{"id":3054,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3054"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:39","slug":"26-the-advent-and-progress-of-the-spiritual-age-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\/26-the-advent-and-progress-of-the-spiritual-age-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-26_The Advent and Progress of the Spiritual Age.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Advent and Progress
\nof the Spiritual Age <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI<\/font>F A<\/b> subjective age, the last sector of a social cycle, is to find its outlet and fruition in a spiritualised society and the
\nemergence of mankind on a higher evolutionary level, it is not enough that certain ideas favourable to that turn of human
\nlife should take hold of the general mind of the race, permeate the ordinary motives of its thought, art, ethics, political ideals,
\nsocial effort, or even get well into its inner way of thinking and feeling. It is not enough even that the idea of the kingdom of
\nGod on earth, a reign of spirituality, freedom and unity, a real and inner equality and harmony
\n\t\t\t\u2014 and not merely an outward
\nand mechanical equalisation and association \u2014 should become definitely an ideal of life; it is not enough that this ideal should
\nbe actively held as possible, desirable, to be sought and striven after, it is not enough even that it should come forward as a governing preoccupation of the human mind. That would evidently be a very great step forward,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 considering what the ideals of
\nmankind now are, an enormous step. It would be the necessary beginning, the indispensable mental environment for a living
\nrenovation of human society in a higher type. But by itself it might only bring about a half-hearted or else a strong but only
\npartially and temporarily successful attempt to bring something of the manifest spirit into human life and its institutions. That
\nis all that mankind has ever attempted on this line in the past. It has never attempted to work out thoroughly even that little,
\nexcept in the limits of a religious order or a peculiar community, and even there with such serious defects and under such drastic
\nlimitations as to make the experiment nugatory and without any bearing on human life. If we do not get beyond the mere holding
\nof the ideal and its general influence in human life, this little is all that
\n\t\t\tmankind will attempt in the future.    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 261<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nMore is needed; a general spiritual awakening and aspiration in mankind is indeed
\nthe large necessary motive-power, but the effective power must be something greater. There must be a dynamic re-creating of
\nindividual manhood in the spiritual type. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor the way that humanity deals with an ideal is to be
\nsatisfied with it as an aspiration which is for the most part left only as an aspiration, accepted only as a partial influence. The
\nideal is not allowed to mould the whole life, but only more or less to colour it; it is often used even as a cover and a plea for things
\nthat are diametrically opposed to its real spirit. Institutions are created which are supposed, but too lightly supposed to embody
\nthat spirit and the fact that the ideal is held, the fact that men live under its institutions is treated as sufficient. The holding of
\nan ideal becomes almost an excuse for not living according to the ideal; the existence of its institutions is sufficient to abrogate
\nthe need of insisting on the spirit that made the institutions. But spirituality is in its very nature a thing subjective and not
\nmechanical; it is nothing if it is not lived inwardly and if the outward life does not flow out of this inward living. Symbols,
\ntypes, conventions, ideas are not sufficient. A spiritual symbol is only a meaningless ticket, unless the thing symbolised is realised in the spirit. A spiritual convention may lose or expel its spirit and become a falsehood. A spiritual type may be a
\ntemporary mould into which spiritual living may flow, but it is also a limitation and may become a prison in which it fossilises
\nand perishes. A spiritual idea is a power, but only when it is both inwardly and outwardly creative. Here we have to enlarge
\nand to deepen the pragmatic principle that truth is what we create, and in this sense first, that it is what we create within
\nus, in other words, what we become. Undoubtedly, spiritual truth exists eternally beyond independent of us in the heavens
\nof the spirit; but it is of no avail for humanity here, it does not become truth of earth, truth of life until it is lived. The
\ndivine perfection is always there above us; but for man to become divine in consciousness and act and to live inwardly and
\noutwardly the divine life is what is meant by spirituality; all
\nlesser meanings given to the word are inadequate fumblings or impostures.  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/span>262<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tThis, as the subjective religions recognise, can only be brought about by an individual change in each human life.
