; for the call of the Spirit more than any other demands that we shall follow it always to the end, and the
\nend is neither a divorce and departure nor a compromise, but a conquest of all by the spirit and that reign of the seekers after
\nperfection which, in the Hindu religious symbol, the last Avatar comes to accomplish. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis truth it is important to note, for mistakes made on the path are often even more instructive than the mistakes made by a
\nturning aside from the path. As it is possible to superimpose the intellectual, ethical or aesthetic life or the sum of their motives
\nupon the vital and physical nature, to be satisfied with a partial domination or a compromise, so it is possible to superimpose
\nthe spiritual life or some figure of strength or ascendency of spiritual ideas
\n\t\t\tand motives on the mental, vital and physical nature and either to
\n\t\t\timpoverish the latter, to impoverish the vital and physical
\n\t\t\texistence and even to depress the mental as well in order to give
\n\t\t\tthe spiritual an easier domination, or else to make a compromise and
\n\t\t\tleave the lower being to its pasture on condition of its doing
\n\t\t\tfrequent homage to the spiritual existence, admitting to a certain
\n\t\t\textent, greater or less, its influence and formally acknowledging it
\n\t\t\tas the last state and the finality of the human being. This is the
\n\t\t\tmost that human society has ever done in the past, and though
\n\t\t\tnecessarily that must be a stage of the journey, to rest there is to
\n\t\t\tmiss the heart of the matter, the one thing needful. Not a humanity
\n\t\t\tleading its ordinary life, what is now its normal round, touched by
\n\t\t\tspiritual influences, but a humanity aspiring whole-heartedly to a
\n\t\t\tlaw that is now abnormal
\nto it until its whole life has been elevated into spirituality, is the steep way that lies before man towards his perfection and the
\ntransformation that it has to achieve. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThe secret of the transformation lies in the transference of
\nour centre of living to a higher consciousness and in a change of our main power of living. This will be a leap or an ascent
\neven more momentous than that which Nature must at one time have made from the vital mind of the animal to the thinking
\nmind still imperfect in our human intelligence. The central will implicit in life must be no longer the vital will in the life and the
\nbody, but the spiritual will of which we have now only rare and dim intimations and glimpses. For now it comes to us hardly
\ndisclosed, weakened, disguised in the mental Idea; but it is in its own nature supramental and it is its supramental power and
\ntruth that we have somehow to discover. The main power of our living must be no longer the inferior vital urge of Nature
\nwhich is already accomplished in us and can only whirl upon its rounds about the ego-centre, but that spiritual force of which we
\nsometimes hear and speak but have not yet its inmost secret. For that is still retired in our depths and waits for our transcendence
\nof the ego and the discovery of the true individual in whose universality we shall be united with all others. To transfer from
\nthe vital being, the instrumental reality in us, to the spirit, the central reality, to elevate to that height our will to be and our
\npower of living is the secret which our nature is seeking to discover. All that we have done hitherto is some half-successful
\neffort to transfer this will and power to the mental plane; our highest endeavour and labour has been to become the mental
\nbeing and to live in the strength of the idea. But the mental idea in us is always intermediary and instrumental; always it
\ndepends on something other than it for its ground of action and therefore although it can follow for a time after its own separate
\nsatisfaction, it cannot rest for ever satisfied with that alone. It must either gravitate downwards and outwards towards the vital
\nand physical life or it must elevate itself inwards and upwards towards the spirit. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd that must be why in thought, in art, in conduct, in life we are
\n\t\t\talways divided between two tendencies, one idealistic, the other
\n\t\t\trealistic. <\/p>\n

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\nThe latter very easily seems to us more real,
\nmore solidly founded, more in touch with actualities because it relies upon a reality which is patent, sensible and already
\naccomplished; the idealistic easily seems to us something unreal, fantastic, unsubstantial, nebulous, a thing more of thoughts and
\nwords than of live actualities, because it is trying to embody a reality not yet accomplished. To a certain extent we are perhaps
\nright; for the ideal, a stranger among the actualities of our physical existence, is in fact a thing unreal until it has either in some
\nway reconciled itself to the imperfections of our outer life or else has found the greater and purer reality for which it is seeking
\nand imposed it on our outer activities; till then it hangs between two worlds and has conquered neither the upper light nor the
\nnether darkness. Submission to the actual by a compromise is easy; discovery of the spiritual truth and the transformation
\nof our actual way of living is difficult: but it is precisely this difficult thing that has to be done, if man is to find and fulfil
\nhis true nature. Our idealism is always the most rightly human thing in us, but as a mental idealism it is a thing ineffective. To
\nbe effective it has to convert itself into a spiritual realism which shall lay its hands on the higher reality of the spirit and take
\nup for it this lower reality of our sensational, vital and physical nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis upward transference of our will to be and our power of life we have, then, to make the very principle of our perfection.