\nThe collective soul is there only as a great half-subconscient source of the individual existence; if it is to take on a definite
\npsychological form or a new kind of collective life, that can only come by the shaping growth of its individuals. As will be the
\nspirit and life of the individuals constituting it, so will be the realised spirit of the collectivity and the true power of its life.
\nA society that lives not by its men but by its institutions, is not a collective soul, but a machine; its life becomes a mechanical
\nproduct and ceases to be a living growth. Therefore the coming of a spiritual age must be preceded by the appearance of an
\nincreasing number of individuals who are no longer satisfied with the normal intellectual, vital and physical existence of
\nman, but perceive that a greater evolution is the real goal of humanity and attempt to effect it in themselves, to lead others to
\nit and to make it the recognised goal of the race. In proportion as they succeed and to the degree to which they carry this
\nevolution, the yet unrealised potentiality which they represent will become an actual possibility of the future. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA great access of spirituality in the past has ordinarily had for its result the coming of a new religion of a special type and
\nits endeavour to impose itself upon mankind as a new universal order. This, however, was always not only a premature but a
\nwrong crystallisation which prevented rather than helped any deep and serious achievement. The aim of a spiritual age of
\nmankind must indeed be one with the essential aim of subjective religions, a new birth, a new consciousness, an upward
\nevolution of the human being, a descent of the spirit into our members, a spiritual reorganisation of our life; but if it limits
\nitself by the old familiar apparatus and the imperfect means of a religious movement, it is likely to register another failure. A
\nreligious movement brings usually a wave of spiritual excitement and aspiration that communicates itself to a large number
\nof individuals and there is as a result a temporary uplifting and an effective
\n\t\t\tformation, partly spiritual, partly ethical, partly dogmatic in its
\n\t\t\tnature. But the wave after a generation or two or at most a few
\n\t\t\tgenerations begins to subside; the formation remains.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 263<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nIf there has been a very powerful movement with a great
\nspiritual personality as its source, it may leave behind a central influence and an inner discipline which may well be the startingpoint of fresh waves; but these will be constantly less powerful and enduring in proportion as the movement gets farther and
\nfarther away from its source. For meanwhile in order to bind together the faithful and at the same time to mark them off
\nfrom the unregenerated outer world, there will have grown up a religious order, a Church, a hierarchy, a fixed and unprogressive
\ntype of ethical living, a set of crystallised dogmas, ostentatious ceremonials, sanctified superstitions, an elaborate machinery for
\nthe salvation of mankind. As a result spirituality is increasingly subordinated to intellectual belief, to outward forms of conduct
\nand to external ritual, the higher to the lower motives, the one thing essential to aids and instruments and accidents. The first
\nspontaneous and potent attempt to convert the whole life into spiritual living yields up its place to a set system of belief and
\nethics touched by spiritual emotion; but finally even that saving element is dominated by the outward machinery, the sheltering
\nstructure becomes a tomb. The Church takes the place of the spirit and a formal subscription to its creed, rituals and order is
\nthe thing universally demanded; spiritual living is only practised by the few within the limits prescribed by their fixed creed and
\norder. The majority neglect even that narrow effort and are contented to replace by a careful or negligent piety the call to a
\ndeeper life. In the end it is found that the spirit in the religion has become a thin stream choked by sands; at the most brief
\noccasional floodings of its dry bed of conventions still prevent it from becoming a memory in the dead chapters of Time. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe ambition of a particular religious belief and form to universalise and impose itself is contrary to the variety of human
\nnature and to at least one essential character of the Spirit. For the nature of the Spirit is a spacious inner freedom and a large
\nunity into which each man must be allowed to grow according
\nto his own nature. Again \u2014 and this is yet another source of inevitable failure
\n\t\t\t\u2014 the usual tendency of these credal religions is to turn towards an
\n\t\t\tafterworld and to make the regeneration of the earthly life a
\n\t\t\tsecondary motive; this tendency grows in proportion as the original
\n\t\t\thope of a present universal regeneration of mankind becomes more and
\n\t\t\tmore feeble.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/span>264<\/p>\n

\n

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

Therefore while
\nmany new spiritual waves with their strong special motives and disciplines must necessarily be the forerunners of a spiritual age,
\nyet their claims must be subordinated in the general mind of the race and of its spiritual leaders to the recognition that all motives
\nand disciplines are valid and yet none entirely valid since they are means and not the one thing to be done. The one thing essential
\nmust take precedence, the conversion of the whole life of the human being to the lead of the spirit. The ascent of man into heaven
\nis not the key, but rather his ascent here into the spirit and the descent also of the spirit into his normal humanity and the transformation of this earthly nature. For that and not some post mortem salvation is the real new birth for which humanity waits as the
\ncrowning movement of its long obscure and painful course. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTherefore the individuals who will most help the future of
\nhumanity in the new age will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need
\nof the human being. Even as the animal man has been largely converted into a mentalised and at the top a highly mentalised
\nhumanity, so too now or in the future an evolution or conversion \u2014 it does not greatly matter which figure we use or
\nwhat theory we adopt to support it \u2014 of the present type of humanity into a spiritualised humanity is the need of the race
\nand surely the intention of Nature; that evolution or conversion will be their ideal and endeavour. They will be comparatively
\nindifferent to particular belief and form and leave men to resort to the beliefs and forms to which they are naturally drawn. They
\nwill only hold as essential the faith in this spiritual conversion, the attempt to live it out and whatever knowledge
\n\t\t\t\u2014 the form
\nof opinion into which it is thrown does not so much matter \u2014 can be converted into this living. They will especially not
\nmake the mistake of thinking that this change can be effected by machinery and
\n\t\t\toutward institutions; they will know and never forget that it has to
\n\t\t\tbe lived out by each man inwardly or it can never be made a reality
\n\t\t\tfor the kind.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 2665<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n They will adopt in its heart of meaning the inward view of the East which bids man seek
\nthe secret of his destiny and salvation within; but also they will accept, though with a different turn given to it, the importance
\nwhich the West rightly attaches to life and to the making the best we know and can attain the general rule of all life. They will not
\nmake society a shadowy background to a few luminous spiritual figures or a rigidly fenced and earth-bound root for the growth
\nof a comparatively rare and sterile flower of ascetic spirituality. They will not accept the theory that the many must necessarily
\nremain for ever on the lower ranges of life and only a few climb into the free air and the light, but will start from the standpoint
\nof the great spirits who have striven to regenerate the life of the earth and held that faith in spite of all previous failure. Failures
\nmust be originally numerous in everything great and difficult, but the time comes when the experience of past failures can be
\nprofitably used and the gate that so long resisted opens. In this as in all great human aspirations and endeavours, an
\na priori<\/i>
\ndeclaration of impossibility is a sign of ignorance and weakness, and the motto of the aspirant’s endeavour must be the
\nsolvitur<\/i>
\nambulando <\/i>of the discoverer. For by the doing the difficulty will be solved. A true beginning has to be made; the rest is a work
\nfor Time in its sudden achievements or its long patient labour. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe thing to be done is as large as human life, and therefore
\nthe individuals who lead the way will take all human life for their province. These pioneers will consider nothing as alien to
\nthem, nothing as outside their scope. For every part of human life has to be taken up by the spiritual,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 not only the intellectual, the aesthetic, the ethical, but the dynamic, the vital, the physical; therefore for none of these things or the activities that
\nspring from them will they have contempt or aversion, however they may insist on a change of the spirit and a transmutation
\nof the form. In each power of our nature they will seek for its own proper means of conversion; knowing that the Divine
\nis concealed in all, they will hold that all can be made the spirit’s means of
\n\t\t\tself-finding and all can be converted into its instruments of divine
\n\t\t\tliving.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/span>266<\/p>\n