\nThat will, that power must choose between the domination of the vital part in us and the domination of the spirit. Nature
\ncan rest in the round of vital being, can produce there a sort of perfection, but that is the perfection of an arrested development
\nsatisfied with its own limits. This she can manage in the plant and the animal, because the life and the body are there at once
\nthe instrument and the aim; they do not look beyond themselves. She cannot do it in man because here she has shot up beyond
\nher physical and vital basis; she has developed in him the mind which is an outflowering
\n\t\t\tof the life towards the light of the Spirit, and the life and the
\n\t\t\tbody are now instrumental and no longer their own aim.  <\/p>\n

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Therefore the perfection of man cannot consist in pursuing the unillumined round of the physical life. Neither
\ncan it be found in the wider rounds of the mental being; for that also is instrumental and tends towards something else beyond
\nit, something whose power indeed works in it, but whose larger truth is superconscient to its present intelligence, supramental.
\nThe perfection of man lies in the unfolding of the ever-perfect Spirit.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe lower perfection of Nature in the plant and the animal comes from an instinctive, an automatic, a subconscient obedience in each to the vital truth of its own being. The higher perfection of the spiritual life will come by a spontaneous obedience of spiritualised man to the truth of his own realised being, when he has become himself, when he has found his own real
\nnature. For this spontaneity will not be instinctive and subconscient, it will be intuitive and fully, integrally conscious. It will
\nbe a glad obedience to a spontaneous principle of spiritual light, to the force of a unified and integralised highest truth, largest
\nbeauty, good, power, joy, love, oneness. The object of this force acting in life will and must be as in all life growth, possession,
\nenjoyment, but a growth which is a divine manifestation, a possession and enjoyment spiritual and of the spirit in things,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 an
\nenjoyment that will use, but will not depend on the mental, vital and physical symbols of our living. Therefore this will not be
\na limited perfection of arrested development dependent on the repetition of the same forms and the same round of actions, any
\ndeparture from which becomes a peril and a disturbance. It will be an illimitable perfection capable of endless variation in its
\nforms, \u2014 for the ways of the Spirit are countless and endless, \u2014 but securely the same in all variations, one but multitudinously
\ninfinite. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTherefore, too, this perfection cannot come by the mental
\nidea dealing with the Spirit as it deals with life. The idea in mind seizing upon the central will in Spirit and trying to give this
\nhigher force a conscious orientation and method in accordance with the ideas of the intellect is too limited, too darkened, too
\npoor a force to work this miracle. Still less can it come if we chain the spirit
\n\t\t\tto some fixed mental idea or system of religious cult, intellectual
\n\t\t\ttruth, aesthetic norm, ethical rule, practical action, way of vital
\n\t\t\tand physical life, to a particular arrangement of forms and actions
\n\t\t\tand declare all departure from that a peril and a disturbance or a
\n\t\t\tdeviation from spiritual living.    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 243<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThat was the mistake made in Asia and the cause of its arrested development
\nand decline; for this is to subject the higher to the lower principle and to bind down the self-disclosing Spirit to a provisional and
\nimperfect compromise with mind and the vital nature. Man’s true freedom and perfection will come when the spirit within
\nbursts through the forms of mind and life and, winging above to its own gnostic fiery height of ether, turns upon them from
\nthat light and flame to seize them and transform into its own image. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn fact, as we have seen, the mind and the intellect are not the key-power of our existence. For they can only trace out a round
\nof half-truths and uncertainties and revolve in that unsatisfying circle. But concealed in the mind and life, in all the action of the
\nintellectual, the aesthetic, the ethical, the dynamic and practical, the emotional, sensational, vital and physical being, there is a
\npower that sees by identity and intuition and gives to all these things such truth and such certainty and stability as they are able
\nto compass. Obscurely we are now beginning to see something of this behind all our science and philosophy and all our other
\nactivities. But so long as this power has to work for the mind and life and not for itself, to work in their forms and not by its
\nown spontaneous light, we cannot make any great use of this discovery, cannot get the native benefit of this inner Daemon.
\nMan’s road to spiritual supermanhood will be open when he declares boldly that
\n\t\t\tall he has yet developed, including the intellect of which he is so
\n\t\t\trightly and yet so vainly proud, are now no longer sufficient for
\n\t\t\thim, and that to uncase, discover, set free this greater Light
\n\t\t\twithin shall be henceforward his pervading preoccupation. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/span>244<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\tThen will his philosophy, art, science, ethics, social existence, vital
\n\tpursuits be no longer an exercise of mind and life, done for themselves,
\n\tcarried in a circle, but a means for the discovery of a greater Truth behind
\n\tmind and life and for  
\nthe bringing of its power into our human existence. We shall be on the right road to become ourselves, to find our true law of
\nperfection, to live our true satisfied existence in our real being and divine nature.
\n  \n<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/span>245<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XXII   The Necessity of the Spiritual Transformation   OUR NORMAL conduct of life, whether the individual or the social, is actually governed by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-25-the-human-cycle","wpcat-58-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3030","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=3030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}