\n

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

And they will see that the great
\nnecessity is the conversion of the normal into the spiritual mind and the opening of that mind again into its own higher reaches
\nand more and more integral movement. For before the decisive change can be made, the stumbling intellectual reason has to
\nbe converted into the precise and luminous intuitive, until that again can rise into higher ranges to overmind and supermind
\nor gnosis. The uncertain and stumbling mental will has to rise towards the sure intuitive and into a higher divine and gnostic
\nwill, the psychic sweetness, fire and light of the soul behind the \u00af \u00af<\/i>
\nheart, hrdaye guhayam<\/i>, has to alchemise our crude emotions .<\/i>
\nand the hard egoisms and clamant desires of our vital nature. All our other members have to pass through a similar conversion
\nunder the compelling force and light from above. The leaders of the spiritual march will start from and use the knowledge and
\nthe means that past effort has developed in this direction, but they will not take them as they are without any deep necessary
\nchange or limit themselves by what is now known or cleave only to fixed and stereotyped systems or given groupings of
\nresults, but will follow the method of the Spirit in Nature. A constant rediscovery and new formulation and larger synthesis
\nin the mind, a mighty remoulding in its deeper parts because of a greater enlarging Truth not discovered or not well fixed before,
\nis that Spirit’s way with our past achievement when he moves to the greatnesses of the future.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis endeavour will be a supreme and difficult labour even for the individual, but much more for the race. It may well
\nbe that, once started, it may not advance rapidly even to its first decisive stage; it may be that it will take long centuries of
\neffort to come into some kind of permanent birth. But that is not altogether inevitable, for the principle of such changes in
\nNature seems to be a long obscure preparation followed by a swift gathering up and precipitation of the elements into the
\nnew birth, a rapid conversion, a transformation that in its luminous moment figures like a miracle. Even when the first decisive
\nchange is reached, it is certain that all humanity will not be able to rise to
\n\t\t\tthat level.    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 267<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tThere cannot fail to be a division into
\n\t\t\tthose who are able to live on the spiritual level and those who are
\n\t\t\tonly able to live in the light that descends from it into the mental
\n\t\t\tlevel. And below these too there might still be a great mass
\n\t\t\tinfluenced from above but not yet ready for the light. But even that
\n\t\t\twould be a transformation and a beginning far beyond anything yet
\n\t\t\tattained. This hierarchy would not mean as in our present vital
\n\t\t\tliving an egoistic domination of the undeveloped by the more
\n\t\t\tdeveloped, but a guidance of the younger by the elder brothers of
\n\t\t\tthe race and a constant working to lift them up to a greater
\n\t\t\tspiritual level and wider horizons. And for the leaders too this
\n\t\t\tascent to the first spiritual levels would not be the end of the
\n\t\t\tdivine march, a culmination that left nothing more to be achieved on
\n\t\t\tearth. For there would be still yet higher levels within the supramental realm, as the old Vedic poets knew when they spoke of
\n\t\t\tthe spiritual life as a constant ascent, \u2014 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tbrahmanas tva satakrato<\/i>
\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tud vamsam iva yemire;<\/i>
\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tyat sanoh sanum aruhat,<\/i>
\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tbhuri aspasta kartvam, <\/i>\u2014 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe priests of the word climb thee like a ladder, O
\nhundred-powered. As one ascends from peak to peak, there is made clear the much that has still to be done. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut once the foundation has been secured, the
\n\t\t\trest develops by a progressive self-unfolding and the soul is sure
\n\t\t\tof its way. As again it is phrased by the ancient Vedic singers, \u2014<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tabhyavasthah pra jayante,<\/i>
\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tpra vavrer vavris ciketa;<\/i>
\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tupasthe matur vi caste, <\/i>\u2014 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tState is born upon state; covering after covering becomes
\nconscious of knowledge; in the lap of the Mother the soul sees. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis at least is the highest hope, the possible destiny that opens
\n\t\t\tout before the human view, and it is a possibility which the
\n\t\t\tprogress of the human mind seems on the way to redevelop. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/span>268<\/p>\n

\n

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

If the light that is being born increases, if the number of individuals
\nwho seek to realise the possibility in themselves and in the world grows large and they get nearer the right way, then the Spirit who
\nis here in man, now a concealed divinity, a developing light and power, will descend more fully as the Avatar of a yet unseen and
\nunguessed Godhead from above into the soul of mankind and into the great individualities in whom the light and power are
\nthe strongest. There will then be fulfilled the change that will prepare the transition of human life from its present limits into
\nthose larger and purer horizons; the earthly evolution will have taken its grand impetus upward and accomplished the revealing step in a divine progression of which the birth of thinking and aspiring man from the animal nature was only an obscure
\npreparation and a far-off promise.  
\n  <\/p>\n

Page \u2013 <\/span>
\n269<\/p>\n

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

Chapter XXIV   The Advent and Progress of the Spiritual Age   IF A subjective age, the last sector of a social cycle, is to…<\/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-3054","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\/3054","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=3054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}